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NY Times: Finding Jesus on Facebook

Just saw a link to this article on Marko's blog.  I think the writer hit some things on the head that most churches are now wrestling with.   20-somethings are clearly living in a different world.  They are connected to each other via social media in ways that most of us can't even fathom.  This article does a great job of showing how some social media works in the church.  Remember that just because it works in New York doesn't mean it'll work in your particularl community but there are many concepts that probably translate.

 “The question of how to connect with that generation is a primary question of the church and has been for a number of years,” said Troy Messenger, who teaches at Union Theological Seminary in Manhattan and focuses on the use of media in worship. “Biblical texts are in such another time and culture, it can be very difficult to translate to our life. A two-minute movie clip can do so much more than two minutes of sermon.”

I'll be the first to admit I often fall back into the 3 songs and a talk youth service but this article really encourages me to break free of that.   I am a big proponent of online social media but I haven't felt like its making much of a difference in students relationship with Jesus. 

Read the article and tell me what you think.

30th floor

Dallas has some pretty big buildings.  I was away on an overnight pastors retreat Tues-Wed and we stayed in one of them.  Pretty fun to have all of our meetings looking out over the tops of all these major buildings.  Someone pointed out to me what used to be the tallest building in Dallas.  It  was at least 18 stores below where we were at. 

At one point we went an walked to an old church downtown.  It was interesting to see a traditional looking church surrounded by huge buildings.  Sort of a metaphor I think for how many churches are finding themselves surrounded an overshadowed by culture.    They still have their place but it's sure hard to see them.

A good time of sharing ideas, brainstorming, talking about issues and building relationships.

Justice, the PCUSA and the 20-something generation.

Earlier this week I had our Theologian in Residence Michael Walker come in to share with my youth staff about his journey with the PCUSA and in light of the current issues what he thinks will happen with the future of our denomination.

Michael said something during his time with us that really made me think.  After he shared several ideas about possible futures he brought up the idea of bringing justice to this situation.  The context of his comment was that it would be very easy for our church to raise the money required to simply buy our property and go our separate ways yet he wasn’t sure if that was a “just” scenario because many churches in our denomination are not in our financial state and would be “left behind” to pick up the pieces and fight the theological battle alone.

What struck me about his comments is how well they connected with the younger generation of leaders that are my youth staff.  For many of them (and even me) the quick response to the denomination’s problems was to say we should just get out as many churches have already done.  But, when we began to talk about our responsibility to justice and to help out smaller churches that couldn’t afford to do what we could do it really started to make us think.

Political advertisements in the United States tend to reach out on the emotional level to grab people by their hearts.  Although I don’t have data to back this up I think that many of these advertisements are falling on deaf ears with the 20-something generation.  So many of them seem to have been conditioned by over saturation of this type of advertisement that they don’t respond much anymore.   Justice issues though can be presented in a way that doesn’t need manipulation of emotions to illicit response.

Focusing on the justice issues in this particular situation forces us to look at it from a different place.  Recently I have been reading Mark Labberton’s book “The Dangerous Act of Worship” in it he talks about ideas of how justice should infuse and shape our worship.  He writes “God’s deliverance of Israel comes from seeing the suffering of his people at the unjust and cruel hands of their Egyptian taskmasters.  He delivers and sets them free.  The unidirectional narrative means that once Egypt is behind them, Egypt might as well not be.  Israel doesn’t go back to Egypt to enact justice.  Once Israel has left injustice behind, that tyranny is no longer in view.  Their concern was not injustice per se, but their own experience of oppression.  Put this way, the exodus paradigm exposes the temptation that Israel had, and that the contemporary church shares, to give in to our instinct to escape.  Appropriate exodus does involve leaving something behind and moving ahead.  However, when it becomes an excuse for entitlement, rejection, judgment, disconnection, and deliberate and pervasive forgetfulness, it fosters a lifestyle of running away that undermines both true worship and true justice.” P136-137 

When I interact with 20-somethings it often seems that their disillusionment and frustration with Mainline Christianity stems from a feeling that the Church has lost its way on the issue of justice.  They state (and probably correctly so) that the Church does a poor job of sharing its vision for its place in the world.   They are tired of building projects, programs and events that are only reaching out to people who are already in the “Christian Club”.   They connect with Labberton’s statement because they see in many ways the Church has become a place of “Entitlement, rejection and judgment…” Yet they also feel like these Churches don’t have a place for them to say that and many of them leave our denominations to go to places where people say what they think and their voice can be heard.

In creating 20-something ministries we have to understand that this generation is willing to go deeper than we sometimes realize. Justice is actually something that they mobilize around and we must give them opportunity to follow, lead and grow in their comprehension of it.  It might be helpful for mainline churches to think through some of the grass roots ideas that have been started by their generation such as the Invisible Children campaign to see how quickly they mobilized around an issue.

This may rattle some cages but I also think that mainline churches need to open up the sacred doors of power and invite some 20-somethings onto their Sessions, Boards and Elder bodies.  Traditional Church leadership (even at the pastoral level) tends to reward age and stage of life with power and control.  This quickly takes most 20-somethings out of any position of real authority and with that leadership in Churches.   I realize that this bottom paragraph could easily be added to every post I write but I include it here because I believe that their voice needs to be heard because their thoughts, questions, push backs and ideas are exactly the types of things that the Church establishment needs to wrestle with. 

Let’s just be honest and say that most of our Churches have forgot about the Exile. Maybe this generation can open our eyes to the exile that is still all around us. 

Dangerous Relevancy

Today I was challenged to think through what I mean when I say the Church needs to become “Relevant to Culture”.  As I was reading through chapter 3 in Mark Labberton’s book The “Dangerous Act of Worship” I came across a section titled “False Danger #2: Worship that doesn’t seem relevant” He starts out this section by listing many of the things Churches do in order to appear relevant.  Much of that has to do with style both of the facility, the worship music, sound systems and the media used to portray the message.   He states that we try to “look, sound and feel like we are relevant.”

As I worked through his thoughts at the beginning of this section I realized that in many ways when I’m arguing and striving for relevancy I’m using the same factors he lists here.   But as Labberton shows in the next paragraph simply stopping at this point  (or even using it as a starting point) takes away the true reason for trying to become relevant in the first place.

The true relevancy we should be seeking in our churches shouldn’t start with an image of dominant culture and a plan to make our Churches mimic it to reach people.  Sadly this is what some well meaning people have been doing for years with Contemporary Christian Music, film, television and print.  The “relevancy” that they have sought is to somehow bring the Culture inside the Church because it is what the people most understand and relate to.  They’ve tried to simply “copy” culture and give it a Christian spin. It has been shown numerous times that doesn’t work

This idea of  “Using their own culture” to reach people seems to be opposed to God’s original plan of reaching people and redeeming them to himself.  It seems almost silly to have to remind us that God’s original plan was that he sent “Jesus” to be fully immersed in our culture.  Mark writes, “Incarnational ministry is the cornerstone of how the church is to carry out its life.” P50 What I like about Jesus is that he didn’t come to the “Culture” but he came to people.  Coming to the culture would have had him try to redeem the courtyard instead of making a whip and chasing everyone out.  Coming to the culture would have had him be more careful whom he hung out with.  He wouldn’t have spent so much time with the unclean or the tax collectors or other fringe parts of society. 

I find myself thinking a lot about who I am encourage us to be like in this web project.  Certainly one goal here is that we do need to become more relevant in order for our churches to reach people.   But at what level would that relevancy be most useful.  Yes we need to be aware of culture and use whatever tools are available to us.  But on the other hand would it be also better for us to show Jesus as he really is and bring that contextualized with relevancy to the culture.  That last sentence may not make much sense but I decided not to rewrite it because it gets at the heart of what I’m trying to say I encourage you to reread it and think.

At the heart of this problem is that there are empty Churches all across the United States wishing they could connect with the 20-something generation and not feeling like they have to tools, skills, staff, money etc to figure out how to reach this group.  They’ve been falsely taught that in order to reach this culture you need to work to make your Church look like it.  Debates have gone on for years and many churches have hurt a lot of their own membership as they’ve debated endlessly about musical styles, Televisions in the Sanctuary and many other issues.   Ultimately though what needs to be discussed most and first is what message our church is telling the community about Jesus.  Ask these questions about your church and discuss the answers:  Is your church hidden away in its building expecting people to come to you?  Does the thought of changing something cause major anxiety amongst your current membership?  Are there “Sacred Cows” that define who you are that are more about you then about Jesus?  Do you have a connection to the culture of your city or have you created your own culture that people must wade through to find Jesus? 

I think it best to give Mark Labberton the last word here, as his thoughts were what spurred on this post from me.  He states, “The question of many secular people is not, Why doesn’t the church look more like us?  Rather their perceptive question (and God’s too) is, “Why doesn’t the church look more like Jesus?” p 51 At the end of this section he tells a story of a young man who asks this simple question “I can find lot’s of people in this town that are like me.  What I need instead is to find some people that are like Jesus.  Is your church that kind of place.”p52

The true relevancy that we are looking for in our churches must have as our starting point the goal of contextualizing Jesus to allow his message to speak to the culture.   This discussion must come before anything else.  Do not get caught up in worship wars, clothing wars, paint color wars or media wars.   Start with Jesus and have real open discussions about how the culture you are trying to reach with his message will best hear it.  Then have the courage and conviction to change, as you need to. 

Check out my new blog site www.Relevantpew.com for more posts like this.

Presbyterian.me

A couple months ago the .Me websites went on sale here in the US.  I happened to be doing some work online that day so I checked to see what was available.  Surprisingly www.presbyterian.me was available so I bought it.  Now I'm at a bit of a quandary though.  Having a Blog name like this is a slightly daunting proposition.  I at first thought I'd write about my journey within the PCUSA and especially through the ordination process that I was a part of for a while, stopped doing and am now contemplating being a part of again.  This sounds especially interesting in lieu of all that has happened in the PCUSA this summer.

But, I'm open to other suggestions.  If anyone can think of something great to use this domain name for I'd love to hear it.   Please don't tell me to point it to a hot place filled with pitchforks. :)

PGF and me

I went out to California on Wednesday to be a part of the PGF Conference it was a great time connecting with friends from many like-minded PCUSA churches from California, Washington, Texas, Atlanta and a bunch of other states.  What I love about this part of ;my denomination is that we all see eye to eye on theological issues and we don't have a lot of waffling about core doctrinal stuff.  I could walk into most of their churches and feel right at home with what they teach, how they teach it and the directions they are going. 

For me this trip was especially powerful as my old church Bel Air Presbyterian co-hosted the event.  Mark Brewer the senior pastor was around a lot and the worship band led two different meetings.

Another thing I loved about this conference is how it shrinks my world a bit.  I know quite a few people from many churches all over the US and many of them were at the conference.  So I was able to connect with them all at the same time.  Just nice to have everyone in the same place. 

Even better Danielle came with me.  Several times during the conference I was refered to as "Danielle's husband" as she is very involved in Womens ministry in the PCUSA and met with a number of other women to network and dream.  I am really proud of the way she does her job humbly but with great skill and passion.  She is someone that they need to grab a hold of because she brings a fresh perspective to all of this.

Now that I'm home I'm looking forward to just being here for a while and working on my dissertation and some other projects.

30-Minute Worship on the freeway

I'll get back to the youth ministry posts tomorrow.  I saw a sign on the freeway yesterday somewhere between Austin and Dallas.  The church had a huge sign out front that said 30-minute worship.  I'm still not sure what I think about it.  On one hand I'm saddened that the church seems to be advocating that worship can be shrunk to such a small time frame.  On the other hand I'm thinking that particular church must have figured out that works for their community and they are adapting to meet the needs. 

What the heck

It has been a dry couple of weeks for me as I have not posted very much. Part of it has been my life getting a bit busy but also me just feeling a bit dry.

I'm in Princeton, NJ for the week at a Youth Ministry symposium. It's been really good so far. Yesterday I had the opportunity to hear Darrell Guder speak and it was as good as I'd hoped it would be.

Today I was in a number of seminars but the one that really stands out for me was led by Tony Jones . Tony made my head hurt today with his thoughts about mainline denominational churches and the downward direction they are going.

Part of his talk hit the of bureaucratic part of most mainline denominational churches pretty hard. Tony comes from a mainline background so he's able to get away with poking at the church. What made my head hurt was that I agreed with him at almost every point. I see the problems with the church, I recognize the nightmare that we've created with our huge buildings, programs and staff. I know that in no uncertain terms our churches sometimes exist only to support the programs, pastors and buildings that we've put together.

The reality though is that I'm in a mainline denominational church and I want to work to help change the direction we are going and to make a difference. I don't see the passion, vision and hope of the emergent church movement as being something that we can't grab ahold of and use to transform our church.

But, my head still hurts. I want to dialogue more about this.

By the way Princeton is beautiful and I recommend going to Seminary here. I was eating icecream today and even in that endeavor I felt smarter just being here.

Pastors retreat

I thought I should post something about the pastors retreat that I went on this week. It was a great time interacting with the other guys on staff that I don't know super well. We stayed at a hotel about 1/2 hour away. The whole agenda for the retreat involved us sitting in a room and sharing about our lives. We started with where our grandparents were born all the way to what we are excited about Highland Park Presbyterian Church. I enjoyed getting to know the other pastors at a different level. That night instead of going out to a big dinner we went to a AA baseball game. The weather was amazing and the ball park was a perfect size. Fun to do something with all of them outside of the walls of the church.

It was stated a few times by different pastors that this was the healthiest they thought our staff had been in a long time. I feel so lucky and blessed to have come to HPPC during this time of great health. I'm looking forward to the future.

RelevantPew

Most people in my life know I've been working on a dissertation project for a while now that I'm pretty passionate about. This project came out of my love for youth ministry and how every year it is difficult to graduate a new group of students and wonder how they were going to do in the world. The more frustrated I got about the state of many mainline denominational churches the more passionate I got about wanting to help solve the problem. Hence "RelevantPew". Basically this web resource will be a place for churches who are trying to reach the 20-something generation. It's a site where they can log on and find out information about the 20-something culture, their beliefs, what makes them tick, what they are passionate about, what churches are reaching them, what resources might be helpful.

I've been in design and content phase for a while and the site should be ready to put content on sometime in May. What I would love to have is some of you who read this posts some comments about what you would like to see on the site. What would be helpful for churches to know and what you think would benefit them as they try to reach out to this generation.

The idea behind the name "RelevantPew" is relatively simple. After the Reformation many churches were hurting financially and started a practices of selling pews to families. It got to such a level in some churches that there was no place to sit unless you "owned" a pew. Across the United States there are 1,000's of churches that now have the opposite problem. They are full of pews but have no one to sit in them. The goal of the site is how can an established church work to reach a generation who has been lost. I'm not advocating churches radically changing everything they do. Just that they would realize some change needs to happen in order to be relevant to this generation.