May 13, 2008

Gordon MacDonald: Is Wright Really Wrong?

In Gordon MacDonald's monthly column at LeadershipJournal.net, he asks this provocative question:

Is there a significant difference between Jeremiah Wright’s “God damn America,” and the comment so oft-quoted in evangelical pulpits (attributed to a well known preacher who shall go unnamed): “If God does not judge America for its sins, He will have to apologize to Sodom and Gomorrah.”

Don’t quibble about word-choice; think substance. Is there a significant difference?

I figure Out of Ur is as good a place as any to answer MacDonald's question. Have at it.

Share this:

Posted by UrL at May 13, 2008 | Comments (11) | TrackBack

May 9, 2008

The Emerging Synagogue?

While following a relatively uninteresting trail of research recently (which I won't retrace here), I happened upon Synagogue 3000 (S3K). This consortium of rabbis and other Jewish leaders is committed to offering “challenging and promising alternatives to traditional synagogue structures.” They call themselves "Jewish Emergents," and their understanding of their mission is, in some ways, very similar to that of the Christian Emergent movement.

They are concerned, for example, with communicating authentic faith in a postmodern idiom, which has compelled them to move worship beyond the synagogue. So, they are meeting in homes, bars, and coffee houses, among other places. They are resurrecting some ancient practices, such as worshiping in Hebrew, while ignoring others. And they are reconsidering the qualifications for participation and leadership.

There are also significant differences between Jewish Emergents and Christian Emergents, of course. Along with Synagogue 3000, Jewish Emergents seem more concerned with updating the style and format of Jewish observation and worship than with questioning or reformulating orthodox Jewish theology. Also, while the Jewish Emergents are eager to reconcile younger non-practicing Jews to the faith, they are not concerned with proselytizing.

These differences (and others) highlight the single greatest difference between the groups (not counting the difference in religion): the Jewish Emergent movement is an institutional effort, not an anti-institutional rebellion. In that way, it may be more akin to the Anglican-sponsored emergent movement in the United Kingdom.

Not only are there superficial similarities between Christian and Jewish Emergents, the two groups are formally in conversation (as formally as emergents do anything). Synagogue 3000 invited Emergent spokesmen Tony Jones, Doug Pagitt, Dwight Friesen, and Dieter Zander to attend their 2006 meeting as advisors. You can watch a brief video of that meeting below.

The presence of "Emergents" in two major world religions, and the cooperation of the two groups together, elicits a few questions in my mind:

1. For the critics of the Emergent movement: does the development of the Jewish Emergent movement indicate that the Christian Emergents are on to something? That is, does an analogous response from adherents of another religion validate the emergent impulse? If the emergent movement is not a strictly religious phenomenon, but is a cultural one with religious implications, what can traditional churches do to keep up with the times?

2. For proponents of the Emergent movement: what is implied by the fact that Emergent conversation leaders seem more willing to work cooperatively with "emergent" adherents of other religions than traditionalist or "Reformed" Christians? Is the emergent label of greater concern to them than the Christian one?

3. If Jewish Emergents can operate within the institution, why can't Christian Emergents? Can institutional churches and emergent ones benefit from a collegial relationship with one another?

Watch the video. Visit the websites. Tell us what you think.

Share this:

Posted by UrL at May 9, 2008 | Comments (12) | TrackBack

May 8, 2008

Out of Context: Dave Terpstra

"I think our generation is approaching ministry more as an art than a science. Since the Enlightenment, 'doing church' has been seen as a science, and it was seen as linear, organized, with clearcut leadership principles. Our generation doesn't see things that way anymore. We approach things more creatively, more organically."

-Dave Terpstra is teaching pastor of The Next Level Church in Denver. Taken from "Next & Level" in the Spring 2008 issue of Leadership journal. To see the quote IN context, you'll need to see the print version of Leadership. To subscribe, click on the cover of Leadership on this page.

Posted by UrL at May 8, 2008 | Comments (15) | TrackBack

May 6, 2008

John Ortberg on Religion AND Politics

Anybody but me notice that this is an election year? I have loved politics since I was a kid; one of my first and favorite books was a little Cold War classic called Being an American Can Be Fun.

But it’s an odd thing. The church—where we’re supposed to be fearless; where we’re supposed to challenge people on sin, and be prophetic, and face martyrdom—the church is also the place where we’re told, “Don’t talk about politics!” Or at least we’re told that in the kind of churches where I grew up. Other traditions are different. In the African-American church, for instance, for decades church was the one place where politics could be safely talked about; leaving a legacy that is reverberating pretty loudly this year.

Here’s the problem: politics is an important sphere of human activity, and as such God is keenly interested in it. It was the Dutch theologian and politician (why don’t we have more of those?) Abraham Kuyper who famously said, “There is not one inch of creation about which Jesus Christ does not say: ‘This is mine!’”

However, as soon as human beings (including church leaders) start assuming they are in a position to pronounce God’s political leanings, things get a little dicey.

In Abraham Lincoln’s Second Inaugural Address, which remains the high water mark in presidential theological reflection, he notes that “Both (the North and the South) read the same Bible, and pray to the same God; and each invokes His aid against the other.” So maybe a way to place politics in its proper context is with a little thought experiment.

Imagine that we elected all the right people to all the right offices. President, Congress, governors, right down to the school board, city council members, and dog catcher (which, by the way, does anyone still get to vote for?) Let’s imagine that all of these ideal office holders instituted all the right policies. Every piece of legislation—from zoning laws, to tax codes, to immigration policy, to crime bills—is just exactly the way you know it ought to be.

Would that usher in perfection?

Would the hearts of the parents be turned toward their children?
Would all marriages be models of faithful love?
Would greed and pride be legislated out of existence?
Would assistant pastors find senior pastors to be models of harmony and delight?
Would human beings now at last be able to master our impulses around sexuality, and anger, and narcissism?
Would you finally become the woman or man you know you ought to be?

In the words of theologian Macaulay Culkin: “I don’t think so.” Because no human system has the ability to change the human heart. Not even democracy, or capitalism, or post-modern-emergent-ancient-future-missionalism. T.S. Elliot summed up our quandary brilliantly: “We want a system of order so perfect that we do not have to be good.”

Systems are important but they’re also complicated. Historian Mark Noll notes that evangelicals often fail to add value in politics because we like simplicity: good vs. evil; right vs. wrong. Political and economic arrangements are full of complexity and nuance. Well-intended legislation may lead to poor results. When we condition people to think that every bill is a battle between the forces of righteousness versus the minions of darkness, we do not serve the process well. But we specialize in polarizing. No parachurch organization with a political agenda ever sent out a fund-raising letter noting that an upcoming bill was “likely to do 40 percent more good than harm.”

We ought to be engaged in the political process. We ought to vote, be educated, be involved. We should do it in a way that is civil and respectful and redemptive. (I saw a cartoon recently where a guy showed up at the pearly gates to hear St. Peter say: “You were a believer, yes. But you skipped the not-being-a-jerk-about-it part.”) But we should also remember that the church is not called to be one more political interest group.

The human race needs an administration of another kind. There is one possibility. Someone needs to be in a position to say: “The kingdom of God is at hand. Repent, and believe the Good News.” Scholars like N.T. Wright remind us that these words were politically loaded. They deliberately echo or parody the claims of Rome—that Caesar was Savior, that his kingdom was Good News.

The Gospel of the early church was, among other things, a deliberate in-your-face to the empire. Pretty cheeky when you think that the church had a few thousand ragged cohorts and the Empire ruled sixty-five million hearts. It was pretty clear which horse to bet on. But here we are, two thousand years later, and we give our children names like Peter, Paul, and Mary; and we call our dogs Caesar and Nero.

These gospel words of the early church were deliberately politically loaded. But they were not to be co-opted. They are to stand above every human party and candidate and political platform. The church historically has not done well when it gets too closely associated with empires. The gospel words must transcend higher to go deeper.

My daughter got a CD for me recently from an old Broadway show called Camelot.
Richard Burton is singing at the end ad the dream of Camelot is about to perish in a great battle. He sings/speaks in a tone of unbearable wistfulness:

‘Don’t let it be forgot,
That once there was a spot,
For one brief shining moment…’

I wondered why that was so evocative. Until I remembered—there is a longing. But it is not really about Camelot, or King Arthur, or Shangri-la, or Constantine, or whoever your favorite candidate is. It’s for a carpenter-turned-rabbi, who once ran for Messiah, and got crucified.

Share this:

Posted by UrL at May 6, 2008 | Comments (16) | TrackBack

May 2, 2008

The Passion of the Heist

I have a confession to make: I’m a thief and a murderer. I haven’t actually killed a living, breathing human being (I have stolen a thing or two, though; mostly pens and pencils). But one summer in college, a roommate and I played Grand Theft Auto: Vice City until we’d both done pretty much every awful thing there is in the world to do, including killing and stealing.

And it was great fun.

The newest installment of the Grand Theft Auto series is anticipated to be dang near the most lucrative media release ever. Take-Two Interactive Software, the company that owns GTA creator Rockstar Games, expects to sell 9 million copies of the game by the end of their fiscal year in October. They expect sales to gross $400 million in its first week; that’s a measly $1 million less than the top grossing movie of all time, Pirates of the Caribbean: At World’s End, made in its first week.

Together the series of three games has sold around 70 million copies so far, which puts it in competition with (and actually slightly ahead of) Dan Brown’s The Da Vinci Code (Doubleday, 2003). It will also be in league with Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, the last of Rowling's Harry Potter books, which sold 12 million copies in its first run in the U. S. Think of that: if the game's popularity is comparable to that of Harry Potter and The Da Vinci Code, there's no doubt that people in your church will soon be stealing cars and chasing women. Virtually, of course.

Now that the Da Vinci Code and Harry Potter comparisons have been made, that makes me wonder, What is the church to do with Grand Theft Auto IV?

Do you suspect we’ll see Christians picketing Game Stop and Wal-Mart for selling a game that celebrates violence, drunkenness, theft, prostitution, and heaven knows what else? Will we write books and Bible studies to refute the game’s poor theology? I doubt it. I suspect we’ll buy it. And play it. (Not all of us, of course. Females seem to be immune to these sorts of temptations. And since the church is made up mostly of women, then maybe it won’t be any problem at all.)

I understand the temptation myself. It didn’t take me long to overcome the queasiness I felt during my first exposure to Vice City. Sure, I have qualms about murder and carjacking, but only in real life. It turns out it’s quite a lot of fun to pull someone out of their car and drive it around a while when there are no consequences (and no one really gets hurt). It’s also great fun to run down pedestrians and take their pocket money or shoot a cop to instigate a high-speed chase. I had no problem preaching on Sunday morning (in real life, of course) and selling drugs from the back of an ice cream truck (in Vice City, of course) on Sunday afternoon.

We continued our killing spree through the summer, my roommate and I, our consciences relatively unscathed. The only thing that gave us pause (you’re gonna laugh) was when we acquired, as the reward for completing one mission, a strip club called the Pole Position. Once a week (in Vice City time), one of us drove by the club to pick up our income. Our principles prevented us from going inside the club, where the scantily clad digital dancers made us feel dirty. Gratuitous violence and civil mayhem my evangelical conscience could bear, but the insinuation of sexual sin—that made us both uneasy.

In fact, it’s the connection to virtual sexual sin that makes me think I ought to confess my GTA addiction at church. I mean, if you can kill a man in your heart (as Jesus seemed to think you could), then why should we expect God to excuse us for offing someone on a video game? We evangelicals are pretty sure we can commit adultery in our hearts, and we seem to agree that viewing pornography makes us guilty of that heart kind of adultery. If viewing pornography (which isn’t a real affair, after all) makes us adulterers, then doesn’t killing someone in a video game (which isn’t a real crime, after all) make us murderers?

No, you’ll object. It’s different. Porn involves real people; video games don’t. You have a point there. But then again, the deep tragedy of pornography is that it objectifies and dehumanizes women (and men). It completely ignores all the things beneath the skin that makes a human a human—the spirit and personality and whatever else. It presents us with a facsimile of a person. A video game starts with the facsimile and then adds spirit and personality to make it more human so that we find more satisfaction in killing it.

So what do you think? Am I guilty of sins I should confess to my church? Or am I within my liberties as a Christian? Tell us what you think and then take the poll on the left.

Share this:

Posted by UrL at May 2, 2008 | Comments (40) | TrackBack

May 1, 2008

The Next Caption Contest

What are your captions for this cartoon by Tim Walburg?

Winning entries will be published in the Summer 2008 edition of Leadership. Please include your name, your church’s name, city, and state.

Posted by UrL at May 1, 2008 | Comments (38) | TrackBack