A Reflection on the (Possible) Predecessors of the "Emerging" Church

I recently began reading yet another book on the history of monasticism (monks and nuns and canons, oh my) - C.H. Lawrence's Medieval Monasticism. The book begins, as do most histories of monasticism with the first Christians who withdrew from the world in order to seek a deeper understanding of and walk with Christ. Lawrence, though, makes one thing clear that the other books I have read often seem to pass over - these earliest of monks, the "Desert Fathers" as they are known - were lay men and women. The earliest hermits who withdrew to the deserts of Egypt - men such as Antony and Pachomius - were simply lay people who sought more of God.

Perhaps it doesn't for you, but for me that came as a little bit of a surprise. After all, often monks and nuns and others who are seeking the monastic life are lumped together under the term "religious." That title would seem to link them with the established church. The fact that by the Middle Ages, most were connected through doctrine and organization to the Roman Catholic church only adds to the idea that these men and women were "super-Christians." They weren't priests, they were better and holier than priests. They have even garnered the reputation of a kind of Christian holy-man or holy-woman hero - as though their prayers were somehow more effective than the prayers of an average person.

But in the beginning, it wasn't like that. Antony didn't set out to create a movement - he went to the desert seeking Christ in solitude. Yet others were drawn to him in an effort to find that very same thing. Similarly, Pachomius - considered by many to be the founder of the "communal" monaster - never intended to create such. It happened when others were drawn to his desire to know Christ. Though neither intended to do so, when faced with groups of other Christians seeking to find Christ through solitude, neither could deny them and so a movement began that led to the formation of literally hundreds of monasteries and convents across Europe and in England.

As I was thinking on this, it occurred to me that, in many ways, people like Antony and Pachomius belong in the same category as many of those who are a part of today's phenomenon frequently called "the emerging church." This movement did not start out seeking to become a movement - it started out as individuals and groups seeking to know Christ better and deeper through shared experience and community life, through sensory worship and a welcoming spirit. I doubt that the earliest members of the movement were thinking to themselves, "In 10-15 years, we'll have all kinds of groups and publish all kinds of books." Rather, a movement grew up around them like a movement grew up around Antony and Pachomius.

People were drawn to Antony and Pachomius and their sisters and brothers in the desert not because these Desert Fathers and Mothers were somehow calling them, but because the people saw in them something lacking in themselves. A piety, a holiness, a strength, a courage - whatever it was, people saw it in Antony and in Pachomius and began to ask them, "How can I get this kind of faith?" Faced with such questions, the Desert Fathers and Mothers could hardly fail to respond.

Similarly, people are not drawn to the "emerging" church necessarily because the emerging church is calling out to them. Rather, they are drawn to a group of Christians who have something that other incarnations of the church seem to lack. A sense of community, a healthy understanding of the environment or the like. And people came (and continue to come) to the emerging church and ask, "How can I experience this kind of faith?"

While it would be a stretch to call the emerging church a "new kind of monasticism," there is no doubt in my mind that it stands in a grand tradition of those who step out of the popular church simply to seek Christ...and I am glad for that.

A Reflection on Business Cards

When Melissa and I first moved to Oklahoma City to pastor at May Avenue Wesleyan Church, I remember very clearly one of the first things I did as "pastor." It was something I was quite excited about - something I had always looked forward to being able to do for the first time...I ordered business cards. Not just ordered, I even designed business cards. They are super-cool cards that have a celtic cross in the background and have the name of the church, my name, and all the contact information for our church on them.

I had finally arrived - I was officially a pastor now that I had business cards. From the day that these business cards arrived (with, of course, the snazzy little metal business card carrying case), I was prepared to spread the word about our church by slipping my card into the hands of whoever I might meet - the pastor of a neighboring church, my neighbor, the mayor, Bob Stoops, whoever. This is what pastors do, and I am going to be great at it because I have professional looking business cards. Or so I thought.

My initial order was for 250 business cards. I figured that would be good to start with and, after a few months of liberally spreading them around Oklahoma City, I could order more to replenish my supply. Well, as I sit here typing this, almost exactly one year later, I have hardly made a dent in the 250. All those opportunities to slip a card into someone's hand or pocket didn't quite materialize like I thought they would. And the few that I did give away weren't to Bob Stoops or the mayor, but to people like Sheree and Lynette - people who came looking for help and who left with my card and a hearty, "Call us if there's anything else we can do for you." Certainly not what I had been expecting when I placed that order.

Truth be told, though, I am glad that I haven't given away all those cards and, to be even more brutally honest, I'm kind of ashamed of my fascination with them to begin with. Business cards, it seems to me, are often used as signs of power and influence. They are designed to be tools of self aggrandizement, of self promotion. That's why people design business cards with flashy colors and ornate designs and with celtic crosses in the background.

It is also why the biggest thing on most business cards is the name of the person, as is certainly the case with mine. Right in the center, in bigger letters than almost everything else on the card, you will see the words, "Rev. Joseph E. Boggs." And those words are where the problems begin - as if this thing called May Avenue Wesleyan Church has anything at all to do with me. Or, perhaps it would be better to say, as if "Rev. Joseph E. Boggs" played any significant role in creating the church in Oklahoma City.

It was not my birth that made angels sing. No one has dropped everything to follow me. I did not go willingly to my death so that the people of Oklahoma City could experience love and grace and freedom like no other. The same is true of any pastor of any church. It's not us. No matter how good the preaching or how effective the leadership, it is not the pastor that is the driving force behind the church. It is not the pastor's name that belongs on the front of the business card.

Of course, I'm not trying to say that business cards for pastors are inherently evil or that they are not useful tools in ministry. Neither am I saying that we pastors should create business cards with the name of Jesus on them instead of our own - just imagine the confusion that would ensue if, in the place of "Rev. Joseph E. Boggs," my business card simply said, "Jesus, Son of God." No thanks - my messiah complex isn't quite that developed.

What I AM saying, though, is that business cards can be a symptom and a symbol of pride. Every pastor faces the temptation to place himself or herself in the place of priority, to succumb to the thought that it is he or she that makes the church what it is and to lose sight of the fundamental truth that the church is only what it is meant to be when Christ and Christ alone is its head. I don't need to advertise me, I need only to point to Christ. Who cares what my name is or whether or not I carry the title of "Reverend." All that matters is the one who constantly breathes life into the dead bones of sinful people and through that breath creates life and animates HIS church.

Note: I wrote this after spending some time thinking about Jonah and Nineveh, as well as the idea of being a reluctant preacher, a reluctant messenger of God. I'm not completely sure, but I think this conveys pretty well the way I feel about the church - not about my "specific" church - but about the whole group of people who seek to follow Christ...

CON-

-FLICTED

She is beautiful...

...yet she is ugly.

She is flawed...

...yet she is perfect.

She is whole...

...yet she is broken.

She is worldly...

...yet she is holy.

She is hopeful...

...yet she is hopeless.

She is lost...

...yet she is found

She is healing...

...yet she is hurtful.

I loathe her...

...yet I love her.

I can’t leave her...

...yet I don’t want to stay.

She is God’s...

...and she is good.

Setting the Bar

One of the mothers in my church recently purchased a book for, well, almost the entire church. The book is called Do Hard Things - written by two young men who have been attempting (quite successfully, it seems) to start what they call a "rebelution" - a rebellion against rebellion. These two young men started doing "hard things" for God when they were in their teen years and, through that process, were led to write a book questioning the assumptions society makes about teenagers.

I haven't finished the book yet, but right off the bat the Harris brothers make one significant point that applies not just to teenagers, but to all of us. They talk about how, 100 years ago, the word "teenager" didn't exist. You were either a child or adult. Children who reached the age of, say, 16, were expected to think, work, and act like adults. Something has happened in the last 100 years, though, which has created a whole new stage of life called the "teenage years" - where expectations for todays teenagers are often miserably low. The question posed by Do Hard Things, then, is when did it become okay to have such low expectations?

I read that and immediately my mind went to the church in general. When did it become okay for the expectations of Christians to be so low? Seriously. In many churches, what we expect of a "good" Christian is painfully simple: be at church every week, tithe 10%, and maybe volunteer for a ministry here and there. Those tend to be the HIGHEST expectations we have - we're satisfied if a family can make it to worship two out of every three Sundays and occasionally contributes to the offering. What happened? When did this become acceptable?

Surely, these weren't the same expectations Jesus had of his earliest followers, whom he challenged to go throughout the world and preach and minister. Surely these weren't the same expectations Paul had of the churches to which he wrote letters. He challenges them to do really hard things...just read through Paul's letters sometime and you'll see. The blueprint for the life of a follower of Christ is a constant call to do hard things for God. And yet somehow we've set the bar so low, have so little expectations for ourselves that we consider the simple act of tithing to be a "hard thing."

To be honest, it's shameful the way we've subtly and consistently lowered the expectations to the point where we can meet or exceed them without a whole lot of exertion, without leaving our couches or our cozy suburbs.

We need God to challenge us, to raise the bar to where we have to reach, to jump, to run out of our comfort zone to live up to the expectations. We need to be people and churches that don't settle for easy but instead are constantly pushing for more hard things to do for God. We helped set the bar so low and, with God's help, we can help lift it back up again.

Besieged by Thoughts

It seems as though my thoughts are always against me, always willing me further, always pushing me to try harder and go deeper in my life. They never let me rest, I can never stop and just bask in some accomplished change or completed transformation; the moment one ends my thoughts start pushing me further. I am constantly assaulted with the questions that are the bane of any Christian's existence: Why am I so quick to sin? Why am I not more like Christ? Why am I doing so little? Shouldn't I be doing more?

Today my thoughts went further than ever before. In my office there are many, many books. There are books on theology, books on preaching, philosophy books, business books, Bibles and history books. They fill the wall behind my desk, and I love it that way. In a reflective moment this morning, though, I found myself looking at the wall of books and, instead of feeling the usual deep sense of satisfaction, I found myself feeling exceedingly disturbed. It only took a moment for the disturbing thought to crystallize as I began to pick out particular books with my eyes. I would look at a title and find myself thinking, "I wonder how many meals for a homeless family could have been bought with the money I used to buy that book." Another title - "Is there a child who lacks clothing or toys because I bought that book?" Still another title - "Was that missionary couple able to raise the funds they needed, or did my selfish desire for a book get in the way?" On and on it went, book after book, for about 15 minutes until I had to force myself to get up and leave my office.

My heart is profoundly disturbed by these thoughts, these questions. Not because I think they are inappropriate thoughts, mind you. No, I find myself disturbed by them because they are wholly appropriate. They are questions that should be asked, inquiries that must be made. Have I sinned in my quest to own "stuff." More than just books, this extends to everything - TVs, DVDs, cars, furniture, even food at the grocery store. Has my drive to satisfy my desires - even my legitimate desires - caused me to forsake opportunities to go good? Are the things that I own merely signs of my greed? When I go out to eat on a regular basis, am I flaunting my wealth in the face of those for whom a meal in a restaurant is an impossibility?

I don't know that I will ever be able to look at the wall of books behind my desk the same way again. More significantly, I don't know that I want to. If my selfishness is hindering God's ability to use the resources He has given me, then my prayer is that God will continue to disturb my thoughts and discomfit my heart. I would rather sell every book that I own and never buy another than live with the realization that the book on my shelf represents what could have been food for the hungry or clothing for the naked or medicine for the sick.

May God continue to transform the way I look at things and at people and, through this transformation, radically alter the way I use my resources. The truth is that my thoughts are doing me a favor when they assault me each morning and each evening. I do fail. I am not like Christ. I should be doing more. There isn't time for rest...

Guest Blogger: Victor Hugo

Okay, so I'm reading Victor Hugo's Les Miserables, and I ran across a chapter in the early parts of the book that is so good, so compelling and makes such a powerful statement that I am going to quote it in its entirety. I wonder if I'm the first blogger to have a dead French guy as a "guest blogger?" Anyway, here goes (the emphasis at the end is mine):

Man overboard!

But the ship does not stop. The wind is blowing and the doom-laden vessel is set on a course from which it cannot depart. It sails on.

The man sinks and reappears, flings up his arms and shouts, but no one hears. The ship, heeling in the wind, is intent upon its business, and passengers and crew have lost sight of him, a pinpoint in the immensity of the sea.

He calls despairingly, gazing in anguish after the receding sail as, ghostlike, it fades from view. A short time ago he was on board, a member of the crew busy on deck with the rest, a living being with his share of air and sunlight. What has become of him now? He slipped and fell, and this is the end.

He is adrift in the monstrous waters with only their turbulence beneath him, hideously enclosed by wave-crests shredded by the wind, smothered as they break over his head, tumbling from one to another, rising and sinking into unfathomable darkness where he seems to become part of the abyss, his mouth filled with bitter resentment at this treacherous ocean that is so resolved to destroy him, this monster toying with his death. To him the sea has become the embodiment of hatred.

But he goes on swimming, still struggles despairingly for life, his strength dwindling as he battles against the inexhaustible. Above him he can only see the bleak pallor of the clouds. He is the witness in his death-throes of the immeasurable dementia of the sea, and, tormented by this madness, he hears sounds unknown to man that seem to come from some dreadful place beyond the bounds of earth. There are birds flying amid the clouds as angels soar over the distresses of mankind, but what can they do for him? They sing as they glide and hover, while he gasps for life.

He is lost between the infinities of sea and sky, the one a tomb, the other a shroud. Darkness is falling. He has swum for hours until his strength is at an end and the ship with its company of men has long since passed from sight. Solitary in the huge gulf of twilight he twists and turns, feeling the waves of the unknowable close in upon him. And for the last time he calls, but not to man. Where is God?

He calls to anyone or anything - he calls and calls but there is no reply, nothing on the face of the waters, nothing in the heavens. He calls to the sea and spray, but they are deaf; he calls to the winds, but there are answerable only to infinity. Around him dusk and solitude, the heedless tumult of wild waters; within him terror and exhaustion; below him the descent into nothingness. No foothold. He pictures his body adrift in that limitless dark. The chill numbs him. His hands open and close, clutching at nothing. Wind and tumult and useless stars. What can he do? Despair ends in resignation, exhaustion chooses death, and so at length he gives up the struggle and his body sinks for ever.

Such is the remorseless progression of human society, shedding lives and souls as it goes on its way. It is an ocean into which men sink who have been cast out by the law and consigned, with help most cruelly withheld, to moral death. The sea is the pitiless social darkness into which the penal system casts those it has condemned, an unfathomable waste of misery. The human soul, lost in those depths, may become a corpse. Who will revive it?

Monastic Ruminations...

As I've been reading (a lot) lately about the development of monastic life in the early middle ages, I've learned quite a few things that I didn't know before. What has been most fascinating, though, is learning how the different types of monastic orders developed over time.

For the most part, the earliest monks were hermits. Their goal was not to start communities, but to withdraw completely from society in order to better follow Christ in solitude. Inevitably, though, people were drawn to these hermits (or "eremites," to use the technical word) as they lived out their faith in the desert, or in caves, or in any number of solitary locales. Devoted Christians would seek out these Desert Fathers (and mothers), as they are now known, in an effort to get the Fathers and Mothers to teach them what it meant to follow Christ.

Initially, the hermits were often reluctant to take on disciples. Eventually, though, communities of disciples began to develop around these hermits. Seeking, then, to ease the burden of having so many disciples, some of the hermits developed "rules" - or a set of standards by which the disciples around them would commit to live. Thus, the monasteries which seem most familiar to us were born - as groups of like-minded Christians (known as "cenobites") withdrew from the world to seek solitude and discipline in a community together.

The next step in the development of monasticism was the coming of the canons. Simply put, canons were monks who served pastoral duties. Rather than withdrawing from society, communities of canons were often located in some urban settings and frequently were responsible for pastoring multiple parish churches throughout the countryside. Rather than withdrawal, the motivation of canons was service and pastoral care. They still lived in communities and subscribed to a strict rule of life, but they were more engaged with the world around them.

Finally come the friars. Friars were the next logical step after canons. Friars often traveled in pairs and, though they subscribed to a rule, they often did not reside in permanent houses but begged for what they needed to survive as they travelled. The main focus of many friars was preaching and evangelism. The call to withdraw from the world that the first eremites felt had come full circle in the friars, whose call was to return to the world again with the message of the gospel.

What strikes me about all of this is the similarity between the development of faith in the New Testament and the development of monasticism. Initially, Jesus could be said to have been a hermit - he spent time in the desert and moved about solo. Soon enough, though, people were drawn to his teachings and a group began to form around him . To be sure, they didn't settle in one location, but there is every indication that the disciples around Jesus had withdrawn from the rest of the world and found their sustenance in the daily "rule" of following Christ. After the ascension, we find the disciples holing up in an upper room, but the indications are there that they are still doing ministry - much like the canons. Finally, we see Jesus send the disciples out like Friars - traveling in pairs to spread the gospel.

Perhaps the development of faith and discipleship is a cyclical process. Or perhaps I'm just a little too fascinated with all of this.

Multi-Sensory Worship

Among people who study the church and worship, one of the more recent themes has been the idea of multi-sensory worship - worship that engages more than just the ears. According to its proponents, many "typical" worship services are, at most, engaging two senses - sight and sound. It would be more effective, then, to have worship that engages ALL the senses - sight, sound, taste, touch, smell.

The next question, of course, is what would this kind of worship look like in practice? How could a church structure its worship to engage all of the senses? My wife and I were talking about this last night, about what it might look like, when it hit me that there are already many, many churches that have true multi-sensory worship every single week. Any visit to the majority of Catholic or Episcopalian or other high-church worship services is a true sensory feast.

Think about it. You walk in and see the font of holy water - you dip your fingers in and make the sign of the cross prior to sitting (touch). As the worship service begins, the priest and others process into the sanctuary, swinging a censer of incense (smell). Soon enough, you are joining your voice singing along to the music and listening to the priest singing the liturgy (sound). At the penultimate point, the climax of the service, you find yourself kneeling at an altar as the priest places the bread into your hand and the cup to your lips (taste). All of this takes place, in many congregations, in a place covered with symbolism - in the architecture, in the art, in the clothing (sight). You leave, having fully experienced worship with all five of your senses...having been given an opportunity to fully engage with God.

Now if only us Protestants could figure out how to bring the same kind of unified, multi-sensory experience to our own worship experiences!

Why I love books.

About mid-January of this year, during a sermon, I committed in front of God and my church to stop buying books until Easter. It was unplanned, but it was good - although I did experience some fairly severe Barnes and Noble withdrawal. And once Easter rolled around, I was back to the bookstore as fast as possible. Since Easter Sunday, thanks in large part to my birthday being so close, I have "acquired" 13 new books and read six of them already (probably going to finish number seven and start number 8 eight sometime today). As I commented to my wife, I feel like I'm "drunk on words." And I absolutely love that feeling.

One of the books I read this week included the following statement by one of its main characters:

"...my relationship to books remains mysterious to me, but I know from my own collection that ownership is the most intimate tie we can have to objects."

I find this particular quote among my favorites ever about books. There is something mysterious about the way that books get inside us, how they transform from words to something more, something potentially life-changing. A good book is often called a work of art. And indeed, this is true - books like East of Eden by Steinbeck or Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand are works of art just as surely as Monet's paintings of waterlilies and Picasso's cubist masterpieces are works of art. To be honest, though, I think there is something about books - about the written word - that places it a cut above a visual work of art, no matter how great.

No matter how many times you look at the Mona Lisa or the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel, the colors of the figures aren't going to change. Neither are their expressions. A visual work of art remains, to a large extent, the same. It is immutable, stolid, unchanging. You cannot look at a painting and then close your eyes and picture something different without altering in your mind the essence of the art. To be sure, there is an emotional experience of art that is as varied as the people who gaze at it. The emotions evoked in me by Tintoretto's Last Supper may be completely different than those evoked in you. Or any other viewer, for that matter. Nonetheless, you and I and that other viewer all see the same thing, the same colors, the same figures.

Such is not the case with a book. Words paint pictures as vivid as the greatest canvas. They give color to scenery and expressions to people. When you read the above quote from The Secret of Lost Things by Sheridan Hay, you paint a picture in your mind. No doubt it is different from my picture - I see stacks and stacks of books: old, new, paperback, hardcover, well-worn, never opened, fiction, nonfiction... And that picture in my head evokes emotions just as a painting does. What separates it from a painting, though, is the picture painted by a book is mine and mine alone. I do not have to share it with anyone, and probably couldn't if I wanted to. Now, not only are the emotions evoked by it different, the very picture itself is different.

That - if it's remotely understandable - is partly why I love so many books!

What's it All About?

I confess that this year I have been having difficulty getting "into" the Easter spirit. What I mean by that is that I have let comparably little things - problems, issues, emotions - get in the way. Instead of preparing my heart and mind for Holy Week and for Easter, I have been treating it as "the big week" of ministry and trying to be sure that I'm "doing my job." And to tell the truth, it's been killing me...almost like Thomas trying to preach about the resurrection before placing his hands in Jesus' side.

This morning, though, as I sat down to begin preparing for my Easter sermon - even as the thought ran through my mind that there's only so many ways to preach that Jesus is alive - I looked at my sermon planner and the text I had selected many months ago for this Easter. In fact, the series I am preaching this year is one that I put together while at Indiana Wesleyan, so I selected this text closer to two years ago. I open up my Bible to Luke 24.13-34 without thinking about it, getting ready to read familiar words about women going to anoint a body that wasn't there, angelic visitors and the like. Then I started reading and realized that, instead of a traditional resurrection text, I had selected the story of the two disciples on the Road to Emmaus. I kid you not, my first thought was, "At least I'll be able to come up with something creative."

I began my preparation by glancing over a book by Frederick Buechner titled The Faces of Jesus (GREAT, GREAT BOOK!!!!!!). In the section where he talks about the resurrection, I ran across the following quote:

If we are to believe in his resurrection in a way that really matters, we must somehow see him for ourselves. And wherever we have so believed, it is because in some sense we have seen him. Now as then, it is not his absence form the empty tomb that convinces men but the shadow at least of his presence in their empty lives.

About ten seconds after reading that, a realization hit me that instantly and dramatically changed my approach to Easter:

The empty tomb is irrelevant.

We Christians are too obsessed with the empty tomb. We talk about it all the time, we send out Easter cards to people with pictures of the empty tomb on them. We arrange our Easter celebrations around it. I can even recall several Easters as a child where the stage at the church was almost covered with an empty tomb backdrop from our Passion play - complete with movable stone.

Perhaps our obsession with the empty tomb is understandable. After all, it is the only tangible, physically real aspect of resurrection that we can hang onto. The empty tomb and the empty grave clothes are the only pieces of real "evidence" of what happened on the first Easter Morning. The problem, though, is that an empty tomb and empty grave clothes only convey one message - they are about absence. When we talk about the tomb, it is in the context of the absence of Jesus' body. The words of the women who first visited Jesus' tomb ring in our ears, "They have taken his body and we do not know where he is." An empty tomb sends a message of absence - "He is not here."

Easter, though, is not about absence. It is about presence. It is about the risen Jesus meeting Mary near the tomb. It is about the Jesus that appeared to the disciples, the Jesus who allowed Thomas to place his hands in the wounds of the cross. It is about the Jesus who walks down a road with two sad and confused disciples as they head for home. Easter is not about the absence of Jesus' body from the tomb - it is about the presence of the resurrected Jesus in the lives of his disciples. To wit, Buechner also writes:

But the fact of the matter is that in a way it hardly matters how the body of Jesus came to be missing because in the last analysis what convinced the people that he had risen from the dead was no the absence of his corpse but his living presence. And so it has been ever since.

The question the angels asked the women who came to anoint Jesus is our question as well:

Why do look for the living among the dead?

A Sin-Seriousness Problem

Needless to say, I am still close to that place I was a couple of weeks ago. I have worked up the courage, though, to begin reading again those books that God usually uses to challenge and provoke me to thought. Perhaps I am nearing the end of this prolonged period of silence.

I've been thinking about sin a lot lately. I know that sounds odd, and it probably is, but nevertheless I have been ruminating on the issue of sin - of willfully violating the will of God and the teachings of Christ. And I have come to a startling conclusion about myself that I am beginning to believe applies to a majority of Christians.

We have a sin-seriousness problem. A big sin-seriousness problem.

What do I mean by that? Well, you might expect me at this point to rail against churches that never preach about sin and start talking about how more pastors should talk about how much sin there is in the world from their pulpits. If you're expecting that, though, you will be disappointed by what follows. When I say we have a sin-seriousness problem, I mean something much more than just, "we don't preach about sin enough." I mean we have a two-fold sin problem.

On the one hand, we often seem to take the sins of outsiders - those who are outside of the Christian faith (i.e. atheists, muslims, hindus, etc.) - too seriously. We are quick to tell them why their way of thinking, their way of life is "wrong" and "sinful." We see a gay couple walking hand in hand and are assaulted by an intense desire to go tell them that God disapproves of their lifestyle. But we don't do that - instead we put some banal bumper sticker on our cars that proclaims how we feel about marriage and about gays. All the while that gay couple - constantly confronted with "Christians" who are against homosexuality - comes to believe that because of their lifestyle, God hates them too. They internalize a message of hate instead of a message of love. We have taken their alleged "sin" so seriously that we have stolen from them the realization that grace and love are extended to even the worst "sinners."

But there's another side to this sin-seriousness problem as well. Not only do we often take the sins of outsiders too seriously, we fail to take our own sin seriously enough! We gloss over our own shortcomings and our own failures rather than confront the truth and discomfort of our own sin. We gossip, we lie, we cheat, we judge others and we never worry about confessing our sin or repenting of it. "God will understand," we say, or "This is just how God made me to be."

Even if we acknowledge our sin, we rarely if ever truly mourn for it or feel true repentance. Our attitude seems to be that "God's grace will take care of it, so it's no big deal." While the first part of that statement is most definitely true - God's grace most certainly can take care of all our sin - the second part is false. Sin is always a big deal. Sin is what separates us from God. Sin is what destroys our lives and relationships. Sin is the reason Jesus had to face Good Friday. To take sin lightly or to fail to recognize the seriousness of our own sin even after we have become "Christians" is to minimize the significance of both Good Friday and Easter Morning.

This two-fold sin-seriousness problem - taking others' sin too seriously and our own not seriously enough - has caused many well-meaning Christians to look like hypocrites and it has caused many people to walk away from Jesus altogether. Isn't it time that we tried to figure out this sin-seriousness problem?

Jesus himself offers the solution when he talks about specks and planks. He warns his disciples to work on their own sin issues - the planks in their eyes - before even trying to address the sin issues of others - the specks in their eyes. We could go a long way to solving the sin problem by merely flipping it on its head. Rather than being accused of taking the sin of others' too seriously while overlooking my own sin, I'd much prefer to be accused of taking my own sin too seriously and overlooking the sins of others.

Wouldn't you?

Who Am I?

Let me begin with an apology for the insane length of time between posts - I have been in that place where I didn't seem to have anything to say.  And as I am learning more and more, when you are in that place it is far better to remain silent and hope your "voice" returns than to just try and speak without saying anything.

This week I have been struggling with this idea of personal identity - not in the abstract, but in very concrete and specific terms.  To put the point on it, I have been struggling with the answer to the question of who I am.  Who is Joseph Boggs?

I can locate myself in a physical milieu.  I live in Oklahoma City, OK...in the southwest quadrant of the city close to the airport, in a three-bedroom, 1 1/2 bath house.  I drive either a Saturn Vue or a Pontiac Grand Prix.  All this I can say about myself, but it is not my identity.

I can locate myself in a professional milieu as well.  I am "Pastor Joe."  I attempt to shepherd the congregation of May Avenue Wesleyan Church from day to day and week to week.  I attend district meetings and events.  I have two degrees that tell me I can do this, and I am licensed to do it.  But like my physical milieu, this is not my identity.

I can even locate myself in a relational milieu.  I am married to Melissa and the father of Hannah and Ike.  I have a great mom, dad, and a sister that most brothers would kill for.  My in-laws love me and I them.  My niece is named Kate, and I have an as yet unborn niece or nephew on the way.  But again, my identity is not these relationships.

Somewhere along the line of my life, I have lost my sense of identity.  As far back as I can remember, I have worked hard to make people happy.  Not everyone and not all the time, but I have been a chameleon of sorts, changing my color to fit the situation.  When I was young, I wanted my mom to think I was a good son, so I would (occasionally) clean my room or try real hard at school.  To be sure, my mother didn't "force" me in any way to be like this...I just was.  I wanted my sister to think of me as a cool little brother, so I offered to beat up guys two years older than me and twice my size.

As I got older, this trend didn't change - in school, I wanted people to like me, so I did stupid things and ended up in military school.  After military school, I wanted to make my Dad "proud" and I wanted him to see me as something more than the kid who has never quite figured it out.  Again, it never seems to matter that my Dad has repeatedly told me how proud he is - I deceive myself into believing it isn't really true - that he, like so many others, is just benignly tolerating me.

In college it was professors - I wanted to be the smartest student, so I asked more questions and wrote longer papers.  I even do it now - I try to shape my thoughts, ideas, and feelings into forms that are pleasing and comfortable to the people of my church and, most importantly, to my wife.  I even do it with God - assuming that God won't like the "real" me (even though I can no longer even identify who that is).

I don't know why I compulsively do this, but I fear that, in doing so for so long, I have forever lost myself, the one who God created me to be.  There is a song by Blue Man Group called Persona, and the second verse has the following lines talking about the masks, the roles that people play:

In the evening I take it off

But there's another one underneath

And I can't seem to find

the bottom of the stack

I might just lose my mind

and never get it back

The song, which is one of my favorites, captures my feeling so well.  Am I so afraid of who I might be that I have forever buried the unique me?  Am I so concerned about being rejected that I won't let down my guard?  Can I continue to live as the guy without an identity, the chameleon?  What will happen if I never discover my true self that has been buried for so long under an avalanche of faces and masks - the faces and masks of complete strangers?

These are my questions.  May God grant me the answers.

Against Poverty

Every generation in our history has had to deal with a besetting social "sin."  For some, it was the battle against slavery in the Civil War.  For others, it was the fight against sexism and chauvinism in the movement for women's suffrage.  For our grandparents and even our parents, it was the insidious sin of racism and segregation that they struggled against during the Civil Rights Movement.  Every generation faces its own besetting sin, and ours is no exception.

I am convinced that the besetting, overarching social sin in my lifetime is the continued existence of abject poverty.  As the gap between the haves and the have-nots continues to grow, more and more people are forced to choose between life's necessities because they simply cannot afford everything they need.  There continues to be large portions of our own population in America and even more so around the world that cannot get even basic medical or dental care because doctors and insurance companies have, by their prices, made such care the privilege of wealth.  As colleges continue to raise tuitions year after year, the poorest members of the global community are increasingly shut out from the very thing - knowledge - that would afford them the opportunity to break the cycle of poverty.

It is absolutely unbelievable that, in the year 2009, that there are still thousands upon thousands of people who die from malnutrition and starvation.  More than unbelievable, it is immoral and sinful.  Our greed motivates us to milk our own products for the highest possible profit and to place higher taxes on imports from other countries.  Our lust after "bargains" allows us to constantly overlook the malfeasance of many big-box retailers whose workers in third world countries cannot even provide for their own needs.  Our pride dictates that we have to keep up with our neighbors and co-workers in the accumulation of more and more stuff - toys that we don't need, books that we don't read, clothes that we don't wear.  All the while people surrounding us are dying.

For most of the Cold War years, the residents of communist nations were referred to by the epithet "godless commies."  The inference being, of course, that the American way - the capitalist way - is somehow ordained by God and better.  I ask, though, is there a more "godless" economic system than capitalism?  Where is the God in the relentless exploitation of supply and demand so that Exxon-Mobil can record a $500 BILLION dollar profit in the midst of the worst economic recession in decades?  Where is the God in a system that tells the poorest of the poor that they just need to "get a job" while doing nothing to help them acquire marketable skills.  No, the system is broken.  Capitalism is just as godless as communism is and ever was.

The failure, though, goes beyond the system.  Way beyond.  The larger failure is the failure of the Church - the people of God - to step up and to follow in the footsteps of Jesus to meet the needs of the poor.  Sure, there are Mother Theresa's out there - but they are few and the need is much greater than they can meet.  Jesus himself spent nearly all of his time with the forgotten, the neglected, the abused, the hated of society; yet we spend our time lobbying for laws and currying for favor.  Rather than give to the poor we spend our resources on the latest gadget we just have to have to be "relevant."  We somewhere have lost sight of what Jesus did and what Jesus taught.

The parable of the Sheep and the Goats in Matthew 25 tells about the day when we will all stand before God and answer for our life's choices and actions.  As Jesus condemns the goats - those who failed to provide food for the hungry, water for the thirsty, clothes for the naked - they ask him, essentially, "When did we have an opportunity to do those things?"  Essentially, they plead ignorance of the need.  Those of us living in our current world will not have that option.  We will not be able to plead ignorance, to say that we are somehow unaware of the need.  There will be no, "When did we see the hungry?," because the hungry stand on corners in our hometowns.  There will be no "When did we see the thirsty?," because we watch the thirsty push shopping carts down the streets we drive.  There will be no, "When did we see the naked?," because the naked are on our news every day.  No, the only thing we will be able to do in that moment before Jesus is to hold up all the stuff we have and the things we did instead and pray that Jesus will have mercy on us.

The time has come for poverty to end.  There is more than enough food in the world to feed its population.  There is enough money in the world to provide clothes and jobs and medical necessities to even the most destitute.  This issue cannot be ignored anymore.  It is to our everlasting shame that, while we stuff our faces at McDonald's, others dig through trash cans for stale, moldy food.  Poverty must end, and soon.

Church, rise up and show the way.  We must remember our task to stand against the grain, to be COUNTER-cultural.  The government won't eliminate poverty and the system is so broken that it would take decades to fix it.  We cannot sit back and wait for laws and ordinances to eradicate the social sin of poverty.  We followers of Christ must get our hands dirty, we must get out of the pews and onto the streets.  We must stop building our churches in the safe haven of the suburbs and start locating ourselves instead in the midst of the poor and the suffering.  We must trust that God will provide for our own needs even as we pour out everything we have to help the poor in our communities and around the world.  The famous Bible verse doesn't say, "Whatever you have done for the best, the highest, the greatest of these."  Rather, our task as sheep - as lambs of God - is to seek out the LEAST, the LOWEST, the POOREST.

There is no legitimate reason for there to still be people who die from lack of food or basic medicine.  Poverty can be defeated - not by individuals, or even by churches themselves.  Poverty will be defeated when God's people rise up and, in God's power, do battle against the world which causes poverty.  

So let's stand up, get out the door, and start fighting!

The ONE thing...

"Anyone who takes away from a [wo]man the tools that are essential to support every day life is taking away the life itself."

Hans Walter Wolff

in Anthropology of the Old Testament

A couple of weeks ago, I preached a sermon on Leviticus 13 - the chapter that includes laws about how to deal with infectious diseases in the camp of the Israelites.  The conclusion we came to that week is somewhat obvious, but important nonetheless - God cares about more than just "souls" or "spirits." God cares about physical bodies - both my own physical body and the physical bodies of those around me.  The next logical step, of course, is that if God cares about bodies then so should I and so should we as followers of Christ.

Ever since I preached that sermon, I have been unable to stop thinking about the implications.  Arguably the biggest problem facing our world is poverty - the obscene number of people who cannot provide even the basics of life to themselves or their family.  It has given rise to a number of questions in my contemplative moments.

1. To what extent am I complicit in the abject poverty of such persons - both here in Oklahoma City and all over the world?  Notice that I'm not asking whether I am complicit or not - it seems unavoidable to me that, for no other reason than my conspicuous (over)consumption, I have and continue to contribute to global poverty.

2. How can I stop being a contributor and start becoming an advocate?  This has got to stop being abstract thinking and move into the realm of actual life and behavior change.

3. Why should I have a nice warm coat while the homeless guy begging on the corner shivers in the icy weather?  After all, I have a warm house and a warm car, he has nothing.

I don't know why, but I keep getting more and more obsessed with this issue.  Further, it's more than just a "thinking obsession," it has moved into the realm of the splangchna.  That's a fancy Greek word that means, basically, "guts" - as in stomach, intestines, that sort of thing.  In the Greek, it is often the word that is translated in English as "compassion."  This poverty thing is something more and more that I am feeling in my guts - as in that unexplainable feeling in the pit of your stomach that tells you that whatever causes that feeling is not only important but something you have the power to affect.

I can't get rid of that feeling, and I'm not even sure that I want to.

More Thoughts on Confession

I have been doing a lot of reading lately in church history - particularly the early formation of monastic communities in the third and fourth centuries.  This reading has led me to more thinking in the last couple of days about this idea of confession.

One of the more common objections protestants have to the idea of confession is that it is not a biblical doctrine - that we do not need a priest to forgive our sins because Christ himself has become, as the book of Hebrews teaches, our high priest.  And of course, that is a valid objection - at least to the stereotypical contemporary Roman Catholic understanding of confession.

The more I read of the early church Fathers and their history, though, the more a different picture of confession begins to emerge.  The idea for the earliest monks was that the teaching of Scripture that we should confess our sins one to another needed to be taken seriously.  However, many of these early monastics were not ordained and even resisted ordination in the Catholic church and thus could not adhere to a mode of confession that required a priest.

Instead, what I am discovering is that, for the most part, these early Christ followers believed it was imperative that each believer develop a close relationship with someone who is more spiritually mature and experienced.  It was to this more experienced brother or sister that many of these early monastics would "confess," and one of the primary purposes of the confession was for the more mature brother to help the inexperienced brother determine what was sin and what was not.

How many of us would benefit from such a relationship? I daresay all of us would.  The practice of confession has been much maligned by us protestants, most of the time with good reason.  However, we could certainly do with a renaissance of accountable relationships in our churches!

The Death of Confession...

As I was checking msnbc.com yesterday for some news - something I compulsively do about 10 times per day, I ran across the following story - which talks about the efforts of the Catholic church to combat the shrinking number of parishioners who are going to confession.

I have two thoughts about this story and its implications for the church - both Catholic and otherwise.  First, this trend of people not participating in confession should not be surprising. Few people would deny that, over the last few years, we have seen an erosion of the concept of "wrong" in our culture.  The "true for you but not for me" idea has led to a hands off, laissez-faire approach to morality in which nothing is truly out of bounds unless it breaks the law, and even then its debatable.  

Given that climate, is it all that surprising that confession is decreasing?  After all, if I have done nothing that is "wrong," then I have nothing to confess.  I think the shrinking confession is a symptom not necessarily of a decreased piety but of a misunderstanding of the fundamental-to-faith concept of sin.

Which leads me to my second observation - this is a bad thing for ALL churches.  Without understanding my own sinfulness, I cannot recognize my own need for forgiveness and thus will not turn to Christ.  Without sin, there is no salvation - though that sounds extreme, it is nonetheless true, just as the maxim, "without pain, there could be no pleasure" is true.  

More than anything else, the erosion and deconstruction of sin worries me.  I'm not worried about postmodernism or post-post-modernism or whatever comes next.  I'm not worried about new historical and scientific discoveries.  But I most certainly AM worried about sin.  And I have no idea how to deal with it.

An Anti-Building Polemic

One of the things that has long bothered me about many churches is the whole building boom. For most of my life now, the mentality seems to have been, "Well, we feel a little crowded on Sunday mornings in our one service, so it's time to build a brand spanking new church with a sanctuary so big we'll never be able to fill it and with all the bells and whistles."  And so some church ends up overextending itself financially to build some ridiculously ostentatious monstrosity.

A primary argument I have heard in favor of this makes use of the great cathedrals of Europe. After all, look at all the great monuments built back in the medieval era.  We (post)moderns are just trying to "honor God" with our imposing edifices like the medieval Christians did.

Two problems with that line of thinking - one big, one little.  The little one first - I have yet to see a church building constructed in my lifetime that comes anywhere close to the visual power and impact of, say, Chartres Cathedral in France or St. Peter's Basilica.  Not even close.  all the new buildings I've seen are cookie cutter approaches that fail to say, "Hey, contemplate how great God is"; saying, instead, "Hey, look at how rich our church is."

The bigger problem with the "We're just doing what they did in earlier eras of the church" argument is one of purpose.  Medieval Christians did not build cathedrals to make more room for worshippers or because they wanted to update the technology of the church.  The construction of a cathedral often took hundreds of years, so they had to have a larger purpose... and they did.  

Medieval cathedrals were textbooks in stone and mortar, paint and pigment.  Average everyday Christians in medieval communities couldn't read, much less own a Bible.  They couldn't even understand the language of the worship services - mass was conducted in Latin.  So the only avenue for them to learn about God was through the environment in which they worshipped.  If you've ever walked into a gothic style cathedral, you know that there is a powerful sense of the immensity of God and the insignificance of man when you first encounter those vaulted ceilings soaring hundreds of feet above you.  Later churches and cathedrals would add frescoes of biblical scenes - visually depicting important lessons for parishioners.

Now that you know all that, ask yourself how many of these new church buildings are monuments to education and how many are monuments to wealth and poor stewardship.  Yeah, that's why I am becoming more and more aggravated each time I drive by some brand new, multi-million dollar facility that is neither needed nor appropriate.  

When will we realize that our money is better invested in people than pews?

Power of the Past...

If you haven't seen the HBO miniseries John Adams yet, I highly recommend that you do.  For that matter, pick up the book of the same name by David McCullough - on which the miniseries is based.

The book and series both portray incredibly well what it must have been like to be a part of the revolutionary generation.  Often we lionize the people of that generation - Adams, Washington, Jefferson, Franklin, etc. - and forget that they too were human beings who had their doubts, worries and concerns.  By no means was independence a sure thing at any point until the revolutionary war was won...and even then it was tenuous.

As the New Year begins, I am re-reading McCullough's book and reminding myself that, whenever I am wont to look back at history and wish I had it so easy, I am not doing justice to the men and women who went through incredible trials during their times.

Perhaps Billy Joel says it best - "The good old days weren't always good, and tomorrow ain't as bad as it seems."