Where is God?

It seems like such a simple and important question. I am sure though that the doubt expressed in it might either alienate, or perhaps intrigue. Yet it is, I think, one of the more important questions that we can ask these days.

For years we have done church with the firm belief that God is here, and we are doing what God wants. In some ways we have so easily assumed God's presence that we have simply begun to ignore God all together.

Where is this coming from?

Well, I am working with my church council on planing for next year. And there is much pressure and desire to do "Strategic Planning." Now I am sure strategic planning has its place somewhere (I am not quite sure where any more). Some how, having a bunch of people sitting around for a weekend, likely with some out side facilitator, coming up with a plan for the next three -five years just seems to be missing the point.

As my spiritual director said, "The church has been doing strategic planning for seventy years and it has never worked"

I wonder if the problem is that it is just the wrong model. Instead of setting up our plan, perhaps we need to begin by asking a different question. Where is God?

Where is God moving?

Where is God in the community around us?

How has God been equipping us? What Gifts has God given us? What opportunities?

Where is God calling us?

Sure have a retreat, but don't stop there. If we are asking where God is. Our task is not strategic planning, it is discernment. And discernment is an ongoing process.

It involves prayer; many conversations; research; try things; failing; learning; watching.

It is an ongoing process, that carries with it surprises.

Where is God? That is question that can lead us.

Advent 1

Some days what you see going on around you makes a person wonder. It has been an interesting couple of days. Again the stories of the people of God being attacked by the people we have entrusted to lead and care for them have come filtering down to me. The image which best describes it is of sharks, who smell the blood of the injured moving in for the kill.

I hear stories of leaders, dramatically shedding tears, over situations they have caused situations in which they had an opportunity to act with compassion but refused.

And again I hears stories, of church built will millions of dollars, who then make sure that the homeless and the poor are kept away and definitely not sleeping under their tree (which would have been a good story if they had invited them in to sleep inside instead).

And the Gospel this Sunday. It is of the end of time. I must admit I understand the yearning it expresses. Lets face it life is pretty good, and far from what the Gospel of Mark describes. We have it easy compared with so many others who truly suffer and are persecuted. Yet, I can’t help but identify with the yearning. Things just seem so broken. It even seems like the desolating sacrilege has been set up where it ought not to me, namely amongst God’s people. Having some revolutionary God showing up and setting things right sounds pretty good right now.

That’s when I trip over the gospel. “For the Kingdom of God is amongst you and within you.” Christ is already here. The revolution has already begun. Can’t we see it?

The Gospel lesson speaks of awakeness and awareness. Perhaps that is our current call. I know that God is here, and that God is moving. Perhaps, what we are now called to is a new awareness, and new wakefulness, so that we can see God moving and move with God.

I went to a lecture the other night. Tony Compelo, preaching about how God is a God of the poor, who calls us to serve the poor. I talked today with a pastor who brings people to Mexico, not to build a house and relieve some guilt, but rather to listen, and be transformed, and to come home and transform their community. A parishner came up to me this morning and encouraged me to have the congregation focus on trying Lectio Divina or the Jesus prayer for lent – so that we might experience God’s transformation.

I think I see glimpses of God, coming in glory these days.

Finding a new language.

Well I have let this blog go for a while. Life has been tumultuous. After much internal and external debate and searching, I have found my self again serving as a pastor. The congregation that called me has been very kind and loving towards me. They are also a congregation that, at least in what they tell me, yearns to be a part of the renewal of the Christian faith. The reality though is I just don’t quite know what that might look like.

It is true that I have many thoughts and ideas. The reality though is that renewal won’t happen from one person’s thoughts or ideas. Rather I believe that what is needed is a dialogue, a searching and a rediscovering. This will only be done together. I also believe that asking new questions will be a part of this process. So I have decided to start blogging again. In the hopes that perhaps others will join in the conversation.

So where to begin. Language. I was amazed today. I had two conversations in which a part of them was just retelling what our faith was about, but using new language. Both times the people seemed to light up a little, as if they were seeing something that they had not seen before. Perhaps this is a place to begin to seek our renewal. Perhaps we need new language to tell and see our faith by.

The reality is that all language is a lens. The words that we use allow us to see certain things more clearly, while also obscuring other things. It seems like our religious language has blinded us. Look at the simple langue of sin. For so many this language has become equivalent of beating ones self down or being beaten down. I think Luther’s comments about us being miserable worms fits in here. What a profound insult to God’s creativity (or perhaps not, especially if we see worms as they are, beautifully and wonderfully made). Luther though meant the insult. Sin is an old archery term for missing the mark. Mmmm have we all missed the mark in our life. Oh yea. Or Sin is much like describing our brokenness. Have we all experienced brokenness. Oh yea. And while much of the world teaches us either to cover this up, or to make it a public spectacle, here church is the one place where we invite people to be honest about the real brokenness of our life. Then we respond, with grace and love (in contrast to the temptation towards judgement). Mmmm. Honesty, grace, love. . . .sounds like what many of us need.

The question is how do we find a language, and create a space for these to be truly practiced and experienced. Or even better. What language do we need so that we can again discover THE WAY which early Christians saw as eternal life.

The Kingdom of God is Within and Amongst You

My apologies to anyone who has been looking for a blog entry and not seeing anything new in the last while. I have been in the midst of the madness of moving. Now that I am settled I was reminded by a friend to get back at this blog.

One of the things that has been on my find lately is that I think that Christianity has gotten its time frame all wrong, or at least significantly wrong.

When Jesus spoke of the kingdom of God, he spoke of it in the present, and as being within and amongst us. This changes things quite radically.

So often we have thought (and taught) that the focus of Christianity is on some future heaven. During periods of time, such as the reformation, when death was ever present and near this makes sense. It also makes sense if you are an empire that doesn’t want the implications of faith to effect its rule.

If we focus on the present though suddenly Christ’s teachings look very different. They are not about getting into heaven, rather they are about becoming a new and different sort of people here and how. Salvation is no longer about who gets through the pearly gates, but rather it is about our current healing.

Suddenly the many moral lists of the scriptures which are framed with “such as these will not enter the kingdom of God” are not a list of who is in and out, rather they are a list of those things that we do that prevent us and others from being healed and becoming the people of God. Instead of lists to scare they are a differential diagnosis, that is lists of things we may need to pay attention to and address if we want to experience healing.

If Christianity is about the present, then God’s grace is not just God’s final act in history, but rather it is God’s first and ongoing act of creation. Grace is the begining of all that we do. It defineds who we are, and it is God ongoing action to bring us to become who we are called to be.

When I look at the great harm done by the Christian church these days, again and again it goes back to its failure to be transformed and to live out the faith to which it is called. So often this is rooted in our failure to not just share our bread, but our failure to ask why we are not the ones both sharing our bread, and challenging the systems which produce hunger. The result is a religion, whose relevance has been often limited to its ability to scare people into morality, and provide comfort, but no healing. While this was convenient for the empires which Christianity served, and the Empire that Christianity has become. It has robed us of far too much of what faith has to offer.

For the kingdom of God is with within and amongst us. Let us no longer be distracted. The feast is set and we are invited to the table. Let us taste and share of God’s kingdom.

Getting Ready to Move

The boxes are piling. Pictures are about to come off the walls. We are deciding what to keep and what to give away. It makes me think about transitions. To say the least my life right now is in complete transition. As one person said, there is not an aspect of my life which has not been in flux in the last while. It is perhaps this which has made me sensitive to the many transitions that seem to face our world right now.

In many aspects of our world transition is precisely what is needed. These transitions are needed for the simple and down right spectacular reason that our current course is directing us towards disaster. One of my big interests is in the area of energy. Lets face it, whether we look at the rising price of crude which may lead to our economic collapse or climate change which will lead to ecological collapse. We desperately need a transition to a just and sustainable energy future. The question is what will it take?

Is it economic cost? That seems to be a real motivator as the current price of gasoline is now causing people to make changes that were once reserved for the “lunatic left” such as biking, or car pooling or even living closer to work. It is true that sheer cost does motivate, but does it do so too late? The reality is that it is a global demand surge coupled by a supply plateau that is putting the price of oil higher and higher. This will take fundamental economic shifts to address, which will likely not be made until the shock might be too much to recover from. The reality is that a new energy future is on the horizon, which will be solar, nuclear wind and electrically driven, but can it be implemented before the tata nanos hit the road? Too bad we didn’t start the shift a few years back.

So is government intervention the answer? Perhaps, but the reality is that both climate change and the rising cost of oil were both easily predicted. If someone like me, with a theology degree could have predicted this, I would think that the smart people governments hired could have also figured this out. Yet they didn’t act. In Canada, as one former government insider informed me, it was basically department infighting, and a lack of political will that killed any effective action. Now both in Canada and the US it is simply the political power of oil companies, and the sheer cost of change.

So with what are we left? That is a good question. My guess is that the answer is in between. With smart policies using markets, and planning combined to address these answers. I am not sure though. It is perhaps something important for each of us to answer.

The same things is also true for religion. Christianity in the west is crashing. There are signs of the future, but how will the transition happen? That is a question for all of us to not just answer but to live. á

What are we called to?

I have been doing a lot of thinking lately. A church has expressed some interest in calling me and I am left debating. At the heart of my debate is the question of what is the church going to be? What it has been is clearly in the process of dieing. To be honest it is right that it should die. The question is what will the church look like which God is wanting to be born?

What I keep coming back to is the need for us to break out of the Constantine model of church. That is, as it has largely existed for 1700 years, as an instrument of empire. Just as we are largely still unaware the degree to which anti-semitism has corrupted Christianity, we are also painfully unaware how much are closeness to empire has led us to miss the point. It was after all a need of the empire that resulted in a church being built to ensure correct doctrine, correct structures, correct control. It was a need of the empire to have people focus on the after life instead of injustices of this life. It was the need of an empire to have religion not look to closely at its capacity for transformation. The result has been a church increasingly irrelevant, increasingly left to fight over scraps, increasingly empty.

So what are we called to? To me it seems like it is time to reclaim some of the ancient models of church, and to discover some new ones. We must learn to again be a community set apart, centered around Christ, a part, but not of the world. It seems we are being called to re-discover the transforming depths of prayer. We are called to live out prophetic action; To practice barrier bashing hospitality; compassion; simplicity; complete generosity; and to again walk into the mystery of God.

In short we are called to become communities which struggle to live out the gospel, and by living it out both proclaim and discover Christ.

The question is what will this take? How will we live this out?

The Future of Faith

I just heard an excellent program on the CBC show ideas. It was an interview with futurist and inventor Ray Kurzweil (Most recent book: Singularity). What it did was provide an excellent glimpse into a future which the current rate of technological advance can predict. It is a fascinating picture. It is one where human life spans are dramatically increased. It is a future where computers not only become more powerful then the human brain, but also one in which we can tap directly into that computing power. Is religion ready for this?

I ask that question as a bit of a joke. I think that in many ways religion is not even ready for the technological revolution that has already happened. Now what I am not talking about is the use of LCD projectors or electric guitars in worship, or websites, podcasts or the many other ways that religious organizations have tacked on technology. What I am thinking about is how our technological advances have changed the place of religion in society.

Lets face it. The dominant forms of Christianity were largely produced out of a time in which Christianity could claim a degree of dominance. Thus for centuries you could have an organizational structure, the church, claim exclusive access to knowledge. By training their clergy and deciding who could be a part of that organization, religious knowledge was controlled and the church maintained almost complete monopolistic power. Sure there were many other voices that arose. Their ability to challenge the monopoly of the church was very limited. The most successful reform attempts where able to effect change largely by creating their own organizational and communal structures. Thus the reform movements were limited largely to monastic reform movements; first Cluny, Cistercians, latter Dominicans, Franciscans and interesting in response to the reformation the Jesuits. Then came the printing press.

Suddenly a monk from the relatively backwater town of Wittenberg was able to spread his ideas and unleash a torrent of reforming voices that tore through Western Christianity. What happened was that knowledge control shifted from a church to books. Key books became the point of both limiting and defining religious knowledge, whether those books were The Bible, Confessions, theological treatises, catechisms etc. Still organizational structures retained their importance, and the mode of the gathered community as the point of religious life continued.

Now we live in the days of the internet, greatly increased life expectancies, jet travel etc. It is clear that the question of control of religious knowledge has changed. I now have not only access to libraries of sacred books from almost every tradition. Any religious voice can have its voice heard, from radical fundamentalist terrorists to Jainists. In my own life I have had the opportunity to hear many of the most influential religious voices personally as well as on-line. The reality is that while many religious organizations still try to make their claim for exclusive religious knowledge. These claims increasingly fail. As many evangelical leaders report they may be coming in the front door quickly, but they are leaving out the back just as quick. (Most main line churches don’t even have them coming in the front door). The reality is that we are now in a diverse and competitive religious environment and that is here to stay. From now on if religious are not delivering the goods that people are searching for they will be gone.

Now many religious leaders start to complain that this shift to consumer religion is nothing but evil and a reflection on our selfishness. I am no longer so sure. I actually believe that there are lots of people searching for some real spiritual substance. Consumer glitz and marketing might get them in, but don’t expect them to stay.

Perhaps much more importantly, and perhaps why religious leaders are really so nervous, is that if you don’t have the goods, if you are not responding to real needs. Then your future is bleak.

This is an important reversal. Most pastors are trained as experts. That is they are representatives of a religious faith, which usually believes that it is the best and knows everything. So it trains people to simply recite “the truth.” The best critique for this came from a friend of mine, Joe, who basically said that Lutheranism has the best theology, . . . that is for 16th century questions. In other words if Lutherans keep answering 16th century questions, as an organization they get to hang out with the dodo. Every denomination or church better start asking which century’s question they are addressing. If it isn’t the 21st, yea sorry.

So what are the questions we need to pay attention to? Well the reality is that most people despite our massive technological advances still find themselves often in lives that are unhappy, lacking meaning, connection or a sense that they are actually making a difference. The reality is that our massive influx of knowledge also causes us to realize the world’s problems, realize how small we are, and also to ask the big question . . . what is this all about. Or perhaps more importantly where do I fit into this. The other reality is that people are going to live a lot longer. The other reality is that once people start getting older they start wanting to explore the spiritual dimensions of life.

Very large on the horizon is that with all these advances, the reality is that there are still billions who don’t even get enough food to eat or receive the most basic of education and healthcare. Who will make sure that the voices of the poor are heard and ensure creation is protected?

In other words, while most denominations like my own, have leaders who have deiced to steer themselves into inevitable demise. The reality is that the future of religion on the whole is that it is remarkably bright and important.

So what will it take for religion to thrive? The reality is a remarkably different sort of leadership. Out goes the excessive worries over organizational structure, policies, practices, preserving a culture or an identity (usually a code word for the club). We don’t need leaders who can simply recite. Instead what is needed is a leadership which can listen to the questions and concerns of people and be able to access the entire richness of the tradition. We need leaders who can walk with people into the depths of their questions. We need leadership who can respond to the realities of the world and shape the church so that it organizationally can give them a means of responding. In a world where people move more and more and become more and more fragments, we need leaders who can facilitate the formation of communities, where people can have a real sense of belonging. We need leaders who can walk into the rich diversity of life, and gather people together who can bring hope, meaning, purpose and real change.

Over the coming years it will be very interesting to see which communities will be able to follow the spirit enough to emerge as a meaningful community of faith in a rapidly transforming world.