Category: Michael D
Ash Wednesday and the Journey to Jerusalem, again.
The middle portion of the Christian story begins, again, as many believers and practitioners of Christianity will recognize the beginning of Lent today, Ash Wednesday. Many will give something up as a way to identify with Jesus, but that is not my way. Rather, I encourage persons to add something to their life during Lent. Do something, add something that will remind that you are created in the image of the divine. There is some spark of the divine in you and all of creation. Find a way to participate in positive creation rather than creative destruction. My two disciplines this Lent will see odd. I’ll be reading, The Power of Parable: How Fiction by Jesus Became Fiction About Jesus. I’m also learning to roller blade. Yes, weather permitting, I’ll be out in my neighborhood or gliding through a cemetery without my cell phone for at least an hour. We are created to be both bodies in motion and to be still. I’ll be trying to do a little of both while I read and while I skate.
I’m beginning Ash Wednesday by turning to some words from Rev. Dr. Rowan Williams, former Archbishop of Canterbury. He offered these words and more in The Observer back in 2008. I find these words stirring and haunting to my practice of Christianity, for Christendom in general, and relevant to America’s current political “stuck-ness.” Here are a few paragraphs and a link.
We Live in a Culture of Blame — But There Is Another Way
Rev. Dr. William Rowan | March 23, 2008. . . the alarming thing is that anyone should think that the story of Jesus’ death is a story about the triumph of bad men over good ones – with the implication that if we’d been there we would have been on the side of the good ones.
It’s not only that the biblical story – especially St John’s Gospel – shows us just the mixed motives that can be seen in figures like Pilate and the High Priest.
Much more importantly, the entire message of the Bible on this point is that the problem begins with us, not them. Jesus is killed because people who think they are good are in fact trapped in self-deception and unable to get out of the groove of their self-justifying behaviour. And the New Testament invites every reader to recognise this in himself or herself.
Because we compete for the same goods and comforts, we need to sustain our competition with our rivals and maintain distance from them. But to stop this getting completely out of hand (‘the war of all against all’), we unite with our rivals to identify the cause of the scarcity that makes us compete against each other with some outside presence we can all agree to hate.
People may or may not grasp what is meant by the resolution that the Christian message offers. But at least it is possible that they will see the entire scheme as a structure within which they – we – can understand some of what most lethally imprisons us in our relationships, individual and collective. We may acquire a crucial tool for exposing the evasions on which our lives and our political systems are so often built. Click here to read more.
Youth & Children . . . the Church Today
I’ve been saying for a long time now that children and youth are the Church today and tomorrow. It’s more than a marketing phrase for me and one reason why I think of my service in the church as “teaching the language of faith and the practice of Christianity for the Church today and tomorrow.” Here in Oklahoma we are using that as a benchmark, vision, and mission statement all rolled into one. A friend in ministry, Rev. Evan Dolive, continues the practice of “public theologian” as he writes for the local paper in his community. His thoughts on this topic are shared in this paragraph.
Young people are not leaving the church because they have objection with the teachings of Christ, rather they are leaving because they have no place in the church. Sure churches do a great job with their nursery program, Worship and Wonder program and even youth and college programs, but after that the church has not done too well. The church has bought into the lie that the late Whitney Houston promoted, that the “children are our future.”
This, my friends, is a bold face lie.
Children, middle schoolers, high schoolers, young adults are not the future of the church, they are the “right now.” Click here to read more.
As I reflect on my denomination, the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ) we too are contracting as many mainline denominations and even the “megas” are as well. I don’t think “mall Christianity” works long term and for me long term is more important than “saving souls.” No, my denomination has systematically dismantled ministry with/for children, youth, and young adults from our General manifestation right down to local congregations. It’s the easiest way to cut the budget when dollars decrease. We’ve noted in resolutions and mission imperatives that children and youth are important, even vital, for our expression of faith, but as yet have not reallocated resources to match those words. We delegate children’s ministry and youth ministry to “professionals” that may have theological training and smile at them when these people who know something about this ministry remind us that ministry with children, youth, and young adults requires everyone in a congregation, a Region, or a General ministry unit.
So, the next time I hear a Sr Minister, a Regional Minister or our General Minister and President talk about the importance of these ministries with children, youth, and young adults I’m going to vocally suggest, beginning with this post, that the next time they are offered a raise these persons set an example by declining it and asking that those monies be allocated to the children, youth, and young adult ministries in their context. If, our GMP would make that statement from the pulpit at General Assembly this year it would send ripples throughout our denomination. It would set a tone and direction. If, the next time a Regional Minister is offered a raise and announced that those funds needed to be allocated to the Region’s ministry with children, youth, and young adults that would ripple into congregations and set a different tone. If a local Sr Minister or solo Minister did the same it would set the tone, the direction, and note the actuality that children, youth, and young adults are the Church today as well as tomorrow.
I’m not saying that congregations have to become children, youth, and young adult focused only. I am saying that intentionally including this age demographic in “being” church/Church is, like an educated laity, congregational and Church reformation. It’s one way to arrest contraction before it plunges too far down the lifecycle toward death or worse, irrelevancy. That’s why some of my peers in ministry and I call this “missional ministry.” At some point this missional ministry has to be as important at starting new congregations because where this intentionally happens in local settings, congregations are born anew or revived by the gifts of the entire community. New congregations emerge with each generation and retain Disciple DNA. In Regions where this intentionally happens, leadership is learned, shared, and shaped because the ideas, energy, and presence of all ages is important to the life of the community and the structure not simply to survive, but to thrive. Thanks Evan for the words about the big lie.