So, I’m asking you, the intelligent, receptive blogosphere community–how should a church (or any religious community for that matter) measure it’s effectiveness? What are the marks/signs/measuring sticks?

If you are a person of constant prayer, lift this dream up. Things are coming together. If you think you (or your church) would like to partner with us, contact me at Otter Creek. “The true atheist is the one who fails to see the image of God in the least of these,” Dorothy Day.

Collision

This semester, I taught the course solo. The students have been excellent. Diverse: urban/suburban, male/female, white/black, conservative/liberal–we made a pack to dive into the world of Luke-Acts to engage the questions of what it might mean to find Jesus alive in both scripture and today’s world.

I learn something new every time I teach this course.

Here are the seven convictions I’m left with this “time around.” I could say more about each one, but I’ll refrain. You can use your knowledge and imagination to push each one further.

1. Christianity is built upon the premise of “narrative rupture.”
2. The Spirit of God is the force behind, underneath, in front of all life.
3. Normal values are turned upside-down in Jesus’ economy.
4 . This faith is public.
5. Witness is more important than objective/subjective truth debates.
6. Maturity happens by being commissioned.
7. God wants to save the world via an alternative community.

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Our small group is reading Sex God right now. I read the book when it first came out a few years back. I think it’s a fantastic work about the “endless connections of sexuality and spirituality.” If you have not read it, you’ll love it. I know few folks who read Bell and fail to learn a great deal about the collision of scripture and life as we know it.

I particularly appreciate Bell’s dichotomy of the temptation to be an angel (soul with no body) and animal (body with no soul) in light of God’s work of creating humanity (body and soul). While I wish Bell would’ve at least footnoted C.S. Lewis (the 20th century “catalyst” for this anthropological distinction), I think Bell’s right on. While many Christians bemoan the “animal” messages of our culture (What happens in Vegas stays in Vegas), the church offers an equally toxic one. Instead of talking about the possibilities of being human, we settle for stuffing sexuality and spirituality deep inside.

I also love this line from Bell. “Lust makes a promise it can’t deliver on.”

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One of our students at Rochester College (and dear family member at Rochester Church) lost her stepmother in a car accident. Sara (pronounced Sarr-ah) Ageno is from Jinja, Uganda. When she was a young girl, her biological parents were both killed in a similar motor vehicle accident. Another family from her local church took her in. Now, her second mom’s life has been taken. Pray for Sara. Pray for peace. Pray for mourning. Pray for her to ask big questions. Pray for her to take those big questions to God.

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I preached from Jacob’s prayer in Genesis 32 today. It’s a remarkable prayer really. Walter Brueggemann says it is the only real full prayer in all of Torah. The thing that blows me away about this prayer is not that Jacob has the chutzpah to pray it (compared to some other stuff this is actually pretty mild). The thing that blows me away is that God goes along with this con-man, huckster. It seems God would rather work with a shady somebody than a pious pretender. I needed to hear that today. Because, before I’m a minister, I’m first a follower.

Some thinkers say religion is dangerous. This group would include Christopher Hitchens (author of God is Not Great) and others who point out the tragedies and violence done in the name of religion. They point to The Crusades, Constantine’s Army, Catholic/Protestant Wars, Holocaust (Germany was overwhelmingly Lutheran at the time), along with bloodshed caused by Islam and modern day Israel. They point out that more people died in the twentieth century, the height of Christendom’s influence in the world, than in all the previous nineteen centuries combined. And, I haven’t even pointed out the Christian/Muslim tension in the world today. They look to Nietzsche and his premise that religion is the opiate of the masses, a crutch that helps less intelligent folks make sense of their lives (especially mortality).

Other thinkers say religion is not dangerous. This group would include many political conservative and (some) liberal thinkers, fundamentalists, evangelicals, and (some) mainline leaders along with other loyalists to a particular re-telling of America’s inception. This group would point to the influence of Judeo-Christian values in the U.S. Constitution, the building of hospitals in India, the modern day school system, work with the poor, literacy, Civil Rights Movement (led by a black Baptist minister), Red Cross, A.I.D.S. relief in Africa, along with the Truth and Reconciliation Commission in Post-Apartheid South Africa (Desmond Tutu was unapologetically Christian in his leadership of this incredible work . . . what N.T. Wright has called the “most significant accomplishment of Christianity in the twentieth century”).

Those who argue that religion/Christianity is poisonous to civilization tend to ignore the accomplishments and sheer will of Christian passion over the last several centuries. While they are correct in pointing out slavery (America’s original sin), they gloss over the fact that a Christian (William Wilberforce) helped to end the peculiar institution.

Those who argue that religion/Christianity is necessary and good for civilization tend to ignore the aforementioned skeletons in the proverbial religious closet. They are limited in their understanding of the way in which religion has promoted evil, division and hate in some parts of the world. They are easily duped by nostalgia and wishful thinking.

I hope to be a part of a church that is a blazing a third way. A way that owns up to the sins of our past and present (my generation loves to point out the racism of our parents and grandparents while ignoring the plank of materialism, apathy, and indifference in our own collective eye) while also having the courage to point out what is good, just, and right about Christianity and other religions.

Christians, it seems to me, suffer from a lack of imagination. We lack the imagination to see a way in which we can make a sustained difference on issues of abortion (I’m pro-life and I’m committed to providing care for young mothers and children born into poverty), war (particularly the re-integration of soldiers into “civilian life”), poverty, addiction (drug, alcohol, eating disorders, gambling, sexual, among others) divorce, abuse, and depression. We feel powerless, as if we cannot make a real dent in the destruction and decay of life as we know and accept it.

God’s Spirit is able to blaze a path in the midst of overwhelming odds. I want to be a part of a church that rises above these old dichotomies, into a new set of questions, dreams, and possibilities.

“What is needed is a realization that power without love is reckless and abusive, and love without power is sentimental and anemic. Power at its best is love implementing the demands of justice, and justice at its best is power correcting everything that stands against love.”