May 2008

Did we just drive our future President from Church?

According to CNN: Obama Resigns from Trinity UCC

On the political blogs I read: this is a good thing, it was time to cut his losses.

On the religious blogs I read: this is a bad thing, do we really want a President without a church home?

On my face when I read: Dude! Did we just drive our future President from CHURCH?

Sigh. I think the president of the UCC church has it right:

It’s also important to name the painful reality that many candidates and public officials now find it nearly impossible to be an active member of a particular religious community, given our divisive political culture. Faith is rooted in community. Persons in public office should have the same opportunity, as the rest of us, to experience the worship, prayers and close personal friendships that congregational participation affords.

My prayers are with the Obamas as they seek out spiritual consistency in a politics that abhors a vacuum of scandal and controversy.

Saturday Shoutout: Anyone else LOST?

Anyone else a LOST junkie? I was encouraged to watch it by a parishioner who said I would find lots of spiritual struggle and sermon illustrations. My partner and I are still addicted and had much satisfaction from Thursday's season finale.

Apparently T.L. Steinwert is a junkie too...her sermon on Sunday is entitled "LOST and Found: Lessons from the Prodigal One and the TV Series LOST" I almost peed my pants! (TMI, I know)

However, this season its been the Science of the show that I've been most interested in. With the season finale done, it apparently opened the quantum theory doors in this interesting article (link) Of course, I have to polish my lapel and say I thought back in Season Two that the island moved...even though apparently due to physics...it didn't.

So, any other LOST junkies that read the Lostpedia every other week? Any other sermons or sermon illustrations that you find compelling? And what are you gonna be doing with your time for the next 8 months?

A cashless system of blog advertising

I've been enjoying the EntreCard system for a few weeks of blog advertising. You will see it on my sidebar underneath the feed section.

I am not opposed to advertising because I consider it to be exposure. However, I like to choose what to advertise, so this system intrigued me by granting me free exposure because it is a cashless system.

It's free exposure because the site uses its own credit system. People will pay credits based on how long the wait is to advertize for one day. I choose which ones to run, and I've rejected several of them that were not the right fit. Then, with the credits you get, you can run ads for a day on other people's sites in the same way! It sounds like it takes a lot to get off the ground, but I got hits and a waiting list within 12 hours...pretty chummy people!

There's a few reasons why it may be useful to you:

It has a Religion/Spirituality section that I've gotten lots of drops from (link)
You can add multiple blogs to one account with their "add a blog" feature (link)
You can get started with their free eBook....I skimmed it and it was pretty good (link)

Anywho, here's my page there. Check out the free eBook for more info, and drop me your card if you choose to try it out! Or leave a comment here if you need help on how to integrate it into your blogger account.

Real-World Facebook [video]

What if Facebook was real life? Pretty hilarious!

The Case for Six-Year Appointments

Ah, appointments. It's that time of year for itinerant systems of clergy like the United Methodist Church. So the blogs are talking a bit about it. This post is no exception.

How about a six-year appointment at a church? Whether that terrifies you or inspires you, read on for more discussion on what that might look like.

First, katie m ladd writes about the theological rationale behind the appointment system in the UMC:

Our appointment process makes a great deal of sense if we understand the pastor's presence to be primarily priestly and pastoral in nature. If the leadership resides among the laity and the pastor is there to teach, administer the sacraments, tend the flock, and lead worship, short tenures are fine. In theory, it matters not whether we are there one year or thirty years. The congregation itself provides continuity, vision, and leadership.

I uphold our appointment system because I agree with the theology behind it: we are not the leaders of our churches, the laity are. By moving us clergy around, that keeps churches from becoming cults of personality and instead they are to rely on their own gifts and graces for ministry. Beautiful. And fits perfectly within a grassroots bottom-up model of ministry so valued here at HX.net.

As sound as the theology is, more and more the pastoral gift of visioning is being emphasized as crucial to moving churches from maintenance to mission. How can we nurture vision and mission-building in short appointments? Research shows that it is usually by year four that ministers really start seeing the fruits of their labors in concentric circles, ripple effects that no longer silence themselves because "the previous pastor didn't do that" or "we aren't there yet as a congregation." It is at the four-year mark that pastors see what is working well...and we move UM clergy usually every three years. Frustrating, I'm sure!

Katie writes further about the appointment system and congregation visioning:

By the time a United Methodist clergy person has been at a congregation long enough to build the necessary trust, lay the important groundwork, and build strong relationships, more often than not we are moved. This is especially true in small churches which have shorter tenures for clergy...A missional outlook is an intentional orientation to ministry. And, an intentional orientation takes time and risk, which require trust.

As we move our brick-and-mortar churches to move their ministries outside their walls, perhaps the way appointments are done can help facilitate that? The UMC can test-drive a few districts or even conferences a new way of appointments. What would it look like?

In the spirit of ecumenism, my Roman Catholic friends inform me of the 6 + 4 system that some dioceses operate under.

A priest is appointed to a parish for six years.
At the six-year mark, their ministry is evaluated by the diocese.
If all is well, then the priest serves another four years.
After those four years, the priest is moved to another church or given another four year extension based on ministry viability.

Thus this means often ten-year appointments. Ugh...Ten years is a long time for Methodists.

I would propose a 4 + 2 system that is similar to the above to achieve six-year appointments.

Appoint a clergyperson to a parish for four years.
At the four-year mark, when ministry and visioning is truly beginning, evaluate their ministry by the DS and the congregation.
If there are seeds of missional context that need further growth by the pastor, then the pastor serves another two years.
After those two years, the pastor is moved to another church or given another two-year extension based on ministry viability.

So, 4 + 2 = 6 year appointments.

I like this idea because then at any time, a maximum of half the churches in a district could possibly have a appointment change. This gives overworked DSes more time to make better appointments and make congregations feel truly present in appointment deliberations.

Your thoughts? Would appointments of four years minimum (barring extreme circumstances, not set in stone) give clergy the time and contentment necessary to move congregations to missional outlooks?

If any present or past bishops or DSes have spare time enough to read this blog (hahahahaha, I made a funny), perhaps some feedback based on being on the other side of the appointment process?

Thanks for your comments, they are always cherished!

What the Church can learn from Wikipedia [4of4]

Here's part 4 of my four-part series on "What the Church can learn from Wikipedia." It is a weekly series, published every Wednesday in May.

Part I: The Wikipedia way of starting new ministries
Part II: Grabbing the long tail of ministry
Part III: Competition is bad for ministry

Welcome to the last installment of this series on Wikipedia. There will be more series after this, but this is a shorter final entry. There will be a wrap-up with lessons learned later. Read on to discover how Wikipedia is a process not a product...and like radioactive elements, our own Discipleship has a half-life that must be maintained to keep us from becoming lukewarm followers of Christ.

Throughout all of this series, there's been one thing that I've neglected to mention but it bears nuancing for this final post. It is important to remember that Wikipedia is not a product so much as a process. Clay Shirkey, in Here Comes Everybody, writes about the origins of Wikipedia (written about in the first of this series)

A Wikipedia article is a process, not a product, and as a result, it is never finished. For a Wikipedia article to improve, the good edits simply have to outweigh the bad ones. Rather than filtering contributions before they appear in public (the process that killed Nupedia), Wikipedia assumes that new errors will be introduced less frequently than existing ones will be corrected. This assumption has proven correct: despite occasional vandalism, Wikipedia articles get better, on average, over time. (pg. 119)

There's a false mystique here of a collaborative process of sunshine and puppy dogs. In reality, the articles come from argument and persuasion, from behind the scenes adding, rewriting, summarizing, splitting up entries, categorizing, and standards of presentation. As Shirky says, "the articles grow not from harmonious thought, but from constant scrutiny and emendation."

There are no "finished" pages on WikipediaIndeed, there are no "finished" pages on Wikipedia. From A-Z, from their own home page, categories, terms of service, and other "static" pages, they are all editable (though some may have restrictions). The lack of a finished "product" may sound like beta-hell, but it's the operating model of Wikipedia.

There's a reason why Wikipedia must be a process, not a product. Consider the product of an Encyclopedia Britannica: a wealth of knowledge in a series of encyclopedias, written by experts in the field. If they stopped publishing it today, and the finished product of all the expert articles was the final say, it would slowly become obsolete. Like reading an old edition of the DCM claiming homosexuality as a mental illness, or religion books that claim Moses wrote the first five books of the Hebrew Bible, old knowledge is simply not permanently correct as societies change and science marches on.

The half-life of knowledge makes products obsoleteKnowledge does not necessarily withstand the test of time. Indeed, there's a half-life of knowledge. Like the half-life of plutonium or radioactive elements that slowly break down into nothing, knowledge also breaks down over time. Like Men in Black when Tommy Lee Jones says to Will Smith:

Fifteen hundred years ago everybody knew the Earth was the center of the universe. Five hundred years ago, everybody knew the Earth was flat...and fifteen minutes ago, you knew that humans were alone on this planet. Imagine what you'll know tomorrow.

New knowledge must replace old knowledge that cannot stand the test of time. Not all knowledge has a half-life, but most of it does. In this manner, Wikipedia far outdoes Encyclopedia Brittanica because it can remove the knowledge that has become obsolete much faster than a paperbound edition.

The Process of Wikipedia is its greatest strengthIn summary, Wikipedia is not something you can download and get its full effect. Yes, there is knowledge in a paperbound copy, but it is in the growing, experimenting, categorizing, re-categorizing, and offering up every word and syllable to constant scrutiny that make Wikipedia what it is. While the tools help, and the software protects the system from hackers, it is considering nothing to be sacrosanct that gives Wikipedia its power and authority.

In the church, we strive to be more like Encyclopedia Brittanica than Wikipedia. We bring forth ministry ideas when they are more like "products" we are pushing on people. We just show the storefront of the Church to people without the behind-the-scenes wrangling that takes place. We like products and people to believe in products and contribute to making products better.

What if your church was a process, not a product?What impact would it have to consider your church a process, not a product? I guarantee it would radically impact how you view your groups: Disciple classes, homeless outreach, bible studies. These are not set-in-stone ministries, but instead are processes, temporary, relative to the context processes, not "products" you have to shove out the door weekly.

Perhaps a ministry can become a process that...

challenges the sacred cows, the products, the finished or established ministries or areas of the church that are unmovable. By re-orienting a congregation to seeing all as up in the air and nothing as sacrosanct will certainly cause anxiety, but a nurturing hand can guide people to less idolatrous notions of church.
dislodges the Frozen Chosen to become involved. In long-time congregations, people don't get involved because they feel "new." By allowing everything to be "new" again, people may feel more interested in becoming involved.
creates breathing room for new ministries. Often when we walk to the budget table, the Finance, Trustees, P/PRC, Worship teams seem to get first billing as the "featured" products while everything else is seasonal stock items. By giving more credence and importance to every ministry at the church, it can level the playing field and allow ministries to really grow to their niches.

The half-life of discipleship makes following Christ a lifelong processMore importantly, our ministries have to reflect our own discipleship. There's a half-life of discipleship, too. We like to think we become Disciples of Christ when we pledge our hearts to follow Jesus and re-orient our world, but the feeling of ecstasy ebbs and flows. Summer camp experiences often don't transform our lifestyle because when we leave the wilderness, nothing has changed. We have to be willing to constantly test and expand our discipleship, because if not we lose its spark and tenacity. If not, then our half-life decays until we are no more radioactive than the culture around us.
A dead body, you see, will take on the temperature of its environment. Such was the case with the church at Laodicea. (source)
Consider the ways your discipleship's half-life may be stunting your spiritual growth

"The Bible says so!" Well, does it? Like someone famous (anyone help?) said, "Don't just read the Bible. Study it. Either study the Bible or don't read it at all." We all grow up with conceptions (old knowledge) of what the Bible says. Read it and study it again. It may say something very different.
"I've earned this by being a faithful member of this church." A role or position in the church is not a product you've bought with tithes and presence...it is a part of the process of being Church. Perhaps by faithfully re-examining your role in the machinery of church structure you can determine if there is a better fit than the one you've always had. In my congregation, a woman who was usually relegated to cleaning and maintaining the church found that she did that out of respect for the sanctity of the church. She is now my Acolyte Coordinator, which brings sanctity to the congregation.

The process of church must be the forefront, not the storefront.For the Church to truly emulate Wikipedia, it begins with seeing the Church as a process, not a product. And that process begins with each of us individually: to see that our discipleship has a half-life, and if it is not kept up, we will become more and more unable to be recognized as faithful Christians. This is not a message to induce anxiety, it is meant to be honest that we cannot afford to become complacent in an ever-changing world.

Thoughts? Feel free to post a comment and introduce yourself!

Final Wikipedia Entry...

Final Wikipedia entry will be delayed. Funeral today.

Will come either later this afternoon or manana.

Thanks for your patience!

Purity Balls: Creepy for 1000, Alex

A bad.hack (read more about it here) is a manipulation of a Christian system either using illicit means to achieve an end, or achieving goals that leave the system worse off and less open than before. Read on for the hack!

I'm all for any event that gets families closer together and parents having a stronger sense of ownership over their children's lives. But I get creeped out when we harken back to the days of father's ownership over their daughter's bodies and giving them up for dowries and such.

So, in other words, this story at the New York Times creeps me out: Dancing the Night Away: Purity Balls.

The first two hours of the gala passed like any somewhat awkward night out with parents, the men doing nearly all the talking and the girls struggling to cut their chicken.
But after dessert, the 63 men stood and read aloud a covenant “before God to cover my daughter as her authority and protection in the area of purity.”

The gesture signaled that the fathers would guard their daughters from what evangelicals consider a profoundly corrosive “hook-up culture.” The evening, which alternated between homemade Christian rituals and giddy dancing, was a joyous public affirmation of the girls’ sexual abstinence until they wed.

Anyone else creeped out a bit by these images? Sorry to post such a visceral response, but there's got to be some theological or social reason behind my gut reaction. Read on for more on purity balls and abstinence pledges, and how they are, with the best of intentions, hurting women and youth.

First, do boys go to these things? Are there boy purity paintball events? (Please don't say Promise Keepers) Apparently, they don't need protection from the evil hook-up culture.

Then, a few quotes that jumped out at me:

“Fathers, our daughters are waiting for us,” Mr. Wilson, 49, told the men. “They are desperately waiting for us in a culture that lures them into the murky waters of exploitation. They need to be rescued by you, their dad.”

Um, no. Characterizing women as passive and helpless will not lead to ownership over their sexual identities.

"premarital sex is seen as inevitably destructive, especially to girls, who they say suffer more because they are more emotional than boys."

Um, again, no. This characterizes girls as lacking a positive sexual understanding, and boys as lacking an emotional attachment to their sexual understanding. Stereotypical, but neither are true.

Finally, here's the worst part: this isn't directly about the girls' virginity at all, is it? Everything I read from this event focused on the fathers. And as a commenter wrote at Feministing (could be NSFW images and language):

You know what? At it's core, this is not about female virginity at all. It's about male honor, which apparently rests between a woman's (or girl's) legs.
Read what the dads are saying. It's all about them.

OK, so those are my subjective reactions. Now, here comes the Science! [/Ben Affleck]

Youth who take abstinence pledges are more likely to put off sexual escapades, but when they do so, they are much more risky.

Although young people who sign a virginity pledge delay the initiation of sexual activity, marry at younger ages and have fewer sexual partners, they are also less likely to use condoms and more likely to experiment with oral and anal sex, said the researchers from Yale and Columbia universities.

"The sad story is that kids who are trying to preserve their technical virginity are, in some cases, engaging in much riskier behavior...From a public health point of view, an abstinence movement...may inadvertently encourage other forms of alternative sex that are at higher risk of STDs."

While we want to knee-jerk and say it is our youth as a whole that are massively experimenting in alternative forms of sex, a recent study shows that is just not true. There's a whole laundry list of studies showing the harmful impact of abstinence-only programs at No More Money: a website lobbying for no more funding for these types of programs.

So, not only are purity balls and abstinence pledges devaluing women, rendering them as passive maidens who need saving from a malicious culture, but also they are hurting them with ignorance. ARGH.

Let's take a deep breath..................there.

Purity balls and abstinence pledges are bad.hacks. Why? Regardless of the real-world effects, the theology behind them devalues women while idolizing their virginity, makes women victims and renders them passive in decision-making, and basically is patriarchal. More importantly to systems, the focus on fatherly honor mirrors a medieval-age feudal honor system that only still exists in.......well, ransom atonement theologies. Hmm.

But this isn't to say they aren't onto something. I think purity balls and abstinence pledges are hitting at a missing aspect of youth lives, but I'm pretty sure this expression isn't it. In what ways can we address this gap in ways that are meaningful?

In a Feminist Theology class I took in seminary, a fellow seminarian created a ritual celebrating teen girls who began ovulating. It sounds weird, but the service liturgy was very powerful. I'm all for a positive father-daughter ritual, and our culture needs more rituals to support these transitions into new ways of being and new biological ways of living too! Perhaps a reader can point us to religious resources dealing with teenagers and pubescence?

Perhaps just subtle shifts in these event's theologies. There needs to be stronger emphasis that girls' worth to fathers has nothing whatsoever to do with their sexual activity. By removing the shame and guilt from women's perceptions of their bodies, then they will have the proper self-image and self-appreciation to say "no" when the time comes (and it will). Just tweak the theology a bit, just a bit...please?

It is just criminal to take a abstinence pledge without age-appropriate sex education. If they don't know what they are pledging against, then how will they recognize it when the time comes? The higher numbers of oral sex say to me that youth don't see it as sex because they can remain virgins...while still being at-risk for STDs. Stop killing our children.

Finally, a commenter at GetReligion wrote the following which hits at the holistic approach that could be taken:

To me it makes a lot more sense to teach one’s children honesty, integrity, responsibility, chastity (in the broad sense of the word), forgiveness and all those things — all those things that make one a fully functioning adult, and sex is just one part of that.

True purity involves a lot more than virginity. This just seems a bit unbalanced.

So, that's my Tuesday rant. Sorry it came so early in the morning. Thoughts or reactions? Any resources celebrating these biological changes for youth? Thanks in advance!

Twitter the Gospel in 140 characters

In Seminary, we were challenged to be able to give the Gospel in 1 minute. This was called the "Elevator Gospel" because it was the length of a very long elevator ride when you knew you had a captive audience. I thought it was tough!

Now, over on Brian Baute's blog, he saw a writing contest from copyblogger and turned it into a challenge: can you put the Gospel of Jesus Christ (as you understand it) into 140 characters?

Why 140 characters? It's called micro-blogging, popularized by Twitter, where short messages are able to be broadcast to people via mobile phones texting or other web applications.

Anywho, the challenge is set: Can you put the Good News of Jesus Christ into 140 characters?

Try it! Here's mine:

Being saved is not about what happens when we die, but what begins when we realize God always loves us and wants us to transform the world. (Jeremy)

Some other examples:

The world, once whole, then broken. Jesus came, suffered, died, lives. Yahweh’s creation restored. Spirit alive in us, in spite of us. Life! (Brian)
Was happy with taking the bad with the good. Jesus showed me the good could be great and the bad could be gone forever (Mark)

Christianity is not about what you do, but what God has already done (Paul)

God’s perfect. We’re not. God punished Jesus, the perfect Man, in our place, on the cross. Believe this, turn from sin, and live forever (David)
We seek revenge, but God knows only reconciliation has the power to end pain and transform the world. That's why God became human in Christ. (Jeremy...yes, I had two)

Post yours in the comments, and start following me on Twitter!

What the Church can Learn from Wikipedia [3of4]

Here's part 2 of my series on "What the Church can learn from Wikipedia." It is a weekly series, published every Wednesday in May.

Part I: The Wikipedia way of starting new ministries
Part II: Grabbing the long tail of ministry

The past two weeks we've hit on two important lessons from Wikipedia

By lowering the thresholds to new ministry ideas, rough forms of ministry can emerge that would otherwise be snarled in bureaucracy (link).
By empowering the smallest of groups in your ministry, you will be encouraging discipleship from your less-committed members (link).

So, those are the "how-to" aspects of what we can learn from Wikipedia. But what about the Why? Why do people contribute to Wikipedia, and why would people want to become involved in small rough forms of ministry?

This leads us to our third segment: motivation. What motivates people to contribute time and energy to a system, and why do they do it? And how does friendly competition actually de-motivate people and stunts ministry?

Why Wikipedia Works

Why do people contribute to Wikipedia?As is the norm in our series, we reach out to Clay Shirky's Here Comes Everybody to guide our discussion. Shirky writes about his editing of a Wikipedia entry on Koch fractals...something he knows next-to-nothing about, but was still able to meaningfully contribute. Why would he do it? Three reasons (text decorations are mine):

The first was a chance to exercise some unused mental capacities--I studied fractals in a college physics course in the the 1980s and was pleased to remember enough to be able to say something useful about it, however modest...
The second reason was vanity...the pleasure of changing something in the world, just to see my imprint on it. Making a mark on the world is a common human desire...
The third motivation was the desire to do a good thing...the genius of wikis is in part predicated on the ability to make non-financial motivations add up to something of global significance.

Those are what motivates at least Mr. Shirky to contribute to Wikipedia. For others, there are hundreds of reasons: to correct or add on expert knowledge, to clean up grammer, etc. Contributing can also mean cleaning up vandalism (thieves!) of "the encyclopedia everyone can edit." Why would people do that, spend time cleaning up vandalism?

How does an open community defend against attacks?As an example of a failed wiki, the L.A. Times launched a "Wikitorial" feature where they allowed their editorial pages to be edited by the public, like a wiki. Almost immediately, the users defaced, deleted, and filled the pages with porn. It was pulled within 48 hours, and never tried again. Shirky explains (bolded and links mine):

The problem that The Times suffered from was simple: no one cared enough about the contents of the Wikitorial to defend it, much less improve it. An editorial is meant to be a timely utterance of a single opinionated voice--the opposite of the characteristics that make for good wiki content. A wiki augments community rather than replacing it; in the absence of a functioning community, a wiki will suffer from the Tragedy of the Commons...

A wiki does not create community; it supplements an already strong community. In the absence of community, wikis fail to motivate people alone.

Everybody loses when incentives are inequalAs a final point, the most important motivating aspect of Wikipedia is that no one is getting paid. The social psychology experiment The Ultimatum Game involves two people getting $10 under two conditions: one can divvy it up, and if the other accepts the division, they both get the money. More often than not, if the dividing person chooses more than $7 for himself, the other rejects it, even though they would still be getting a free $3. Why? The experiment shows that if there in unequal distribution of money, there is less motivation to accept the system, and thus everyone loses. By removing monetary rewards (and even social advancement to Wikipedia moderators is not public knowledge), Wikipedia removes those barriers and allows for purely non-financial motivations.

In summary, Wikipedia works because of (a) personal motivations to better a communal product and someone's self-image, (b) the strong community to withstand vandalism, and (c) non-financial motivations make it more tolerant of the long tail of participation.

Competition and Community are Incompatible in Ministry

Moving to churchy stuff, Shirkey's three reasons to edit a Wikipedia page translate easily into the local church context.

A desire to contribute a skill or ability.
A desire to be remembered.
A desire to do a good thing.

We see those at play in our churches all the time, there's no lesson there. However, the two other reasons are significant indeed.

Dedicated communities make open systems work.First, the presence of a strong supportive community makes open systems work. Admittedly, Wikipedia has built in tools to survive malicious people that the Church simply doesn't have: it is easier to clean up after an attack than it is to mount it in the first place. When a vandal defaces an entry on Islam, a Wikipedian just has to click the "revert to previous entry" and it is done. I'm jealous.

The community is the safeguard of the Wikipedia; thus, a strong community may be the safeguard of the Church. Consider these examples:

Do community-building stuff to encourage trust and participation among each other. How long has it been since you've done a potluck dinner after church, or held a fun event just for the fun of it, even if it cost money? The more people interact, the more they can trust each other with ministry ideas.
Articulate a Vision/Mission statement that ministry groups can coalesce behind. With a mission statement, then it becomes easier to "test" ministry ideas against that mission, rather than expressing "personal" concerns with the ministry ideas. This relaxes interpersonal conflict by holding up an impersonal yet deeply personal standard to judge ministry ideas by.
Ensure there is space for ministry leaders to just worship or do bible study. In my church, I lead a Mission:Possible bible study and accountability group for my church leadership. They don't have to prepare anything or lead anything, they just come to be nurtured. This relaxes typical mindsets and allows leaders to grow towards one another.

Focusing more resources on community-building may become essential to open ministry.

Demoralization of ministry groups, even with financial incentives, is never good.Second, open ministry is incompatible with competition, so seek the reduction or removal of incentives-based ministry. We saw from the Ultimatum game that when there is an inequality, sometimes everyone loses. By removing financial benefits and even social-capital-building benefits, ministry can handle both motivating people AND reaching out to the long tail of the membership. Our churches love to offer benefits to people and breed competition, so removing them will ironically remove barriers to motivation.

I see these barriers all the time in small forms that are well-intentioned.

Get rid of Gold stars in Sunday Schools registering attendance. After the long tail plays out, it becomes obvious those who are unable to attend every week will never catch up to Suzie Sunshine with the 10+ Gold Star lead, so why bother trying? (unless you are Hillary Clinton, of course)
Stop pitting church groups against one another in fundraising. At General Conference, a basketball was to be offered to the highest bidder of the delegations, so delegations started raising money and pledges from their delegates and home conferences. I saw my own delegation say "what's the point" when some other Conference easily took the lead with a ridiculous amount of money. They raised a ton of money, but at what cost? Demoralization of ministry groups, even when you are raising more money, is never good.

I am part of a group that believes in me, and I believe in them.In conclusion, motivation is based on personal feelings and agendas. But motivation in group theory is also based on a feeling of closeness to one another, rallying under one banner, and by not feeling in competition with one another, especially when groups are gathered around the budget table. By removing the roadblocks to ministry, even friendly competition, we can grow into a community that sustains and complements a wiki-structured ministry.

Your Turn

Your turn to contribute to this discussion. In addition to general comments on the content, any thoughts on these two questions?

What community-building ideas have you found successful in your local context?
What incentives or competitive aspects of your context stunt ministry growth?

Thanks for taking the time to reply...much less read these looooong posts!

Humor for Breakfast [video]

I love the internets. The way how people can take movies or trailers and make them utterly ridiculous. Case in point, the final scene from Star Wars...wait till about the 50 second mark, you'll be rewarded:

Learning Humility, part 134

Saturday

Situation: Car wouldn't start.
Diagnosis: Engine wasn't getting enough gas, replace the fuel filter. You've done this before in your 80s Buick, you can do it again in this newfangled 90s Camry!
Solution: Buy a $20 fuel filter, put it in.

Monday

Situation: Car has been out of commission for 48 hours, now a health and fire hazard.
Diagnosis: While putting in the fuel filter, and about 90% through a textbook-smooth replacement of a fuel filter, this blogger (now named McClumsy) broke the fuel line in half.
Solution: Tow to an auto place. Four hours and a few feet of fuel line later, car is fixed for $250. Had I just brought it there in the first place? $80.

Sigh.

Clergy Misconduct + Independent Churches = Where's the Accountability?

I was struck by the most recent clergy sex scandal, this one out of Plano, Texas.

The specifics of the case are awful, but not pertinent to this blog.
What is pertinent is how the congregational system of churches is unprepared to deal with clergy abuse in ways that connectional systems are (but don't).

Read on for ideas on a decentralized approach that may work well for central-authority-shy congregational churches.

GetReligion has a write-up here:

Why can’t Southern Baptist authorities crack down? Ah, there’s the problem. In a free-church movement — one with no bishops, no authoritative central structure — the churches are pretty much on their own when it comes to this kind of work...
. . . Some state conventions might have the staff and know how to create a data bank of information of clergy sexual abuse. But for Baptist leaders to do so, they would risk clashing with their tradition’s total commitment to the freedom and the autonomy of the local congregation.

So, with the congregational system, all churches are on their own, though voluntarily loosely-affiliated with one another. This leads to, at least, two main problems:

a lack of central authority to report misconduct to, and
a suspicion of meta-church structures as "someone else's problem" because "it couldn't happen in my church."

As documented in dozens of cases, abusive pastors are able to move often from church to church because of the lack of a central governing body.

In connectional churches (like the United Methodist Church), there is a central governing body that regulates pastoral changes between pulpits. In this way, there is someone to report incidents to that is not the press or police, and some assurance that the matter, if no criminal charges can be filed, will be dealt with internally.

However, this is not to say that connectionalism is any better at disciplining problem clergy. In the Catholic Church, RCC leaders like Cardinal Law moved priests around even though they knew about sexual abuse. I mention this not to harp on them, but to emphasize that connectional systems are still able to be abused by failures in leadership.

So, what's the solution for congregational churches?

Central database of pastors and complaints

This sounds good on paper, and is what the Southern Baptist Convention is pursuing now. However, it doesn't solve problem #2: working with meta-church structures. From the GetReligion piece:

If the board of deacons in a Southern Baptist congregation faced an in-house sex scandal and wanted help, where could it turn? It could seek help from its competition, the circle of churches in its local association. Or it could appeal to its state convention. In some states, “conservative” and “moderate” churches would need to choose between competing conventions linked to these rival Baptist camps.

Central authority on pastoral complaints

This also sounds good to address problem #1, but there are all the incentives to not have one...no one wants to take the fall, and since there is no "central church authority" anyway, then there's no legal standing anyway. Once again, from the article:

Everything depends on that local church and everything is voluntary. One more question: What Baptist leader would dare face the liability issues involved in guiding such a process? ...

For lawyers, the goal is to find a structure to sue, yet in the free-church way of doing things, there often is no structure larger than the local church or there are real questions about the authority and clout of the larger regional or national structures...

Those are two of them, but you know this wouldn't be Hacking Christianity if I didn't advocate for a decentralized solution.

Empower the laity through mandated sexual ethics training

If we train parishioners on sexual ethics and give them avenues and resources, then they can be the point people when an ethical lapse occurs.
I'm not sure how to implement this, as making it a law that one layperson out of every church seems ridiculous and unenforceable. Perhaps a "safe sanctuaries" type thing where churches who do go through the training are recognized or added to a list.
The need is real, if nothing else than that the segment of churches which are utterly independent is growing at ridiculous rates. From the article, one last time:

Things get even more complicated in the rapidly growing world of totally independent megachurches, both evangelical, Pentecostal and Fundamentalist.

For congregational (or totally independent) churches, there is little structure in place to deal with lapses in sexual ethics by clergy or lay leadership. Offenders simply jump ship and go to another church, and the church they left is often happy with that by keeping quiet and privatizing the sin.

Thus, the best solution may be to empower the laity to be watchful even of the most charismatic of church planters. Even in connectional churches (in some cases, already present), a network of faithful laity who are also trained and given resources to deal with clergy misconduct may work well to cross denominational and independent lines.

What do you think? Would a decentralized, grassroots approach yield laity empowered to act in the face of misconduct? Or would it backfire by emboldening busybodies into the already scrutinized life of pastors?

Feel free to post your thoughts, and introduce yourself too!

What I'm Reading 05/17/2008

Jesus Creed » Pastor’s Wisdom: John Frye
tags: no_tag
- I like the image Eugene H. Peterson uses for pastors: pastors are detectives searching out the slightest evidence of God’s grace in peoples’ lives. I’ve learned that pastors are artists of the soul, not religious scientists.
Lifehacker Top 10: Top 10 Tools to Get Blogging Done
tags: no_tag
- Lifehacker is a great site with many nerdy, but useful, tools. This is one of them! - post by umjeremy
- Writing your blog should be a fun way to stretch your mind and stay connected to trends, friends, and the greater world, not another computer task that takes far too long to get done. But that's exactly what it can feel like if it takes you more time to find your post ideas, tweak your markup, and make everything look right than to actually get your thoughts down. Being somewhat experienced at this blogging thing, your Lifehacker editors have pinpointed a few tools and tricks that make our posts go faster and smoother. After the jump, we round up 10 of them.
Should Christians Apologize?
tags: no_tag
- Interesting take on apologies for the radical ridiculous people in Christendom, rather than waiting for them to apologize themselves. - post by umjeremy
- In a way this is about getting over “me-centered” Christianity. One’s faith isn’t just an individual thing, disconnected from history or the rest of the world. We are part of a community of believers and (like it or not) we need to be willing to fully be a part of that community. Recognizing the faults present there is a necessary first step to helping make things better and to understanding why others view us the way they do.
Web Worker Daily » Archive How RSS Feeds Affect My Life & Work «
tags: no_tag
- I read over 150 blogs/news per day...using an RSS feed reader, I get through them usually in 15 minutes. It's a blessing beyond belief! - post by umjeremy
- It remains to be seen if I can keep up with my feed reading over time. In the meanwhile, I’ll absorb as much knowledge as I can to expand my understanding of this ever-changing industry and to improve what I do and how I do it.
Power On Self Test: May The Font Be With You - Boing Boing Gadgets
tags: no_tag

How to Move a 100 year old church [video]

No, not "move" in the spiritual sense...in the actual sense! A great video!

Sorry the last video got yanked by the MLB. It was an awesome catch tho! :-)

(hat tip to Andrew Sullivan)

Style for Breakfast [video]

Why am I a Red Sox fan? Because they've got style. Manny, for all his faults, catches the ball, jumps and high-fives a fan, then STILL gets it back in time for first-base out. Style points +5

What the Church can learn from Wikipedia [2of4]

Here's part 2 of my series on "What the Church can learn from Wikipedia." It is a weekly series, published every Wednesday in May.

Part I: The Wikipedia way of starting new ministries

There has been much discussion about this topic on the blogosphere, so please forgive me for not responding to all points. This is very early on the series, and much of the conversation revolves around topics that I'm not ready to release my writings on yet. Thanks for your patience.

Still, on Richard's blog (among others) the topic for this week has come to light (emphasis mine):

[A]lthough Wikipedia has undoubtedly been a roaring success, the wiki idea does not seem to have really caught on. The editors of wikipedia are a very small fraction of those who read it. Similarly, in the church we talk of ‘the ministry of the whole people of God’, how many church members and friends are really prepared to get their hands dirty with ministry?

Richard has preempted the topic for this post. We can learn this week that when we scale ministry, it does (in fact) look a lot like Wikipedia, and there's a crucial lesson there for how to structure ministry.

Who Contributes to Wikipedia?

There's a common idea that everyone who visits Wikipedia edits. This is only mostly true. A large number of visitors to Wikipedia DO make edits (and become "contributers"), but it is a small percentage of the "audience."

Clay Shirkey, in his book Here Comes Everybody, writes about the "long tail" of the internet (also called the 80/20 rule and power law distribution). Basically, the top contributers (represented in green) contribute significantly more than anyone else when it comes to Wikipedia and other social networks. On any given article, there is usually one major contributer, who gives twice as much as the number 2 contributer, who gives as much input as the next 10 contributers combined, and then a ton of people who have made one edit each. You see from the graph that the "long tale" is the large group of people that make small contributions to a system (represented in yellow).

But that's not the interesting part to Shirkey.

There are two big surprises here. The first is that imbalance is the same shape across a huge number of different kinds of behaviors...the second surprise is that the imbalance drives large social systems rather than damaging them. Fewer than two percent of Wikipedia users ever contribute, yet that is enough to create profound value for millions of users. (pp.124-125)

In other words, even though many people are freeloaders, and even those that contribute do so very unevenly, this imbalance does not (in itself) damage the system. By the sheer scale of Wikipedia, for instance, 2 percent of the users is a broad enough base for it to all work out.

We are tempted to move into churchy stuff, but not yet. Two more observations. The first is a simple statement: most participants in a system are below-average. That sounds insulting, but it is true. In an imbalanced system like this, the average is well above most of the users (where the green meets the yellow above), so most people *are* below-average.

The second observation is that when we try to map out the "average" user of Wikipedia, there is no representative user, and the habits that come from thinking about averages are not merely useless, they're harmful. As Shirkey says, "You can't look for a representative, because none exists. Instead, you have to....concentrate not on the individual users but on the behavior of the collective."

So, to summarize, when it comes to wikipedia entries and involvement:

Most edits are small edits, with only a few contributers doing over half of the work.
Most contributers are below average.
Efforts to map out the "average" wikipedia contributer will fail miserably.
Even with below-average contributions and inequal distribution of work, wikipedia works!

Who Gets Involved in the Church?

Now, what does this mean for the church? A former seminarian linked to the following report written by Dan Dick from the UMC's General Board of Discipleship (I can't find it in digital form except on this weird iPaper website...let's see how this embed trick works)

The article, if you can't read it, is the results of a 75,000 person survey that concludes that most mega-churches are filled with below-average Christians. No surprise. However, Dick's point is that in mega-churches, most of the attendees are far below average.

[W]e found that the fastest growing churches depend on the least involved, least motivated, and least engaged Christian believers...Think of a baseball team where only one player is actually playing the game and everybody else on the team is just watching, or doing something else...This is what we found in the vast majority of ‘premiere’ churches – a whole lot of disinterested spectators.”

Which, rightly so, has people angry from those churches.

“They ignore the 10% (of the people) who are on fire for God to focus on the consumers. It isn’t a fair picture,” says a leader from Joel Osteen’s Lakewood Church.

But it is a fair picture, by their own admission. Bringing in Wikipedia's distribution of involvement, they match perfectly: 10% are on fire, 80% are spectators. The vast majority of Christians who are in broadcast-based churches are not involved beyond presence and pocketbooks.

But let's not point at the Six Flags over Jesus churches. Let's bring it down a bit. My church has a membership of 150. Of those, 1 is super-involved. My #2 is about half as involved as #1. Then the next 15 people are involved in various ways. My sunday morning attendance is about 40. And my CEO attendance (Christmas & Easter Onlys) is about 60. So you see the distribution of involvement matches perfectly with the mega-churches and Wikipedia alike.

Map out your church involvement. I bet you get the same graph.

The Long Tail of the Church and Wikipedia

The lesson from Wikipedia is that no matter how small the contribution, the entirety of the whole is better for it. That is a tough concept for the church.

We want truly dedicated believers who are involved in every aspect.
We tend to rely on the semi-professional laity to get things done right...rather than trusting the under-average crowd to try something new.
Especially in the small-membership church, we tend to over-use our people who DO step up, and then wonder why they aren't exhibiting healthy self-care that makes others want to become involved too.
On the meta-level, there's still a strong stigma that small churches are worth less than big churches. It's not true, but I hear it a lot.

The secret of Wikipedia is this: By grabbing ahold of the long tail of ministry, churches can experience significant renewal. It is exactly those small areas of ministry where the church can be renewed. Consider the following small groups that may be in your church or community:

The soccer families that go out for pizza after their games. What if you sponsored a bible study for them to read while waiting on their pizza, or sponsored a social night at the church following games?
The couple or three elderly persons who visit shut-ins. What if you paired them with a sunday school class and they went together on their visits?
The people who do the dishes after coffee hour. What if you posted some hymns on the wall by the sink and they sang songs while they cleaned?

Those are little examples of how to focus your energies on the small groups in your church. But it expands to denominational systems too. It is OK to have small churches! The "below-average" crowd (any church under 150 attendance, by most estimations) is the "long tail" of the Church and needs to be embraced to further grow the church.

Local church leaders can reevaluate their budgets and ensure they are throwing money not only at broadcast and storefront areas (like sunday worship) but all the small groups that are truly grabbing ahold of people's lives (the "long tail" of ministry).
Church leaders can reflect the value of small churches and ministries in the way they evaluate churches. For instance, bishops that ask only how many professions of faith and apportionments are coming from churches are committing the sin of wikipedia: they are looking for an individual characterization rather than evaluating the collective whole.
In extreme examples, maybe big churches can be broken up into multiple churches, or big ministries broken up into small ministries that aggregate together only on occasion.

C.K. Miller, in Next.Church.Now, writes that churches that are successful are those that tie worship to a discipleship system. By further empowering small groups, and focusing more of our church resources on the "long tail" of ministry, then we can experience renewal in the church.

What do you think? How can we grab ahold of the "long tail" of our church membership and encourage discipleship, while realizing that our traditional modes of ministry (worship, bible study, dedicated accountability groups) don't reach the long tail like they have in the past?

Thoughts? Comment below! Thanks for reading.

What I'm Reading 05/14/2008

Things younger than Republican Presidential candidate (oh, and did I forget to mention “war hero”?) John McCain
tags: no_tag
- Unbelieveably age-ist. And I apologize in advance. But still a bit funny. Don't hate me, people older than this "young" clergyperson. - post by umjeremy
- The Chocolate Chip Cookie is younger than John McCain.
  
  OK, this is an odd one. Apparently, the chocolate chip cookie has not been around since the dawn of time. It did not evolve from anything, nor was it hanging down from the forbidden tree (or whatever it’s called) in the Garden of Eden. It was, in fact, invented in 1937 by Ruth Graves Wakefield of Whitman, Massachusetts, who ran the Toll House Restaurant.
  
  So this classic staple and friend of milk lovers everywhere is actually younger than John McCain.
In the Coracle | Pat Loughery’s thoughts on life, faith, sports, motorcycles, photography, music and other details
tags: no_tag
- Interesting "insiders" take on a failed church plant. - post by umjeremy
- here are some of the things we were told along the way that I just don’t agree with anymore, whether or not I did back then. Some were said directly, some just implied. And the folks that I read them from or heard them from - I really respect them, their lives, their churches. But I know these ways are not my way. Not then, and even more so now.
  
  It’s all about Sunday.
- If it’s not working, your signage or location is wrong
- What counts is attendance, baptisms and signups for membership class
- For the first two years, work as hard as you can without burning out
- The goal of every pastor is to be full-time, paid
- Some people are just scaffolding people
- Gather a crowd first, figure out who the disciples are later

Not Pastoral Malpractice, but Pastoral Malpraxis

A recent blog post on the LifeWay Christian Stores blog claims that the biggest problem in the Christian Church is that pastors commit pastoral malpractice.

Not medical malpractice, but pastoral malpractice. What is that? Sexual misconduct? Stealing money from church coffers? Naaah.

What do I mean by pastoral malpractice? I mean ministers who stand and preach a gospel other than God’s rightful need for punitive justice against our sin and His wrath being appeased by pouring out upon Christ judgment intended for us.

Ouch. Read on to see that malpractice is nowhere near as dangerous as malpraxis, or failing to reflect on what you preach.

Pastoral Malpractice

As both Henry and Will comment, pastoral malpractice is essentially preaching any atonement theology other than penal substitutionary atonement. If we water down what happened on the cross, then we are committing pastoral malpractice and leading our flock astray.

Will goes on to emphasize the love of God as opposed to penal substitutionary atonement

Never mind that this God of wrath is hard to reconcile with John’s view that “God is love,” and that “perfect love casts out fear” (and if there was ever a God to fear, it is the one described above). Never mind all that and so much more besides. If you don’t preach what Rainer says you must preach, you are guilty of treason and pastoral malpractice.

I'm also most struck by Henry's comment here:

A commenter on the Lifeway post cheers on Mr. Rainer, and comments on how people are tired of a “watered down gospel.”
What I’m wondering is this: Why is it OK to water down God’s love, but it’s somehow “treasonous” to water down his wrath?

Amen to these insightful comments on the theological issue at play, and the ridiculousness of narrowing the grievous sin of pastors to not preaching a particular atonement theory.

Pastoral Malpraxis

However, I would claim there is a bigger issue here. Malpractice is defined as failing to act when you have a duty to act. It's not about getting something wrong! Malpractice is professional negligence that causes harm to someone.

I don't think it is negligent to fail to preach substitutionary atonement. Given our diversity of Christian thought, you can preach alternative atonement theologies and still be within the realm of Christian thought.

In my opinion, the bigger sin is neglecting to study the effects of your preaching or actions.

This is the essence of pastoral malpraxis, or failing to reflect on what you preach.

There are some preachers who get one message, have crafted that one message, and are unable to deviate from it. They walk the walk and talk the talk consistently. Their Christian practice is impeccable. However, at what point do they reflect on their ministry and remove their personalities from it to see its effects on people?

It is precisely the act of reflecting on practice that makes it become praxis.

Liberation theologians Gutierrez and Sobrino define Christian praxis as "a combination of reflection and action that realizes the historicity of human persons." Gutierrez further defines praxis in this way:

The understanding of faith appears as the understanding not of the simple affirmation--almost memorization--of truths, but of a commitment, an overall attitude, a particular posture in life (A Theology of Liberation, 6).

To be pastors, we have a responsibility to ensure the whole of our Christian life is in line with the ideals of God. That includes the effects of our sermons and actions on people and ministries. We are called to constant refinement and accountability, and failing to reflect on our deeply personal sermons can lead to unnoticed hurt in people's lives. For instance:

If I preach Jesus gave his body to be broken, then am I hurting those battered women who willingly give their bodies to be broken so their families can stay together?
If I preach that if you just pray to Jesus, your prayers will be answered (Mark 11:24), then am I giving false hope to people?
If I preach that God wants you to be rich (3 John 2 and the prayer of Jabez), then am I siding the church with consumerism and empire rather than the kingdom of God?

It is precisely the act of reflection and action that Christian praxis is built on. And thus any follower of Christ, regardless of their atonement theology or ordination status, who does not reflect on their practice of their faith is committing malpraxis.

This isn't some sort of teleological ethics that focuses on the effects and end results of ministry. It is praxis in the pure sense, of considering Christian ministry by reflecting and acting and reflecting again in a constant circle of refinement to make us holier representatives of Christ to all we meet.

What do you think?

Is failing to reflect on your message and life's message (malpraxis) more dangerous than preaching a watered-down gospel to the masses (malpractice)?
In what ways can we better encourage those cult-of-personality churches to better reflect on the praxis of their ministries in ways that remove egos from the picture?

Thanks for reading, and I hope you will post your thoughts!

Closed Systems of Discipleship & Accountability

One of the basic tenets of hacking is that nothing is impenetrable.

No matter how closed the system becomes, there is still a chance for breaking into it.
The more closed a system becomes, the more restrictions are placed on the insiders of the system.
Thus, a proper balance must be made between closed doors and openness for a system to breathe and properly run.

As the United Methodist Church limps away from General Conference 2008, there is one unresolved question: how closed will our system be for the next four years? How closed will our ordination process be? How closed will our doctrines be? How closed will our church membership be? How closed will our interfaith dialogue be?

The question of "how closed will our system be?" is one asked in many areas of life, and the most consistent answer may surprise you.

The more closed that systems become, the more harmful they become to insiders of that system.

Music & movie security hurts consumersWe see this in the world of music and movies. With the creation of Digital Rights Management (DRM), there are more layers of security on music and videos to keep people from copying them. However, people who bought legitimate downloaded MLB videos were eventually unable to play them or obtain refunds. Sony CDs often won't play in your computer, and even if they do, Sony installed rootkits in them to compromise your computer. Even supposedly DRM-free iTunes music has your account info embedded in it. In short, even though DRM is easily surpassed by hackers, people who legitimately bought the media get hurt.

How closed should the system be?

We see this in the world of public policy. My home state of Oklahoma has some of the most stringent anti-immigration laws on the books. A recent op-ed in USA Today has this to say:

Oklahoma, which has one of the toughest new laws, now bars illegal immigrants from receiving state services, requires employers to verify that new workers are legal, gives people a way to sue companies that hire illegal immigrants, and makes it a felony to transport, harbor or conceal an illegal immigrant. It was meant to be harsh, and it is.
It's also undeniably effective. Oklahoma Hispanic groups estimate that as many as 25,000 left the state after the law was approved last year. School attendance dropped, workers disappeared, church attendance shrank and Latino businesses lost customers.
...By intent, the laws have also hit businesses, which have scrambled to replace lost workers. Employers say they're being asked to become immigration police with imperfect tools. A study in Oklahoma predicted that the law could cost the state's economy more than $1 billion a year, and a firm that specializes in finding new locations for businesses said some companies have crossed Oklahoma off their lists.

Harsh immigration policies destroy legal ethnic communitiesThe more closed a system gets, the more people inside the system it hurts. The legitimate Hispanic-serving businesses close up shop, my pastor friend's Hispanic UM church closed, and yet illegal immigrants still live in Oklahoma or simply move one state over. The system is closed, but who is truly paying the price?

How closed should the system be?

We see this in the church. General Conference failed to address church membership in a meaningful way, so in the meantime the Judicial Councils' JC1032 decision regarding pastoral authority in determining church membership stands:

As part of these administrative responsibilities the pastor in charge of a United Methodist church or charge is solely responsible for making the determination of a person's readiness to receive the vows of membership.

By all accounts, and including the dissenting opinions, this decision renders that pastors have sole authority to determine church membership readiness. By giving pastors the gateway, without accountability to a DS or the laity, pastors can, in the words of Jon Capen:

Because of the majority’s ruling, pastors across our great connection will not only enjoy the rights and privileges of ordination, they will also enjoy the additional power, discretion and authority that are now ordained by judicial fiat. Pastors will be able to screen out persons seeking membership to safeguard our churches against all varieties of sinners. While churches without sinners may be a precursor of heaven, the decision to pursue such a path must, under our system of church governance be made by the General Conference after the idea has been debated, tested and refined in the legislative processes of our church.

Lack of diversity in congregations hurt its mission and ministryWhen the gateways of a church (click for bible study) are not accountable to the church, then the system is closed, the gate guarded by one entity who has discretion to keep out potential disciples of Christ from the merits and privileges of membership because of whatever fatal flaw they have.

How closed should the system be?

Like DRM which tries to keep pirates from stealing music, and public policies which try to keep immigrants from stealing jobs, our membership policies are put into place to keep thieves from our churches.

Thieves who would join a church just to get a discount on weddings and funerals (see my post here: Top-down polity v. bottom-up policy)
Thieves with different theological backgrounds who will try to steal our church's long-standing (and thus...correct) identity.
Thieves who are just here to worship and not get involved with any disciple-making opportunities.
Thieves who would join a church to try to remove the pastor by gaining church membership en masse.

It is human nature to despise thieves and keep them from circles of trust, and that is reflected in JC1032 and the debates on the floor. However, is that really a human nature that we want reflected in our polity and practice in the church...fear of thieves?

Our church leadership has failed us in guiding us to better standards of membership that are not based on fear. It's time for us to do something about it. Following the local policy is better than upper polity model, local church policies can be put in place that render a pastor's decision accountable to the church in some manner.

Maybe submit a petition or policy to your local Charge Conference to get a report from the pastor why they denied membership to someone. Not restricting pastoral authority, that's against the Discipline, but ensuring pastoral accoutability. Because if any pastor makes a cookie-cutter church and allows in only those who would keep the system closed, that pastor should be accountable.
If you are a pastor or layperson in leadership, sponsor a round-table discussion on standards of membership. If you have education in that background or get some resources, it can be enlightening to your membership.

Church polity such as unaccountable pastoral authority in membership are satisfying for those who want to keep out thieves. But they worsen a polarized atmosphere that ill-serves our great denomination and breeds mistrust and fear.

In short, closed systems of discipleship hurt the church if there is not accountability. There must be grace in discerning membership readiness. And ultimately there must be more trust in God to change a person's heart than we can judge. Maybe some stronger and more articulate local church policies on membership can help our congregations come to stronger understandings of what membership looks like.

We are the ones who are being hurt by pastors who make cookie-cutter churches, and by laity who are silent and only friendly to those who look like them. By basing membership on suspicion, we are further from the kingdom of God.

Your turn: what do you make of this? What policies or standards would help us embrace one another not out of fear, but out of a shared sense of mission? What very real situations should we be aware of to guide us to a balance of accountability and accessibility?

Just so there's no guessing...my take? Love them all. Let God sort them out.

Thoughts?

What I'm Reading 05/10/2008

supporting women in all levels of leadership « beauty and depravity
tags: no_tag
- Great article with plenty of comments about women in ministry. - post by umjeremy
- Why do churches, pastors, and Christians believe that women should not be allowed in all levels of leadership and ministry? The unanimous answer is:
  
  Because the Bible says so.
Novelties: When Specialty Plates Go Hilariously Wrong
tags: no_tag
The Boar’s Head Tavern » Ten Reasons Men Should Not Be Ordained To Ministry
tags: no_tag
- Hilarious, subversive, and well-written. A trifecta of goodness! - post by umjeremy
- Ten Reasons Men Should Not Be Ordained To Ministry
  
  10. A man’s place is in the army.

Five Hardest Video Game Levels [Nerd Alert]

It's friday, my weekend is REALLY busy, so what am I doing? I'm blogging about video games, like most pastors do. Right?

Anyway, MSNBC has the top 5 hardest video game levels. Check it out. Dude, they only got one right in my opinion: Mike Tyson's punchout. The rest? Lame. The hardest games ever made can be found on the original Nintendo, not new pansy ones with glitzy graphics.

For a nerdy moment (though if you are of my generation, you grew up with these games), here's my top five hardest levels in video games. I was a Nintendo junkie, so deal with it.

5) Super Mario Sunshine, Tower Minigame (Gamecube)

There's quite a few levels in Sunshine that were very difficult! I'm thinking mostly of the minigame where you have to jump from floating spinning block to disintegrating block, like the one on top of the tower (where you rocket all the way up to it, not the one on top of town hall). I only played this in the past year, so it is on my mind.

4) Street Fighter, Fight against Sagat (Super Nintendo)

In StreetFighter for the Super Nintendo, you would hit the boss characters at random times, and each character got harder the later in the round you got. If I was playing and hadn't hit Sagat yet, then I knew I was gonna be taken out. Sagat would take some hits, but was always able to come out of his fireballs in time to tiger uppercut me. Always tough, and always satisfying to win.

3) Super Mario World, Tubular (Super Nintendo)

There are no words. You just had to have perfect timing. Beyond that...nope, no words.

2) Ghosts and Goblins (Nintendo)

The entire game is one dang level! No continues, and it was REALLY TOUGH! EXCLAMATION POINT AND SHOUTING! Also, whenever your character jumped, you could not change direction or anything in midair (though for a guy in a suit of armor to jump, I guess that's realistic). But, seriously, I broke many controllers playing this game, before becoming a pastor made me calm and serene.

1) Battletoads, Speedbike Level (Nintendo).

ALL TIME HARDEST LEVEL. Couple that with limited continues and that it is so late in the game, I rarely beat it. But by then since my lives were so low, I never beat the game. It's my one failure as a Nintendo power player. Yes, it still hurts. Sigh.
Seriously, check out this quote from Wikipedia: "Battletoads for the NES has a reputation as being virtually impossible to finish, even among hardcore gamers." Dang right!
Close second is the clinger-winger stage where you are being chased by the glowing orb thingy.

What was the hardest level from a video game for you? And don't say Tetris! :-)

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