The Secrets of Leaven

Every attempt I have made to write this review of Todd Wynward’s novel, The Secret of Leaven, has sounded far more negative than I intend, so let me say up front that I enjoyed the book on several levels. One should be aware, however, that the book should properly be read as a fairy tale or, at the least a fable for the Church. Read it as alternative history or conspiracy theory fiction with a theolgogcal bent and with good guys as the conspirators. That means suspending your disbelief about the following:

1)                  There is a secret world-wide society known as Leaven that is the ‘true’ followers of Jesus. Francis of Assisi was a member, and so was Dorothy Day, but the membership is very small; the group has fewer than fifty people scattered around the world, including a Greek Orthodox monk, a zen meditation instructor, and an archeologist, who in 1992 finds the ossuary of James, the older brother of Jesus. How do we know James was older than Jesus? Because the author says so. This is just the first of many truths that have been hidden from the Church since ancient times.

2)                  The protagonist of the book, however, is thirty-year-old Thomas Whidman, a third year seminarian, who is just coming to grips with the reality that horrible things happen to good people and God does not stop them, which causes him to lose his belief in God. For some reason, though, he can’t stop talking about religion with his girlfriend, the above mentioned meditation instructor, and just about everyone else he meets, and most of those conversations seem forced by the author to make sure his theology is coming across. Actually, none of these people can stop talking about the nature of God except his girlfriend and his college roommate, Ed, who consequently are the two healthiest people in the book.

Will Thomas join the Society of Leaven? Yes, that is a rhetorical question.

3)                  There is a curious mystery in this book, one that will keep many readers hanging on for the 500 page ride. Thomas has a great uncle who was a preacher in the early twentieth century. Josiah Whidman predicted the rapture was coming in 1923 and gathered a following in Gilman, Arkansas for the occasion. However, he vanished on the night before the rapture was to come. In the present, Thomas’s uncle Ben, also an evangelist, has attempted to wipe out all trace of great uncle Josiah, but Thomas accidentally learns about him.

What happened to the uncle? Thomas makes Josiah the focus of his thesis and determines to find out, jaunting off to Arizona and Arkansas following clues. How many classes he has missed and how he is paying for last minute plane fares on a seminarian’s income are probably questions we are not supposed to ask. And driving to Arkansas is simple; in this version of America, Thomas just gets in his car, and it’s a short hop down the Interstate.

4)                  Finally, there is the difficulty one has to struggle through of the weirdly fraudulent action that the secret society of Leaven pulls at Ben Whidman’s revival, justifying it as ‘holy mischief’.  I won’t tell you what they do exactly, but you will guess at it long before that part of the book happens. The morality of hijacking an event for your own purposes as being justified speaks to the basic problem of adopting a teleological view of ethics. I am not sure that was one of the theological concerns we were supposed to ponder in the book.

This is the first of a trilogy, so the full consequences of these actions will have to be lived out in the other two books. This isn’t The Lord of the Rings or even Harry Potter, but, in the end, it is kind of fun to watch. Just don’t expect to be seriously enlightened if you have done any reading from emergent church leaders, new evangelicals, or Richard Rohr, or have ever listened to a Homebrewed Christianity podcast. Judging by the glowing reviews on Amazon, most of the readers have not. Of course, the book takes place in 1992-1993, so most of these ideas would be unknown to any character who was not a part of the secret society.

I’m not sure if we are going to see the full realization of the Kingdom or just learn that the Society of Leaven is responsible for the rise of emerging Christianity, but we at least know Thomas is on a journey of discovery; by the end of the book, he will have gone far, and the author hopes, so will we. Hopefully, Wynward is working his way up to the present; will he be able to carry his thoughts into the future?

Disclosure of Material Connection: I received this book free from the author and/or publisher through the Speakeasy blogging book review network. I was not required to write a positive review. The opinions I have expressed are my own. I am disclosing this in accordance with the Federal Trade Commission’s 16 CFR,Part 255.

God's Gay Agenda?

Sandra Turnbull's new book, God's Gay Agenda, tries to bridge too many gaps. Writing from a (conservative?) evangelical perspective, she confesses to having been struck by the Holy Spirit at the Crystal Cathedral--not a good start for those who find Robert Schuller's theology weak at best. Recognizing the importance of a fairly literal reading of scripture for her target audience, she still relies heavily on historical critical method to make her case. And, of course, there's the fact that she is a partnered lesbian making a case for full inclusion for LGBT members.

Just to make it clear from the outset: I have supported LGBTQ rights, including ordination, marriage, and adoption for decades. Currently, I co-lead a Bible study for LGBTQ students at my local university where I am a chaplain. I did not need this book to convince me. I was hoping it would be one I could give to others who need convincing. It would be a plus if I got something new from it.

Unfortunately, she gets lost in the Bible. Early on, she strongly embraces the notion that sexual identity as we understand it today was not in existence in biblical times. So where were all the LGBT folk back then if not being stoned to death? Apparently, they belonged under the category of eunuch, a group she stretches to include those born that way, the castrati, and those who voluntarily gave up sexual relations to serve God; it is in this last group that she places LGBT people. However, she is not making the case that all gays must remain celibate.

One big problem here is that it is impossible to read this book without knowing that Turnbull has already reached the conclusion she wants; instead of reading the Bible to see what it says, she reads the commentaries to find ones that best suit her agenda. The worst error occurs when she jumps from translation to translation until she finds one that best says what she wants it to say.

The truth is, she's ten years out of date. While she is doing biblical cartwheels to explain why Romans 1:26-27 (one of the so-called clobber passages) doesn't say what we long thought it did, she misses that the larger argument of Romans 1 is about the sin of idolatry, not sexuality. While she rehashes this old material, queer theologians have moved on to such topics as the real importance of the Ethiopian eunuch, which is that Philip gives a sexual outsider without a bloodline a family to belong to, not that he is also gay. She's writing for those who cannot get past those six references, of course. However, plenty of other people have tread through those waters, and she takes entirely too long reviewing them so that she can make her "modern day eunuchs" references.

Frankly, I really don't know how many of the LGBTQ folk I know would want to think of themselves as eunuchs. Well, more accurately LGB people, as she makes very little mention of trangender people, and the word queer never leaves her pen.

Finally, the marriage chapter is tacked on as an epilogue. One gets the impression she was not planning to discuss the subject and, as it took over the headlines, she hastily penned a chapter to cover that it.

Judging by the comments on Amazon, she has helped a lot of people take a second look at gay Christianity, so obviously there is a market. It is too bad a more skilled biblical scholar and theologian did not write the book as a way of moving the discussion forward. We are treading water at best with this one.

The Enoch Factor

Okay, it 2013 and time to get back to the blog for some new thoughts. It's out with the SBNRs (Spiritual But Not Religious for those hopelessly out of date) and in with the Nones (people who check none when as their religious affiliation on forms), apparently.

But while I get back to gathering new ideas for blogs, it's time for another book review. The book is titled The Enoch Factor, and it is written by Stephen B. McSwain.

One thing is clear about this book The author has his audience clearly in mind. He wants to reach all those people raised in conservative churches who have had enough and want something different. In other words, not me, an Episcoapl college chaplain who has been challenging church doctrine most of his life because that is what I have been taught to do.

A quick look at reviews on Amazon will tell you that a lot of people are in love with this book. I am not one of them. Here's why:

1) The connection to Enoch is vague at best, and silly on close examination. Basically, McSwain takes off on one line of scripture about Enoch walking with God and manages to develop a whole theology around it. At least he doesn't seriously try to engage the book of Enoch, a book accepted as canonical by one church in the entire world. But if you remember the Prayer of Jabez from a few years ago, then you know how this treatment of one line can become utterly distorted.

2) McSwain is another disgruntled former conservative evangelical pastor who suddenly realized what he had been preaching was a load of crap. Instead of discovering that other Christian tradtions, though, he discovered the gnostic wisdom books.

3) The result of that discovery is that he is now 'Awakened', as he tells us repeatedly, and we who have not made this dicovery of a Jesus who is all about spiritual stuff, but apparently unconcerned with incarntional life. The dualism evident in this was palpable, as was the judgment about who is awakened and who is not.

4) All of which became to sound like a Christian self-help book. Stop going to church and led to meditate. You will be a better Christian--not that Jesus was about creating Christians anyway.

 5) How am I supposed to take seriously the excessive use of quotes from people like Deepak Chopra and Wayne Dyer? Granted he quotes some better sources (even Jesus on occasion), but after the third quote from A Course in Miracles, I was ready to stop. And, as much as I love Buddhist thought, I don't actually believe I have to study his sayings to achieve my awakened state.

6) However, I didn't stop. I read the whole thing because I wanted to get to the third section which was going to tell me how I might be awakened too. "To know God, Go Within" (p. 195). That's pretty much it. Notice the incredibly individualistic nature of all this.

7) Finally, if I have avoided most of the pscho-babble that usually accompnies self help books, it is because I save the best for last. The way one goes within is to conquer the Ego that is destroying you. That's right, it's all about what we now call ego. When we stop the ego from the way it controls us by going within (like Jesus going to the wilderness), we will awaken.

If you are convinced organized religion is pure bunk and do not care about anything communal being part of your spiritual practice, you might be satisfied with this. If you are ready to say goodbye to Christianity, by all mean, pick up this book.

However, if you are not that angry, please consider an Ignatian retreat or find your local emergent community or a parish where you can actually struggle with your questions. Believe it or not, there are actually thousands of them out there. They are probably the ones you have been told to stay away from because they don't preach about sin and hell every week. This is not the book for you.

Keeping the Feast

I remember purchasing Robert Farrar Capon’s The Supper of the Lamb while in seminary. Subtitled A Culinary Reflection, I thought it would provide an interesting way to look at the Eucharistic meal through the preparation of the Easter Dinner for which he provides recipes.

I never got through it. Put bluntly, I found it way too long on details about the shape of an onion and the proper way to determine if a corkscrew is any good. By the time he got to a recipe, I was long gone. In my cook’s (not chef’s) imagination, I always thought I could do better in reflecting on how food and communion provide so many metaphors for the Christian life. Well, maybe not better than theologian and storyteller Capon, but perhaps more accessible to those who did not want to wade through a couple hundred pages.

I never wrote that book. However, Milton Brasher Cunningham did. It’s titled Keeping the Feast. Instead of long explanations, he provides short meditations on various subjects and ties them to a recipe. The book is short, just ten chapters, each of which is about ten pages long, including a piece of poetry to begin and a recipe at the end. Most are thoughtful, and the recipes are certainly interesting. The Strawberry Shortcake with basil as an ingredient stands out.

Skip the chapter on baseball (unless, of course, you really like baseball). It seems oddly out of place, and the recipe that goes with it is strangely disconnected even from the chapter, much less the rest of the book. The other meditations are great and could be read out of sequence, though be sure to get to the two page afterward which closes out the book.

You will be treated to images of family suppers, community meals, funeral repasts, and the ways in which community comes forth through shared food. Most importantly, Brasher Cunningham ties our more common meals always to their reflection of the sacred meal we share in church. You may never look at dinner the same way again.

Water from an Ancient Well

Much has been written about Celtic Spirituality. I have books of liturgies, prayers, and meditations on my shelf. I love the language, the imagery the idea of entering into a different cultural context than my own in order to try and understand who Christ is.

That’s a great starting place for someone who has been to seminary and work in ministry for over 25 years. If I were just starting out, most of those books would be useless to me. Either they are too different from the Christianity I know, or they have so much churchy language as to be unintelligible. I’m still working on my doctrine(s?) of atonement, for example.

So enter, Water from an Ancient Well: Celtic Spirituality for Modern Life by Kenneth McIntyre. Drawing on the practices of pre and post Christian Celts, McIntyre gently explains several concepts of Christian faith to the reader, and offers ways to explore major tenets of the faith. Scripture, the Cross, creation, evil are all explored in both everyday language and in reflection on how the Celts wrestled with these concerns. All the people and things one comes to expect from books on the ancient Celtic life are here—Patrick, Brigid, druids, thin places, etc.

This is not a book to read straight through, and not quickly. Start with the introduction and first chapter, but from there choose a chapter that interests you and spend some time with it. You may even read it a few times, pray the prayers located within it, and put the book aside while you ingest the ideas for a few days before choosing your next section to read.

Readers should be aware that they will find things to wrestle with here. For example, one chapter explores the concept of panentheism. Don’t know what panentheism is? Don’t worry; he gives a good explanation before showing how Celtic thought fits in nicely with it. However, you may decide you don’t agree with the concept even after reading. That’s okay too. You will still be exploring what you do believe.

That caution aside, the book is worth your time. If you ever wanted a clear way into Celtic spirituality, this is a good one. A good book for Advent or Lent, I would say—or any time you want to go a little deeper in your spirituality life.

Jihad, Anarchy, and Jesus -- not necessarily in that Order

Okay, up front disclosure. I joined Speakeasy. What that means is that in exchange for occasionally getting a free book, I agree to review it on this site. It works like this: they send me a notice about a book they want reviewed, I say yes, and they send a copy. I can say whatever I want, and only have to write 200 or more words. I signed up because it puts books in my hand that I might not otherwise get around to. The titles I have seen so far have included a wide range of topics around Christianity, and I am choosing books that I think will be interesting for those who read this blog to know about. The full disclosure notice is at the end of this blog post, and will always appear for any book I write about for Speakeasy. And, no, I do not get paid, so I really can say whatever I want!

Every time I read a book written by a former conservative evangelical Christian, I find myself getting incredibly smug. I don’t like it, mind you, but it is pretty hard not to feel that way when I watch them wrestle with questions that more middle to left leaning mainline churches have had answers for a long time, mainly because we never threw out things with which the ancient Church had already wrestled. I can usually beat down the smugness by reminding myself of all the crap we mainliners are struggling with, such as becoming utterly irrelevant to the world at large.

Sadly, that was the second response I had to Aaron D. Taylor’s Alone with a Jihadist: A Biblical Response to Holy War. My first response was probably the same one that everyone else who failed to pay attention to the subtitle had. When I picked up this book, I assumed I would be getting a blow by blow description of Taylor’s time spent with the jihadist Khalid. If you want to see that, you should seek out the film Holy Wars by director Stephen Marshall, for which this conversation was taped. I have not yet viewed the film, so the interpretation of the conversation I make here is based solely on Taylor’s description.

Instead, what you will get is one chapter about the conversation, and about fifteen more chapters of what happens to Taylor’s thinking over the following year as a result of the encounter. Admittedly, what happens as a result is hope filling—or it would be if we could get a few million mega-church members out there to have the same conversation and reflection. The truth is, Khalid Kelly, and Irish convert of Islam who lives in London, found a hole in the most basic thinking of conservative Christianity and drove a truck through it. Hmm. Perhaps that is not the best metaphor to use under the circumstances.

Anyway, I really wanted to see some give and take between Kelly and Taylor, with the Christian helping deepen the Muslim’s understanding of his faith and vice versa. The problem is, the Christian Taylor was then practically an unarmed man. He got beaten badly, and he knew it, so the scenario in my head could not take place.

What was his undoing? Kelly asked Taylor to explain how Taylor would use the Bible to implement a government. Try as he might, Taylor could not come up with an adequate answer because Kelly did not want moral philosophy but practical and law based answers to questions of how one responds to prostitution or robbery. Worse, he pointed to Western governments, the ones set up by majority Christians, and declared them wholly inadequate to resolve social problems.

But that’s pretty much all we get of the conversation. If this were a debate, Taylor lost. Big time. And he knew it. Now, readers of this blog who have an adequate sense of the full history of the church—which, unfortunately, too many conservative Protestants do not—might have avoided the trap Taylor fell into, which was trying to justify the failures of Western civilization as being due to people misusing the freedom they are given. Kelly’s answer to that was to recognize that freedom as a failure to carry out God’s will; freedom, he says, is a man-made (sic) ideal, while God demands obedience.

Now, here is where the smugness comes in. My response to Kelly would be to say that Christianity was never intended to create a government, and that his assumption that that is what God wants us to do is not one I accept. I would’ve happily owned to the fact that Christian government has been a disaster, but that is because Jesus never called us to create a government in the first place. And I certainly would have jumped in to say that nothing about Western civilization could be argued as the Christian form of government despite the fact that many people claim it is. In other words, I would have rejected Kelly’s major premises and outlined an entirely different understanding of the relationship between faith and government.

Which is exactly what Aaron Taylor does for the rest of the book. Chapter two outlines his recognition that Kelly was right in his assertions. His biblical analysis is that Christianity has never been called to set up governments, so of course the ones it has attempted not only have failed (are failing?), but those attempts have been a diversion from our call in the first place. From there Taylor explores the uneasy relationship between the Christian and the state, unjust laws, and significantly, the notion of coercion. In short, he not only recreates the model that the early church followed—i.e., little involvement with government and obedience to the laws as much as possible without compromising the faith.

He makes a compelling case for pacifism; admittedly, I am with him on that one, so he does not have to sell me on it. Once again, I am aware that his audience of choice is not me.

But then he steps into the concept of Christian anarchy.

So let me just say now that Christian anarchy is a concept that I have trouble wrapping my head around. Perhaps it is because I chiefly associate anarchy with chaos. So, I did some dictionary work on this. The most benign definition for anarchy is simply the lack of government. All the other definitions have to do with disorder, rebellion, and confusion. Add to that the quick willingness of so many modern anarchists to use violence in the attempt to achieve their aims, and you can understand why I am reluctant to go down the Christian anarchy road.

But let’s go back to that original definition and ignore the ones that have grown up over time. I don’t have a problem with doing that. Heck, I have done the same thing with the word radical, so I cannot be disparaging when others do the same with different words. Is Christian anarchy really what Jesus espouses? Here is where I think Taylor falls down. Jesus’ call to live in the kingdom of God.

The problem for me is that, at its heart, anarchy is a political system that I no way hinges upon Christianity. Once we espouse something called Christian anarchy, we have moved anarchy to the foreground and left Christianity as the adjective. Hence, a political understanding of the world takes precedence.

Besides, I have known anarchist groups. And what I have seen in every case is that, despite the ideal of there not being a leader, they all have clearly identifiable leaders even if they are unwilling to acknowledge who they are. Just watch a group of anarchist for fifteen minutes, and you will know who the leaders are. In other words, they all have developed a form of government.

Is there such a thing as a Christianity that does not have rely on secular explanations to justify itself? That’s a debate I would love to see. Unfortunately, despite a very hopeful writing that demands Christians, mainline and evangelical alike, to reconsider the role of the church in relation to the state, Taylor assumes the answer is no. I still want to make the case that the “Kingdom of God” is not a dependent concept but one that changes the world in ways we cannot yet see. Even if I like much, perhaps even most, of what Christian anarchy has to say. I just cannot go there.

Disclosure of Material Connection: I received this book free from the author and/or publisher through the Speakeasy blogging book review network. I was not required to write a positive review. The opinions I have expressed are my own. I am disclosing this in accordance with the Federal Trade Commission’s 16 CFR,Part 255.

Taking Post-Christendom Seriously

I spent my sabbatical visiting and seeing and listening to what other people do in their worship, especially people who are on the supposed front end of the new wave sweeping the church. Some of the places I visited were indeed forward thinkers. Others were simply providing the same old wine in new wineskins, a reverse on the saying of Jesus. The packaging may look really shiny and new, but the product is the same old thing.

During the past four months, I have worshiped in Georgia, Maryland, Pennsylvania, Massachusetts, Ohio, and Indiana. I spent a weekend with The Simple Way in Philadelphia, worshiped in Brian McLaren’s home church, ate Mexican food and worshiped with Stephanie Spellers and the folks at the Crossing in the Cathedral in Boston, and stayed a night with the Common Friars, a working farm/commune/new monastic community/household—no one quite knows what to call them—in Athens, Ohio

I’ve been welcomed by a Megachurch right here in Greensboro, listened to a Seventh Day Adventist pastor rail against Westboro Baptist Church’s notion that God could hate anybody, and seen Episcopalians who have figured out a way to use a projector and screen without destroying the sense of liturgical space or forcing everyone to spend the service looking up. I’ve also watched a pastor on a Jumbotron down a individual shot glass of wine during communion. (Note to a/v folk everywhere: This is time to switch the picture to the band even if they are not doing anything.)

On Pentecost, I visited the local Lutheran Church and saw the 9:00am contemporary service, which, like most 9:00am contemporary services is just shorter with guitars and good for accommodating families with small children, not reaching anyone outside of the church. In Pittsburgh, I visited a Methodist/ Presbyterian hybrid known as Hot Metal Bridge, where the ratio of tattoo to worshiper was about the highest I have ever seen, and the band played a combination of bluegrass and punk. I actually liked them a lot.

Oh, and if that was not enough, I was a deputy at the Episcopal Church’s General Convention too, where I watched my bishop take over the place with one 18 minute sermon—look for Michael Curry and General Convention on YouTube if you want to see it; it’s worth listening to his call to go out and be some crazy Christians, And, in the midst of all this, I was attending committee meetings of the Nominating Committee for our new Suffragan Bishop (That’s like an assistant bishop for you non-Episcopalians), reading applications, watching videos of sermons, and interviewing candidates via Skype. This person will be among other things, my de facto boss, so I have a definite investment in s/he being tuned to students and young adults.

I have come to realize that having coffee available before the service does not mean that you are solving the problem of how to welcome newcomers; it just means you have given us something to do with our hands. Placing a greeting time at the beginning of worship does not help either, especially if everyone greets their friends and ignores the visitors; that happened to me more than once. Surprisingly, it was the mainline denominations that responded best to visitors.

I have also learned that a forty five minute message does not beat a twelve minute sermon, especially for those of us who are not audio learners. Most of those long messages were a lot of filler with little actually being preached, and anyway, this overloads the emphasis on the individual preacher as the focus of worship, once again taking away from the sacramental.

Which leads to another learning I had. Evangelicals moving into emerging settings have not yet discovered liturgical forms to make the Eucharist seem as significant as the Word. "Okay, now it's time for communion." does not convey sacred mystery; it reduces sacrament to ordinary. Rewrite The Book of Common Prayer (I mean the Episcopal one, not the very good but misappropriated Title from Shane Claiborne and friends), but find some language that retains a greater sense of the holy, please.

Some of the details about my journey are in previous blog postings, though I have few more that I did not get around to writing up, especially the last trips before General Convention.

The toughest question I have been asked so far has been, “So what have you learned?” It has been hard to put into words, and I suspect it will be my next set of blogs that will flesh that out. But some things are coming clear to me, and one thing kept coming to me with each visit I made.

This is a message that cannot be repeated enough to the Church: it’s a different world out there! The end of Christendom is not happening now; it already occurred while we were sitting in our stained glass rooms paying no attention to what people were saying and thinking. While we have been functioning as if nothing has happened, all the while wondering why we are losing numbers, the world became a new place.

I was not just looking at liturgical practices and the types of messages being preach. I was also spending time with people in these congregations (when they would talk to me at least) and communities. I was finding out who attends the worships and why. What draws them to that space? What if anything, makes them different from us?

Now, at this point, it would be tempting to say that my own community is a wonderful example of responding to the rejection of church as usual, what with all the things we have done to welcome all sorts and conditions of people. Certainly, we have been on the forefront of the issues that are important to younger people, that we are the kind of place that should be attractive to anyone who wishes to think and question and explore. We pride ourselves on not being your typical worshiping community.

Well, I am sad to say that we are more a part of the past than we like to think. We are the past because we still live as though the Church matters to people. And for all intents and purposes, that is no longer true, or, put a better, way, the Church can no longer assume that anyone thinks it matters.

Take, for example, the recent flap around Chik-Fil-A. At first, I thought that we should all be embarrassed that this is the primary reason most people even thought about the church that week. Then I realized that that is exactly the problem. Millions of people, maybe a majority of Americans, saw that incident as being indicative of the value of the Church in their lives and in the world. Conservative Christians think they won a great victory by flooding chicken shops; in reality, they showed the rest of the country just how irrelevant we are. And the rest of the Church got swept up in the tide.

Of course, the liberal Christian response to such events is to show how they are not the conservatives to prove there is another way of looking at the issue du jour. In so doing, they tie their response forever to the conservatives. In fact they give legitimacy to this silliness by being so caught up in it. In the meantime, millions of people are looking at all of us and saying, “Why should I be a part of that group?” and we’re not giving them a very good answer, are we?

In chapter four of Ephesians, the author says “We must no longer be children, tossed to and fro and blown about by every wind of doctrine, by people’s trickery, by their craftiness in deceitful scheming.” Remember, he’s talking to the Christians with this statement, not to the victims—I mean audience—who happen to hear what we have to say. In bending once more to the winds, we have given people one more reason to ignore us and no reason to care what we have to say.

That’s because we have forgotten that most people are not attracted to causes unless they are personally affected. The rest of us are attracted to a sense of place, living with a deep desire to belong, to have a community of acceptance, not only for ourselves, but for our friends and family who may not always think, act, and believe as we do.

In her newest book, Christianity after Religion, Dianna Butler Bass describes the process of joining churches during Christendom as the three Bs, belief, behavior, and belonging. One accepted a core set of doctrine, then took on the practices of the community and thus gained a sense of belonging.

In the post-Christendom age, she argues, the order is reversed. People now seek belonging first, a belonging that includes being accepted for whatever beliefs they bring with them. The welcoming church will be the one that makes room for the seeker first and foremost. That acceptance will be followed by the seeker learning how this community lives out its life through their behavior, and finally through those behaviors will discover and begin to adopt the community’s beliefs.

I believe she is right, and that is a profound shift in thinking which demands an equally profound shift in the behavior of most worshiping communities. The days when a community could, for example, say that gays are welcome and assume that statement would attract a certain group of people are gone. Those churches are all over the country now (I personally met two openly gay pastors in nice, small, Midwest country congregations), but so are plenty of other nonreligious communities that do not have the baggage on those issues that we do.

All of this could sound depressing, but I see it very much as hopeful. It is hopeful because we have something to offer a world where people have 1500 Facebook friends and no one to be with on a Friday night. We have something to offer people who think in 140 characters or less, people whose most cherished symbol and strongest theology can be found inked on their biceps.

And what is it that we have? We have Jesus. We have the one who came to say we can have a life of abundance. We have a model of the Kingdom of God lived to the fullest. We have the promise of a different way of life, a community of caring, a place of new beginning and radical friendships, and most importantly, a place of hope in a world that is short on hope. We have Jesus.

We have the Jesus who is bread, not just for our meal today, but the bread of life. We have Jesus, who comes together with us each week in our celebration of bread and wine, the living out of the new Kingdom in sign and in coming together in shared lives. We have God’s table, where space is made for everyone, rich, poor, Black White, Yellow, Brown and Red, gay and straight, conservative and liberal, a table where the only label that has real meaning is beloved child of God and it is applied to all equally because there are no half loved children here.

That’s about all I have at this point. No great plan for the renewal of the church, just some thoughts about the disconnect between the world we live in and what we are doing in the church. In the upcoming months, I will be asking two questions: “Why are we doing the things we are doing?” and “What are we missing?”

Ministry today has become about shedding the baggage we have dragged along for too long and walking the road of the one who says “Behold, I make all things new.” But Christians should stick around to see what happens next. There’s a great big world out there that wants to know the living Christ through us. There are some dos and don’ts I have picked up along the way, but we really have to pave the road to where we are going as we travel. Fortunately, we have Christ’s footsteps to follow. Let’s get out there and see this new world together.