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A Fresh Coat of Paint on a Broken Machine (part 2)

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Categories: changing mindsets, church, food for thought


In my previous post, I revisited the story of the man who kept ordering chocolate shakes at a fast food joint, and kept receiving vanilla ones. When he complained to the teenage cashier at the counter, all the teenager could say was, “I pushed the chocolate button.” I used this story to talk about ways that the church is doing a similar thing with our “tried-and-true” methods. Although many of them aren’t working anymore, instead of finding new methods that do work, we keep splashing new coats of paint on our broken machines, trying to make them attractive and “relevant” again.

This is a preview of A Fresh Coat of Paint on a Broken Machine (part 2). Read the full post (1260 words, 2 images, estimated 5:02 mins reading time)

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A Fresh Coat of Paint on a Broken Machine

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Categories: Broken machine, church, food for thought, Things that Will Probably Get Me In Trouble


Near the very beginning of this here blog, I wrote a couple of posts about The Chocolate Button. I related a story I read once in a newsletter about a man who asked for a chocolate shake in a fast food restaurant, and received a vanilla one. He returned to the counter, and the teenager helping him proceeded to pour him another shake from the machine–this time, also vanilla. When the man continued to come back two and three times complaining that his shake was not chocolate, all the teenager could say was, “But I pushed the chocolate button!” His logic could not move past basic procedures–he seemed unable to rationalize that something was wrong with the machine.

I used this story as an analogy for the institutional church system, and years later, it seems to me like it’s still appropriate. How many times, and in how many ways, do we Christians keep doing the same things over and over again in the name of Christ, church and evangelism, not realizing that we’re bearing little or no fruit from our efforts, and when someone asks why we’re doing it, we say, “Well, this is how we’ve always done it!” Frankly, it comes from the same kind of mindlessness as the teenager who kept pushing the chocolate button. At some point, someone needs to speak up and admit that the machine is broken–otherwise, we’ll spend from now till Jesus comes spewing out vanilla shakes and magically believing that they’re actually chocolate.
But that’s not the worst of it.
I worked in McDonald’s as a teenager (which is perhaps why the chocolate shake story is so funny to me), but I can tell you, when I go into a McDonald’s today, the whole thing is different. Yeah, it’s still a bit of an assembly line, but the way they prepare food, the procedures, even the machinery is vastly different from when I worked there five or twenty-six years ago. What I’m trying to say is–even McDonald’s keeps up with the times. They employ new technologies, they offer new products, they replace their old machines with new ones. Even if their teenage employees sometimes don’t use their brains, the higher-ups seem to know when it’s time to change.
But what about the church?
You know, I think there are a lot of people out there who are sincerely trying to renovate. You can spot them because they’re the ones who use catch words like “relevant” and “real” to express what they are doing in church. I’ve used those words quite often myself. But I still have to take issue with a lot of what we’re passing off as “relevant”, because in fact, it’s not very relevant at all. If you look at how we “do church”, at the heart we’re practicing the same methods we’ve practiced for centuries. I’m talking specifically about things that really have no backing in Scripture–they’re not necessarily BAD things, just things we do in a certain manner because we’ve ALWAYS done them that way.
The problem is, when those things stop bearing fruit, and we keep on doing them for the sake of our tradition, we lose sight of what we’re here for in the first place. We’re not here to perfect our practices–we’re here to partake in the mission of Christ. The mission of Christ is to help as many people as possible become partakers in the redemption Christ has offered us all, but what we’ve done is basically reduce that mission to trying to get people to come to our gig, hoping that in the process they will “get it.” To put it another way, instead of genuinely reaching out to people where they are at, we seem to spend most of our time simply gussying up our practices, hoping to make them attractive to people. We might try to use different words to make them sound more hip and “relevant”, but in the end we’re just splashing a fresh coat of paint on a broken machine.
Now, I realize I might make a lot of traditional folks angry with words like these; let me be clear–I’m not dissing the traditions of the church in and of themselves. Many of our ancient practices carry deep meaning–especially those deeply rooted in Scripture–and I respect them and draw from them like any believer should. What I’m saying is that preserving traditions and fulfilling the mission of Christ are not necessarily synonymous. When we are reaching out to a generation that has no grid for the value of our traditions, we have to learn to think like they think–not try to get them to think like we think. (Especially when the way we think has in so many ways become mindless–see analogy above.) We cannot hope to convince anyone of the value of an ancient tradition unless we can help that person make contact with Christ in the here and now–right where that person lives. Christ is not kept in the past. His mission continues in the present, and that’s where we must live, too.
The bottom line, imho, is that there are a lot of methods we still use–in how/when we meet, how we evangelize, and many other things–that if we would open our eyes, we’d see they just plain aren’t working anymore. I’ve spent a lot of time personally looking at some of these methods, and when I can’t even find a solid Scriptural basis for many of them, I have to ask why we’re still doing it that way when it’s obvious we’re not getting results. This driving question has informed my own journey for several years, and is continuing to inform my journey into mission today. And for anyone who truly wants to partake meaningfully in the mission of Christ–that is, they want to bear fruit, not just belong to something–I think these questions have to be asked.
It’s gone way beyond whether the chocolate button still works. It’s time for some new technology entirely.
I’m actually going somewhere specific with all this–this was just groundwork. 🙂 More in the next post.

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Quick Fly-by

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Categories: How I am

Just stopping in quickly because I know I haven’t posted here in a couple of weeks.

Yes, this is a filler post. Deal with it. 🙂
Actually, my intentions have been the best, but life sort of pre-empted me. Sunday mornings are now prime-time for me to write here, but last Sunday I had to take The Wild One in to an urgent care clinic for a delayed reaction to a bee sting (she’s fine, thanks for asking), and this morning I’m visiting my friends at the congregation where I was helping with worship last year (a visit that was actually supposed to happen last Sunday, but got pre-empted by the bee sting thing).
So in a sense, last week was a double pre-empt, because not only did the blog-writing get pre-empted, the pre-empting event also got pre-empted.
Okay, that’s enough. At least now you know where I’ve been, and that I haven’t gone off the grid. Be back soon with something profound to say. Meanwhile, try and figure out the previous paragraph. That should keep you busy for awhile. 🙂

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Coming as Babies

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Categories: changing mindsets, food for thought, Meanderings (look it up), moments of truth

I’ve been spending a bit of time the past couple of days thinking about mission, and what it means–what it looks like–to be missional. Particularly, I’ve been asking God, basically, “What next?” We’ve been getting settled in this new place for a year and a half, and I still have this desire to do some sort of missional work in the creative community–but I’ve been soul searching about the right approach, what the next steps are (if any). I’ve been trying to find words to verbalize things felt deep in the soul, where people could maybe understand them. And frankly, I’ve felt a little lost–not in the sense of losing faith, but in the sense of trying to think about mission outside the boundaries of traditional church, when all I’ve done previously has happened within those boundaries.
Just this morning, I think something really has registered with me that’s going to deeply inform our direction in the days ahead. It’s not a new concept, but it’s like it “clicked” with me–like someone switched on a light. An “a-ha” moment.
Okay, you get the idea. 🙂
One thing I’ve been trying to do is get back to the basics of mission, particularly the mission of Christ. If Jesus set an example for us to follow–and I believe He did–then we can learn the correct approach to mission by looking at what He did as well as what He taught.
So how did Jesus approach His mission? He became one of us.
Jesus did not come to earth in a blaze of glory, riding on a white horse, His deity apparent all over the place. (That would be the SECOND coming, and that hasn’t happened at press time.) Instead, as the Bible indicates, He laid down His heavenly glory and took the form of a man. A regular human being, just like us. We call this the “incarnation.” The incarnational approach to mission has already been talked about a lot in missional circles, and like I said, I’m familiar with it and seek to embrace it.
But there’s more. You see, Jesus came as a man–but not as a grown man. He didn’t launch His mission as the self-proclaimed expert of all things spiritual. He came into this world the same way we all do–as a baby. A helpless, vulnerable, non-potty-trained baby. He didn’t come with all the answers–that came later. Jesus came to us needy. He came to us needing to be fed, changed, nurtured, loved, trained–all that stuff that kids need in order to grow.
Talk about humbling oneself.
My family and I have been immersing ourselves in the local creative community pretty much since we got here, because we understood the necessity of becoming part of the existing community. What I hadn’t really seen before now–but God did, and has already been orchestrating–is that we are coming as babies. We’re not coming with the answers; we’re coming with needs.
I probably see this playing out most right now with The Wild One. She has totally laid down her personal aspirations for “ministry” probably more than I have–she has been able to totally empty herself. The artistic circle she found herself in saw her not as a pastor or spiritual expert, but as someone who is hungry to learn art–who has always wanted to do it, but never had the chance or the resources, and who has great potential. As a result, they’ve totally taken her under their wing and begun to teach her to paint–and she’s making great progress. And because this group loves the arts in general, and because they are already so open, they’ve adopted the rest of our family right along with her. We’re not on the giving end–not right now. We’re the needy ones. We’re the babies.
I can now see this setting up the same way with the music scene. I’ve developed a rapport with this music community by covering the local scene as a freelance writer, and I’ve made a lot of friends. But the truth is, while I do know a few things about how to encourage young artists, in order to do what I really want to do in music–I’m going to have to become the baby. I’m going to have to ask people half my age how to go about booking shows, who to talk to about getting publishing deals, and so on. I may have to collaborate with others in order to polish my songwriting skills and aim them in a new direction. I’m not really the expert here–I’m the needy one.
I’m beginning to see that at least in our case, to be truly incarnational in our approach requires us to become as infants in this community–not just to be one of them, but to grow up as one of them. And with this fresh understanding of things, I actually have a new perspective on the past 10 years of our lives.
There’s a place in the Bible where it talks about Jesus emptying Himself in order to come to earth as a man. Jesus stripped Himself of His heavenly glory in order to embark on this mission. I don’t know how that felt for Him–but I do know some of what it feels like to be stripped. The entire time we lived in Tulsa, we were being stripped. We obviously weren’t being stripped of heavenly glory or deity (we never had those things). But we were being stripped of our pastoral or clerical prestige, so to speak. We were also being stripped of mindsets, of wrong assumptions, of wrong motives, and pretty much of everything we thought “ministry” was. By the time we got here to Denver, we were almost completely deconstructed and undone. Starting over–as babies.
It sure looks like God has been setting us up.
This whole theme about becoming as a child has deep ramifications, not just in mission, but in other ways as well. Didn’t Jesus repeatedly say that we need to come to the Father as little children? This post could get really long rambling about that–so I’ll save that for another time. But this understanding has really caused a lot of the fog to clear for me. It’s showing me that it’s okay, even necessary, to step into this mission not as the expert, but as the student. It’s showing me that it’s okay, even necessary, to embrace small beginnings. I think God has a long-term plan here, and apparently we’ve been within that plan for awhile now.
On a personal level, I think I’ve struggled for a long time with my deconstruction. Although I’ve definitely been thankful for the sense of freedom (and wouldn’t ever want to go back into bondage), I also have felt such a sense of loss because at the very least I had a strong sense of direction, and when things dismantled, I felt there was nothing to replace what I’d had. I think I’m finally going to be okay with that now. I think I can fully embrace this time and place, knowing that the previous stripping was necessary in order to step into this mission in the right way.
Jesus came to us as a baby, and He changed the world. I believe that if I embrace the same idea, enter this mission as a baby, and have patience with the process, I can at least make a positive difference.
Which is pretty much all I wanted in the first place.

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So If You Want to Hear What I Sound Like When I Talk…

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Categories: random stuff

…yesterday I was a guest on “The Collective Podcast” on Communitas Collective, a site where I’ve been plugged in as a contributing blogger for several years. You can go here to listen to the podcast. It’s about 45 minutes of audio, but if you can get past the boring banter at the beginning between Glenn and Eric, once they actually let me into the conversation, you’ll find I’m very interesting to listen to.

Joking aside–thanks, Glenn and Eric, for inviting me. It was a privilege.

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God Doesn’t Have to Explain Himself

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Categories: food for thought, Meanderings (look it up)

“Why?”

That’s one of the first questions we learn to ask as children. You can usually tell when a kid has first discovered this question, because that kid will follow you around and ask it all the time.
“Why? Why? Why?”
That being the case, I suppose it’s natural for us to want to know why. When something bad happens that rocks our world, when dilemmas come up for which there are no easy answers, we have this nagging need to understand the purpose behind it all. Since this is obviously in our nature, you’d think that God would be going out of His way to answer this one for us–especially when our need to know “why” stems from a tragedy, or trauma, or something else that causes us pain.
But He doesn’t always. He doesn’t always tell us why.
Have you ever noticed that God never seems to be in a big hurry to defend His reputation? As someone who is practically obsessive-compulsive over my need to be understood, at times I find it quite annoying that God doesn’t have the same problem. He never seems to get ruffled when He gets blamed for bad things happening, or when He is caricatured as something He is not, or even when He is mocked. I get upset sometimes that God doesn’t feel the need to prove Himself to people who are genuinely questioning His existence. I’m like, “God, why don’t you show that person what you showed me?” It kind of feels like that singing frog in the cartoon who only sings when the one guy is around. (Not disrespecting God by comparing Him to a singing frog, but simply comparing the feeling, you understand.)
But here’s the thing. If He is God, and we are not, then God isn’t under a mandate to explain Himself. God is not in our debt, and He owes us nothing. Now, in saying that, it isn’t to say that God hasn’t already gone to great lengths to make Himself known. That’s why we have a Bible. That’s why even today, countless miracles are still recorded all over the world. Even nature itself testifies of Him. It’s just to say that the answer to “why” isn’t an answer we are automatically entitled to know. That said, offhand, I can think of at least three possible explanations for why we don’t always get an answer to “why.”
First–this is speculation and personal testimony, but in my own spiritual journey and experience, I’ve discovered that sometimes my “whys” get answered years down the road, long after I’ve asked the question. When the question gets answered, it’s an “a-ha” moment, and not only do I realize why, but I realize why God didn’t answer the question when I first asked it. I realize that only after some maturity and further experience could I even have understood the answer. I think sometimes that’s why God doesn’t always answer right away–because we asked a question for which we had no grid to appreciate the answer, and He must first grow us to a point where we can handle the answer.
Second–there are still other times when the answer to “why” just never comes–perhaps because in this life, we simply aren’t equipped to understand. Sometimes the answer to “why” can’t be understood by people who are “seeing through a glass darkly” (1 Cor. 13), and it’s going to take seeing Him face to face in the next life before the answer is clear.
And third–there is this troubling thing that Jesus said over and over in the Bible. He said it as a conclusion to many of His parables, and He said it in the “letters to the churches” in the Revelation to John: “He who has ears to hear, let him hear.” This is troubling because it suggests that sometimes we are not pre-disposed to hear. Sometimes God speaks and we just don’t get it; other times, I think, God doesn’t speak because knowing the hearts of men, He knows who has ears to hear Him, and who does not.
I’m nobody’s judge, so I have no ability to discern who has ears to hear. I only know I desire to be one of those people who has ears to hear. And for me, that starts with a heart approach that can ask God to explain Himself, but does not demand it as though it were my right. If I don’t get an answer to “why”, I don’t want it to be because my heart was not in a position to listen.
In contrast to the troubling “ears to hear” thing in the Bible, there is also a promise that we will seek Him and find Him when we search for Him with all our heart. (Jer. 29) I personally think this doesn’t just mean we seek Him intensely–I think it suggests a heart that is pre-disposed toward Him, a heart that leans toward trust as opposed to demanding proof. I think it is this kind of a heart that gives us ears to hear.
I guess what I’m saying by all this rambling is that while God doesn’t have to explain Himself, and while there are some “whys” that may never be answered in this life, there are some things He gladly reveals to those whose hearts are turned toward Him. By that, I mean those who will love Him even if He never answers their “whys”, because they trust Him with their unknowns. God doesn’t seem to be in a hurry to answer those who demand an explanation, but He does seem to be willing to reveal more of Himself when He sees a heart that truly longs for Him.
So while I’ve asked some “whys” for which I may never get an answer, and some “whys” I am not ready to handle yet–at the very least, I want to be a person who trusts God with my unanswered questions, a person who gives Him the benefit of my own doubts. A person who believes that God has my best interests at heart, even if He doesn’t always tell me why. And hopefully, a person who has ears to hear, so when He does speak, I’m in a position to listen.

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What’s More Important

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Categories: church, Meanderings (look it up), moments of truth


I think that at the heart of my journey out of institutional forms of church is a true desire to focus on what really matters–the heart and soul of my faith, the things that really make this engine run, so to speak. I think this desire has really set my course for many years. And as I gradually became less and less focused on the institutions surrounding Christianity, and more focused on the heart of faith, I began to see just how many times and in how many ways I’d majored on the minors–focused so much energy and placed so much importance on things that really weren’t all that important in the greater scheme of things.

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Quick Update

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Categories: How I am

Yesterday (Wednesday) we finally were allowed back into our apartment–exactly one week after a busted sprinkler pipe sent water gushing into our home. The work of re-sorting everything has now begun. It feels good to get back at least somewhere close to our normal routine. Thanks to all who expressed concern and support. Just a quick update to let you know we’re getting back to normal.

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Update: Still Here

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Categories: How I am

Well, the bad news, is, we’re still waiting to get back into our apartment. I don’t think the management realized just how much water was leaked; apparently they’re having a hard time getting the walls to dry out. They even went in and cut out some drywall yesterday. (I don’t think the on/off snow is helping matters much, either.) It could be as late as Tuesday before we can go back. So we’re a bit stir-crazy in the hotel, just waiting so we can get our lives back to some sense of normalcy.

The good news is, we’ve seen an amazing show of support from our new circles of friends–not just “we’ll pray for you”, but genuine offers of help. I feel more surrounded and covered and protected by my community than I have in many years–and that’s without belonging to any particular institutional church. No strings attached, no agendas, just being present with us in the moment–both believers and non-believers who are actually acting Christ-like. It is very encouraging and healing.
I’ve tried to keep perspective of our situation. I know that first of all, what happened to us could have been far worse; and secondly, there are a lot of people who do have it far worse, particularly from this crazy weather around the country. And even though our lives have been inconvenienced by the extended hotel stay, I’m glad the apartment management is taking recovery seriously enough to do it right, so we don’t come back to mold in our apartment. I’d rather have a few more days in a hotel than have to breathe air in our apartment that makes us sick.
I have experienced a great deal of grace in the midst of this chaos. I’m very thankful.

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When Disaster Knocks on the Door–Or Bursts thru the Ceiling

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Categories: what I did today

The first part of today was pretty normal. The second half was nothing short of surreal and traumatic.

While working on a writing assignment this afternoon at the coffee shop, I got a panicked call from The Director. He said that water was pouring through the apartment ceiling and flooding his bedroom–obviously a busted water pipe. I raced home to find he had exaggerated nothing. It was a deluge–a literal waterfall coming from the corner of the ceiling. His bed was soaked through, and his carpet was literally floating on the water that had reached the floor, nearly a foot deep, and already flowing into the rest of the apartment. He and The Wild One had been frantically trying to save whatever they could out of the room. After two (!) desperate phone calls to the apartment manager, they finally got the water turned off.
It turns out it was a broken pipe from the sprinkler system in the apartment, put in for fire safety. Talk about irony.
It was hard to figure out what to do next. We kept sloshing through the soaked carpet trying to figure out what to rescue, while trying to figure out what to pack up to take out of the apartment with us–since obviously we weren’t going to be staying there tonight. The problem was, not only did they cut the water–they cut the power, too, to protect from electrocution. So we’re having to dig through closets with no light trying to figure out what to pack. We got what we needed, and with all our stuff now piled up on the kind-of-dry side of the apartment, we left as the carpet rescue guys were just arriving, to try and find somewhere else to stay for the night.
It was really bad–but it could have been much worse. Some furniture was damaged, some paperwork got soaked. Obviously The Director took the worst hit–his bed is destroyed, his guitar amp was sitting right under the waterfall when it happened, and his desk may be ruined as well. The apartment management is footing the bill for a hotel room while they clear the water, fix the pipe and replace the carpeting, but whatever personal losses we incurred we will have to absorb.
If you are a renter, get renter’s insurance. I have learned this the hard way.
As I said, it could have been much worse. Although it was a very traumatic experience, there were evidences of God’s intervention all over the place. The Wild One was supposed to have gone to art class today, but stayed home due to the bitter cold because she didn’t want to travel home on icy roads. She kept saying, “I knew I was supposed to stay home today.” Had she gone as scheduled, The Director would have been alone when this happened. Our most vital stuff was saved from the water. And this might sound silly, but yesterday I just happened to pick up a pair of new waterproof boots for the weather–which I’d been planning to do, but kept putting off and did it yesterday at the spur of the moment. The Wild One and The Director didn’t have waterproof boots, but I was wearing mine when this all happened. They helped me get into places I needed to go, quickly and without worry. The timing was amazing; it was like we were all ready for it–although you can never feel “ready” for something like that. Lots of things were in place that normally wouldn’t have been in place, which kept it from being more damaging than it was. So while our lives have been turned upside down in the past 10 hours, it’s apparent Someone was protecting us. We lost a few things, but ultimately we could have lost everything. So…I am very grateful.
So I’m sitting in a warm, dry hotel room that I don’t have to pay for, in a comfortable bed, writing this post on the free wi-fi, waiting to get new carpet in our apartment. Not the way I would have planned it, but still.

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