The Flavor of Weak Sauce

I love my denomination, but if I am entirely honest, it often frustrates the bejabbers out of me.

At our recent General Assembly, we once again backed away from investing our resources in renewables and other forms of energy that might blunt or slow the onslaught of the climate crisis.

For over a decade, we've been noodling around  the edges of making our investment portfolio more clearly reflect care for creation, but once again, our bottom line got muddled by the endless competing interests that sabotage progress amongst progressives.

Of more concern, frankly, was the tepid, enervated approach to the incipient collapse of our republic.  Presbyterians were at the forefront of the American Revolution back in the day, and watching the work of the Founding Fathers systematically undone by the far right should stir us to a hue and cry.  

"Christian nationalism," in the context of both the American Constitution and the Presbyterian Constitution, is an abomination.  It reflects a fundamental failure of representative government, and a toxic commingling of political power and faith that betrays the intent and purpose of the Gospel.  

The current name of that movement is Trumpism, and it is organized around Trump and those who are either in on the grift, in his thrall, or taking a transactional perspective to morality.  

Its rise threatens every single social position the denomination holds: on climate, on racial justice, on inclusion of Queer folk, all of it.   

But it is, ultimately, not a political challenge.  It's a spiritual and existential threat, one that demands an immediate moral response.

And for that, my fellow Presbyterians are catastrophically ill equipped.

What we collectively did on that front?  We funded a study to examine the dynamics of White Christian Nationalism.  

A STUDY.  I know what that means.

I mean, I've lived most of my life inside the Beltway.  I live here now.  I can hear the thrum of 495 in the distance from my front yard.  If you want to do nothing, or to stall, or to kill something, what do we inside-the-Beltway types do?  We commission a study.  We say more information is needed, and that we need to be more deliberate in assessing the complexities of the issue, and opine that there are subtleties that need to be examined, and more perspectives that need to be considered.  We need to hear from all of the constituencies, particularly those that are historically underrepresented.

By the time that study is completed, Christian Nationalism may well be in power, in such a way that meaningful constitutional governance of our republic no longer exists.

"Something is actually happening, Reg!" as that line from Life of Brian goes.  

Which, of course, calls for immediate discussion.

Principles of Representation

The Two Hundred and Twenty Sixth General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church (USA) is under way now, as my oldline denomination gathers to go about the business of revising protocols, making policy statements, and updating procedures.  

The whole thing is quasi-virtual now, a process that begin as a pandemic era adaptation and has continued.   The event itself is also less than half the size it was a decade ago, perhaps because we as a denomination are less than half the size we were a decade ago.

That does not prevent us from making motions and declarations of significance, however.  At this assembly, we're calling for the Constitution of the United States of America to be amended.  We're calling for an end to gun violence.  We're calling for an end to solitary confinement.  We're condemning Christian Zionism.  There are many bold statements.  We're being prophetic, after all.

But not a soul is listening.  Outside media once did, but now?  Now we are too small to matter, and our conflicts, such as they exist, are mostly inside baseball.  Our policy proclamations have no more impact than me pacing around in my kitchen and ranting to myself about the latest step towards the collapse of the republic.

The challenge, I think, is that we have reimagined the word "representation."

That was, as it happens, one of the few things that we've been arguing about this cycle.  As we work to be more inclusive, we've come to understand representation as meaning the centering of marginalized voices and persons.  To translate that into Common: representation means favoring or prioritizing queer, black, female, and indigenous perspectives and persons.

As we've talked about removing bias and anti-queer bigotry from our ordination process, this became a point of contention.  The challenge, as laid out in an amendment to our Book of Order, is a rather simple one.  We want queer folk to no longer experience bias.  And we want "principles of representation" to govern our call discernment process.   

But what does that mean now?  What are Presbyterian "principles of representation?"  We Presbyterians were, back in the Enlightenment and at our Reformed roots, at the vanguard of republicanism and democratic rule.  We understood that a representative system of church governance...meaning, leadership is freely and fairly chosen and representative of the people...was a blessing.  The voice, conscience and freedom of those on the margins was respected, but not given precedence.  What mattered was being representative.

If "principles of representation" are understood as meaning "prioritizing the centering of marginalized voices," then that understanding has been radically and fundamentally subverted.  

On some levels, I get this.  Call, after all, has not a damn thing to do with gender, sexual orientation, or race.  God works through whomever God calls.  God is no respecter of our socially mediated personhoods, and for too long, we've allowed ancient categorical bigotries to fence our tables and delimit those we consider worthy to lead.

Just because you happen to inhabit a particular set of Venn Diagram circles of privilege means nothing.  

White? Male? Comfortably Bourgeois?  God couldn't care less, and when for generations that was the only way Presbyterians looked and spoke, that was a problem.  Thing is, that principle doesn't stop at categories of privilege.

Queer?  Female?  BIPOC?  In and of themselves, those categories also don't mean a thing to the Creator of the Universe.

Privilege means nothing to God.  But neither does marginalization.  

Within the Biblical narrative, the God of Amos is the God of Isaiah, eh?  Rural proletarian/agrarian and urban power elite could both feel that fire in their bones, could both call for justice and grace with the same divine authority.  No Jew or Greek, no slave or free, no man or woman, as dear ol' Uncle Paul put it.

Justice...God's justice...means eliminating our human favoring of one human category over the other.  Wealth and influence and physical power cease to matter.  Just that reality is liberation, a setting right, a word of good news and jubilee.

When the structures of our social power fail to reflect that, or when our organizational structures fetishize or valorize the categories we've socially constructed, we've lost sight of the heart of our faith.

Ethical Breeches

What are ethics?  What is an "ethos?"

Ethos has to do with our purpose, the great story that defines us.  It's our worldview, that broad set of assumptions and expectations that we use to ground us and direct us as we try to make sense of existence.

"Being ethical," then, can be defined in many ways.  Following the law is ethical...but what if that law stands in conflict with another, more radically defining purpose?  Then, what is "ethical" becomes what is evil, as Huck Finn so pointedly wrestled with as he went down that river with Jim.

Huck looked at his own behavior...treating Jim like a human being...and realized that this made him, in the eyes of his culture, an unethical person.  He was cool with that, mischief-maker that he was.  To be "good," he had to violate cultural norms, and suffer cultural approbation.

In the little echo chamber of my dwindling, greying denomination, there's been an ethical scandal of sorts thrumming about.  An initiative charged with the immense task of building up one thousand and one new worshiping communities had been achieving some measure of success, with hundreds of new gatherings created, gatherings which the Gospel is proclaimed and Kingdom communities have been created.  I've worked with them, and they knew what they were doing.  It's been a bright spot, in the often grim and sclerotic drabness of our denominational decline.

But now, we hear even that bright spot is tarnished.  Significant actors in that movement have been found to have committed ethical violations, or so we're hearing.  There have been articles, highlighting this violation.  More accurately, there are the minutes of the meeting of an auditing group, in which those violations are detailed.  There was outrage, and calls for heads to roll.  "Oh, crap," I thought, when I first saw the headline.  There's been stealing, or canoodling, or some significant misrepresentation.  It was disheartening.  So I went, and read it.  Things seemed, well, murky.  But there was a link to more detailed stuff, so there I went, to pore through those minutes.  You need to read them, too.  All the way through, drab as they may be.

There were violations of ethics, absolutely.

That is not at question.  The issue: what ethics were violated?  What is the ethos or worldview whose boundaries have been crossed through "...breeches of internal control," as the minutes so entertainingly mis-spoke?

Those are outlined by the minutes, and they are as follows:  The violators created a nonprofit corporation in the state of California, whose sole purpose was to support the growth and development of new churches.  The stated purpose for such a corporation: to protect the initiative from the very real vagaries of PCUSA budget shortfalls.

I read through the minutes, looking for something more.  Where are the "new churches" formed for an evening in Vegas, ones that involved high-priced escorts and copious anointing with oil?  "Worshipping communities" that were a euphemism for "me and my bros worshipping my schweet schwaggy new Lexus?"   Nope.  Nada.

There wasn't a thing.  Man.  Can't we Presbyterians even manage to create interesting scandals?  Jeez.

The violators created a nonprofit organization to help establish and teach gatherings of human beings following Jesus Christ.  Period.  Maybe there was more.  Maybe there are things left unsaid.  Perhaps there was malfeasance, or self-dealing.

But I cannot speculate on that, nor would such whispering gossip be reasonable or Christian.

What, then, is the nature of the primary ethic that has been violated here?  It is the ethic of organizational command and control, a purpose formed around the structures of accountability and oversight that came to define twentieth century Presbyterian life.  Carefully considered church policies, procedures, and protocols were ignored.  The agency responsible no longer had controls in place, or ways to oversee the new organization.   Shortcuts were taken.  There were liability concerns.  There was inordinate risk exposure, which was inappropriately managed.  There was the potential for confusion, the misuse of logos and the potential besmirching of corporate reputation.

From the ethos that views church organizationally, where the values that are primary are systems of accountability and adherence to established procedural protocols, then, this was a significant failure.

What ethics were not violated, not by any observable measure or by any report?

The Great Commandment and Great Commission, that ethic of creating more followers of Jesus of Nazareth, and doing so expeditiously and with good intent.  There's nothing, not a whit of a hint of a trace of anything in the minutes describing this report that would suggest otherwise.  A short cut was taken, and conversations not had, in a system not exactly known "reputationally" for its agility.  People saw a way to make a needed thing happen, and did it.  That's it.

Outside of the PC(USA), in the world of evangelical Christianity, such an action might not even draw a blink.  Create a bona-fide not for profit corporation, to operate in partnership with a church to further a particular end that transcends the church itself?  Heavens forfend.

Again, I will accept that perhaps that may change.  Further investigations may prove that there was malfeasance, or the intent thereof.

But given what is known, the disjuncture between those two ethics hit me, hard.

They can sometimes play well together, as accountability can be a powerful servant the integrity of the Gospel.   Bad things can happen if we are not wise and prudent.

But having been a Presbyterian my whole life, I know all too well that is not always the case.  Bad things can also happen when we are graceless and unwilling to trust one another.  Structures of distrust can become the point and purpose of our lives together.

Has that happened here?  I struggled with it, for a while.

Two scriptures rose up, as I thought on this.  First, that time the disciples came charging up to Jesus, incensed that someone who was not part of their circle was out there preaching and spreading the word.  Who the hell is this guy?  What right does he have!  Stop him!

Jesus, as I recall, did not seem too concerned with misuse of logos or "reputational risk."  He asks: Is that man doing the work of the Gospel, in a way that would be self-evident to any disinterested observer?  If so, fine.  Go team go.

The second scripture had to do with risk.  Right there in the lectionary the week the scandal hit, there it was.  The master, and his talents, and the three servants.  The first two servants go big, and take risks, and bring a return.

Then there's the Presbyterian.

The Presbyterian presents his master with a ten year plan, a risk assessment review cross referenced to the Book of Order, a seventy four page draft investment management protocol, and the minutes for the five committee meetings to develop the aforementioned protocol before the second reading, which has been postponed to the January meeting pending signoff from legal counsel.

And buried under that great orderly stack of paper and procedure, the single talent, unused, ungrown.

Sigh.

My Circus, My Monkeys

I like this one, but my wife tells me it's a wee bit intense.

"Not my circus.  Not my monkeys."

It's a meme that's been making the rounds lately, based on a Polish saying.  The saying pungently evokes a moment and a mindstate.

There you are, and the street is filled with monkeys.  Monkeys everywhere, getting into everything.  They have presumably escaped from the circus, and it's chaos.

A storekeeper approaches you, in a panic, as the monkeys smash and leap and generally make a mess.

Perhaps this one.

"Can you do something about these monkeys?"

To which you say, nonchalantly:

"Not My Circus, Not My Monkeys."

It's a way of saying: "Really, this isn't my problem.  I have nothing to do with this.  Didn't start it. Don't need to finish it.  I've never met these monkeys before in my life, and I'm gol-danged if I'll stress about it."

More pointedly, the point of that saying is:  don't let yourself get anxious about other people's mess.  Which I'm fine with.

Zen Mojo Jojo. Hmmm.

But what if it is our mess?  What about those times when we can't look at something, and deny we're part of it?  It's so easy to walk, to push off responsibility, to shake your head.  This is particularly true when you do not agree with a position that the gathered group that you're part of has taken.

Or when a position requires you to have awkward and difficult conversations.

"They did it," we say, grumpily, when anxious people ask us about why something was decided.  "I had nothing to do with it.  Those sure aren't my monkeys."

My denomination took several difficult steps in the last week, ones that will require the aforementioned challenging conversations. Same sex marriage?  Israel/Palestine?  I mean golly, what could possibly go wrong during a conversation on those subjects?

Ack.

It'd be easier--more comfortable--to push those conversations off.    "Eh, why talk about it?  We've got other stuff to do.  Not my circus"  It would be equally easy to have those conversations from a position of remove.  "Well, you know, that was the perspective of the GA.  But I wasn't there, and those folks aren't me.  Not my monkeys."

But as I followed the GA this year, the words kept echoing in my head:

"My Circus. My Monkeys."

And no, that's not any particular comment on the character and/or hirsuteness of the commissioners.

It's about belonging, even in difference.  It's about taking responsibility to speak grace into difficult, complex realities.

If we're serious about being a denomination in which relationships--particularly challenging relationships--matter, then we need to be willing to lean into that relationship a little more fully.

Having a Conversation about Israel

Midway through last week, I sat at the kitchen table with my boys.

That very day, my denomination was in the throes of some really tough decision-making about disengaging from businesses profiting from the peculiar military/correctional mess in Gaza and the West Bank.  I'd pitched in my two cents here on the blog, and I felt the need to sound my perspective off my boys.  It was just the three of us, as my wife had gone with my mother-in-law to sit shiva that evening with the family of the rabbi of our synagogue, who'd lost his father.

So that night it was Presbyterian pastor dad at table, having a dinner meal with his Jewish sons.

There are plenty of calls to have conversations to rebuild relationships between the Jewish community following the General Assembly, and I'm obviously in an unusual position to have such a conversation.  Judaism isn't just an abstract community for me, folks I know from meetings and gatherings.  It's not just that I "have Jewish friends."

It's the woman that I love.  It's the flesh and the blood of our children.

We chose, early on, not to do the half-and-half thing.  They would be raised Jewish.  Period.  And so, having made that nontrivial decision, I've had a nontrivial hand in their Jewish upbringing.  I found the mohel and made the arrangements for their brises.  I schlepped them for years to synagogue for Hebrew School, through the worst traffic in the United States.  I stood with them on the bema, and watched proudly as they were mitzvahed.

So I started in, asking them for their perspective.

Here's what we might be doing and why, I told them, laying it out as objectively as I could.  Here are the three American corporations we would no longer be investing church resources in, here are the specific products and services they are providing, and here is why we feel we can't be part of that.

What do you think?  Are we being unfair?  Is my church picking on Israel, or being anti-Semitic?

At sixteen and thirteen, neither of my sons are particularly shy about telling their father when they think he's being an idiot.  Believe me.  Not. Shy. At. All.   God help me.

My thirteen year old piped up first.  "Not even close," he said.  "Not everything that Israel does is right.  Why would you have to agree with everything they do?  Why would I?"  And then, because he is every once in a while prone to *cough* vigorously expressing his opinion, he went into a schpiel about how weird he thought it was that a Jewish state should have a large ethnic community within its borders that are unwillingly walled in.

"You know what that is," he opined after describing the West Bank and Gaza, gesticulating and raising his voice.  "You know what you call that?  You call that a ghetto.  It's a freakin' ghetto.  It's like Israel is turning into the freakin' Nazis.  If anyone should know better than that, it's we Jews.  Why is Israel acting like a bunch of freakin' Nazis?"

My older son, more inward, more measured, was a little more circumspect.  "That's not really a fair description.  What Israel is doing is not good, sure.  But it's not like the Holocaust.  They aren't being systematically slaughtered.  Israel's not like the Nazis.  It's just not the same."  He thought for a moment.

"It's more like what America did to the Native Americans.  It's like they've been kicked off their land and forced to live on reservations.  Israel isn't getting all Nazi with the Palestinians.  They're getting American on them."

There was more back and forth, with some of the heat and debate that always comes when my sons get into something, but after surprisingly little bickering, both agreed:

Israel is just being like America in one of her less proud moments, and it does not look good, and it was not anti-Israel or anti-Jewish to both point that out and to choose not to validate it.

And then they were off, disappearing into their rooms and their screens.

It was an interesting talk.

Israel, the PCUSA, and "Divestment"

Divestment?  From Israel?

That's the rumbling issue that's raising eyebrows, as the PC(USA) holds our biannual Meeting di tutti Meetings.

For all the kerfuffle, I don't know that what the Presbyterian Church is considering can even be meaningfully described as "divestment."  Sure, there are folks out there advocating for that approach, but that's not what's being done.  At no point has any proposal been seriously considered that would sell my old-line denomination's collective holdings in all businesses that operate in Israel.  That's just not gonna happen.

The question, for Presbyterians, is whether or not we can treat businesses who operate in Israel in the same way we treat business which operate in the United States.  For example, the PC(USA) does not invest in American businesses that build or design weapons.  We also do not, as a matter of principle, invest in the very profitable businesses that own or manage privatized prisons.

We don't hold stock in Lockheed Martin.  We don't hold stock in the Corrections Corporation of America.

Do such businesses serve the security of the United States?  Sure, on some level, as icky as it is. Would we be wealthier if we'd laid all our money into them?  Just click those links, and see how profitable human brokenness can be.

But as a free association of individuals, we are fully entitled to place our capital into endeavors that more clearly articulate our shared values as a community.  Because those values are fundamentally countercultural in this society, profitability and maximization of shareholder return are not our only metrics.  Far, far from it.

While that impacts the sorts of businesses in which the church invests, having a socially responsible investing strategy could not be sanely understood as "divesting from America."  Neither would it be rationally defensible to describe choosing not to invest in such business as a "slippery slope" to "divesting from America."

Similarly, choosing not to invest in businesses--American ones, I might add--that serve the purposes of coercive power in the Israeli/Palestinian mess does not mean that we are "divesting from Israel."

If a business is owned and operated in Israel, that's all well and good.  It could make funky and practical little sandals, or cosmetics, or gaming software.  These are not weapons, or part of an oppressive power structure within a nation state.  Those companies, the PC(USA) can still invest in.  They are simply creating products from the economy of a democratic ally of the United States.  If an American business works in Israel?  Also not an issue, so long as it doesn't do the same things there that would lead us to not invest in here in the US.

There are some on the left who call for more expansive punitive sanctions against the whole nation of Israel, the complete withdrawal of resources from any business that works with that state.  As a denomination, the PC(USA) has never seriously considered being part of the "BDS" movement.

More significantly, broad calls for blanket divestment make no sense in this context.  If an entire system is fundamentally and unworkably corrupt and oppressive, sure.  It's why people who care about the good do not invest in Iran, or in North Korea.

But Israel, troubled and imperfect though it is, is not in the same category as such states.   There is a viable parliamentary democracy in Israel.  Speech there is free, and the press is not muzzled or beaten into silence.  There is active and unsuppressed debate, including the voices of Israelis who are deeply troubled by the way a right-wing led Israel is treating the Palestinian people.

It would not be in the interests of peace--or justice--for the Presbyterian church to disengage from Israel.  If we have anything to contribute to the cause of peace, it is in respectful and honest conversations with our Jewish friends and colleagues.  There, we can share the pain we hear from our Palestinian brothers and sisters in faith, who yearn for peace even under the harsh conditions in which they live.

If we slam that door closed, using the power of our mammon to build a wall between us, then that role would be compromised.  Which is why that is not even close to being on the table.  Nor should it be, so long as Israel remains a state worthy of its sacred name.

The more radical BDS folks want to say that what we're doing is "divestment", because it would represent a "win."   Those reactionaries who want folks who care about Israel to be afraid?  They want to say this would be "divestment."  That fear of an isolated Israel conveniently obscures hard realities that they don't want seen or discussed.  But the reality of what's being proposed remains.

It's three American businesses, and if they were doing what they were doing in Israel in the United States--facilitating a peculiar mix of war and the incarceration of an entire people--we'd sell our stock in them.

All we're trying to be is consistent.

Zionism Unsettled

The other day, I wended my way through rush hour traffic to get to a small church gathering that ended up not happening.

It was unfortunate, but a reality of the hurly burly of Washington existence.  It's just hard to get people to travel across the mess of traffic to get anywhere.  We've got a bazillion things to do, and we can't do it all.  This is why I don't even try to do it all.  Just the important stuff.

But the important stuff can get lost in the thickets of busyness.  We can be so intent on our doing that we forget to prioritize, or lose a sense of who we are becoming.  Relationships, those relationships that matter, have been neglected, have withered, and are no more.  We wake up, and we realize our children have grown, and we were so busy rushing around in a panic that we lost track of them.  From far away, they ignore us right back, just like we taught them.

Or we suddenly realize that our relationship with our spouse is a dead thing, suffocated under a mound of meetings and memos and the resentments that arise from functional abandonment.

The meeting in question had to do with Zionism Unsettled, a report from an affinity group of the Presbyterian Church (USA), one that will go before our General Assembly this summer.  It's an effort to speak to the seemingly intractable conflict between Israel and the Palestinian people, which in and of itself is a worthy thing.

It's a mess, a level-five conflict, one with as many layers and tears as an onion.  In it, there is no question that Israel, a democracy, fears for its existence with legitimate cause.  There are some really unpleasant powers in the region that seek to do the Jewish people ill, that 1) use the Palestinian people as a proxy and 2) use that conflict as a distraction as they oppress their own people.

On the other hand, Netanyahu, Likud, and the Israeli far-right have only deepened the conflict.  Their radical nationalism and focus on security above human rights have generated some very real abuses of the Palestinian people.  Their aggressive policy of settlement expansion has also--to my eyes, at least--rendered the "two-state solution" unviable.  I do not believe that the current scattered assemblage of non-contiguous Palestinian ghettos can be woven into a nation.

Into this mess, a group of justice-oriented Presbyterians have attempted to speak.  The challenge with speaking, though, is finding the right tone.   It is our right to notice injustice, and our duty to say something.  But if we say the wrong thing, it will be actively counterproductive.  Say the right thing in the wrong way, and it will also be actively counterproductive.

I am convinced that if the Presbyterian church has a hand in the solution to this issue, it does not lie in our wealth, our political influence, or our numbers.  It has to do with our relationships.  In particular, it lies in our connections the American Jewish community, with whom we have constructively engaged for two generations.  Jews in the United States are committed to justice and democracy, and are supportive of Israel.  They can also speak to Israeli power with authority, in ways that Christians cannot.

In so far as we Presbyterians have influence to help restore justice in that region, it lies in our healthy relationship with the Jewish community here, and our capacity to open justice conversations.

Zionism Unsettled will damage that relationship.  It already has.  It is too easily heard as an attack on both the integrity and best aspirations of the Jewish people.  I do not believe it was intended that way, but having read the report, I can't help but hear it through the ears of progressive and justice-oriented Judaism, the sort of Judaism that defines the synagogue of which I--a Presbyterian pastor who has raised two Jewish boys--am a member.

It's going to be a bad thing.

Some will respond that this is only because Jews in America are hypersensitive to any statements about Israel. If you say anything with even a whiff of criticism of Israeli policies or politics, you are a hateful anti-Semite.  There's some truth in that, if we are honest.  Some folks go right to that button, every time.

But we also need to listen to ourselves, and to where our tone and language are taking us.  I think Presbyterians need to take seriously the folks who have weighed in supporting Zionism Unsettled.  If we endorse this report, we will have picked up a rather interesting group of fellow travelers.

Iranian state-run news media have picked our efforts up, and are lending their support.  Former Grand Wizard of the KKK David Duke has blogged admiringly of this report as a step in the right direction in the battle against the Zionist Occupation Government.  And on the website of Stormfront, the white power neo-Nazi movement in the United States, the chatter is that the Presbyterian Church is finally doing the right thing to drive Jewish influence out of America.

If active anti-Semites--delusional as they are--see this effort as supporting their aspirations, then we are doing it wrong, no matter what our intent may be.

Listening to the Patient

After a cold...beaten a month ago...left behind a lingering cough in the chest of my 15 year old, we finally took him to a nearby clinic yesterday.  It's often too much of a bother going to a full-blown doctor, so I've started going to the nearby clinic embedded in a CVS.

Sure, it was "just" a nurse practitioner.  But they take their time, they listen, they do a thorough diagnosis, ask all the right questions, and can crank out a 'scrip from the clinic.  For things like sinus infections or the routine ailments of day-to-day existence, an attentive generalist works just fine.  We got there, filled out an electronic form, and the very moment I'd finished the form, we were seen.

As the pleasant Ghanaian nurse-practitioner ran her way through the testing and poking and prodding, she noted that my insurance card marked me as a "Rev."

"Oh," she said.  "You're a Reverend?"

I said that yes, I was.  "What church?"  I told her about my community.  "I'm Presbyterian too," she shared, smiling.  Cool, I said.  What church?

It was a nearby congregation, one I sorta knew.  You guys just got a new pastor, I said, talking shop.

"Oh yes," she said.  "We're very happy.  But I just wish that it hadn't taken so long.  I can't think of any good reason it should have taken so long."

And she talked for a bit about how her community developed a rapport with their long term interim, and lamented that they couldn't stay.  "We'd just gotten to know them," she said.  "And then it was like we had to start all over again.  It seemed like it was so much harder than it needed to be."

As she wrote up a prescription and printed out a diagnostic report, I marveled at just how consistent this feedback is.  Here I am, striking up a conversation about a new ministry, and what a layperson needs to report has to do not with hopes for the future, but with the unnecessary pain of an over-managed transition.

Yes, I know, I know, interims can be very valuable.

But at a certain point, no matter how much of an expert you are, you do have to listen to the patient.

Blest Be the Pensions that Bind

As the Presbyterian church continues to wrestle around with the realities of soaring medical expenses, an aging pastorate, and the oldline death spiral, the impacts of that reality hit hard now and again.  For pastors throughout the denomination, the latest bell that tolls for us is the announcement of a significant modification in the way that medical benefits are allocated.

Hard pressed by financial realities, our Board of Pensions has announced shifts in the way we fund and support pastor's medical care and the care for their families.  As has been the trend in employer-provided health care, the revisions to the plan put more financial burdens on those with families.  The change also hits harder for smaller communities, which already reel from the weight of providing care.  It transitions away from a system that subsidized smaller communities with the resources of the wealthier communities.   We're more and more like the marketplace in which we find ourselves.

It's not particularly fair, as many have noted, but neither is the bloated profit-driven health care "system" we endure in this nation.   That favors size and wealth and buying power, and has driven costs spiraling unmanageably upwards in the last three decades.  In this new, harder reality, the Big Parking Lot churches will fare well, and the midsized churches will get by with some belt-tightening, but wee kirks will find it harder and harder to manage even a half-time call.

But honestly?  They already do.   Family chapel congregations, small rural fellowships, and fledgling emergent house churches are already largely priced out of the "called and installed" pastor marketplace.  It's not that they're mean.  It's not that they're skinflints.  The resources simply aren't there.  Why?  You said it.  The rent is too damn high.

So perhaps it's time for little churches to look elsewhere.

Smaller congregations are already given the option of getting "off the grid" pastors.  That means stated supply folks like myself who operate on annual contracts, or Certified Lay Pastors who are charged to serve a particular congregation.  And for us?  Well, participation in the PC(USA) pension and health care system is great if we can get it.  But it's not mandatory.

And the world is changing.  At some point in the coming years, our slow-as-sludge move towards universal health care provision will hopefully make this a moot issue.  Coming at the end of this year, the first of the Health Insurance Exchanges will kick in under the Patient Protection and Affor...oh, shoot, under Obamacare.  These will provide citizens and small employers with other options for purchasing and securing health care.

For smaller congregations that want to provide care for the pastors that love them and teach them, it would be interesting to see how the price-point of access into that approach to care provision compares to the excellent but expensive Board of Pensions system.   That's difficult to ascertain at this point.  But given that many communities already aren't able to buy into the BOP offering, perhaps there are other options.

Because ultimately, the glue of our fellowship isn't pensions, and it's not health care.

Exchanges and excellent, not-for-profit oriented retirement 403(b) providers like TIAA/CREF might offer communities that have been priced out of the system a way to care for pastors and their families.

Such Offense in the Future

I don't make it to Presbytery meetings anywhere near as often as I used to.  I tried not to miss them, and for years and years did not.

But as I shifted from a two-thirds-time church to a half-time congregation, some things just had to give. Oh, I'm happy to make it out to committee meetings.  There, I feel the capacity to have some input.  But as much as I like the worship opportunity, and the chance to talk with folks, I'm aware that it's both work and a place where my presence is rather less than necessary most of the time.

If I'm attending to the terms of my position, then going will happen with less frequency.   Not to mention that the little guy has a packed and late-running schedule on Tuesday.   I'm the parent who handles that, and the meetings are almost invariably on Tuesdays now.  Ah well.

So I read the meeting agenda, and check on the meeting minutes, and listen to the social media hum as I perform my parental duties.

At this last Presbytery meeting, though, there was a public censure.  Technically, it was a "rebuke," a formal statement of institutional disapproval for an errant member of Presbytery.  And when I say, "formal," there is literally a form.  It's a Fill In The Blanks statement, drawn from our Rules of Discipline.  It goes like this:

Whereas, you, (Name) ________________________, have been found guilty of the offense(s) of __________________________ (here insert the offense), and by such offense(s) you have acted contrary to (the Scriptures and/or the Constitution of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.)); now, therefore, the Presbytery (or Session) of __________________________________, in the name and authority of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.), expresses its condemnation of this offense, and rebukes you. You are enjoined to be more watchful and avoid such offense in the future. We urge you to use diligently the means of grace to the end that you may be more obedient to our Lord Jesus Christ.

That doesn't happen often.  In fact, in the years I've been going to Presbytery, I can't recall seeing one.  There's been discipline, mind you.  But typically, it's involved booting folks for malfeasance or removing them from office.  They haven't stood there and taken it, in front of a gathering.

The rebuke was delivered to Tara Spuhler McCabe, a pastor who'd officiated at a same sex marriage, which while in conformity with the laws of the District of Columbia remains something we Presbyterians choose to study and debate.  And study and debate.

My position on the issue is reasonably clear, and has been for years.  If approached to bless the vows of a same sex couple, I'd be morally and spiritually obligated to do exactly what she did.  Perhaps I should keep a pre-filled out version of the form available for an Investigating Committee just in case.  Not that the Presbytery was eager for this.  Sigh.  What a mess.

In reflecting on this unfortunate bit of mess, I found myself wondering about which church it is that primarily governs us.   Yes, we stand in deep and transforming relationship with the sacred texts of Scripture, and in respectful dialogue with the faith confessions of those who have come before.  That is the church from which we spring.  It is our root, and our ground, and it still has much to teach us.  We should not be an offense to that golden thread of the True Kirk that runs through it.

But there is another church, one that is equally significant.  There is that church that is not yet.  There is the gathering of disciples who have not yet gathered, but who will be called into relationship with Jesus of Nazareth after we have passed.  And we will pass.  There are forms and patterns of following Jesus that we do not yet know, and depths of grace that we have not yet encountered.  As a church constantly reformed and reforming in response to God's Word, that's a basic bit of our self-understanding.

That church, I am convicted, looks at us now and is troubled.  Offended, even.  Why do we fight over this thing, which doesn't have a thing to do with what is most essential about our faith?  Why do we use it as an excuse to hate and exclude?  The world is filled with such real horror and deep brokenness...and this is how we waste our kairos?

Lord have mercy, but they'll think we're fools.

Church Information Forms, Websites, Lipstick, and Pigs

Having recently pitched out the crazy idea that there might be a way for Presbyterian churches to find a pastor in less than two years, some of the comments on that article in the Presbyterian Outlook got me to thinking.

One of the underlying assumptions of the Presbyterian "interim period" is that this is a time when congregations take stock of who they are, rediscovering their mission and vision.  As a part of that process of finding their identity, the Pastoral Nominating Committee goes through discernment exercises, and creates the Church Information Form, the See Eye Eff which will let potential pastors know 1) who the church is and 2) what they expect from a Teaching Elder.  Writing that CIF can be a major undertaking, and it's not without value.

Here's da ting, tho.  

Having recently been through the process of seeking a ministry myself, I can say that while CIF review was an important part of the process of my assessing a congregation and considering an approach to that community, it was not the only part.   

Of equal and in some ways greater importance was the congregational web-presence.

Where the CIF is the face of the church made up all purty-like for potential suitors, the website is the face that the congregation shows the rest of the world.   Sometimes, of course, that's just putting HTMLipstick on a pig.  But more often than not, a quality website indicates a solid congregation.

And so I'd look at the sites with a careful eye.    How recent and dynamic was the content?  I know that 2008 seems like just yesterday, but it isn't.  If there's nothing that indicates activity in the last three months (and here, I'm being nice), if there are stale links and stagnant content, then you really don't care.  You just don't.

There are other questions I'd ask myself.  How well-structured was the site for potential visitors and newcomers to the community?   Did the site connect to or integrate social media?  If it did connect to social media, was there any evidence that the community actually did anything with that media?

I'd go deeper still.   Did the web presence mesh with what I was seeing in the CIF?   Were the hopes, visions, and particular identity of that Christ-community something that you could see clearly on the site?   How warm and grace-filled was the content presented for public consumption?   

Perhaps most importantly, because this is the primary metric by which Teaching Elders should assess their connect with a community, could I see myself being a member of that church?   Not just the church that pitched itself to me on an in-house datasheet, but the church as it presents itself to the world.

When I went a-looking for a new congregation, what I found in web-assessing my current church was not the biggest and most slickety website in the world.  But it was updated regularly enough to show care.  It was filled with pictures of actual human beings, souls who were part of the worship and life of the community.  Perfect and super-mega-shiny?  No.  This was not the work of a big-parking-lot church with a  IT budget in the mid-six figures.  But it felt true and reflective of a small community that was both warm and web-savvy.   The web spoke who they were, and that was, well, terrific.

Long and short of it?   In this era, a congregation that doesn't have a web presence that tells the truth of who they are won't go far.  Pastors...ones worth their salt...know this.  

The Evangelical Covenant Order of Presbyterians

When the Presbyterian Church (USA) recently moved to open the door for the ordination of gays and lesbians, it was inevitable that those for whom this action was a line in the sand would seek ways to distance themselves from the denomination.

So when a gathering of conservative Presbyterians coalesced in Miami, the output of that event seemed inevitable.  There was much praying.  There was much worshipping and preaching.  After it all, to no-one's great surprise, there is now yet another denomination.  Or sort of a denomination.  A denominish?  Denominette?  It's a bit difficult to tell yet.

What was formed at the Miami gathering has been called, somewhat opaquely, the Evangelical Covenant Order of Presbyterians.  This name has the advantage of sounding a bit like the campus ministry at Hogwarts, or better yet, a league of oldline superheroes with a secret subterranean sanctuary.   "To the Bat-Nave, Robin!"

For branding purposes, they're going to call themselves ECO.  Coupled with an appropriately leafy-growthy logo, it feels rather more contemporary than the blockish and fusty logo of the PC(USA).

Getting into the meat of this movement, though, there are a few telling things.  As has been noted by others, there's almost no indication of the "why" of the creation of this entity.   For example, as a "covenant order," there is a covenant that you need to affirm.   Reading through the covenant, I can see little in it that I wouldn't be able to affirm in both practice and/or principle.   Nor, quite frankly, do I see much in it that a practicing, open and married lesbian teaching elder couldn't affirm.

Going more deeply into their theological statements, I'm there with the exception of one or two sentences out of many, many pages.  This I can say as someone who stands on the other side of the fence they're in the process of teetering on top of.  If your raison-d'etre is the Divine Nyet to gays and abortion, it's a bit odd that this isn't more evident.

This highlights something of a conundrum for the fledgling ECO.  They are positioning themselves as a back-to-the-roots conservative movement, one embracing eternal biblical truths while being open to new forms of being church.

But they are not the conservatives who believe that the universe is 6,000 years old.   They are also not the conservatives who reject global warming and climate change as a Wiccan/Democrat/Bilderberger plot to contaminate our precious bodily fluids.   They are also not the conservatives who reject women's roles in leadership.

ECO is only fundamentalist when it comes to gays and abortion, and those positions are hedged and hidden by indirect language.  They'd slide into the denominational continuum to the right of the PC(USA), but just a smidge to the left of the EPC, and several notches more to the left than the PCA.

Further, while ECO seems to be taking on the form of a denomination, that form seems remarkably close to the thing they've just left.   Or rather, left-ish.  A tremendous amount of depresbyribonucleic acid is still evident in the ECO genome.  For example, their constitution includes in its entirety the PC(USA) Book of Confessions.  Their materials indicate that a congregation can can be both PC(USA) and ECO at the same time.  They focus a great deal on the pensions and benefits for pastors, an odd thing for a movement.  I'm fairly sure Luther didn't include a benefits package rate sheet underneath the theses he nailed to the door in Wittenberg.

The challenge for this group would seem to be the Aesop's Bat Conundrum.  That classic fable describes the Bat, who claimed himself neither beast nor fowl in a war between air and earth.  Are you a bird of the air? Are you a beast of the ground?   

As much as I like the via media myself, claiming to be both often gets you neither.  

Still and all, I can appreciate the positivity with which ECO seems to be trying to launch.  They're not fulminating or raging, which is a welcome thing in our binary, demonizing culture.  For those who choose to participate in whatever this new thing proves to be, I'd hope PC(USA) folk will choose to be as gracious as our Master calls us to be towards them as they semi-depart.

Door To Door

I've never been comfortable with door-to-door sales.   Years and years ago, back when my hair was long and my belly was concave, I spent a couple of days doing the door-knockin' thing as a canvasser for Greenpeace.  It was one in a series of attempts to get a job that summer, and it was profoundly disappointing.  Instead of rallying interest in environmentalism, or stirring the passions of a movement, we were taught a sales pitch.  The goal: money for the organization, from which we could take a wee percentage.   That lasted not long at all.  Nothing sucks idealism out of the young like working on commission.

Perhaps even lower on the karmic totem pole are the folks who show up at your door seeking to convert you.  Despite what Ray Comfort pitches out there, fewer things are less welcome than someone coming at you with a prepackaged conversion script.

I've never minded, of course.  Most days, I'm perfectly happy to chat with the pairs of earnest fresh-faced young Mormons who arrive with books and name tags.  I don't mind the Jehovah's Witnesses either, though if they push too hard, they'll get themselves a theological whuppin'.  Nothing like referencing the Cappadocian Fathers to make a Witness flee in terror.  Then again, referencing the Cappadocian Fathers has the same effect on most people.

So it was with some surprise that I found myself yesterday walking about the neighborhoods of the little town in which my little church is located, church-literature in hand.  This is, quite frankly, not something that Presbyterians tend to do.  The arrival of Presbyterians at your doorstep bearing tracts is, some scholars argue, one of the sure signs of the end times.

That's the key to the Sixth Seal, I think, the one right before the Final Seal, the one that can only be unlocked by the words:  "I, Newt Gingrich, do solemnly swear that I will faithfully execute the Office of President of the United States..."

What surprised me even more was how pleasant it was.  That the afternoon was clear and crisp and gorgeous was a plus.  I and the congregation's evangelism elder spent most of the time walking and chatting about anything and everything, which was actually kind of fun.  I'm not sure how many Jehovah's Witnesses get into sub-conversations about whether or not droids are connected to the Force as they walk.

As for the door-to-door part, well, it was fine.  Surprisingly fine.  This is, in part, because we rolled it Presbyterian style.

Our entire "pitch," such as it was, was to tell people that we were from the little historic country church up the road.  We then shared our names, handed over a postcard telling folks where we were and what's up for our Advent Season, and welcomed them to join us if they'd like...and that was that.  Oh, and we'd wish them a good afternoon.

For most, that was as far as it went.  Sunday afternoon is loaf-around-in-comfypants time for most Americans, and we don't want to mess with that.

At about a half-dozen houses, conversation went a bit further.   Like, say, at the house where the resident opened the door quickly, a wad of bills in her hand, thinking we were the pizza guy.  This, we all found amusing.   Or the houses where we knew someone, or where the person clearly wanted to have a conversation.  There, we chatted, for as long as the other person felt like it.  In at least one instance, we were invited in, and things did get theological, which was cool.  I'm always up for that.

As we walked, there were a few things we made a point of doing.  Governing principle number one of our reaching out was to respect the integrity of the person we were speaking with, while letting them know that we were there.  Getting all up into folks bidness?   That's actively counterproductive.  Way I figure it, this isn't the first century.  Ain't nobody in the You Ess of Ay not heard tell of this guy named Jesus.  As the Apostle Paul put it, you got to be cool, bro.

Governing principle number two was related.  For the folks we encountered who let us know they already had an affiliation with a faith community, our response was, "Well, great!  Good for you!   Say hi to [insert name of pastor/spiritual leader here] for me."  This seemed somewhat surprising to folks, but again, our task is not to wrest Catholics and Methodists from their congregations so that they can be Presbyterian just the way the Good Lord wants them to be.  We're just letting y'all know we're here.

The other governing principle was, of course, that communities of Jesus folk are and will always be responsible for letting people know they exist.  We can't be hunkered down, hidden away behind the walls of our buildings and meetings and polity and the tightly-knit circles of the Us.  A healthy church exists outwardly, connected to and engaged with the community full of human beings around it.  That needs to be particularly and especially true for congregations that are open-minded and open-hearted.

So, amazement of amazement, I actually find myself looking forward to the next time I get to go door to door.  Particularly if it's a sweet spring day.

Power Supply

Yesterday morning, I motored my way from my home in Annandale, Virginia out to the congregation I'll soon be serving part-time in Poolesville, Maryland.  I had an 11:00 AM meeting scheduled with the clerk of session of the wee kirk there, to sign my first contract and talk about how things at Poolesville Presbyterian work.

I left early, concerned that the ever unpredictable steel and asphalt maelstrom on the Capital Beltway might slow things down on a rainy morning.  There were storms all about, deep rumbling clouds fat with rain, which made my ride out there on the bike just a tiny bit on the damp side.  Only a tiny bit, though.  The 'Zook acquitted itself admirably protecting me from the elements, although I noticed an odd side effect of the aerodynamic bubble behind my extended GIVI screen.  In really heavy rain, the vacuum behind the windscreen creates swirling back pressure.  The water beading on my helmet visor leaps forward into that vacuum in bright shining droplets, like I'm casting diamonds and pearls at the road from my face as I ride.   Rather pretty, although a bit distracting.  Not nearly as distracting as it might be if it happened in meetings, but so it goes.

Whichever way, I made it to my meeting on time, and the contract was signed, and badda boom, badda bing, I'm the pastor at Poolesville.  And, well, that's an unusual thing for a Presbyterian.  In fact, it's a huge thing, or would be if folks in my denomination thought about it.

Understand this, O my Presbyterian Brothers and Sisters:  In June of the Year of Our Lord Two Thousand and Eleven, a PC(USA) congregation said a fond farewell to a long-term and well-liked pastor. 

Within three months, they had lined up a new pastor.  

July.  August.  September.  And lo and behold, that's their transition.  That's the total amount of limbo and liminal time they'll have to endure.  Three.  Months.  How does this compare to your last transition? 

This is not an unusual occurrence in smaller congregations, congregations that are used to having temporary supply pastors, which is what I'm going to become starting October 1.   That means, in PresbyParlance, that I'm not "called and installed."  I'm just under contract on an annual basis.  That means every year, I need to sign a new contract to reaffirm my relationship with the congregation.  If things are working, then we're copacetic.  If either party is ready to move on, well, then it's time to go.  Have robe, will travel, as they say.

Called pastors, well, they're there as long as they want to be.  Of course, they renegotiate their "terms of call" on an annual basis.  And if either party wants to move on, well, then it's time to go.  

It's the same thing, kids.

Functionally, there is no difference between being a called and installed pastor and a temporary supply pastor.  You preach.  You teach.  You meet.  You greet.  You pray.  You care.   And honey child?  Both positions are temporary.   There ain't no such thing as a permanent pastor, unless you attend the First Presbyterian Church of Transylvania, and Pastor Edward has only been there 350 years.  Not like Pastor Vlad, who was there 735 years, and left only after that well intentioned but poorly thought out sunrise service.

And yet most congregations that aren't teeny tiny don't call supply pastors.  Supply pastors are for little bitty bucolic family churches out in rolling fields, or for struggling churches that can't afford competitive salaries.  To which I ask:  Why?  Is it just congregational ego? 

Why couldn't a 200+ member, thriving, successful Presbyterian congregation choose to sidestep our agonizingly slow and convoluted call process?  Don't complain about it.  Don't fret about it.  Just go supply, and simply write a position description, advertise for and locate a qualified pastor who would then pick up and carry on.  You'd have a trained, ordained, tested, and proven Presbyterian pastor.  As a "temporary supply."  With contracts to be signed on an annual basis. 

Not just why "couldn't."  Why "wouldn't?" 

Given the choice, why would you inflict the call process on yourself if you didn't have to?  The way we connect pastors with churches now is institutional quicksand, a source of frustration and anxiety for both pastors and pastor nominating committees alike.  If the results were demonstrably better than any other system, it might be justifiable.  But the results are not.   Instead, it means that those charged with calling pastors approach the task with fear and trembling, but for all the wrong reasons. 

Our process as it stands now is orderly, but indecent.  A congregation's energies would be better spent on outreach, or service ministry, or ministries of justice, or on just about anything so long as it got us out in our communities living and spreading the Good News.  Instead, we pour our energies inward, into processes that make us feel like we're doing something but that come perilously close to institutional onanism. 

So to you pastors contemplating a move?  Perhaps you should suggest going supply to your big steeple church.  You elders who have suddenly found yourselves chairing the PNC?  Maybe it's time to think outside the box a bit, and to make that known to your General Presbyter.

Why should little churches be the only ones getting it right?

Past Division and Towards Unity in Christ

5)  How do we move the church past division in theology, evangelism and mission to work towards unity in Christ?    


Here, the answer is flagrantly Jesus.   The issues that divide us and fragment our denomination are many.  We argue about homosexuality, and about how to approach people who are not Christian.  We squabble about what it means for the bible to have authority in our lives together.  We go at each other over pretty much everything and anything, because we're chasing after different priorities and different goals.

Absent a clear sense of shared and common purpose, any organization or group will tear itself to pieces.  Diversity of focus and emphasis can exist just fine within such a group, but if it's not absolutely clear that a community of human beings has a unifying purpose, that community will come apart at the seams.


Here, the oldline denominational churches face a much mightier challenge than the new mainstream nondenominational churches.  Nondenoms function pretty much the same way that a corporation functions, meaning they're organized around a single core product or service, with identity focused on a single board and a single iconic CEO...I mean, pastor.  Establishing identity is really straightforward.  Just listen to pastor-slash-brand.  That holds true right up until that pastor leaves/dies/resigns after canoodling.    


In the oldline, we function much more like a political system.  There's mess and disagreement and difference of opinion.  This comes naturally to democratic systems of governance, but it doesn't give univocal organizational certainty.


For that, well, we have Jesus.  The question arises, of course...which Jesus?  Is it the Jesus of the evangelical right, oozing plasma and corpuscles for our salvation, wrapped in Old Glory, and takin' down Satan with his FNH F2000 with a 4X ACOG sight?   Or the transgendered person of color Jesus of Queer Theology?  


Then again, there's also the Jesus whose ethos and teaching can be fairly easily established from a plain-text reading of the Gospels.  The Sermon on the Mount and the Sermon on the Plain lay out an ethic of self-giving, transformative love that's radical and cohesive.  The nature of the Kingdom he proclaimed is pretty clear, particularly when you get into the implications of that Kingdom for how we are supposed to live together.


When we wander outside of the synoptics into the witness of John's Gospel, we have a distinct but harmonic vision of the relationship Jesus had with God, and the relationship he expected his disciples to have with one another.


This is the Jesus...formed by and speaking into the ethos of first century Jewish apocalyptic thought, while simultaneously subverting and transcending it...that pops up if you set aside your presuppositions and cultural biases.  The teachings of this Jesus, if we give them authority over our lives, have the power to unite us.


We resist that Jesus, of course.  He's not us.  He doesn't neatly fit into either side of our squabbles, and instead demands that we love those we disagree with, to the point of forgiving them even if they crucify us.


If we can follow that guy?  We'll still be different, of course.  We won't always agree.  But though different, we won't be divided.  Not in the way that causes pain and brokenness.

The Unique Presbyterian Voice Regarding Vital Ministry

4)  What unique voice to we, as Presbyterians in the Reformed tradition, bring regarding vital ministry in churches and society? 


Answer:  Jesus.  As Presbyterians in the Reformed tradition, let me deepen that a little bit.  I think what our unique voice has to offer is  יֵשׁוּעַ, with a side order of Ἰησοῦς . 


What that means, put a bit less coyly, is that what Presbyterians have to offer in this coming century goes well beyond seminars on how to run the most agonizingly complicated possible process for bringing a pastor to your church, or books entitled The Seven Ways Robert's Rules of Order Can Spice up Your Love Life.


Oh, wait.  That's still coy.  Let's take another swing at it.  


This is an era in which history has been forgotten.  In this age of the interwebs and the 24 hour infotainment cycle, what pours through us from that big data pipe is the right now.  It's immediate, lizard-brain amygdala data, gratifying our desire for gossip and sex and violence and tension and kittens, sometimes all at once.  It affirms that we are wonderful, the center of everything, and that even given the wonderful thing we are, there are all manner of electronics and pharmaceuticals that would make us even more amazing.


It is not a deeply literate era, or an era that sees past itself and its own immediate hungers.  That impacts how Jesus is interpreted and understood in ways that is increasingly driving the majority of Christians away from the essence of his teachings.   Christianity, as it exists within the realm of our globalized society, is increasingly focused on matters that pertain not at all to the core teachings and ethos of the Gospel.


We come to Jesus so we can be successful and live lives filled with an abundance of material prosperity.  The Gospel of Health and Wealth is easily the biggest growth market for AmeriChrist, Inc. and its international subsidiaries. We come to Jesus to affirm our political positions, particularly as it pertains to those uppity hoe-moe-seckshals.  We expect Jesus to embrace the binary conflict dynamics of our culture, and pay no attention to what he told us was the core decision point against which we either stand or fall.  We want a neatly packaged, soundbite faith, and so chop the great story of redemption and reconciliation into verse-by-verse prooftexts that meet that basic human desire to not think, not imagine, and not understand. It's just easier that way.


In coming to Jesus with those things front and center on our shopping list of demands, we walk away from our interaction with the Nazarene precisely the same as we were when we walked towards him.


We want a commodified, packaged, and marketable Jesus, one who meets our needs and gets us what we deserve.  And Lord knows, we get what we deserve.


In the face of this dominant cultural approach to Christianity, what Presbyterians have to offer is countercultural.  We remember.  As Reformed Christians, we pay attention, not just to the now, but the great arc of history.  We understand the nature of what the church has been, how it has moved across languages and cultures, how it has stumbled from being in the thrall of the state to being a pitchman for the market.


We understand the character of the sacred texts that guide us, and the forces that formed them from outside the crucible of the Right Now.  That may mean that we're no longer front and center as a force in cultural Christianity.  But as cultural Christianity pitches out consumerist treacle, pop psychology pablum, and literalist straw men, what the Reformed Tradition offers is a sentient Christianity.


Not all will want that.  But it is what makes our witness unique and valuable.  It's our gift, and we should both cherish it, develop it, and be willing to make the case for it to those who are disaffected by the  spiritually self-evident failings of marketized and politicized Christianity.  

Priorities and Challenges for the 21st Century Church

3)  What do you think are the highest priorities and challenges for the church in the 21st century? 


Answers: Jesus.  Why?


Here, the question is twofold.  Priorities are pressing concerns.  Challenges are those things that materially or conceptually countervail against the norms that govern a person or organization.  For the church in the 21st century, just as the church in the 20th, 13th, 3rd, and First centuries, the teachings and person of Jesus of Nazareth represent both the ultimate goal of the church as a movement and the primary challenge to the church as a human organization or institution.


Teaching the essence of Christ's message needs to be front and center for any gathering of bipedal hominids that claims itself as a church.   Insuring that we're conveying the Gospel of the Kingdom of God and embodying the grace, justice, and mercy of Jesus is the central priority for both the Church with a Capital C and that particular place you go on Sunday.


Yeah, the world has a whole bunch of other things wrong with it.  We're mangling our ecosystem, our society is bleating and baa-ing its way to a globalized oligarchy, and for some reason people keep watching Jersey Shore.   Our culture has become a seething, directionless mess of commodified sexuality and political polarization.  Churches have a prophetic voice about those things, and shouldn't be silent in the face of injustice, but those things themselves are not the gravitic center of our purpose and identity.  


Jesus is.  


And that is where the challenge comes in.  As we attempt to be relevant and engaged within our culture, it becomes really easy for the church to become consumed by the ethos of our environment.   It can become just another reason to justify ancient bigotries and hatreds.  It can become so "relevant" that it stops being the Gospel.  It can become co-opted by political persuasion, to the point at which being a Jesus follower can be just a front for a particular ideological position.  It can become just a light gloss over almost any social interest or group.


A straight-up reading the core teachings of Jesus challenges all of those highly seductive ways of being church-that-is-not-church.  No matter where we are in the arc of human history, no matter what the sociological, cultural, or technological context might be, our assumptions tested, tried, and transformed by our relationship with Him.