Pastor's Puddle

Our break is over. Good coffee, a great fruit salad, and still only a little slushy snow outside.

The conversation is turning to crowd sourcing. Kathryn Reklis from Fordham University brought it up. It is an interesting topic, especially from an Anabaptist perspective. What would it look like to crowd source a sermon using pastor's puddle?

Jason Byassee noted that the panelists started using social media, then stepped back and did theological reflection. This is a theological method.

Jim Rice of Sojourners magazine observed that there is still a broadcast aspect to new media. This blog, for example, has a broadcast element.

Eugene Cho observes that people do not just show up at his church, but learn about it, usually online.

Tony Lee emphasizes the importance of getting our message out. I wonder about the Mennonite Hour and other "old media" efforts (or CMC on WGCS) and their effectiveness in connecting with people outside our tradition. Marty Troyer in Houston is using a blog to reach beyond the usual suspects.

Eugene Cho reminds us that boundaries are important. This is a big one for all of us.

Lunch!

Eugene Cho from Quest Church, Seattle, is presenting now. Quest Church, like House for All sinners and Saints, a relatively recent church plant.

He suggests that the front door of churches today is digital. New media can be used as a way to connect people. Might we say build community? He is using the word social capital to describe what new media can bring.

Cho notes the astonishing changes in how people communicate in the last 15 years.

Eric Elnes from Darkwood Brew at Countryside Community Church in Omaha. It is interesting to note that most of these presenters are from urban and relatively new congregations. He shares that he kind of stumbled into using technology for practical reasons. He is not an early adopter, he's just trying to do what works.

He makes the case that we can't rely on mainstream media to get our story out, we have to be out in the digital public square ourselves, and new media makes it possible to do that with relatively few resources.

Elnes finds new media to be a democratizing force in the world an in the church.

One thing that keeps coming back to me here, is the role that social media is playing in pastoral care. Facebook and CaringBridge are tools we are using at College Mennonite to care for each other. What does this mean? How is this changing us?

Tony Lee of Community of Hope African Methodist Episcopal Church, Washington, DC, a 7 yr. old church plant. "How did you get hooked up with social media?" he asks. "it was free!" Again using social media as a tool, not as a conscious effort to be a social media church.

My impression listening to these congregational leaders whose churches are using new media are connecting with those who have lapsed or no church background.

Lee: high tech and high touch. New media allows us to connect with more people.

The structure of this day is that we will hear stories from congregations in the morning, then theological reflection from pastors in the afternoon. For those of you looking for theological reflection it's coming.

Weather update: nothing too impressive yet. Hoping things are up and running in time for my flight late tomorrow afternoon.

Nadia Bolz-Weber, from the House for All Sinners and Saints in Denver, a Lutheran ministry is sharing now. For starters she suggests that the media used is simply a new opportunity to articulate the message. I disagree. The relationship between message and media is complex.

She said her church has a closed Facebook page for members, and says it has been good for introverts, creating space for them to interact socially.

She mentioned the phenomenon of people viewing services who have limited connection to her congregation's geographical community. She shared the story of a woman from NYC who connected online and came to be baptized in Denver after building a relationship with the church online. Interesting.

My friend Richard Kauffman recently made this post on facebook, "When it comes to evil, Christianity doesn't have an explanation. It has an eschatology, not a theodicy."

Richard makes a provocative claim, perhaps a little overstated to make a point. Christianity, of course, has a great deal to say about evil. But ultimately Christian faith is interested in the coming fulfillment of creation, and less in trying to explain the suffering that is. This certainly was the case with the 16th century Anabaptists, an eschatological people, focused on the in breaking and coming of God's reign, and its implications for how we are to live. A persecuted people who had suffering imposed on them through torture and martyrdom did not focus on their own suffering, but on God's salvation.

Evil and suffering have long been concerns of Christian thinkers, and non Christian thinkers who find Christian thought on these matters untenable. But in our time and place, evil and suffering have become the core spiritual scandals, the barriers of many people to faith.

I am intrigued by this. Why is this concern so central for us in the most affluent society the world has ever known? I suspect among those for whom suffering is the norm and not the exception, this theological concern is not so central, at least that reflects my own experience in contexts of great suffering and misery. These are only reflections, and are not the result of scholarly research or study, but I suspect several reasons for the concern for suffering in the face of a good God. One is the fact that most of us live in unprecedented comfort. We forget that, not so long ago, even in our own wealthy nation, children died of childhood diseases with relative frequencies, life expectancy was in the forties of years, food could be scarce, and working conditions for millions were abysmal. We forget sometimes that we live in a time of remarkable abundance, security and health.

Another reason on my suspect list is the consumerist nature of faith in our times. We look at God as a provider of goods and services and ourselves as consumers. In this frame, God becomes a cantankerous shop owner, or an incompetent bureaucrat.

Also on the list is the dissolution of a theology that explains evil. In the Chronicles of Narnia, the question comes up of why Aslan doesn't just make everything right. The wise response is, there is such a thing as evil, you know. I'm not sure popular American culture believes in evil anymore, or in human sinfulness. We have misunderstanding and incompetence, but not evil and sin.

Perhaps the most controversial reason on the list is the self obsession so much apart of our culture. We are quite interested in ourselves. Indeed we find ourselves quite interesting, and God perhaps less so. This self focus during a time of suffering naturally will move us to questions of theodicy.

Finally on my list is the intrusion into the church of a culture of therapy. This is not at all to say that therapy is bad. It's root comes from the Greek word for healing, and it was something central to Jesus' ministry. But when healing becomes the primary task and focus of the church, and its pastors, we train ourselves to focus excessively on human wounds, and neglect to understand these wounds in terms of God's salvation, and eschatological destiny. In this last one I double back to Richard's point. Unless the church recovers an eschatological sense and vocation, theodicy will continue to be its primary scandal.

Critical to Richard's insight, and, I think, to the uniqueness of the Hebrew Bible, is that theological reflection begins, not with creation or questions of origin, but with salvation and redemption, God's breaking into redeem people from suffering. The foundational event of the biblical people is liberation from bondage, suffering and misery in Egypt. Theological reflection on creation, and indeed all other matters, is done through the prism of God's breaking into the world to save. Looking for God to break in becomes the focus for the biblical people. Certainly questions of God's goodness and the triumph of evil are important (why do the wicked prosper?) but the people see them through an eschatological lens.

A marvelous illustration of this thought process is found in John 9, when the disciples ask, who sinned, this man or his parents that he was born blind? The disciples question is one of suffering and its causes. Suffering comes into the world through sin in a general sense, but the disciples were quick to specify, particular suffering resulting from particular sin. But Jesus turns their question on its head. No one sinned. Indeed its the wrong question. The man was born blind so that God's glory might be revealed. On the one hand, Jesus might be saying that the purpose of the man's blindness is so God can heal him, but I think this is a short sighted view. Jesus finds the question of causation irrelevant. The only meaning Jesus sees in human suffering is the possibility of God breaking in to that suffering with power to heal and save, liberate and redeem. In short, eschatology. Richard is right. Jesus is not interested in theodicy but in eschatology.

Of course this is a tender topic. As Christians the suffering of others should move us to compassion first and foremost, as it did with Jesus, then theological reflection can come. I do not wish to minimize or belittle  anyone's grief or suffering. But we are wise to remember that there is a bigger hope, and we are inclined to miss it if we are focused on theodicy.

When we lived in Kansas I was part of an investment club. Each of us in the club was assigned at least one stock to monitor, and report to the group. I followed Comcast, the cable provider. During the time I followed Comcast they acquired NBC Universal. I had to explain to the group just why Comcast would want to make such an acquisition, and what it might mean for the cable industry in general.

Here is what I learned. Young people don't watch television, at least not on television. They watch programs, movies, and the like on tablets (like iPads), game consoles, smart phones, and old fashioned computers (remember desk tops and lap tops?). And they watch them when they want to watch them, not when the television schedule says they should watch. Cable is expensive, and why would they pay for something they don't use. Cable is expensive because programming is expensive, and the business model of bundling channels into a package, most of which have no interest for a given consumer. Hence, Comcast fears it has an unsustainable business model. Cable is doomed. In acquiring NBC Universal, they are betting on the future of content.

The telecommunications industry is highly volatile. Ten years ago I read that CD sales were doomed, that music and publishing companies had unsustainable business models, and that print media were likely to go out of business on a grand scale. This all seemed far fetched to me at the time, but now it is coming to pass.

Another development with staggering implications that has just taken place only in the last year, is the emergence of the Massive Open Online Course, or MOOC, in the field of higher education. One year ago Jim Brenneman had likely not even heard the term MOOC, my guess is now giving it attention is one of his top priorities. If it isn't it probably should be. Some people imagine that the MOOC will mean the end of many educational institutions, as millions and millions of people enroll in free online courses taught by professors from the most prestigious educational institutions, and at the top their fields. Some people are excited about the potential of MOOCs to make the finest education available to anyone in the world with access to the internet, a democratization of education. Even as this transformation is underway, many questions linger, but the implications are off the charts.

We are in the middle of a stunning, whiplash inducing, change in the way people organize, share and consume information, communicate with each other, and engage the world. By reading a blog post, you are participating in this change right now. When Pastor's Puddle began, I would watch the hits when a new post was up, and within seconds the number climbed into the dozens, and it all felt strange to be communicating with so many people in this new way. I keep in touch with many of you via facebook, and also have a sense of connection with people I rarely see. I find I am beginning to send and receive text messages more frequently. I hear sermon responses from people who haven't set foot in CMC for years, if ever. Many people who are rarely (again, if ever) here on Sunday morning think we are their church. People who do not think of CMC as their church watch or listen to our services, often at their convenience.

I believe we are in the middle of a communications revolution that rivals the revolution that gave rise to the Anabaptist movement, and led to a profound reordering of church and the way Christians think about what it means to be a Christian. The invention of the printing press transformed a society of illiterate folk who gained information orally, visually, and in community, to a society of readers, where ideas could be spread in print, and where people read on their own. This transformation led to new and exciting ways of thinking about faith and studying scripture. It empowered believers to study scripture and other ancient authorities for themselves, without relying on the church or other authority figures to tell them the biblical story or explain and interpret what it meant. This empowerment became central to the growth of Anabaptism. But some things about the transformation brought by the printing press we might bemoan. Widely available printed material made it possible to have a personal faith rather than a corporate faith, where each individual was free to discern truth for him or herself. The long journey to epistemological individualism was begun. It also led to the elevation of the printed word over against some other kinds of authority or spiritual experience. The destination of this aspect of the transformation has been bibliolotry, or veneration of the words of scripture as a kind of deity.

In this transformation, the church adapted, but much changed and much had to die. The same will likely happen now. The church will adapt, incorporating new media. And as it does so, some practices will die (are dying, really), and others will emerge. As before, the introduction of new media into the life of the church will mean not just a change in method, but the message will change as well, although it is difficult to know how.

The cultural and social forces being brought to bear on educational, telecommunications, publishing, recording and other institutions are being brought to bear on the church as a whole and on congregations in particular. The most important public square in our society today is the internet, and it will be increasingly so. The most important birthday for many young people is no longer 16, when they can drive, but 13, when facebook and other forms of engaging the online public square become available to them. The most vibrant churches of the not so distant future in our society will be those that effectively engage this public square. Churches are already working at community building, faith formation, pastoral care, and worship, through social media and other internet vehicles, transcending geographical barriers. The question is not will it be done, nor whether people will see the internet as a place where they engage a faith community, but who will do it and how it will be done. Will Mennonite congregations engage this public square?

I believe College Mennonite is uniquely equipped to engage this public square, but we will need resources to fully engage it. For some of us, these changes represent unspeakable loss, others can't imagine that authentic church done online, others of us are excited about the opportunities these changes represent, and perhaps some of us are simply bewildered by the changes and not sure what we should do. I am cautiously optimistic that these changes represent a rare and exciting opportunity for the church in mission.

Recently, the state legislature in Indiana cut funding for a program paying for prisoners to receive a college education while incarcerated. On the surface it might seem that purpose of this decision was to save money in the state budget. It looked bad politically to give something to prisoners when so many others were suffering from other program cuts. From a political standpoint this decision must have seemed like a no-brainer.

Yet, however politically savvy this decision might prove to be, it will likely prove to be fiscally irresponsible. Incarceration is terribly expensive to taxpayers, and any program that reduces repeat offenses is both a social and economic good (in that our society gets a productive member), and cost effective from a state budget perspective in that taxpayers will not have to pay to incarcerate the prisoner again. Everybody wins!

But as a society, we have decided that the purpose of prisons is not to make our society better. The purpose is not security, not restitution, not rehabilitation, not restoration, not helping prisoners become and asset to our collective social well being. The purpose is punishment. And in a society that believes, first and foremost, in the punishment of prisoners, paying for their education is a bad idea.

Such a punishment system is irrational, of course. It serves no socially productive purpose. When a prisoner "does time" to pay her or his debt to society, it does me no good at all. Someone simply languishing in prison doesn't pay anything to me. In fact, as a taxpayer I have to pay. It's a lose-lose proposition.

To be sure, some people may not live safely in society, and need to be incarcerated for the good of all. But this is different than punishment. Some have argued that punishment acts as a deterrent. This may be, but the language we use suggests otherwise. Our language suggests that punishment is an end in and of itself, not a means to a greater good. The purpose of prisons is punishment for the sake of punishment.

My best guess is that the punishment theme in our society is a vestige of the Roman penal system. If we read the scriptures with care, we see instances of punishment, but the overall thrust of biblical justice is otherwise. Unfortunately we project Roman understandings back on the scriptures and see punishment when none is there.

Simple Living

When Beth and I were first married we, like many couples, brought different lifestyle understandings to our relationship. Both of us believed we practiced simple living, but we had different values when it came to spending money. Beth believed in spending money on long distance phone calls (which were expensive back in those days), but I thought it was an extravagance. On the other hand, I would more readily spend money on eating out, when Beth thought it unnecessary. We both thought it was okay to spend money on travel, which by some standards is luxury.

My experience of Mennonites is that we love to use the term simple living to describe our distinctives, as in, "we believe in peace, community and we practice simple living." I have found that these are abstractions, and that we generally do a poor job of explaining what these three characteristics mean. And particularly elusive is this concept of simple living. In addition to being elusive (one person's simple living is another's unnecessary luxury), I find our concepts of simple living are rooted in cultural and contemporary economic models rather than biblical understandings. We use the abstract idea of simple living to support values we have adopted from society around us. Here are a few.

Since the 1960s or 70s a prominent simple living model has been the Bohemian lifestyle, or variations on it. The artist colony, sophisticated but anti-establishment sensibilities, valuing artistic integrity over commercial success, independence, free thinking, anti authoritarian, unconventional, and the like are characteristics of Bohemian simple living. Godspell and Jesus Christ Superstar reflect the development of a Bohemian spirituality within Christianity. The social rebel, vagabond Jesus, traveling around with his community, helps shape this way of thinking about Christian faith.

Another simple living model is the rural lifestyle, which gets a nostalgia boost in an era of urbanization. These values are marked by tie to the land, a slower pace, rejection on urban ways as overly sophisticated, and cultural practices that kept rural communities together.

Another model is the frugal lifestyle. This is an American middle class staple that one should not live extravagantly. A person should not drive a car that is too expensive or live in a house that is too big, and should avoid sticking out at all costs.

Another model, dealt with in a prior post is the anti-tech model. Technology is an alienating force making our lives more complex, and separating us from other people and from creation.

In some sense, the embrace of simple living grows out of the fear that all of these lifestyles are dying. Bohemian culture has been co-opted by the establishment as cool goes mainstream. Rural culture is in decline as the world becomes an increasingly urban place. Frugality may make a comeback, but people under 67 (boomers and younger) still seem to have different ways of valuing money the those older. And new technologies will continue to shape our lives.

The reality is our lives are complex, perhaps increasingly so, and not simple. It is also the case, I think, that the Christian life is not necessarily simple. I am wondering if it is time to jettison a term like simple living and use something else altogether, a term with a stronger biblical pedigree, less elusive, and more helpful to us as we try to be faithful Christians. The term I propose is just living.

Just Living

Some recent reading, as well as some recent events, got me thinking about the difference of what we call simple living as opposed to what we call just living. Since "simple living," as elusive as it is, still seems to focus on personal economics, I will keep the focus on the same.

I read an observation recently that ought to be obvious, but it had not quite occurred to me before. The cost of a $100 t-shirt is the same as that of a $2 t-shirt. That is the toll that each takes on the earth is the same. The same amount of water, nutrients in the soil, fuel needed for transport, electricity for manufacturing is the same in each case. In fact, one could argue that socially and environmentally, the $2 t-shirt is more expensive than the $100 t-shirt. The $2 t-shirt is more likely to be made cheaply, which means it is likely to break down faster. It is also more likely to have been made by workers not receiving a just wage, or laboring in an unsafe factory (see Bangladesh fire). Now few of us would be inclined to call buying a $100 designer t-shirt simple living. But if you can afford it, do you not have some obligation to spend your money on the more just product? You are providing a just wage to workers, and helping an honest business person make a living.

The counter arguments here might be to buy your t-shirt at a thrift store, or buy the cheaper shirt and give the money to charity, or don't buy a t-shirt at all. Regarding the former, if you can afford to buy a new, justly made t-shirt, is it right to take a t-shirt of the shelves of a thrift store that a less affluent person might need? Are you driving up the price of thrift store t-shirts by increasing demand, therefore creating an undue burden on the poor? Is it better to give money to charity than to spend it on a $100 t-shirt? Maybe. But maybe not. If the t-shirt is made justly, its purchase may lead to a greater social good than a gift to the charity (unless the charity is College Mennonite Church, of course). And the choice to not spend at all maybe a choice to hoard. What's the difference between frugality and stinginess?

We could apply similar kinds of thinking to cars. I drive a Honda Civic Hybrid. Is it more just than $100,000 Italian sports car? A Cadillac Escalade? The cost of these three will depend on a variety of things, but the value added by well paid labor in the Italian sports car suggest it could be as just a purchase as the Civic. Or the Escalade? What if I drive my Civic 20,000 miles a year, but you drive your Escalade 2,000 miles a year and take public transportation the rest of the time. We would be loathe to call a Ferrari or an Escalade simple living purchases, but we can make a case that they are as just as a Civic.

This points to some of my concerns about "simple living." Often I think simple living is a meme we use to buttress our own sense of superiority rather than use in an effort to be more faithful Christians.

After reading The Big Short, I was struck by something Warren Buffet said about Wall Street culture. We have become a trading culture, he said, instead of an investing culture. Investing cultures can reflect on just ways to use wealth, trading cultures are focused on what brings the most short term gain.