iPods and Spiritual Formation

Robby and Jo Mac in a local park, sharing iPod earphones as we listen to our of our co-favourite songs: Bohemian Rhapsody by Queen. You haven't lived till you've seen Jo act out -- and sing along with -- all the operatic parts in the middle of the song.

Especially when she's got BOTH earphones plugged in, and all we get is the frenetic actions and occasional piercing high notes as she bounces in and out of the room. My daughter ROCKS.

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I was having a conversation recently with Jo and her two cousins, who attend the same high school as Jo, and Jo accompanies them to their church's youth group every week. The three of them all say they want the same thing from their youth group: a more interactive approach to spiritual formation. Okay, they didn't use that phrase, but it's what they were describing.

The three of them really enjoy getting into discussions about spiritual things, but they are adamant about being a part of the learning process, and for them, that means not simply being receptors. They were really intrigued when I shared with them how I have often approached interactivity in a youth group setting, ever since 1990.

First of all, you don't prepare a long sermon, or a three-point alliterated teaching block. You spend the prep time brainstorming three or four kickin', open-ended, slightly ambiguous questions/statements that will be the framework of the meeting time. This is usually harder work!

You tell the group that one side of the room is for "Agree" while the opposite side of the room is "Disagree". Then, you establish or remind them of "Robby's Rules":

1. Nobody can be sent to hell for voicing their honest opinion.
   
2. We listened to you, now you listen to others.
   
3. One at a time, people, one at a time.
   
4. No Squirrels! (Code word meaning "no plastic Sunday-School answers")

As you go through each of the three or four vague-but-provocative questions/statements, the group has to decide which side they're on -- Agree or Disagree -- and physically move to that part of the room.

Then, you let people debate and defend why they chose the side that they're on. If they change their minds half-way through, they are free to get up and move to the other side, but they must explain what changed their mind.

My job is to be the faciliator, who keeps the dialogue going, ensures that both sides get equal time, and -- if they're getting too cozy -- throw in the occasional monkey wrench to make them think a little harder. Bonus points are given to those who can provide Bible verses to back up their ideas. Of course, if they take verses out of context, the other side is certainly free to point that out, and explain what they think those verses "really" mean. Respectfully, of course.

Usually by the end, the teenagers have covered most of the ground that a leader would have liked to have taught on, and if there's anything that was missed, the leader (me) would be free to sum things up with an appropriate Bible passage. But the major difference is that the bulk of the meeting had been carried by the youth themselves, with leadership functioning as learning facilitators rather than content controllers.

Sometimes you simply couldn't cover the entire topic as you'd originally hoped, because tangents sometimes are as good or better than the direction you were going, so you also need to be comfortable with a "teaching arc" taking several weeks to complete. The old "neat and tidy one week lesson" paradigm takes a serious beating in these settings, but the pay-off is seeing teenagers coming a week later, Bible in hand, to challenge each other (and me) with what they've been wrestling through during the week.

Theres' an old saying about giving a man a fish versus teaching a man how to fish, which applies to youth ministry as well. We can give them the "right answers" and hope that they remember and internalize them, OR we can equip them with the tools to learn for themselves, which will equip them far beyond the time that they are in our high school youth groups.

Step One in the New Chapter

Time elapsed, from going on the market to finalizing sale: 5 days.

Next...

Staying On Track

Nehemiah 6:1-13 contains a great lesson for those who are involved in the continuum of the emerging church.

And "continuum" is the right word for it. The Emerging Church -- or better yet, the questions that the emerging church is asking and wrestling with -- cuts across all kinds of denominational lines, as well as house churches, simple churches, and on and on. That's what makes it so hard to explain the Emerging Church; perhaps we should focus on the Emerging Questions that are most commonly being asked, instead.

The lesson in Nehemiah chapter 6 is simply this: if God has called us -- as individuals, house groups, communities of faith, church plants, etc. -- to a certain work, we need to be careful that we don't get sidetracked by detractors.

While a good critique can be helpful, trying to chase down, dialogue with, or bring correction to some of the anti-emerging websites too often turns into "chasing after the wind" (Ecclesiastes 1:14). And the end result is that you spend all your time (in fruitless frustration) arguing with people whose minds are firmly closed and you have no time, energy, or spirit left to do those things that God is calling you to do.

As Kenny Rogers sang once (I can't believe I'm actually quoting Kenny Rogers):

"You gotta know when to hold 'em
Know when to fold 'em
Know when to walk away
And know when to run"
"The Gambler" by Kenny Rogers

Sounds like good advice to me. Thanks, Nehemiah, and thanks, Kenny!

(audio FX: running footsteps fading into the distance...)

Teaching is Fun!

Just got back from Toronto, where I spent the day teaching at Tyndale Seminary. My topic was "Detoxing From Church", which is a subject near and dear to my heart. It was a great time of hangin' out with Dave-O, our zany pastor at Church on the Rock, and a class of great students with cool insights and thoughtful questions.

I really enjoy these opportunities to teach! It felt a little like "Welcome Back Kotter", though, teaching at the same seminary where I did my Master's level work back in the day.

Self-Critique Preferred

Somebody, although I can't quite recall who it was (probably Andrew Jones or Stephen Shields), mentioned late last year that 2005 would mostly likely be the year that the emerging church would start to come under criticism.

And whoever it was has my vote for "prophet", because that's certainly become the case. From D.A. Carson's "Becoming Conversant with the Emerging Church: Understanding a Movement and Its Implications", to a certain infamous anti-emergent site whose methodology would make even the most hardened heresy-hunters flinch, 2005 has become a year for the emerging church to be challenged publicly.

While a good critique can sharpen all of us -- and we'd have to be pretty arrogant to assume we don't need to be critiqued -- the best critique so far has come from the inside.

Jason Clark, of Emergent U.K., wrote a great summary in August 2004 (well in advance of the current critiques) that echoes my own thoughts, likes, concerns, etc.

Love/Hate the Emerging Church is an excellent self-critique. I submit that we need to be more proactive in critiquing ourselves, and doing our homework, rather than waiting for others to critique us and then simply react to them.

"Now the Bereans were of more noble character than the Thessalonians, for they received the message with great eagerness and examined the Scriptures every day to see if what Paul said was true." (Acts 17:11 NIV)

I think it's worth pointing out that there are TWO noteworthy characteristics of the Bereans:

1. They "received the message with great eagerness" -- they weren't cynical, suspicious, or arrogantly convinced that they didn't need to hear what Paul was saying, and
   
   
2. they "examined the Scriptures every day to see if what Paul said was true" -- they tempered their eagerness with honest biblical research

If we adopt only part 1, we'll be eager but gullible. If we adopt only part 2, we'll be diligent but dour. We need a balance, even in being Bereans. We'd like to avoid becoming the subject of the picture below. The caption reads "It could be that the purpose of your life is only to serve as a warning to others". (courtesy of Despair.com).

Another Faith Step -- Together

Last Wednesday was our 20th wedding anniversary, as I mentioned earlier. Wendy & I were unable to go out on the actual day of our anniversary (although I did bring her roses!), but we had the chance to go out last Saturday evening instead.

During our relaxing and fun time together, at one point we stopped by Mountain Brow Park in Hamilton, and looked out over the view of downtown Hamilton and the factories in the distance.


Wow, how romantic, you're thinking. Wait, it gets better.

Back in August 1984, at the advanced age of 19, Wendy flew out to Ontario from her home in the Interlake of Manitoba. We hadn't seen each other all summer, so I couldn't wait to be with her again, but another significant part of her trip to visit me was that she was meeting my parents for the first time. The good news is that both of my parents immediately connected with Wendy, and Wendy had a lot of fun getting to know them as well.

During that all-too-short week, Wendy & I went out, and at one point, ended up at Mountain Brow Park. While we were there, talking about our deepening relationship and our future together, at one point I gestured to the sprawling downtown of Hamilton, and told Wendy that, although our relationship was obviously growing, I knew that I was called to youth ministry.

"If you were to marry me," I said, "you might end up living in a place like this", as I pointed to the downtown area.

Wendy looked at it for only a moment before replying, "If that's where God wants us, then that's where we'll go."

We were married a few months later, and when Jo was born four years later, we were living in downtown Hamilton, right below the spot in the park we'd been at in 1984!

If you think God doesn't have a sense of humour, guess again!

It seemed kinda fitting, on a night when we were celebrating our 20th anniversary, and with another faith-step chapter ahead of us again, to remind ourselves of our commitment with each other, years ago, to do whatever God seemed to be calling us to, regardless of the cost.

I just couldn't resist...

I just read a column from the Winnipeg Sun, and it has got to be the funniest thing I've read from a newspaper columnist in a long time (and I tend to read columnists nationwide with alarming regularity). If you've ever dreaded a trip to the dentist, you'll definitely relate to Good thing I really like my dentist. I read it to Wendy, and it was like reading anything from Dave Barry -- hard to get it out before laughter incapacitates you and makes you incoherent.

Enjoy. Wendy & I are still laughing.

The Myth of Objectivity

As I surf around various blogging sites, both pomergent and those who feel the need to attack everything pomergent, I can't help but notice a strange, but large, blind spot that many people seem to have developed.

You hear (read) people quoting Augustine, Luther, and Calvin as if everything they wrote, said, or did was completely un-touched by their own personalities, hangups, personal histories, prevailing societal thought and culture, etc. It's as if everyone thinks that Augustine's works were not affected by his association with the heretical Manicheans before his salvation, or to admit the possibility that his work on predestination might have been influenced by the fatalistic determinism of his pre-Christian days.

There was also his taking verses completely out of context to refute Pelagius (who needed refuting, but not by twisting Scripture), and his development of "Limbus Infantum" (Baby Limbo) as a pleasant form of purgatory for un-baptized infants (Augustine previously taught that all un-baptized infants went straight to hell).

Martin Luther's pendulum swung so far towards justification by faith that he called the book of James "an epistle of straw" which would be burned up also with wood, hay and stubble, and wanted to remove James from the Canon of Scripture. His treatise "Against the Murderous Peasants" gave the German aristocracy the "blessing" to go ahead and slaughter thousands of peasants who were protesting injustice.

John Calvin, flying in the face of 15 centuries of Christian history and theology, thought that the book of Revelation was bogus, and if you read Calvin's commentaries on the Bible (which are worth reading generally), you may notice that there isn't one for Revelation. Like Luther, Calvin wanted to get rid of a book of the Canon.

Of course, there was also that nasty business in Geneva, where there were -- what? 58 or more? -- executions by Calvin & Co. of people who sinned or questioned Calvin's Institutes.

And, of course, we should remember that these three gentlemen developed most of their signature doctrines out of reaction against others -- this isn't usually a good idea if objectivity and fairness is valued.

I'm not trying to suggest that any of these three be rejected or held in suspicion. There is a great deal that can be learned from their writings. I DO run the gamut between being amused and alarmed at how people point to Calvin, Luther, and Augustine as if each of the three had been parachuted in from heaven, completely untouched by anything, and wrote completely objective, doctrinally and theologically pure treatises.

Let's face reality: the idea that anyone writes from a completely objective viewpoint is a myth. We're all interpreting data and concepts through a grid that we've developed over the years. We all "see through a glass darkly" (1st Corinthians 13:12, KJV), and that includes Augustine, Calvin, and Luther. They aren't super-human, nor are their written works on a par with Scripture. While we can learn from them, we must cultivate the "Berean" approach: searching the Scriptures for ourselves, and exercising discernment.

Party Time

20 years ago today, Wendy and I became husband and wife in central Manitoba, not too far from where this picture was taken. When our pastor (we imported him from Full Gospel Chapel in Steinbach to do the ceremony) got to that part about "richer or poorer", I couldn't help smiling and Wendy laughed out loud. Thinking of all of our earthly possessions stuffed into a 1968 Volkswagen Beetle (hidden in a friend's garage till loose lips led to its sacking), we knew which side of "richer or poorer" we were on at the time.

Now, 20 years later, we have many stories of God's provision and faithfulness, often in unusual and creative ways. We've gone through some heavy situations in churches, come out the other side a little burnt but hopefully a little wiser. We have three children that mean the world to us, and a fourth child (he'd be 14 now) who preceded us to heaven. We've lived and ministered in Ontario, British Columbia, Manitoba, and California. We've had some incredible highs and some desperate lows.

To employ a much-abused Christian saying, "I'm blessed" -- in the truest sense -- to have walked these roads with such an amazing spouse. Happy anniversary to us!

Why Wait?

This picture can be found, along with many similarly tongue-in-cheek "de-motivational" pictures, t-shirts, and coffee mugs, at www.Despair.com. There's a lot of (black) humour on this website -- you may find yourself putting faces and names to some of the slogans! I thought it might be fun to take this picture and -- in a self-deprecating way -- apply it to ourselves.

There's an increasing number of websites and books being produced that are critical of the emerging church. Why should we wait for others to point out our weaknesses? Some of them will be helpful, when they truly get a grasp on what the emerging church is all about (if anyone really knows!), while others are dismissable and receive rants because they haven't done their homework.

But hey, what about a good, solid, self-critique among us -- the emerging church, pomergent pontificators, the emerging conversationalists? Let's use this picture as a visual starting point:

As we continue to experience this transitional era called "postmodernism", what are some of the "deadly projectiles" that could cause pomergent decapitation, or at minimum, painful flesh wounds?

Here's the parametres:

1. Let's be tongue-in-cheek, in keeping with the picture itself. If we can't laugh at ourselves, maybe that's the first projectile to avoid.
   
2. Sarcasm can be really funny, but let's not turn this into "Flame Wars: Revenge of the Miffed".
   
3. Pithy comments can be the best -- it's worth the effort to find an economy of words sometimes!
   
4. While humour is good, let's also be honest with potential projectiles.

Done right, this could be an extremely important part of the "conversation". Let's make it worth our while.