The Problem of Plugging In

An article I wrote in January for my denomination’s magazine, The Covenant Companion, has been posted (as a PDF) online.  In “The Problem of Plugging In” I drew from a couple of Wendell Berry’s essays to discuss the power of metaphors and the way our language hinders or aids spiritual growth.

Your church has problems. So does mine. It takes little observation to know this is true; a quick glance around any congregation reveals challenges, mistakes, and disagreements. Those of us who have participated for any length of time in church life are not surprised by these problems. We may actually interpret our issues as evidence of God’s grace. After all, even our most complex problems are simply expressions of our own inadequacies and evidence of God’s loving and mysterious choice to include us in his redemptive mission.

But despite this silver lining, problems need solutions. Apathy about evangelism is a problem that needs a solution. Stunted spiritual growth is a problem that needs a solution. Anemic worship, stingy stewardship, racial divisions, shallow community, disinterest in justice, and disregard for prayer are all problems churches face that need solutions.

Again, there is nothing especially interesting about churches with problems; it’s the solutions—ministries, strategies, programs, and campaigns— that are noteworthy. Where do our solutions come from? What are the assumptions behind them? Are our members well served by the ways we address our problems?

In 1978 writer and farmer Wendell Berry began his essay “Agricultural Solutions for Agricultural Problems” with a discussion about the powerful ways our metaphors shape the solutions we seek. “It may turn out that the most powerful and the most destructive change of modern time has been a change in language: the rise of the image, or metaphor, of the machine.” This industrial metaphor, according to Berry, replaced language that was “biological, pastoral, agricultural, or familial.” He goes on to show how the industrial solutions favored by modern “agribusiness” can easily be traced back to a mechanical understanding of how the world works. This is a world of input, feedback, and efficiency.

Download the article to finish reading.

We’re A Culture, Not A Costume

Students Teaching Against Racism, a student organization at Ohio University, has released these brilliant posters just in time for Halloween, the yearly occasion when hidden prejudices surface in the form of inappropriate, ignorant and offensive costumes.  Here’s a blogger with more information and the rest of the posters.

“Actualy, we’re Korean!”

Leslie is a friend who, along with her family, has been very generous to our family over the past few years.  She agreed to let me post the following story which she originally shared on her Facebook page.  I share it here with no commentary except to express my gratitude to Leslie and other friends whose stories help me understand a little more what the world feels like from another’s perspective.
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“Hey, you’re Chinese!”

Our family of four had just left the house on our way to dinner.  Four young white boys were strolling leisurely down the alley.  As our car slowly approached, they made barely enough room for us to drive by.  As we did, one said loudly, “Hey, you’re Chinese!”  While my husband Mike kept driving forward, I immediately rolled down my window and replied, “No, actually, we’re Korean!”  Then one of the boys took the ball he was holding and threw it towards our car.  We were too far forward and his arm was too weak to place the ball anywhere near us, but the intent was clear.  While Mike kept driving forward, I tried to roll down my window, look back, even tried to get out of the car, etc.  Ball retrieved and thrown again.  I was ticked.  Mike calmly kept driving only stopping once briefly in response to my, “STOP!”  Mike: “Why?  What are you going to do?”  Me: “I don’t know, but I can’t just NOT do anything.  Maybe teach them some manners or see where they live or try to find the parents?”  Mike kept driving.  I kept being ticked.

What to do in that situation?  They were probably only 8 to 10 years old.  Being a quarter of a century older and wiser didn’t seem to affect my reaction.  In fact, as we continued driving, I had to fight back tears and even say to myself, Think happy thoughts. Instead, I thought of first grade in West Virginia when some kid called me Chinese.  My friend, Ellen Wheeler, was so mad she told the teacher, Mrs. Morrison, who was navigating how to handle this situation since I was probably the first Asian kid she taught.  Even some 6 year olds, like sweet Ellen did, know better.  But then again, many do not.  I thought again of 2nd grade when a cute 3rd grader’s friend also called me Chinese and made the usual “ching chong” sounds.  I have a bad memory, but these and many others are burned in my old, forgetful head with much clarity.

My darling children will be teased, hurt, made to feel less than, and there is absolutely nothing I can do.

It’s not just that the incident unearthed childhood wounds.  I could say that last night’s sleep deprivation was making me emotional to an extreme today.  It’s more likely the fact that my precious and impressionable 5 year old and my adorable and mimicking almost 3 year old were in the back seat to witness it all.  Poor Ethan had to hear another mom speech about ignorance, people making mistakes/poor decisions, how you are not to throw things at people no matter what, do not tease, etc.  But what might be most responsible for the tears and allowing prepubescent kids to upset me so much was the fact that I know it is inevitable that my darling children will be teased, hurt, made to feel less than, and there is absolutely nothing I can do about that fact.  I cannot protect them from the cruelty of life.  I will not be able to stand in front of them and take every bullet of pain no matter how much I would want to or how hard I try.  All I can do is love them and give them the tools to wear their own bullet-proof vest or the means to heal from those shots that eventually penetrate, because they will.  And they will sting, hurt and wound.

Ignorance is everywhere, in the hills of West Virginia and the streets of Chicago.  Human nature as well.  But I do believe that being where we are (the city, a diverse church, our neighborhood school) will provide opportunities to broaden our children’s horizons so that hopefully they will not be the kids who throw stones.  Earlier this same day, I had the privilege of helping to shower a mother-to-be.  The room was filled with friends and family of different races who touchingly shared the beauty of Anna and the fortune of her son who will no doubt be raised in abundant love.  I cried happy tears in celebration of who she is and who her biracial child will grow up to be under such direction and care.  It was a stark contrast to what I experienced just a few hours later.

Black hair and small dark brown eyes are just as lovely as blonde hair or black skin.

We continued on to Cho Sun Ok, ate a delicious Korean dinner, and were surrounded by a room busting of Asians.  The boys gobbled down mandoo, chadolgui, and little Connor even ate several bites of the spicy kimchi bokumbap.  For some reason, seeing him inhale kimchi made me so proud.  Good food and ice cream for dessert helped diffuse the anger.  Those kids in the alley are probably decent kids.  Contrary to my desire to label them as bad, ignorant, and even sheltered rich white boys, they are probably not.  After all, I’ve seen my “perfect” children tease and make poor decisions, too.  Instead, I have to remind myself that there is very little to separate us in the mistakes that we make.  Instead, I threw in one more mom speech before bedtime about how God created us differently and those differences are not to be objects of ridicule but rather beauty, that black hair and small dark brown eyes are just as lovely as blonde hair or black skin.  I’m thankful that Ethan and Connor do and will have friends of all kinds, races, socio-economic statuses, languages, etc.  I’m also thankful that I’m married to a calm, rational man who can counter my urges to get out of the car and whoop some ass.

What would you say about Christianity at an interfaith discussion?

On Wednesday evening I’m participating in an “Interfaith Discussion” at a local university.  There are five of us on the panel, each representing our own faith (or non-faith).  It is, frankly, a bit intimidating (and impossible) to be the representative of Christianity, but I’ll do my best.

Each of the leaders are being asked to address a few different questions, but I’m curious what you think.  The event organizers are hoping for about 100 undergraduate and graduate students representing a variety of faith backgrounds to show up.  What should I say?  What aspects of Christianity would you want shared at this sort of event?

Of course, I have my own thoughts about this, but I’m very interested to hear yours.

“Crowds are a worse danger, far worse, than drink or sex.”

I’m finishing up Eugene Peterson’s wonderful memoir, The Pastor, a book I’ve anticipated eagerly since I first learned of it last year.  About halfway into the book, in a chapter titled “Company of Pastors,” Peterson includes a letter he wrote to a colleague who was leaving his church for one “three times the size of where he was.”  He writes,

I certainly understand the appeal and feel it myself frequently.  But I am also suspicious of the appeal and believe that gratifying it is destructive both to the gospel and the pastoral vocation.  It is the kind of thing America specialize in, and one of the consequences is that American religion and the pastoral vocation are in a shabby state.

It is also the kind of thing for which we have abundant documentation through twenty centuries now, of debilitating both congregation and pastor.  In general terms it is the devil’s temptation to Jesus to throw himself from the pinnacle of the temple.  Every time the church’s leaders depersonalize, even a little, the worshipping/loving community, the gospel is weakened.  And size is the great depersonalizer. Kierkegaard’s criticism is still cogent: “the more people, the less truth.”

This is strong language and it’s a theme that runs throughout the book.  Peterson sees the pastoral vocation opposed, in most cases, to the trajectory of the American Dream.  In the letter he goes on to show why “largeness is an impediment” to Christian maturity.

Classically, there are three ways in which humans try to find transcendence- religious meaning, God meaning -apart from God as revealed in the cross of Jesus: through the ecstasy of alcohol and drugs, through the ecstasy of recreational sex, through the ecstasy of crowds.  Church leaders frequently warn against the drugs and the sex, but, at least in America, almost never against the crowds. Probably because they get so much ego benefit from the crowds.

Most  of my experience as a pastor has been in medium-sized congregations of a few hundred people.  As these congregations grew it was hard not to notice how much time needed to be given towards administration, organization and strategy.  While the growth in size was welcomed, it also required more pastoral effort to mitigate the effects of the increasing size.  But increased time and attention to these details at the expense of more traditional pastoral responsibilities is not Peterson’s primary complaint.  His is a theological concern.

But a crowd destroys the spirit as thoroughly as excessive drink and depersonalized sex.  It takes us out of ourselves, but not to God, only away from him.  The religious hunger is rooted in the unsatisfactory nature of the self.  We hunger to escape the dullness, the boredom, the tiresome of me.  We can escape upward or downward.  Drugs and depersonalized sex are a false transcendence downward.  A crowd is an exercise in false transcendence upward, which is why all crowds are spiritually pretty much the same, whether at football games, political rallies, or church.

Peterson closes the letter by stating his belief that “crowds are a worse danger, far worse, than drink or sex.”

In the past year, for the first time, I’ve pastored a church of fewer than one hundred people.  While we have seen an increase in the size of our young congregation, we are- using American church standards- nowhere near being a large church.  I have enjoyed this.  The extra administrative and strategic efforts required by a larger congregation simply aren’t needed in our church.  To be clear, I’m working harder than ever but the work has more of a pastoral edge to it: listening, praying, questioning, studying, leading.

But again, Peterson’s gripe is more theological than what I’ve been observing in my own experience.  A church, if I read him correctly, that feels and behaves like a crowd is an impediment to the ways the Gospel transforms people in community.

How do you see this?  Does Peterson overstate his case, or is he on to something important that is difficult to hear within the American way of measuring growth and success?

My pastor once told me that a church of 300 people seemed like an ideal size to him.  Anything greater than this was evidence of God’s sending nature, pushing a portion of the congregation out to begin a new community of faith.  His words resonated with me and Peterson, as he has done many times, now gives me new language to think about old dilemmas.

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I’ve written previously about Eugene Peterson.