Church Voices

This is brilliant:

Because evangelicals have too closely aligned themselves with political agendas, instead of the Scripture-derived social mission of the church, two camps have emerged over the past few decades. On the one hand, you have the “Christian-means-Republican” camp where many biblical imperatives are pursued through legislation and government force, and on other hand, you have the pathetic economics and theocratic biblical theology of prophetical left in the likes of guys like Bono, the One Campaign, and so on. Both camps pursue the same method, except that “the right” might start with the Pentateuch and Romans whereas “the left” might begin with the Prophets and the Sermon on the Mount. Both turn to government instead of the church to do the work of the Kingdom of God.

Here’s an incomplete list of what irritates me in life:

People who use checks at the grocery store.
Slow service at a restaurant.
People who try to check out more than 10 items in the 10 items or less line.
Anything involving the DMV.
Dealing with Verizon CSRs.
Dealing with Charter Cable CSRs.

In Philippians Paul writes, “but in humility consider others better than yourselves”.

If, when confronted with people and situations that really get under our skin, we really did consider others better than ourselves, how would we react?

Waaay back in my first full time job (FACS for those keeping track) I met a woman who changed teh way I thought about children. Or rather what children do to their parents. I was young and had a fairly simplistic view of the world, and had it in my mind that young unwed mothers were destined for a life worse after baby, than before baby. This woman, who’s name I can’t even remember now, so we’ll call her Abby, was one of the few people who worked as late as I did, and, since it was call center work there was a lot of time to waste later on in the evening when the calls died down. I knew pretty early on she had a kid, and she had to work hard to provide for both of them. A few weeks of gum flapping later and she confided to me that if she hadn’t had her son then she wouldn’t have stopped a lot of the self-destructive habits she had made a part of her life. In other words she rose to the level of responsibility required by motherhood.

It seems silly now, but that was a completely different view of the world that I had never considered might exist. This little paradigm shift is, perhaps, a baby step towards this one. The basic premise is that having children does something to you. It creates an awareness of something greater than yourself. In other words, Godly people don’t have babies, people who have babies become Godly people. From the article:

First, there is the phenomenological fact of what birth itself does to many fathers and just about every mother. That moment — for some now, even that first glimpse on a sonogram — is routinely experienced by a great many people as an event transcendental as no other. This hardly means that pregnancy and birth ipso facto convert participants into zealots. But the sequence of events culminating in birth is nearly universally interpreted as a moment of communion with something larger than oneself, larger even than oneself and the infant. It is an elemental bond that is cross-cultural as perhaps no other — a formulation to which most parents on the planet would quickly agree.

I am convinced that one of the most harmful things the Church has done to itself is limit its pallet to two colors: black and white (forgetting for a second that black and white are not technically colors). Of course it is not just the Church who paints with only these colors. It is a natural tendency for everyone to see things dualistically. Either this, or that. This is bad, that is good. McDonald’s vs. Burger King. Coke vs. Pepsi. Republican vs. Democrat. This is black, that is white. This isn’t surprising—dualisms provide a convenient way of seeing and getting around the world. Gray areas are sticky, complicated, and lack solid definition. So we prefer black and white, thank you.

I have had 5 different jobs dealing in some way with customer service. In my experience I have observed that people often complain about there being a lack of options available to them. Then, nearly in the same breath, they’ll also complain about having too many options to choose from. What this tells me is that people want variety, but without confusion. People want to venture beyond black and white, but they don’t know how without losing the clarity of dualisms in the process. Is there a way to add a little more color to our lives without adding confusion and complication?

One example of the sort of dualistic thinking that has brought the Church harm is the “of the world vs. not of the world” dichotomy. This is a valid dichotomy, but many Christians are severely confused about how to understand it. I suspect the confusion is due to mainly two things. First, it is because this dualism, correctly understood, does not always have black and white options. Rather, it contains many grays. The harm has come by presenting it the former way. A solid result of this can be seen by noting how the “Church” has universally condemned things like drinking, tattoos, piercings, cussing, smoking, gambling, etc. “Either it’s of the world or it is not,” they say. Naturally, everything that is not explicitly Christian becomes worldly. So out goes secular music, film, and art also. Throw in Dungeons and Dragons, Harry Potter, and Halloween while you’re at it (or anything else that doesn’t jive with your own personal understanding of Christian morale).

Second, it is because of a general misunderstanding of the term ‘world’ and how it is used in the Bible. This has been wonderfully captured by English Journalist Steve Turner in his book Imagine: A Vision for Christians in the Arts. Turner writes:

The Bible does warn against “the world” and “worldliness” and so if we are to be faithful we have to find out what that means. Extremism comes from confusing two Biblical usages of the word world. On the one hand there is the created world that God deemed “good,” [Gen. 1:31] which is contrasted with the rest of the universe. “For God so loved the world” is as much a statement about our globe, distinguished from the rest of the universe, as it is about love. On the other hand, there is the rebellious system of thinking we might contrast with the kingdom of heaven. “Love not the world” means neither “Don’t care for the planet” nor “Drop out of society,” but “Don’t embrace anti-God thinking.”

Confusing these two usages can lead to disaster. Some strict fundamentalist sects show disdain toward creation and culture, and yet in doing so become proud, arrogant, and uncaring. They therefore become worldly in the very way the Bible condemns and yet are not worldly enough in the way the Bible commands. We are told to be in the world but not of it. People like this are often of the world but not in it…We become worldly not by engaging with the world but by allowing it to shape our thinking. Jesus was clear about this. His prayer for the disciples was “not that you take them out of the world but that you protect them from the evil one” (John 17:15). (p. 43)

I want to suggest further that the Christians who confuse the two understandings of the word ‘world’ not only become worldly by becoming proud, arrogant, and uncaring, but also by deeming that which does not necessarily promote anti-God thinking worldly. To do this is to slip back into thinking as the Judaizers did—in black and white. They forget that something harmful to one’s Christian walk might not be to another’s. Jesus wasn’t afraid to step into the gray. In Luke 20, the Pharisees approached Jesus with a black and white dualism. They ask “is it right for us to pay taxes to Caesar or not?” By saying yes, they would understand Jesus to be condoning the oppression of the Jews (God’s people) by financially supporting the oppressors, the Roman army. By saying no, they’d arrest and execute him on the charges of him refusing to pay his taxes. Jesus’ response: “Show me a denarius. Whose portrait and inscription are on it?” “Caesar’s,” thy replied. He said to them, “Then give to Caesar what is Caesar’s, and to God what is God’s.” He refused to paint with their pallet of only black and white. He did this by showing paying taxes didn’t mean compromising holiness, for holiness is giving to God that which is God’s, which is perfectly compatible with giving to man what is man’s.

Here Jesus gives us the answer to our question, Is there a way to see the world with more colors than just black and white without losing clarity in the process? Yes—by maintaining personal holiness. Personal holiness is how someone relates to the world without allowing it to shape their thinking. The nastiness comes when someone judges another based on their own personal holiness. Have you ever worshiped God during a secular song? Have you ever cussed during a prayer? Remember when David danced and Michal rebuked him? She was judging his personal Holiness. David’s reply, “I will become even more undignified than this.” We often understand that comment as our reply to the world outside looking in on us. But how often do we note that David said it to a fellow believer? If you’ve read this far, do yourself a favor. Read Romans 14.

“The worst thing I’ve ever had to do is watch educational television” - Miya, 4th Grade.

Powerpoint* is in church, and its not going away. Whether that’s good, or bad depends on your powerpoint presentation. This book review highlights how a powerpoint presentation can be a liability. From the article:

Bullet points on a screen make information harder to understand, not easier.

The core purpose of communication is to cohere: to coalesce fragments of information back together into a single understanding. That’s the most difficult task of communicating. And it’s actually the origin of the word communication: to “make common”, or to bring together.

Bullet points can do many things, but they do not cohere information. In fact, they do the opposite–they fragment understanding into little pieces. Break any topic into a title, sub-headings and bullet points, and you’re de-communicating, because you’re not helping to bring a single idea together.

Maybe you’re an analytic kind of learner, and you still disagree with me. Maybe you’re already on-board. Either way check out how this presentation saps the power from one of the greatest speeches in history, the Gettysburg Address. I’m serious, go, check it out. Did you check it out? Alright lets go on.

So what suggestion does the author make for creating a powerful presentation?

Instead, Atkinson says you should craft a story to tell in your presentation - much like a Hollywood director scripts a film.

This is especially applicable to sermons. Most of the time what we preach isn’t new information to our audience. Our sermons are probably 10% information and 90% persuasion/motivation. When was the last time you were persuaded/motivated by a bullet point? Probably never. When was the last time you were motivated/persuaded by a story? Probably in your memory, whether it was the story of a child under the care of Compassion International, or the story of the death, burial and resurrection of Jesus Christ. Ever wonder why all those scams on TV promising you that you can make millions from home rely so heavily on testimonials? Because stories motivate/persuade.

Ask yourself this: do the powerpoint presentations you create bring information together to work with your sermon to create a story, or does it chunk out bits of information into separate, floating bits of data?

Along these same lines I’ve always wanted to try a presentation that displays the verse and then goes into a series of images that reflect what that portion of the sermon is about, and then goes to the next verse, and then a different series of images that reflect that portion of the sermon. Unfortunately I’ve not had the chance to do this yet.

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