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Disclaimer: I like to find metaphors to help me better understand my world in the United Methodist Church. This particular metaphor leaves me in a very cynical place, and so I hope my friend Kevin Watson will forgive me for my cynicism.
I’m sure you, like me, are highly engaged in the latest news coming from Los Angeles about The Tonight Show. I never get into entertainment news, but this debacle of Leno vs. Conan is just too much. As I hear the plans of NBC, I just can’t help but think how this is a move I would expect from an organization like the United Methodist Church. Let me explain.
Why invest in Leno at this point to the exclusion of Conan (and especially Fallon)?Leno’s show is tanking. Conan’s show, while not doing great, is not nose-diving down in complete failure. So, I do admit that it makes sense to help Leno achieve success, but at what cost? Do you sacrifice a relationship with Conan? How many more years does Leno have in him? He’s already retired once. Conan has another 15 years for the Tonight Show and he is able to connect with a younger generation, which the Tonight Show has basically just handed over to the Daily Show and the Colbert Report.
The short-sightedness of this move is something I would expect from the United Methodist Church. I can’t tell you how many conversations I’ve heard and articles I’ve read about developing future young leaders. But I see so little action. Appointments are often made as a metaphorical Leno and Conan. The assumption is that “the Conans” in our system (or any system) will stick around until the metaphorical “Lenos” are finally done. Very short-sighted.
At some point, the “Conans” are going to jump ship. Can the larger organization fault a Conan for leaving? Is there a place where you will receive a chance to succeed then why not follow that path?
(by the way, I’m not trying to say that I am currently thinking about pulling a Conan and leaving the organization)
John 8:12, “I AM the light of the world.” The preceding context: A woman is forcefully brought before Jesus and thrown to the ground. Humiliated. Shamed. Caught. Guilty. Exposed. As the men discuss her pending death, she lies on the dusty ground trying to cover her nakedness, as she has been pulled from her lover’s bed guilty of adultery. Her man is not on trial. He is not as important in this power grab the religious leaders are using to trap Jesus into either declaring his heresy (the law of Moses should not be obeyed, and the woman aquited) or a criminal (in disobeying the Romans in carrying out the execution). Emerge the famous words, “He who has no sins, can cast the first stone.”
All at once with those words everyone stands in the same shoes. The woman and the religious leaders are in the exact same condition: guilty. Guilty not by some relative standard of religious righteousness. Guilty by the standard of the Holy One.
I AM the Light of the World.
In Christ, our lives stand exposed. Bonhoeffer says that “man only knows who he is in the light of God.” All of our hiding, all of our masks, all of our self-righteousness falls away because the Holy One, the great I AM WHO I AM judges our lives. There is a certain agony to this kind of exposing light. I would much rather lurk in the shadows than come clean about my issues. I would much rather shirk back in shame, than confess what the light exposes.
But in this agonizing light comes freedom as John chapter 8 leads us to these words of freedom, “then you will know the truth and the truth will set you free.”
The turn of the new year brings a new sermon series at Asbury: I AM
Specifically, we are looking at the seven I AM statements of Jesus in John:
I AM the bread of life
I AM the light of the world
I AM the gate
I AM the good shepherd
I AM the resurrection and the life
I AM the way, the truth, and the life
I AM the true vine
When this series was first brought up as an idea, I thought it sounded great to have a Christologically focused series. Quickly, I discovered that a series like this is very difficult to articulate. A series like this is steeped in good amount of heady theology. The first week (I AM the bread of life), I tried to set up the whole series by remembering the Moses story of Exodus 3. It turns out that trying to explain I AM WHO I AM as a 7 minute part of a 25 minute sermon is very difficult!
Throughout this series, I want to continually point to Exodus 3 ( the revelation of I AM WHO I AM), because Jesus is I AM. But however mysterious we may find I AM WHO I AM, we find description (even flesh) in Jesus. I think of Paul’s words “He is the image of the invisible God.” I AM WHO I AM is utterly mysterious, but in Jesus I get a glimpse of mystery made flesh. In Jesus, I AM is explained to me in terms of metaphors I do understand: bread, light, gates, etc.
“We have seen his glory, the glory of the One and Only” (John 1:14).
I haven’t been blogging much lately, but I will be blogging even less in the next month because of this beautiful little girl
VenuePM is now 9 weeks old. I’ve launched a few worship services before, but this one has taught me quite a bit more than the others. Here are some of my reflections on this time around…
1. Different is good. We have a successful Sunday AM service, but we were feeling the need to do something different. We didn’t want to simply replicate the same service again. We needed to find another way of expressing God’s love for people. The first most obvious difference is live preaching in the PM service, verse a simulcast message in the AM service. We also went out and hired a different worship leader for our evening service, which gives us a totally different musical experience. We want our worship services to foster a sense of community in and of themselves, and in order to accomplish this our services have to be different.
2. Good communication is vital. We really messed up on this one. There were all sorts of mis-communication happening. We had to post a note on Facebook, have some special meetings after we launched, and play general cleanup. If I had to do this one over, I would have started with some key conversations one on one, months before we made anything public.
3. New worship services are about new people. I greatly underestimated this fact in launching this service. Originally, our strategy was to try to get a good number of our morning congregation to “transplant” into this evening setting. The thinking here was that 11:00 AM on Sunday is still the desirable time for first time visitors. If we are full (or almost full) in the morning, we need to free up space. It turns out we have done too good of a job creating community in the morning that we did not get what we were asking from our people. At first, I was a little upset by this, but now I see this is a good thing because it is pushing us to think about how to get new people. I hate the idea of having to do marketing to attract people. That said, I have to confess, we are now starting to do outside marketing to try to get our name out there. The better model, I’m convinced, is to engage our members in spreading what God is doing because of this work. This is a cultural change for our people. I was relying on pre-conditioned practices, when in fact, we had to be willing to grow something from virtual scratch without the benefit of the critical mass of people that constitute our AM service.
4. Work with people who get what you’re doing. This is an area we have done well. Our team is made of Todd Craig, Ben Kilgore, and myself. This is a good team in that we’re all trying to figure out a new way of saying a really old message. We’re trying to connect with those who have been burned by the church and offer a place of confession and healing. I couldn’t ask for a better team.
5. Success does not begin and end with me. I’ll probably have to learn this one everytime I start something new. There are too many Saturday nights that I lie awake thinking, “will anyone come to VenuePM tomorrow?” When the success is about me I neglect prayer, don’t invest in people, and become depressed/or swelled with pride. God give me freedom from such thinking.
When people describe the practices and polity of the UMC, I often hear the word “connectionalism” thrown around in the conversation. I think this usually means two things. One, we share money. Two, we share pastors. Rarely, do our members ever interact with one another or share any sort of community with other United Methodists.
One of our 2nd Saturday work sites has been Wesley Chapel UMC in north Tulsa. We send teams to help clean the grounds and help with repairs to the facility. Here is a story of our own version of serving one another in “connection”:
I’m still wrestling with the question of evil, especially how it relates to Genesis 3:1-10. I’m currently reading through Thomas Merton’s autobiography, The Seven Storey Mountain. Merton is writing about his call to monastic life in 1939-1940. After spending a summer in a remote part of New York state to think over becoming a Fransiscan and also writing a novel, he returns to New York City and finds Europe at war. He had intentionally not been reading the papers or listening to the radio. Merton writes this as he comes back to civilization:
“There was something else in my own mind- the recognition: ‘I myself am responsible for this. My sins have done this. Hitler is not the only one who has started this war: I have my share in it too…” It was a very sobering thought, and yet its deep and probing light by its very truth eased my soul a little.”
What a sobering thought. There is great evil in the world, and yet I have been one who has shaped this evil. There are those who do deeds I think I can never understand, and yet if I am honest about myself, I have to own that I have particiapted in this evil and have helped shape a world that is contrary to God’s goodness.
Back to Genesis 3… so much of this story of Adam and Eve is the story of all of us. It is the story of all of us who have chosen to think that we have a better way for our lives than God’s plan. It is the story of us all falling into a deception that ends up harming us. It is the story of us all clinging to some fig leaves in order to cover for our shame and to cover over our guilt.
And yet, “But where sin inceased, grace increased all the more, so that just as sin reigned in death, so also grace might reign through righteousness to bring eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord.”
I’m working on a message on Genesis 3:1-10. A few days ago, I posted a link to a John Wesley sermon about this famous chapter in the Bible. Today, I’m wrestling with the question of evil.
Specifically, from where does the serpent in Genesis 3 come? The first verse of chapter 3 specifically says God created the serpent. Since I am reading this passage with the New Testament in mind, I conclude that the serpent is some sort of representative of the Accuser, or Satan. This raises a whole set of questions. What is God’s role in the existence of evil?
To find some clarity, I turn to the saints…specifically St. Augustine. In Confessions, he wrote these thoughts about evil:
“Whatever is, is good. Evil, then, the origin of which I had been seeking has no substance at all; for if it were a substance , it would be good. For either it would be an incorruptible substance and so a supreme good, or a corruptible substance, which could not be corrupted unless it were good. I understood, therefore, and it was made clear to me that you made all things good, nor is there any substance at all not made by you. And because all that you made is not equal, each by itself is good, that the sum of all of them is very good, for our God made ‘all things very good.’ To you there is no such thing as evil, and even in your whole creation taken as a whole, there is no; because there is nothing from beyond it that can burst in and destroy the order which you have appointed for it. But in the parts of creation, some things, because they do not harmonize with others, are considered evil….
… And I asked what wickedness was, and I found that it was no substance, but a perversion of the will bent aside from you, God, the supreme substance, toward these lower things, casting away its inmost treasure and becoming bloated with external good.”
Not sure what to think about this and how to relate this to my experience. But it is a good reminder not to confuse God’s good creation with the presence of evil in the world. It also reminds us of our own authority and responsibility in participating with evil.
We begin a new sermon series this week at Asbury called Deceived. To kick off the series, we’ll look at Genesis 3:1-10. I’ll have some reflections on this passage as the week progresses, but to start off the week we’ll turn the pages back a few centuries. Here is a classic sermon on the story of the fall from John Wesley…
“….mankind in general have gained, by the fall of Adam, a capacity of attaining more holiness and happiness on earth than it would have been possible for them to attain if Adam had not fallen. For if Adam had not fallen, Christ had not died. Nothing can be more clear than this; nothing more undeniable: The more thoroughly we consider the point the more deeply shall we be convinced of it. Unless all the partakers of human nature had received that deadly wound in Adam, it would not have been needful for the Son of God to take our nature upon him.. [READ MORE] “
