Steeple Soapbox

Change Your Bookmarks and RSS Feeds

2007-12-18T18:08:00.001-08:00

I'm resurrecting this blog and moving it to a new website:

www.ben.bechurchne.org.

Look for new posts in the new year!

2007-09-19T14:35:00.000-07:00

Thanks to Leonard Sweet for this idea:

One woman uses her celebrity to draw attention to global poverty and has adopted a child from a third world country.

One man formed one of the most explosively successful anti-poverty organizations in the Western world and who reminded lawmakers in Washington D.C. that:

God is in the slums, in the cardboard boxes where the poor play house. God is in the silence of a mother who has infected her child with a virus that will end both their lives. God is in the cries heard under the rubble of war. God is in the debris of wasted opportunity and lives, and God is with us if we are with them.[1]

Another man lives without refrigerator, trash, or electricity in the middle of New York City, so as to better respect the environment.

Can you guess who they are?

Angelina Jolie. Bon o. Colin Beavan.

How many are Christian?

None of them.

Angelina Jolie doesn’t practice any religion. Bono is a lapsed Christian who is not involved with a church. Colin Beavan is a non-practicing Jew.

Where are the churchgoing Christians in this picture of courageous witness?

Still thinking?[2]

If God can’t use the church for God’s work, God will use the world.

[1] This is from Bono's speech to the National Prayer Breakfast.

[2] Here are a few names: (there are distressingly few): Jim Wallis, Shaine Claibourne.

Post-Wedding Thoughts

2007-09-17T15:36:00.000-07:00

It's been a wonderful past four weeks, since Melissa and I got married. We received generous gifts and thoughtful messages and the love we felt from those who surrounded us was one of the best parts of the post-wedding experience.

In many cases, it was clear that people had given something of themselves. We received a couple paintings, several personalized gifts (a clock, etc.), and a few photos that were taken by our givers.

For instance, Marion Fuller, who I have known from church since I was a little kid, gave us a set of salad bowls.

They were made by her husband Harley, who passed away just a little while ago. She wrote in her note that "this was the only set that he made...he would have wanted you to have them".

These gifts are tangible reminders of community as we enter our married lives together. Every time I see them, I give thanks for the wonderful community God has blessed us with.

An Article

2007-09-17T13:05:00.000-07:00

Hello Everyone,
I know this isn't an update so much as it is shameless self-promotion, but if you're online today, check out umc.org. If you log on later during the week, check out this link and then give me feedback!

MIA- Wedding

2007-07-24T18:35:00.000-07:00

Quick bullet point update on my life

1) Life is good, but crazy- less than four weeks to go before the wedding. Melissa and I were at a high school friend's wedding this weekend, and it was a very "real" moment for both of us. As you might imagine, both stress and excitement are definitely up.

2) I finished the final Harry Potter today and really enjoyed it- thought it was the best book of the series. (And, for those of you who haven't read it and plan to, that's all I'll say!)

3) Wedding planning is also stressful- I finish up tuxes and hopefully finalize the service this week, and then have tons of details to wade through in the next 3.5 weeks.

4) Needless to say, blogging is not the top priority for me now, unless I can do it in ten minutes or less, so expect me to reemerge more once August 18th is past!

Beauty

2007-06-26T18:27:00.000-07:00

Forgive Me, For I Have Sinned

2007-06-23T16:38:00.000-07:00

And not posted for a full 22 days. Quick update on my life:

1) Annual Conference was wonderful- Melissa and I did two postmodern-y presentations, one on the shift from modernity to postmodernity and the church's response and the other on emerging worship. Despite being given the worst slots available, we did relatively well in terms of attendance, with 12 coming to our presentation on postmodernity (despite it being directly before the ordination service) and 40 coming to our presentation on emerging worship.

2) The Generation X/Y Conference, as I have mentioned before, was utterly wonderful- thanks to Cameron, Laura, Amy, (who are all online, so I have to mention them to make them happy), and all the other fantastic people who made it one of the best conferences I've ever been to. I have to write an article for GBHEM about it, which should be completed this week- I'll post it here once it's completed.

3) We sinned horribly and got another bookcase, a dish rack, two sets of plates and bowls, an office chair, the largest candle I've ever seen, and a small deep freeze for about $300 (oops!). That would have been the case except for the small detail that we actually got it all at garage sales, and made out like bandits, getting all of the above for about $40.

Why I've Disappeared

2007-06-01T16:38:00.000-07:00

Not a good idea to have links driving traffic (like a whole extra 12 people to your blog!) and then not post. In my defense, my computer's monitor has decided to stop working and so had to be sent back to the Repair Gods of IBM for fixing. Naturally, my notes from the conference, e-mails, and life are stuck on a now impotent hard drive. Hopefully, this will be a temporary condition!

5/24-5/25 Gen X/Y

2007-05-25T10:00:00.000-07:00

A quick post today, I'll try to post again tonight, once everything wraps up. What a fantastic conference! Doug and Tim are absolutely fantastic and this event has provided a great deal of clarity for me as I continue with my discernment process about church planting.

A few quotes that I've cut and pasted from my notes (and then off to lunch):

“We have detached our imagination from our faith”- Tim Keel

“Our brand of Christianity has been hard on faith because faith involves imagination, dreaming and seeing things that…we had before not been able to see.” - Tim Keel

“I don’t think there’s a more exciting time to be alive than today. I think that for the past millennium and a half, the church has power…Now, for the first time ever, we’re contesting what it means to be Christian in the world.”- Tim Keel

“We need a broader narrative about what God’s doing in the world that’s not differentiated by sacred and secular.”- Tim Keel

Another Lesson in Balding E

2007-05-24T14:02:00.001-07:00

Another Lesson in Blogging Etiquette: Do Not Mention the Folically Disadvantaged Head of a Presenter, Especially If He Has a Google Tool Which E-mails Him Every time His Name Is Mentioned In A Blog. (It's Probably Not a Good Idea to do Self-Psychoanalysis Either)

P.S. And in case said presenter, (who by the way is a fantastic, wonderful, awesome, amazing pastor) visits my humble site yet again, I hereby retract my "baldness" comment, especially in light of the steady retreat of my own hairline, which will no doubt have disappeared, along with my hair, by the time I approach his age, judging by my genetics. (In case he's wondering, I'm not calling him old, not even "chronologically advantaged".)

P.P.S. And if he'll still talk to me after said sarcastic post, then I must be a lot more likable than I thought! :)

5.24.2007 Gen XY Conference Mid-Day

2007-05-24T09:09:00.000-07:00

First, let me officially send a gloating smirk to my friends, Matt and Farrah, and my fiancée, Melissa, who are not at this incredible conference that is setting my mind on fire as we speak. It’s going to take me weeks, (if I retain anything in my sleepy daze) to process everything I’m hearing. What a fantastic conference!

Notable Quotes from Doug Pagitt this Morning

“Fear is powerful, but is just doesn’t motivate. Possibility has to motivate us.”

“There is no acultural Gospel or Good News, there is only Good News within a context.”

“Every place is as suitable for the Gospel as any other.”

"Truth is always played out in a situation."

Gen X/Y Conference Wednesday, May 23rd

2007-05-24T07:10:00.000-07:00

Time I Awoke (Arkansas Time): 3:20 AM

Time I Spent In Transit: 11 Hours

People I Met On the Plane: Claudia, Freddie, and Isabella (who is 11 months old and remarkably well behaved) Martinez

Time I Arrived At the Mount Sequoyah Retreat Center: 3:00PM

Time the Conference Was Supposed to Start: 3:30 PM

Time It Actually Started Due to the Inevitable United Methodist “Technical Difficulties”: 4:15PM

Presenters: Tim Keel (The bearded, earringed, long haired pastor of Jacob’s Well in Kansas City)

Doug Pagitt (The balding, wispy-goateed, completely real pastor of Solomon’s Porch in Minneapolis)

The Content of Our “Worship Experience”: 2 Songs, 1 Sermon, Communion, and 1 Song (Which depending on whether you like cookie-cutter contemporary or not, was either heaven or hell)

Time I Began to Lose It Due to Lack of Sleep and Excessive Extroversion: 5:30PM

Time I Ended Up in Conversation With Doug Pagitt: 6:00PM

Number of Times I Unwittingly Spilled Out My Angst Regarding My Discernment Process To A Crowd Of People: One

Number of Times Doug Pagitt was Around When I Did That: One

Number of Conference Presenters Who Now Think I’m Crazy, Uber-Intense, and a Little Bit Troubled: One

Number of Times I Now Wish That I Had Kept My Bloody Mouth Shut Until I Got a Full Night’s Sleep: Beyond count

Memorable Quotes From the Day:

Tim Keel on Losing His Faith: “I wasn’t losing the content of my doctrine, I was losing my way of life”

Tim Keel on Seminary Education: “I felt like I was being trained and going into deep debt for a world that didn’t exist” (And I completely agree with him!)

Tim Keel on Church Ministry: ““The Church has loads of organizations, but don’t have enough organism”

Doug Pagitt on Living the Christian Life: “I got into Chrisitanity thinking that I was going to be a full participant” and ““If I’m going be a Christian, I’m going to be one fully and completely, I’m not going to outsource any part of it”

Amount of Sleep I Got Last Night: 9.5 Utterly Comatose Hours

Hopes For Thursday: To Be Slightly Less Crazy Than Yesterday

I’ll post a midday update if I get a chance.

Wow...It's Been Way Too Long

2007-05-11T19:17:00.000-07:00

Hello Everyone,

To my 30 or so readers, sorry for my absence...I have no good excuse, although a lot of good reasons for not being around, like reaching the end of school, renting an apartment, and having some computer issues. So, very briefly, a quick update on my life.

1) Wedding planning continues apace, the rest of the save the date cards will go out this week and we're putting together the details for our reception this week.

2) I start my job as music director and (very) part time youth pastor at Trinity UMC and Monroe Community Church on June 3rd.

3) Melissa and I have rented our first apartment at Birchview Gardens, (I'll stay in it now, Melissa will move in during August).

Also, I will be blogging daily (perhaps even twice a day) in a couple weeks from the Generation X/Y Event, which will be led by Tim Keel and Doug Paggit, who are two of the top pastors in the country when it comes to engaging with postmodernity. Come check it out! Bring your friends!

Gifted and Graced

2007-04-14T17:21:00.000-07:00

I remember, going through the candidacy process for ministry, (although whether it was in the official material or not I cannot remember,) a lot of discussion about whether one possessed the "gifts" and "graces" for ministry: gifts being those things that come easily to us, that are blessed and magnified by God in our calling, and graces, those things that perhaps did not come easily to us, but are given to us by God to help fulfill our calling. (For some reason, I don't think this is what the UMC meant by this, but it made sense at the time to my teenage mind.)

This phrase has captured my attention over these past few months, as I continue to recover from a year-long relapse with my chronic illness and at the same time discerning whether or not I am called to plant a church.

Unfortunately, although I would like to be of normal health, I'm not, nor will I ever be. Chances are, the place I'm at now: about 80% of normal physically and not being able to do more than 35-40 hours of work a week without serious repercussions is where I'll be for the rest of my life. Getting in better shape, learning to stick with a routine, and getting extra rest will help, but it will not significantly change my physical capacity to do work over the long term.

Based on this, it looks like church planting would, not be a great option for me. (For that matter, full time pastoral ministry wouldn't look like a great option either.) Church planting involves very high levels of stress, 80 hour workweeks, and few (if any) breaks for rest, especially as the church is getting off the ground.

And still, in spite of this, I still feel a tug to continue discerning in this path, and I will be faithful to that. Ultimately, I believe that if God calls me, then God will grace me with the strength necessary to respond, whether that be through miraculous healing, job sharing, or a setting that can work with my physical limitations. And, if this means that I am not called to church planting, then God will call me to a ministry that will be even more deeply meaningful than the path I'm on now.

I think that we often forget, as a church, that in order to accomplish truly remarkable things, we must trust in God, and we must be willing to risk: in our ministry, in our personal lives, in our finances, in our expectations, and trust that God will carry us., even if we can't see how.

This is certainly one of those times for me.

Holy Week

2007-04-08T17:15:00.000-07:00

Every pastor-blogger would understand why I've been mysteriously absent this week- the grueling marathon commonly known as Holy Week. For laity, it is chock full of wonderful worship services, easter eggs, easter dinner, and generally a good (or at least meaningful) time all around. For pastors, it is a long endurance test, at least four services (Maunday Thursday, Good Friday, Easter Sunrise, and Easter), several sermons, high pressure, and a lot of late nights.

To round up my Holy Weeks stats:
10.5 hours driving, 3 nights getting to bed at 11:30 or later (not by choice), one prayer group, four services, three practices, 10 songs led on Easter morning, and countless cups of tea.

I am simply thankful that I've survived. Once I've recovered, I'll post something more.

Why Professors Should Blog

2007-03-31T07:07:00.000-07:00

If anything has inspired, amused, and occasionally annoyed me at seminary, it is that so many professors are under the impression that their ideas can change the world. I've read countless articles and books implying that if people really believed what the author believed about (insert relevant theology/methodology/interpretation here) then the church would be saved, oppression ended, and the world redeemed.

Unfortunately, most of them have chosen a very clunky and cumbersome way to proclaim their message: books. The process of publishing a books (especially an aspiring PhD's student's first book) takes in the neighborhood of five to ten years, and its end result is often so expensive and esoteric that only academic libraries and other professors in the same field can afford to buy it. (And, if it gets really successful, then perhaps it gets foisted off on a few unsuspecting college/grad students as well!) Therefore, the reach of most academic books, (unless they are absolute dynamite) is extremely limited, measured in the tens of thousands, or perhaps even the hundreds of readers, rather in millions.

So I wonder, if professors care so much about their ideas, if they believe, that their ideas can change the world, then why not blog about them?

Blogs carry with them several sizable advantages over books:

1) They're cheap- anyone with a computer can write one, anyone with a computer can read one, without having to shell out $50-$150 for the privilege.

2) They're contemporary- if a burning issue comes up, then you can write about instantly, rather than having to wait 5-10 years to get a book published (at which point it is automatically outdated.)

3) Their success based on merit- If (and I admit, this is a big "if"), you engage with other blogs and post interesting, compelling material, then people will read your work. It doesn't require a PhD, a slick proposal, or connections with a publishing house to get your ideas out there.

4) Their potential audience is gigantic- An academic book reaches a very small subsection of the population (measured in the tens of thousands), a successful blog could reach millions.

Granted, there are some drawbacks. Blog posts don't lend themselves too long, complicated, interconnected arguments. However, with the advent of easy to make e-books, or even publishing on demand, it is still possible to disseminate more complex academic works to a wide audience. (In fact, blogging provides a built-in customer base for any would-be book author.)

Therefore, may I suggest to all the professors reading this post (of which I believe there might be one, who is already online here), if you truly care about disseminating your ideas, blog!

Liberal Tolerance Is A Lie

2007-03-27T17:06:00.000-07:00

I was sitting in class this evening, and someone brought up a book that a lot of us were reading in a separate class, Purpose Driven Church. Immediately, almost everyone gasped in horror and disgust (someone even made the symbol of a cross at the book!) The passage in question, Rick Warren’s suggestion of starting worship with an upbeat song (never mind that most mainline churches do that) became the symbol of all that was wrong with evangelicalism- shallow, demanding only a one time commitment, and giving no impetus for long term discipleship. At the end of the conversation, the book symbolized everything wrong with all those big churches and those conservative pastors: it was “manipulative”, “shallow”, “boring”, and “irrelevant” for mainline ministry.

This was blatant, first class, shameless, theologically fundamentalist stereotyping. In the end, for many of my classmates, Rick Warren’s conservatism invalidated everything he said about pastoral leadership. Furthermore, their criticisms willfully ignored huge stretches of the book where Rick Warren talks about member’s rigorous discipleship training program (which would put most of our mainline churches to shame) or where he notes that his chapter on worship primarily refer to “seeker services”, which are geared exclusively for non-Christians, while members get a service with more depth later in the week.

I am not surprised by this episode, but I am disappointed. It’s a shame that my classmates, who have been lectured by liberal professors time and time again to “read a text in its entirety” and to “not prooftext”, have just willfully done exactly that.

Unfortunately, this is not the first time I’ve seen this happen at Drew. (And if you talk to any conservative student at my school, they can tell you stories about the times they’ve been stereotyped or even demonized by other students and professors.)

Oh well, so much for that much vaunted liberal tolerance.

Zoom!

2007-03-26T06:31:00.000-07:00

Churches often encourages their leaders, especially their pastors, to be culturally static. The pastor is expected to dive head first into the church’s little universe- their social circles, their traditions, their activities. Many pastors take this leap for what seem like good reasons:

1) Why take time getting to know non-Christians in the community when I can spend time building relationships with the people who will support my ministry (and pay my salary)?

2) Why listen to “secular” music (or for that matter, engage with secular media of any type) when I can fill my heart and mind with music that will bring me closer to God?

3) Why participate in activities in the larger community (e.g. school board, community theater, rec-league sports, etc.) when the church needs my help for their programs (e.g pot luck suppers, family fun night, meetings, etc.)

This thinking entails that ministers have little contact with the outside. Their perspectives get warped. Inch by inch, they begin to think that their church members are the norm for the wider community: that everyone knows what words like “doxology” or “benediction” means, that activities beloved by the church will appeal deeply to the unchurched, that advertisements and promotions that resonate with our church members will touch the wider community as well.

If we, as the church, are primarily concerned about engaging the community for the sake of transformation, then this is a deadly rut. Seth Godin, who I have blogged about before, talks about the same phenomenon with business leaders, and has a technique to help them break out of their ruts, called “zooming”. The premise is this: in today’s world, cultural/technology/business shifts are happening so quickly that it’s important that business leaders remain flexible. Therefore, successful leaders must consistently challenge their norms by engaging by continually challenging their assumptions and their routines. (He suggests simple techniques, like taking a different route to work in the morning or listening to a CD from a genre of music that you don’t like.)

This technique is equally important for church leaders. So, here are a few tips for how to start zooming, church style:

1) Get involved in the community. Join a book club, a community theatre, or a volunteer project and build relationships with people who don’t go your church.

2) Keep track of cultural trends- subscribe to a few blogs, watch the latest popular television show, or turn on the radio to the top-50 music station to see what people are listening to.

3) Change up your spiritual life- experiment with new spiritual disciplines, read parts of the Bible that you’ve avoided (and preach on them!),or find a spiritual director to help keep you accountable.

4) Read the top books in both church leadership and business leadership, especially from those who will directly challenge you. (e.g. Adam Hamilton, Peter Rollins, Shane Claibourne, Seth Godin, etc.).

5) Never say “I don’t have enough time! The church needs me to do (insert important ministry here)!” This is as (perhaps even more) important than your committee meetings, pot luck suppers, and other church-centric activities. Churches that effectively engage with their community grow spiritually and numerically. Churches that remain isolated die. If you, as a church leader, can’t break out of your box, how will the congregation ever be able to?

Another Quick Post

2007-03-16T17:29:00.000-07:00

You know you're getting old when it's 8:30PM and your body's telling you it's time for bed. So, since keeping awake right now is my greatest concern, I'm going to keep this short. First, a stream-of-consciousness preview of topics that I'd like to write about in the next few weeks. (And you, my faithful reader, are allowed to harass, threaten, or blackmail me if I don't come through!)

1) Zooming (Another Seth Godin idea)
2) Why Professors Should Blog
3) Who is Church?

Finally, links to a few nifty websites and posts that I came across this week.

1) Swap your paperback books here
2) Wikihow- wikipedia plus how to manuals
3) How to save electricity
4) An insightful post about privilege and charity in the West

A Quick Update

2007-03-12T17:33:00.000-07:00

I’ve been meaning to post regularly, and over the past month or so, I’ve done pretty well. However, with the craziness of this past week, I blinked and realized that it was Saturday, I hadn’t posted in a week, and I was driving home the next day.

So, with my abject apologies, here’s a quick update on my life. I’m home this week, so I have absolutely no excuse for not posting again.

At any rate, here are this week’s highlights.

1) I got into my inaugural accident on Wednesday evening. Note to all you young drivers: always check your blind spot before you switch lanes, especially during NJ rush hour. Thank goodness, the other car wasn’t damaged, but my front side driver’s door is not looking good, and my driver’s side mirror was completely obliterated. The car is currently camped out in a NJ body shop, getting fixed.

2) Yes, the wedding plans are coming along. If we really like you (and have your e-mail address), expect a save-the date e-mail by the end of the week. The rest of you will have to wait for it to come in the mail, which will happen hopefully next week!

3) School is remarkably sane. My chronic illness is under control, my coursework is reasonable (and I’m even enjoying most of my classes), and supervised ministry at my church continues to be enjoyable and challenging.

Stop Preaching! (Part Two)

2007-02-27T19:44:00.001-08:00

(Scroll down to see my first post on this topic)

Deemphasizing preaching is not as radical idea as you might think. While the United Methodist Church (and indeed, almost every church) considers "Proclaiming the Word" and preaching synonymous, this has not always been the case. For instance, while there were itinerant preachers in the Middle Ages, they were not people's primary source of information about the Bible. Rather, they learned through visual images, such as stained glass, which, through a complex code, communicated not just a Biblical story, but interpreted it as well for the viewer.

Let me briefly suggest some ways to remedy the overemphasis on preaching.

I wonder then, what it would be like to "proclaim the word" to all people, paying equal attention to all intelligence types.

What it would look like if we proclaimed the wold in a way that appealed to intrapersonal intelligence? Maybe it would be lectio divina, where people "pray" the scriptures, listening to them several times, meditating on them and possibly sharing how God spoke to them afterwards.

What it would look like if we proclaimed the word in a way that appealed to bodily-kinesthetic intelligence? Maybe it would be a series of stations where people had the opportunity to create something (e.g. draw, paint, write, do a ritual) in response to a text.

What it would look like if we proclaimed the world in a way that appealed to interpersonal intelligence? Maybe, rather than delivering a sermon, you could lead a structured discussion on the text, preparing by having some key points, researching the text well, and providing relevant illustrations based on where the discussion goes.

Once we remove ourselves from the "preaching" box, the possibilities are endless.

Stop Preaching! (Part One)

2007-02-27T06:25:00.000-08:00

We are a word-addicted church.

We open our worship with written words on a page, read litanies for special occasions, sing songs with complex lyrics from a hymnbook, articulate our doctrine and structure through 800 pages of, yes, words, and feel like we've accomplished something at Annual Conference when we pass a resolution in print.

This word-addiction is especially apparent when it comes to preaching, one of United Methodism's self-proclaimed hallmarks. We have licensed people as "local preachers", we talk proudly about the great "traveling preachers" in the early 1800's, we make all our seminarians take a class on preaching (though not necessarily on worship), and for most churches, "The Proclamation of the Word" (which is always the sermon) comprises the central part of the worship service.

This is a horrible, inexcusable tragedy.

Now before you run screaming to my local DCOM or BOOM (and if you don't know the words for these acronyms, then you can hardly be called United Methodist!), or earnestly inquire as to what they're teaching us at those crazy "liberal" seminaries, let me explain:

The study of multiple intelligences tells us that people understand the world and make connections to it in different ways. Some people acquire information best through hearing something (musical, linguistic), others through images (spatial), others through doing something, (bodily-kinesthetic) some through interactions with others (interpersonal), others through self reflection (intrapersonal), others through music, etc.

Consider for a moment then, how many types of intelligence a typical sermon reaches, delivered verbally from a pulpit on a Sunday morning (by the way, this exercise works equally well with learning styles.)

Can't come up with many?

Well, neither can I.

The typical sermon, the vaunted "proclamation of the Word", the very center and climax of a typical Protestant worship service, appeals almost exclusively to only one type of intelligence- linguistic intelligence. All other people are left in the dust, required to either adapt (or simply to tune out). (And yes, you may point out that we do have hymns that could appeal to musical intelligence, but remember, most are sung to 150 year old tunes with 150+ year old lyrics while being played on an instrument that went out of style nearly a century ago. I think traditional hymns have a lot to offer us, but our rabid, exclusive devotion to our ancient-white-people style of music doesn't always speak to today's worldview and culture.)

Needless to say, when the central part of your worship service primarily speaks to only a small group of people, you have a problem.

YouTube Goodness

2007-02-20T08:00:00.000-08:00

United Methodist History in Claymation (Watch this soon, it's being taken down!)

Scambaiters convincing would-be scammers (the type that e-mail you to share about their 100 million dollar bank accounts) to do the classic Monty Python "Dead Parrot" sketch

What I've Been Reading

2007-02-19T06:47:00.000-08:00

Here's what I've been reading this past week:

1) A fantastic and very disturbing series of articles (Part 1, Part 2) in the Washington Post on how injured soldiers returning from Iraq are treated.

2) A post by a blogger on how to buy original art at reasonable prices.

3) A short article on how to improve air quality in your home.

The Great Methodist Rip Off: Part Two

2007-02-16T13:31:00.000-08:00

How could a denomination offer materials in a way that is affordable for their members and fiscally responsible for them? A few ideas:

1) Don't overcharge for books. For instance, Cokesbury.com regularly prices its books a few dollars higher than their competitors. You lose sales and goodwill when your built-in customer base (e.g. UMC clergy and laity) have to go other places to find affordable materials.

2) Offer good free materials on the internet. You don't have to give away everything. Instead, pick and choose what resources to highlight. For instance, you could give away the worship planner (see previous post), chapters of recently published books, or a few top quality articles in .pdf format.

3) Offer the majority of your resources online as a subscription. For a scaling annual fee, offer hundreds of articles, out of date books, worship resources, planners, etc. The denomination gain a constant revenue stream that would pay for offering the materials online and churches would have a genuinely affordable option when looking for resources.

The Great Methodist Rip Off

2007-02-14T16:36:00.000-08:00

I was thinking about the penny pinching, miserly nature of our connectional hierarchy as I learned today that the General Board of Discipleship (which, now that it's been renamed GBOD, must now be automatically relevant) has taken their weekly hymn resource off its website. This planner provided suggested music across all UMC music resources based on theme and scripture for each week. Apparently, (my fiancee had used it) it was quite well done and extremely useful when constructing a service every week.

When, in preparation for leading Sunday worship, she visited the site, she found that they had been taken down, and that instead of getting these resources for free, they were now only available in a $16 book.

Our blessed worship people made a passing effort to explain their decision, saying that they're responding to "customers requests" to have all the planner in one book, (what customer requests that you remove a free product and charge for it instead?) "flexibility of use" since the resources are now in one place, (why not add cross-searching abilities into the web site or simply publish it as a free .pdf for download?) , and, believe it or not, due to "price concerns", after all, since it's only thirty one cents a week, anyone can afford it. (How generous of them! Especially considering that churches were paying nothing for it before!)

I do give them credit for listing customer complaints at the bottom of the page. However, they never respond to those complaints specifically, instead simply assuring us that they thought seriously about it.

Quite frankly, if they're going to take away a free resource and make us pay money for it (and yes, for a poor seminary student like me, $16 is a lot of money for a resource!), then be honest with us and admit you're doing it to make a profit. Pretending that you removed the resources from the website to help out "customers" (by the way, customers? since when are the constituents of the churches who pay for your budget via apportionments mere customers?) is dishonest and condescending.

Rather than giving us the resources to equip us for our ministries, they're going for a cheap buck and hoping we don't notice. Unfortunately, this seems to happen across the board in United Methodism. It's the reason why "our United Methodist Publishing House" doesn't give away ANY resources,and charges prices that are significantly higher than places like Christan Book Distributors and Amazon.com. It's the reason why there are Wesleyan Foundations (UM college fellowships) that can't use the Methodist order of worship because they don't own a book of Worship and aren't an official United Methodist Church (Contrast this with the Episcopalians, whose entire Book of Common Prayer (which is far more central to their worshipping life than the Book of Worship is to the UMC) is open source, free to anyone to use).

When a denomination overcharges its members for the resources you need to do ministry effectively, then you know it's in serious trouble.

Pray With Podcasts

2007-02-01T15:57:00.000-08:00

If you're like me, prayer can often get lost in the press of life. One way to take time for God is to download daily prayer from the internet. There are several daily prayer podcasts that you can get manually on a website or subscribe to using a podcatcher like Juice.

Here are four that I've found:

Pray-as-you-go.org - This provides new podcasts for Monday-Friday of the week, sponsored by Jesuit Media Initiatives. They involve music, a scripture passage, and then a guided reflection or meditation on the passage. I've used this on a regular basis for several months and it's fantastic!

Order of Saint Luke Podcast - This is a weekly podcast for their daily office. (Inconveniently, they put the entire week's podcast on one .mp3, so you'll have to remember the time when each day starts and fast forward)

Orthodox Liturgy- This is a recording of Orthodox nuns doing the offices for all the major and minor hours of the day. I just discovered this site today, so I can't speak to its quality, but I'm excited to try it out! They also broadcast prayer at the appropriate times on their internet radio station.

Episcopal Offices- Morning prayer, noonday prayer, and Compline (evening prayer).

Church, According to Seth Godin, (Cont.)

2007-01-31T10:14:00.000-08:00

It’s amazing how so many lessons from the business world apply so readily to the church. Seth Godin is one of the top business bloggers. His book, Small Is the New Big, is a collection of his best blog posts, arranged in alphabetical order, from over the course of six years. I’ve learned more about leading a church via his book then I did reading all six books I was assigned during the first semester of my supervised ministry class (which may say more about Drew than about Seth Godin)!

One of the sections of Godin’s book, (You can read his posts here and here), talks about the local max. Most businesses, Godin says, look at their life cycle like the chart below. You get a good idea, you make money, you have success, (point A), you peak, and then you decline (point B). Many of us can probably recognize this chart from our churches: they will have a good period, generally under an excellent pastor, will peak, (often at around 180 or so in attendance) and then begin a gentle decline downwards. At some point, the church bottoms out, and a similar period, with similar success begins again (e.g. just repeat the “local max” graph over again) or the church closes.

Godin suggests that the graph of a truly successful business looks like this.

When we’ve reached the local max, we form the foundation for a much larger, more successful, more effective organization, (the big max), not by doing A, which is what got us to doing the local max, but by operating completely differently (point D), which comes only when we successfully navigate the trough (point C), where it looks like our organization might fail entirely.

Here are a few ways that this directly applies to church life.

1) The first graph describes the lifecycle of churches especially when they reach the barrier of two hundred in worship attendance. Reaching two hundred in attendance necessitates a ministry paradigm shift, because pastors can no longer have consistent one on one contact with all their parishioners, because old organizational structures collapse under the weight of more programs and responsibilities, and because parishioners no longer feel “intimacy” because they don’t know everyone they see on Sunday morning.

Most of our pastors, if they’re even good enough to get people to this point, are not trained to see that the “local max” of their congregation is simply one step towards their “big max”. Therefore, rather than helping the church take a step back so they can eventually grow in ministry, pastors do the same things that fit when the church was one hundred people, only more. They visit more parishioners, they preach the same way, do the same programs more often and subsequently get burnt out.

2) What would happen if we trained our pastors to think of two hundred in worship attendance as only a stepping stone for a church on its way to a better place? What if we taught them how to navigate the trough, (point C), and gave them tools to develop new paradigms for ministry (D)? If we did this, I think we’d be surprised at how many that have between 160-200 people on a Sunday morning would become churches of 500 plus in a relatively short time. (And, for you New England United Methodists out there, think about what a difference churches that size could make in terms of finances, resources, collaboration, and mentoring for the rest of the conference.)

3) Going from a church’s local max to its big max requires innovation. Godin suggests taking resources gleaned from your local max, and investing them in a small independent team that invents a completely new product, one that might even compete with the “mother ship”. For churches, this may mean starting new church services or new ministries (e.g. a Saturday night service in a different worship style or a young adult group). However, it most likely means starting a new church on a different site, because the old leadership will be too invested in the success they previously had (the local max) to be willing to shake things up enough to simply take the organization to the next level.

4) What if those of us who are United Methodists were to see our denomination via these charts? In the United States, our local max was in the late 19^th, early 20^th century, at least in terms of people and finances. But what if that was just our local max? What if we were just in the trough (point C), waiting for a new strategy (D) that will make us more successful than ever before?

I’m not sure whether this is truly a viable possibility or not- it seems to me that we are still trying to live in our glory days (e.g. our pastors are still trained in 1950’s ministry) and that our structure is too invested in perpetuating itself. So, what if the United Methodists were to birth a new conference or new district, and resource it with money and personnel (and a minimum of interference) to find new ways to do church and ministry? Why not birth a new denomination of new-generation Methodists, better able to minister to the emerging generations? Now there’s a thought that could get me in trouble!

RSS Feed

2007-01-25T05:53:00.000-08:00

I now have an RSS feed that you can subscribe to using Sage or some other feed reader. Enjoy!

Why Doesn't the Church Ever Change?

2007-01-24T20:09:00.000-08:00

I have recently started rereading Seth Godin’s brilliant book, Small is the New Big, which is a series of blog posts about marketing, management, and leadership. He writes about why managers and mid-level workers are often so unwilling to make decisions and take significant risks, pointing out that the system in most companies is designed to discourage people from taking risks and innovating. By remaining “competent” in their own, often outmoded paradigm, they are rewarded with promotions, raises, and stability. Breaking the paradigm, or doing something that will threaten this competency means that they must risk their personal and economic security, possibly lose the goodwill of their employers, and withstand negative repercussions from the system. Therefore, even when a system (e.g. a business model for a dying company) is obviously not viable, people will avoid innovation, which ultimately guarantees a slow and inevitable death.

For anyone who has ever participated in the United Methodist Church’s system for identifying, training, and deploying pastoral leaders, this situation should sound very common. Think for a second about all the ways our dying church encourages pastors to keep the status quo:

1) Our United Methodist Seminaries- who train our future leaders using an educational paradigm born in the 1950’s, which encouraged pastors to be educated, to reach the people who walked through the doors (rather than those outside their doors), and to value personal and economic security, and send out their students to do supervised ministry with pastors who lead in that paradigm. This means that our pastors are taught about only one paradigm of pastoral leadership (and heaven help that any of our blessed seminaries ever touch anything so *gasp* radical as resources by those *big* churches such as Church of the Resurrection or Willow Creek), a paradigm that emphasizes stability and passivity.

2) Boards of Ordained Ministry- comprised of people trained primarily by the above seminaries, almost all in that one paradigm of leadership, who evaluate candidates for pastoral leadership primarily based on their ability to articulate theology, and who do not reward those who innovate, buck the system, or take risks. The candidacy process designed to serve those who reach the Board of Ordained ministry inevitably describes only stable, non risk-related situations for ministry. For instance, if you’re in the elder track (which were our local church leaders come from), they describe full time appointments in established parishes, rather than the possibilities of innovative and potentially risky ministries (such as church planting).

3) Our System of Appointments- which addresses the concerns of 1950’s pastors by providing people with lifelong tenure (which eliminates the need for training after you leave seminary) regardless of competency, free houses, and free health insurance. This gives our pastors incentive to take existing churches that operate in old models and to lead them their existing outdated paradigms, rather than risking change (and possibly shrinking or even dying) in order to find a better model, since it might put at risk their free houses, decent salary, and health insurance. This model does not fit people who want to risk and innovate (e.g. church planters) because ordination requires economic security (e.g. an elder with a full time appointment MUST have health insurance) and strongly encourages that pastors to be placed in stable old style churches, rather than to grow something new on their own. If you want to take a risk, then you have to work around the system, the system won’t work for you.

4) Our pastoral culture- which encourages people to look out for their salaries, health insurance, etc. before they think about serving the Gospel. (As I’ve talked to people about the possibility of planting a church, I can’t count the number of people who’s first concern was about how that would work with my candidacy process, with ordination, with health insurance, with financial security, etc. rather than talking about the importance of taking such a risk.) It’s also a culture where pastor actively discourage one another from taking risks and discourage those who strive for excellence. (When I wrote a paper on New England United Methodism a year ago, I heard multiple stories of pastors who’s ideas for outreach to their community or collaboration with other churches were ignored and derided by “experienced” pastors. Needless to say, after a few years, these previously idealistic pastors became “experienced” and mediocre as well.)

5) Our attitude of scarcity- if you listen to Annual Conferences or to leadership in local churches, people talk of keeping what they already have, rather than for reaching something new. A good pastor is one who bails out the sinking ship. A “naïve” or “renegade” pastor is the one who decides to build a new boat.

All of this will result in death, if don’t believe me, check out our budgets, our membership and worship attendance numbers, and the morale of our leaders. If we continue in this paradigm, then we will be dead in another thirty years, no doubt about it.

Wouldn’t it be better to risk, and at worst, die a quick spectacular death rather than a long painful one?

Why don’t we radical restructure our seminarians educations to focus on growing churches, on new models for leadership, and on planting new churches, rather than sticking to the safe “theological education” model which has churned out thousands of ineffective leaders over the past few decades? At worst, this model could fail to produce effective leadership, which is where we are right now anyway.

Why don’t we reform the candidacy process to require mentoring for people in on the edge situations with daring, innovative pastors, rather than sending them in to learn old methods from people who were good leaders in 1950? At worst, our pastors won’t learn how to lead churches, which they don’t know how to do anyway.

Why not allocate millions of dollars to recruit and train pastors to plant new faith communities specifically geared to reach postmoderns and Gen X’ers, rather than spending money to prop up a system that supports pastors that speaks primarily to people age sixty and up? At worst, we could go bankrupt, but we are heading in that direction anyway.

In the end, I wish that we would rather go down in flames, trying to do the work of Christ, then shrivel up because we wanted to play it safe.

Jesus Heals

2007-01-14T14:33:00.000-08:00

I preached this Sunday, and for the first time in my life, used a manuscript. The passage was Mark 5:24b-34, where Jesus heals a woman with hemorrhages. As part of my sermon, I did a reinterpretation of the passage, using a typical high school as my setting that I thought I'd share with you.

At this point in Jesus’ career, in the local Sea of Galilee high school, he was on the top, the winning quarterback of the football team, bound for a Division 1 university, the talk of the town, with a rapidly growing posse of friends, suckups, and wannabees, all trying to mooch off his glory and advance a couple levels up the social ladder on the wings of a smile or a word.

We can all guess where the woman with hemorrhages would be on the social scale. She was another one of those people who we can all guiltily recall if we think back to our teenage years, an unfortunate blip on the high school radar. I wonder what it must have been like for that woman, the loser, the class joke, the Napoleon Dynamite of her school, hustling quickly, silently from class to class, arms full of books, head down, dressed in old second hand clothes from the local Salvation Aarmy, two sizes too big, smelling like she hadn’t taken a shower in week, hair in long, clumpy, frizzy waves down her back, a person perfectly suited to be tormented or ignored. I wonder what must it have been like for her, trying so desperately to fit in, taking up a job so she could buy clothes at the Gap, sitting at the same table week after week with the “cool” girls, who alternately ignored and abused her, trying out for the field hockey team and the drama team, only to be cut from both. She would be at the end of her rope, no one to talk to, even her teachers giving her a wide berth.

I wonder what it must have been like for her to watch Jesus go down that high school hallway, surrounded by crowds of friends that she would never have, hearing the gossip about them as they pass by, “He won the state championship on Saturday, I hear he’s going to USC to be their starting quarterback, did you hear he got a 1580 on his SAT’s?” And perhaps, in that one moment, she thinks, “If I could just touch him, if he could just speak to me, just look, no, just even glance at me, then maybe I could be healed. Maybe I could find friends to spend time with, to share secrets with, to laugh with, maybe I wouldn’t be teased and tormented every time I went down the hallway, maybe, just maybe, all of this could stop; I could be human again, part of the community again, just a person, again.”

And so she dives into the crowd, squirming past person after person, as the triumphal procession marches down the hallway to Jesus’ next class, gathering steam, people, energy, and excitement. Students stop opening their lockers and join in the crowd, just to see what’s up. Teachers, chatting to other teachers outside the doors to their rooms, stop and stare. Everyone looks at the local town hero, going in triumph, crushed by the mass of people, the mass of popularity, heading to his next class.

And finally, she comes behind him, and he’s just in reach. She stretches out her hand and her finger lightly brushes the back of his shirt. Time stops. Suddenly, in painful clarity, she notices that Jesus has stopped walking, the crowd has paused as well, and he’s looking around, saying to one of his friends, “Who just touched me?”

His friends laugh, punch him on the shoulder, “Good one Jesus! You’re in the middle of a parade! Every popular guy, hot girl, and famous jock in this hallway is around you right now!”

But Jesus remains unconvinced, his eyes scan the crowd. Suddenly, she realizes that the faces in the throng are fixated upon her. She hears voices saying, “What is she doing here? She doesn’t belong here. She’s such a loser, and oh my gosh, she’s almost touching me! Get away! Get her out! Send her back to wherever she belongs!” In despair, she falls to her knees, oblivious to the pain as she hits the hard tiled floor.

“I did it, Jesus,” she says. “I touched you. I’m nobody in this school. I thought maybe, just one glance, just one touch, and I could be human again. I could have friends again!”

The crowd jeers and tenses itself for the explosive sarcastic comment, the push, the disdainful roll of the eyes that will send this woman back to where she belongs.

But it never comes.

Instead, Jesus bends down, kneeling with this girl, who is quaking in terror, and kisses her lightly on the cheek. “Go and live in peace, my dear and beloved friend,” he says, “And be human again.” With that, he stands, and moves off down the corridor, leaving her kneeling in his wake.

A Record Setting Two Blog Posts in Two Weeks

2007-01-04T12:46:00.000-08:00

If anyone's still reading, I'm going to try to make an effort to post at least once every week. Depending on how I'm feeling, it may be a journal entry, a reflection, or perhaps a few links. This week, as I try to dig out from piles of work leftover from last semester, a few links (which have no overarching context or theme) that I found interesting this past week. Enjoy! (or not!) And, if you feel really daring, leave some feedback on the blog! (I got the idea from Jordan Cooper, who puts up links like this on his blog a couple times a week.)

Christians hanging out with the type of people that Jesus did.

A poignant, entertaining, and insightful blog by a cook at a homeless shelter in Canada.

A nice article on Barack Obama- one of the most intriguing politicians in American today.

Why Methodists don't immerse.

2006-12-25T18:16:00.000-08:00

The semester is finally over! As you all have undoubtedly noticed, my blog died yet another untimely death during the past semester, a condition which, I hope (as I do every time I post) to remedy. So briefly, here is a summary of this past semester-

My supervised ministry (10-15 hours of work at church every week in addition to a 2.5 hour class weekly at the seminary) went extremely well. I’m working at Monroe Community Church (a new church start) and Trinity United Methodist (the parent church) about an hour south of Drew. It’s been a wonderful semester; the people are fantastic, I’ve connected well with the congregation, my supervising pastor is fantastic (if a bit crazy).

The rest of the semester, quite frankly, was a train wreck. I have CFIDS (Chronic Fatigue Immune Dysfunction Syndrome), which had been in remission about five years. I had a major relapse last semester, but was hopeful that I would recover over the summer before this fall semester. Unfortunately, this was not the case, and I ended up missing a lot of class time. Thankfully, my professors are very understanding, and I’m carrying most of my coursework into January. (Our spring semester doesn’t start until February).

Finally, for those of you who are wondering, Melissa and I finally have an official date for our wedding- Saturday, August 18th, 2007. Hopefully, we’ll have invitations out by the end of this January, but make sure to put the date in your calendars!

Kiva.org

2006-09-25T14:47:00.000-07:00

Hello Everyone!
Just wanted to give you all a heads up on w kiva.org, which is a microfinance organization. Microfinance providese small loans to people and small businesses, generally in third world countries, so that they can build a better life for themselves.
This site will alow you to donate to an businesses or people who areproperly vetted by a microfinance institution)in amounts as small as $25, which will be paid back to you over 6-12 months. Once the loan is repaid, you can either withdraw your money, or you can put it towards another business or person. Check them out at kiva.org

P.S. Thanks to Matt for e-mailing me about this site!

Up and Down- Drew Edition

2006-09-20T13:52:00.000-07:00

Hello Everyone!

I just wanted to make a quick post with what’s up and what’s down from my first two weeks of class.

Up

Supervised Ministry (the church)- My church is wonderful, the people are welcoming, my pastor is delightfully crazy, and I’m really excited about what I will learn and the ministry I’ll be doing.
United Methodist History- Taught by the professor who taught my parents United Methodist history nearly three decades, who is apparently as delightful, passionate, engaging (and slightly profane) as he was when my parents had him.
My Fiancée- Who is always way up in my book ( And, to make things better, she threw me a surprise birthday party!
EDIT Drew Hierarchy- For funding myself, Melissa, and two friends (Farrah and Matt) to go to the Northeast Jurisdiction Leadership Training Event.

Down

Supervised Ministry (the class)- I was devoured by a six credit class in three credit clothing and spent a lot of time at the first class typing into my notes (as we were told how important self-care was), “I will not jump out the window, I will not jump out the windowl….” Believe it or not Drew, there are people who use the number of credit hours to determine how much work they’ll have to do, and have to drop other classes if the workload proves to be too much. (e.g. me)
Supervised Ministry (the Pastor’s Orientation)- Held on Monday, September 11th, which is not only many pastor’s Sabbath because it’s a Monday, but is also a day when most pastors now have duties leading worship services, etc. However, after forcing pastors to break Sabbath and forcing others to probably work a twelve hour day, we did hear another nice lecture on self care; how considerate of them!

A Run of the Mill Blog Post

2006-09-10T19:17:00.000-07:00

Just wanted to give everyone a quick update on the past few weeks. Two weeks ago I was coordinating Orientation for about 75 eager incoming first years- it went extremely well, although it was a lot of work, and I am still catching up on lost sleep!

Last week was the first of classes. For all of you who are curious, I am taking Systematic Theology (which looks to be fun and stimulating), Supervised Ministry (which is a six credit course masquerading as a three credit course, a fact that might have been helpful to tell us BEFORE we enrolled), Preaching (the jury’s out on this one), and United Methodist History (taught by the delightful Dr. Kenneth Rowe, who taught my parents United Methodist history when they were at Drew).

In other news, I had my first Sunday at my supervised ministry, which is a multi site church: one site (Trinity UMC) is a small church, much like what you’d find all across New England, and the other (Monroe Community Church) is a new church start. So far so good- I managed to successfully read scripture and be social without any serious mistakes J

That’s it for now; I’m beginning to realize that I can’t simply wait to post when I have a good idea and/or time to develop a really insightful post…so, for all of you disappointed readers, brilliance will have to wait for another time, and in lieu, you just have this simple update.

P.S. In case you were wondering, yes, I did have this on my to-do list, and yes my brother did harass me about posting when we talked tonight.

Whitewashed Churches

2006-08-06T09:06:00.000-07:00

“Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you are like whitewashed tombs, which on the outside look beautiful, but inside they are full of the bones of the dead and of all kinds of filth.” – Matthew 23: 27

I visited a local UMC church this morning for worship. Because my dress clothes are in the laundry, I went in a clean pair of jeans and a black polo.

When I entered the church, I looked around the congregation, and immediately felt out of place. I nearly turned around and left, even as the committed churchgoer and theologian-in-formation drove me forward, reminding me that even if they cared how I was dressed, God didn’t. My eyes found their way to the back of the sanctuary, to the one lone aberration in the scene: a teenager, with long hair that drooped over his face, a black t-shirt, a sweatshirt, and black jeans, sitting alone, in the very back corner.

If I, the lifelong United Methodist, felt out of place, then what did this scene say to him? Would he know that God loved him even though he was dressed differently? Would he realize that Christians weren’t simply a group of whitewashed, polished people, that sat neatly in rows on a Sunday morning?

As the service progressed, I began thinking about all the little ways this church (and indeed, most UMC churches) put up walls. There were no signs to show people where to park, only a brief welcome, no explanation of what happened and why, and no invitation to partake after the Communion liturgy.

I began to wonder, if this is what the church is like, all across America, then who are we truly serving? If we all feel the need to get dressed up to the nines on Sunday morning, even at the cost of excluding those who don’t have it all together or perhaps simply can’t buy the dress clothes, what are we saying about who Christ came to save?

If we simply sit in rows, listen politely, and contentedly participate in the unexplained secret codes of the church (Communion, theological terms, navigating the hymnal and Bible, the Order of worship, even where to park), then are we truly church, or are we simply whitewashed tombs, giving the outward appearance of order and beauty, while all lies dead within?

If we, the insiders, cannot come to our churches, and be real, be brutally honest, be incurably broken, be slovenly, be not-put-together, be true servants, then where can we? If the church no longer serves Christ, then where will Christ go to find true disciples?

The Engagement

2006-08-05T11:03:00.000-07:00

     Well, I suppose this is the best way to commence a “Yes, I’m finally back after a four month absence” post.  Since Melissa did such a wonderful job telling you the general outline of the story in her blog (http://mellanella.blogspot.com/), I’ll fill you in on some of the behind the scenes details.

1) In many ways, I could not have picked a worse weekend to  propose- I was coming off an exhausting week volunteering at a music theater camp at Camp Mechuwana, had to work my regular job as Orientation Coordinator, and then, to make matters busier, play gopher-assistant for a worship conference at Drew at the end of the week. However, since this was the only weekend for the next month where someone important (e.g. family) was not gone, I decided to go for it.

     2) When Saturday morning came, I found out, to my dismay, that the Conference schedule had changed, that the lecturer was doing an question and answer session instead of  a talk, and therefore I had absolutely no clue when the conference was going to end (rather than a reasonable assurance that it would end around noon). Frantic, I dashed out of the conference as soon as I could, ran to my car, parked it next to Melissa’s apartment building, and hurried everything into the apartment.
     I put everything up as quickly as I could, sweat pouring down my face (because, naturally, it was about 90 outside), finally finishing around 11:25. I ran to the bathroom, changed into some nicer clothes, turned on Norah Jones, and settled down to wait. It was only then I realized that I had locked Melissa out and that in order to return her keys, she’d see me dressed up, hence the unsuccessful ploy to prop the door with Melissa’s recycling, which, as you know, worked oh so well

     3) My parents were absolutely shocked to see us when we drove up to Amesbury on Saturday, since we didn’t tell them that we were coming. We walked straight in, garnered some surprised looks, gathered them into the kitchen, and told them the news. They were thrilled, to say the least. Dad got a big smile, Matt was grinning like a Chesire Cat (he knew beforehand), and Mom started crying, jumping up and down, and hugging Melissa and I all at the same time. I don’t expect I’ll see such a sight again (that is, until Matt gets engaged someday).

Why Men Shouldn't Be Ordained

2006-03-30T13:40:00.000-08:00

For your amusement, here’s a post I picked up from “Transforming Seminarian” that’s making it’s way though the blogosphere right now. Enjoy!

“ I'm also quick to note that this is not my list, but something I got from a professor of mine, who didn't write it, either, but got it from the internet. He will actually be using it today, as well, as he teaches a course entitled "Women, the Bible, and the Church" here at the seminary (which my wife is Teaching Assistant for!). This list has made the rounds in a few forms over the past several years. I've taken the liberty of making a couple of small edits from the form in which I got it.Top Ten Reasons Why Men Should Not Be Ordained (think David Letterman)10. A man's place is in the army.9. For men who have children, their duties might distract them from the responsibilities of being a parent.8. Their physical build indicates that men are more suited to tasks such as chopping down trees and wrestling mountain lions. It would be "unnatural" for them to do other forms of work.7. Man was created before woman. It is therefore obvious that man was a prototype. Thus, they represent an experiment, rather than the crowning achievement of creation.6. Men are too emotional to be priests or pastors. This is easily demonstrated by their conduct at football games and watching basketball tournaments.5. Some men are handsome; they will distract women worshipers.4. To be ordained pastor is to nurture the congregation. But this is not a traditional male role. Rather, throughout history, women have been considered to be not only more skilled than men at nurturing, but also more frequently attracted to it. This makes them the obvious choice for ordination.3. Men are overly prone to violence. No really manly man wants to settle disputes by any means other than by fighting about it. Thus, they would be poor role models, as well as being dangerously unstable in positions of leadership.2. Men can still be involved in church activities, even without being ordained. They can sweep paths, repair the church roof, and maybe even lead the singing on Father's Day. By confining themselves to such traditional male roles, they can still be vitally important in the life of the Church.1. In the New Testament account, the person who betrayed Jesus was a man. Thus, his lack of faith and ensuing punishment stands as a symbol of the subordinated position that all men should take.”

An Ode to ShopRite

2006-03-25T15:45:00.000-08:00

An Ode to Shop-Rite

For those looking for those weird, utterly irrelevant details that fill out the picture of the life of a poor Drew seminary student, here you go.

I love Shop-Rite.

To explain: I have been shopping in the high warehouse ceilinged, wide aisled, beautifully antiseptic grocery store commonly called Shop and Stop, contentedly wasting my money paying $4.50/lb for chicken and hamburger and dealing with their mystery bread (the bread isn’t a mystery, but finding the prices is.)

Then I discovered Shop Rite, the low ceilinged, narrowed aisled, low priced claustrophic’s nightmare and a miser’s dream. I probably saved 20% on my groceries today. I feel like Christmas has come again.

Thank you God for bestowing upon us Shop-Rite, your special gift to poor seminary students across New Jersey!

What I'm Doing For Lent

2006-03-16T09:01:00.000-08:00

This Lent I’ve been spending time with the mystics. Currently I’m reading St. John the Cross, a 16th century Carmelite Monk. I attempted to read him several years ago and he made absolutely no sense. I understood his yearning for union with God, but his writing about “the dark night of the soul” and his statement that “faith is a ray of pure darkness to the soul” were incomprehensible . Now a few years later and several steps farther on my faith journey, he’s making perfect sense.
With the caveat that much of his writing is hard to understand before you’ve personally experienced what he’s writing about, I thought I’d share with you one of my reflections coming out of his statement “The excessive light of faith is darkness because a bright light will suppress a dimmer light”.
Enjoy, be enlightened, or scratch your head in puzzlement as suits you best.

We expect that God will come to us like a bright beam of light, will blind us with its brilliance, and will reveal God’s self in its fullness. We expect that God will bring us greater spiritual clarity and comfort. We wait for greater consolation, more spiritual highs, more mountaintop experiences.
However, the purest Divine light brings deeper darkness. As the love of God illumines our life, all the dimmer lights of our life are extinguished or subsumed into the eternal light. Our consolations dry up. Our ecstasies are more subdued. Instead of better understanding God, we draw closer to invisible Divine Mystery that suffuses our lives and is forever beyond our most brilliant conceptions or most vivid sensual experiences.
We come to a place where the Divine Darkness dwells so purely within us that we can only detect it by the way that we are transformed. All our arrogance, egotism, and preconceptions disappear in shadow. All that remains is Divine Darkness.
Often we pray for light, for clarity, for God to show oneself and make God’s presence known. Instead, perhaps we should pray for mystery and night. Perhaps we should pray for God to work secretly and transform us in ways that we cannot detect. Perhaps instead of praying for divine Light to illumine our lives, we should pray for Divine Darkness to enshroud us in the mystery of God’s love.
Dear Lord, let me reach the Darkness and come into the cool night of the Spirit. Subsume all lights that shine within me and enshroud me with the divine light that extinguishes every other desire of my heart. Cloak me with the Divine Mystery and let me live into the night of your Love. Amen.

Derek Webb

2006-03-04T10:01:00.000-08:00

Yes, I know this isn’t a new post with any real merit, but after yet another plane delay on the way back from the WCC a couple weeks ago (and a wonderful four hours of sleep in the Sao Paulo Holiday Inn, which was populated by hundreds of happy Brazilian Walmart execs), I’ve been incredibly busy catching up with schoolwork and utterly exhausted from the trip.
At any rate, a quick music recommendation for people who are looking for good Christian music without the trite, paper thin, theologically objectionable lyrics. Try out Derek Webb, who’s touring with Jars of Clay (my absolute favorite band) right now. This is a particularly excellent song off his latest album.

Rich Young Ruler

(vs. 1)
poverty is so hard to see
when it’s only on your tv and twenty miles across town
where we’re all living so good
that we moved out of Jesus’ neighborhood
where he’s hungry and not feeling so good
from going through our trash
he says, more than just your cash and coin
i want your time, i want your voice
i want the things you just can’t give me

(vs. 2)
so what must we do
here in the west we want to follow you
we speak the language and we keep all the rules
even a few we made up
come on and follow me
but sell your house, sell your SUV
sell your stocks, sell your security
and give it to the poor
what is this, hey what’s the deal
i don’t sleep around and i don’t steal
i want the things you just can’t give me

(bridge)
because what you do to the least of these
my brother’s, you have done it to me
because i want the things you just can’t give me

WCC- February 17-18

2006-02-19T07:27:00.000-08:00

Saturday-Sunday afternoon, February 18-19th, 2006

Sight of the Day- A little Methodist church about five blocks from my hotel, busting at the seams with people from every part of the world

Weather- Sunny, humid, in the mid 90’s

Price for Lunch- I will pay something today (probably 3.00 or less), but yesterday my school took us out to a fabulous Brazilian/Italian restaurant for free

Price for Dinner- Nothing…yes, that’s right, I will spend about 3.00 on food for two days

- New Insights: Latin Pentecostals (who led evening prayer yesterday and don’t belong to the WCC) sknow how to worship with passion. Quite frankly, they showed all the rest of us staid mainline denominations up in terms of congregational participation and enthuasiasm. Maybe this points to one of the reasons why the charismatic church is exploding worldwide, while mainline denominations wither and die.

Portuguese Word of the Day-“Deus, em tua graca, transforma o mundo”- “God, in your grace, transform the world”: This was the theme for the WCC assembly

Best Experience of the Weekend- Singing praise songs loudly and enthusiastically with a room of rather charismatic Methodists from around the world during Sunday morning worship.

Amount of Sleep Last Night- 8.5 hours

WCC- February 16th

2006-02-17T16:32:00.000-08:00

Thursday, February 16th, 2006

Sight of the Day- No particularly interesting sights- but tomorrow I’ll see the President of Brazil and the Archbishop of Canterbury!

Temperature- Mid 80’s with some rain and a lot of humidity

Price for Lunch- $3.20 American (for two sandwiches and soda)

Price for Dinner- $4.75 American

Cool Conversation(s) of the Day- Bartholomew, a Benedictine monk from Belgium and a professional religious reporter…Soren, a classical organist from Denmark who’s interested in global music….and a youth steward from Vancouver, Canada, on the bus back to the hotel

- New Insights: I’m beginning to think that my Christianity has been incomplete because I haven’t had the opportunity to build relationships from Christians in other contexts, especially internationally. If you never have had a chance to interact from Christians around the world, I can’t recommend it strongly enough. In America we are far too narrow minded and provincial….there’s a rich wealth of Christian wisdom in our world that we are utterly unaware of.

Portuguese Word of the Day- Sanitarios- Bathroom (One of the most important words in Portuguese)

Amount of Sleep Last Night- 9.5 hours (a record for this trip by a long shot)

Quick Quiz- Which even today do you think will be most likely to make my mother gasp in horror and worry?

A) Nearly getting crushed in a crowd getting onto a bus on Tuesday

B) Wandering alone in downtown Porto Alegro in search of food (okay, so just a block, but that’s okay)

C) The sound of a broken bottle and a cop pulling out a shotgun on the driver of the car next to us while someone in our bus tells us to “get down”

WCC- February 17th

2006-02-16T16:40:00.000-08:00

Friday, February 17th, 2006

Sight of the Day- The President of Brazil (on a screen), a man dressed in a dress shirt, tie, and lovely black skirt, and the Rowan, the Archbishop of Canterbury

Weather- Somewhat cloudy in the mid 80’s

Price for Lunch- $1.80 American (for a nice sized sandwich…my budget loves these prices!)

Price for Dinner- $1.90 American (for two homemade stuffed sandwiches)

Cool Conversation(s) of the Day- Kerry, the youth steward who I mentioned but didn’t name yesterday

- New Insights: It is utterly unbelievable how you can plan for seven years, bring in the top people in the western world in global music, and still have mediocre performance based worship.

Portuguese Word of the Day-A qui- Here, a lever- to go (these last two terms are extremely important when ordering in Brazilian restaurants)

Best Advertisement of the Day: A cigarette packet with a government warning that smoking causes….(hint, it’s a medical condition that is not life threatening but it advertised about extensively in the United States)

Amount of Sleep Last Night- 6.5 hours (this is what happens when you stay up later talking economics, politics, and theology with your roommate)

Most Unique and Enjoyable Experience- Participating in the choir and getting taught a song by a Coptic Christian Bishop

WCC- February 15th

2006-02-15T13:39:00.000-08:00

Wednesday, February 15th, 2006

Sight of the Day- A male delegate from Fijii in a polo shirt and lovely colorful skirt.

Temperature- Mid 80’s with a cool breeze

Price for Lunch- $5 American (a buffet)

Price for Dinner- $5 American

Cool Conversation of the Day- One Presbyterian New Testament Professor from Germany on the bus this morning.

New Insights: Ecumenism is not about unity in dogma, but about asking “what do we see together?” rather than “What is right and what is wrong?”- From the workshop entitled “Recentering the Ecumenical movement in Spirituality”

Also, in case you were taking the right of women to be ordained ministers
for granted, understand that in most of the world, women are prohibited, either explicitly or implicitly, from ordained parish ministry. This isn’t true just in regions of the world like Asia, South America, or Africa, but is largely true in Europe as well.

Portuguese Word of the Day- Aqua, which means water.

Great Quote from His Holiness Aram I, Orthodox Patriarch of Lebanon and Moderator of the World Council of Churches

“I consider the role of youth as being essentially an agent of transformation. We must help the youth to move from the fringes of our churches to the heart of the churches’ life and witness, including the decision-making processes. I cannot imagine a church without youth. They ensure the church’s vitality and renewal. Youth should be actors, not merely listeners; they should be leaders, not merely followers.”

WCC- February 14th

2006-02-14T16:32:00.000-08:00

Tuesday, February 14, 2006

Sight of the Day- A black garbed Orthodox Patriarch using his Palm Pilot.

Temperature- Mid 80’s with a cool breeze

Price for Lunch- $1.60 American (for a sandwich and soft drink)

Price for Dinner- $10 American (ridiculously overpriced for Brazil, will probably be the most expensive meal I have here)

Cool Conversations of the Day- One with a Presbyterian pastor from Switzerland and another from a 19 or so year old theo student from Germany (who was also a PK!)

Quick Portuguese- “Bueno Dies” hello and “Obrigado”- Thank you

New Insight- You can experience boring worship no matter how big and well organized your gathering is (and yes, evening prayer was quite tedious today). But at least I got to sit behind two monks from Taize….

The Trip to Brazil (Unabridged)

2006-02-14T15:45:00.000-08:00

Note: This was written over two days, the first half written while I was on the plane flight to Brasilia.

What did you get when combine two New York Port Authority cops, one New York Port Authority chief, two police investigators, one irate Homeland Security supervisor, two Homeland Security workers, two feet of snow, five hours on the tarmac, one refueling stop, two planes, one inedible 1:30 AM dinner, and five hours of sleep?
Answer: My first day traveling to Brazil, of course.

Since I’ve finally woken up, the batteries of my CD player have run out, and I have an hour to burn before we get to Sao Paulo (well, I think we’re ending up in Sao Paulo, but currently that’s up for debate), I’ll give you the details..

It seems quite ironic that the most exciting and eventful day of my entire trip could quite possibly have come before I got to Brazil. We ended up flying out from JFK airport on the day that New Jersey finally decided to get serious about winter, and a northeaster swept in and deposited about two feet of snow in about a twelve hour period.
The weather and driving was certainly not good- ever major airport in the Washington D.C./Newark/New York area was closed except for JFK. I had unsuccessfully tried to get to church in the morning, only to give up after getting stuck three times in about half a mile. On the whole, I think I set an all time record by getting about two miles to the gallon throughout the course of the morning. Oh well, I guess today was not the day to save the ozone.

I got on the busy and my group arrived at JFK without incident and got our luggage, and checked in.

Everything was going quite smoothly. I should have been suspicious.

Being the industrious person I am, I decided to go through the security checkpoint and get myself situated before finding something to eat, and this is where things started getting interesting.

No, unlike previous trips, I was not stopped, questioned, searched. I did not have my luggage searched or have homeland security employees looking suspiciously at me as a would-be terrorist. Instead, I put my baggage through the scanner- laptop, laptop case, duffel bag, and coat and wallet together.

When I get to the other side of the checkpoint, out comes my laptop, my laptop case, and my duffel bag. I put my shoes back on, repack my laptop, grab my duffel bag, and right around the time I begin to worry about my last bin, it comes through. I put on my coat, gather my luggage, and begin walk away, when I pat my back pocket and realize that my wallet isn’t there. I return and talk to the Homeland Security supervisor, who, after asking me four times whether I stuck the wallet in my coat, my duffel, my laptop case, other jeans pockets, etc. etc. etc. (although how my wallet could have possibly made it into my close laptop case or duffel is beyond me), begins to search.

I’m starting to get worried and annoyed. He obviously isn’t happy that he has to search for me and I’m obviously unhappy that in the five or so seconds that I took my eyes of the bin to walk through the security checkpoint, that my wallet disappeared. After about 15 minutes of searching, the wallet turns up- on the other side of the security checkpoint and in a separate bin.

The supervisor breathes a sigh of relief, hands me the wallet, and asks me to check to see if anything is missing. I open my wallet- credit cards, ID are all intact. Phew. That’s when I find out that all my money for food and expenses (where ATM machines and credit cards are not as prevalent) has disappeared.

I again return to the supervisor, who is absolutely thrilled (and a wee bit skeptical) to hear that my money is gone. He shrugs his shoulders and tells me that I can go to the pay phone, call the Port Authority. I thank him for his time and he responds with an eye roll.

Irate and worried, I walk over to the waiting area, deposit my remaining luggage with friends, borrow some change (since of course I am now flat broke), and, after three tries, manage to get the Port Authority, which decides to send a police officer to the scene.

All right, take a deep breath, relax, rest your eyes, go surf your favorite web site for a few minutes, get a glass of water- if you’ve made it this far, you deserve a medal. Plus, I want your full attention, because this is when things get interesting.

Don’t worry. Go ahead. My story will still be here when you get back.

The Port Authority police officer comes over and the previously uncooperative “what are you doing complaining about stolen property at my checkpoint” supervisor, who we shall call Ramon (primarily because that’s his name), becomes considerably more polite and friendly.

In contrast to his homeland security counterpart, the police officer is friendly and sympathetic. I answer a barrage of questions, explain in exacting detail what happened, how much money I lost, etc. etc. He writes my name and address and decides that he should call the Chief of Port Authority police in that area, since thefts at security points tend to be taken seriously.

{Okay, quick aside- I just checked the in flight map, and no, we are not landing at our original destination, we are actually landing in Brasilia, which is about an hour by plane from Sao Paulo, I believe. This probably has something with running out of fuel after idling on the tarmac for five hours, but more on that later). (Quick aside to the aside- I was actually correct…we ended up on the tarmac in Brasilia, so we could refuel- which added an extra hour or so to our flight.)

So the police chief comes over, and asks me the same series of questions. He too talks to the supervisor, who, (poor guy), is now looking very stressed and a bit beat down. The police officer who first arrives informs me that this is likely all the can do except file a police report, since it’s unlikely that the investigators will come down unless there have been a series of incidents at this checkpoint.

Sure enough, about fifteen minutes later, the investigators (who yes, look like they came straight from a crime show) and ask me the same series of questions. By now, it’s looking like a metro police convention down there, with two metro police officers (who informs me that this checkpoint has an awful reputation for thefts), one police chief, two police investigators, two TSA homeland security advisors, and a few TSA/Homeland security officers thrown in for good measure.

They finish, I leave, and we finally get on the plane, which rolls on the runway at 7:30 PM, and stays there for five and a quarter hours.

No, that’s not an exaggeration. Five and a quarter hours. With no explanation.

Finally, around 12:45, we lift up off Kennedy’s only operating runway, and are served dinner (which has been sitting in heating units since 7:00PM) and it was easily the worst dinner I have ever eaten, (which, at that point, I didn’t really care about, my last full meal had been 13 hours before, and I would have been satisfied with mud if they had heated it up and given me a spoon).

After the aforesaid refueling stop, (caused by idling on the tarmac for five hours), we arrive in the airport around 1:30PM, having missed our connecting flight by about 3 hours. We end up getting bused to a different airport which puts us on a five o’clock flight to Porto Alegre. We crash in our hotel, eat dinner around 10:30 in the evening, and finally get to sleep.

And that’s it, that’s my story. No, money is not a problem- people have been forcing money upon me, and if I accepted all the Brazilian (and American) twenties that people have been trying to give me, I might be able to turn a tidy profit by the end of trip. That being said, I guess it will be a good spiritual discipline to rely on others for my daily bread.

All right, that’s enough for now. I’ll give you an update on the first day of the assembly later!

Giving

2006-02-10T19:59:00.000-08:00

I thought I’d share a quick excerpt from my Bishop’s latest conference wide e-mail where he reflects upon his trip in December to Nigeria. In times when money gets tight for us as individuals and communities of faith, this brought me up short. Maybe it will do the same for you:

Some have asked for the text that I read from my Journal. I wrote it during my December visit to Nigeria after visiting our mission hospital in Zing where patients desperately wait, sometimes two or three to a bed, for help....for a doctor....we no longer have one there. Next to the hospital complex is a new, state of the art (for Nigeria) eye hospital....also with no doctor....no funds....only a very dedicated nurse. When there was a doctor there, hundreds would come from as far as Cameroon....there are so many in Africa suffering from eye diseases carried by water and insects....many are blind....and waiting....waiting for help....no doctor....no mission funds.....waiting.   The nurse asked me why the United Methodists in the U.S. could not provide more help....like it used to?

The day before I had been at a wonderful outdoor service of about 8,000 in a remote area where some of the people had walked for days to get there. Most of those who came are very financially poor, but very rich in spirit. When the offering time came, the music started....and then the dancing...the people from each area represented came joyfully processing, singing and dancing, up to the large offering basket....children, old folk, teenagers (who had climbed up into the trees so they could see), mothers with babies wrapped on their fronts....singing and dancing....led by the pastors dressed in their black robes and white stoles that fluttered and billowed like wings of the Spirit...singing and dancing....such joy....such generosity....such faith that if they risked giving their little, God would provide for tomorrow (no 401k plans here....many of the pastors and D.S.'s hadn't been paid for months)....the pastors we re leading...........And then they called on the Bishops!!! Bishop Ntambo (from the Congo where they do this almost always) and Bishop Weaver (from New England where they do this almost never.....I never have figured out how to get my right foot to follow my left foot in dancing....that's why a hundred years ago I did OK at the "twist"....but I didn't think that would work here.) But with God all things are possible.....and when the Spirit says "dance" (and be generous), somehow the Spirit provides.....and Bishop Ntambo and I danced our way to the offering...and the offering baskets and hearts overflowed....the "Lord loves a cheerful giver," (the Greek word used in the New Testament for "cheerful" is "hilarion." The "Lord loves a hilarious giver"....think about your church....your own giving.)

And after experiencing all of this on the day before, the nurse at the hospital that day asked me why the United Methodists in the U.S. could not provide more help??? That night I wrote in my Journal: "What shall I tell them?....that we are too poor with our multiple TV sets and cars...and our Christmas tables laden with more food than many in Nigeria will see in a month. What shall I tell them, who tithe what little they have, when they ask how our mission dollars can be declining if our American United Methodist's are tithing? What shall I tell the Nigerian pastors who lead the way in the offering dance...pastors who have not been paid for months...about our pastors who will not lead in stewardship efforts, or even give "Together for Tomorrow" a good faith effort? What shall I tell them about churches that tell me they cannot pay 100% of their Mission Share, and then show me their new kitchen? What shall I tell them about churches that disagree on this denominational issue or that issue and think they will make a difference by not sending their mission share dollars, when th e only impact they will have is to leave a child without a doctor in Zing? What shall I tell them about the too many Christmas gifts I will buy with my VISA card to honor the Christ who gave it all for the poor....and the poor in spirit like me?

O Lamb of God who takes away the sins of self centeredness, greed, waste, lack of boldness, gluttony, and reluctance to love our neighbors as we love ourselves....have mercy upon us."   What would you tell them?

A Quick Update

2006-02-06T11:57:00.000-08:00

It’s been a couple weeks since I’ve updated, so I thought I’d do a quick hits post to keep people current with my life.

-  I spent the last week of January relaxing, preparing myself for the semester. I visited with my Aunt and Uncle in Philadelphia over the weekend, and had a marvelous time watching their 500 channel (no exaggeration) television, eating great meal after great meal, getting taken out to movies, church, Doug and Buster’s (a huge arcade/restaurant), and generally enjoying their wonderful company.

- Last week was my first week of classes and I’m in for a fairly easy and hopefully stimulating semester. For the record, I’m taking

     1) Greek Exegesis, where we finally get to read and translate actual Biblical texts after spending all of last semester on grammar.

     2) Religion and the Social Process (fondly known by students as Oppression 101), where I’ll get to learn about all the inequities upon which our society is structured and how bad white straight males are. (Just kidding on that last account, our professor (who is a practicing Quaker incidentally) has a wonderfully gentle spirit and is making sure to give people room to struggle and engage with the issues).

     3) The Future of the Ecumenical Movement, in other words, my trip to the World Council of Churches Assembly in Brazil next week, with about 3000 other Christians from across the world and across denominations.

     4) Intro to New Testament, with a professor who’s teaching it for the first time. While I’ve heard great things about her, I’m a bit skeptical about the course, since it’s primarily historocritical in focus (we don’t even start reading the New Testament itself until the third week) and not nearly as challenging as my Intro to the Old Testament course.

     5) Worship in the Emerging Church, with Mark Miller, one of the foremost composers, worship leaders, and musicians in the denomination (he wrote, for instance, the sung communion liturgy in the Faith We Sing). While our first set of classes lacked focus, I’m really looking forward to the opportunity to learn from him and to visit some emergent congregations.

     Hopefully this will sate your appetites for a little while- I’ll try to get one more post before I head off to Brazil on Sunday.

In the Dryness of the Season

2006-01-19T20:25:00.000-08:00

I took a course called “Ministry and the Imagination” this week, which turned out (at least so far) to be a wonderfully worthwhile experience. As part of the writing studio I was taking, we were asked to write new hymn lyrics to a familiar tune. I wrote the following song, which was very well received by the group, and so I thought I’d share it. I set it to the tune called “Beach Spring”, which most of you would be familiar from a hymn like “Come and Find the Quiet Center”.

In the Dryness of the Season
By Benjamin Davis

“Those who drink of the water that I will give them will never be thirsty. The water that I will give will become in them a spring of water gushing up to eternal life."- John 4:14

Verse 1

In the dryness of the season,
When God’s love seems turned away,
When our passion and our vision,
Fade away in desert haze,

In the heat God seeks and molds us,
Cries the tears that soothe our pain,
Comes to lift us when we falter,
So we’ll walk and run again.

Verse 2

God remains our faithful parent,
Will refresh, our souls sustain,
Soaked in water, spirit-cleansing,
Sending down a healing rain.

In God’s love we rest and linger,
Claiming joy that God imparts,
Living water births the Spirit,
Flowing deep within our hearts.

Verse 3

In this place God’s rushing Spirit,
Softly ripples, waits today,
Will we find that stream of water,
Will we love or turn away?

To a world that’s dry and barren,
Filled with hate and parched with need,
Can we find and gently guide it,
To that well, life to receive

Copyrighted January 2006.

My Last Two Months

2006-01-06T20:51:00.000-08:00

     I was utterly amazed to find out how well read my very underwritten blog is. I have been harassed, e-mailed, lectured, and scolded by people across the nation (quite literally) about my entirely too laissez (perhaps we should say lazy)- faire attitude towards updating regularly. To this end, I hereby promise (for about the fourteenth time) that I will start updating regularly, with a regular digest of quotes, amusing episodes, insightful reflections, and heartfelt remembrances, so as to appease my reading masses. Furthermore, if at any point I waver from this goal, I hereby give you all permission to e-mail, call, or blackmail me if necessary.

     With that being said, a lot has happened since my post a couple of months ago. My semester ended, and, so far, very successfully. My grades are better than they’ve been at any point I can remember and I even had some time to relax even during finals weeks, which is quite remarkable. Other than Old Testament final night, in which I got to see the beginnings of what I’m sure was a remarkable sunrise around 4:30 AM after about 14 straight hours of work, it was a fairly easy process.

     Life at Drew is good, although I am coming to a fuller realization of the weaknesses of my community. Most particularly, I came to realize that if I simply trusted the seminary process and did my best, I would be a very well equipped chaplaincy style minister, perfectly suitable for a church in the 1950’s. Seminary education will not give me tools that I need to be transformative- it will not teach me about methods for evaluating congregational health, working with small groups, evangelizing, visioning, running meetings, or encouraging discipleship, even as it gives me an excellent background in academics and in pastoral care.

     Perhaps this points to one of the reasons why our clergy quality is so poor in New England. Not only are many of our pastors burnt out, but their training is literally half a century old. If our clergy are to become effective, I believe that our seminaries will have significantly reform their course of study to emphasize practical parish ministry, group dynamics, spiritual growth, personal self awareness, and congregational dynamics. *steps off soapbox*

     One semester at Drew also makes me realize that liberals can be every bit as intolerant as people of any other ideology. It has disappointed me to watch some of my classmates drop one belief that they blindly held onto (e.g. the historical church has always been the sole correct possessor of the truth) just to blindly pick up another (e.g. the historical church has always been a close-minded parochial oppressor). Furthermore, while the school emphasizes racial and cultural diversity, they ignore and even repress ideological diversity. Professors, students, and even one dean have made the assumption that the school speaks with one monolithic voice on issues such as white privilege, homosexuality, the role of scripture, and social justice. Furthermore, they also often imply that those who disagree with them are close-minded, bigoted, racist, and generally inferior Christians. I am thankful that there are many people, especially in my class, who are far more open-minded and can hopefully change the somewhat bigoted liberal attitude that my school sometimes exhibits over the course of these next few years.

     In other exciting news, I attended the wedding of a college friend, Megan Burd. It was a pleasure to be able to support her and catch up with some old time Colby College friends. It was refreshing to see such an explicitly spiritual and dignified wedding- rather than focusing on pageantry, it focused on the purpose of a Christian wedding- which, in my mind, is for two people to make a covenant between themselves and God in the sight of their entire community. What a beautiful sight!

     All right, that’s enough for now. Enjoy your January and keep in touch!

A Record Two Posts In Two Days!

2005-11-17T18:33:00.000-08:00

I thought I'd share a couple blogs that I have found particularly insightful and well written, especially in comparision with the rest of the blogosphere.

The first is a blog from someone who works as a cook in a homeless shelter. He spends a lot of time detailing his experiences with the homeless and the indigent in his city.

http://mission.squarespace.com/

The second, for you UMC types, is a blog by William Willimon, the Bishop of the North Alabama conference, and one of the foremost preachers in the denomination. He posts about once a week.

http://willimon.blogspot.com/

A Regular Post

2005-11-14T19:12:00.000-08:00

After delaying, procrastinating, ignoring, and outright evading posting on this blog due to a lack of creative energy and ideas, I have finally come to the sad realization that not all my posts are going to be brilliant creative pieces of prose, and my readers (all three of them) are far more interested in the life of Ben than reading the next Great American Essay. So anyway, here’s what will hopefully be the first in a series of non brilliant but (most importantly) regular updates on my life.

Quite honestly, I probably shouldn’t be taking the time to write this right now. After two months of relaxed boredom, school is finally picking up and I’m beginning to feel challenged, stimulated, and even a little bit stressed. Between now and the Wednesday after Thanksgiving Break, I have to:

1) Study for a major Greek test.
2) Write a final draft of my exegesis paper (which is taking the form of a sermon) (8+ pages)
3) Write a 15-18 page term paper for my Church History class.
4) Write a 4-6 page paper on power and marginalization for my Pointless Public Practice of Theology Class.

However, compared to last year around this time, when I was frantically writing my honors thesis, pulling multiple all nighters, and coordinating CrossRoads, this is positively a vacation. I’m now discovering the joys of having a social life after several years of self enforced isolation at school. As a matter of fact, for the first time in several years, I’m able to hang out with friends, expand my social circle, go out on a Friday evening, and generally enjoy myself without the burdens of responsibility. In short, I’m living life as an early twenty-something should be living it.

It’s a very healing experience. I’ve learned this semester that my worth us in no way connected to my grades or my responsibilities. I’m not sure I could have handled going to a more intense school or program this semester. Having this opportunity to rest and relax has given me a chance to start processing the seismic changes in my life overthis past 14 months: my cousin Josh dying, graduating, having my parents move, moving away myself, being “desingled”, and leaving my spiritual home at Green Street. Even though there are days when I’m frustrated with my school’s program, this experience confirms that Drew was the right choice for me.

Let me finish by saying hi to everyone back home. How are you all doing? How are things at Green Street? Feel free to post a comment or send me an e-mail and catch me up!

Interesting Quote of the Week

2005-10-05T14:23:00.000-07:00

On The Way Mainline Churches Evangelize

“We’re polite Christians, we don’t knock on doors and to tell people about Jesus. We leave that to the growing churches”- Bishop Steven Charleston

And On the Relationship Between Social Justice and Evangelization

“How about getting some food in their stomachs so you can get Jesus into their hearts?”- Bishop Steven Charleston

Read. React. Comment.

Hilarious Yet Horrifying

2005-10-01T17:39:00.000-07:00

For your reading pleasure, every week I’m going to post a link to a story that I found hilarious and horrifying at the same time. Read, laugh, and rant. After all, that’s what the comments section is for.

Our government apparently thinks that animals and women are pretty much the same thing.

My First-Month-At-Drew ABC’s

2005-09-26T14:13:00.000-07:00

A is for my Apologies for not posting more frequently!
B is for letting Melissa and her housemates Borrow my television and in turn let me Borrow their cable on Sunday afternoons for Patriots games.
C is for Cliff Ives and Grace Bartlett, the new wonderful interim pastors at my home church.
D is for Dana Fewell, the brilliant professor of my Intro to Old Testament Class, who has inspired, challenged, and stimulated me more than any other professor during the first month at Drew.
E is for all the wonderful E-mails I’ve received from people back home.
F is for Farrah Willis, Natalie Finch, Sara Wastella, Matt Goode, Matt Goad, Beth Underwood, Sister Shane, Susan, and all the other wonderful classmates I have met so far.
G is for Grace Episcopal Church, the church that I plan to attend for the next year.
H is for my Homes in Amesbury, MA and in Augusta, ME, both of which I miss greatly.
I is for the Incompetent Drew administration, which seems to find new creative ways to make its students lives unnecessarily annoying every day.
J is for Jonah, the great satiric book of the Bible, featuring a suicidal, unenthusiastic, yet wildly successful runaway prophet.
K is for Koine Greek (common Greek), which is the Greek used in the New Testament. This is the equivalent of common American speech. So, when we think Paul is “sending greetings”, what he’s really saying is “Yo! Waz’ up dog?”
L is for Melissa’s Lame suggestion for this letter, namely “L is for how much I like seminary!”
M is for Melissa Yosua, my best friend, significant other, and fellow seminarian, who has made my experience so much more fulfilling then it would have been otherwise
N is for New Jersey, the state where everyone needs to return to driver’s ed.
O is for Ocean Grove, where I had a wonderful retreat after the first week of school.
P is for all the Pressing responsibilities that I no longer have!
Q is for all the Quiet times I’ve been able to find in the midst of my easier-than-normal schedule.
R is for the blessing of Rest, which this workaholic-in-recovery if finally finding.
S is for Professor Seesengood, my witty New Testament Greek teacher.
T is for the Two weeks between now and when I get to return home (both of them!).
U is for the Ups and downs of the first month of school as I’ve tried to find my feet and get into a routine.
V is for Verizon, which has yet to turn on the internet in my house.
W is for the quiet ten minutes it takes me to Walk to campus from my house.
X is for how eXtremely contrived this list is becoming as I’m running out of letters.
Y is for Yung-Tek Bae, my Korean housemate and Brother in Christ, who is a wonderful seminarian and will be a wonderful minister of the Gospel.
Z is for the Zillion and a half vocabulary words that I have to memorize for Greek this week.

My Adventures at Drew Begin (Part Two)

2005-09-13T15:51:00.001-07:00

Simple hospitality can make a world of difference. My second day at Drew, I met one of my Korean housemates, Yun-Tek Bae. He is a first year student from Korea who is in the United States for the first time, and, if that wasn’t enough, is speaking English outside of a classroom for the first time as well.

I was making dinner that night, and asked him to join me. We talked for nearly two and half hours, discussing our lives, politics, our cultures, and the ministry, despite the language barrier. It was an absolutely magical experience.

He told me how blessed he felt to have made a friend so quickly, but I’m certain that he couldn’t have felt as blessed as I did. For me, that conversation was the most spiritual experience I’ve had so far at Drew.

It’s easy to forgot how showing hospitality transforms and blesses us. When we think of service, often we associate it with drudgery, lack of recognition, self sacrifice, and perhaps burnout. However, when we truly serve for Christ’s sake, rather than for our own satisfaction, we are transformed.

Please think about this every Sunday morning when you’re comfortably sitting in church. Every time you see a visitor, think about the tremendous courage it takes to go to any new community of faith. The visitors you see are worshipping with people they don’t know (but who obviously know and love each other), are singing unfamiliar songs, and are learning an uncomfortable set of rituals. They are literally foreigners in a foreign land.

It is easy to assume (especially if you’re from Green Street), that someone else will come up to them, say hi, and make them feel welcome. However, if we are serious about showing hospitality, then hospitality can never be something that other people do for us. Take a moment to put yourself in their shoes. Say hi, and find out their story. Don’t just have a conversation, establish a friendship. Show them around the church, introduce them to other people, make them feel included in the community. After all, when you minister to the stranger, you are ministering to Christ in your midst.

My Adventures at Drew Begin (Part One)

2005-09-13T08:01:00.000-07:00

For all (one) of you who have been eagerly awaiting my first post on my life at Drew, please accept my somewhat sincere apologies- it’s busy being a seminary student! Now that I can finally get into a routine, I’ll try to catch up in a few installments over the next couple days.

On the whole, my first week at Drew went the way that a standard incoming seminarian’s should: I moved into my room in the house that I’m sharing with four other people, met a couple of my housemates, and waited (patiently and sometimes not so patiently) for orientation to start.

When moving to a new place, simple thoughtfulness or thoughtlessness can make a world of difference. I’ll start with one negative example.

Melissa, my significant other, (and yes, I prefer that term to girlfriend, which sounds so fifteen to me, (with my apologies to all the fifteen year olds reading this blog)), had an awful time moving into Drew. Housing couldn’t find her a place to stay, and after finding her a room about two weeks later than they said they would, didn’t bother to send out housing forms and so gave her housing information only a week and a half before she was supposed to move in.

When she finally arrived, she found out that her apartment was filthy. Her dresser was missing a drawer (she only received a new one yesterday, after her third call to the Physical Plant Department), one room didn’t have a bed, and the entire place was unswept. The small kitchen was disgusting (it took me an hour and a half to clean five cupboards because of all the grime), the oven was unusable, and there was only one overhead light in the entire space, which meant that her room and the common area became unusably dark by 7:00PM.

This made her first few days at Drew unbearably stressful, as she had to worry about cleaning her apartment, harassing housing about sending furniture, trying to find lights for her room, moving in her belongings, starting orientation, and getting used to the foreign land of New Jersey.

I don’t believe that this lack of hospitality was intentional. However, it implies that Drew didn’t care enough about their students to make sure that their arrivals at Drew were as smooth as possible…(to be continued tomorrow)

SpiritSong Surprises

2005-08-02T09:28:00.000-07:00

Editors Note: I actually wrote this post on July 7^th, after the first day of SpiritSong, a Christian music festival that I went to with my Aunt, Uncle, cousin, and family. I didn’t post it until now due to vacation, lack of Internet access, and, of course, general laziness.)

I have a confession to make.

While I am generally an open minded person, Fundamentalist Christians are not exactly on my A list, (unless of course, unless it’s A as it refers to the posterior of a four legged horse like mammal.) If you ever feel the twisted need to raise my blood pressure or give me an ulcer, simply find a good story about the Christian Right preaching pompously on homosexuality while aggressively ignoring the pervasive heterosexual immorality of our culture, working to raise taxes on the poor (or lower them for the rich), or blandly informing people that senseless personal tragedies (like the death of a child) are part "of God’s plan".

One quick caveat: when I say "fundamentalist" Christian, I do not mean "Conservative" Christian. There are many God-filled people who are on the right side of the fence who are utterly wonderful people, amazing Christians, and who walk very closely with Christ. These people do not fall anywhere in the above critique.)

As I visited SpiritSong this weekend, I was prepared (as I do when I listen to Christian radio), to tune in for the music and mute the message.

My expectations for these A-list Christians were utterly shattered.

Newsboys, a group that I often find theologically repugnant, put on a Spirit-filled show. Their lead singer is a gifted worship leader, and after about a five-song opening set, he gave a sermon of sorts.

I certainly didn’t agree with a great deal of what he said, but he did say a few things that surprised me and made me shoot surprised "Ican’tbelievethatHEjustsaidTHAT" glances at my brother.

He said, "I accepted Jesus, I read God’s word, but I didn’t find the peace that transformed my life. It’s a journey and I’m not there yet. You have to live it and find people a community to support you in order to transform your life."

"To often, we say that we believe in Jesus, go down to the altar, and then continue our lives as if nothing had happened. This is exactly what the enemy of our souls wants us to do; he wants Christians to act like they’ve never been changed. Why is it that we go from city to city, thousands of people accept Christ, and there’s no transformation in that city…You cannot be a Christian by wearing a T-shirt, listening to Christian music, going down front, or going to Christian concerts, Christianity is about community."

"The world doesn’t need more teachers. It needs more fathers for those who don’t have fathers, more mothers for those who don’t have mothers, more brothers and more sisters. We need to love."

There is hope for the church, because if I find myself Amening the lead singer of Newsboys, then anything can happen. I was actually feeling fairly glowing and ecumenical as he prayed to end his sermon

Then they began their next song (to huge audience applause).

Breakfast in Hell.

If the toast is burning,
And the milking is churning,
Captain Crunch is waving farewell.
If the Big One finds you,
Let this song remind you,
That they don’t serve breakfast in Hell.

Oh well. I guess the church, as John Wesley put it, is still journeying "on to perfection".

The Ugly Face of Christ

2005-07-02T12:14:00.000-07:00

I'm sitting in my room, watching the Live8 concerts on VH1. For those who don't know, Live8 is a series of concerts happening across the world over the course of 24 hours to raise awareness for the desperate plight of Africans, especially in regards to poverty and AIDS.. Will Smith, U2, Pink Floyd, Green Day, Alica Keys, Paul McCartney, and other big name artists are participating just as the G8 conference, (which incidentally, my Bishop, Peter Weaver, is attending) begins on Wednesday, where some of the richest and most powerful countries in the world will discuss how they should aid or not aid Africa this coming year.

VH1 and MTV has interviewed artists performing in London and Philadelphia talk about the cause. Their spirit is absolutely inspiring. They talk about how it is wrong that people will live or die based upon where they are born. They speak in outrage about how during the Live8 concerts, 30,000 African will die from lack of the basics of life and drugs for AIDS that we take for granted in the United States. These celebrities with passion about how it is the duty of the fortunate to help the unfortunate, even sometimes using Christian language, such as talking about “our brothers and sisters in Africa.”

The Live 8 concerts depress me.

They contrast painfully with the general apathy or even hostilty from Christians in America towards those who are less fortunate. While concerned non- religious people are preaching about justice just as Jesus would, Christians in America concentrate on supporting tax cuts for the rich, picketing the funeral of gay soldiers with signs like “God hates fags” and “This fag is burning in hell”, and making it impossible for those who have nothing because of medical costs not covered by our horribly insufficient health system to declare bankruptcy and start over.

I agree with most fundamentalist Christians that America is in the midst of a serious moral decline. However, I feel that Christians have often been the cause of this moral decline. We reframed religion as a consumer product, implying God exists solely to serve us and by preaching that you can be a Christian and still follow “everyone for themselves”, law of the jungle mentality. By espousing hate towards the marginalized and consciously choosing to oppress the poor, Christians simply promote our culture’s conviction that the self is the ultimate end of life, and that pleasing the self, regardless of the cost to others, is a worthy way to live.

It is not surprising that voices for justice and morality now come from outside the Church more often than from within it. It is now movie stars, athletes, and musicians who are trying to awaken a sense of selflessness and charity in our nation, in direct opposition to the most prominent and powerful Christian leaders and denominations.

In the midst of this decline, many people in my generation realize that America’s values are hollow and meaningless. Many grow cynical, become dissatisfied, and are starting to look for an antidote to this cultural poison. In their search, many will look for signs of something bigger themselves: the face of God, even the face of Christ. They will look at Christians to see if they can see God within them, if there is anything true in the miracle of Jesus Christ.

We are the face of Christ to the world.

Right now that face is harsh, unforgiving, judgmental, and self centered.

And sadly, irrelevant.

Annual Conference

2005-06-19T18:23:00.000-07:00

I thought I would make a brief post about Annual Conference. For all those who don’t know, Annual Conference is the annual meeting of all United Methodists in a particular geographic area (e.g. New England) to spend time worship, conferencing, meeting, gossiping (and slandering from time to time), and making decisions together. So, in true I-can’t-write-a-complete-paragraph blogger form, are the highlights.

I confess that I did not approach the Annual Conference in a Spirit filled way. I overanalyzed the worship services, mocked the people I perceived as tedious or arrogant, and let my wish to participate in the peanut gallery interfere with a sense of where the Holy Spirit might be leading us.

Oh well, there’s always next year to improve. Now, on to the highlights!

Highlights I Regret I Missed

-John Blackadar, current conference secretary, future District Superintendent, singing "Spitball Me Lord Over the Homeplate of Life" after the Board of Ordained Ministry Meeting.

- The candy fueled late night D.S. and future D.S. party on Wednesday night. (It’s nice to know that my future supervisors can have a good time!)

Highlights I Wished I Missed

- The 40 MINUTE debate on a two and a half line resolutaion on whether we give our names and addresses so a reputable insurance company can send us information about the possibility of getting long term healthcare. (Incidentally, after a heated debate, the motion passed about 1100 to 3.)

- The absentminded, confused, and dyxlexic PowerPoint operator of the first two days of Conference, who forgot that clicking to the next slide is not an optional activity, that most hymns have more than one verse, and no, amazingly enough, we don’t know the other five verses of the hymn from memory.

- The long youth ministry session where everyone (mostly the old people) felt compelled to TALK about how much they loved youth, presumably to compensate for their lack of action when they return to their local churches.

- The spiritual cliff I dropped off every time they followed up Bishop Weaver’s inspired sermons with yet another aggresively unsingable mediocre song

Highlights I’m Glad I Missed

- Ordained clergy publicly questioning our Bishops’ intergirty on this issue of homosexuality during his first session with the clergy on Wednesday. Welcome to New England Bishop!

Highlights I’m Glad I Didn’t Miss

- Talking with Drew Professor Chris Boessel about community

- Bishop Weaver’s spirit filled inspired sermons. He is officially my new hero.

- The utterly spontaneous times of fellowship with members of the Green Street delegation and others

My Actual Introductory Post

2005-06-07T17:35:00.000-07:00

Hello,
I hate mass e-mails and I hate forwards. Somehow, they seem so untidy, cluttering up our inboxes, ending up in the rubbish or junk files, taking up space and memory. So, instead of sending out mass e-mails about my adventures in seminary and occasional rantings, I'll just take some space up on the vast world wide web instead.
If you're reading this, then you know who I am and at least something about me. I'm giving into this online blogging craze because this seems to be the most logical way to let everyone know how I am doing. I will try to post at least once a week this fall, detailing my adventures at Drew School of Theology this fall and ranting whenever I feel the urge. So enjoy! Or at least survive.

The First (Or the Last, Depending On How You Read) Post

2005-06-07T17:30:00.000-07:00

If you have scrolled through countless posts and slogged through large amounts of borderline unreadable material to find this post, then congratulations. I admire you devotion.
Now, go out and find something more exciting to do. Read a good book, hang out with friends, spend some time praying or exercising, I have nothing more to say.

Steeple Soapbox

Change Your Bookmarks and RSS Feeds

Post-Wedding Thoughts

An Article

MIA- Wedding

Beauty

Forgive Me, For I Have Sinned

Why I've Disappeared

5/24-5/25 Gen X/Y

Another Lesson in Balding E

5.24.2007 Gen XY Conference Mid-Day

Gen X/Y Conference Wednesday, May 23rd

Wow...It's Been Way Too Long

Gifted and Graced

Holy Week

Why Professors Should Blog

Liberal Tolerance Is A Lie

Zoom!

Another Quick Post

A Quick Update

Stop Preaching! (Part Two)

Stop Preaching! (Part One)

YouTube Goodness

What I've Been Reading

The Great Methodist Rip Off: Part Two

The Great Methodist Rip Off

More Contextless Links

Pray With Podcasts

Church, According to Seth Godin, (Cont.)

RSS Feed

Why Doesn't the Church Ever Change?

Jesus Heals

A Record Setting Two Blog Posts in Two Weeks

Kiva.org

Up and Down- Drew Edition

A Run of the Mill Blog Post

Whitewashed Churches

The Engagement

Why Men Shouldn't Be Ordained

An Ode to ShopRite

What I'm Doing For Lent

Derek Webb

WCC- February 17-18

WCC- February 16th

WCC- February 17th

WCC- February 15th

WCC- February 14th

The Trip to Brazil (Unabridged)

Giving

A Quick Update

In the Dryness of the Season

My Last Two Months

A Record Two Posts In Two Days!

A Regular Post

Interesting Quote of the Week

Hilarious Yet Horrifying

My First-Month-At-Drew ABC’s

My Adventures at Drew Begin (Part Two)

My Adventures at Drew Begin (Part One)

SpiritSong Surprises

The Ugly Face of Christ

Annual Conference

My Actual Introductory Post

The First (Or the Last, Depending On How You Read) Post