Anne Rice and Christ/ianity

I never was an Anne Rice fan and only marginally enjoyed Christ the Lord series of books she wrote after converting.  But she showed up in my feed reader this morning as she has disavowed Christianity but will continue to follow Christ.

Let's break it down point by point. She wrote on her facebook page:

For those who care, and I understand if you don't: Today I quit being a Christian. I'm out. I remain committed to Christ as always but not to being "Christian" or to being part of Christianity. It's simply impossible for me to "belong" to this quarrelsome, hostile, disputatious, and deservedly infamous group. For ten years, I've tried. I've failed. I'm an outsider. My conscience will allow nothing else

source

I sympathize with the perspective that Christianity is quarrelsome and full of disputes. But what group isn't? It is human nature to conflict, dispute, resolve, and move on to the next conflict. Even Christ himself was constantly in conflict with those around him, so if Rice is looking for a consistent state of nirvana, it ain't Christ.

Read on for more updates and the responsibility of seeking redemption for flawed human movements.

As I said below, I quit being a Christian. I'm out. In the name of Christ, I refuse to be anti-gay. I refuse to be anti-feminist. I refuse to be anti-artificial birth control. I refuse to be anti-Democrat. I refuse to be anti-secular humanism. I refuse to be anti-science. I refuse to be anti-life. In the name of Christ, I quit Christianity and being Christian. Amen.

source

Well, honestly, if that's Christianity then I'm not one either, on every single point.  Christianity is not monolithic, and every social issue or theological issue has people across the spectrum on it. It did not begin that way, and it has only gotten more spread out over time. There will always be people to disagree with in your club, but you gotta keep your membership card to get the benefits.

Finally, she writes an hour-ish ago before this post.

My faith in Christ is central to my life. My conversion from a pessimistic atheist lost in a world I didn't understand, to an optimistic believer in a universe created and sustained by a loving God is crucial to me. But following Christ does not mean following His followers. Christ is infinitely more important than Christianity and always will be, no matter what Christianity is, has been, or might become

source

For more reactions, Michael at ThinkChristian.net wonders if this is a reaction to the culture wars: people leaving Christianity due to the conflict and continuing to be "spiritual" but not part of a "religious" movement.  And Jim at BoxTurtleBulletin dredges up a status update previously that points closer to why she chose to leave Christianity as a movement:

[Anne Rice's] embrace of Catholicism was of a personal and spiritual nature, and as is not unusual among Catholics, didn’t extend to social issues...Rice was ultimately unable to reconcile her belief in Christ on the one hand, with the actions of fellow Christians and how those actions have stained the Christian “brand” on the other. She appears to have hinted at this with this post on her facebook page which appeared on Tuesday:

Gandhi famously said: “I like your Christ, I do not like your Christians. Your Christians are so unlike your Christ.” When does a word (Christian)become unusable? When does it become so burdened with history and horror that it cannot be evoked without destructive controversy?

Her last point hit me in the gut, not from realization of something but from my long-standing wrestlings with this. The way I see it is that no human movement is without its flaws, even the ones we believe to be divinely driven and sustained. Even the bible is not without its flaws and errors that do not translate 2000 years in the future.  The constitution, heralded as the pinnacle of human freedom and collective sustainability, only considered white men to be people.

Maybe that's why Jesus drew people close to him as a group rather than directing them one-on-one. In our flaws, we find out how to be human together. As a group together, we help those flaws become smoothed out until we are people without wax.  Christianity without Christ is folly, but willingly following Christ in solitary does not heed his example either.

It comes down to if you think Christianity is redeemable.  If you want it to be redeemed, then stay inside and work for change. If your denomination's doctrine and policies rub you the wrong way, stay inside and work for change. If you love something, truly love it, then you have to see it as redeemable, and then it is your responsibility to work to redeem it...even if all you do is plant the seeds that someone in the next generation actually gets to bear fruit.

What do you think?  Thoughts? Post them in the comments and welcome to the conversation!

Read more...

The Psycholgy of Altar Calls

One of the first difficult discussions I had with the Board of Ordained Ministry was over invitations to Christian Discipleship (ie. "altar calls"). It is customary in the sermons we submit to include an invitation to accept Christ into your life via an altar call.  I did not include one and they asked me why. Instead, I invited the recipients of the sermon to action, be it offering hospitality or seeking justice or truth-telling.  It was my understanding that Christ invites us continually, not just once, and we respond continually as we seek sanctifying grace. Thus began a 4-year conversation with the Board over my weak embrace of an altar call praxis.

While as a pastor I have of course led people to Christ, as a layperson I can recall only one: a youth at a summer camp. It was a camp that was heavy on emotional 2-hour worship with a rockin' band and sweating preachers.  This youth and I had a good relationship, and on the last night of camp when other youth were coming to the altar, without my prodding he accepted an altar call, asked me to walk with him, and credited me with inspiring him to discipleship.

I have thought of that youth for a decade now, and while I praise God that he chose the path he did, I wonder about the reasons why.

Was it the band?
Was it the preacher?
Was it seeing others walk down the aisle?
Was it feeling like an outsider all week and wanting to be included?
Or was it the Spirit and I should stop analyzing it?

I'm certain it was a combination of the above, with the Spirit affecting the large majority of it. But I cannot help but wonder to what extent did the psychological role of emotive worship and the social-psychological effect of altar calls affect the situation? Are those means justified by the ends of saving people to Christ?

The seersucker seminarian pointed me to a post by Oklahoma pastor Wade Burleson. He recounts an article  that speaks well of my reservations with altar calls and my lingering concern that "the ends justify the means" mentality is intrinsic and inseparable from altar calls.

The article by 1970s preacher Dr Martyn Lloyd-Jones is reprinted here in its entirety (source here, bolded sections are my bolds).
===========

Question: During recent years, especially in England, among evangelicals of the Reformed faith, there has been a rising criticism of the invitation system as used by Billy Graham and others. Does Scripture justify the use of such public invitations or not?

Answer: Well, it is difficult to answer this in a brief compass without being misunderstood. Let me answer it like this:

The history of this invitation system is one with which you people ought to be more familiar than anyone else, because it began in America. It began in the 1820s; the real originator of it was Charles G. Finney. It led to a great controversy. Asahel Nettleton, a great Calvinist and successful evangelist, never issued an “altar call” nor asked people to come to the “anxious seat.” These new methods in the 182Os and were condemned for many reasons by all who took the Reformed position.

One reason is that there is no evidence that this was done in New Testament times, because then they trusted to the power of the Spirit. Peter preaching on the Day of Pentecost under the power of the Spirit, for instance, had no need to call people forward in decision because, as you remember, the people were so moved and affected by the power of the Word and Spirit that they actually interrupted the preacher, crying out, “Men and brethren, what shall we do?” That has been the traditional Reformed attitude towards this particular matter.

The moment you begin to introduce this other element, you are bringing a psychological element. The invitation should be in the message. We believe the Spirit applies the message, so we trust in the power of the Spirit. I personally agree with what has been said in the question.

I have never called people forward at the end for this reason; there is a grave danger of people coming forward before they are ready to come forward. We do believe in the work of the Spirit, that He convicts and converts, and He will do His work. There is a danger in bringing people to a “birth,” as it were, before they are ready for it.The Puritans in particular were afraid of what they would call “a temporary faith” or “a false profession.”

There was a great Puritan, Thomas Shepard, who published a famous series of sermons on The Ten Virgins. The great point of that book was to deal with this problem of a false profession. The foolish virgins thought they were all right. This is a very great danger. I can sum it up by putting it like this: I feel that this pressure which is put upon people to come forward in decision ultimately is due to a lack of faith in the work and operation of the Holy Spirit. We are to preach the Word, and if we do it properly, there will be a call to a decision that comes in the message, and then we leave it to the Spirit to act upon people. And of course He does.

Some may come immediately at the close of the service to see the minister. I think there should always be an indication that the minister will be glad to see anybody who wants to put questions to him or wants further help. But that is a very different thing from putting pressure upon people to come forward. I feel it is wrong to put pressure directly on the will. The order in Scripture seems to be this – the truth is presented to the mind, which moves the heart, and that in turn moves the will.

D. Martyn Lloyd-Jones

=================

Thoughts?

Read more...

When the Church is the Borg: Assimilate + Dominate

I'm really not interested in partisan political discussion, but blogger Andrew Sullivan has an observation that I want to post here for discussion on its parallels in the church.  He writes about former Republican VP candidate Sarah Palin joining Fox News:

In my view, we're seeing the fusion of a political party with a media company. It's like a state-run TV that only runs pro-GOP stories. Think of the TV in Iran and you'll get the fuller picture.

And by sealing off Fox viewers from any other news source, and feeding propaganda 24 hours a day, and having a monopoly of the base, FNC is more powerful than the RNC in determining Republican politics.

Andrew Sullivan, The FNC-RNC Merger

In Sullivan's view, the Fox News' approach of assimilate and dominate is unhealthy to the elected leadership of an ideology in that it replaces the elected leadership of the RNC with Fox News corporate-chosen agenda.  Regardless of whether the results are as Sullivan outlines, the approach of Fox News seems to be this embrace of the echo-chamber:

1. Rail against the "liberal media" so that you only watch the one network (theirs) 
2. Promote a one-sided viewpoint that may fudge the lines of fact
3. Recruit and exhibit a monopoly of voices in their ideology.
   

It strikes me that I've seen this approach in churches as well.

1. Rail against other churches and/or ideologies in the town/area so that parishioners treat their statements or actions with suspicion.
2. Promote perceptions and beliefs that are counter to the facts but helpful to the pastoral/leaders' message
   
3. Allow in only voices that complement the pastors' or leaderships' messages
   

I think this is a natural tendency to exclude, assimilate, and dominate a particular area of influence...it is certainly the most effective!  But in doing so we are not critiquing the most dangerous aspect: the echo-chamber that reduces Christian compassion and stunts Christian expression!  Indeed the churches that most often use these tactics are ones that spawn replicas of themselves rather than partner with local expressions of their faith, which further extends the echo-chamber to new areas.

I admit that I don't invite in Beth Moore bible studies or Pat Robertson content into my parish.  But I do engage their sentiments and theologies in sermons and interactive bible studies.  I get uneasy when the choir sings songs that promote pre-dispensationalism or when the lector prays to "Father God" but I don't dictate that such things are anathema or seek to insulate people from those ideologies.

Engagement with dissonance is preferable to insulation.  The worst thing you can do for a growing child is put them in a medically-pure bubble where they do not build up immunity to disease.  I fear such chambers that we create in our churches are free of dissonance and full of self-fulfilling statements that are harmful to Christian witness and personal growth.  If you build your whole life around freedom from dissonance or challenge, then how can Christ (who challenges and offers dissonance) be made real?

This is a problem, from my perspective.  I just don't know what to do about it.  Thoughts?

Read more...

Hacking Content Overload: Becoming Curators

My spouse gets exasperated with how fast I read.  I read the last Harry Potter in about 6 hours and just read a hyper-masculine body shop magazine Twilight in about 4 hours.  I appreciate this gift because I have 2000 items to read in my GReader everyday and a few hundred Facebook updates of people I appreciate.  It's a lot of reading and skimming and starring items for further study later...but it's part of my daily routine and I wouldn't trade it.

However, what annoys me is that I read the same thing about 5-6 times (at least).  It's great as I get many different perspectives but for information-only stuff, it's lots of clutter and what others have called the social media echo-chamber.  Parroting tech specs or talking points wears on me and wears out the J button (GReader inside joke!).  But I don't want to unsubscribe because of the other content on those feeds.  So how can one sort through the different feeds and find the wheat among the chaff?

Last year, Internet addict thinker Steve Rubel had a solution to sorting through the ballooning amount of content: following Digital Curators that find great internet stuff, clean it up, frame it, and share it.  It's not Digg as aggregate voting by the masses is finding what's popular, not what's the best.  Museum Curators find the best and offer it in frameworks of their choosing.  Same approach for our digital lifestyle: if you trust a person, you'll read their stuff because you know it will be quality.


For example, on Facebook I have Curator friends whose links I always read...because I know them in RL and trust them and we usually have like interests. I know my facebook posted links, friendfeed, and twitter function like Curators for others given the amount of responses on them.  I only post what I like and what I think others would like.  In this way, niche Curators like myself (also called Long Tail editors) can be found and relied on for a specific area of content.

So how is this relevant to the Church?  It's almost like there's an inverse process in every medium:

• When a medium's content is professionalized, amateurization opens up the medium (ie. blogs opened up journalism from newspapers)
• When a medium's content is amateurized, professionalization brings out the subjective best of that medium (Curators cut through the clutter and find the good stuff)

As I wrote before, the amateurization of the church is upon us as pastors, denominations, and small groups become ran by amateurs rather than solid professionals.  Perhaps rather than pushing back or setting new standards or crying Chicken Little we should find ways to become Curators of our medium.

• Community Curators: In our communities, we can highlight community events and offer the church's hospitality and presence to them. In this way, churches can support the best the community has to offer and use its gifts to make it even better. If we hold up certain events and ignore others, perhaps the best of the community will rise up and make the community a better place.  What other ways can we become curators of our communities, holding up the best of what's going on?
• Denominational Curators: In our denominational variances and regional differences being played out on the national scene, perhaps loosening up expression of denominational faith (women pastors, etc) and holding up how in each area particular pastors or programs are ideally expressing that regions' faith values.  What other ways can we become curators of our denominations, holding up the best of what we have to offer?
• Biblical Curators: before the bible was written people were entrusted with the stories of Christ and they held those stories in trust and in the community.  Perhaps today as bible tools are better available and everyone's opines from dumb to worse can be found online, perhaps churches should become curators again.  Churches can hold up particular stories and go into great depth with them instead of the cursory Lectionary readings and offer true deep insight into the Scriptures.

In short, with the glut of denominations, the rise of amateur local pastors (not in a negative sense), and the proliferation of pseudo-biblical-research on the internet, what roles as Curators might the church be called to play?

Thoughts?  Welcome to our visitors!

Read more...

Amateurs in the Institutional Church 1of2

I know that blog posts about the Church and online media/phenomenon don't get many replies here, but I post them anyways because that's an area I'm interested in.

So here's Internet theorist Clay Shirky (remember him from the What the Church can Learn from Wikipedia series?) talking about the the effect of amateurization and what institutions can do to respond to it...and *I* think it has parallels in the church.  Check out the video and read specific quotes after the jump:



Here's a striking quote for me. Shirky is talking about the advance of online media options and interaction, but I think it parallels the church too:

When you open up new capability, then the average quality decreases. But that happened with the printing press. Prior to the printing press, the only written works which were obsessively copied were Plato, Aristotle, [hand]-copied by monks. When the printing press came along, the quality of the average book actually fell because now lots of people could be writers. So this is the absolutely normal pattern for new media....the way you get out of that is if the increase in abundance is so enormous that the absolute amount of good stuff increases.

[Thus I believe] we are living through the largest increase in expressive capability in the history of the human race.

In short, mass amateurization of an industry certainly reduces the quality of the industry (think blogger ethics v. journalism standards), but because it's en masse the amount of good stuff increases.  So while any idiot with a keyboard can post something online, there are brilliant people who can now reflect online too.  So while the overall quality of the written word has gone down in recent years thanks to txting, IM, and blogs...the sheer amount of good contributions have gone up...if you can wade through the garbage, that is!

I see elements of this in the Church today:

• Institutional Church v. Dime-a-dozen church startups - The institutional church's membership levels have gone down, while non-denominational churches have popped up a hundredfold.  These churches lack tradition, established avenues of accountability, and indeed some are just tax havens in Westboro, KS.  So while institutional churches have decreased,  I suspect the absolute amount of people experiencing the Christian tradition has increased.
• Trained Clergy v. passionate local pastors - The number of seminary-trained professional clergy has gone down, while the number of local church pastors has gone up.  Local church pastors may be gifted but don't have the full measure of church tradition and theological training under their belts.  But while seminary-educated clergy has decreased,  I suspect the absolute amount of people experiencing passionate pastoral leadership has increased.
• Local Church Discipleship v. loosely affiliated groups - On a local-church level, attendance in traditional church discipleship structures has decreased, while impromptu and sideline ministry groups has increased.  Outside of the general church structure are often groups of people that wouldn't call themselves a group but they are doing ministry and discipleship regardless.  So while supervised, accountable discipleship has decreased, I suspect the absolute amount of people experiencing diverse reflections on their spiritual growth has increased.

In short, the Church is also reeling from the effect of mass amateurization.  At the denominational, ecclesiastical, and local church level, the rising tide of "amateur" embodiments threatens the viability of the institutional church.

Thus the question lingers...

• Will we go the way of the newspapers and struggle to survive in the face of a changing world that values ease of access above all else?  
• Or will we adapt and thrive, seeking out the best ways to use amateur input and shepherd the power and conviction through our difficulties?

More tomorrow; what are your thoughts today?

Read more...

Gamers, LAN Parties, and Church Committees

I'm a geek and a reformed gamer...meaning I'm so busy nowadays that I can't play FPS or RTS games anymore.  But in college, my roomie and I were serious geek gamers.  We had our first taste of high-speed internet and used it to research papers shoot other virtual people.  Not to brag, but for a long time about 2 hours, I was #5 in the world's quarterly rankings in Unreal Tournament.  Life was good, fragging unknown strangers with weird names from across the globe.

So it caught my eye when a new study came out about gamers. At LAN parties (where geeks would bring their computers, hook them together, and play competitive games), gamers are more aggressive towards strangers than friends (via /.)

...multiplayer video games tap into the same mechanisms as warfare, where testosterone's effect on aggression is advantageous.
Against a group of strangers – be it an opposing football team or an opposing army – there is little reason to hold back, so testosterone's effects on aggression offer an advantage.
"In a serious out-group competition you can kill all your rivals and you're better for it," says David Geary, an evolutionary psychologist at the University of Missouri in Columbia, who led the study.

But the flip side is also true: gamer's testosterone levels actually went down when they competed against friends or people they knew.

However, when competing against friends or relatives to establish social hierarchy, annihilation doesn't make sense. "You can't alienate your in-group partners, because you need them," he says.

I certainly agree with this.  When gaming with your friends, sometimes there's a common courtesy ("no cheap shots") and you give each other feedback ("Quad damage makes you glow so you can't hide and snipe people!").  While games with friends are competitive, it seems you really take your gloves off when playing against strangers.

While we aren't fragging people in churches, this study says two things to me in relation to church dynamics:

1. When there's a disagreement in churches, strap them to computers and have them settle their differences with joysticks. j/k!
   
2. Seriously, this highlights the tremendous importance in building a sense of teamwork and community even in the most contentious of church committees. 

The better the members of your team know each other, the better they might treat each other.  If they are faceless people having disagreements, then arguments can be more aggressive.  If all you know about the Finance chair is that he once ran into the church mailbox, then arguments can be more aggressive. 

To get people to know one another, try these:

• Get to know each other.  Even though it sounds like something to do with children or youth, start meetings with interaction.  A bible study or hymn or even a name-game gets people a bit closer to treating one another like...people.
  
• Go to trainings together. I've served for several years on Lay Academies and they have trainings in your area of ministry.  Going together with a ministry team is essential to building trust and competency.
• Eat together.  Before a big meeting, meet for dinner, or have a lunch meeting where people bring their lunch.  Words shared over food somehow taste better.

So, that's how Gamers can teach Churches how to treat each other.  Get to know one another, and it becomes at least hormonally more difficult to treat one another badly.

Thoughts?

Read more...

Radical Hospitality: Love Your Enemies' Arguments

In Luke's gospel, Jesus tells us to "love our enemies, do good to them, and lend to them without expecting to get anything back" (Luke 6:27-36).  In these days beyond crusades and duels, our conflicts are primarily ideological: schoolyard arguments, coffee-table disputes, shouting pundits and unanswered questions in Sunday School.  So how do we love our enemies on an ideological level?

We could start, of course, with respect and giving the other dignity in conversation.  But that's only window dressing.  In religious discussion (like politics), the goal of conversation so often is to persuade others to your viewpoint, or put up the best spirited defense of your viewpoint against imagined opponents.  Indeed, that's the assumed basis for evangelism after all: to persuade others of the truth of Jesus Christ.

But we are called to love our enemies, and persuasion may or may not be the right kind of love.  Indeed, that's what Peter Rollins gets to in his book (not)Speak of God.  Evangelism relies on what Rollins calls power discourses that rely on word and wonder:

Power discourses...convince the other that Christianity is compelling and must be accepted by any rational person, and miracles prove that a person ought to believe.

P. Rollins, (not) Speak of God, pg. 37

Rejection thus becomes irrational.  Calling our enemies irrational may be tough love, but it is also a claim to a position of superior power.  Rollins calls the church to turn away and not rely on power discourses but to instead create sacred space where questions can be wrestled with.  A sacred space with a sacred level of hospitality that goes beyond merely listening to the other.  What could that look like?

Here's one idea: What if our goal in conversation is not to polish our own worldview in full view of others, but to build up the other's worldview to its best possible form?

That's what political commentator Julian Sanchez is making in a recent blog post (via Andrew Sullivan):

Consider the way our views normally evolve. We sort of hunker down in our ideological bunkers trying to fend off various attacks and challenges. Sometimes an especially forceful argument will require a modification in the fortifications—and on rare occasions, we’ll even be forced to abandon a position. Which is to say, we learn from other perspectives largely in a defensive mode, through a kind of Darwinian selection of arguments. But what if instead we tried to use the insights available from our own perspectives, not to defeat or convert the other guy, but to give his argument its best form?

What?  In short, Sanchez is claiming that we learn about the other from an entrenched position (perhaps in our echo chambers) and we are not really engaging or honoring the other.  But still...we are supposed to help them with their arguments??

Sanchez concludes:

...This might sound like giving aid and comfort to the enemy, but even in terms of the Darwinian struggle, there’s value to being able to show how your view trumps even the optimal form of the competition. Think of chess: You can’t see your own best move unless you have some sense of what your opponent’s best response would be. But the more intriguing possibility is that a smart progressive’s good-faith reformulation of libertarianism might be something that the libertarian, too, could recognize as an improvement—and vice versa.

In the Scripture, Jesus says to love our enemies.  Even when we think we are right, and we know they are wrong.  Perhaps the form of radical hospitality in ideological conflict, when we invite the other into conversation, is to take a cue from the Girl Scouts: leave them with their arguments better than they came with.  To build up their arguments, to help the other better understand their own. 

Then, perhaps, we can let the questions that follow from the Other either reinforce their belief or cause them to wonder why you would want to know about them.  Who knows...they may ask about yours, or what another ideology or theology might say.

Thoughts?  In these days of theological and ideological echo chambers and town hall shouting matches, the mere coaxing out of thought and argument is becoming more and more rare.  So what if the radical hospitality that Christ calls us to exhibit...what if it can extend to thought as well as deed? 

Thank you for your comments, and welcome to our visitors!

Read more...

What are your 13 Church Arguments?

Howard Fineman was on the Colbert Report talking about the 13 arguments that define America. While Stephen Colbert, obviously, digresses far away from the book topic, there's a few nuggets worth extracting.

The Colbert ReportMon - Thurs 11:30pm / 10:30c

Howard Fineman

Colbert Report Full Episodes
Political Humor

Rap Battle
NASA Name Contest

First, Fineman articulates that within a nation, the arguments work. They are relevant and understood. When you move out of that nation, and the arguments need translation. For instance, other countries don't understand our arguments, and thus they look silly or need explanation.

Second, Fineman said that the 13 key arguments are key because they are interpretations of key values.  For instance:

Once you accept the personhood of an individual, then you have to say "who deserves to be an American person entitled to the protections of American law"...what rights do we extend to immigrants once they are on our soil?

It makes me wonder what are the key arguments that our faith communities struggle with and that define us and that are untranslateable outside our faith community context.

Each church is a nation, with key arguments that keep on coming up (in healthy or unhealthy ways). Perhaps then the approach is not to answer the arguments, or silence the arguments. Instead, find out what are the key values that underline the arguments, and nuance and expand them.

For instance, coming to a better understanding of the value of personhood in politics leads to transformation to everything from immigrants to abortion. Thus, coming to a better understanding of "holy ground" may transform how the church understands trustees, building usage, and use of the church as a safe sanctuary for illegal immigrants on the run.

What are the 13 arguments in your church, and what are the values that they are based on? What are the ways that one can massage those values to lead to consensus?

Discuss in the comments!

Read more...

Candidate Jesus > Church of Jesus

The difficulty with giving money to churches today is that in the internet age, designated giving is easy.  ThinkChristian has a good discussion going about the tension between supporting the church infrastructure and giving to particular causes that you believe in.  Check it out.

The discussion revolves around that people like their money to go to projects they believe in.  Giving to Doctors without Borders or Red Cross or other charities...the money goes to support those causes, right?

But when people give to the church, there's this perception that it is diluted into maintenance and not mission.  Maybe some will go to the AIDS ministry or the Food Shelter, but it also goes to that decrepit building that is always cold where I sit in the pew, or that pastor that I don't always agree with, or the utility company really gets my tithe anyway.

Maybe we need to hack this perceived difference between giving to causes and candidates...and giving to the church.  It would seem that Candidate Jesus would raise more money than the Church of Jesus these days!

There's this concept that money gets diffused when given to the church and not for charities.  But in reality, donations to charities are diffused.  They have to have a secretary.  They pay for office and web space.  But still the perception is that "at least my money is going towards an effort I 100% agree with."  So a donation to a cause is less diffused than giving to my local church.

And then there's the big winner this year in designated giving: Barack Obama.  His online donations were embarrassingly huge, mostly from small donors (probably the ones who think an hour at church merits less of a gift than a movie ticket of equivalent time).  But when we give to Barack Obama in small donations, we aren't giving again 100% to the man.  We are paying for the entire campaign infrastructure. 

But that doesn't matter to us.  We are giving to a candidate, a person we believe in.  If it pays for the gas for 100 miles in an RV, fine. So long as it is ethically done, where the money goes doesn't matter, because we are a part of the movement.

So, why the discrepancy?  People get so concerned about paying for the infrastructure of churches, but not social actions or candidates' infrastructure.

•  I think that giving to a Candidate or Cause is an expression of personal opinion, not so much a donation to the infrastructure.  That's why people don't care that their $50 may have paid for lunch in Iowa somewhere.  They expressed their opinion.  They gave their support.  Done.
  

So how are we to hack this perception in the public eye that money to a church gets diffused while money to other groups doesn't.  I know that tithing is a spiritual discipline and is more about discipleship than it is an act of giving.  But for those who are not in that framework yet, how can we hack this perception?   How can we reframe this mentality in the church?

• Do we celebrate "where we are going" and emphasize more vision-language in broadcast so that people get hooked into "the vision"?
• Do we raise money from the church for specific programs, designated giving, and rely on the shrinking dedicated group of tithers to sustain the infrastructure?
• Do we breakdown exactly where church moneys go so that people see that for every dollar given, .20 cents goes to mission, .30 cents goes to the church staff, etc?  (If it is too unbalanced, then that's cause for a church to change!)
  

I see a dark, dark path if we start to polarize our programs into extremes, either anti-abortion rallies or pro-marriage-equality programs to draw money from the extreme activist ends (who are most likely to give because they are convicted).  That's not the Church Universal.


So, how does your local church deal with designated giving and the need for general giving to support the infrastructure of the ministry?  Discuss.

Read more...

How to Deal with *ist Jokes at Church

How to deal with *ist jokes (sexist, racist, heterosexist, anti-mormon) at church.

You know the jokes I'm talking about...

• the sly ones about women, 
• the pointed ones about "them homersexuals," 
• the loud and proud ones about Mormons. 

How do you "hack" the situation by pointing out the inappropriate behavior while doing it in a Christian context?

Carmen Van Kerckhove is a blogger on race in the workplace at her blog Racialicious. She has a guest post up at Brazen Careerist that is just the ticket. When someone tells a racist joke, here's her suggestion:

My recommendation? Play dumb.

Put on a bewildered expression, act as if you don't understand the joke, and ask your co-worker to explain it to you. He will not be able to explain why the joke is funny without evoking a racist stereotype. You can then question the veracity of this stereotype, thus pointing out the racism of the joke, without being confrontational and without humiliating your co-worker.

Racist jokes rely on an unspoken, shared knowledge of racist stereotypes. Without the stereotypes, there is no humor.

Try it out next time when you hear an *ist joke, and you may be surprised at how much more effective this can be....more than "YOU RACIST PIG" spraypainted on their bible can be.  Although that is pretty effective.

Thoughts?

Read more...

The Long Tail of Ministry Revisited

One of my main evangelism quotes is "don't do it.  Do discipleship instead.  And so by doing discipleship, we evangelize."  Thus by focusing on how to make the current members better Disciples, they will attract new people.  By doing so, the mission fields are not the chaotic world, but the smaller more-manageable circles of relationships that you are already a part of.  This is called the Long Tail of Ministry: the aggregate of the circles of relationships your current membership already swims in...has an equal amount of opportunity as shouting from the rooftops and standing on soapboxes at the mall.

A few months back in the "What the Church can Learn from Wikipedia" series, in part 2 we talked about the "Long Tail of Ministry."  Missed it?  Wonder what the heck that is?  Read the link, but essentially I'll let another site explain the long tail effectively.

the Long Tail theory suggests that the dramatically lower distribution costs for media (such as music and movies) enabled by the internet has the potential to reshape the demand curve for media...Anderson argues that the internet's ability to serve niches cost-effectively increases the demand for items further down the "tail" of the demand curve, making the aggregate demand for the tail comparable to that for the head.

We talked about how focusing on the long tail of ministry (those smaller groups in your church) can revolutionize the church like it revolutionized the internet industry.  Great, right?  Well, then this is a follow-up.  Here's two points worth mentioning.

(1) Harvard released a study questioning investments in the long tail businesses.  While the article questions the long tail's validity based on empirical data, it also offers recommendations and suggestions to businesses.  In there, there's a recommendation to businesses that translates directly into supporting the long tail of ministry [bold emphasis mine]:

When producing niche goods for the tail end of the distribution, keep costs as low as possible. Your odds of success aren’t favorable here either, and they will probably become less so.  The extremely low demand for the large array of products in the tail means that simply recovering the costs of producing them will be challenging. Given that obscure products tend to be appreciated less than hits, it will be very difficult to earn any kind of price premium for them.

So a lesson here to keep churches from completely upending and turning their world upside down is to reasonably support the long tail.  Taking money and volunteers away from a structured Sunday School to support an unstructured movie club is probably not the best idea.  (This serves as a extension of the previous blog post on the Long Tail of Ministry).

(2) In a blog post response to the response to this column, the Harvard article author Anita Elberse presents another aspect of the Long Tail to consider:

[the Long Tail inventor] Anderson again makes the argument that online markets exhibit a long tail. I agree with that assessment, and have not claimed the opposite. However, I argue the data reveal two other important patterns. First, the tail is long but extremely flat—and, as online retailers expand their assortments, increasingly so. Second, compared with heavy users, light users have a disproportionately strong preference for the more popular offerings, while both groups appreciate hit products more than they like those in the tail.

Light users have a preference for more popular programs...this is true for the church, isn't it?  Well, statistically-true anyway...a paper by the GBOD (Lazy Christians = Low-Hanging Fruit) shows that "the fastest growing churches depend on the least involved, least motivated, and least engaged Christian believers.”  If you have the biggest and baddest Sunday School around, if your worship service has Amy Grant doing square dances, and if your soup kitchen feeds half of Philadelphia...then you might have the most shallow Christians in your ranks.  If that is your goal, you are well on your way.

But if you want niche Christians, if you want to reach those on the margins, then it won't be via a massive overhaul of sunday school, but it might be by the many small groups in your community and congregation.  By encouraging personal relationships and small groups, then you will engage the long tail of ministry while leaving the CEOs and Sunday Christians to the Christendom retailers.

So, in other words, if you are a smaller church in the midst of ChristoGiantChurches...don't play the same game.  Don't try for the same shallow pool.  Teach your members to talk while holding their spiritual breath, sink deeply into the relationship circles that are already at the margins, and by God's grace you'll bring fresh water, bread, wine, and breath to those who are in your midst already.

Thoughts?

Related articles by Zemanta

• There's No Money In The Long Tail of the Blogosphere
• Why Chris Anderson's "Long Tail" theory might be all wrong.
• Poking Holes In The Long Tail Theory

Read more...

Order, Chaos, and Jesus

What does the Joker and Luke Skywalker have in common?  They both oppose order: be it rational order in Gotham City, or the Empire's New Order.

But don't take my word for it. When two blogs that I follow type up very similar posts, I have to wonder if they are reading each other (actually, I know they do).

But check out these quick hits because anytime theology, Batman, and Star Wars are in the same post, you know it's gonna be good.

Blake Huggins: The Joker was/is right .  He writes about the Joker quote while he was in the hospital room with Two-Face.  But he had this tidbit which caused me to think a bit:

[W]e had all been conditioned to go along with “the plan,” even if, as The Joker notes, the plan is horrifying. The plan was indeed horrifying, but most everyone went right along with it because the establishment said so and had, in effect, manufactured the consent of the masses beforehand. 

It seems to me that unless this hegemony of thought is somehow subverted, not necessarily by complete chaos, but by intentional anarchic acts of liberative resistance and inquiry, the established Order will continue to see that everything goes according to plan.

Jonathan Brink: Order v. Chaos .  He writes about Darth Vader's plan to bring Order to the Galaxy, which Luke rejects and parallels it to the existence of Dictators and evil men in a world that God brought "order" to in Creation:

[W]e’re left with the same question Darth Vader presents to Luke. “Join me and we can bring order to this planet.” Taking these men down seems right. But in doing so, we’re left with the question of which side we’re joining. Is control and order really the answer? Is force really the most restorative pathway?

Because once I join the effort to control, I then approve of its measure. If I approve of the killing of these people, to remove what seems like the chaos of the universe, I approve of the removal of me the moment I create chaos. And that line of order becomes entirely subjective on any side. It can be moved at any time based upon whim and circumstance, or as the men above choose. And what eventually occurs is a culture based in fear, not freedom. The order that was supposed to happen occurs, if only for a select group of people. As long as we’re on the good side, we’re safe. But step over the line and we’re at risk.

Done reading?  Good.  Thoughts?

1. Think about religion and politics abuses like these idiot pastors.  By amassing political power into the church, they risk prescribing Christian behavior instead of embracing our human freedom to choose it.  And that's a failure of the church even if it results in outlawed "unChristian" behavior.
   
2. Think about church growth.  By systematically encouraging church growth through marketing principles with an "ends justify the means" paradigm, we risk Order overturning the chaotic relationships that often result in Christian discipleship.  
3. Think about pastors and church leaders.  Do you regard them as prophetic in every word they say?  I have to wrestle with and challenge even my closest of prophetic friends, because I won't let them sell me a plan that I'm not with.  
4. Think about Jesus.  Better yet, read what both these bloggers write about Jesus and Order.  

Blake : maybe Jesus has more in common with the Joker than we are willing to admit. Indeed, perhaps Jesus goes even further than the Joker by actually taking on the violence of the established Order and unmasking it for what it is — and the best part is that he, unlike the Joker, refuses to play by the rules of the Order, that is, by participating in violence. Thus, Jesus is the ultimate villian of the established Order.

Jonathan : I keep thinking of the moments Jesus is standing in front of Herod and dying on the cross. He could have assumed control and brought order to the world. But to do so would be to go against love. Instead he established a world based in chaos that allows people to harm each other. But more importantly, he provides the ability to transcend that chaos through love by the power of His Spirit. It’s a culture based in the exact opposite, in freedom not in fear.

I've got a lot to think about.  I don't really have a well-thought-out plan of how to respond to these excellent (and geeky) posts.  Do you?
Type the rest of your post here

Read more...

Flash Mobbing the Gospel

One of the most interesting phenomenons of the internet culture is instantaneous communication and the ability to form groups rapidly and easily. We covered this phenomenon in "What the Church can Learn from Wikipedia."  Read more there.

By far the most youtube-friendly of the new developments via this ability is flash-mobs.  They are disconnected groups of people who get together and do weird things like the following.

First, a frozen crowd in a terminal:



Read on for ponderings of how this type of street theatre could become a useful tool for churches.

Second, remember "Where's Waldo?" Find the ninjas in the crowd!



Finally, the famous improv group does a musical...in the food court of a mall.



There are all sorts of useful ways to use a flash-mob, a group of disconnected strangers, to do potentially subversive things like this.

• Get people to all bring themselves to the park for a quick sermon/praise songs get-together.  Disperses before you get taken out for a noise ordinance.
• Get people to protest a new MacDonalds contribution to the obesity epidemic by having everyone get together wearing fat suits and get stuck in the front door (yes, I'm creative).
• Arrange for a random barbeque on a parishioner's lawn all of the sudden (hopefully one with good humor).

I don't know...it's a Saturday night.  Knock yourself out.  What ways could this phenomenon be harnessed by a tech-savvy church?

Discuss and add your ideas below!

Read more...

Mirror, Mirror in the Pew

Some interesting research has shown that mirrors tend to suppress prejudice.

People exhibit less prejudice when they're in the presence of a mirror, Dutch researchers have shown. Carina Wiekens and Diederik Stapel said this effect occurs because mirrors make us more aware of our public appearance, and therefore remind us of the need to fall in line with social norms.
...
The researchers concluded: "Our results suggest that when both private and public selves are activated [by the mirror] they do not cancel each other out when it concerns their input for normative behaviour. Rather, public concerns "win" and people show more appropriate, norm-driven behaviour."

Very interesting!  I wonder what would happen if we put these in the church: would people tone down their rhetoric?  Would committees be happy and sunshiney with puppy dogs?  Would it tell us which church is the fairest of them all?

Another blogger noted that this phenomenon has been shown in other ways as well:

This appears to be just one aspect of a more general phenomenon: It seems that people monitor themselves more closely when they can see themselves in the mirror. For example, there are studies which show that overweight people eat less when a mirror is placed in front of them.

Interesting research.  The key effect of mirrors is this: Mirrors make us feel watched. And while that may sound creepy, the psychological effect can be that we are more aware of our own actions and presentation of Christ in our daily lives.  Opposite of vanity, mirrors can make us more aware of our own discipleship.

It started me thinking of places where mirrors could be helpful in a church.

• On the stairs leading to the pulpit, reminding the preacher that their face is representing Christ at this moment.
• On the wall of a committee meeting room, reminding people that what they say behind closed doors is still a reflection on them.
• In the pews, allowing people to watch themselves to see how they incorporate the lesson (or put on their mascara).
  

The last one was facetious, as I think mirrors in the pews would exacerbate individualism and vanity to unhealthy levels.  But the implications of making people feel "watched" and becoming more self-aware are interesting.  I'll have to think on this a bit.

What do you think? 

• Would mirrors in a worship space cause people to think more reflectively about themselves and about society?  
• Or are mirrors and efforts to have people feel "watched" unhealthy?

Discuss!

Read more...

Slowly Untangling the Church Web

While perusing the economic blogs I read, I happened across this notion of the economy and proposed solutions.  It had a metaphor that I think is helpful for those of us who are looking to change the church structure (to "hack" it):

Have you ever tried to undo a bunch of tangled wires or cords? If you don’t pull on the right wires in the right order, the mess becomes worse. If you pull too hard, the whole thing can break. But if your first pulls are good ones, the untangling becomes easier with each move.
That’s like our economy’s situation today. If we expect too much too quickly, we’ll make matters worse. But there is a way out of the mess, and it lies in our hands.
Be careful, and start pulling.

I think it is a helpful image for churches as well.  While we may read the writings here at HX.net and exclaim "I want that to happen at my church NOW!" the truth is that changes take place slowly.  We have to pick and choose which threads to start pulling to untangle church bureaucracy and lay the groundwork for a bottom-up mission model.

However, even if we pull out all the threads, we should never remove the church structure completely; the goal is not ecclesial anarchy.  A commenter on the above conversation exclaimed:

I dislike the analogy. The goal in untangling a knot is to take a complex, highly coupled system, and separate it into individual linear components. But a healthy economy is a complex, highly coupled system, perhaps even moreso than than an unhealthy one. The knottiness of the economy may make prescribing solutions for helping a troubled one difficult or even intractable, but the knottiness itself is not the the problem.

Indeed, the involvement of people and bureaucracy is part and parcel to any effective church.  The goal is not church anarchy; it is streamlining and ensuring the "knottiness" of the church structure is affirming and helpful.  Knots are fine.  Roadblocks are fine.  Burdens are fine.  But only so far as they encourage people to work together, not unite the people to work against the system.

So go and be a knotty church! (bad bad pun!)

Read more...

Hacking Clergy Retirements

In many conferences, there's a mass exodus of the "old guard" of clergy; megachurches are seeing their pastors retire,larger churches are seeing their founding pastors retire, and there's a great need for seasoned middle-aged and young clergy.  I wonder how the retiring clergy could more effectively phased-out of church leadership while bestowing helpful thoughts and wisdom to the next generation...

In the business world, when people retire they get a party and a gold watch.  Except nowadays at American Express (hat tip: Andrew Sullivan):

Rather than retiring and leaving the company at once, participants gradually give up their day-to-day responsibilities, while replacing some of their free time with activities like mentoring and teaching master classes to their successors. In addition, they get more time out of the office doing whatever they want—be it planning for life in retirement or doing charity work. The phased retiree continues to receive a portion of his previous salary, benefits as usual, and the company in turn gets to hold on to some of its most valuable employees a year or more past traditional retirement age.

Are any churches or conferences experimenting with clergy retirements that they want to discuss?  I could see this implemented in a few ways:

• Retiring clergy go to "half-time" while the incoming minister becomes the full-time minister.  This could lead to conflicts of personality and people not seeing the new pastor as the "real pastor" but could be helpful to get on-the-church training.  
• Retiring clergy could become mini-district-superintendents and lead accountability groups for a cluster of clergy for a year after retirement.  They would have the experience to be helpful, and be "outside the system" enough that clergy would confide unofficial thoughts with them.
• Retiring clergy could read HX.net and train their lay leadership to make their pastors irrelevant in a few years time. :-)
  

Other thoughts on clergy retirements and how to keep the wisdom in the pools while allowing for new growth and ideas?  Discuss.

Read more...

The Methodist Prisoner's Dilemma, part 2

Following up on The Prisoner's Dilemma Part 1, I wrote this:

Structurally, we want Methodism to remain connectional, so pastors are moved around often.  But for the local church, research shows that pastors need more time to build up local churches before being wisked away.  So the game is how to find the right balance.  

One aspect to the game revolves around the Staff-Parish Relations reports.  They are the basic communication aspect between the Conference and the local church about the pastor.  Thus, they form the backbone of the Prisoner's Dilemma.  Read on for how they fit into the game.

Since we just passed SPRC evaluations time in the Methodist church (fun times), here's what I see as the prisoner's dilemma elements:

OFFER:

• The Conference says that if you give the Conference honest feedback on your pastor, they will keep the pastor there as long as they can.

OPTIONS:

• If the LOCAL church cooperates, they will send accurate reports to the conference in trust that the conference will keep their end of the bargain.
• If the LOCAL church defects, they will embellish reports to the conference in attempts to keep the pastor there as long as possible.  I say this not as a negative "those lying SPRC meat-heads" but as a commentary on human nature.

RESPONSES:

• BOTH COOPERATE: If the Local church offers honest feedback and the Conference keeps up their end of the bargain, then we have parity.  Trust prevails!
• LOCAL COOPERATES, CONFERENCE DEFECTS: If the local church offers honest feedback and the conference moves the pastor, then the local church may feel betrayed.  Great care must be taken on the Conference level when moving a popular pastor to ensure future evaluation standards.
• LOCAL DEFECTS, CONFERENCE COOPERATES: If the local church exaggerates on their evaluations or covers up pastoral difficulties or malfeasance, then the Conference may follow along.  While it is in their interest in the short term, in the long term choosing the pastor over the Conference may lead to a dark dark road of congregationalism and pastoral malfeasance.
• BOTH DEFECT: if the local church doesn't keep the conference in the loop, and the conference moves the pastor anyway, then pretty much everyone is miserable.  Dude.

This is a dilemma in that the dominant strategy for local churches is to retain their pastors.  This applies to popular pastors as well as small churches that know they "have to hold onto" decent pastors as long as they can, because who knows what the next fry will look like.  It is this tendency that the Conference has to deal with.

Two lessons from this:

1. Building and retaining trust is absolutely essential in the appointment system.  If a pastor has to be moved, then great care must be done on the Conference level AND on the SPRC to ensure proper participation in the process.  By degrading trust in the system can lead to congregationalism drift and a level of pastoral accountability that is damaging to all parties involved.
2. Pastors have a huge role to play in this.  If pastors encourage connectional participation and expose their parishioners to more connectional (district or conference) events, then there's a greater sense of "we are in this together" rather than "us versus them."  This has been a bigger push in recent years, particularly around younger clergy who are a bit "outside" the system and have noticed the effects of congregationalism in a connectional church.
   

Thoughts?  What elements of the Prisoner's Dilemma have we missed?  What are other ways that pastors and laity can encourage trust and connectional participation in the system?

Read more...

The Methodist Prisoner's Dilemma, Part 1

Image via Wikipedia

The Prisoner's Dilemma (also called Game Theory) is a sociological experiment and a police tactic that contrasts acting in one's self-interest or acting in a group's interest.  From Wikipedia, here's the classic version of it:

Two suspects are arrested by the police. The police have insufficient evidence for a conviction, and, having separated both prisoners, visit each of them to offer the same deal. If one testifies ("defects") for the prosecution against the other and the other remains silent, the betrayer goes free and the silent accomplice receives the full 10-year sentence. If both remain silent, both prisoners are sentenced to only six months in jail for a minor charge. If each betrays the other, each receives a five-year sentence. Each prisoner must choose to betray the other or to remain silent. Each one is assured that the other would not know about the betrayal before the end of the investigation. How should the prisoners act?

You see the dilemma and how sticky issues like "trust" affect how a person will "play the game?"  Do I betray the other to help myself, do I betray because I think they will betray me, or do I trust that we can both get out of this?  This is classic and effective.

Why is this in the news?  It's in Batman: The Dark Knight.  If you haven't seen Batman by the time of this blog post, go watch it immediately!  I won't go into the details out of fear of spoilers, but trust me: it's there.

What struck me is that the United Methodist Church is also in a Prisoner's Dilemma.  Read on for more...


Let's get out the meta-level (beyond two people) of the Prisoner's Dilemma first.  One commenter on the article "Game Theory and the Dark Knight" (spoilers!) offered this perception on the U.S. Congress Prisoner's Dilemma (edited slightly to remove movie spoilers)

[The Dark Knight] is the classic Prisoner's Dilemma. It is also how we elect Congress. The entire US will benefit from continuously changing the politicians. But, their seniority system means that each state gets more if they reelect their own state's politician. Do what's best for your state and the US suffers. Do what's best for the US and your state might suffer. You can only do whats best for everybody if you trust everybody else...Congress uses its seniority system to manipulate the people in each state. Same payoff matrix [as The Dark Knight].

In the United Methodist Church, we are in the same dilemma as Congress when it comes to clergy transitions and itinerant ministry.

• Do what is best for the global church, and the local church suffers
• It is in the local  Methodist Church's interest to keep their pastors as long as possible, as most pastors don't see returns until year four and often churches suffer during transitions.
• Do what is best for the local church, and the global church suffers.
• It is in the global Methodist Church's interest to move pastors around often (less than four years) so that local churches stay connectional and don't drift into congregationalism.

You see how we are in a similar situation in the Church.  Structurally, we want Methodism to remain connectional, so pastors are moved around often.  But for the local church, research shows that pastors need more time to build up local churches before being wisked away.  So the game is how to find the right balance. 

Trust is an inherent part of this system as churches feel betrayed by their conference overlords if their pastor is removed "too soon."  While I'm not privy to see how we appoint people, I'm sure this is an expressed concern on everyone's parts.

I have more on this, but I'm disciplining myself to shorter blog posts.  Thoughts? 

• Is there an inherent tension between local churches and the conference as far as the benefits of a pastor's tenure?
• Is this an accurate meta-level of the Prisoner's Dilemma?

Related articles by Zemanta

• The Winner of Our Prisoner's Dilemma Contest Is ...

Read more...

The Gated Church Community

I watched the video again of author Bill Bishop on The Daily Show, and I wanted to extrapolate part of the conversation.  Bishop talks about how we live in neighborhoods and move to neighborhoods where the similarity isn't always race or economic status, but political beliefs.  Here's a quote that struck me:

(3:30) Jon Stewart: Was it always this way?  Wasn't this country founded on this ghettoification of groups would come over and find their own kind and stay there, and slowly like molecules assimilate into the community.
(3:43) Bill Bishop:That's what is different now.  The separation is due to lifestyle, and it is increasing.  Over the past 30 years, communities are becoming increasingly Republican and increasingly Democratic.

So instead of the typical immigrant communities that create Chinatown or the Italian district and then spread out into society, people are moving backwards and ghettoizing into more and more homogeneous units and neighborhoods.  We aren't talking gated communities, we are talking typical neighborhoods.  For instance, from his book, the following statistic:

In 1976, less than a quarter of the American people lived in so-called "landslide counties" – that is, counties in which the spread between the two major presidential candidates was 20 percentage points or more. By 2004, nearly half of us lived in this kind of politically tilted territory.

Wow.  This is the situation that I began writing Hacking Christianity about.  But it is worse than I thought. 

What can the church do about this?  Should we continue to claim diversity in the face of a uniform neighborhood surrounding the church square?  Or do we, like our politicians, play to these individualist and like-minded sensibilities.  Bishop, one last time:

(5:05) Bill Bishop: We live with mirrors in front, and that's what the campaigns are doing is putting a big mirror in front of you and saying "Vote for You."

Thoughts?  Have you ran into these difficulties in your community or street or neighborhood?  What do successful churches do to provide a space for dislike-minded people to worship together while they live alongside like-minded neighbors?

Read more...

Bill Bishop: Housing and the Echo Chamber

In moments of hubris, I like to think that HX.net is a new way of looking at things, of breaking through the echo chamber that we live our lives in.

Then, as always, something comes along and destroys that ego. Last night The Daily Show had Bill Bishop, author of "The Big Sort: Why the Clustering of Like-Minded America Is Tearing Us Apart." Check it out:



Read on for thoughts on Christian missions and narrative-building...

Here's a quote from his website:

We've built a country where we can all choose the neighborhood and church and news show — most compatible with our lifestyle and beliefs. And we are living with the consequences of this way-of-life segregation.

Supporting his research is a year-old report that talks about housing (How much will you pay to live near people like you?) and how people pay more to live by people that look like them (hat tip Andrew Sullivan):

Specifically, while all households prefer to live in higher-income neighborhoods, college-educated households are willing to pay $58 more per month than those without a college degree to live in a neighborhood that has 10 percent more college-educated households. In fact, the researchers find that households without a college degree would actually need compensating to live in a neighborhood with 10 percent more college-educated neighbors.

Similarly, blacks are willing to pay $98 more per month to live in a neighborhood that has 10 percent more black households, compared to a negative willingness to pay on the part of white households to live in a similar neighborhood. Perhaps unsurprisingly, increases in household income and education also lead to a greater willingness to pay for better schools.

The way how we self-segregate ourselves in housing and lifestyles is reinforced by the echo chamber that we choose in the virtual world of media.

So here's the challenge: if people live and get their news from the echo chamber, does Christian missions have to replicate those lifestyles to break through?  If the narrative is mono and structured to always be mono, then how can we bring other voices into those lifestyles? Do we need SUV-driving materialistic suburban whites to get into the grooves of "those" people, or do we do the "wait until they get the itch to come to us" approach?

I once heard a pastor say that he was gifted with suburban churches.  I thought up until now that that was a ploy to not have to serve rural churches, but now I wonder if he was up to something...

What do you think?

Related articles by Zemanta

• Bill Clinton: Nation growing polarized
• TPMCafe Book Club: Bill Bishop

Read more...