Simon Says, "Happy Easter"!

I don't know what your church did for Easter services this year, but the Granger Community Church played "Simon." Their Pastor, Mark Beeson, used the game as a sermon illustration. I gotta tell you, this is a long way to go for a sermon illustration.

Simon Says, "Happy Easter"!

I don't know what your church did for Easter services this year, but the Granger Community Church played "Simon." Their Pastor, Mark Beeson, used the game as a sermon illustration. I gotta tell you, this is a long way to go for a sermon illustration.

MAKE THE MOVE

The Palmer Perspective has moved. Your browser should have redirected you there automatically, but if not, you can find me at http://seanpalmer.wordpress.com

Those of you who view the page RSS will need to reset it to the new blog.

The Sky is Falling

I've been working my way through Alan Roxburgh's The Sky is Falling. Here are some salient quotes from the first half of the book.

"America's religious history has been deeply shaped by the nation's history and social formation. Beginning with the massive suburbanization of the nation in the mid twentieth century, a deep conviction has developed (particularly among white, Protestant congregations) that individualism and economic opportunity are the highest expressions of Christian life."
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Speaking of change:

"The need for control and predictability still assert themselves in powerful ways. Oddly enough, congregations and organizations that promise people a return to stability will thrive in this period, even though they can't truly provide it. Since everyone is looking for stability, when these churches say they can provide it, people flock to them like moths to a flame. Then, to make it worse, the promise seems validated because certain types of congregations do thrive (and they are generally homogeneous, middle-class, and suburban). Other leaders then see them as signs of hope and choose to copy their tactics, though doing so only pushes them even farther from embracing the transition around them and honestly addressing its demands."
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"At a recent conference focused on church growth and seeker-directed leadership, a Mennonite pastor walked into an elevator I was using. Bemused by the discrepancy between the theological and ecclesial imagination of Mennonites and the nature of the conference. I asked him, why a Mennonite was at such an event. His response was quick and direct: 'Because it works!' In the midst of massive discontinuity, disembedding, and transition, leaders desire to find something that 'works' rather than stopping long enough to understand what is actually happening...They seek external resources that promise ways of reinstating control without changing the substantive nature of the system. There is little thought put into the question of fundamentally reinventing the system itself."

Meet My Needs!

Truth be told, the church has never met my needs. That's odd to me since I've been in it my entire life and now serve her full-time. What's odd to me is that people in church keep telling me that we need to do things to "meet people's needs."

Really?

I mean, I suppose the church has met my deeper needs in some ways that I cannot articulate, but the meeting of needs I most frequently hear about have to do with externals: services that last no longer than an hour, 15 minutes sermon about kids and families, events that are fun and high-energy, leadership that doesn't challenge, etc....

I hardly ever hear anyone say, "I think our church should help me get over my selfishness and greed" or "I wish our church would teach me how to be humble person in a competitive workplace." No one ever says, "Goodness, I wish this church had a word to say about the fact that water is thicker than blood and that life is about baptized brothers and sisters in Christ and what they do together in the world, more than about my immediate family." Where are the voices saying, "This church could really be something if we learned to live peace-filled lives and love folks like Osama bin Laden and that crazy guy over in Iran."?

Here's my question: In the church's frenzy to "meet needs" by having active kids and youth ministries, clever preaching, entertaining worship complete with the style of music we like, the lack of prophetic voices, and all at a cut-rate prices, are churches failing to met anyone's true and deepest needs? It seems to me, that many of us in the church are lying to people. We imply that we can meet their needs, yet offer them something that satisfies their wants, but never get close to their needs.

What do you think?

The Cusp of Riches

My wife, Rochelle and I have been talking and thinking a lot about missional living and radical giving. The world is such that there are people in need no matter where you look and everywhere you turn, which means there are myriad ways to offer gifts to those in need.

Truthfully, I have always struggled with giving. Part of the reason for this has to do growing up poor and feeling as if you didn't keep as much as you could, then you would run out. Increasingly though, I'm learning that that kind of scarcity thinking is antithetical to the gospel of Christ.

I'm not the only one, though. Many of us have trouble giving, don't we?

Two weeks ago Rochelle was leading a Bible study from the book of James. The apostle James has a lot to say about taking care of the poor, orphans and the widows, showing favoritism, and pure religion. One of the women in class, who is very generous and very wealthy made a few defensive comments about the rich and giving. But, what Rochelle wanted to say was "Wait, don't get offended because you're rich. You're one of the good ones, you're one of the few people who are working to get this right."

And, in my experience with the wealthy folks at my church, that has been largely true. It's never the wealthy or the poor who have difficulty giving, and even giving to the point of sacrifice. It's most frequently those of us on the cusp of riches that are most resistant. It's those of us who aspire to more cash and comfort that always want to be stingy, who want to know where every dollar we give to someone or some organization is going, it's those of us whose chief sin is lacking trust in God to be faithful and to care for us that secretly hate to give and consider giving a kind of divine stick-up.

Many folks, I'm finding, resent giving. I can tell because they add all sorts of qualifiers to their giving. I've seen families in need have to undergo a full-on financial anal probe to get 200 bucks from the church, and I've seen people have to account for where every dollar given them by the church . Now, in our highly competitive, capitalists-driven America, we call these questions and qualifiers "accountability." But is it really?

Jesus says this curious thing in the Sermon on the Mount. He says, "Give to everyone who begs from you, and do not refuse anyone who wants to borrow from you." He adds no qualifiers. He never says that we need to know where the gift goes or if the person is "worthy" or "needy" enough to receive it. I think the Lord is saying, "Your job is to give. Don't worry about what happens next."

Interestingly, the next topic Jesus tackles is loving our enemies. Perhaps the two are connected. Perhaps we sense that those who ask of us are somehow our enemy, as if they are taking something from us that we don't want to give away. Perhaps as we learn to give, we are also expanding our capacities for love--to the point of loving those who are stridently opposed to us.

How might this re-thinking of giving reignite the churches' vision and mission in the world? How might a church bent on giving without expectation or question help us reflect the Kingdom of God?

Reading, Reading and More Reading.

Each summer I select a slate of books to work through. In fact, I'll spend a good bit of my vacation - if and when I take some - reading. This summer I am delving more deeply in Missional Ecclesiology and Emergent literature. By "Emergent" I mean Emergent Village's recently published "An Emergent Manifesto of Hope."

I'm looking forward to all the non-definitions that are sure to be found in my fellow seeker's and friend's work. While I'm sure the book will light some of the path forward for many of us, I suppose others will be frustrated. Those who want all of life to be tidy and as unwrinkled as hospital corners, have a difficult time with those associated with Emergent Village. The reason is that we are all very different and that makes some people uneasy. Emergent Village is made up of conservative baptists and church of Christ folks from the south, Biblical liberals from the west, northeastern academics, mid-western radicals, staunch Republicans and vehement Democrats and that makes for an eclectic group that is no where near univocal.

Personally, that's why I'm engaged by it. I'm fascinated to meet and know other committed Christians who read Scripture differently than what I've been taught to read and hold to an alternative ecclesiology than I know. These people make my experience and knowledge of God richer. So I read them, praise them, disagree with them, and love them as the Father loves me - or at least I try to. And at the end of the day we're all trying to walk in the way of Jesus.

On the missional front, I've got a copy of Alan Roxburgh's new book, "The Sky is Falling" and Patrick Kiefert's, "We Are Here Now." In my book, the best emerging church practitioners are deeply and intentionally missional. The two should go hand-in-hand.

I'm also in an online group that's reading Rob Bell's "Sex God" and I've also got to finish BarackObama's "The Audacity of Hope." I had to Obama down recently as I waded my way through Jones' and Lakeland's Constructive Theology, the writings of Freidrich Schlieirmacher, Church Dogmatics by Karl Barth, Luis Pedraja's Teologia, and the sermon's of John Wesley.

So, what are you reading this summer?

Ch-Ch-Ch-Changes

I'm thinking about moving this blog to another provider. I've loved blogger, but I think wordpress might be a little easier to use. Any input?

GO SPURS GO

I've been a San Antonio Spurs fan for years--since the heyday of David Robinson. I love the team and have celebrated each of their three championships with great joy. And yes, I want them to win it again this season! However, since my wife--who is also a Spurs fan--is from Phoenix we decided to root for whichever team won this Western Semifinal to win it all. The Suns are probably my second favorite team and I have no problem cheering for them as long as they're not playing San Antonio.

It's been a great series! It reminds me of basketball before the Jordan area, when some players couldn't be touched, making for a "soft," "finesse" game. I haven't enjoyed basketball this much in a long time.

And, oh, the Spurs aren't dirty. GO SPURS GO!!

The Worship Industry

This video - featuring Brian McLaren - is for all my friends who are worship leaders. Each of them works hard to draw people into a communion with God and the pressure is often frustrating.At the very moment that someone in a church is praising them for how they experienced God that day, another person is waiting to fillet them about what they "didn't get."

I hope this video gives us all some hope and direction about what worship should and can be, and how we as worshipers can bless our leaders (leaders, pastors and teachers) by freeing them to simply be open and honest in all of church life.

The Irresistible Revolution / The Future Church...Hopefully

In order to get more "reading" done, I've started to listen to books on CD. Last week I picked up the mp3 of Shane Claiborne's "The Irresistible Revolution."

It is a powerful message that has been close to my heart for a long time, though I think I'm better at talking and writing about it than doing it. Claiborne's life challenges in the same way that Mother Teresa - whom he interned under - challenges.

When I think of the future church, I hope what Claiborne is doing is right at the heart of it, though that spells unease and trouble for most of us.

Journey to the Future Church

Truth be told, over the last several years, my feelings toward the church have eroded. What once to me was a flawed but useful, necessary body, slowly became completely useless in terms of rehearsing the Kingdom of God.

The reasons for this disillusionment were myriad: First, I saw church after church make moves and decisions based on any reason you can imagine except for spiritual and theological ones. Effective, anointed, and gifted ministers were fired and/or otherwise replaced with cheap suited M.Divs with nothing to say, no vision for the future, and hungry bank accounts (this was the case with a friend of mine ministering north of Houston and another in San Antonio). Second, as is so often the case, power players with money and an affinity for the status quo, pressed their preferences into policies that ultimately made their churches less a reflection of Jesus than more of one. Third, though I had always suspected it, it was made clear to me that many of the church are more concerned with comfort and maintaining their spiritual country club than with ministering to the world and loving and accepting the irreducible other. Fourth, I continued to see churches -- particularly large ones -- mistreat their ministry staff, somehow expecting that they and their families could subsists on far less money than the average member of the community. Fifth, I witnessed some ministers and church leaders actively resist new ideas, emerging voices and fresh winds of the Spirit. Sixth, it began to dawn on me that my own spiritual growth was happening outside of the church. I don't simply mean outside of church services, but rather outside and away from the folks I worshiped with (the definition of church) on a weekly basis. Not only that, my friends at other churches were having the same experiences and thinking the same things. Something strange was happening.

It was during this time that I began to examine what was going on in the church. The period of searching led me to literature with fancy sounding words like "Missional Ecclesiology," "discontinuous change," "liminality," "post-modernity," "post-liberal," "post-Christianity," "post-colonialism," and others. It was almost enough to make me go postal. It was an education in itself just to understand the terminology. Because I was so desperately seeking, I suppose I never really gave up on the church, though. Rather, I had come to believe that many of us charged with her leadership were groping in the dark, yet because we were charged with leadership we had to act like we knew what we were doing.

It's not working though. We know it's not working. Those within and without our congregations know it's not working, yet because we have so long confused faith with certainty, church leaders frequently have to act like we are certain with this precious jewel which is the church lest we think it become faithless. Frequently my heart echoed the words of Martin Luther King, Jr.: "So often it (the church) is an archdefender of the status quo...If today's church does not recapture the sacrificial spirit of the early church, it will lose its authenticity, forfeit the loyalty of millions, and be dismissed as an irrelevant social club with no meaning for the twentieth century. Every day I meet young people whose disappointment with the church has turned to outright disgust."

I confessed to a friend last week that I was deeply distressed about the future of the church. Ironically, I received an e-mail from my friend Mark Love at Abilene Christian University asking me to be a part of a panel at this year's Annual Lectureship about "The Future Church." Now you should know that I trust Jesus' words when he says that the gates of hell shall not prevail against the church He built, but when I first received his e-mail about "The Future Church," my heart cynically asked, "Will there be one?"

I do not say these things about the church as some kind of agitator that is secretly hoping to see her fail. I'm a son of the church, a lover of who she is. I'm not one of those folks who can look around any church and undercut her good by pointing to what's wrong. Truthfully, I'm not even negative about the church. I'm optimistic about what the church can and should be and do, and therein lies my holy discontent.

I'm not too negative, I'm too positive!

I believe that faith-filled, God-centered, neighbor-loving people can actually change the world. I believe that folks like Mother Teresa, Martin Luther King, Billy Graham, Shane Claiborne, St. Paul and others who gave their lives for grand, beautiful pursuits in the name of Jesus are not the exceptions. They are snapshots of what God can do with any and all of us who are willing to give ourselves to Him. I believe that the folks in our pews who want to simply check in and check out of the local church to consume their religious goods and services were sold a lie by a church that promised them stability instead of adventure. And because of that, we've got a lot of work to do and undo!

It's hard for me to talk about the future church, because I don't know what it will look like, and I think that's a good thing. The church is God's, not ours, and He's under no obligation to consult us about her. But if I were to guess about the church's future, I would say that there are three primary options:

(1) More and more Christians will try the escapists' model. We will fortify ourselves in our own schools, churches and sub-culture, becoming evermore irrelevant to the world. This is one way the church can survive in the future. We will simply stand as a anachronism to the larger culture, accepting our new place in public life. Like the Amish, the evangelical church can pick a moment in time and say, "We will go no further."

(2) Churches will continue to simply try to do the same things we've always done, thinking we can be successful if we simply do what we do better. We will fail to see that some of the problem in the church is in the church. We will say the problem is that people don't want "The Truth" anymore and stand in rabid, blind opposition to the culture. The church will become judge and jury over the world, begging it to come back to the dominant days of Christendom and the culture-privileged church. Here, nearly nothing inside the church will change and our proclivities will become unquestioned and unquestionable gospel as the actual gospel goes unheard and unspoken.

Or

(3) The church, as it slowly and reluctantly has in the past, will change! It will take a rethinking of our assumptions about Scripture, people and culture. It will mean learning to re-imagine church, spiritual formation, and faith development. It will mean seeking God rather than political power, influence, image and ego. It will mean engaging the irreducible other -- the people that are not like us -- with a love and acceptance of them that seeks God's purposes in their lives more than their easy transformation into people who look, talk and act like we do. It will mean reconverting -- which will be painfully hard -- ourselves and others into people on a spiritual quest instead of folks who want a serving of Yahweh on the side. It will mean that the church as we know it must die, so that God can once again demonstrate the power of resurrection.

I, for one, think #3 is the church's best option. And I, for one, think language like "missional," "liminality" and "post-whatever" are useful for church leaders, but are not the point. The point is that the church -- the people of God -- are called to be God's Kingdom representatives on earth and what that looks like changes and adapts in time and through culture. Being Kingdom representatives is our primary vocation. Whether we are teachers, lawyers, accountants, maintenance personnel, administrators, students or whatever, we ARE called to enter into the Kingdom of God, to call others into it, and love the world as Jesus did. And each day, as more and more of us do this, the church has a future. And each day, as more and more of us do this, the future has a church.

The Pride of My Life...

One of the truths of my life is that I get a lot of attention. Certainly, some of that attention is negative and critical, but the lion's share is positive. I get to write some, travel and speak and have people gush about how I've blessed their lives. But today, I get to gush about someone who has blessed my life -- my wife, Rochelle.

This morning, Rochelle and I taught a session at the Pepperdine Bible Lectures. This was our first joint session. I honestly thought my stuff was the best part of our class. Well, that was before we actually presented the class. I was blown away. She outdid me. And trust me, that hardly ever happens!

Rochelle did a fabulous job today, and I am very proud! In the past 2 months, my wife has given birth to a baby, organized and ran a women's retreat, taught our church's women's Bible study and a Sunday School class, lived with a husband who has been out of town several weekends and somehow managed to put together the best class that I've heard all week (and that's not husband grandiosity and pride).

What a woman!!

Nearly ten years ago, as Rochelle and I were about to get married, my mom said to me, "I couldn't have picked a better wife."

My mom has never been more right.

One Day Done

I woke up this morning in beautiful Malibu, CA. The only problem was aI woke up at 4am to the cries of my 11-week old daughter and the the snores of my 3 year-old daughter. Nevertheless, 2 hours later when I arose for good, it was to brisk, clean air and sights of the moutains rising over the Pacific ocean. Each year I come to the Pepperdine Bible Lectures, I ask myself how any students or facutly ever get anything done. I went to Abilene Christian, in the dust bowl of Abilene, TX and barely got anything done while there, so Malibu would have been a diaster for me. This is truly one of God's more beautiful places on earth.

Missional and other things...

I've been talking to a lot of people about Missional Church. The scope of the discussion is extremely broad, and the language itself gets used by so many people many so many different things that it's difficult to get your head around. Though I've been immersed in the literature for about 6 years now, I am always fascinated by the folks who are really put off by the concepts.

For those of you familiar with Missional Ecclesiology and Missional Renewal, please comment or e-mail me about what excites you about it, or what concerns / worries you about it the shift from churchianity to Christianity.

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Our family is off to Malibu this week. Rochelle and I will be teaching at the Pepperdine University Bible Lectures. I will also be doing a session for high school students called "The Pepperdine View." Our girls are going with us and my mom is flying from Georgia to join us on the journey.

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Our 3-year-old is struggling to potty train -- or rather her parents are struggling with training her. Any helpful ideas?

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Much love to you all!

Homiletical Fast Food

I know that I've already blogged twice about sermonic plagiarism, but evermore interesting thought concerning the issue continues to arises. Trust me, I'm not on a hunt to root out some plagiarizer, rather people keep giving me head's up when they come across something on the subject.

This week our Administrative Minister handed me an article Dr. Thomas G. Long contributed to this month's The Christian Century. Here are some of the more choice quotes from that piece:

"...preachers who stand up on Sunday morning with a sermon ripped off the Internet and preach the words as if they were their own almost certainly violate the implied agreement with the congregation.

"A good test of this point is to ask, What would happen if the preacher told the truth? "Hey, folks, it's been a busy week and I didn't have time to work on a sermon, and honestly, I'm not all that creative anyway. So this is a little something I found on the 'net" (and I would interject a "book" read). The fact that the air would immediately go out of the room is a reliable indicator that the tacit agreement of the sermon event has been violated. This is why plagiarists, for all their blather about God's words being free to all, never confess their true sources and always imply that these words are coming straight from the heart."
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"Only preachers who deliver their own sermons stand with one foot in the life of the people and one foot in the biblical text."
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"All preacher borrow from others, and should. There is a difference between being a debtor and being a thief. All preachers stand on the shoulders of biblical scholars, theologians and faithful witnesses from across the generations. We do not owe our congregation an original essay: we owe them a fresh act of interpretation."
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"Pulpit plagiarists...in the name of expediency, will grab what they wish wherever they can find it and claim it as their own. Their stolen sermons may occasionally sparkle, but in the end they will have spread the banquet table of God with the empty calories of homiletical fast food."

Food for thought, I think.

The Blogosphere

Lat week we hosted and led two memorial services for dearly loved members of our community. One was 93 and the other 74. In the midst of all this, one of our elders' wives was diagnosed with a brain tumor, which they thought was malignant at fist glance. To say the least, it was a hectic, emotional week.

That explains my absence from my keyboard recently. My apologies for those of you who frequently check on the blog.

While I haven't been writing a lot, some of my friends have posted very thoughtful pieces on theirs. I'm always mixed when I read friends' blogs. I'm glad that they are finding their voice and engaging the world, but then I get a knot in my stomach because I think to myself, "Shoot, I wanted to write that." Then, I feel guilty over my jealousy.

Anyway, here are some things you might want to check out.

1. One of my "old kids," Jessica Reese (I've known her since she was 15, now her oldest daughter is older than my youngest), who is - or will soon be - an emerging writer, has some good thoughts on Christian art at her site.

2. My friend, and recently returned missionary now working with Compassion, Russ Debenport, has some great music and thoughts about CCM at his blog.

3. Though Easter has passed, William Willimon has a great piece on the last to believe in Easter on on his blog, "A Peculiar Prophet."

4. Bill Kinnon, who I don't know, has some interesting thoughts entitled, "The People Formerly Known as The Congregation," at his site.

Happy Reading

Don Imus ...

I've been extremely busy that last few weeks, so a lot of my thoughts have gone unblogged. But if you're interested in what I think about the Don Imus fiasco, click here.

I think Whitlock is on to something. What's more, Whitlock is a smart, thoughtful columnists, who had previously been berated by Imus over another issue.

To Oklahoma and Back

You’ve probably noticed that the blogs have dried up lately – nothing new in a while. Well, there are several reasons for that. First, I spent an extraordinary amount of time studying for a mid-term in Systematic Theology. I’ve probably never studied that long for a test – approximately 10 hours. Historically I don’t do well on test. I’m better at writing papers, I think. Memory is not one of my gifts, so I try to stay away from things that require it. After the 10 hours studying, I took the test, and feel as though I did pretty good. By “pretty good” I mean that I understood all the words.

Second, I’m trying to be more intentional about how I spend my time at home. Honestly, I’ve always been intentional about my time at home, I was just intentionally working on different stuff – sometimes even the blog. With the addition of our second daughter, I realized that I am even more needed. More than that though really; the need for me to be present at home pales in comparison to the joy I experience by being with our girls. With every piece of research I read and with every story I hear, I become more convinced that there is a fathering crisis in this country. Too many Dads don’t spend time with their kids, they don’t know how to connect with them, and many of them are say horrible things to their kids when they do spend time with them. I could tell you endless stories of absentee fathers and dads who call their kids fat, stupid, lazy and unlovable. I never want to be that guy. So, if it means that it takes me longer to get my writing projects done or I have to read at midnight, then so be it.

Speaking of spending time with the family, the third reason I haven’t blogged much lately is because I spent this past weekend at an event in Lawton, OK speaking to a group of teenagers. (Remind me sometime tell you the story of meeting a very cool C-list actress, having to toss out my contact lenses and speak without really being able to see anything, and how I realized that my life was indeed crazy when I was changing my clothes in a church nursery.) The best part of the Lawton trip was meeting and spending time with some very cool emerging Christian artists: Shades of Green, comedian Hoss Ridgeway, and Watershed Worship. I’ve very pumped about the generation of artists – true artists – that are coming up in the church in general and churches of Christ, in particular. Not only did they bust me out some free t-shirts, my two new free Shades of Green CD’s will soon be dropped in my iPod.

Well that's enough blogging for now. Catch you later.

Life Convergence

Noted profound thinker and pugilist, Mike Tyson, once said, "Everybody has a plan until they get hit." Surprisingly keen from someone who seemingly can't keep any part of his life in order, don't you think? But Tyson is right. Dead right!

As I sat with my old prayer group from college this weekend, I began to think about life, plans and joking around. In school we would laugh and make fun of just about anything. That's not so much the case now. Though our censor buttons are still typically turned to the "off" position when we're together, there are some things that aren't so funny anymore. Since we walked the campus of Abilene Christian University our plans have taken some hits. There have been some truly wonderful moments -- marriages, children, career advancement, goals met. There have also been terribly distressing moments -- divorces and marital strife, beautiful children born with birth defects and infertility, career frustration and jobs deserved and not offered, and goals that may never be met or have been abandoned all together.

In an odd life convergence, when I arrived home from the weekend I had a mass e-mail from Classmates.com asking me to update my profile. I -- like you, I suppose -- receive these pretty frequently and never pay attention, but this time I did. As I was looking at the questionnaire, one question jumped off the page to me: "Where are you in life?"

Classmates has several options listed to answer that question, but most folks in my high school graduating class answered: "About where I thought I'd be?"

I thought, "Are any of us where we thought we'd be?" In some way "yes," but in more ways "no," I would guess. Who could predict the ups and downs, the loves and loads that have befallen us all since high school or college? My prayer group from college couldn't. Living means encountering and embracing the unexpected and recalibrating "where we thought we'd be."

And I think that's a good thing!

As I flip the pages of the New Testament, I see again and again that the people who miss Life with Jesus miss Him because He doesn't fit what they thought He'd be. I've learned that it is the truly spiritual person who sees God in the "terribly distressing moments," knowing that our plans need to take some hits so that we might step into God's plan.

I'm not saying that I've got this all figured out. I want God to sign off on my five-year strategy, trust me. I am saying that the next time I log on to Classmates.com, I want them to have another option listed to answer the question, "Where are you in life."

The option I want: "Right where God wants it to be, and I'm happy with that."