The false ascetic begins by being cruel to everybody because he is cruel to himself. But he ends by being cruel to everybody but himself. Merton, No Man is an Island, pg. 96

Merton highlights the importance of rooting the acts of spiritual disciplines in self-love not self-loathing. It’s easy to allow our frustration with ourselves to drive us to work harder at self-improvement. But this only perpetuates a cycle of self-hatred which spreads to others-hatred. Spiritual disciplines that bring about the desired growth effect are those rooted in self-love. When we love the person God has made us to be and believe that we can achieve the dreams he has planted in our hearts, self-discipline finds the fuel it needs to succeed.

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I recently came across this series of articles by Lori Carrell. She is a professor of communication at the University of Wisconsin. These articles are the results of research done for a Lily-endowed Center for Excellence in Congregational Leadership. She did a survey of more than 10,000 sermon listeners and a number of pastors as well. I found these articles encouraging and helpful. If you’re a preacher, I highly recommend them!

Sermons Most Likely to Succeed

The Perils of Power Point Preaching

Are You Wasting Your Sermon Prep Time?

Reaching the Choir

Why Your Preaching Matters More Than You Think

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This is a very well done video on Christmas and consumerism. Watch and see.

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Norm MacDonald, former SNL weekend Update man, used to joke about which job was the worst in America. Every year the results would come in and the worst job would be something like: Assistant Crack Whore. Everyone would laugh because it’s the superlative of worst-ness in the vocational world.

Joking aside, I believe this year’s ‘the worst job in America’ honor goes to the Chief Executive Officer. The populist hostility toward the CEO continues to mount in inverse proportion the downward spiraling Dow. Our economy is in shambles (and getting worse) and everyone is laying the blame at the feet of highly compensated CEOs. The fury over the following stories makes this clear:

• AIG executives taking luxurious retreats
• the most sought after contingency in the $700 Billion bailout plan being ‘no golden parachutes’ for CEOs
• today the headline story on CNNs site ‘Auto CEOs flew private jets to seek bailout’

And as I listen to the numbers get recited on Larry King Live, I’ve gotta wonder what took us so long to get outraged? The GM CEO Rick Wagoner made $15.7 million last year. This was a year in which GM lost $39 billion dollars. The Ford CEO made $28 million in just four months on the job in 2007, a year in which Ford lost $12.7 billion. With all the families that are losing their jobs (or are poised to lose their jobs), one has to ask is this fair? Do these CEOs really add that much value to the company?

I think we are entering an era during which this will change. Ever since Reagan, America has increasingly subscribed to a trickle-down model of economics. I think we’ve reach some sort of tipping point and things are going to change. When everything was going well in the economic world, people didn’t care. Americans had been largely able to pursue their American Dream so they didn’t care what CEOs made. But now that 401Ks are in the dumps and hundreds of thousands of families are unemployed, these CEOs have to justify their exorbitant financial packages. They have to explain why they are being paid like gods, but are unable to control the economic future like a god.

The curtain has been pulled back and they look more like thieves than leaders. They are no longer cultural leaders (the ones asked to speak at conferences, the ones asked to lead church breakfasts, or the ones we hope our children would aspire to be). They are the morally abhorrent we curse at the dinner table. They are the despised of our culture. They are the object of unending media scrutiny and scorn. The CEO is the worst job in America, regardless of its compensation.

[Edit]
Maybe a form of leadership malpractice is the answer?
http://discussionleader.hbsp.com/kellerman/2008/11/leadership_malpractice.html

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Starting in early December, Mary and I will be transitioning into a new phase of our lives. I will begin a church planting residency at Emmanuel Covenant Church in Roseville, MN. After leaving Highrock Covenant Church in Boston, MA more than two years ago, we look forward to our time at Emmanuel with excitement.

We moved out to the Minneapolis area because of a possible church planting job with Wooddale church, a large mega-church in the western suburbs of Minneapolis. After things didn’t work out with Wooddale, I pursued church planting with another denomination. They were agreeable to move forward, but I didn’t feel ready to plant yet and I wasn’t sure the denomination was a good fit for me. I returned to the Evangelical Covenant denomination last January. After meeting with some of the staff of the denomination, it was determined that I should go through a church planters’ assessment last May (read about that here). Both Mary and I have been surprised by the love and support of the ECC. They seem to do church planting well, and I feel very much at home within the denomination.

Throughout the last four years, I’ve worked for Gordon-Conwell as a Web developer, first for Ockenga and then for the IT department. I’ve worked on a variety of their web applications, and I’ve helped design a number of their pages. It has been a positive work environment, and I’ve learned a lot about teamwork and leadership from watching my co-workers there. It has also been a fun place for me to work. Weird as this may sound, I like programming. There is a creative element of putting all that code together to accomplish a task that will make the end-user’s life just a little bit simpler and more efficient that gives me satisfaction. I will miss my job at Gordon-Conwell.

Working at Emmanuel is the next step in the journey for us, and I believe it’s a good one. I’ve met with the lead pastor there, and I’ve gotten a feel for their church culture. I think it’s a great fit for me, and I’m eager to be a part of the ministry of their church. They are a one year old church plant that seems to be healthy and thriving. The duration of the residency is six months. The goal is to get me back into vocational ministry, help better connect me to the Covenant church in Minneapolis, and provide a hands on church-planting learning environment. During the residency I will be gearing up for planting a church, so that upon the completion of the residency we can hit the ground running.

Thanks to everyone who has supported and prayed for us through this transition. I’m starting to recognize that we aren’t really transitioning from an uncertain place to a certain place, but that this is just the next step in our faith journey–certainty about the future is elusive. We know what the next six months look like, and for now that’s good enough for us!

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A common Christian misconception that I’ve been fighting to overcome in my life has to do with the importance of ordinary, secular work. Over that past few years I’ve been working as a web developer, and before that I’ve worked as a computer engineer, IT helpdesk technician, and a 7th grade teacher. I wanted to know if there is and was any intrinsic value to my work. I had been taught by the church, either explicitly or implicitly, that secular work–work done outside the realm of vocational ministry–is important only insofar as it provides the worker with income that can be donated to charity or given in support of the person who works for God as a missionary or pastor. This work was prioritized because it was the work that facilitated individuals’ spiritual salvation. It was the work that brought people to a place of accepting Jesus into their heart and therefore this work had enduring, eternal significance.

I knew this wasn’t quite right. I knew this left a lot of people in the lurch. The majority of the Christian population was then left with jobs that were only indirectly meaningful as they supported the work of others. Beyond that, the only purpose of their work was to act as a witness to God in the workplace. Those of us engaged in secular work could do little more than act as happy representatives of Christianity that would pique the interest of our co-workers, and hopefully provide an avenue where we could invite these people to church. Then in the presence of trained ministry professionals, our co-workers would hear a message describing a metaphysical transaction accomplished on the cross by Jesus Christ, which would allow them to be saved from their sins if they would acknowledge him as Lord and say a certain prayer. The goal of our work was to make money to give to support professional Christians and to invite our co-workers to come to church so they could meet these professional Christians. Beyond that, our work had little, if any, intrinsic worth.

In an intentional effort to correct this thinking and save my misguided thoughts about work, I read Darrell Cosden’s book: The Heavenly Good of Earthly Work. He articulates a theology of work by looking back to creation and forward to the resurrection. He suggests that our calling to work originates in God’s original plan for humans in creation (because it is only after the Fall that work became toilsome). From the beginning God planned for us to join with him in working. When we work, we become co-creators of culture and co-rulers over the earth with God. Looking forward, Cosden states that our work is not just for the here and now but it will endure into Heaven. He argues for a theological understanding of the resurrection that accounts for God’s promise to redeem all of creation. God won’t trash the earth and start over from scratch. God’s salvation of the earth includes the resurrection and transformation of not just humans but all of creation (Rev. 21-22, Rom. 8, 1 Cor. 15). This means that the programming work that I’ve done, along with the paper filing, technical testing, and management supervisory work that others have done will have an eternal impact on the life we live beyond the grave. Because God will redeem all of creation, our work, which is a part of creation, will be wrapped up in its redemption.

If God can raise and transform the dead…he can raise and transform all present and even past (decayed and gone) earthly realities.
Yet, rather than limiting our thinking to individual products of work, it may also help us to think about the cumulative nature and impact of our work on this earth and on the whole of humanity. Think about how different our world would be had someone not invented the wheel. God’s judgment about the “goodness” or otherwise of the wheel we invented does not apply only to the “original” wheel. It involves a judgment of all that has resulted from there being wheels–all that we have built upon, from, and with this invention.
Today we live with the results, good and bad, of what previous generations did through their work. Every product of work, and every way of working, in some way preserves and develops what has come before. Human beings stand on one another’s shoulders all the way back to Adam. Rather than thinking individualistically about the salvation of unrelated separate entities, it might help us to see our work interdependently as part of the “fabric of this world” (as Lee Hardy calls it) that God will preserve and transform into the fabric of the new earth.
Cosden, pg. 114-115 

This being the case, our work clearly has important eternal significance, and furthermore it means we ought to be thoughtful about what sort of work we engage in. With the caveat that there is no perfect job, we should engage in work that is not explicitly damaging to creation–whether it be environmentally dangerous, hurtful to humans, or relationally destructive. For example, if our job was to sell crack on the street or required us to dump environmentally harmful chemicals into a river, as Christians, it wouldn’t do to justify this as a well paying job that can support the vocational ministry of many a minister. Our vocation would be eternally destructive and we should switch jobs immediately. Other jobs, like a technology job that produces software for a military contractor, may fall into more of a grey area. Our continued work at that company should be reflected on with other Christians around us so as to discern the appropriateness of our vocation.

In fact, Cosden suggests that we should all engage in regular Sabbath reflection on the value of our work. This reflection should gauge the appropriateness of our current occupation based on its impact on creation and on the gifting and skill sets we possess. He provides some questions to be answered personally as well as in the context of community to help us reflect on our current vocation.

1) Does or can, this or that occupation allow me to work as God’s apprentice according to his purpose for this creation?
2) Given the ambiguities and ambivalence in this specific work, does it (or how can it) in some measure promote and build harmonious relationships between God and humanity, between people, and between people and nature?
3) Does this work promote or contribute to the psychological wholeness and flourishing of people in themselves?
4) Is this work suited to who I am and am becoming with my gifts and talents?
5) Does (or how can) this work and its results allow me and others to flourish as God’s apprentices?
6) How can we together, with the help of God’s Spirit, minimize or even eliminate its hindering us from this purpose?
Cosden, 117-118 

The goal of our Sabbath reflection is to arrive at a place of conviction about our jobs. We want to work in vocations that allow us to participate with God in his work in the world. Cosden calls this “work in the Spirit,” which he defines (with help from Miroslav Volf’s book, Work in the Spirit) as:

1) Work that preserves and maintains what is good in creation, both God-given and made by humanity.
2) Work that clears away, as much as possible, those things that seek to confound the purposes of God and threaten to destroy his kingdom.
3) Work that produces new things that promote personal, communal, cultural, and environmental harmony and well-being–all in a restored relationship with God in Jesus Christ.
Cosden, pg. 145-146 

As you and I engage in work in the Spirit, we do more than just earn a paycheck or pass our time. We participate in producing products and culture that will last beyond our days. We engage in work within this created order in partnership with God. We join God in his mission of salvation and transformation of the entire world. We engage with God, who is said to be working even to this day (John 5:17), in accomplishing his purposes for this world. I found this a refreshing take on work that has the power to transform our attitude and save our jobs from the daily grind of the 9-5 work week.

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Making big decisions has historically been a gut-wrenching experience for me. Instead of feeling liberated by the Christian truth that God promises to lead us, I feel burdened by it. The pressure of being certain about the will of God has weighed me down to the point of debilitation. The need to get it right and not make a bad choice has tended to destroy any joy that is supposed to be present in Christian freedom. Decisions have turned into those fork in the road moments where I’m consumed with the fear of taking the wrong path.

It is with this personal back-drop that I read the following quote. I find it an excellent articulation of our responsibility and freedom in making decisions in the real world.

It is now necessary to actually discern what the will of God may be, what might be right in the given situation, what may please God; for one must, of course, live and act concretely. Intellect, cognitive ability, and attentive perception of the context come into lively play here. All of this discerning will be encompassed and pervaded by the commandment. Prior experiences will raise encouraging or cautionary notes. Under no circumstances must one count on or wait for unmediated inspirations, lest all to easily one fall prey to self-deception. Given the matter at hand, an intensely sober attitude will govern the discerning. Possibilities and consequences will be considered carefully. In short, in order to discern what the will of God may be, the entire array of human abilities will be employed. But in all of this there will be no place for the torment of being confronted with insoluble conflicts, nor the arrogance of being able to master any conflict, nor also the enthusiastic expectation and claim of direct inspirations. here will be faith that, to those who humbly ask, God will surely make the divine will known. And then, after all such serious discernment there will also be freedom to make a real decision; in this freedom there will be confidence that it is not the human but the divine will that is accomplished through such discernment. The anxiety about wether one has done the right thing will turn neither into a desperate clinging to one’s own good, nor into the certainty of knowing about good and evil. Instead, it will be overcome in the knowledge of Jesus Christ, who alone exercises gracious judgment; this will allow one’s goodness to remain hidden the knowledge of grace of the judge until the proper time

Bonhoeffer, Ethics, 323-24

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Bill Maher’s new movie Religulous has just come out. I have seen him on a number of TV promotional spots like the Daily Show. He challenges the simplistic unscientific beliefs that so many religious people fervently hold to. He is shocked that people believe in a literal flood, a very real Satan figure, or the theology of atonement that is said to give meaning to Jesus’ death on the cross. He frames the faith of these religious people as worse than pitiable. One line of reasoning he repeats throughout his interviews goes something like this: We live the 21st century and we should have moved beyond this as a society. Religion is a blight on society–look at all the wars that are to blame or the bigotry that’s resulted from people holding misguided religious beliefs. He asserts that religion is ridiculous (hence the title) and even dangerous to society and we must move past it as a civilized country if we want to evolve. He has made it his crusade to embolden people to stand up for their agnostic beliefs and push for a more secular society.

I think he is onto something. The clips that he shows make clear that some religious people do hold ridiculous beliefs. For every religion out there, it isn’t difficult to find some nut job who has distorted its meaning. There is the guy on the street corner who preaches condemnation and hell fire at people he doesn’t even know. There is the co-worker who rigidly observes a set of Christian rules and judges everyone around him without an ounce of compassion, love, or forgiveness evident in any part of his life. There is the high school student who goes to youth group every Wednesday for prayer and praise, and then on Friday dives head first into the drunken debaucheries of the high school party scene. Christianity is a religion full of people who serve as bad examples, but that’s the point. To say people are messed up is to engage in Christian theologizing.

One of the central doctrines of the Christian faith is the doctrine of sin. We were created blameless but we err. We were declared good but we execute evil. We were made to love but we’re filled with hate. Every person on the face of the planet has felt the pangs of sin–trusts have been betrayed, confidences broken, and relationships destroyed because of sin. We all know sin like we know hunger because it’s as much a part of our life as eating.

For Maher to point out the shortcomings of individual religious adherents is only to confirm the presence of sin in the world. There is no surprise that he can grab a random religious zealot on the street or a politician who has used religion to get elected and make their faith look stupid. He could have grabbed anyone. Everyone holds some set of beliefs that are crazy, and everyone lives an inconsistent lifestyle–in some people it’s just more obvious.

Where Maher goes wrong is with his putative solution. He avers that we are smart enough to move past this. We are developed enough as a society that we ought to be able to move on to a more enlightened place. But I think this is terribly naive. I’ve seen no evidence that smarter, more cultured, or more educated people in any way behave better than those who are less educated. I could offer anecdotal evidence of the college students I’ve interacted with on the Harvard campus and the orphan children I worked with in Africa. I could suggest national or political examples of Nazi Germany or Watergate. I could offer corporate examples of Enron, Martha Stewart or most recently the sleazy practices that lead up to the mortgage crisis. Some of the smartest, most cultured people do things just as stupid and self-contradictory as the people Maher has interviewed.

And that’s the Christian message: we are all messed up. Each and every single one of us is broken, hypocritical, judgmental, and selfish. We are sinners. We not only live at times embarrassingly inconsistent lives, but our sin often times seriously hurts other people. Lying isn’t bad just because God arbitrarily says so; it’s bad because relationships are built on the foundations of honesty. Raunchy anonymous sex isn’t sinful because God is a prude. It’s sinful because humans are vulnerable people who can best enjoy the riches of sex within the context of the covenant relationship of marriage. Sin afflicts us all, and it is in us all. We are all sinners. Being a Christian just means that we recognize our brokenness and are trying to move towards healing and salvation in the context of community.

History does not move forward without catastrophe, happiness is not guaranteed by the multiplication of physical comforts, social harmony is not easily created by more intelligence, and human nature is not as good or as harmless as had been supposed. We are thus living in a period in which either the optimism of yesterday has given way to despair, or in which some of the less sophisticated moderns try desperately to avoid the abyss of despair by holding to credos which all the facts have disproved.
Niebuhr, “Optimism, Pessimism, and Religious Faith,” anthologized in Essential Reinhold Niebuhr, 9.

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I’m a vegetarian. It’s sort of a new thing for me. I’ve abstained from meat since the beginning of February. It’s been surprisingly easy with the assortment of good vegetarian foods available, and my love affair with sweets. But a lot of people ask me why I’m a vegetarian, and so I thought I’d share a video that graphically portrays the essential reason behind it.

This is a video about a couple of guys who raised a baby lion, released it into the wild, and then sought it out a year later. Take a look:

For me, this video gives me a glimpse of how humans and animals have a potential to relate to one another. I believe that God’s original plan for creation was devoid of death, and hence devoid of meat-eating. Animosity entered the animal-human relationship, and carnivores were born, but that wasn’t they way it was supposed to be (Gen 1:29-30).

I believe that in the ultimate restoration of God’s creation this human-animal relationship will be restored to something like we see in the video above. Humanity will have dominion over the animals just as God has dominion over us: we will graciously rule through sacrificial love and service. Instead of exploiting animals as meat-making-machines without feelings or lives of value, we will treasure them as important parts of God’s creation.

Household pets can be good examples of proper human-animal relationships. Humans can rule over their pets in a loving affectionate way that demands sacrifice for the well-being of the pet. Pets are often considered parts of the family and the intimate tie that owners feel towards their cats and dogs is tangibly felt. Pet owners know that their pets have emotions–they feel anxiety, loyalty, hope, faith and love. I believe this is a reality for all animals, not just pets, and so I choose not to eat them.

My convictions are rooted in scripture, but I wouldn’t assert that vegetarianism is mandatory for all Christians. There are plenty of examples of meat-eating in the Bible. However, there are also plenty of examples that point us to the high worth of animals in God’s eyes. So for Christians who choose to eat meat, I think a serious look at our food-producing system is in order. We are detached from the birth, growth, and slaughter of the meat we (as a culture) eat. Some of us would be mortified to see the way the animals we eat are treated.

I’m still trying to figure all of this out. At first I didn’t eat eggs, but now I’m eating eggs from free-range chickens. Maybe next week I’ll change my mind again. This is an evolving experiment that is rooted in my desire to life a more gracious life. Being a vegetarian is a personal calling that helps me enter into a more holistic life of compassion. It is one way I can practice a heavenly lifestyle here on earth now.

For further reading:
A great book on vegetarianism for Christians: Webb, Stephen On God and Dogs

A Pastors journey into vegetarianism: http://gregboyd.blogspot.com/2008/02/why-im-vegetarian.html

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There was a time in my life when I was terrified to open my mouth in the presence of Christians.  I felt like everything I said was evaluated and judged, and people were constantly weighing my worth in the balances.  If I said something that referred to a time in my life when I got in trouble or did something inappropriate I got dirty looks.  If I asked questions about doctrine or God’s nature my questions would be dismissed with platitudes and condescension.  Church became a place I felt rejected and insecure instead of loved and safe.

I recently came across this quote and it reminds me how important it is for church leaders to create a culture where openness and questioning is acceptable–a place where people can be honest about what they think about God and what questions they have.

Earlier, Willard talks about how this flows out of our desire to appear good in the eyes of others–we don’t want to reveal our doubts or be thought of as strange so we keep quiet and participate in a ‘conspiracy of silence’ that stifles honesty and vulnerability.  We live not for God, but for the eyes of others, which he calls ‘eyeservice’. 

I believe this is what I experienced in the past.  People felt like certainty and unwavering faith were the mark of spiritual maturity.  Conversely doubt and questions were the sign of immaturity, which was naturally remedied through some bible study groups and a consistent devotional life.  I haven’t found that to be the case.  In fact, with Soren Kierkegaard, I would argue that doubt isn’t a sign of no faith but the sign of the presence of faith.  You can’t doubt if you don’t believe.

I also believe church is supposed to be a place where we can be honest.  One of the core Christian disciplines is confession.  We confess our failures so that we can receive healing.  If a church culture stifles honesty and vulnerability, we won’t feel safe enough to confess our sins to one another.  Consequently we won’t experience the liberation that comes from being totally honest in the presence of another person, and then hearing that person repeat the phrase back to you, “As a representative of Christ, you are forgiven.”

If you are in a place of leadership in the church, I encourage you to do all you can to contribute to creating a culture like this.  Share vulnerably yourself.  Accept others when they are honest.  Welcome honest questioning and don’t shun doubt.  Often times this sort of culture-creating work can be hard.  We have to be the first to open up and share, but I’ve found that people welcome the honesty and respond in kind.

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