Theological Exploration

So, today, I'm riding the train home from work, as I am wont to do, when I looked behind me to see what people were reading, as I am also wont to do, and I saw a guy reading what looked like a bible, but was really the Book of Mormon IN DISGUISE! I figured this out when I looked, progressively less surreptitiously, over his shoulder trying to see what book of the bible he was reading. The more and more I stared, the more I realized he actually was reading the Book of Alvin.

When I got home, I did some research and found out that the Book of Alvin is part of the story of Joseph Smith. It occurs chronologically right after he finds his pair of magic spectacles that allow him to decipher his magical golden tablets that he found just laying around under a rock. He is visited by the Spirit of his old business partner Brigham Young and told to expect to be visited by three ghosts, in preparation for which he is given a pair of super-magical earmuffs (they were golden too!). That very night, he is visited by all three ghosts at once. You will immediately recognize their names from history: Alvin, Simon, and Theodore. With the help of the magical, golden, jewel-encrusted (sorry, I forgot that part before) earmuffs, he is able to decipher the ghosts' outrageous squeaking. They explained the whole history of religion (including stuff that wasn't covered in the golden tablets) from the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah to George Washington. Their final command, before they disappeared into the mists was this: Joseph Smith must henceforth change his name to David Seville.

And the rest, as they say, is history. More specifically: THE BOOK OF MORMON PART II: THE SQUEAKUEL.

I Guess Maybe I'm Not Ready

So the other day I was reading something on the internet and I heard about this book called "Rapture Ready." I thought it sounded interesting so I went to my library's website (sorry, but I'll pay that $18 fine as soon as I can! Honest!) and put a hold on it. Then, the next day I went to pick it up. I was pretty excited because I always like to read an outsider's account of weird and popular subcultures (THEM by Jon Ronson is a great example) and I figured I was far enough removed from church and religiousness in general to find it funny yet non-condescending.

But then we got in the car and my wife read me the blurbs on the back. Two of them were good, but the third was written by.......wait for it........Brian Maclaren.

Just when I thought I'd finally escaped, there's that shiny bald head again. It's like you can't even throw a book without hitting a book either written or blurb by that dude. I know. I tried it when I got home. I hit a book blurbed and written by him.

Anyway, if I get around to reading the book, I'll let you know how it was, so you've got that going for you, which is nice.

Turn Off Your Smoke Machine

Warning: This post will discuss the single biggest failing of the modern American Christian church. If you can't take it, then stop reading now and save yourself. If you can take it, let's start a movement to end this horrible abomination.


Simply put, the single biggest failing of the modern American Christian Church is not any of the following:

1. Leadership


2. Fundamentalism


3. Guns


4. Stale Communion Bread/wafers (this one was close)


5. Reticence to change

No, it is not any of these. It is the architecture. Modern American churches by and large have the most boring, uninspiring, unhelpful architecture in the history of the known church universe. Let me "explain."

If I wanted to let everyone know that I was an obnoxious, horrible douche*ag (edited for content), would I drive a Jetta with a broken mirror and wear 5-year-old socks? NO! I would wear crisp power suits with red and blue striped ties, have a faux-hawk, drive a BMW 325xi (or maybe the Z4 convertible if I was going for the douchebag/tool difecta) and probably have a Hill badge displayed prominently on my person at all times. (Side note, by driving a Jetta with a broken mirror and wearing old clothes, I'm saying that I'm totally not in any way a douche).

Likewise, if the modern church is serious about it's beliefs that it and It alone hold the keys to the knowledge of good and evil (God = good, funky buttlovin' = evil, pants = ????*) then the church buildings need to show it. If the way, the Truth, and the Life is through the church, let me know, man. I mean, Jesus H. Christ, if I knew all this important stuff about Jesus H. Christ, I would write it in big letters and perhaps statues of sinners burning in hell all over my church. Come on McLean Bible, give the people what they want need. Admittedly it's probably hard to simulate eternal hellfire but there's gotta be something you could do other than look like a mall (actually, there may be something to this....aw, never mind). At least try to be majestic or something like the Crystal Cathedral.

When it comes right down to it, the modern "traditional" American church is the only church movement/body/pantaloon in history to not match it's architecture with it's theology. here a just a few examples"

1. The Catholic Church - Huge, ostentatious cathedrals, some even built with the bones of their enemies**.
   What is says: "We own you. God lives here and we own him too. Plus, we have a truckload (cartload? Popemobileload?) of money, so we've got that going for us. Plus we have cool miters, so we've got that going for us."



2. Islamic Mosques - Tall minarets, domey looking things.
   What it says: I don't know. I don't speak Arabic.



3. Good Ol' One Room Clapboard Baptist Churches - "One Room Clapboard Churches" kinda says it all.
   What it says: One Room Clapboard Churches. Simplicity. Something to do with water or immersion, or squirt guns or something. Also potluck dinners that the same person will bring the same pot of spaghetti to every month for 50+ years.



4. "Emergent" "Churches" - so many options to reflect who they really are!
   
   • Coffee house - "Look how cool we are! We meet in a coffee house! A secular coffee house!"
   
   
   • An Old Warehouse - "Look how cool we are! We don't care at all about our image!"
   
   
   • And old unused church building - "Look how cool we are! We're 'subverting' the mainstream church!"
   
   
   • Strangely, for all the gushing over the "ancient-future" idea, I have yet to hear of an "Emergent" church that meets in underground catacombs like the authentically ancient Christians did. That would actually be pretty awesome.
   
   
   
5. Episcopalian Church - I don't know, something vaguely English/Celtic looking.
   What it says: "If you liked Lord of the Rings, you might be Episcopalian***!"



6. Unitarian Universalist - Anything they damn well want to build.
   What it says: "Do you like it? If not, we'll change it so you do like it!"

So come on mega-churches of America, take back the mantle of "most important buildings in the city!" Show the people what you're about! Bring out the Left Behind-style corpse dummies. Kill Persecute a Muslim. Fight in the Holy War! You've got a soul, now be a soldier! Or a construction worker!




*The Southern Baptist Convention recently published a document disavowing its former stance on the necessity of wearing pants. Pants-wearing is now technically a "greyish area" as defined by the bylaws of the Convention.****

**Could just be the bones of dead parishioners, teh internets were unclear on that point.

***If I am confusing Episcopalian and Anglican, please forgive me since I don't really care at all which is which.

****Not actually true. Pants are still required at all times.

Bad Photoetry Thursday: I've Seen Everything Imaginable

The Original!

Warcene Creed courtesy of Get Your War On!

Just So You Know

I don't know why this has to come from me since it seems like it would make more sense for certain other people to promote it, but Effloresce is here.

Oh yeah? Well Emerge from this!

First off, let me say that I really love my church. And please don't be offended.

I think the "Emergent" movement is dumb. For all it's talk about a new "conversation" that is honest and doesn't have the baggage of a built-vocabulary like the "institutional Church," I don't think it's that much different. There absolutely is a set of buzzwords that you need to know, and the buzzwords, at least to me, appear to be synonyms of the horrible, soul-crushing buzzwords that "Fundamentalists(!)" use. But not the same words mind you. The emergent church can't use the same semantics as those they are emerging from, right?

I guess the most frustrating thing about it for me is that, while I agree with many of the things the movement says, I don't want to be a part of no movement. I want to be a part of a church that does things however it wants! I don't care if other emergent churches do things a certain way and go to certain conferences and read certain books. Once we all start doing that, we're nothing but another denomination that'll soon have mega-churches of its own. Not that there's anything wrong with that. It just seems that so often we are blind to our own ambitions, our own destiny. Without thinking independently, we'll all become that which we rail against. It's happened time and time again, both within the church and without. So 20 years down the road, don't say I didn't warn the movement.

And here's another thing. Can we drop the criticism of other churches already? Yes, I already know that we do things differently. Please stop reminding me of how stupid other churches are for the way they do things. Stop defining yourselves by what you are not, and start worrying about what you are! I'm not saying we shouldn't look around us, but there is a HUGE difference between saying, "eh, that's not really for me, but if it works for you..." which is what I thought the emergent thingy was all about and saying "what you are doing is different from my church in the following ways and this is why it is stupid and wrong and if I had enough guts I'd say you were going to hell, but that's what a IFB would say so I can't say it but I really think it."

Maybe I'm just not looking in the right places (i.e. Ginkworld and The Ooze). As an example of what I mean, read this article by Frank
Viola (imagine my disappointment when I realized he was not the same Frank Viola that led the Minnesota Twins to the World Series in 1987.) He's trying to be evenhanded, but the whole article is predicated on the fact that we all know how stupid this other person's church is. Grrrrrrr!

Maybe y'all can educate me on how "emergent" is any different in essentials from any other denomination. I already know we do things differently, but are we any less elitist? Do you have a good book I can read? If you tell me to read any more articles or anything else by John O'Keefe, I'll just pretend like I didn't hear you.

Dear Prudence

So, yesterday at church (check out the new website!) we talked a lot about worry, trust and life. Since we're looking at the sermon on the mount, we focused on the lillies of the field and the sparrows and what not. During our post-"sermon" discussion much was made of the balance between no worries and meeting our responsibilities. Or how worry could sometimes be a good thing. But I don't think I agree, and that scares me. Let me explain.

No matter how hard we try, I don't think we can divorce ourselves fully from our cultural frame of reference. We always have and always will (at least to some degree probably) desire what can only be called "success." I know I do. That's why I worked my tail off for four years in college to finish at the top of my class with a lucrative degree. Success. Bred through a lot of worry. If you don't believe me, ask Maggie who was there to see it all, including the time I kicked my backpack across the apartment when I only scored 4 percent above average on a Dif. Eq. test. But what was the point of it all? To have a good job? Sure, but what's the point of that? In God's eyes, am I any more of a success because I used fear and worry to differentiate myself from those that "sit at home all day playing the guitar?" I don't really think so. Aren't we explicitly told not to fear the wrath of men? Actually, that's not a rhetorical question. I don't know the bible nearly as well as I think I should (crap! worrying again!) so if someone could enlighten me as to whether or not that idea appears anywhere, I would greatly appreciate it. So, what does it boil down to? I'll distill it to one question that I have: Is there ever a valid issue about which to worry? I'll posit that the answer is no, but that won't stop me from doing it.

Second, I want to look at the idea of prudence. We talked a lot about not worrying, but still meeting our obligations. What obligations? Do we have any that outweigh God? Who cares about the ant and the grasshopper? I can't find any mention in the sermon on the mount that asks for prudence when it comes to money especially. Jesus didn't say to that one guy "Go sell all your possessions, set up a trust fund for your kids and make sure they have some insurance and then follow me." He just said "sell everything and follow me." It seems pretty ridiculous to think that Jesus really meant that, I mean, we can't just abandon everything, can we? Should we? Shoot, I don't know, but I do think it is a typically American thing to think that we can't. That we need to provide prudently for the future, as though by preparing we can somehow stave it off. I guess maybe it all boils down to attitude. If you can prepare monetarily for the future without letting money rule your life, do it. Also, my ignorance may be rearing its ugly head again, so if Jesus ever does say something in the gospels that advises prudence and planning for the future, someone please bring it to my attention. Because I am scared out of my wits that it's not in there and I don't think I can sell everything and follow him....

Church vs. Change

One of the things that I love about our church is that, from week to week, you never know how different the services might be. For example, we often have discussions during the service so that if anyone has anything to contribute, they're welcome to. Trust me, it's not as weird as it sounds; it's actually quite natural. Other times we may have one of the design team members dress up as a biblical character and act out/tell their story. Okay, so that just happened once, but still.

Anyhow, today, we took a page from the Quaker worship book. For those of you not familiar with Quaker-style, this means that we sat around waiting for people to say things. Well, it's not exactly like that, I mean, we wait for God to speak to and through us. So we're sitting there and David gets up and sings Amazing Grace (he was also a suprisingly good singer), and then Erin got up and sang a song of her own crafting. A couple other people spoke too. It was pretty cool, really. But here's the problem: someone turned my reverence control knob down to zero. All the time that we were waiting for other people to speak, my mind kept going back to stupid things that I could get up and say. Like this: I go up to the microphone at the front of the room and, in all seriousness, say "It's a long ways to the top if you want to Rock and Roll," and then sit back down. Or maybe standing up at my seat with my eyes closed and speaking in some ridiculous sounding "tongue:" "Grashanick KALMAAR TAG HORFRAGGARANT etc." and then sitting back down. Seriously, what is wrong with me? Everyone else was being all sincere and thoughtful and reverent and it was all I could do not to start laughing in my seat.




In all honesty, I still think doing something like that would have been utterly hilarious, but these people are my friends. I don't want to offend them.

An Open Letter to Mars Hill Church

Dear Mars Hill Church,

You have no idea what you mean to our family.

We moved here last October. We didn't have any friends or family within 2500 miles, and we'd never even been to the east coast before. It was quite a shock, not to mention a little bit lonely. So we did the only thing we could think of; we started looking for a church. In this regard, the Yellow Pages was our friend. Back in Washington state, we had been "attending" a Christian and Missionary Alliance Church that we rather liked (not that we had much choice, since almost every other church in town was a Mormon church) so we tried out the closest C&MA church we could find. It was fine and all, but we weren't very excited about it. Two weeks later, we were back in the phone book at 10 PM Saturday night looking for another church to try. We saw Mars Hill Church and called the number. The church meets in a coffee shop? Okay, a little weird, but okay. We wrote down the directions and arrived late the next morning (we're doing better now, I swear!) to find a skit being enacted on stage. It was all about women and their role in the church. To be honest, it was kind of refreshing. So then a discussion starts (a discussion at a church service? Okay, weird again, but okay) and people are coming in from all over. And people don't agree. It actually made me feel a little uncomfortable. I was already thinking that this was some sort of wacko new-age church and that it wasn't going to work out.

And then the Eucharist started. We've always looked for a church that does the Eucharist every week (not monthly, or quarterly) so this made a good impression on me. And it was beautiful. I never knew there could be such a great balance of tradition and intensity, for lack of a better word. I was starting to think that maybe this was okay after all.

After the service, we were invited to Chipotle for lunch. I was admittedly a little leery of the traditional "take the visitors to lunch and grill them about their religious beliefs and current afterlife destination." Instead, we found what could only be called friendship. We talked to Dee throughout lunch, and even though we had never met her before, we were both comfortable.

On the drive home, both Maggie and I were feeling the same thing, but were both a little hesitant to express it. We loved Mars Hill Church. It was love at first sight. But it couldn't be real, right? We couldn't have been that lucky. If we said something we might jinx it. But eventually we did start talking. And eventually we came back for a second visit, and a third. And from then on, we weren't visiting anymore, we were just going to church.

Again, you have no idea what this means to us. We have friends. We have a family. We have people that will be there for us if we need it, and people that we can be there for when they need it. In summary, thank for accepting us, and making us feel welcome. Thank you for getting to know us and letting us be apart of your lives. Thank you for being there for God to lead us to.

Sincerely,
Schuyler

P.S. It is already breaking our hearts that we will almost certainly have to leave MHC someday. My transfer here is only temporary, and we are dreading moving away from you all. Maybe we'll move back out west when we get the chance; maybe Seattle, maybe Portland. Maybe you can all move out there, too! You'd like it out there, I swear!

My first protest! Well, sort of.

Today, after church, three people from church and the three of us drove up into our neck of the woods to attend the fourth in a series of five gatherings intended to bring attention to the ongoing genocide/mass rape/persecution etc. of people in Darfur. We missed the first three, one to see our Beloved Mariners lose to the Nationals, and the next two because we were out west visiting family. So we went today to sing songs, and listen to a sermon all about death and what we can do to stop it. Also, we were right across the street from the Sudanese Embassy protesting their government's apathy towards and/or active encouragement of the aforementioned atrocities. Police were on hand in case anything got out of control.

But here's the deal. I constantly get caught up in the minutiae in sermons. The guy today (I don't remember his name) went on for awhile about the activism we need in order to change the situation in Darfur. He namedropped the National Association of Evangelicals and praised their work. And then he mentioned their three major social/political issues. Darfur, abortion, and preserving traditional marriage.

Screeeeeeech! Let's call the whole thing to a halt. Is he saying that by being there we are condoning the NAE stance on all three issues? Can't we take them one at a time? And how can you compare the mass murder of millions of innocents (be they in Africa or in American wombs) with the "weakening" of an, at best, two-century old matrimoial tradition that isn't even biblically mandated? And from that point on, all I could do was nitpick the rest of the sermon. I noticed how he divided Christians up into us-and-them, and we're the good guys. I noticed that, while paying lip-service to the idea of loving others as ourselves, he didn't seem to believe that it applied to gays. I noticed that he wasn't even a very good speaker. And I couldn't help thinking that when he told a story about a woman who died in NYC, in the Bed-Stuy neighborhood when no one would answer her calls for help, he was also thinking that it was black people who wouldn't answer the calls and that it is black people in Sudan that are not answering the calls now, and that that's just how black people are, so we have to carry the white man's burden to change it.

I'm sure that I read waaaaaaaaay too much into what he was saying. And maybe that says a lot more about me than it does about him. But I'm not ready to delve into that idea quite yet.

By the way, one of the songs that we sung was what I've always known as "The Prayer of St. Francis." The first line is "Make me a channel of your peace." I just love that idea. I love the whole song. It's all about becoming selfless, loving others as yourself and just being a messenger for God. If I ever get the guts, I'll try to play and sing it at church (the version I know, not the one we sang today)