A Church for The Church

I have been wrestling, another thing I aparently do a lot of, with the purpose of 'a church' in 'the church'.

NOTE: I use the indefinite pronoun (a) to refer to nay given building, organization and/or group of people; the definite pronoun (the) to refer to the 'spiritual Israel' that makes up all people who have listened to Jesus and are trying to follow him. This is a traditional and, in some ways, inadequate way of talking about things; yet, in dealing with a practical issue, we need practical definitions.

So what is the purpose of a church? I wonder if some of the anti-church bias we're starting to see (everyone is interested in small groups and house churches) has to do with putting unrealistic expectations on a church as an organization. We want it to be our social outlet, or center for teaching, our center for worship, our center for formation, the regional headquarters for evangelism and, for some people, for the 'culture war'. We want it to do so much, and when it doesn't provide these things, we get frustrated. We feel let down.

But are these expectations reasonable? How much can we expect one or two dedicated people to do? And how much of what we depend on a church, a pastor, a ministry team to do ought we to do for ourselves?

I have started looking at a church more like the hub of a network. It provides access to services that I need; it isn't the service, it doesn't control the service, but I may come there looking for it. Along these lines, I have started to consider attending a local Catholic church. I went to a Lutheran church for a while, and I enjoyed the worship very much; the liturgy is powerful to me. However, this 'a' church was not the center for spiritual growth and social interaction that I hoped it would be. I have now found these services elsewhere (Enoch's Path, a local 'Jesus Community'). However, I am now missing what I found at the Lutheran church - an embodyment of our Christian life in worship, the liturgy.

I can envision a church that functions as a network; this church would connect me with people who think like I do, who wrestle with the questions I wrestle with; this church would lead worship in many different ways, perhaps in many different places - in as many ways as there are people who wish to express themselves differently (including the liturgy, I hope!); this church would form social networks, connect people who wanted to serve in similar ways, even if the people were outside the church. Why doesn't this church exist? Why is every church so convinced that they have every right answer, that they already meet every need?

Father, help me to see you everywhere I look. It's so easy to complain; it's so easy to find little things to complain abut; maybe I'm being too picky. I still think I'll contact the local Catholic church.

There are people out there?!

O my - people read my blog! I feel somewhat obligated to post to it now...

Hopefully I won't get boring, and I'll actually have the time.

News & Names

All sorts of news. No sexless nickname is needed for the baby now - she's Anna Leigh Mogle. I'll admit I was kind of pulling for a boy, but I've totally changed my mind now. A girl will be so much fun! I'll get to show her love, treat her like a woman, threaten her potential boyfriends straight, etc. It'll be exciting!

Also on the news front...it looks like we'll be moving to Kalamazoo. I need to get my teaching certificate, and I want to get it as quickly as possible through a curriculum that I can actually stomach. That rules out MSU with their year-long student teaching and the seriously awful curriculum. So Western it is. If there's any good news in this, it's that we do know a few people in Kalamazoo, some friends from high school. We actually don't see them as often as we ought, so it will be nice living near them for a change.

Anyways, this isn't my spot for personal news alone, so here's something I've been chewing on lately. I wonder why it is that in the Emergent conversation people tend to use first names? It sounds so strange to me, coming from Academia. Brian McLaren is 'Brian'. Doug Pagitt is 'Doug'. When people talk like this, I start to think they're talking about someone they know. And they don't know these people, not really anyways (at least, I don't see how so many people could truly be on a first name basis with Brian McLaren and Doug Pagitt). Anyways, I wonder if it's #1 - an anti-academia type of thing. #2 - a 'personal' type of thing. #3 - a communal type of thing. Personal and communal? Sort of weird, but it works. Referencing someone by their first name is obviously more personal than using their last and, at the same time, less so; it both fills them with personality, but throws them in with all the other 'Brian's and 'Doug's that are out there.

Long Time No Post

Man, it's been a while. I just haven't had time to write anything! Still don't, actually; I'm on my way out the door to the Enoch's Path meeting. Hopefully I'll get a little more time this summer. O well, not like anyone reads this thing anyways!

No Consensus

Why, Father, can't we learn to love without demanding something in return? Why can't I learn to do as Jesus - have compassion for those who are mislead, rather than arrogance and anger? Why, WHY, won't your body be unified? Perhaps we're all totally depraved after all.

Post-Left, Post-Right

I went to my first emerging-style gathering on Monday. It was very exciting. I took Bob with me, my very good friend. I didn't expect him to like it, but he's always interested in learning about new things in the church. He actually liked it a lot, but had one complaint - one of the prayer stations set up had news stories from 'liberal' sources. Now, Bob's not your typical conservative. He doesn't support the Iraq war, he doesn't support the US support of Israel. But he still feels, like many Christians, that most of the media is 'liberal' (a term I loathe to use - what's liberal about forcing any sort of agenda?!). It really got me thinking; how can we truly get past the right-wing, left-wing politics? This is just one more place where post-modernism comes into play. Politics are so based on buzzwords that language, a means of communication that we tend to think of as inherently based on logic, breaks down. Certain words, rather than conveying the meaning of the speaker, really end up triggering emotional and visceral responses in the hearer. And so this man whom I love, a compassionate man, complained about an article about how many people are dying of AIDS in Africa, how many children are being devastated by the Iraq war, how many people cannot find work after the Katrina disaster. Did he really mean that he doesn't have sympathy for these people? No. But these issues have been so embedded in political language that it's nearly impossible to talk about them without being (or at least being seen as) partisan.

I don't say this meaning anyone to think that I'm not guilty of the same thing. I have so much difficulty getting beyond words. Partly because I think of myself as a 'rational' person, whatever that means.

How do we get beyond this? I don't think I have an answer. The answer can't come from the speaker, or even an intermediary; the answer has to come in the form of a radical change in the way we think about the conveyance of ideas. An inner change. But isn't that what Christ is good at?

Blogging and Postmodernism

The more I look into this blogging thing, the more it feels like an exercise in postmodernism. While lots would like to say that postmodernism is about rejecting traditional values (both opponents and proponents, I sometimes think), it is more than anything about there just being too much information. Too much information to make sense of in a logical, reasonable way, to the point where you question the ability of reason and of logic to make sense of anything. Blogs are like that. They're easy to make. There's one about anything and everything. Almost all of them are valid in their existence, and potentially valuable in their content (not this one, of course!). What do you do with all of them?! You could spend your whole life reading other people's thoughts. Is this just another way to ignore the real world? Is it a way to react with the real world?

Thank goodness for the various tools that let us sort through (if not make sense of) this innundation of information: I just downloaded firefox, and I've started hooking up some of the blogs and things that I read to live bookmarks. I held off for a while because I had tried firefox on my machine a while ago, and I didn't like it. It didn't show Perseus' new java interface properly. O well; I don't use Perseus that much anyways! It was also a little slow, but I found a tip on how to fix that here and it seems to work pretty well.

Rules for Proper Road Tripping

1. If you are to make plans, make them at the last minute, and make them scarce.
2. If your destination is known, leave out the 'getting there' details. If you're not sure where you're going, make sure you have lots of maps.
3. Bring snacks.
4. Bring music.
5. Look for the unexpected.

So Amanda and I took a spontaneous road trip to Cedarville, Ohio last week. We went to visit Mark, our good friend, and to see Donald Miller. Spending time with Mark is always rewarding. The Donald Miller appearance was fun and, at the same time, a little disheartening. Miller was asked by the host, 'What is your role in the emerging church?' His response was 'I don't even know what that means. I don't like the criticism that comes with it, but I like the book sales' (more or less). I stuck around for 1 1/2 hours after the show (show? appearance? reading?...), but when I got to the table, Miller pretty much just wanted to sign my book and keep the line moving. I said, 'I was surprised to hear you say that you don't know anything about the emerging church movement.' 'Ya,' he responded. I'm not cracking him. 'O. Are you familiar with Brian McLaren?' I continue. 'Ya, he's a friend,' Miller responds. At that point, he didn't seem interested in hearing me say anything else, so I moved on. How can Miller be friends with McLaren, and not know anything about the EMC? How can his church, Imago Dei, have 'emerging' hidden on their pages to draw Google searches, and yet he doesn't know anything about it? And does the fact that he didn't say 'ass' or 'bastard' in his reading, as the pieces read, have any relation to the fact that he wouldn't associate with emerging at school as conservative as Cedarville?

I'm not sure what to make of it. But the reading was good; Miller seemed like a very nice, very tired guy. I can't blame him. He's been on the road, I think, for a while. Plus, I was one of about 300 people who stood in line to get a signature. It must be tough to be friendly and forthcoming under all that pressure, expecially for a guy who, it seems, doesn't do well in the spotlight. I hope that he comes through whatever he's going through a little better refined.

Weary

Things are not going well. Everything's fine with Amanda and th baby. And I'm in perfect health. The thing is my nerves - they seem to be shot. I don't have any discipline, and I can't seem to get my work done. I don't usually think of myself as a psychologically weak person; but for the past week I just haven't seemed to have any strength at all. I don't know what's going on. If anyone stumbles onto this and cares, please, brother, lift me up in prayer.

I found an interesting new forum - the Christian Pipesmoker's Forum. I'll add a link at the side. First of all, I'm learning lots more about pipes, tobacco and smoking. Second, I started a conversation there about emergent. It's not going so well. People just don't seem to understand the need. My favorite thing of all, though, is that the main argument so far has been 'why leave an old church to look for something new rather than fix the church you're in?' This from mainly reformed Christians! It seems a little odd.

I've also learned that I'm not nearly so far along in working for church unity as I thought. But I wonder if anyone is; I've realized that many of the people I've been reading, both in books and on the internet, are still in such a reactionary place that we speak in terms of 'why we're better than traditional/modern Christians/churches'. That can't be good; the point, it seems to me, of postmodernity is understanding that there is good in ALL types of Christian walks (well, alright, MOST); God is big enough to express himself in any way we can think of, and probably quite a few that we can't. So why shouldn't there be believers who are right at home in a traditional church? It makes perfect sense.

Been a while

I haven't posted in a while, but no one else reads this, so I guess it doesn't matter! Anyways, on the interesting news front, I got the first real feedback on my 'Laelius' today from my good friend Bob - he said it was interesting, and agreed whole-heartedly with my translation ethic. Which was uplifting. And I have baby pictures! Well, ultrasound pictures. I'll try to put one in here...hah! And there it is! Well, it's above. This will certainly be strange to read.

Ok, it's probably hard to see the baby in the picture; he's (or she's) reclining (although, actually, his feet are towards the ground), and it sort of looks like one arm is propping up his head and the other is up so he can suck his thumb. Sort of a relaxed position; Manda and I think that he's just taking it easy, laying back, having a cold...thumb....! Very funny.

Not much else new. Behind in school work, but of course that's not new. So back to it then...

Small Things

It's amazing to me how little things can become so huge. I set out tonight to spend some time updating my wiki with some old papers and things that I've written that I'm pretty proud of. That was a few hours ago. Where did the time go?? I'm not revising them or anything, just trying to edit them so that they look pretty on the screen, and trying to manage the network of links between wikis and wikipages - and I've barely gotten anything done!

Ah well. On to bigger and better topics. Is there anything better on a chilly evening than a nice, roasty, full-bodied stout? I really don't think so. Ahh! Warms you right down to your toes! My all-time favorite is still Bell's Double Cream Stout. It's sad to think that some day I'll have to leave Michigan; I'll have to find something that's local where I am to call my new favorite. I just hope that the beer in other states can compare! I've not really tried beer from other states, so I just don't know what's out there. I would assume that most states (except maybe Utah, as we learned in SLC Punk!) have at least one good microbrewery. I'll see eventually...

So I've been reading the 'Laelius', getting a little ahead of my translation. It's frustrating that there are still things that I just can't make out. I would think that after having read it for a class, and a year and a half worth of Latin later, I should be able to come back to it and make my way through it without too much trouble. Not happening. Most of it isn't too bad, but there are some little points that I just can't make say anything. I'll just have to keep trucking through, I guess.

Speaking of the 'Laelius', if you've actually taken the time to read this post (which is turning out to be ridiculously long!) you MUST have lots of time on your hands - so click on the 'My Laelius Translation' link on the right, and read it. Tell me what you think. It's not very long yet, and I'm trying REALLY hard to make it completely intelligible to anyone who might want to look at it. I would appreciate ANY feedback, you needn't be a Latinist, or even middly-to-highly educated to have a crack at it (and at me in your comments!). So, to take a page out of Nike's ad campaign, just do it!

From the soon-to-be-father

Amanda's been sick all day today. I thought we would be one of the lucky couples for the first few weeks of the pregnancy - she didn't get sick at all. I was wrong. As the end of the first trimester nears, it's getting worse and worse. But that's 'part of the fun' as one mother I know put it. I'm sorry for her, and at the same time I'm not. The only way she could get around this sickness is by not having our baby - I think she agrees that she'd rather have the baby!

Life is amazing, you know? It just never stops. You get out of high school, get married, get a job, have kids (not always in that order of course!). I'm so glad and thankful that I get to be in this beautiful place. That's right - despite everything that's wrong in this world, I still think of it as a beautiful place, with beautiful things and beautiful people. And they all never stop amazing me.

Emergent

So maybe the most interesting thing I've gotten into lately is the 'Emergent Church'. I'm not sure how to define it; by definition it defies definition. I think that's one of the reasons I like it - the rebel in me says 'Ya! Don't be defined!' In other ways, it just fits with ideas that have been floating around in my head for a long time. For instance, emerging Christians seem to be peacemakers rather than squabblers, a huge problem in our contemporary church. Rather than draw lines they like to have discussions. It seems like a perfect setting to learn.

But is Emergent a 'church'? Is it a style of worship? Is it a mentality? A philospohy? I don't know. Can a church, as in the local church, be 'emerging'? I just don't know. All I know is that the more I read about/by/for emerging Christians, the more turned on I am.

For more, check out Brian McLaren at http://www.anewkindofchristian.com.