:: In.a.Mirror.Dimly ::

I spent years believing that I didn’t belong in church. Prone to cliches, I often described myself as a square peg surrounded by round holes. I didn’t know if the problem was my squareness or the roundness of the church—so to speak.

Over the years, I’ve heard similar complaints about certain groups not fitting in at church.

Women feel overlooked and marginalized.

The more athletic, muscular men don’t feel like they can be themselves.

The more artistic, humanities-oriented men feel like they don’t have a place with either the church or the athletic men.

In general, the artists feel crammed into predefined categories where they lack creative freedom—if they are even acknowledged in the first place.

If you look at this list, it would seem that no one actually belongs in the church. Everyone feels left out.

In stepping back, I think it’s probably better to say that certain groups feel left out of certain churches. Some churches are less affirming toward men, while others are quite restrictive and disingenuous toward women.

I want to step back and ask, “What do we mean when we say we don’t feel like we belong in church?”

There are lots of broad, sweeping prescriptions for “fixing” our “problems,” but sometimes they just make things worse. My least favorite “solution” is the whole, “Our churches are too feminized” line of thinking—if we dare to even call this “thinking.” This strikes me as reactionary—men are not comfortable in church so it must be feminization!!!

Um, the women are who aren’t allowed to speak in feminized churches while getting saddled with all of the work actually sort of hate it and rightfully resent such statements. (I go into this particular topic a bit more here.)

We never want to overlook the needs of any one group, but by pitting men against women or attendees against leaders or whatever else is counterproductive. We need to start talking about what we actually mean when we make statements about not belonging in church.

There are a ton of reasons why church may not click for someone. Gender is but one of many issues swirling about.

From the best to the worst, every church is a system and a culture to a certain degree—even those that try to just keep it simple. Trends will emerge, groups will form, and others will struggle to fit in. Expectations develop, those gifted for leadership will emerge (whether by calling alone or by gender/calling), and membership traits will coalesce in one way or another.

By the time all of these things take place, there will be those who fit and those who do not. And the question remains, how do some people end up fitting in while others do not? The answers aren’t simple here.

I hope to ask this question from a few different angles this week. Stay tuned.

Sometimes I write totally ridiculous stuff about pastors raging with testosterone who pound on pulpits. Other times I play with hyperbole in response to pastors who dress business casual and say pretty awful things about women in the nicest way possible.

When I write with these over the top conventions, I think I sometimes make guys think, “Whoah!”

For those not familiar with guy speak, that can be translated as, “Hey men, get off my case!”

It’s possible I may be using hyperbole right now.

Translation matters aside, I wonder if my over the top introductions give the wrong impression. While I’m making light of the more extreme masculinity stuff, I certainly don’t want to shoot down any guys. In playing off the extreme ways that men have alienated women, I don’t want to alienate men in the process.

In fact, I believe that equality in the church can happen through a very simple formula.

Less win for men + more win for women = Everyone wins.

That an English major could express an idea in mathematical form, no matter how basic, is just about as shocking as a certain pastor in Seattle going on Queer Eye for the Straight Guy—especially since that show is probably cancelled. I’m also sure there’s probably a more complex way to write out that equation with parentheses and exclamation points or whatever they use for math these days.

Be that as it may, here’s the tension we face:

Do we need to tear men down in order to build women up? Not exactly.

This isn’t an either/or situation, but it does require some changes and shifts. It may even require some downgrades for men. However, the talk of equality doesn’t need to turn into a matter where there is a winner and a loser.

If you follow The Office, you know that it’s possible to have a win/win/win solution. You win, the other person wins, and I win because I helped you both win. It’s so crazy that it just may work.

The key to gender equality, in my eyes, is that it requires one side winning a little less so that everyone can win. That may feel like a big deal, but think of it this way, if women can actually stop losing and win a bit more, the men may end up winning in other ways… ahem. 

Think of it like this… let’s say hypothetically that on a certain occasion I am failing to communicate with my wife—not that such a thing EVER happens. But just in a fictional, make believe world, I commit the twin offenses of keeping my thoughts to myself and failing to listen to my wife.

Most of you should be able to guess what happens next. If not, we need to talk.

My wife will feel neglected, and that failure on my part puts a ton of strain on the marriage. Worse than that, my failure to build lines of communication make my wife feel helpless. What can she do if she feels neglected and can’t communicate with me?

THAT is our problem in the church. Many women feel ignored, have been abused, and don’t have any way to pursue a solution. They can’t even say how they feel in many churches. The inequality and neglect women feel in the church is cutting men off from something awesome and beautiful: empowered women who can reach their God-given potential, serving alongside of them and supporting them when they grow weary.

When I say that men need to “lose” a little, what I’m really saying is they need to trade some of their dominance in order to listen and to cultivate more equality with women. When they lose some of that dominance, I think they’ll gain something far better in the end—a healthy role for women in the church.

This trades a structure in the church defined by power for relationships in the church defined by love. For people who follow a dude who made his disciples into his very own family rather than keeping them as servants, this is a pretty basic concept to grasp.

So when we talk about equality for women in the church, I think we need to beware overstating our case or threatening men in unhelpful ways. We don’t want to make this sound like men need to lose everything. This isn’t about the end of masculinity. This is a shift, a relatively small lose in the long run that has a huge pay off.

Men can go shoot stuff, grill it, and watch a boxing match or whatever. That’s not the problem. The problem is that the power in the church is slanted so far toward men that women feel neglected and boxed in. That’s something nobody wants.

With equality in the church, we’re creating the ideal environment where everyone can win.

Guys like me can till manure from my rabbits into my vegetable garden.

Other guys can pursue God with a sense of strength and adventure.

Women can express their God-given gifts without fear or limitation.

Even if getting there takes a little bit of uncertainty and shifting, we all can win,

Win. Win. Win.

Just like The Office.

Years of being blessed with a low checking account balance forced me to rethink my approach to Christmas. Those were not easy years as I tried to tell myself that Christmas isn’t all about the presents, while fearing that my family would consider me cheap or inconsiderate.

A budget gift is a budget gift.

In a happy case of irony, my focus on gift-giving lead me back to a better conception of Christmas.

If art thrives on limitation, gift-giving followed suit. If I only had ten dollars to spend on each person, I had to ask very different questions for gift-giving, the most important being: “What would this person never buy for himself/herself?”

This lead to a series of time-consuming projects such as homemade applesauce, unique jams, hot sauce, and framed photographs. Everything was tailored to the specific needs of each person and in most cases kept us within our budget.

The first time I gave my grandmother a jar of homemade applesauce, she opened it right away and burst into tears at the first taste. She hadn’t eaten homemade applesauce since the last time her mother had made it. My mom guards her jar of blueberry jam, while my in-laws don’t miss a meal without their hot sauce.

As we’ve reached greater financial security, we’ve been able to spend more money on gifts, but our question remains the same. Oddly enough, the homemade gifts are still a big hit. In addition, we’ve begun to keep our Christmas spending under control by joining together with family members to buy one large gift that someone would never purchase on his/her.

I organized some pretty epic purchases that both met a relative’s need and ensured a minimum investment—the biggest ticket item being a computer for my wife before she entered graduate school. I’d share some examples from this year, but I don’t want to spoil the surprise for anyone.

Ironically, the more I’ve thought about my gift-giving strategy, the more I’ve been drawn away from focusing on giving gifts and pondering the power of God. Isn’t Christmas all about the power of God to do for us what we could never do for ourselves?

I love the promise that Gabriel made to Mary, “The Holy Spirit will come on you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you.”

God overshadows us. He breaks into our gift-giving madness to remind us that our iPads will one day break, our E-readers will be replaced, our shirts will unravel, and even our jams will go rotten. We can’t beat greed, materialism, and selfishness on our own. We’ll keep thinking that these bits of technology and clothing are what we really need.

God knows that we need to overshadowed. We need him to overcome every competing desire in our life. Only he can overshadow every idol that tries to replace those quiet moments where we sense that the loving touch of God is what we were made to experience, even if we think we’ll be fulfilled by touching what we have made.

There is incredible joy in giving someone a gift that he could never acquire on his own. In fact, meeting a real need is the best kind of gift giving. God knew that when he overshadowed Mary with his power and sent us a Savior as the greatest gift—doing something we could never accomplish on our own.

May we find that joy both in our relationships with God and with one another. May we find what only God can give and meet needs that would otherwise remain.

This post is part of World Vision’s 12 Blogs of Christmas Project about the true spirit of Christmas. In order to learn more real needs that you can meet this Christmas season, check out the World Vision Catalogue.

Do you have your own story about the true spirit of Christmas? Share it today at the World Vision blog.

I was careful to avoid saying that I would never go to church again, but it was certainly hard to imagine how it would ever happen again. Nine years ago I left a season of rooted stability in my faith and entered into a six-year season of transition into another expression of Christianity.

The basics remained the same, but over that time my perceptions of the church, salvation, the mission of God, the ministry of the church, and my own life calling passed through a major, major overhaul. I don’t know if you’ve ever done major renovations on a house before, but much like house renovations, my faith renovations were not pretty.

I was angry, frustrated, and disappointed at various times. I had a hard time tolerating those who remained rooted with their faith in tact. Sometimes I struck out at them, and sometimes they struck out at me for asking unsettling questions.

I’m now in a season of relative stability, rooted in a take on God that fits my limited perspective. As I look back over the past nine years of transition, I can see how others around me are in similar seasons of being either rooted or transitioning.

• Some have been disappointed by Christianity for various reasons and left the faith.
• Some have switched from one denomination to another.
• Some are still wandering.
• Some have found loving Christian community in new places that had previously been off their radar.

If we hope to keep the unity of Christ in the midst of our divisions, we need to understand these seasons. Besides our divisions over beliefs and practices, we can also divide over our seasons of belief.

At the risk of oversimplifying things, here are three seasons I have observed:

The Rooted Season of Faith

Many of us are in a rooted season in our faith where we have a certain level of comfort with our understanding of the Bible, our spiritual practices, and the ways we serve others. Those who are rooted need to be aware of welcoming those who are sprouting in their faith and have yet to find their place, while also remaining patient with those who are being transplanted.

The Transplant Season of Faith

For some of us who have been rooted in one spot for a while, sometimes the old answers and ways of doing things stop making sense. We all have our different reasons for pulling up our roots and moving elsewhere, though sometimes wider trends emerge.

Transplants are often in vulnerable positions, as they don’t feel like they fit anywhere, their beliefs have been shaken in some way, and they may be hurting enough to become combative. The hardest thing for a rooted person is patiently loving an argumentative transplant. I reached a point during my own transplant process that I actually couldn’t go to church for a season because I wasn’t in a healthy place to deal with it.

Besides spreading conflict, another problem with transplants is they sometimes rush into something new without dealing with their previous hurts and disappointments. I saw this a lot with folks who were disappointed by the church and then jumped right into house churches or emerging churches without seeking healing first.

The Sprouting Season of Faith

On the opposite end of the spectrum from the more jaded transplants are the sprouts, Christians who are still enthusiastic about their faith. The danger with sprouts is transplants can snuff out their zeal with their grievances, while those who are rooted may fail to reach out to them and nurture them in the faith.

A sprout can wither easily and get trampled down if it isn’t guarded with care. Sprouts will have lots of questions and they may feel overwhelmed by the maturity of those with deep roots. Those who are rooted must make sure they protect the sprouts from storms and hard times, ensuring they receive the nourishment from God they need so badly.

Besides different beliefs and practices, Christians differ with their seasons of faith. I’m sure there are folks who would claim to be hybrids or something different altogether, but these three seasons keep coming up for me. When we understand the seasons of faith of those in our communities, we’ll be able to love them right where they’re at today.

Do these seasons of faith make sense to you?

Have you passed through a season of transition or of being rooted?

Last night I realized that I may have an unhealthy relationship with my computer…

Dear Loving Computer Screen,

Thank you for always being on whenever I need you. Thank you for providing me with work to do and money in my bank account. Thank you for giving me thousands of followers and hundreds of friends. Thank you for providing hours of streaming NHL hockey to help me battle the evil forces of laundry and dishes.

I offer my day to you, focusing my eyes on your brightly illuminated pixels in search of guidance and provision. Only you can provide the programs I need to open, the hyperlinks I need to click, and the Klout that I desire so badly.

Only you can connect me to the infinite wisdom and entertainment of the internet. Only you can make my day better.

Guide me, consume my time, and fill me with the good things I desire from life. May I rest in the peace of your presence throughout today. Be with me whether I’m online or offline, for now and until you’re rendered obsolete by the next big thing.

A-RAM

Do you ever feel like you’re always plugged in? It’s like sometimes my life is so tied to the internet that I can’t escape it.

I work through the internet. I keep in touch with friends through the internet. I watch hockey through the internet.

The hard part is that even my leisure can begin to merge with my work, and if I’m misbehaving, my work can be slowed by my leisure. In order to make the most of my time in either category, I need to be fully present with one or the other.

And yet more and more, I find myself fighting against blurring lines. Time leaks away from work, or work tries to invade my quiet Sunday afternoons.

A gift I’ve received from God lately has been permission to fully rest. When I’m relaxing on an evening or weekend, I have permission to just focus on a full period of hockey without checking my e-mail—unplugging from my work. If I’m taking a walk, the phone stays turned off. If I’m eating dinner on the porch, the computer, Nook, and phone stay inside while I watch the sunset swirl with reds, oranges, and purples.

I keep hearing this whisper over and over again to be fully present where I’m at. This is so different from my frantic, multi-tasking tendencies, that I can only say it is something that God is impressing on me.

This week has been particularly busy. I’m going to the Indianapolis Christian Writing Conference on Friday, and I picked up some extra projects. I’ve worked some long days. I could have worked even longer days.

Despite my overwhelming to-do list, last night I sensed that I needed to eat dinner on the porch and spend a little time in the living room with the rabbits while a hockey game played in the background. These aren’t things that I do naturally. My wife is often shocked to see me sitting on the couch, just relaxing.

These short, simple pleasures were gifts. I would never give myself permission to stop. I can always find another project, another e-mail, and another chore.

God’s gift to me has been rest—permission to unplug and enjoy an evening at home. Rest is just as available and unlimited as my projects and work, but I need to choose to receive it.

Read more posts about God’s gifts today at Faith Barista: The Book that Would Not Go Away

In the sometimes illogical world of sports where beards are grown in the playoffs and jerseys are left unwashed for good luck, there is a term for fair-weather fans who only support a team at the peak of its success: bandwagon fans. The bandwagon fans don’t endure the losing seasons or the ups and downs along the road to winning the championship.

Bandwagon fans want all of the enjoyment at the end of the season without enduring the regular season. So far as I can tell, that’s perfectly fine in sports. However, when we apply the bandwagon fan principle to other things, it’s not quite as attractive.

The Bandwagon Fan for Campaigns

For example, we have politicians campaigning right now for positions such as president, best friend to lobbyists, and most likely be swayed by large campaign donors. Campaigns have staff and volunteers who invest long, hard days for the sake of their candidates.

Can you imagine someone refusing to help this candidate when given the chance, merely clicking a button in the voting both, and then celebrating as if he/she had been an integral part of the campaign? The bandwagon fan doesn’t look so hot in that scenario.

Bandwagon Faith

The interesting thing about Jesus, is that he’ll welcome anyone into the Kingdom at anyone point of his/her life. If you receive Jesus with your dying breath, you’re just as much a part of the Kingdom as someone who was raised in a Christian home, serving Christ with every breath.

There are no merit badges to accumulate in the Kingdom. We can enter it at any time.

On the other hand, when we are given an opportunity to follow Jesus today, and we put it off until a later point, we have a major problem. We are reminded in the book of Hebrews that today is the day of salvation. If you hear God’s voice today, don’t ignore it.

Let his voice speak into your life, and then take action. Faith is demonstrated by works in the present, not future aspirations.

Bandwagon faith says that we don’t need to fully commit ourselves to God’s Kingdom campaign today. The “bandwagonner” plans to celebrate fully in the Kingdom some day, but fails to invest in the work of God today. Bandwagon faith tries to squeak by with the bare minimum of commitment, ignoring the call of God in the present.

When Christians fail to live in obedience, it’s like we’re saying to God, “We’ll take care of ourselves today, and we’ll get around to you later. Oh, and we can’t wait for that big party with you some day!”

Obedience make’s God’s call a priority, taking tentative, sometimes faltering steps forward. When we leave bandwagon faith behind, we are able to find the joy and peace of God in our present circumstances, even if the way forward is sometimes uncertain and difficult.

We learn that the joy and celebration promised in God’s coming Kingdom can actually be ours to enjoy today. Bandwagon faith robs us of the most precious gift of God: Jesus fully present in our lives today through his Spirit.

I take my metaphors to their natural conclusion, which I feel is my warrant as a writer. So, when someone says, “I go to church to get fed,” I can’t help thinking of a baby sitting in a high chair with his mouth open and someone stuffing food into it. Fussing and spit up is part of it.

That metaphor of being “fed” at church has been a powerful one. When Willow Creek Community Church  conducted their church-wide study called Reveal, they discovered that they needed to help their people become “self-feeders.” In other words, mature Christians had grown too dependent on being spoon-fed truth. Church was not a self-serve buffet, but rather a series of high chairs.

We need teaching and instruction, especially if we’re young in the faith. The Bible is tricky, but we also need to learn how to pray and serve others.

Have we possibly associated church too closely with being fed spiritual truth to the exclusion of some other important things?

And related to that, How responsible should mature Christians be for their own instruction in the faith?

The difference between now and most other times in Christian history is that we have access to incredible resources such as books, blogs, online videos, and podcasts. We have accessible commentaries, study tools, and hundreds of trained teachers publishing books that will crack open the Bible for us.

There are some amazing books being published by seminary professors right now that languish in obscurity between the academy and the church because they’re a little technical at times. Make no mistake, teaching yourself is hard work.

I’m not trying to say that pastors preaching sermons are unnecessary. Rather, I wonder if it’s time to reimagine what being “fed” could look like and whether we focus so much on being fed that we forget about the other things that our churches could do. In the process we can take a lot of pressure off our pastors and allow them to focus on ensuring we are becoming spiritually healthy, living as obedient disciples, and serving others where needed in our communities.

I personally know that it’s much easier to spend ten hours pouring over a commentary because Paul said truth is important. However, I’m not quite as fast to jump to the aid of the poor in my community for a few hours, even though we see examples in Acts of the early church providing for orphans and widows, to say nothing of James.

Focusing on teaching truth is pretty easy for folks like me, especially those of us who enjoyed seminary. However, teaching and instructing is just one part of the larger picture. In addition, it may be possible to still do it well without reinventing the wheel.

I’ll be honest, I’m not a lover of sermons. There have been sermons that changed my life, but I think there could have been many, many more life-changing sermons if the pastor stopped talking after fifteen minutes and we focused on putting it into practice as a community. In other words, it’s good to teach that Jesus delivered people from evil spirits, but I’m just as interested in taking time on Sunday to pray for people who feel tormented by temptation.

Each denomination has its strengths when it comes to teaching and preaching. I come from a background that was heavy on teaching, so I’m writing from that perspective—hoping for a little more practice and a little less head knowledge when I gather with believers in community.

I’m aware that we need diversity and that my experience will differ from others. I’m also aware that these are big, systemic and tradition-based matters I’m raising today. Change, if it ever happens, would be slow.

However, I think we need to step back and imagine some new possibilities:

What could it look like if we took some of the teaching pressures away from our pastors and placed it on ourselves?

How could we ensure that teaching still happens?

Would our pastors be able to minister a little more effectively with less teaching responsibilities?

I had to confront one of my fears a few weeks ago. It’s a bit too private to share all of the details on a blog, but if I had to list the top three things that freak me out, I’d say this is right up there. It’s the kind of fear that I can’t control, that I know can only be resolved through prayer that I’ve been too afraid to seek.

A few weeks ago, I decided to take action. I wasn’t facing anything life threatening or uncomfortable, but I was in a situation that made it really easy to face that fear. The freak out was pretty awesome: sweaty palms, beating heart, short breaths. I was a ball of fun at close quarters in the elevator that day.

And then something changed. I gained an understanding of the actual source of my fear, and I realized that I’d completely mischaracterized it. It wasn’t quite as bad as I thought, even if it still kind of freaks me out.

By staring into my fear, I discovered a weak point in its defenses, and you’d better believe I’m praying into that weak spot with everything I’ve got.

On Becoming Less Fearful

I had a chat with some classmates at my 10-year college reunion, and one guy asked how we’ve changed over the past 10 years. One friend said that he is now less fearful after working through so many hard times at his first job. He cares far less about what people think of him, and he is far more confident as takes risks and pursues challenges.

In a sense, his first job blasted him with so many sources of stress and anxiety that they soon lost their power. He saw them at their worst, and he realized that God was able to sustain him.

There are real things to fear in this world, but so much of what we fear is insubstantial, lacking teeth. The substantial parts of our fears may knock us around when we face them, but God is able to deliver us because Jesus is Lord over all.

Facing our fears often seems like a terrible at idea in the thick of things. However, we’ll never have a chance to experience God’s power and deliverance unless we own our fears and let him begin working in us.

I have found that deliverance is often a process, a series of stumbling steps forward. As I discovered in the elevator that day with my nervous faith, God can break through and begin to heal us when we face our fears.

When I read a story or watch a movie, I crave a just and tidy resolution. I want everything to be put right. A delayed resolution is the last thing I want in a story.

In removing myself from pages and movie screens, I want the same thing in life: a tidy resolution. Much of the strain we face in this world is that such resolutions are delayed, even if they are guaranteed to us in the Bible.

We live our lives, pass into a time of waiting with God, and then we will one day be resurrected along with the rest of God’s new creation. So far as I can tell from the Bible, the resurrection and the life that follows are where God brings the resolutions that we crave today and the full blessings that we hope for.

Waiting is essential.

The resurrection assures us that there is something enormously significant waiting for us when Christ returns. If anything, we are tempted to make too much of today and too little of the good things God has prepared for us in the restored rule of Christ.

We engage in works of justice and peace not because we want to seize control of this world, but because we want to proclaim that God is already in control in ways we don’t yet understand and moving us toward something else. That is the hardest part of the Kingdom for me. God is King here and now today, but his rule is not fully present among us.

The resurrection is the game changer, the moment that God will set things exactly as they should be. How we live between now and then is certainly a pressing matter. We are sometimes faced with a false choice between a spiritualized moralism and an activist moralism. One deals with the spiritual power of the Kingdom and the other deals with the manifestations of the Kingdom among us.

The Resurrection makes the foolishness of the Gospel possible. The meek, mourning, peacemaking underdogs truly are going to win because only God can raise the dead and recreate our world into a just and loving place.

We don’t fight for control of this world using its own tools. We declare that God is already in control in his mysterious ways and that one day he will bring the life, restoration, and justice that we miss so badly today.

If I ever lose hope, perhaps it is because I have asked God to bring his future resolutions into the present. Perhaps I need to learn how to wait, to submit myself to God’s timing, and to rest in the assurance and promise he gives us today: I am with you until the end of the age.

And so I’m learning that presence of Jesus is enough for today. He is the resolution.