Hacking Christianity

I kissed a girl...and went to hell [bad.hack]

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!

Church signs are a favorite pastime of mine. Back in college we were to go on a church sign scavenger hunt, which was pretty easy in Oklahoma City! I enjoyed how churches do pop-culture twists or wordplays (this church is prayer-conditioned) to condolences to Packers fans (God will never leave you for the Jets). In fact, one of my favorite blogs is called "crummy church signs" which collects the bad and snarky ones. Check it out.

But in multiple places on the net, this sign is getting some attention:

(thanks to Matt Algren for the better picture)

Read on for more and how when we use limited space to condemn people, we forget to include the love of Christ.

In case you can't read it, the sign says: "I kissed a girl and I liked it...then I went to hell"

The reference is the song "I kissed a girl and liked it" by a female singer Katy Perry. It is obviously referencing some church's belief that gay behavior is sinful. While it is in the same genre of pop-culture intersections that the church signs attempt to achieve, I'm pretty sure this is a bad.hack.

Sure, it is the church's privilege to put whatever they want on a church sign, but I don't see how this fits with their expressed mission. If we plug their vision statement into Wordle, here's what we get (click to enlarge)

If the biggest words in their mission are "People" "Want" and "Love", then how is this church sign expressing the love that people want?

As Church Marketing Sucks comments:

Dave Allison, pastor of Havens Corners, thinks the sign is a "loving warning to teens." He told The Columbus Dispatch that "The Scriptures tell us that you should not do what the song tells you to do. The Scriptures are not ambiguous on this issue."

It appears that Dave is forgetting that the Scriptures are also not ambiguous on how you're supposed to treat people. Last time I checked, there were more references in the Bible on how to love your neighbor than on how not to love them.

While the church sign has been replaced, one person who emailed in to complain got a response from the pastor.

I wanted to let you know that the sign has been changed. After
prayerful deliberation over whether or not to change it, it seemed
like there were too many questions over what the sign even meant.
Those who were unfamiliar with the song were at a loss to understand
even if they agreed. Also, some of you wrote thoughtful e-mails
rightly pointing out that the message and our church could easily be
misunderstood. There was no room on the sign to talk about love and
forgiveness, simply the consequence.

The sign now reads, "THROUGH FAITH IN CHRIST GOD LOVES US AND FORGIVES
OUR SINS."
Blessings,
Pastor Dave

I think the church has learned a valuable lesson which we can learn too.

In what missions and ministries is your church too focused on condemnation to have room for sharing the love of Christ?
In the choices of how you present the "face" of the church, is it mostly focused on condemnation or riling against society rather than reaching out to it?

Church signs are often the only thing I know about a church. The letter to the editor, the coaching attitude of a parishioner, the sermons found on the internet...are all often the only thing people know about a church.

In what ways are preaching the consequences (or condemnation) defining your church more than that they seek to share the love of Christ?

Thoughts? Welcome to our visitors!

Cell Phones in Church [video]

I think I'm gonna start out the new school year of worship next sunday with this clip.

Wow, my blogs in the clouds...

This is just too cool. The static picture doesn't do it justice; if you are reading this in a feedreader, go to my blog homepage to see it in animated action.

Seriously, do it now to see an animated one of these:

Wow. I mean, wow. I like it.

Now I just need to optimize it because it slows down Chrome a bit, and FireFox a lot, and Safari hates it.

Thanks to Amanda from BloggerBuster...this is awesome!

Welcome UM Reporter readers!

Hello, an abridged version of my "What the Chuch can Learn from Wikipedia" series has appeared in the September 5th edition of the United Methodist Reporter.

What United Methodists Can Learn from Wikipedia

To that end...welcome to the first-time readers! Here's some resources for you:

About the Blog

I'm a United Methodist pastor and I blog about ministry, technology, and internet-age group theory. The "about" page is here:

What is Hacking Christianity?

Read the Full Series On Wikipedia

The full series can be found here. For reference, the UMR article is an abridged version of part 4.

What the Church can Learn from Wikipedia

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Comment

Got something to say? Find the page you are interested in, and scroll to the bottom. There's a place for you to comment! Feel free to try it out on this thread if you like!
If you find something that makes you angry or passionate, please read the following before posting!

The Four Responsibilities of Commenting

Important Note

I need to give credit where credit is due. While I reference Clay Shirky's book in the article and build on his work in original ways, the term "half-life of knowledge" is his. While I turned it into the "half-life of discipleship" and feel confident that the rest of the article is acceptable, I wanted to ensure that Shirky got credit for that particular term. Read his book, it is amazing:

Clay Shirky, Here Comes Everybody: The Power of Organizing without Organizations (Penguin Press: New York, 2008)

Welcome to our visitors! You can consider this an open thread, and comment on anything and anywhere here!

Upcoming Gas.hack?

I've gotten several readers asking my opinion on the "Free Gas" phenomenon where churches offer gas cards or supplement the cost of gas for a day as evangelism tactics. Two responses.

YES, very interested in this gimmick, and I've got a lot to say about it.
BUT I'm swamped at the moment with church stuff and thus it's on the backburner.

I've been tinkering with a response piece to this since....well, the blogger date says 7/22, so maybe I should bust it out soon.
In the meantime, here's some links to chew on. UMPortal beat me to the punch months ago, so read their article there
- It Keeps Getting Better
Also it's now on CNN and on Reuters as churches try out this evangelism strategy. Feel free to read these links then respond.
- Bless You and Here's some Gas
- Sex, blood, and gasoline

So check out those articles and consider this an open thread to discuss them.

What are people's responses to churches offering free gas or gas cards or even supplementing the gas prices for a few hours?

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!

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!)