"...and this is what I am going to proclaim to you!"

So…the more I think about this (and I’ve been thinking about it a lot) – I really firmly believe that we are living in a “pre-Christian” age.  

I know, I know, the prevailing narrative of our times is that we are in a post-Christian world.  And in one sense, that is true.  As Europe was Christianized and then brought Christianity, more or less, to the New World and to other parts of the British Empire, “the world was Christian” – especially the West, or developed, world.  This is kind of an over-romanticized, simplistic version of the truth, but as a basic summary, I suppose it suffices.  

And so now, when much of the developed world including Europe and North America, is falling away from Christianity, or at least Christendom as we’ve romanticized it according to our visions of the Middle Ages and/or the 1950s, we talk about being in a post-Christian world.  People – society – the world used to be Christian, and now they’re not.

But…claiming to live in a “post-Christian world” assumes that most people in the world today have heard the message of Christianity (or even a reasonably orthodox approximation thereof), have sincerely evaluated it on its merits, and have rejected it.  We blame it on the Enlightenment, or the heathen Baby Boomers, or “taking prayer out of schools” or whatever.  We used to be Christian and now we’re not.  

Except, well…I just don’t think that’s true.

Instead, I think that we are living in a pre-Christian age.  I think that the vast, vast, vast majority of people living in the developed world today have not heard the gospel and rejected it; rather, they have never really heard it in the first place.  We aren’t dealing with individuals who need to be called back to the faith that they know but have left, we are dealing with individuals who need to be catechized in the first place. 

This is the “nones”.  In all the recent surveys that ask (especially younger) people what religion or faith tradition they hold to, when given the option of choosing from among various forms of Christianity or other world religions, a great number are now choosing “none of the above”.  And what we hear of “the nones” is that they “are good people”, are “spiritual but not religious”, care about “helping people and doing justice”, and so forth.  They aren’t hardened atheists, they are just sort of spiritual drifters, pulling together bits and pieces from a variety of traditions and sources, seeking after their own wisdom, trying to make their way in the world.  

And I don’t know about you, but this sounds an awful lot to me like, “…as I walked around and looked carefully at your objects of worship, I even found an altar with this inscription: to an unknown god.  So you are ignorant of the very thing you worship…” (Acts 17:23).  

Further, beyond the “nones,” I also believe that in identifying the pre-Christians among us, that we’re also talking about a whole lot of people who would check the “Christian” box, because it is still sort of culturally expected (particularly in certain locales), or because they go to church on Christmas Eve.  But these people, despite attending on Christmas, and possibly even getting their kids baptized, wouldn’t know Christianity if it bit them in the armpit.  I don’t say this to be mean or judgmental – I just say it because it’s true.  Lutherans argue that the basics of the faith are “the six chief parts” of the Small Catechism – the Ten Commandments, the Apostle’s Creed, the Lord’s Prayer, Baptism, Confession and Absolution, and the Lord’s Supper.  The writer of Hebrews claims they are “repentance from dead works and faith toward God, instruction about baptisms, laying on of hands, resurrection of the dead, and eternal judgment.”  And let’s be real: a very significant number of people in the pews each week couldn’t give a 30 second overview of the Scriptures if their lives depended on it.

But let’s lay off the guilt trips.  Again, this isn’t about judging people or making them feel bad for not knowing this stuff.  We could blame this on poor catechesis by the pastors of yore, or heathen Baby Boomers who didn’t take their kids to church, or suburban youth athletics that require Sunday games/practice, or whatever.  But that doesn’t solve the problem.  It doesn’t catechize the ignorant, and it doesn’t introduce Christ to the pagans, so it’s a waste of time.  

Look at the rest of the Acts story – the second half of Paul’s sentence:  “So you are ignorant of the very thing you worship—and this is what I am going to proclaim to you.”  (emphasis mine)  And then he proceeds to do so.  Verses 24-31 constitute a fabulous Christianity “elevator speech”, that I think is worth memorizing, or at least, adapting to our own contexts and then memorizing.  

We Christians, and especially those of us who are “Christian public leaders”, live amongst “nones” and “just-shy-of-heathens, not-even-baby, ‘fetal’ Christians”, and we need to know how to teach the faith to these people.  We need to know how to introduce them to it, and how to teach them the basics, and how to teach them to teach others the basics.  

We are not in a post-Christian era, where people who know this stuff need to be called back to it.  We are in a pre-Christian era.  Without getting too big for my britches, we Christians (“public leaders” and non-pl’s alike) are like the Apostles.  We know this stuff, and a relative handful of other people do as well, but to the rest of the world, we are the stuff of myths and legends, we appear to be either crazy or awful, or both, depending on what rumors have been circulating in a particular neighborhood.  

Thinking about it like this has changed the way that I think about ministry inside and outside the walls of the congregation, and it’s definitely changed the way I think about evangelism.  We don’t live in some “Christian nation” that needs to recover its own values, or around people who are “backsliding” just because they’re terrible people.  We live in pagan freaking Athens.  They need to hear the story, and be told the Gospel.  They don’t know it.  They know they need something…but what that is, they can’t quite…or can only barely…put their finger on.

A lot of us – and I include myself here – look at the passing scene and want to “do something” – things are horrible, the world’s gone to hell in a handbasket, and people need to shape up!  So we say things like this:

“But because of your stubbornness and your unrepentant heart, you are storing up wrath against yourself for the day of God’s wrath, when his righteous judgment will be revealed.  God “will repay each person according to what they have done."  To those who by persistence in doing good seek glory, honor and immortality, he will give eternal life.  But for those who are self-seeking and who reject the truth and follow evil, there will be wrath and anger.” (Romans 2:5-8)

Or even, if we’re feeling a little more Gospel-y than Law-ish, we might go this route:

“Before your very eyes Jesus Christ was clearly portrayed as crucified.  I would like to learn just one thing from you: Did you receive the Spirit by the works of the law, or by believing what you heard? Are you so foolish? After beginning by means of the Spirit, are you now trying to finish by means of the flesh? Have you experienced so much in vain—if it really was in vain? So again I ask, does God give you his Spirit and work miracles among you by the works of the law, or by your believing what you heard?” (Galatians 3:1b-5). 

But those sorts of messages are only helpful for people who are actually already Christians, who have been well-catechized, who “get it,” and need to be reminded of it.  It doesn’t work with people who really have no idea what you’re talking about it.  

Shouting Romans 2 or Galatians 3 at somebody who comes to church on Christmas – or never – is a little like yelling at me for not following the rules of lacrosse.  Well, one, I am not trying to play lacrosse, and two, I have seen a total of probably 30 seconds of the game being played, mostly if I flip to ESPN looking for baseball.  (Is that right? Are the two played during roughly the same season?)  I (think I) know that it’s big on the East Coast, played mostly by preppy white kids from the richy-rich suburbs.  I have a couple friends that I think used to play, but to tell the truth, the 30 seconds I’ve seen on TV makes it look hard and exhausting, and the uniforms aren’t even all that suitable for checking out players’, well, anyway… ;)  So don’t yell at me about lacrosse.  I will just stare at you like you’re crazy, wonder why you’re yelling at me, and then walk away to go find a good book.  

It’s my contention that we have an awful lot of people who don’t play lacrosse in this world.  There are an awful lot of people who worship statues to an unknown God, who need to hear this:

“The God who made the world and everything in it is the Lord of heaven and earth and does not live in temples built by human hands.  And he is not served by human hands, as if he needed anything. Rather, he himself gives everyone life and breath and everything else. From one man he made all the nations, that they should inhabit the whole earth; and he marked out their appointed times in history and the boundaries of their lands.  God did this so that they would seek him and perhaps reach out for him and find him, though he is not far from any one of us. ‘For in him we live and move and have our being.’ As some of your own poets have said,‘We are his offspring.’ “Therefore since we are God’s offspring, we should not think that the divine being is like gold or silver or stone—an image made by human design and skill. In the past God overlooked such ignorance, but now he commands all people everywhere to repent. For he has set a day when he will judge the world with justice by the man he has appointed. He has given proof of this to everyone by raising him from the dead.”

Yes, some will sneer (see verse 32), and we can’t control that.  But some will want to hear more (we can’t control that either).  We need to give people the chance to hear it.  Give them the opportunity to want to hear more.  

I don’t know about you, but “and this is what I am going to proclaim to you” sounds like a pretty awesome, adventurous challenge.  How will you answer it?  What is your Christianity elevator speech (or as Peter might say, the ‘reason for the hope that you have within you’)?  Do you agree that we’re pre-Christian, not post-Christian?  

Talk to me, people!

Did Christmas Really Happen?

Last week, a former seminary professor of mine wrote an article for Huffington Post whereby he claims that he doesn't "know or care if [the Christmas story] 'really happened'" and that whether it is or isn't "factually accurate" doesn't matter as to whether the general themes of the story are "trustworthy and true". 

As much as I like David Lose (heck, I even made a figgy pudding for Christmas dinner this year!) I'm sure you can guess that I have a big problem with this.

Dr. Lose uses most of his article to do some pretty basic historical and textual criticism of the varying Biblical "infancy narratives".  Luke and Matthew have basically no factual overlap, we can't really know the details because they're reported so differently, nobody else but Matthew talks about the Slaughter of the Innocents, Luke "seems not to know about" the escape to Egypt, etc, etc.  Thus, Lose tells us, the two accounts are "virtually irreconcilable", but none of this matters because 

Such stories tell us the truth, the truth about the world we live in, about our capacity for good and evil, bravery and cowardice, and about the hopes and fears and tragedies of our lives. But they don't stop there. These stories of wayward magicians, outcast shepherds, and unwed teens also confess the truth that somehow, somewhere, God is mixed up in all of this.

Ugh.

Okay, let's start with this: I am not opposed to historical (or other) criticism per se.  I think that knowing the geopolitical, religious, and other cultural settings at the time of the writing of various books of the Bible is interesting and helpful.  I think it's good to know how language and literature functioned in the ancient world, what the various intended audiences of the prophets, story-tellers, and letter-writers would have heard, and how they might have reacted, to the message.  I am completely fine with the idea that, particularly in the Gospels and the historical books of the OT where there are multiple accounts of the same event, it's because there were different individuals writing (or otherwise preserving) the accounts, and they had different purposes and different audiences.  I don't feel the need to harmonize the Easter stories, and I don't feel the need to get all worked up about two different creation stories.  There are things to be gained from each rendering, and it need not destroy our faith. 

That said, I think that we need to be incredibly humble when we start claiming that so-and-so "seems to know nothing about" Event A, or that he is "playing fast and loose" with the facts.  No matter how good our archaeology is, no matter how deep into history we might get, we, living 6000 miles away and 2000 years hence, will never know more about "what happened" than people who actually lived in that land, in that time, in that culture, people who knew the participants in the events, or at least, knew the people who knew them.  To suggest otherwise - that we know more about 1st century Palestinian events than people who actually lived in Palestine in the first century - is arrogant, along with just patently ridiculous.

To be sure, literature did function differently in the ancient world than it does today.  Dr. Lose is completely correct in stating, "Luke - and Matthew, Mark, and John for that matter - are playing for bigger stakes than mere historical accuracy. They are trying to share their faith far more than they are trying to establish the facts."

And what of it?  We still do this today, after all.  Anybody who has preached a sermon can tell you that there are details of the story they've chosen not to deal with (you can't preach on everything, all in one sermon), there are theological minutiae that they've skirted around, or linguistic ambiguities they haven't engaged, for the purpose of the sermon at hand.  And so long as we aren't twisting the text to make it say what we want, in contradiction to what it in fact says, or making things up out of whole cloth, I don't think there's anything wrong with this.  Depending on how good of a preacher you are, you've got people's attention for somewhere between 10 and 45 minutes - there's no way you're going to be able to say it all.  Heck, we even do this in the movies!  Does anyone think that Lincoln is 100% factually accurate in every last detail?  Of course not.  But it, and your average Sunday sermon, are on the whole, reasonably close to "factually accurate".  Which is the task of the preacher, and the documentary-ish filmmaker. 

So why then are we Christians so afraid to extend that same charity to the Biblical authors?  Do Luke and Matthew share different details of Jesus' conception, birth, and infancy?  Yes.  Do all four gospel writers share different - even contradicting - details of his trial, death, and resurrection?  Yes.  Does that mean that, on the whole, they are not reasonably close to "factually accurate"?  Of course not.  When two honest-and-sincere witnesses share differing accounts of a car accident we do not impugn and denigrate their motives, throw up our hands, and declare that we'll never know, and it doesn't even really matter if the accident itself happened, all we need to know is that some people are hurting right now.

"Did it really happen?" matters because Christianity (and Judaism, for that matter) is a religion based on claims that God actually, factually, concretely intervened in the long, sorry history of this world, and further claims that the consequence of this intervention is that the long, sorry history of this world and the people in it have been redeemed, and that one day, the "final intervention" will take place, and the whole entire thing will be completely recreated. 

If we find that the Gospel writers are playing "fast and loose" with the facts of this intervention, then those of us who have placed our trust in the God we believe has intervened in this way, are placing our entire salvation at stake.  Because once we declare that the Gospel writers are the sort of people who manipulate historical facts to the point that they no longer recognizably represent the event (regardless of the reason why), then everything they wrote about - up to and including the Resurrection - is up for grabs.  And as St. Paul writes, if Jesus Christ was not raised from the dead then our faith is in vain and we are most of all to be pitied.  

To be fair, I don't think David Lose, in this article, is denying the historicity of the Nativity.  I think he's attempting to reach out and make Christianity slightly more palatable and accessible to the average 21st-century skeptic.  But I just don't think anything is gained by this strategy.  Christianity is offensive, for any number of reasons, not the least of which is because it asks us to believe things, that, to put it mildly, boggle the mind.  It asks us to suspend disbelief, and trust the promises.  And how are we to know what those promises are, and that they are real, if they weren't, at some point, in some particular situation, given to us?  Whether it's from the top of a mountain or the back room of the Temple or in a field by night, somewhere along the line it had to actually happen.  Backing down from the authority or reliability of the canon in an attempt to "win over skeptics" is not doing them - or the faith - any favors. 

Thus, I'm frustrated, in part, because I think this particular article could have been written with all the info explaining that Matthew/Luke/John were writing to different audiences, Matthew is taking great pains to set the infancy narrative in the context of Jewish history, Luke is concerned with geopolitical history, and John's prologue focuses on cosmic history.  This of course means that stories and details will be somewhat different, but as Christians who affirm that the Scriptures are inspired by the Holy Spirit, we believe that, all things considered, the birth of Christ happened basically in the fashion in which it's described, and while there are many parts of the story that are "hard to believe", we nevertheless find it harder to believe that God is a liar whose word cannot be trusted.  Therefore, dear skeptic, because we believe that God chose to intervene in history in this way, at that time, in that place, because we believe that Jesus is Immanuel, God-with-us, we also believe that God is just as present at a Slaughter of the Innocents in Newtown, CT, as he was in Bethlehem; we believe that the young Jesus whose parents spirited him away to Egypt and who knows what it is to hide from crazy murderers was lovingly, graciously, really present in closets and bathrooms with young children attempting to escape the crazy murderer of their own day. 

Bottom line: if we are going to do evangelism and apologetics, let us do them well.  To "apologize" in the classic sense, is to defend - as in, "defend the faith", not "defend our inability/lack of desire to believe."  The historic, orthodox, traditional Christian faith tells us, in the words of the Apostles Creed, that Jesus was "conceived by the power of the Holy Spirit, and born of the Virgin Mary."  Let us not shrink from this scandalous nature of our faith, nor water it down - for when we alter the message because we can't bear it, are we not counted among the company of the rich young ruler, or no-longer-disciples of John 6? And that, Christians, is a place I don't want to be...

PS: One final point on the topic of historical criticism - it is so strange to me that Biblical scholars feel totally free to deny the historicity of, say, the Slaughter of the Innocents, an event which is attested to by the Gospel of Matthew, the Gospel of James, and Macrobius, and which has been observed by the Church as a liturgical feast since 485 AD, and yet, also feel free to unequivocally affirm the existence of "Q". (This is not about David Lose in particular - I have no idea about his personal opinion on Q, I'm speaking of scholars in general here.)

Life Update

It's 9:00 on December 23rd, and I'm bored, so I thought I'd update all 6 of you on life in South Dakota...

Running: Going awesome.  Just finished Week 2 in Couch-to-5K.  I decided to do two of each weekly plan, rather than pushing it super hard.  I'm getting a lot of flak from the Couch-to-5K Facebook page, who are basically all telling just to keep moving, but a) I'm a serious couch potato, and b) running with a prosthesis means that I'm already expending 2x the energy of the "normal" runner...also, since I don't have a "running" leg (the carbon fiber blades you see Oscar Pistorius and his gang run with), that doesn't help the situation at all.  So I'm taking it a little slow, but it's winter in SD, and 18 weeks instead of 9 still barely gets me to the 5K season up here...  Anyways, it feels great.  I've had to hit the treadmill the last couple weeks, since it's been solid ice on the sidewalks around town.  I can figure out how to handle the cold, but I'm not too keen on the prospect of falling flat on my face...  For some reason my shin splints and general knee pain are worse on the treadmill (???) than on the concrete...who's ready for the ice to melt?  Also, this week was Day 1 of TOM, and holy cow did I get nailed...Tuesday was my first day of Week 2 - it was tough, but I made it through. Thursday was my 2nd day of Week 2, and Day 1 of AF, and criminy I thought I was going to die.  I seriously only made it about 75% through the workout - I just had no energy.  Which was strange because was one of those months where I actually felt reasonably decent, as opposed to some months where it's 4:00 pm before I can even think about getting up off the couch...  So, TMI for all y'all, but then I ran again this afternoon after church (had Anytime Fitness all to myself  = awesome), made it through and it felt great.  Again, a tough workout, but a good one.  Yay!

Church: Pretty good, all things considered. We have lots of work too, mainly involving a shift in focus from survival/maintenance mode to growth/outreach mode.  The real issue, I think, is that there's a belief (or a want-to-believe) that this is basically the 1940s, everybody pretty much goes to church, and the way to grow the church is to have a pastor that makes people want to come to this church instead of the church down the street.  Don't get me wrong - I think this is probably the situation that a lot of churches are finding themselves in, and so we're not alone.  But I'm excited about the task ahead, which is preaching the idea that we're not in a Christian, or even a post-Christian era.  I'm starting to think that we're really in a pre-Christian era - people haven't heard the story and rejected it, they've never heard it in the first place.  The way to grow the church is not "be the coolest church around", but preach God's love and mercy and salvation, and have members that are on fire and ready to tell the good news - not that their church is cool, but that Jesus is infinitely amazing and is the only thing that has the power to resurrect the dead - whatever "dead" looks like in your life.  It's a huge mental shift for people who aren't used to thinking along those lines, and it'll come with time, I believe, so I'm not particularly frustrated or concerned - it was a huge mental shift for me the first time I encountered this approach to ministry.  The good news, though, is that the people are awesome.  It's just a really great congregation, that loves, and that has so many gifts, and is just waiting to burst forth, so let's go.

Confirmation: I just love teaching confirmation.  It was my favorite part of internship, it's my favorite part of ordained ministry.  These kids are just fantastic - I love giving them freedom to ask lots of questions.  Sometimes they're on topic, and sometimes not-so-much, but they get me and I get them.  We're having fun, and they seem to be learning.  What I want them to get out of confirmation is not to be perfect-little-Lutherans, but faithful, growing Christians who get it.  We're tossing out the memorize-every-word-of-the-Small-Catechism in favor of memorizing the Creed, the Lord's Prayer, and the Ten Commandments + 3 Bible verses that they choose.  I want them to have a faith that is meaningful to them.  So this year we're doing a little freelance-ish Youth Alpha and the Small Catechism (the whole thing, not just what I'm making them memorize).  This summer at camp, we'll do worship (why do we structure worship the way we do?), and next year they'll do a Bible overview - The Story, maybe, or something similar.   They're just really fantastic kids who are trying to get it, and learning how to think about and talk about God, and it's so much fun to watch!

Life in a Small Town: It's alright.  I like my town - it's actually a really good size - small enough to feel cozy, but big enough to have a grocery store and gym and Wal-Mart and furniture store and several churches and some fast food...The congregation has been pretty welcoming - I went to my grandparents' for Thanksgiving, but I'm having Christmas Eve dinner with a couple from the call committee.  The ladies made me a quilt for my installation today, which is absolutely gorgeous, and I just love to pieces.  But I'd also be lying if I said that I'm not lonely.  There really aren't many people here who are my age, and the ones who are, are all married-with-kids.  Most nights I come home and chill in front of the TV or Netflix.  I just don't have much in the way of friends, which is why I drive to Sioux Falls on a fairly regular basis to see friends from school, or just find random things to do - like Christmas at the Capitol.  Honestly, it's really hard to be single.  I can "offer it up" all I want, or try to see it as part of "suffering for the Kingdom" or whatever, but it still just really stings doing Christmas completely alone.  And it's harder having all my married friends say, "Of course it's sad that you can't see your parents, but you just start your own traditions!"  Well...that's easy to say if you come home from Christmas Eve worship and your wife and kids are there.  Or if the "new tradition" is that you put off opening presents until after Christmas Day worship that Mommy has to preach at.  When your holidays are you, and only you, it's just really, really hard, and I know hardly anyone who understands that.  My "new tradition" is Netflix, Campbell's Chunky Soup, and leftover Christmas cookies - or whatever.  I know a lot of people have it a lot harder than I do - relatives who have died or who live so far away as to be un-travelable-to or such broken relationships that they don't even really want to go home.  And it's true, I'm much better off than that...  But honestly, I'd rather argue about whose family we're going to see for Christmas this year, than be totally alone.  I'm also really struggling with being the pastor and the pastor's wife, but that's for another post...  Pray for me, please, if you're so inclined...

Going to Church: For everyone who has an excuse about why they can't come to church that really boils down to "I just didn't want to put in the effort to get there because it's not that important to me" - one of the ladies in the nursing home here just weaned herself off oxygen so that she could take the senior transit bus to church on Sundays.  I ♥ this. 

On the Other Hand: I'm working on some awesome Christmas cooking/baking projects this year, which I will definitely post pics of when I am done...

Merry Christmas, everyone - remember that the light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not, can not, will not overcome it!

Thoughts from an alum

Given the news coming out of Luther Seminary today, I thought I'd offer my reflections.  A couple of things I write here are suggestions of actions I believe would be helpful; some are simply my thoughts, feelings, and reactions.  Other people may disagree with my suggestions, or feel, think, and react differently.  That is fine.  Also, please note: I am a very recent alum.  I am not an HR guru, a finance person, or a higher ed administrator.  I am not a current student, nor a an old-timer with a degree from LNTS.  I'm a first-call pastor at a smallish congregation in a small Midwestern town.  So, here goes.

• I like Rick Bliese.  From his rosy Santa Claus cheeks to his "dad jeans", by all accounts, he is a good, caring person who loves Jesus and the students, faculty, and staff at Luther.  He has personally been very supportive to me during my time at seminary and in candidacy, and I feel bad that this is what eventually "had" to happen.
• We need to be in prayer for him and his family - obviously this is a huge, and hugely negative, transition for them, down to the fact that they live in seminary housing and so will need to find a new place to live.
• The seminary is going to have to find a way to start handling pastoral care for students.  I'm aware Luther just hired a new campus pastor - I know nothing about her except that she's supposedly good.  I hope she is, although she has no institutional memory at this point, and in times of major upheaval such as this, that can be somewhat limiting.  Others are going to have to step up.  Students on campus are literally (yes) dying for someone to care for them.  Administration is generally available to meet one-on-one, or hold a "forum" in the chapel for people to (sort of) air their concerns.  But very few individuals offer one-on-one prayers, or hugs-and-tears.  Students feel trampled-upon at frequent intervals, and the sense, I believe, is that even when policies, decisions, transitions, whatever are "good" or "right", they are handled in a way that communicates that students aren't all that important.  Just like churches that want to grow need to start asking, "If I were a visitor, how would I react to this?", Luther staff/administration needs to start asking, "If I were a student, how would I react to this?"  
• I feel lied to.  For years, we have heard from President Bliese and others that, "Look, the economy [and the 2009 decisions] have been rough on everybody.  We're struggling, but we're making good decisions, and we're going to be okay.  We're certainly in better shape than the others."  I'm not sure whether Luther is "struggling, and not going to be okay", or whether the other 7 are already 6-feet-under, as it were.
• This raises huge vocational questions.  What are any of us doing as pastors in the ELCA, receiving graduate education from her seminaries, when they are all barely - barely - keeping their heads above water? What is the long-term survivability of the ELCA?  And if the answer is "not much", then why are we all dragging ourselves through the torture that is candidacy?  
• It also raises huge vocational reminders: I don't believe (or at least, I haven't heard anything that would make me think) Rick Bliese is guilty of true illegalities: fraud or embezzlement or such.  Apparently he asked forgiveness today for "poor fiscal leadership".  Mismanagement and poor leadership are not illegal, but they are sinful.  As pastors/youth leaders/professors/etc, we need to be aware that our own mismanagement and poor stewardship of what we've been given (not necessarily, or only, money) is just as sinful in the eyes of Our Lord as embezzlement. 
• I love Luther, and I thoroughly enjoyed my time there.  (Well, most days...)  I love the faculty and staff, the administration, my fellow students.  I learned a lot of really awesome facts and ideas there, and I grew tremendously.  But I have a ton of educational debt, as do most of my fellow students.  The cafeteria is barely open anymore.  Contracts prevent students from purchasing books...at the bookstore. And yet, certain individuals and departments spend ridiculous amounts of seminary funds on high-end coffee and cookies every day of the week.  There are flat-screen TVs in every corner of Northwestern and the OCC.  NW and OCC have both recently undergone major asthetic remodels, while the dorms and apartments battle bedbugs and mold year-round.  I understand that fundraising is not as simple as "write us a check, please, and make it out to 'cash'".  I understand that donors want to earmark their money for things that they might not realize aren't totally the top priority.  But the administration needs to realize that students notice these things, and fair or not, find statements about "concern for rising student debt" to sound rather platitudinous against the backdrop of a flatscreen TV  hanging on the wall in the lunchline. 
• "Where there is no vision, the people perish."  Look, this isn't about Rick Bliese.  It's not really even about the economy, or about 2009 decisions that torqued off rich old ladies, or spending money on frivolities instead of necessities.  It's about the fact that much of the ELCA and many of her associated enterprises - Luther Seminary among them - has taken its eye off the ball.  We are told that we are to be missional - but missional about what?  A vast cohort of students, faculty, and staff (and therefore pastors, bishops, and synod staff) get more worked up about personal pronouns for God than personal relationships with God.  We are taught that to "want people to come to church on Sunday morning" indicates a lack of understanding that God works outside the church.  We are taught that the Church, and Word & Sacrament, are nice, you know, but so are justice and advocacy.  I spent more time in seminary learning about "family systems" than I did sacramental theology.  No, for realz.  I was assigned more papers about why we shouldn't evangelize, than about how and why we should.  I recognize that this is a huge indictment of the entire system, and I want to be clear that I do not, by any means, include anyone and everyone who is part of the system in this.  There remain many, many good and faithful students, faculty, staff, pastors, bishops, and synod staff.  But donors (and your average layperson trying to decide whether to venture out into the cold to go to church on Sunday, for that matter) don't get excited about advocacy for advocacy's sake, or "training students to reflect a baptismal approach to missionality blah blah blah", or even "buy your own hymnal!"  You know what's exciting?  Jesus.  Jesus is exciting because He forgives sins - our own, and everybody else's.  He is exciting because by the power of the resurrection, he transforms lives in the here and now.  He is exciting because he is constantly creating us anew, he promises us eternal life, he has already begun to set this upside-down world right-side-up again and one day he's going to finish the job, there's gonna be a new heaven and a new earth, where everything is going to be fixed, and how awesome is that going to be? Tell little old ladies that we're training pastors to reach out to the world around us and share the everlasting love of Jesus Christ.  Tell them that with passion, and conviction, like it's the best thing you've ever heard about (because it is - even better than sliced bread) and they'll start writing checks.  Tell them you've got students who are slogging through the economy just like the rest of us, but who are so in love with Jesus that they'd be here no matter what, come hell or high water, bedbugs or mold, learning how to spread the Good News in the 21st century just like Paul did in the 1st, and people will be fired up.   

So there you've got it - just some honest first impressions from the recent grad. Feel free to chime in with your own, or tell me I'm totally wrong.  But something's gotta be done, that's all I know.  And remember to pray for Rick Bliese.  

Credit Where Credit Is Due

And "fun with evangelism", too!

Yesterday I led one of my Ladies' Bible Study groups in the "Lutheran Woman Today" Bible Study, found in the May 2011 issue.  In the past, I've had many an issue with the material provided, so my expectations as I opened the magazine to preview it were pretty low.  Especially when the Table of Contents revealed that the topic was "evangelism."  Oh Lord, here we go...was my precise thought, as I flipped to page 32.

Imagine my surprise when I found a really solid study on - and call to - evangelism.  I mean, truly, given what we'd endured over the winter ("mother Earth," "how to be nice to gay people," and "rooting out racism"), I had to check the cover and make sure this was still the same publication.  The thing I liked most about the study was that it was very clear that we are called to be witnesses to Christ (Acts 1:4-8), and that worshipping, learning, and serving, while good and valuable, are not evangelism. Evangelism is actually telling people about Jesus, and communicating that nothing else matters without the transforming power of Jesus Christ in a person's life. 

I thought it was an interesting choice of text - it's probably not what I would have picked, but it worked fine.  Some of their suggestions of the duties of an "evangelism task force" don't really work in our context (It's hard to have a three-pronged evangelism team when you live in a town of 50 and have, at best, 20 people in church on Sunday morning.)  But the main point - you are supposed to be telling people about Jesus - came through loud and clear.

So I was all excited about this, and couldn't wait to work through it with the ladies.  When I got to the home Bible Study was being held at, I found my normally friendly ladies to be quite grouchy.  "We're glad you're here, because we don't like this.  We were all just talking about it before you got here, and none of us like it." 

Uh-oh. 

After listening to them for a few minutes, I suggested we just read through the study and see what happens.  First, they did not like the idea that service is good but it doesn't substitute for evangelism.  Upon further reflection today, I wonder if this comes out of an exaggerated application of the "we'll know they are Christians by our love" principle combined with the "two things we don't discuss in polite society - politics and religion" principle.  Nonetheless, I stuck to my guns, and we moved forward.

Pretty soon, we got onto some sort of discussion about "evangelism begins at home" or something, which turned into a rant about kids who get confirmed and never come back to church.  Interesting...veddy interesting... I thought to myself.  So I asked, "Why is this important?  Why do we care if kids come to church?"  I got the usual answers: to hear the sermon, to pray, to worship, to be with other Christians, to have your faith renewed, etc...  So I push again, "Ok, but why is that important?  I mean, who cares if 'your faith is renewed'?"  At this point, some of them thought that I was actually arguing that these things aren't important, so I corrected that, noting that I hadn't said that at all, that I was just asking questions. 

Anyway...eventually these ladies get to: faith is important because you need it to get through the daily stuff of life, I don't know how anyone who doesn't pray can survive the day, you need the good news of Christ when there's a tragedy or death, how can you go to a funeral without the hope of the resurrection, and so on... I let them talk that angle for several minutes before I interrupted and said, "This, by the way, what you're all doing right now, is evangelism."  They looked at me in complete shock.  I had completely caught them off guard.  "But we're just sitting here talking with each other."  Bingo.

After that, the ladies started sharing some other instances of when and where they are sharing their faith - "back when I used to work at the courthouse, if somebody's relative died, we would talk about church and what we believed..." "there's this lady I have coffee with who says she's an atheist, but I tell her things, and she listens and asks questions, she seems kind of interested..." 

Somewhere along the line, these ladies got the idea (like most of us, probably) that "evangelism" = standing on the street corner, shouting "REPENT!!!!"  Hearing that it's not really that at all, but this kind of natural "sharing your faith" was a completely new idea.  However, I think a lot of them are really struggling still with the difference between "being Christian" and "being a nice person."  Ah, well, I guess that's what this week's Gospel lesson (I am the way, the truth, and the life) is for...

Interestingly, also, two of the ladies (the only 2?) who are not originally from the community but moved here when they got married, shared stories that the first time they attended church here (these are all older ladies, so probably 40 years ago or something), not a single person said hello or welcomed them in any way.  Now, they kept coming because they were married, and they were "church people" already, and whatever.  But I think it got the attention of the rest of the group to hear that they are not necessarily as "nice" and "welcoming" as they like to think. 

All in all, a great Bible Study.  Good work, LWT.