Taking Our Church to the Moon

This particular Saturday morning found us up and scurrying around.  It was a break in our routine. Generally we are moving slowly, enjoying breakfast and taking time for conversation.  Not today.  Instead we were headed out to Grandview for a book party. 

We arrive to the frantic activity of wrapping, tying and predestinating the arrival of The Green Ember to selected destinations.  Every room is utilized.  Even the front porch has been converted into a post office of sorts.  Hospitality insists on an abundance of food and cups that never empty of drink.  Laborers partake along with laughter and conversation.  Then it’s back to work.   

This whole book adventure is the endeavor of the Sam and Gina Smith family.  They are imaginers and allies in imagination for other families.  We are happy to be a small support. 

Along about noon a call goes out for someone to run an errand.  I volunteer and Gina sends me out the door with a favorite Sara Groves CD.   Somewhere between Redwing Lane and Midway Road one of the songs intrudes into my thoughts in a positively jarring way.    

To the Moon

It was there in the bulletin
We're leaving soon
After the bake sale to raise funds for fuel
The rocket is ready and we're going to
Take our church to the moon

There'll be no one there to tell us we're odd
No one to change our opinions of God
Just lots of rocks and this dusty sod
Here in our church on the moon

We know our liberties we know our rights
We know how to fight a very good fight
Just grab that last bag there and turn out the light
We're taking our church to the moon
We're taking our church to the moon
We'll be leaving soon

Is Sara right?  Are we separating ourselves to the point of inconsequence?   Are we too tame, just way too tame?  Might we just as well take our church to the moon?  

Click here to hear To the Moon 

Dismiss the Nonsense

Pope John Paul II left explicit instructions in his will that his personal notes be burned (a request that was ignored by the way).  While unsure of his reasoning I often share the same sentiments when reading over previous journal entries. 

“What was I thinking?”  “I don’t quite see things that exact way any longer.”  “Will this become obsolete soon?”  “That statement was immature and arrogant.”  These disturbing questions and comments go off like fireworks in my head.

On the other hand, something therapeutic and insightful happens by entering into the creativity of writing.  As long, that is, as it doesn’t become a relentless slave driver to produce the next post.

So with that in mind please be quick to dismiss any and all nonsense found within these random writings.  I will, after all, probably come around to doing the same thing in the near future.    

Happenings in 2014

1. Maria arrived in New Zealand for a year with Torchbearers and proceeded to have the adventure of a lifetime.  Friends from around the world including France, Germany, and Canada have welcomed her for a visit.  She returned with an insight and depth that occasionally makes us uncomfortable. 

2. Every Friday morning the garbage truck arrives for the weekly collection.  This means that Thursday evenings are spent rounding up the trash, putting it in our old dilapidated container and dragging it to the street for pick-up. 

3. Jacob came to live in the basement bedroom after his graduation from the Bible College.  He is quiet.  We are loud.  Our friendship continues to grow.  He and his fiancé, Emily, have wedding plans for the Spring. 

4. On Easter weekend we learned Diana’s dad had cancer.  Much of the year has been adjusting to our family’s loss.

5. We drove to Branson, Missouri, to spend a week on the lake with Diana’s family before our nephew Josiah’s wedding.

6. Lots of the young adults from our group moved on – Josh to Portland, Jacklyn to Illinois, Nate to Louisville and Anica, too.  We miss them all. 

7. Used hardback books at the Goodwill in Arkansas are at the inflated price of $2, but I found one on our trip that was worth the price and was a mind shaper much like the Ancient-Future Worship one I bought on our October vacation.     

8. Daniel completed his time at Adelphia and moved to Everett, Washington, where he is employed at the Under the Red Umbrella Café, frequents a local gym and is trying his hand at launching a small business. 

9. Christina’s solo in the Messiah was inspiring and led to a request for her to sing at the United Methodist Temple for their Christmas Eve Services. 

10. She and Diana continue their school work with Classical Conversations. 

11.  New Year’s Eve found us at Family Dollar having a blast stretching our $7 for snacks to share at the annual Beckett Bash.  We had way more fun than we should have rounding up microwave popcorn, Ginger Ale, chocolate cookies, potato chips and Fiddle Faddle.   

Jesus’ Friends

Have you heard Tony Campolo tell of the time he ended up at a greasy spoon diner in Hawaii at three-thirty in the morning because jet lag kept him from sleeping?  While there he overheard a prostitute remark to her friends that tomorrow was her birthday.  It gave him the inspiration to ask the owner for permission to bring a cake and decorate the diner for a party the next night. 

The place was wall to wall prostitutes when she arrived to a “Happy Birthday Agnes” and wild cheering.  Agnes was stunned saying that she had never before had her own birthday cake and asked to take it home to show her mother.  After a few uneasy moments when she left, Tony finally blurted out, “What do you say we pray?”

He prayed that God would make her new that God would give her back everything that had been taken from her.  After the prayer Harry the owner said, “Hey, Campolo, you told me you were a sociologist.  You’re no sociologist, you’re a preacher.  What kind of church do you belong to?” 

Tony Compolo answered, “I belong to a church that throws birthday parties for prostitutes at three-thirty in the morning.”  The owner came right back at him with the response, “No you don’t!  No you don’t! I would join a church like that.”

This story reminds me of what Tim Keller said in his book Prodigal God.  “In every case where Jesus meets a religious person and a sexual outcast (as in Luke 7) or a religious person and a racial outcast (as in John 3-4) or a religious person and a political outcast (as in Luke 19), the outcast is the one who connects with Jesus and the elder-brother type does not.  Jesus says to the respectable religious leaders, “the tax collectors and the prostitutes enter the kingdom before you” (Matthew 21:31).

“Jesus’ teaching consistently attracted the irreligious while offending the Bible-believing, religious of his day.  However, in the main, our churches today do not have this effect.  The kind of outsiders Jesus attracted are not attracted to contemporary churches, even our most avant-garde ones.  We tend to draw conservative, button-down, moralistic people.  The licentious and liberated or the broken and marginal avoid church.  That can only mean one thing.  If the preaching of our ministers and the practice of our parishioners do not have the same effect on people that Jesus had, then we must not be declaring the same message that Jesus did.  If our churches aren’t appealing to younger brothers, they must be more full of elder brothers than we’d like to think.”

Henry

Henry lives in a neighborhood filled with ethnic diversity which allows him to be a part of a larger world community.  He shops in a market that supports local organic farmers and spends time with friends at a café that supports fair trade with coffee growers in Latin America.  His company provides technology solutions for small business that are making an effort to become more environmentally friendly.

Social justice issues are important to him, and he backs it up by supporting organizations that combat human trafficking in Asia.  Saturday mornings finds him putting together food bags for children living in poverty whose parents are struggling with drug abuse.  Spiritually he is involved in a Value and Vision Circle that keeps a conversation going about values, ethics and designer spirituality.

In his own words, “It is up to me and our community to make a meaningful contribution to this world.  The institutions around us have in large part failed.  Science has not delivered on its promises.  Religion has become morally bankrupt and political leaders are corrupt.  Families, including my own, are breaking apart.   This world is dysfunctional on so many levels.” 

When someone commented on his negativity, he quickly countered, “Not at all.  Even though my friends and I recognize the chaotic nature of the world and though we have dismissed any overarching purpose in life, we are discovering the value that our personal stories make on a local level.  We embrace the conditions as they are but still contribute positively to society in individual ways.” 

As for me I would like the "Henry’s" of the world to know that as Christians, we too value personal stories.  We do believe after all that we were created to do good works which God prepared in advanced for us to do (Ephesians 2:10).  We know the importance of acting justly, loving mercy and walking humbly with God (Micah 6:8). We do care for widows and orphans in their distress (James 1:27).

What I would welcome from them is a conversation about the grand biblical narrative.  Because as someone once said, “I can only answer the question, ‘What am I to do?’ if I can answer the prior question “Of what story or stories do I find myself a part?’”        

I would invite them to consider what God wanted for us through creation and what happened to us with the fall of humanity into sin.  To consider what God has done in Jesus Christ to put things right and how things will be restored in Him.

What I would like us to realize is that the "Henry's" are not just an insignificant number of free thinkers.  Instead they represent a largely growing contingent of people dissatisfied with life, and they see their stories as a way of making sense of it all.  They represent a coming generation that has arrived.