What We Talk About When We Talk About Rob Bell

I don't know Rob Bell. But I'd like to thank him for his work. Thank you for writing books that I like to read. But thank you even more for writing books that my 15 year old son likes to read and that we can talk about afterwards.

I first heard about Rob Bell in 2006 when he appeared in a series of Nooma films. I arranged to show a series of these short, postmodern films about God at San Francisco Friends Meeting after reading about how Gregg Koskela had shown one at Newberg Friends Church.

The first one of his books that I read was Velvet Elvis: Repainting the Christian Faith. It's a reminder of all the different ways people have been Christians and how there can be more than one way to follow Jesus just like there is more than one way to paint a picture of Elvis. (Just re-reading pieces of it while writing this blogpost was inspiring all over again.)

Our copy of SexGod: Exploring the Endless Connections between Sexuality and Spirituality has about the most boring cover you could imagine. But it is a beautiful work of thinking and writing on the inside. I hope my sons will read this one too. (For those of you who worry about these things coming from an Evangelical Christian, as far as I can remember, it doesn't talk about same gender relationships. Neither condemning nor affirming. It is clearly heteronormative but fairly progressive about male-female roles in heterosexual relationships. If you can translate from that to your own situation, you might like it.)

Somebody gave us a copy of Drops Like Stars, about creativity and suffering. It's beautiful, but I didn't really get it. But eventually, I figured out that it wasn't written for me. Me who likes to read all the words, the writer, the know-it-all, the girl-who-always-raises-her-hand-in-class. It is designed for people who think like visual artists. You know who you are.

All of this came up because Chris brought home Bell's latest book, What We Talk About When We Talk About God. Chris read it, then I read it, then our 15 year old son read it while in meeting for worship the other week. [For more on teens reading in worship: part 1 and part 2] Bell asks why we still talk about God and how we have to be/get to be open to new ways of talking about God and deal with the both/and nature of much of the discussion. Then Bell explains that he thinks that God is with us, for us and ahead of us, and then why this all matters in this day and age. Right on, brother.

I don't actually agree with everything that Bell writes, but pretty close. And I find his books to be a very engaging and inspiring conversation partner and conversation starter. I asked my son if he thought other young Friends would be interested in reading and discussing it and his eyes got big and he said Yes. So let me encourage other Friends to bring this to the attention of any youth group or any mid-week study group - it's a fine way to get into the discussion about what we actually know or believe about God.

As usual, my timing is off regarding big moments in the blogosphere. I finally read Bell's 2011 book
Love Wins: A Book about Heaven, Hell, and the Fate of Every Person Who Ever Lived. This caused a huge controversy a couple of years ago in Evangelical circles but I didn't actually read it until I checked it out of the library last week. (I was a little busy in 2011, and did not have the bandwidth to argue much about theology just then.) It has a lot in common with If Grace is True and If God is Love by Phil Gulley and Jim Mulholland. Bell just issued a new version, Love Wins for Teens which I don't quite understand because I think the original is pretty accessible for teens, but maybe the new pink cover will appeal to a different demographic?

So the last thing I want to write about is the rockstar pastor phenomenon. Rob Bell has been one of the biggest of this millenium. Best selling author, 10,000 member church at some point, one of Time's 100 most influential people in 2011, New Yorker profile in 2012. But he left that to move to California, write, surf and maybe make a tv show. I have to hope that he now has more time for his family.

I am grateful that Bell writes about his doubts about being a pastor, a Christian, a worthy human being. And I am happy for him that he was able to take a break, to step away from the push to do more, bigger, faster.

But I wonder about the rockstar Quakers I have known, who have charisma and depth, who aren't actually rockstar famous. Is that a good thing? Or not? This topic is probably another blogpost in itself, but I will just put it out there for you to think about.

Faithful Betrayal

On Sunday morning after Quaker Heritage Day, Wess “brought the message” to worship at Berkeley Friends Church. He told a parable about the master and the perfect disciple. You can read more of it in his article that was in the Jan/Feb 2010 issue of Quaker Life. Essentially, the disciple swears never to deviate from the Master’s teachings, and the Master says that to swear this is already to betray his teaching.

Wess was making a reference to how the Christian Church in postmodern culture has to break with some of the traditions that have been handed down to us. I think the lesson is that in order to be faithful to our highest or greatest calling, to be faithful to God, we may have to break with or betray some of our human teachers.

For Quakers, this may mean several things.

First is that we have to examine the taboos that we have inherited, like we can’t talk about X topic, or with those people (insert your favorite here). Depending on where you came to Quakerism, that may mean we actually have to talk about what we believe, whether that is a more or less orthodox understanding of Christianity, or it may mean we have to admit our doubts or that our interpretation has changed, of the Bible, or George Fox’s Journal, or whatever.

Second is that the way we do business, or worship, or nominations may have to change. Again. None of us is a Quaker in exactly the same way that 17th century Friends were. We may resume some old practices; we may borrow from those other Quakers; we may choose something that fits with our local cultural or generational norms. Here I recommend reading Brent Bill’s Modest Proposal (which is a lot less shocking and a lot more practical than Swift’s essay by the same name).

Third is that the institutions we have been handed may not be the instruments we need to achieve God’s kingdom in our times. Do our meetings need different (or fewer) committees that what we’ve had for the last ten years? Do our churches need to separate into smaller worship groups? Or join into larger congregations? Do we need some form of realignment of our allegiances and associations? (I know that word has history and heavy baggage, but I mean to invoke all of that, or at least some of that heat and light.)

How is God calling us to “be the Quakers” in 2011?

Where are the nudges in your personal life? What courage will it take to speak your understanding of the Truth?

What support do we need from each other to lay down the forms and patterns that no longer serve God’s purposes, no matter how useful they may have been when they were innovations?

And how will we know what is truly faithful in the face of the sense of betrayal that others will feel about our new leadings? How hard is it to tell somebody, “I know you’ve dedicated the last thirty years of your life to that committee, but it doesn’t exist anymore.”?

The fact is that those conversations are going on already. In monthly meetings. In yearly meetings. In international organizations. Some of this work has been hastened by the financial crisis. But most of it is due to the generational shifts, the Great Turning, the Great Emergence, that is happening all around us, whether we like it or not.

To swear never to deviate from the paths of our great teachers is to have betrayed them already.

Twitterpost: What WOULD Jesus Twitter?

robinmsf: Going to What Would Jesus Twitter? with @breyeschow http://tinyurl.com/dd74mr on April 1 in SF!9:47 PM Mar 24th from web

breyeschow: @w2e Just a reminder, "What would Jesus Twitter" at the web2open, help spread the word, 9:00am on the 1st! http://tinyurl.com/cdr3gb #w2e6:01 PM Mar 30th from TweetDeck

breyeschow: #w2e twitters are starting; hope I'll get a spot at the #web2open 2morrow; do folks care what JC would twitter? http://tinyurl.com/cdr3gb 11:39 AM Mar 31st from TweetDeck

robinmsf: RT @breyeschow #w2e hope I'll get a spot @ #web2open 2morrow; do folks care what JC would twitter? http://tinyurl.com/cdr3gb I hope so too 12:24 PM Mar 31st from web

breyeschow: Just arrived at the Web 2.0 Expo, Geek quotient way high. #w2e

robinmsf: waiting for Web2Open session on WWJTwitter? at #w2e

breyeschow: "What would Jesus Twitter?" Got a slot! 12:40-1:20, room #1 at web2open #w2e http://twitpic.com/2ojmk

mortond: @breyeschow Hate I'm going to miss your session., but I would love to hear your thoughts and outcomes.

breyeschow: @mortond I'll post some kind of relfectin afterwards @ http://www.reyes-chow.com/. Thanks for asking.

robinmsf: RT @breyeschow "What would Jesus Twitter?" Got a slot! 12:40-1:20, room #1 at web2open #w2e http://twitpic.com/2ojmk I'll be there!

breyeschow: Jesus Twitter board http://twitpic.com/2ot9m from Tweetie

breyeschow:Thanks all who came to the "What would Jesus Twitter" session, just guessing there were 12 of us ;-) #w2e from TweetDeck

robinmsf: WWJTwitter at #w2e more an intro 2 how churches & non-profits use social media. Not enough audience overlap to drive discussion?

robinmsf: Churches use social media for internal work (organize potlucks) and external credibility (read our reviews on Yelp) not evangelization

robinmsf: Does having your church life and work life integrated online make you more likely to practice integrity? Could this be part of formation?

via Facebook: Interesting question. There is the opportunity here (some people choose not to do this) to share from all parts of your life. Raises the question if we live our lives as a seamless whole. from Bill Samuel

robinmsf: So what WOULD Jesus Twitter?

via Facebook: One son stayed home, one left and did bad. Came home and father thru a party. from @funnel101

via Facebook: b@itudes? from Lisa H.

robinmsf: Thank you @breyeschow for hosting the What Would Jesus Twitter? web2open session at #w2e Good food for thought.

wikileon: @breyeschow I missed the Web2Open session on WWJT. How did it go?

breyeschow: @WikiLeon I think it went well, had a dozen or so folks, good conversation.

breyeschow:@robinmsf you are very welcome, great to have a little more face time as well #w2e

chadstep: @robinmsf I think I just posted on this but didn't realize what I was posting and you hit it on the head

bobpearson: @breyeschow Don't be discouraged by only 12, Jesus started that way also...#w2eabout

breyeschow:@bobpearson not discouraged at all, actually about 6 more than I thought would sho up ;-) #w2e

[Actual Twitter stream regarding What Would Jesus Twitter? Web2Open session at Web 2.0 Expo April 1, 2009 in San Francisco. If you also twittered from this event, please add to the comments!]

[Thursday am: I added a few more tweets I found plus other reactions.]

What Would Jesus Twitter?

I'm looking forward to this open session at the Web 2.0 Open
UnConference on April 1, 2009 in San Francisco. It's free but you have to register in advance.






TITLE: "What Would Jesus Twitter? The convergence between church, religion and social media"

TARGET DATE: April 1 Session

FOCUS: In this session we will look at some of the ways social media has simultaneously rocked the world of the traditional religious establishments as well as unleashed an amazingly vibrant new expression of spiritual life. Social networking has become an integral part of many religious traditions as they build community and attempt to be a positive presence in the world. Focusing mostly on Christian church movements be ready to hear and/or share stories of resistance, fear, embracing and liberation that are all pointing to a new manifestation of church today.

This session will be convened by Rev. Bruce Reyes-Chow [Blog | Twitter | Facebook ] who is the pastor of Mission Bay Community Church in San Francisco [Website | Twitter | Facebook ]

If you want to follow me on Twitter: robinmsf

Intro to Quakerism for the Emergent Crowd

So a couple of days ago, I got an email from a Presbymergent friend. It was an invitation to folks who are what she calls hypenmergent to send a flyer to a major conference for people interested in the emerging church.

For those of you who are lost already, Presbymergent is a subset of hyphenmergent. The P word is for Presbyterians who are also emergent. Hyphenmergent covers all the people who are part of an existing denomination who also interested in or committed to the emerging conversation. Emergent is better described here on the Emergent Village website. If you're still too confused, then don't worry about it. But keep in mind that I consider convergent Friends to be the Quaker part of the emerging church conversation.

Basically, I am making a handout about Quakers for an audience who are mostly progressive Christians. Many of whom will have heard of Quakers but not really know much about us. Some of whom are already happily in a church community and some of whom are actively seeking a new church community. So I think it's worth sending 100 flyers or so.

A serious problem is that this conference is in New Mexico this coming week. (I would have liked to go, but it's the same weekend as the FWCC Section of the Americas annual meeting in Oregon, which I am committed to attending.) So I have to mail the flyers on Monday for them to have any hope of arriving in time to be put out on the hyphenmergent table in the "resource marketplace."

But I had a total of three days to make this flyer. I will have one day left by the time I post this. I can not make an exhaustive comparison (or even a coherent comparison) between the emerging church and convergent Friends. I want to give a hint of what we're about and point them to additional resources. I want to use stuff that I already had put together for other purposes.

Here is my current draft. It looks a little better in my Word document than in my blog, but it's going to be very basic formatting. I'm thinking straight black ink on white paper. It'll look more "Quakerly" and it may stand out from all the colored paper flyers on the same table. What do you think?


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curious about Quakers?

CONVERGENT FRIENDS

The Religious Society of Friends, also known as the Quakers, is one of the traditional Peace Churches, with a 350 year history of pacifism. Friends are also known for their commitment to social justice, the equality of men and women in worship and society, and plain living. Quakers have not always been able to resolve their own internal conflicts, leading to four (or six, depending on who’s counting) branches of Friends with a variety of practices and beliefs that don’t always get along.

Convergent Friends are seeking a deeper understanding of our Quaker heritage and a more authentic life in the kingdom of God on Earth, radically inclusive of all who seek to live this life.

Linguistically, the name alludes to an affinity for both Conservative Friends and the Emergent Church. Metaphorically, it suggests that Friends are moving closer together towards some common point on the horizon. The winds of the Spirit are blowing across all the branches of Friends, blowing us in the same direction. The convergence of Friends is a fuzzy, changing concept, not an example of pure mathematics or philosophy.

This term includes, among others, Friends from the politically liberal end of the evangelical branch, the Christian end of the unprogrammed branch, and the more outgoing end of the Conservative branch. It includes folks who aren’t sure what they believe about Jesus and Christ, but who aren’t afraid to wrestle with this question. It includes people who think that a lot of Quaker anachronisms are silly but who are willing to experiment to see which are spiritual disciplines that still hold life and power to transform us. Some of these people are communicating across vast distances of geography or institutional theology. Some of them are communicating across dinner tables, while consuming take-out pizza and home-made chocolate chip cookies.

Welcome to the conversation!

To find a Friends’ Meeting or Church near you, visit www.fwccamericas.org/meetingsearch.aspx and enter your zip code

For the latest in convergent Friends blogs, events and dialogue, visit www.QuakerQuaker.org, a collectively edited community of blogs and social media.

---------------other side of the paper-------------------

Some books by and about Quakers:

Testament of Devotion by Thomas Kelly (HarperCollins, 1996, originally published 1941)

The Journal of John Woolman (1720-1772), edited by Philips Moulton (Friends United Press, 1989 & 1971)

Through Flaming Sword: The Life and Legacy of George Fox by Arthur O. Roberts (Barclay Press, 2008, originally published in 1959)

A Plain Life: Walking My Belief by Scott Savage (Ballantine Books, 2000)

Essays on the Quaker Vision of Gospel Order by Lloyd Lee Wilson (Quaker Press of FGC, 2001, originally published 1993)

Plain Living: A Quaker Path to Simplicity by Catherine Whitmire (Sorin Books, 2001)

Living the Way: Quaker Spirituality & Community by Ursula Jane O'Shea (Quaker Home Service, 2003)

Holy Silence: The Gift of Quaker Spirituality by J. Brent Bill (Paraclete Press, 2005)

On Living with a Concern for Gospel Ministry by Brian Drayton (Quaker Press of FGC, 2006)

---------------------------------------end--------------------------------------

I'm really interested in what other people think. Even if you're reading this after the deadline, let me know how I could do better the next time.

We're not alone.

Quakers aren't the only ones struggling with how to balance the elements of our lives.

The other day I ran into a woman I knew slightly from an emerging church group I participated in last year on the way to my anchor committee meeting. She too is struggling with the balance between her sense of being called to pastor a congregation and the need to pay her bills, and for her it's further complicated by the fact that her heritage is in the Baptist church, which has some issues around women as pastors. It is of course more complicated than that, and I felt a sense of kinship with her struggle.

And then I read this post, "The pastoral secret that everyone already knows, but pastors keep trying to hide," from one of my favorite Presbymergent bloggers, Bruce Reyes-Chow. He lives in SF and he also happens to be the Moderator of the General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church (USA). Which I understand to be something like a Presbyterian Pope but only for two years. I met him briefly a couple of years ago, and then I've followed his journey via blogs and Twitter and mutual friends since then. (As in he doesn't really know me, but I feel like I know him.)

In any case, life is complicated and wonderful and hard all at the same time. You are not alone and neither am I.

A New Kind of Christian -- The Trilogy

A New Kind of Christian: A Tale of Two Friends on a Spiritual Journey
The Story We Find Ourselves In: Further Adventures of A New Kind of Christian
The Last Word and the Word After That: A Tale of Faith, Doubt, and a New Kind of Christianity

I already wrote a little about the first book by Brian McLaren. The other two are more of the story of Dan and Neil and friends as they muddle their way through the shift to postmodernity. The second includes a retelling of the Old Testament. The third includes an exploration of the meaning of Jesus’s life and ministry. I just finished them all, in the new paperback edition from Jossey-Bass, thanks to The Ooze Select Bloggers book reviewing program.

Other people have written about this trilogy to describe how this is different from other kinds of Christianity. I can only guess at how shocking it all is to people steeped in fundamentalist Christianity. For me, raised in the mildest form of Christianity, having left even that, and now coming back, hungry for more, it barely raises an eyebrow. I’m interested in how these books and the various theories outlined can help me to articulate an understanding of Christianity that I can own, heart and mind. Heresy trials are just not that important to me – that’s probably why I fit as a liberal Quaker.

None of the theories of atonement, presented in some detail here (or anywhere else), make much sense to me. None of them rings true in my heart, in my relationship to God or in my Quaker tradition. The execution of Jesus seems more like a logical consequence of disrupting the status quo. It seems like a human response, not unlike our government’s approach to terrorists; it doesn’t seem to reflect a divine intention. The resurrection is a mystery I’m interested in exploring, not how Jesus ended up on the 1^st century version of the electric chair.

The mixing of fact and fiction makes the books a puzzle. The temptation is to read them as a roman a clef – and figure out who is who. But McLaren warns against that, and I think he’s smart enough to have made composite characters who don’t intentionally line up with real people – or maybe I just don’t know enough about the evangelical world to find the clues.

I think their greatest value may be to people who still think that they’re the only ones asking these questions and struggling with these ideas. McLaren illustrates nicely the way people who are apparently nodding their heads and following along in mainstream evangelical churches may quietly be questioning it all, and how they may not know how to bring up their questions for fear of looking foolish or less faithful.

I have seen the same thing happen in Quaker meetings, both folks who are afraid to bring up their attachment to Jesus and their secret longing to follow Him more closely and openly, and folks who are questioning the whole existence of God, who know that the image they had of God doesn’t work anymore but can’t imagine any other way to understand what people mean by the Divine. I have personally heard a Friend say in a small group, “I don’t think there’s anybody in my Meeting I can talk to about this,” and someone else say, ‘Just yesterday, so and so said the same thing to me, and I think she’s from your Meeting.”

We have to be brave enough to speak our understanding of the Truth. Sometimes other people will disagree, and discourage us, but we have to keep trying. Dan, in the Trilogy, has his whole life shaken up. He nearly loses his job in a way that might make it impossible for him to find another one in the same field. Neil already went through that sacrificial transition. Other characters feel like their lifelong faith or atheism is being shaken to the core. Many people feel the same way in real life. This is where I think the example of Jesus can help us to be brave enough to take the punishment that we may or may not know is coming. If the possibility of life after death encourages you, then every day is a great opportunity to gain another star in your crown. If simply the witness of faithful living on this Earth encourages you, then Jesus is a fine example. Brian McLaren is another.

Phyllis Tickle and Joanna Macy? Anybody?

Has anybody out there already read both Phyllis Tickle’s new book, The Great Emergence, AND any of Joanna Macy’s writings about The Great Turning?

I just finished Tickle’s book, and it’s as good as people said it was. A Friend at SF Meeting was able to loan me Macy’s 1998 book, Coming Back to Life: Practices to Reconnect Our Lives, Our World, co-written by Molly Young Brown. I'm just starting it, and it seems relevant for me on several levels.

I think these two women are prophetic voices for our times, coming from different backgrounds, both observing and commenting on the same mega-shift as Brian McLaren, etc. I’d like to talk to anyone who’s read both authors and would be willing to compare and contrast with me.

In exchange, I’ll offer two end-of-year gifts to readers:

One is a link to an opportunity to win a trip to the Obama inauguration next month by submitting your commitment to change in 2009. It’s offered by the Case Foundation.

Second is a recipe with a fine Quaker pedigree. I first ate these cinnamon-sugared pecans at a couple of SF Meeting events. The woman who made them said she got the recipe from a long-time Friend from another meeting who always brings them to AVP gatherings. It also appeared in the December issue of the SF Meeting newsletter.

Cinnamon-Sugar Nuts
Can be any kind of nuts, but pecans are good. Makes one pound.

Preheat oven to 350 degrees.

Lightly beat one egg white. In a medium sized bowl, mix with one pound nuts until coated. In a small bowl, stir together 1 cup sugar, 1 teaspoon salt, 1 teaspoon cinnamon, then stir mixture into nuts until evenly coated. Spread on a baking sheet. Bake for a total of 20-30 minutes, stirring at decreasing intervals (after 10 minutes, 8 min, 5 min, 3 min, etc.) During the first ten minutes or so, the egg white will puff a little. Watch them carefully near the end and take out when they are lightly browned.

Happy New Year!

A New Kind of Christian

Brian McLaren’s 2001 semi-autobiographical semi-novel. The first part of a trilogy that continues with The Story We Find Ourselves In and The Last Word and the Word After That. It’s just come out in paperback, and it’s published by my friends at Jossey-Bass, A Wiley Imprint. It was sent to me by The Ooze, and I actually read it in the same month I received it!

It’s the story of how a pastor finds his faith again, and understands why he’s been increasingly unsatisfied with his life and his church. It’s not just him; he's feeling the discomfort of a transition from modernity to postmodernity, and he’s making the transition a little sooner than some.

It’s a fictionalized account of a transition that McLaren and a lot of other people have gone through. It’s hard for me to picture how radical this must have sounded in 2001. I suspect it must have been shocking to a lot of people. OK, I know it is still controversial for a lot of people – I just don’t know very many of them. For more people I do know, I think their response is going to sound like “finally”, and “Thank God somebody is making sense out of Christianity.” And a sense of “of course, I get it now,” because McLaren is articulating what we already knew but couldn’t quite explain.

This is a story more than an academic treatise. There’s just enough plot and character development to make it entertaining reading. As a novel, wellllllll, it’s a lot more telling than showing. But still, it’s a lot easier reading than most academic explanations or even personal interpretations of this complex set of theories and transitions. At least the ones that I’ve read.

I liked the comparison of the postmodern shift to puberty. You’re not better before or after puberty, you’re just different, and you have to learn to think and act differently. And you’re not better or worse for going through puberty early or late, although being on either extreme can be uncomfortable, for you and for those who love you.

I’m starting to sound like a broken record, but I’m still looking for a book about the emerging church that doesn’t assume that you already were a conservative evangelical Christian and that this shift represents a liberation. I’m looking for one that represents the transition from “I didn’t want to be a Christian” to “Now I can see a way that I can call myself a Christian.” You know, like my journey. (I’m also writing more about that topic, but I think it’s for another blog post.) If you have suggestions, I’m really interested.

What I'm Reading Now (or Not) -Tenth Month 2008

I miss writing every day. A week or so ago, I had a couple of hours to myself while waiting to pick one of my kids at a birthday party. As soon as I found parking, I went into a local doughnut shop and wrote in my journal for an hour. (Okay, I had a doughnut and some decaf too.) Afterwards, I felt physically lighter. Despite the doughnut. I just felt better for writing. I hope that, as I adjust to the new job and the new commute pattern, I will find time and energy for writing more often again.

And reading. I haven’t had much time or energy for reading anything that wasn’t about child care policy in California, or else written at the level of a fifth or first grader. (I highly recommend the books Guests by Michael Dorris and Triumph on Everest: A Photobiography of Sir Edmund Hillary by Broughton Coburn. I’m not so fond of the Akiko on the Planet Smoo series, but my kids love them.)

However, I made a commitment a few months ago to review books for The Ooze. Ahem. I am a little behind.

I should just admit now that I’m probably not going to read The Becoming of G-d by Ian Mobsby any time soon. Not that it’s not a good book. I’m just not that interested in “What the Trinitarian nature of God has to do with Church and a deep Spirituality for the Twenty First Century.” But if I was going to read a book with a real life interpretation of the Trinity, I would start with this. I think I met Ian Mobsby, sort of, at a Re-Imagine event a year or two ago. He's the Priest Missioner to a group called Moot which he describes as an Anglican Emerging & Fresh Expression of Church.

I am still working my way s-l-o-w-l-y through The Emerging Church by Bruce Sanguin. I was put off by the cheesy author photo and the fancy chart in the middle when I first picked it up, but then for some unknown reason I looked at it again and realized that it’s like a “how to help your existing congregation be more emergent” book of instructions. And interesting. But I got into just at the point when I have no real time to help anything or anyone be more emergent/convergent/religious. And I’m not sure how realistic it is. Like I said, I haven’t had a chance to try any of it. But it sounds nice.

And then today I got another package. A book and a CD. Hey, that’s cool.

The CD is called Evensong Rising. Or maybe that’s the name of the band, or both; I’m not sure.

The album is put together like a worship service. You know, Processional, Adoration, Offertory, Doxology, Preparation, Sermon, etc. I googled Stanwich Church, which is referenced in the liner notes, and it’s the Congregational Church in Greenwich, CT. I think this is the band for their evening service.

The sticker on the shrinkwrap says “Featuring the hit single Satisfied Evensong Rising ignites the Ancient/Future Worship Movement” Who knew? It’s way better than most of what passes as Christian rock. Good production quality. And it’s not all the same tempo, or same genre even. The lyrics are a mix of old hymns and modern twists. Mostly indie rock type stuff. I liked the song “Unto Him” more than “Satisfied.” But then I’m a sucker for a good fiddle line.


But the book. The book is A New Kind of Christian by Brian McLaren. His book from 2001 about the pastor and the science teacher. I’m not sure why it needs a new set of reviews from The Ooze Select Bloggers, but I’m glad to have a chance to read it. Maybe it will work as subway reading, better than some of these other more academic texts I’ve been reading.

The New Conspirators - the book

Fourth in a series of reviews for The Ooze.

I just received two new books in an unmarked package which I assume came from the same source. They’re similar in tone and topic, but there was no cover letter or even a return address, so who knows? I’ve started receiving inquiries from other publicists and authors asking me to review their books – maybe these are like that. I’m frankly less inclined to read the new ones, but I’ll try to get around to it.

I’ve also finished Emerging Churches by Gibbs and Bolger and I’d really like to write about that. And Chris M. recommended Jesus for President by Shane Claiborne and Chris Haw so I’m trying to read that. True confession: I just don’t want to. It looks so gimmicky to me, like a book designed for people who don’t like to read. Way over the top in terms of pomo design elements. But Chris really liked it, despite all that, and other people think a lot of what Claiborne has to say is worthwhile. Heck, even I admire what little I know about The Simple Way community. So I’m still trying, but the book is not really grabbing me so far.

But back to the The New Conspirators: Creating the Future One Mustard Seed at a Time by Tom Sine, with a foreword by Shane Claiborne, published 2008 by InterVarsity Press. I already blogged about the conference that happened about the time the book came out. (I wanted to go but didn’t.) I already like his explanation of the four streams of renewal in the Christian church today. And I still wonder where convergent Friends fit in. But that’s only the first chapter (or “Conversation”) of the book.

The middle part of the book (Conversations 2-4) is a sharp analysis of the state of the world and some credible projections about what’s to come in the near future. One organizing metaphor Sine uses is the 1960's book/movie “The Ship of Fools.” His extrapolation is that we are all on this planet on the same ship. Some are cruising, obliviously or nervously, in connoisseur class. Some are traveling quietly in cabin class and a huge number are traveling and dying in the cargo hold, unknown to the rest. I haven’t seen the 1965 movie by Stanley Kramer, but I will look for it or the 1962 book by Katherine Porter at the library.

The third part of the book is about what we can do about it. It starts by inviting us to use our fullest imaginations to picture a world where Jesus is already active. Then Sine explores how we might live into that vision of whole life community, whole life stewardship and whole life mission, with examples from all over the world. Finally he encourages us to join the entrepreneurial edge in responding to God’s calling. Not necessarily starting new churches, but a following your leading, flying by the seat of your pants, one day at a time, approach to religious life and community. Near the beginning, Sine quotes Claiborne, “Get ready friends … God is preparing us for something really, really – small.” (p. 23)

Sine’s image for this is the mustard seed. His group based in Seattle is called Mustard Seed Associates. They are, as best I can tell, an association of Jesus followers who are “trying to be a difference and make a difference and help other followers of Jesus create the future one mustard seed at a time.” (p. 300) You can contact them if you’d like to know more or tell them about what you’re doing or dreaming of.

I’ll end by quoting further from the introduction. “For followers of Jesus, times of challenge are always times of opportunity to give new creative expression to God’s love for a people and a world. The character Gandalf in The Lord of the Rings reminds us that we can’t choose the times in which we are born, but says, ‘We are responsible for the time that is given to us.” (p. 18)

Amen, Friends.

The Tangible Kingdom

The Tangible Kingdom: Creating Incarnational Community:
The Posture and Practices of Ancient Church Now
by Hugh Halter and Matt Smay.
A Leadership Network Publication by Jossey-Bass, 2008.

This is my third review of a book that was sent to me by the good folks at The Ooze.

I’m going to start with the good news. I think this is the most practical book about forming and living in Christian community that I’ve ever read. (Outside of maybe the Benedictine Rule.) It’s funny, engaging, and easy to read. It’s really well-organized, with helpful diagrams and reflection suggestions/queries at the end of each chapter.

The authors are leaders of Adullam, a congregational network of incarnational communities in Denver, Colorado, and of Missio, a global network of missional leaders and church planters, which is part of Church Resource Ministries.

The first half of the book has a great analysis of what's going on in Christianity today - what works and what's not working and how long it's been that way and why. The second half is about how the authors are doing and being church.

The authors explain that they see three main elements to incarnational community: Mission, Communion, and Community, and they give examples from early Christian stories and from their current lives. [I think equivalent examples could be pulled from early Quaker stories as well.] They also outline three main barriers to incarnational communities.

By Community, they mean connecting to each other: sharing friends, food and life. The main barrier to community is individualism, which looks like not having enough time for the community, and can be overcome by discipling togetherness, gentle confrontation, and not allowing people to remain invisible.

By Communion, they mean connecting to God, through sharing scripture, sabbath gatherings, and other spiritual practices. The main barrier to communion is consumerism, the sense that others should produce spiritual experiences for me to consume. This is overcome by discipling participation rather than passivity, and sharing our gifts widely.

By Mission, they mean connecting to new people, through benevolent action, spontaneous blessing, sacrificial giving, and sending of leaders. The main barrier to mission is materialism, which manifests as not having enough money to share, especially for people who have gone into debt in order to have more stuff. This can be overcome by discipling charitable giving, especially helping one another in times of extra need.

Here’s one of the basic nuggets: Whatever you give leadership to will grow. This may sound like a cliché to some of you. For most church leaders, they are pointing out that if you put all your best time and people and energy into creating more engaging worship, then it’s likely that more people will come to your worship gatherings. But that doesn’t mean that they will actually be doing the hard work of transformation the other 167 hours of the week. For a liberal, unprogrammed meeting, this might translate as, if you put your best time and people and energy into making newcomers feel welcome, then it’s likely that more people will come, and come back. But again, that doesn’t mean they will actually be having a transformative experience.

So among the lessons I learned are:

#1 Be good news [present, loving, an advocate] to your family. (People will notice.)
#2 Be good news to the people around you (neighbors, coworkers, your softball team, the Starbucks baristas, etc.)
#3 Invite people to join you in your regular life activities
#4 When people see that you are a present and loving advocate for the important things in life, they will start to talk to you about important things. Talk to them honestly.
#5 Be willing to give credit where credit is due: God and your faith community

This doesn’t sound so difficult, does it?

I think the main point is that living incarnationally will show. I liked the line on p. 42: “In our Adullam Network, we specifically ask people not to try to be ‘evangelistic.’ We suggest to them that if people aren’t asking about their lives, then we haven’t postured [read: embodied] our faith well enough or long enough.”

I liked the general prescription for new church groups getting started. Once a month, just have a party together that you can invite all your friends to. Once a month, do some kind of service together. And a couple times a month, do some kind of scripture reading, prayer or something that connects you to God. Which works out to basically meeting once a week, but not necessarily every week on Sunday mornings at 11. And it offers a whole lot of different ways to connect to each other, to the community and to the Divine.

The new bee in my bonnet is this word “incarnational.” I think another way to say this is to be the change you wish to see in the world. One of the things that worked well in my workshop at FGC was the invitation to people to try on some new/old Quaker practices to see if they had Light & Power in them: to live them out. Halter and Smay are giving me theory and evidence for some things I (and others) have intuited.

In my own life, in this intersection between my leading in ministry and my family’s practical needs, I believe God is calling me to a new phase of incarnational life. To the opportunity to live my faith and leading while working full time and still homemaking. It’s not just a life for people with nothing else to do but be holy.

Among other changes, it will offer my husband and me a chance to return to a more equal distribution of labor, both in paying the bills and in housekeeping.

More to the point, I have to learn to live as my increasingly religious fanatic self in a more secular environment. Even my paid jobs over the last ten years were in religious institutions. I have to learn to talk like normal people again.

And who knows where this will lead? I have some suspicions, but they are still very fragile and weak. In any case, I am learning some lessons that may be fruitful. And maybe this is all preparation for something else that I can’t even imagine yet. That has happened before.

So that’s the good news. Back to the book.

The first negative thing I have to say about this book is not its fault. It’s one more book that assumes the reader is escaping fundamentalist evangelical Christian culture. Which I’m not. I’m still waiting for the book written for other people interested in the emerging church. I’m open to suggestions, any day now.

The second thing is to complain about the completely gratuitous swipe at Quakers and the Amish on p. 160. The authors seem to have confused their stereotypes of us with my stereotypes of fundamentalist Christians as the people who are not allowed to have fun. But as a mark of Christian charity, I forgive them.

Now for my real quandary about this book. What do reviewers usually do when they read a book that has really good content wrapped in some less relevant stuff that is mildly offensive? I’m not talking about the cussing in Oh Shit! It’s Jesus! I’m talking about a less than equally respectful and inclusive attitude towards women and LGBTQ folks. It’s not overtly, intentionally, offensive. It’s mixed in with some good language about not judging others and about treating all of God’s children with love. But it is implicit in their examples of talking to young men about how they are spiritually leading their girlfriends, fiancees, or wives without any sense that this is a mutual exchange. It’s evident in the lack of examples of female leadership. Or describing one of the trends in the folks they train as, “They think the homosexuals’ fight for sexual clarity isn’t that much different in God’s sight than the heterosexuals’ struggle against pornography.” Umm, that’s a step up from utter damnation, but, well, that’s not quite good enough for me. But does that negate all the good stuff in this book?

Everybody has a weak point. Everybody fails to live up to Jesus’s example in some ways. Does that nullify their good points? The ways in which they’ve got it right? Sometimes I suppose it makes it too hard to hear what a person has to say, even when he or she is right. But in this case, I’d say it’s worth sifting through.

And while I’m at it, I think it’s a good exercise for all of us. How can we listen beyond our disagreements that we know are in the way in order to hear the Truth coming out of our brothers’ and sisters’ mouths?

Lord, help us all.

Church Basement Roadshow - San Francisco edition

I've never been to a revival. Or a camp meeting. Not in the traditional sense of either of those.

I'm not sure I'd want to.

But I have met the three people who are going to speak/sing/act silly at Dolores Park Church in San Francisco on June 19, 2008.

I have also read (some of) their books. I can affirm that they are funny and smart and occasionally outrageous. And I'm going. So come on down.

I dare you to resist the altar call.

(Will there be an altar call? I've never been to one of those before either. Hmmm.)

Here's more about the event:

A biodiesel-fueled RV loaded with three of the most outspoken emergent church leaders and authors will crisscross the country this summer in “The Church Basement Roadshow: A Rollin’ Gospel Revival.” The tour featuring Tony Jones, Doug Pagitt and Mark Scandrette will hit thirty-two cities across the U.S., with a message that combines old time revival flair with a 21st century gospel. They’ll preach, sing and sell healing balm in church basements from San Diego to New York.

Jones, author of The New Christians: Dispatches from the Emergent Frontier; Pagitt, author of A Christianity Worth Believing; and Scandrette, author of Soul Graffiti: Making a Life in the Way of Jesus, are part of the emergent movement, a decade-old phenomenon of pastors, missionaries, artists, theologians, authors and “regular people” who are rethinking church and Christianity for a globalized world. Controversial for their “nothing is too sacred to be questioned” doctrine, Jones, Pagitt, and Scandrette have acquired many fans and critics based on their writings.

“This summer will be a defining time,” says Pagitt, “As we take our invitation of hope and good news to people around the country. We’re preaching a fresh way of life and faith – one that is in rhythm with the life of God.”

Taking a page out of the Billy Sunday playbook, the authors will spread the emergent message of a generous, hope-filled Christian faith in the style and cadence of the tent revival preachers of a hundred years ago. They plan to have fun with it, wearing frock suits and selling “healing balm,” but the goal is, as in the revivals of yore, to preach the good news.

“This will be unlike any book tour people have seen,” said Jones. “We’ll be barnstorming the country, shaking the rafters with our ancient-future message of hope.”

“People will laugh and sing,” Scandrette added, “But they’ll also be challenged to join the Jesus Revolution.”

[I heard a rumor that they're not officially selling their books; they're going to sell bottles of snake oil, each of which comes with a book.)

The Church Basement Roadshow has already attracted the attention of major sponsors, including Jossey-Bass/A Wiley Imprint, beliefnet.com, Compassion International, Restoring Eden/Creation Care Fund, International Bible Society, Zondervan/TNIV, Wesley Seminary, christianbook.com, Emergent Village, and BidForGreen.

Full information on the Church Basement Roadshow, including tour dates, can be found at www.churchbasementroadshow.com.

About the Authors/Performers

Tony Jones is the national coordinator of Emergent Village (www.emergentvillage.org), and a doctoral fellow in practical theology at Princeton Theological Seminary. He is the author of many books, including The New Christians: Dispatches from the Emergent Frontier and The Sacred Way: Spiritual Practices for Everyday Life, and he is a sought after speaker and consultant in the areas of emerging church, postmodernism, and Christian spirituality. Tony lives with his wife, Julie, and their three children in Edina, Minnesota.

Doug Pagitt is the founder of the network that became Emergent Village, and he is the founder and pastor of Solomon’s Porch, regularly recognized as one of the most innovative churches in the world. Doug speaks across the country and internationally about missional Christianity and church leadership, and he has appeared on ABC, CNN, PBS, NPR, and in the New York Times. He has written, co-written, and co-edited many books, including Church ReImagined and Body Prayer. His forthcoming book from Jossey-Bass is titled, A Christianity Worth Believing: Hope-filled, Open-armed, Alive-and-well Faith for the Left Out, Left Behind, and Let Down in Us All. Doug lives in Minnesota with his wife, Shelley, and their four children.

Mark Scandrette is the executive director and cofounder of ReIMAGINE, a center for spiritual formation in San Francisco that sponsors city-based learning initiatives, peer learning groups, and the Jesus Dojo, a year-long intensive formation process inspired by the life and teachings of Jesus. Mark is a founding member of SEVEN, a monastic community working as advocates for holistic and integrative Christian spirituality. He is a recognized speaker and poet, and his innovative thoughts on Christian spiritual formation have gained him much acclaim. He also serves on the coordinating group of Emergent Village. Mark, his wife, Lisa, and their three children live in the Mission District of San Francisco. In 2007, Jossey-Bass published his first book, Soul Graffiti: Making a Life in the Way of Jesus.

I know, this is the less Quakerly end of the emerging church phenomenon. But I'm still going. Leave me a comment or send me an email (at the address in my profile) if you're thinking of coming. Maybe we can carpool or eat together or something. I don't know what time it is yet, arrgh, so I don't have the babysitter lined up yet, but that's another factor.

40 Day Experiment in Truth with Re-Imagine

The workshop was advertised like this:

EXPERIMENTS IN TRUTH:

A laboratory for personal transformation.

Sponsored by ReIMAGINE

The master invites us to rethink or reimagine our whole lives in light of the Maker’s dream of greater wholeness for our world. This workshop explores the physicality of spiritual formation. If I change what I do in my mind and body or emotions, how will it effect my capacity to flow with the creators energy & love? (what I eat? how I spend my time? The media I consume? How I use my money? Who I spend my time with?) This practical workshop seeks to deal with the disparity we often feel between how we want to live and how we actually live. Jesus spent 40 days in the wilderness fasting and facing his greatest shadows and temptations. Participants in this workshop will engage in practices aimed at confronting our own shadows and obstacles to the spiritual life through “experiments in truth.”

Wednesdays March 19th through April 30th. 6:30-8:30 p.m.

When I first saw this announced, I emailed right away to say I was interested. Nonetheless, I missed the first meeting of the group. At the last minute, I sent an email saying that while this workshop series was just what I had been looking for last fall, I realized that I had not made enough time in my life to attend this workshop this spring.

I knew that in addition to my ordinarily full life, over the next 40 days I would be traveling away from home for almost two weeks, one at the beginning and one at the end of April, as part of my public ministry. It was not a good time to add more nights away from my family. I knew that I would need to be careful about trying to transform my daily practices too much in a time that was already going to be out of the ordinary. But observing physical practices to sustain my spiritual health and stamina seemed very important. And the idea of participating in this experiment would not let me go. Then I realized that I really wanted to make time

The syllabus looked like this:

March 19: Introduction to spiritual formation and experiments in truth including how Jesus modeled and taught acetic practices and watchfulness.
EXERCISE: Develop and commit to a 40-day “experiment in truth” that addresses 3 key life growth areas with practices of abstinence and engagement.

March 26: Discernment and listening as individual and communal practices.
EXERCISE: Send feedback inventory to 5 trusted friends/ elders.

April 2: Developing your personal growth plan - setting goals for growth in various life dimensions.
EXERCISE: Work through outline for your personal growth plan.

April 9: How to identify and utilize the power of having a spiritual mentor.
EXERCISE: Make initial contact with a potential spiritual mentor or peer mentor.

April 16: Developing your personal rule of life - yearly rhythms, commitments and practices to sustain your spiritual formation.
EXERCISE: Develop a personal rule of life in conjunction with your growth plan.

April 23: Processing the benefits and insights gained through your 40-day “experiments in truth.”
EXERCISE: Complete your personal rule of life in conjunction with your growth plan.

April 30: Final check in and potluck party.

The three areas where I chose to make a difference were:

1. I want to be less anxious about having too many things going on
2. I want to consume fewer unsustainable/unnecessary things
3. I want to be more inclusive in my lovingkindness

In the end, this is what I wrote:

“I commit to:

• Better sleep hygiene when I am at home – to go to bed at 10:00 every evening and to get up at 6:30 every morning. This is one of the things I know would be good for me but I have not been able to stick to it before. I made myself a chart – kind of like I would use for my kids – to record the times I go to bed and get up, so that I can measure my progress.

• Exercise as a stress and weight management tool – to walk at least half an hour every day when I am at home, and as often as possible while traveling. I have done this before and benefited greatly, but I have fallen away from the practice over the last few months. The mental health benefits outweigh the physical, but they are connected.

These two practices are connected to sustaining my physical body in order to live up to the spiritually strenuous month I’m expecting. I expect to have less anxiety and more emotional stability if I am getting more regular sleep and exercise.

• Not buying meat – I wanted to try not eating meat for 30 days, but I’d already bought a ham for Easter dinner, and it seemed a waste not to eat it. We did cook it this weekend, and I froze the rest for later, but if that’s all the meat I eat over the next month, it will still be a step towards more sustainable diet. I also know that I will be a guest in many places over the next month, and I would rather not set this as one of my dietary restrictions on my hosts – although it is common enough among the Quaker circles where I will be traveling. It is also true that my husband is enthusiastic about this practice – he’s been suggesting it for a while now, and is glad I’m considering it.

If I were not traveling, I would like to commit to a new practice – one of seeking out the least attractive visitor to my worship gathering every week and engaging that person in welcoming conversation. One of the things I want to work on over the long term is being more inclusive in my friendships. Over this month, I will just try to lean on the spiritual friends and mentors I already have.”

What did I learn from the experiments? I was right about sleep. Everything in my life is easier, less stressful, and more satisfying when I get enough sleep. My own personal sign that I am not observing a good rhythm is that my alarm clock goes off in the middle of a dream. When I am in a good rhythm, my dream cycle ends naturally when it’s time to get up. The whole day goes better when I wake up more easily.

I was really lax about exercise. I did make an effort to walk a little bit outside every day, even when I was traveling. I think this gave me more balance, a little quiet time to process all the stimulation, and helped me sleep. So I would say that while I didn’t live up to the letter of my goal, I walked more than I would have if I hadn’t made this commitment.

The main thing I learned about abstaining from meat is that it doesn’t matter to me. God is not nudging me to give up meat entirely. I understand the need to eat less and the environmental reasons why average US levels of meat consumption are unsustainable and I know that meat production in the US is fraught with abusive practices, but veganism or vegetarianism is not my calling. What was more interesting was that my scruple about fair trade chocolate grew considerably over the same period. I’m still fallible on that, but I am more and more able to think before I consume chocolate (in all its forms), and to choose some other flavor at the ice cream store, or just go without. What especially works is that more and more I associate the flavor of chocolate with the sweat and fear of slavery. Not nearly so appetizing. What’s hard is when I make that connection half way through something delicious. The next step will be to refuse to buy it for my children.

The second phase of the experiment was to do a personal examen – what is the state of my spiritual journey? This was followed by sending a feedback form to trusted friends to ask them to “affirm my strengths and potential,” “help me become more aware of growth areas,” and “share your wisdom and insight.” I sent the prepared list of questions to seven people and four of them sent it back. One good thing I guess is that they were all generally encouraging and they didn’t point out any glaring faults that I didn’t already know about. And they all basically agreed, which was also confirming/affirming.

The thing they didn’t say, that I secretly fear but am exposing here as an attempt to conquer that fear, is that only people who don’t really know me think I’m good at stuff. That the people who really know me think I’m a flake. Maybe that’s just my family. In many ways, I am gifted but undisciplined. Part of what I have learned over the years is that external structures, even artificial ones like this class or my to-do lists, help me to use what little self-discipline I have to accomplish larger goals.

The third phase was to connect with a potential mentor. I already have a spiritual director, an anchor committee, and some other project-based elders and spiritual friends, so I didn’t seek out anyone new. But I counted my blessings, that’s for sure. I also thought more clearly about the different roles that each of these people plays in my life.

The last exercise, and perhaps the least explained or helpful, was to develop a personal rule of life. We each received a worksheet with a list of points and questions, about “My Lifetime Vision and Purpose”, “Imagination for Making a Life in the Way of Jesus,” with subheadings like obedience/surrender, service & healing, community, simplicity, prayer, creativity, love; “Facing My Personal Shadows,” “Seeking the Maker’s Dream with My Life Energy,” and “My Personal Rule of Life.” I’m tempted to post the whole outline here, but I feel like it’s the proprietary information of Re-Imagine, and I don’t want to just give away what they work so hard to produce. I want to learn how to pose such good questions. Maybe when I finish my plan, I’ll post that.

It was striking how similar the categories, with their associated advices and queries, were to an individual book of Faith and Practice. To what degree do we see our common books of F&P as our rule of life? The core of Re-Imagine is a group that calls itself SEVEN, that has adopted a common rule of life. This is one of the things that attracts me to the group.

Actually, I think this exercise has a lot in common with my Plain manifesto. In fact, I think I should have started by identifying what I already do, rather than starting with “what else do I need to improve?” That is an important question too, but not the right place for me to start. I also wish we had spent more time in the group talking about this and how to do it. I spent quite a bit of time at home (and in the bleachers, on park benches, on my walks) working on this.

One part that was interesting was to think about what are the practices & patterns that I need to keep my momentum at significant life milestones. I had to ask myself, what life milestones do I have left? Here’s what I came up with:

menopause

children leave home

moving to a new home

starting/ending a job

retirement

needing glasses

other disability

children’s marriages

grandchildren born

death in the family/my own

It’s not really a fun list, other than the grandchildren maybe. I wonder, do you have other events that you celebrate/mourn/mark in your spiritual journeys?

In the end, it was a good experiment. I learned a lot about myself, and it was a good opportunity to do some reflection and discernment, even if it wasn’t the best time for me to do that. I met a lot of nice and interesting people, but it was a class, not the formation of a new community. I struggle with how to make time to connect with other groups and people while being so involved with my family and Quaker community already.

I highly recommend any event or class sponsored by Re-Imagine. They do good, thoughtful, fun, and well-organized work. I will write soon about the upcoming Church Basement Roadshow, which is tangentially connected

Prophetic Witness: Using What I've Learned

Here’s a quote from my introduction:

“I’m going to give a little introduction, then we’re going to share our complaints with God. We’ll do a body prayer for re-creation and we will literally groan in solidarity with the world. We will read a few passages from John Woolman, Isaac Penington, Marge Abbott, and the Bible. At the end, you’ll have some time for silent reflection and to write some notes for yourself before we move into worship sharing and then a brief period of closing worship. Interspersed will be a few songs I find inspirational. This not going to be like last week’s workshop, it may not be like any other Quaker thing you’ve been to before. Some of this will feel uncomfortable, or just uncool, or too vulnerable. I invite you to try it anyway. If you need to stop and just hold the rest of us in the Light for a while, that’s okay too.”

I think this all turned out to be true. It was uncomfortable for some people. Not everybody liked all the songs I played. But my lasting impression is that it was what it needed to be. I tried out some of the exercises I’ve done with emerging church groups in a Quaker context and they worked. I think there was a good balance between me talking, individuals reading aloud, the group reading together, and some experiential learning.

I’m really, really glad I did this before my FGC workshop this summer. That won’t be exactly the same, but I will be much better prepared, and much more confident about my material, because of this experiment at home.

So what do I mean by prophetic? I think prophetic has elements of clear-seeing and clear-listening and elements of God’s Truth-telling.

What do I mean by witness? My six year old asked me that question last week. I said it’s “the things we do that show what we believe.”

Does that work for you as a definition?

One of the things that was said by and about early Friends is that they were changed men before they set out to change the world. An important part of prophetic witness is removing the beams from our own eyes, of removing the seeds of war from our own possessions, of identifying the traces of hypocrisy in our own lives. However, if we only aim to improve ourselves without sharing our time, energy and gifts with the suffering world, our efforts are certainly incomplete and maybe ultimately wasted.

At what point does that right living, that righteousness, becomes a beacon? When does it become a search light shining on the world, including the uncomfortable places in other people’s lives? How do we witness to our beliefs and hopes for the world in a way that invites people to change too, neither shrinking from the hard things nor abusing the privileged relationships we have?

In the course of the evening, we read some complaints from the Psalms and added our own questions for God that start with “Why…?” and “How long…?” I pointed out that sometimes we don’t even know the words for our prayers. We took turns reading from Paul’s letter to the Romans, about how the whole world is experiencing the pangs of labor and delivery. I invited the participants to, “Join me in vocalizing our pain, our longing, our fear and hope. Reach down into your gut and literally groan, as if you are the voice of our suffering world.”

These exercises were based on a series developed by the folks at Re-Imagine for a workshop I went to with them last fall, called “Entering the Story.” They said it was okay to borrow them, and I want to give them credit for the really helpful way that they framed and opened these themes.

In between, we did another exercise, from a book called “Body Prayer: The Posture of Intimacy with God” by Doug Pagitt and Kathryn Prill. In part, it went like this:

Let’s all stand up if you can. Feel your feet connecting you to the ground. Take another deep breath.

"God is never finished with creation, and God is never finished with us. We are constantly being re-created, and we are invited to join God as co-re-creators of the world. This re-creation happens in our attitudes and spirits as much as in the physical world. We re-create when we replace hate with love, hurt with healing, despair with hope. Our prayers beckon re-creation. We join this re-creation as we ask God to do anew in us what God has done throughout time. We pray for sight returned, babies born, lives revived. We seek mercy unmasked, love unimpeded, and faith remade. We join with all creation in seeking re-creation. For we know that all creation groans in anticipation of being remade. And we join in the groaning, to be released from pain and suffering. We wait for God to give us our full life as children, including renewed bodies; we eagerly look forward to this freedom.

Lift your arms out and up in a V position. Drop your shoulders, stiffen your fingers, and stretch by pushing up through your elbows and forearms. Reach toward God, the One who remakes and re-creates all of creation. Reflect on God’s ongoing work of recreation in your life and in the lives of those around you."

This felt good. Good to stand up and stretch. Good to not sink into just complaining and groaning, but also asking for help and healing. Like the Psalmist, we can also trust in God’s unfailing love.

Towards the end, we considered where we each are feeling God’s nudges. Where are we called to bring God’s love and healing to the world?

It’s true that some of the things we are called to do seem really small and trivial.

It came to me in worship one day when I was thinking about the question “how can I be of service?” that it’s really unlikely that God is going to say, “Hey Robin, lead my people out of slavery,” or “Hey you, stop the Iraq War.” It’s probably gonna be more like “Robin, stand there and hold that door for all these people.” Or “Robin, sit down and listen to your grandmother tell that story AGAIN.”

But it is in the process of discernment and obedience in these small things that we develop the habits and the spiritual muscles to be able to do larger, more difficult things.

A personal example is how difficult it is for me to stick to my resolution to eat only fair trade chocolate. I mean well; it seems small; it seems obvious, but it’s harder than I thought.

A larger question these days is about war tax resistance. That is definitely going to be a heavier trial. Lots of Friends today have been to jail for shorter or longer times. That doesn’t seem like such a big deal. My real question is whether I am called to re-live the days when being a Quaker meant the government could seize all your property? What would that mean for our prophetic witness?

Nothing could be finer than to be in Carolina in April

I’m headed off to Greensboro, North Carolina on Thursday for the annual meeting of Quakers Uniting in Publications (QUIP).

On Friday night, I’ll be part of a panel with Will T. and Gil Skidmore about Blogging as Ministry: The Quaker Way. I’m still developing what I might say, but here are some of the points that I thought of:

• Q blogs offer spiritual material to read between magazine issues
• Q blogs are a form of contemporary, narrative theology
• Q blogs offer connections across boundaries - windows through the institutional walls
• Q blogs feature respectful engagement
• Q blogs are part of a small universe - If I don't know the person, I probably know someone who knows him or her
• Q blogs have led to intervisitation
• Q blogs make Quakerism more visible
• Q blogs enable more folks to be heard by others
• The Quaker Quaker community knits us together

I invite your comments and suggestions. The real challenge is to be brief…

On Saturday, we’ll be heading to Guilford College, for a tour and a presentation by the editorial board of the new book-to-be by young Friends. (Including C. Wess Daniels!!)

Quakers Uniting in Publications (QUIP) warmly invites you to attend the Quaker Youth Book Project Panel.

Saturday, April 26th 7:30 pm
Bryan Jr. Auditorium on Guilford College campus
This event is free and open to the public

Come hear young adult Friends involved in the Quaker Youth Book Project, QUIP's second youth anthology project and follow up to Whispers of Faith, speak to their hopes for the project, their experiences of youth movement and community in Quakerism, and the role publishing can play in supporting and nurturing rising generations of Quaker writers and ministers. The project's editorial board hails from all branches of the Religious Society of Friends and all over the world - including Kenya, Bolivia, Canada, Great Britain and all over the United States - and bring a diversity of skills and experience related to writing, editing, publishing, visual art, and ecumenical and youth ministry.

For more information on the Quaker Youth Book Project see www.quakeryouth.org/quipbook

On Sunday, I am looking forward to meeting some Friends from North Carolina Yearly Meeting (Conservative) who are gathering in Greensboro over the weekend for their own Representative Body. I don’t know exactly how many or what times, but if you’re interested in joining us, leave me a comment or email me at the address in my profile.

On Monday, there will be a lunchtime discussion about Quakerism and the emerging church with Scott Wagoner and me and some other folks. Scott and his friend Tony are working out exactly where – let him or me know if you want more details!

Monday night, I am looking forward to meeting in person the fabulous foundress of Eco Everyday in Greensboro and a coordinator for the 2005 WGYF, Betsy Blake. I would like to thank Betsy in advance for her kind arrangement of hospitality for me, despite our only knowing each other by phone and by email. And Facebook. I would never have joined Facebook if Betsy hadn’t posted something there about an event that she and I were working on together. But I wanted to see what she had done, and the rest can be seen here.

On Tuesday, I am coming home. I will try to do some writing on the way. It is a full and blessed life I lead. Complicated sometimes, crazy-making maybe, but worth it.

Lord, please help me to remember: It’s not about me. I am not in charge. I am not alone.

Please hold all of those traveling and meeting this week in the Light.

The New Christians: a book review

The New Christians: Dispatches from the Emergent Frontier by Tony Jones, published by Jossey-Bass (March 2008)

I received an advance copy of this new book a few weeks ago. It’s a good introduction to the emerging church conversation, and it fills in some of the history that I certainly didn't know.

Jones tells good stories. I really liked the one at the beginning about his being intimidated by the über-coolness of a woman sitting next to him on an airplane. "As we were taking off, she was editing a very hip-looking graphic novel with the blue pencil of a savvy New York editor." Imagine his discombobulation when she pulled out her rosary beads.
“Does … not … compute…”

This story illustrates his point that Americans are not becoming less religious – but they are differently religious than before. Americans are less and less fitting the usual stereotypes of evangelicals, Catholics, liberals, etc. Our 21^st century religious practices reflect a more flexible attention to the leadings of the Holy Spirit rather than strict adherence to a single denomination or a particular leader.

An amazing statistic for me was his fully footnoted assertion that 85% of Americans know with which specific Christian church they are affiliated. More believable was the corollary that many people don’t care so much about the docrine of that church. Instead, there are a wide variety of reasons that people choose a particular church community.

He also illustrates how many, many people, especially young people, dislike the current polarization of American religion. He characterizes the emerging forms of church as valuing community over individualism, participation over consumption, and complexity over rigidity.

The book is interspersed with definitions of many terms that he uses: modern, postmodern, foundationalism, paradox, liturgy, Pietism, atonement, etc. I like the definitions, and the variety of voices, but the layout of the book seems choppy. I think the book includes too many different design elements. It resorts to cutesy symbols for email or internet conversations to signal the changes in frame and voice. Not quite smiley face emoticons, but close.

Jones makes a repeated point of telling the reader how he tries to listen and speak humbly, especially with people who disagree with him. I think that’s great. It doesn’t actually fit my experience of hearing him speak or reading his conversations on the internet, but it’s good that he’s working on being less belligerent. Humility is indeed a virtue.

A minor sidenote for me was that the format of the annual Emergent Gathering in New Mexico, which I kind of wanted to go to last year, and kind of want to go to this year, sounds a lot like the annual San Francisco Monthly Meeting retreat. I want to go to the Emergent Gathering more and more each time I hear about it.

The best line of the whole book is Dispatch #3, on page 35:

“The gospel is like lava: no matter how much crust has formed over it, it will always find a weak point and burst through."

This simple analogy speaks volumes to me. I think it sums up the emerging phenomenon. It fits with my observations and experience. It gives me hope.

The New Christians: Dispatches from the Emergent Frontier also gives me hope.
Thank you, Tony Jones.

Christianity for the Rest of Us

[Fourth and last in a short series of highly subjective mini book reviews.]


Christianity For the Rest of Us: How the Neighborhood Church is Transforming the Faith
by Diana Butler Bass

This book contains the results of a study about mainline Protestant congregations that are thriving, not dying: mostly Presbyterians, Episcopalians, Lutherans, and Congregationalists. A side point is to disprove the theory that only conservative, fundamentalist churches are growing in America today.

What are the practices that characterize a thriving mainline congregation? Officially what their study looked at was the coherence of spiritual practice in a congregation, the authenticity of their practices, and the degree of transformation through their practices. The main things they found that these churches had in common were shared tradition, practice and wisdom. And a commitment to a transformative form of Christianity. And humility. These were not churches that claimed to know all the answers, but who were working through the questions together.

If you want academic sounding explanations, there is a chapter at the back called “Research Methodology & Findings” but most of the book is a collection of stories – stories about the spiritual journey of the authors of the study and stories collected from the participants. Narrative theology, yes! Way more interesting to read.

One thing that is missing for me is a focus on children in the life of the church, although Butler Bass acknowledges the “Emma-test” at the end. This was her seven year old daughter’s thumbs up/thumbs down opinion of the various churches and Sunday Schools that she attended with her mother.

Here is the list of the 10 Signposts of Renewal :
(For more details, get the book; in addition to the stories, the queries are fabulous!!!)

• Hospitality
• Discernment
• Healing
• Contemplation
• Testimony
• Diversity
• Justice
• Worship
• Reflection
• Beauty

So of course, as I’m reading the book, I keep asking myself, “How many of these is my meeting practicing?” The answer is all of them, a little bit. I kept crying as I read it – recognizing God at work – recognizing myself and recognizing my meeting – at the very least our aspirations to be like that – not just an obligation on Sunday mornings but a transformative element in people’s lives.

If the keys to a thriving congregation are shared tradition, practice, and wisdom – how are we sharing these with each other, especially newcomers?

My meeting is in a growing phase right now. Can we step into the opportunities that God is showing us? How will we take advantage of the light and life that is blowing in among us? How do we provide formation and use the gifts people already bring? How do we help people as they cycle through our meeting?

One metaphor that came to me: How can we be the Spiritual Service Station that God is calling us to be? As needed, we can offer repairs for some, refueling for some and a chance to join the crew…

Another image: Maybe our meeting is more like a spiritual adult school – there are always new students, many of us are staying on to become faculty, but we are still engaged in our own research and learning. Some of our newest members are taking on a kind of grad student/t.a. role. Like a school, we don’t freak out that a large proportion of the population will move on after a class or two or a year or two. We have to make sure that we have remedial, introductory and advanced level educational opportunities.

I believe this is a big part of our vocation as a meeting: to offer the spiritual formation we can while folks are with us and then to release them out into the world with our blessing. San Francisco is a transient place for many people, especially young adults. We aren't going to change that fact. We can try to accept it with serenity and grace and courage. The school metaphor is really helpful to me.

I would really like to give the list of the signposts of renewal to our whole meeting and ask them “where do you see each of these in our meeting?” “Where do you think we need to grow?” I think this would be an amazing adult religious education session, following on from our visioning sessions five years or so ago. Another important question would be “where do you see that we have grown in the last five years?”

I know that the Religious Society of Friends is not generally considered a mainline Protestant denomination by either Friends or other Protestants. But we have enough in common that this book feels relevant to our condition. We have the same historical sort of tradition; we are experiencing a decline in numbers; we have folks wondering whether we are headed into a period of renewal or a slow agonizing death of our denomination.

The real problem I think will be figuring out how to translate “Christian” into “Quaker”. Just because I’ve come to see them as easily synonymous doesn’t mean my whole meeting has, or even the whole M&O committee. (or all the readers of this blog, for that matter. That’s okay too.)

How can we all read something like this together? Bass writes about contemplation and discernment and hospitality as Christian practices. I know these also to be Quaker practices. Bass even quotes Quakers J. Brent Bill and Parker Palmer to explain discernment and contemplative practices.

But what about Jesus’s inclusive table practices, for example, which in some thriving congregations have been reintegrated into their enactment of the Lord’s supper. They are clear examples of practices of diversity & hospitality which lead to a concern for and the practice of social justice. Is the example of Jesus an inspiration or in any way authoritative for us?

If I were “in charge,” I would buy nine copies of the book and make the whole thing required reading for the Ministry and Oversight committee. But that ain’t gonna happen, so why dream?

I think I will actually copy the chapters on Transforming Lives and Transforming Congregations plus the list of signposts to give to the clerk and asst. clerk of our M&O committee. I expect both of them will be able to read this Christian language without flinching.

At the very least, I will encourage them to move forward on having an M&O retreat and giving themselves time to read and reflect on these chapters

I also put Diana Butler Bass on my list of people I wish I knew.