To Write Love On Her Arms
Today is To Write Love On Her Arms Day. If you’re not familiar with TWLOHA, you’re missing what is in my opinion one of the most meaningful movements of the church in teen/young adult culture in a generation.
The TWLOHA story is the story of how Jesus moves in the world. It is a story of ordinary people loving each other in extraordinary ways. It is the story of Christ meeting people in the reality of existence, of the crap the world hands us, of the broken and dysfunctional coping strategies we embrace. In the middle of our pain and hopelessness. In the heart of our disbelief.
It’s tempting to just see TWLOHA as something cool and hip and relevant. Because it’s got all the elements of a great story, we gravitate toward it. Many of us live in a world where the TWLOHA story is only a story. And so we relate to it in a purely intellectual way. We are moved by it, but we are not affected by it.
In many ways, we often have the same reaction to the Cross. We buy into the story, we accept it intellectually. But do we really identify with it?
In his book Velvet Elvis, Rob Bell makes the point that the first Christians insisted that when we identify with the Cross, something within us dies and we become a new person. Identifying with something is different than believing it or understanding it. It is accepting the reality of it. Allowing it to shape our identity, our ideas, our behaviors.
It is easy for adults, especially adults in the church, to turn a blind eye to the reality of the pain and brokenness that is wrecking teen culture. Even as a youth leader, directly involved with teens on a weekly, if not daily, basis, I don’t see much of it first-hand. But if we listen, we will hear the undercurrent. We will sense the pain that is so well covered, so masterfully hidden from the world.
Kids experiencing that kind of pain and brokenness generally don’t trust adults. And so it’s hard for us to see what’s going on because they either lie to us, or avoid us, or both. That’s why it’s so important that we equip and support other teens to reach into those dark places in their own culture. Teens who love Jesus and know him and want to love people the way he does.
That’s why TWLOHA is so important. It equips young people to talk to other young people. It opens doors of conversations that might not happen otherwise. It gives old farts like me a platform to tell hurting kids that there are adults who care and who love you and who want to help you get help. And it gives those who have become so good at hiding one less reason to hide.
Show me da money
It’s a trip. It makes the world go ’round. It’s what I want.
Cash. Bread. Dough. Moola. Dinero.
Pastor Steve’s recent sermon series on Generosity has got me thinking a lot lately about money. Not in the “love of it is the root of all evil” sort of way, or in the “give it all away before you burn” kind of way, but just in how we see, perceive, and understand it. Its value to us as individuals, to the world, and, more importantly, to God. To God’s kingdom.
I think we all tend to see money as basically something we earn, spend and save. Generally, that’s the notion that fuels the economy. It plays out in different ways for different people in different places and cultures, but I think for the most part we’d agree that money is 1) earned in return for providing a good or service; 2) spent on goods or services we consume; and 3) saved for future expenditures.
At the heart of this very broad model of monetary awareness is the notion that money is “ours.” The money I have is money I earned for something I have done. I will spend MY money as it suits ME on things I want or need. If I choose to give money away, I will give MY money to causes I support because they align with MY beliefs. I will save MY money to provide for MYSELF, MY needs, MY family, MY future.
There’s a lot of egocentricity to our perception of money, isn’t there?
So when the government taxes us, or the church asks for an offering, or a need arises outside of our immediate sphere of influence, our response is that “those people” are taking MY money. And even when it’s in someone else’s hands (church, government, etc.), that’s MY money they’re spending. And they’d better dang well spend it on something or in some way I agree with. Because that’s MY money. I earned it. I worked for it. I get to control it. They took it from ME. I gave it to them. It’s MINE.
One of the things that really ticks me off is when people give money to the church, then try to dictate how it should be used…or, more often, how it shouldn’t be used. It’s one thing to give money to the church music department because you love how music adds to people’s experience of God. It’s another thing altogether to say that money can’t be spent on electric guitars because you prefer the sound of the pipe organ.
When do we ever let go?
I’m not talking about letting go of our money, per se. I’m talking about letting go of our perceived ownership of money. Of the notion that somehow, because we earned it, we get the ultimate say in how it’s used.
On the surface, that probably sounds a little nuts. At the very least, it’s counter-cultural.
But what if we thought about money a little differently?
What if, instead of seeing money as something we “own” because we “earned” it, we began to see it as a means of Grace? As a way that God blesses us so that we, in turn, can conspire with his kingdom work of creation and re-creation?
What if we started to see that God gives us each unique gifts, talents and skills that we, in turn, use vocationally in order to help provide for the common good? And the compensation we receive for that vocational use of our God-given skills provides us with a means to survive and thrive in his kingdom…not only by allowing us to compensate others for their vocational use of their God-given skills (by purchasing the goods or services they provide and we consume), but also by sharing that compensation with communities of people who leverage the gifts of many to provide a broader range of service to others who, for whatever reason, are less able to provide for themselves.
In short, what would happen if we began to see money as God’s rather than as ours? It’s His, not mine. I am merely a conduit through which he passes blessings to some part of the world. I receive blessing so I can share blessings.
So when I give money to the church, it’s no longer mine. It never was. God used me to use it for awhile, and now he’s using the church to use it for awhile. When I pay my taxes (my fair share of the community’s corporate expenses), that money no longer belongs to me. It never did. God is now using someone else to use that money.
Obvioiusly, it’s not a perfect system. Such a revised view of money requires a level of trust that is inconceivable for most of us. Past and current–and very real–abuses leave us very cynical. And so accountability is always an issue. But what if we can train ourselves to believe that money is never really ours to begin with, that it is a tool God uses for his purposes. And that our desire to control it is, at its heart, a desire to play God. To eat the apple all over again.
I’m not talking about giving away all of our stuff, or that wealth and posessions themselves are inherently evil. I’m talking about how we use and perceive those things. I have a big screen TV. An iPod for every member of the family. Two cars, one with satellite radio. Cell phones with unlimited texting. A camper. A warm, comfortable house. Decent clothes. Two computers. A Blackberry. A kick-ass coffee maker that grinds fresh beans, brews a killer pot of joe, and has it ready for me when I wake up in the morning.
It’s not about having or not having stuff. It’s not even about feeling guilty about the stuff we have. It’s about recognizing that none of it is really mine, and that God has called me into this particular life, where this particular stuff is available, for a reason far beyond my ability to earn, spend, and save. That the gift of living in a culture where stuff is so readily available carries with it a responsibility to use our lives–and lifestyles–as redemptive tools in God’s kingdom.
When we understand that money is not really ours, we begin to understand that we have no right–or need–to control it. That once it passes from us, it’s up to God to use it through someone else to accomplish his greater good.
Otherwise, we’re still just chewing on the apple.
Time to go all Old Testament on you…
Because I’ve been teaching a couple of classes on the Old Testament for the past few weeks, it’s really been influencing my thinking of late. It seems a lot of Christians don’t like to spend much time in the Old Testament. Beyond the Creation story, a few character sketches about various heroes and villains we teach kids in Sunday School, and maybe some Psalms & Proverbs and the occasional well-selected prophesy, we tend to want to dwell on the Gospels and Epistles of the New Testament for our spiritual foundations.
But I think we’re missing a lot if we don’t dig back and understand the teachings that formed the foundation for our own foundations. Because I’m convinced that EVERYTHING in what we call the Old Testament, which should probably more accurately and respectfully be referred to as the Hebrew Scriptures, points to Jesus, what he did in the world, and what he is continuing to do in our lives today.
One of the reasons I think we either spend little time or avoid altogether those ancient scriptures is that we think somehow Jesus “changed” everything when he appeared on the scene a couple thousand years ago. So somehow all of that “Old Testament Stuff” doesn’t apply to us anymore.
But I think we’re selling those teachings short by that way of thinking. Maybe instead of seeing Jesus as changing things, we should instead look at him as fulfilling them. And how we continue to live day by day in that fulfillment.
Part of our hang-up with the Hebrew Bible is its very “ancientness.” It’s hard to tell what we should take literally and what we should take figuratively. Which stories are real and historical, and which ones are symbolic and metaphorical? Was the universe really created in six literal 24-hour days? Was Abraham really in his 90s when Isaac was born? Where did manna come from? Was Goliath really 9 feet tall?
Then there are those long lists of family lines, detailed legal descriptions, and bizarre (to us) traditions…what’s up with that? Why does God seem so violent in his commands concerning the pagan nations surrounding Israel? And what on earth is Song of Songs all about?
I think sometimes we get so hung up on the minutiae, so lost in the details, that we miss the big picture of what’s happening as those narratives unfold in all of their distinct and diverse voices. And the big picture, at least to me, seems to be about preparation.
As in all things, context is the key. While individual stories, passages, and details certainly hold meaning and purpose for us today, they must be understood in their original context to be fully appreciated. And in a nutshell, the context of the Old Testament is Israel, growing into its role as God’s instrument to spread transformation and salvation to the world, learning how to know him and trust him, and, most importantly, working through all of the very human junk that gets in the way.
Throughout the Hebrew Scriptures, God is preparing Israel. He first prepares Abraham’s family to become a nation. He then prepares the nation to become set apart from the culture around them. And finally he prepares them to enter into a different kind of kingdom and to bring the rest of the world along. It is through their real context in time and space that this story of preparation unfolds.
And so to not understand this foundational context of preparation is to not really understand the fullness of Jesus and the movement to follow him. It’s not enough to say, “this is the way the world was and Jesus came to fix it.” As if God comes up with the whole Jesus plan as a last-ditch effort to save humanity after everything else has failed.
Rather, we need to see the entire scope of history unfolding, of how the Old Testament period of time was the period in which God prepared the world for something that was part of his plan all along, from the very beginning. And then to understand that there’s not a clean break between the end of the Old Testament narrative and the beginning of the New Testament, but that it was–and is–a continued–and continuing–revelation of God’s purposes.
To view Jesus simply as the solution (New Testament) to a problem (Old Testament) really sells him short. To understand his–and our–place in history, in time and space, as part of a continuing story that is still unfolding day by day, moment by moment, we need to reach back into those foundational narratives and see how we were–and still are–being prepared at every step for God to present what’s coming next.
Israel’s ancient story is still our story today. The more we embrace that notion, the closer we move to the reality God invites us into.
New perspectives on perspective
Life really is all about perspective, isn’t it?
The way we view the world is so deeply informed by our circumstances, perceptions, associations and experiences that we really don’t even notice it. It just is. We define everything by our perspective. That’s why there is always tension and conflict in life…we are individuals with different perspectives trying to live in community. But it’s also why we see such beauty in diversity. The same differences in perspective that cause tension and conflict are also the things that make communities work. We need each other’s perspectives. It’s a very yin-and-yang sort of thing.
Yesterday I got one of those all-too-rare opportunities to have my perspective changed. And the truth is, at first, my instinct was to resist it. Because it infringed on my own perspective. It challenged the way I wanted to see myself and the world around me.
An acquaintance who is a pastor in a little country church not far from where I live was going to be out of town for a few days, and he asked if I could cover yesterday’s sermon for him. I happily agreed, partly because I feel like God has been calling me to speak publicly more and more lately and to share some of the insights he’s been giving me through study and conversation. But I have to admit, there’s also a little bit of an ego trip attached to that…and so there was another part of me that took the offer just because I like to be in front of a crowd.
Now, I hope I don’t have such delusions of grandeur that I thought, at least consciously, that I could somehow deliver a 15-minute sermon that was going to make this little country church suddenly want to grow into another Willow Creek or Saddleback. But as the service started, I couldn’t help but feel a little out of place. I’m no city boy by any stretch of the imagination, but I began to identify with some of the “city folk” who occasionally wandered into Mayberry in the old black-and-white episodes of the Andy Griffith Show. A feeling of smugness began to wrap around me.
But if we’re open to it, sometimes God’s spirit will correct us in those moments. And even as I found myself thinking I was somehow too sophisticated for all this, I heard that still, small voice in the back of my head, telling me to just see the beauty in the simplicity of it all.
The church where I regularly worship, participate in leadership, teach and sometimes preach is not a large church by anyone’s definition. On a busy Sunday we might see 250 or 300 people in worship and Sunday School. But compared to the 40 or 50 people at this little country church, it is massive. And that was my mistake… was trying to compare it to my prejudiced context. To my own experience. My own perspective.
And in the instant of that realization, my perspective changed.
And in my new perspective, I began to see that this was not a simple, backward country church. It was a beautiful collection of authentic, genuine, humble people who knew exactly who they were as a community. There was no pretense, no hiding behind masks of status or position. There was an overwhelming sense of confidence in their identity. And instead of feeling smug and sophisticated, I began to find myself longing for that kind of confidence, for that sense of knowing exactly who you are and what you are about.
So often we succumb to the temptation to want to force our perspectives on others. To make them see the world as we do. To somehow manipulate people into fitting into the imaginary roles we have created for them as mere characters in a life story we think is all about us. And what we miss is the opportunity to be changed by their perspective. To step out of our own limited scope of vision and see things from a different angle. To let God cast us into the roles he planned for us as part of his story.
We Christians talk a lot about humbling ourselves before God. But what I’m starting to learn, often the hard way, is that sometimes that means humbling ourselves before each other. Being willing to put our own perspectives aside and see things through a different lens. To understand that God speaks to all of us in an endless variety of unique voices and circumstances and experiences, and to see the beauty even in the voices we can’t hear or the experiences we don’t understand.
The little country church life is not one I would choose for myself. But I hope I never ever find myself looking down my nose at it. I hope to be humbled by the beauty and authenticity of it, and to let those kinds of perspectives give me a broader view of this story that we’re all a part of and that none of us is the central character in.
A Roller Coaster Guy Stuck in a Merry-Go-Round Park
I love metaphors. I think there’s a reason Jesus speaks so much in that form through stories and parables. Metaphors draw pictures of concepts in a way that speaks to our commonality of experience.
Regular readers–both of you (insert smiley face emoticon here)–will notice that lately I’ve been wrestling with expressing some frustrations in the arena of church leadership. And last night, in one of those times when my brain wouldn’t shut down and let me sleep, this whole Merry-Go-Round/Roller Coaster metaphor started to creep into my imagination. And it speaks to a lot of my current sense of restlessness.
Folks who know me will get it when I say I’m a Roller Coaster. Wildly erratic at times, rushing at full speed from place to place, tossed about uncontrollably. If it wasn’t for the belts and harnesses I’d fly off the track. Life to me always has been and always will be a thrill ride. An adventure. An experience to throw myself into without worry or regard to where it’s going to take me or what it’s going to do to me.
Other folks, though, are more like Merry-Go-Rounds. Enjoying a nice, pleasant, easy pace. No jerking around. No sudden acceleration. No adventure. No need for belts or harnesses. No puking at the end of the ride.
Merry-Go-Rounds don’t understand Roller Coasters. They’re too uncomfortable. Too unpredictable. Too uncontrollable. Too messy. Too dangerous.
We Roller Coasters, similarly, don’t get the Merry-Go-Round life. Circling around and around and around and around. Seeing and experiencing the same things over and over and over again. Too comfortable. Too predictable. Too ordered. Too safe.
Roller Coasters want everyone to be Roller Coasters. To experience the thrill. To be utterly and thoroughly exhilarated by the very wildness of the ride. To fly off into the unknown and be totally at the mercy of the ride.
Merry-Go-Rounds have no desire to be Roller Coasters. Merry-Go-Rounds wonder why Roller Coasters can’t just straighten the track, flatten the hills, and be more…well…stable. More cautious. More under control.
Now I’m not talking about extremes here. I’m not about to go jump out of an airplane or bungee off of a bridge. Nor am I talking on the other end of the spectrum about folks who just do nothing and settle for a bland, couch-potato type of existence. I’m just talking in broad generalities.
If you’re a Merry-Go-Round, please try not to get mad at me here. Because I love you. I just don’t get you. Going around and around and around makes me dizzy. It’s not pleasant or peaceful at all. In fact, I find it stressful. Unnatural. Because when I look at Jesus, I don’t see a Merry-Go-Round. I see a Roller Coaster.
And yet, in many ways, there is something about “church life” that is much more Merry-Go-Round than it is Roller Coaster. It is the most counter-intuitive thing I can imagine. And I think the reason is, we’re much more comfortable PLAYING church than BEING the church.
Playing church is comfortable. It’s safe. It’s predictable. It’s plannable. It’s showing up on Sundays, singing nice songs, passing the plate. Casserole dinners. Shaking hands in the aisles. Not offending anyone. No risks. Polite prayers. It’s a Merry-Go-Round.
Being the church is dangerous. Unpredictable. It’s stepping into the war zone of culture and addiction and poverty and brokennes. It is battling the demons that entrap total strangers while forcing yourself to face your own. It is risking everything to follow Jesus wherever he leads you. It is loud, powerful, hands-in-the-air, tears-in-your-eyes worship. It will fill you with adrenaline one minute and empty your stomach the next. It’s high-fiving your friends right before you barf on your shoes. Roller Coaster.
Admittedly, some Merry-Go-Rounds will never embrace Roller Coasters. Some folks will always be content to spin around and around, their biggest thrills coming as the horsies bob up and down. Smiling and passing the potatoes. Playing a nice comfortable game of church.
Others will long for the rush of the Roller Coaster, but live a life afraid of leaving their friends on the Merry-Go-Round. Worried that the Merry-Go-Rounds will resent them for changing rides. Afraid to leave the game and live the life. Trapped in an endless cycle of regret. Resenting both the Merry-Go-Rounds that hold them back and the Roller Coasters who live with wind in their hair and hearts pounding out of their chests.
Those who will take the risk and ride the Roller Coaster will be filled with life in a way that can never be experienced on the Merry-Go-Round. We will suffer as much as we rejoice. We will cry as much as we laugh. And we will love every minute of it.
We will always love our friends on the Merry-Go-Round. But we can’t ride with them.
Church…or crutch?
Earlier this week I was in a meeting where part of the discussion centered around “marketing” the church. The discussion itself isn’t really what was important, nor was the specific topic. But it rubbed up against something in my subconscious that’s been bothering me; something I couldn’t quite wrap my brain around, but was nagging at me nonetheless. I hope you’ll bear with me while I explore this thing a little bit…
It seems we Christians do a lot of talking about “inviting people to church.” And that’s cool, I guess, especially if you belong to an active, loving, sharing kind of church. We tend to want to share that experience with folks. I can dig that.
I guess the thing that bugs me is not so much the idea of inviting folks to church, but why we’re inviting them. I’m a little worried that it’s often like church itself is the endzone we’re playing for. That if we could just get more people “in church” things would be better…their lives would improve, our communities would get fixed, and the world would be a better place.
Clearly, the church has a significant role to play in those arenas. It just seems like at times we may have our cart a little before the horse.
Now don’t get me wrong…I love my church. I am very active in both ministry and administrative areas (love the ministry, hate the administration…let’s just be real here). And please keep in mind that when I say “church,” I’m talking about the building/organization/Sunday morning worship service aspect (small “c”), not the “body of Christ,” ecclesial (capital “C”) meaning of the word.
I think the church has a vital role to play in the holistic experience of God’s kingdom. But is it really the primary place we should be giving people their first introduction to Jesus?
I know this is not an original thought, but shouldn’t the church be going to people first, before bringing people to us?
Jesus spent his time living in the margins to bring the kingdom into reality. Yes, he taught in the temples. But first, he served in the world. Healed in the world. Forgave in the world.
I wonder if we sometimes use the “invite people to church” mantra as a crutch to keep from really being the Church. As if by simply inviting folks to the “Sunday Morning Experience,” we are excused from the hard work of entering into the messiness of their lives and the relational exchanges that kingdom living is really all about. Is the unspoken message that, once we get them in the building, we get to turn them over to someone else “more qualified?”
I mean, it seems like so often we tend to judge the state of others’ spiritual lives on the mere measuring stick of whether they go to church or not. As if that alone is enough to really make that transformational relationship with Jesus happen. But I think there are as many living, breathing, serving followers of Christ outside the “church” as there are lukewarm, spiritually crippled “Christians” inside it.
If we really want people’s lives, our communities, and the world to improve, the goal can’t just be getting them into church. The goal has to be reaching out, serving, loving. Offering the message of Christ’s forgiveness and his invitation to be transformed in real relationship with him. To simply give hope. It doesn’t require a program or a budget or a committee. It requires real people taking an active interest in the lives of other real people in the real places where they live. In fact, sometimes I feel like the programs, budgets, committees, etc. can become barriers to real ministry and mission. They can easily become crutches that support a consumer approach to church, rather than catalysts to a servant approach.
I’m proud of my church, and I do want others to share in the experience we offer. And if inviting someone to church can help them enter into what Rick McKinley calls “the living, breathing, purpose and presence of God on our planet” that is God’s kingdom, that’s groovy. I recognize that it often does happen for people that way, that a first-time worship service experience can move people into that place where the Jesus story really starts to mean something. I celebrate that.
But if we’re really doing our jobs, really being the hands & feet of Jesus, shouldn’t church attendance more often come as a result of someone’s experience with Jesus in the reality of their lives? Is a simple “invitation to church”–even in the friendlist church–often little more than an invitation into a community of strangers with strange ways?
I’m not saying we shouldn’t invite people to church. We should. I just hope we understand that, when we do it, we are only inviting them into one part of the story, into a single aspect of the experience of living in the kingdom. That it becomes a doorway into which people enter Jesus’ story, or a place where people can explore and grow in their relationship with him. Not just some touchdown club that pushes people into “churchy” work so the organization can survive, but a vehicle where people can live out God-sized dreams.
Church (small “c”) is a beautiful, necessary thing. But ultimately, church (attendance, membership, activity, etc.) is not the goal. The kingdom is the goal. Being the Church, not going to church.
And we’ve got to get ourselves back to the garden…
The day we’ve been waiting for all year has finally come.
Our crew from FUMC Williamstown will be shipping out 29 strong tomorrow morning (6/23) for the Woodstock of Christian music, Creation Festival (Northeast). The late-June trip to Agape Farm, PA, has become an annual pilgrammage for our youth group for the past 7 or 8 years.
I know there are some folks who, when they see that “Christian Music” label put on something like “Festival,” instantly conjure images of over-scrubbed post-80’s hair bands crooning insipid “I love Jesus, I love you too,” lyrics to a vanilla pop beat while clean-cut teenagers sit around campfires cooking s’mores and singing Kumbaya. But Christian music has come a long way beyond the honey-dripping days of Michael W. Smith, Amy Grant and John Tesh. Bands like Skillet, Pillar, Thousand Foot Krutch and Kutless can flat rock your face off. Post-pop acts like Family Force 5 and Toby Mac bring all the flash and showmanship of a KISS concert from 1979. And you’re as likely to see multiple piercing, tattoo-covered, leather-wearing, pink haired punkers as you are white-toothed, collar-popped preppies roaming the roads, concert areas, vendor booths and campsites.
And while worship is always in the air, there are some ground-cutting artists who are brining a new kind–or perhaps the better term would be a new flavor–of spirituality to their lyrics, writing about real people in real life situations with a real need for a real Jesus. Listen to a little Flyleaf and you’ll get the idea.
Of course, Creation Festival is about more than just the music. From arena-packing keynote messages to intimate talks in small wooded venues from some of the most innovative thinkers in Christianity today, there are endless opportunities for learning and growth.
What really blows your mind at Creation, though, isn’t the music or the speakers. It’s the fact that up to 80,000 Christ followers get to come together and live in community for the better part of a week in that pastoral hill country of south-central Pennsylvania. At first, you don’t even notice that something’s different. But with every interaction, with every conversation, and through every mind-shattering worship service, you get the sense that God is doing something special, and this is what it looks like.
This will be my 3rd Creation Festival, and if I’ve learned one thing, it’s that, in some way, each one of us–adults and teens alike–will have some kind of genuine encounter with Jesus. As often as not, it’s messy, bloody, sloppy–and beautiful. I have seen more teens come to a real relationship with Christ through this event than all the other youth programming we do all year long. And it’s all because Creation Festival creates the kind of environment where those things can happen like nowhere else I’ve ever been.
So wish us well and keep us in your prayers. We’ll be back sometime late Sunday (6/28), sweaty, dirty, tired and totally sold-out for Jesus.
(**NOTE: If you’d like to keep up with what our youth from FUMC are doing at Creation, you can follow their Creation Festival Blog at http://ihsyouth.wordpress.com.)
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