Day 6

We finally finished! We hadn’t expected that it would take us the whole week, but it did and we experienced a sense of accomplishment. For Fred and Fran, things are far from finished. The next step for them is to have the house inspected. If it passes inspection, it will undergo mold remediation and then the rebuilding process begins. If it doesn’t pass inspection, the house will be completely demolished. For Fred and Fran, and many others like them, there is much uncertainty regarding the decision of the insurance company—there seems to be a large variation in how claims are handled.

Fred and Fran drove down from Baton Rouge and arrived around 1:00 p.m. We gave them each a blue T-shirt that volunteers receive and we signed our names on the back of them. At least two times they thanked us profusely for what we had done for them and began to cry. When we said good-bye to them, there wasn’t a dry eye among us.

The whole experience has been powerful and humbling for all of us. In one way what we did feels like a drop in the bucket. We only worked on one home, and FISH has a backlog of 250-300 houses. And yet that “one drop”—Fred and Fran—is infinitely important in God’s eyes and was greatly appreciated by them.

As a team we are so grateful for God’s provision, not the least of which was incredibly gorgeous weather. Except for the day that we arrived, every day was beautiful and the humidity was low. Had the weather been humid and rainy, it would have made our time here much more difficult. We are thankful for your prayers and your support as well; we know that they made a difference.

We are all looking forward to going home, seeing our families and friends, and sleeping in our own beds. While we will experience a sense of closure, for those down here who have experienced the loss of their house and social lives, there is not a sense of closure at all. We need to keep these people in our prayers, and we ask that you will keep Fred and Fran in your prayers.

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Day 5

Work continues. It’s amazing how long that it takes to do the inside demo work. We thought for sure that we would be finished by midday Wednesday, but we weren’t even close. Yesterday we finished getting the last of the drywall and plaster off the last ceiling, we continued to attack the millions of nails that are in the studs that must be removed, and we cleaned out most of the debris—plaster, insulation, bits of wood, and anything else that found its way to the floor. After lunch we began to pull up the hardwood flooring that all must be removed.

Today we are expecting to finish the house by noon. We need to finish pulling up the hardwood floors, finish removing the lasts of the nails, do a final sweep of the entire house, do a little cleaning up of the yard, and do a little work at the house down the street that the other crew was unable to finish. We are expecting to meet with Fred and Fran (whom we haven’t seen since Wednesday lunch) and say our good-byes to them.

Relationships are the most important aspect of our mission trip: our relationship with God, with one another, with the other team, with the homeowners, and with people with whom we come in contact. When Ron told the truck driver from the excavation team that tore down the next door neighbor’s house what we were doing, he began to weep openly he was so grateful. He was not the only “stranger” who thanked us for coming down to help. For many people down here, groups like ours are “merchants of hope.”

Please keep the people of New Orleans in our prayers, as well as Fred and Fran. The need is so great, it is difficult to wrap your mind around it.

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Day 4

We thought it might be helpful to share different perspectives about our experience on this mission trip. Therefore, Pat, Carol, and Cindy wanted to share a few thoughts on their experince so far.

A World of Contrasts
Water can be life sustaining or it can cause tremendous destruction. One cannot visit New Orleans post-Katrina without acknowledging the presence of water. The reminder of the power of water is very visible – broken windows, sagging roofs, neighborhoods emptied of their former residents. Its physical presence surrounds us – the Gulf, Lake Ponchatrain, the Mississippi, the canals, the levees.

Water also plays a key role in our daily diet. Volunteers are strongly cautioned to guard against dehydration and encouraged to consume double the normal intake. Each person is drinking about six bottles each. Supplying our crew of 11 requires multiple coolers and lots of ice. The dual nature of water, both its restorative and destructive ability is one of many contrasts we have observed.

Signs of the past contrast vividly with those of new life: an empty ball field, dead trees, and empty bleachers against a backdrop of butterflies, mockingbirds, and the random flower. As volunteers we also experience a mixture of opposing emotions: sadness, tears, laughter and hopefulness.

As a parting thought, we have become keenly aware of the difference between the creature comforts we took for granted “back home” and the nuances of “camp life” here in Luling, Louisiana. However, we recognize that our discomfort is temporary and pray that those whose lives have been changed forever will gradually experience restoration and renewal.

The picture on today's posting are of Lynn taking one of the interminable wheelborrow trips of debris to the pile in the front. The other two pictures are of the women taking a welcome break from the rigors of demolition, and the last picture is a scene a little over a "year later" on Lake Pontchartrain

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Day 3

It's amazing what you can do with a two foot crowbar when you are doing demolition work. Yesterday we continued to our demo work inside the house and took down almost all of the drywall and plaster on the walls. As you might imagine the dust in the house was thick. I went through five of the breathing masks that we are required to wear when working in the house (and which you would be crazy not to wear). Some of us pulled the walls down and the others worked on shoveling it into large bins which we then dumped in the huge pile in front of the house.


Around 1:00 p.m. a large debris truck showed up (paid for by the Federal Government) and proceeded to use its large jaws to deposit the pile into one of its trailors. The combined unit, the driver told us, holds 101 cubic yards of debris. The debris we had produced filled in the back trailor which holds 47 cubic yards. The company is out of Austin Texas and has been doing this for the last seven months.

The highlight of the day was having lunch with Fred and Fran. They wanted to buy us lunch and arrived around noon with a lot of Popeye's fried chicken, fries and biscuits. We had a leisurely time enjoying our conversation with them and it appeared that they really enjoyed having the meal with us. It sparked memories of past picnics on their patio pre-Katrina. That is how time is marked here; life before and after the hurricane. That is understandable since for so many people it was and continues to be a life-altering event. The picture of our group with them was posted on Day 2.

The two pictures for today's posting show a veiw of the kitchen that we have almost completely gutted, and a picture of the truck with the jaws that picks up the debris from the piles.

Today we hope to finish gutting the house. We will be taking up hardwood floors and taking down the plaster ceilings and then sweeping and cleaning up for the inspectors to come. If the dwelling passes inspection, then the mold remediation will begin. But we have been told, that frequently the homes don't pass inspection and are completely destroyed. We believe that Fred and Fran's house will pass inspection.

Please keep Fred and Fran in your prayers, and that we will continue to work safely and well together.

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Day 2

We arrived at the home we were assigned after a two hour drive--the traffic on Interstate 10 is terrible, like a bad day on the Southeast Expressway. It should have taken us 30 minutes. The traffic is a "good" sign because one of the people from the church (5 men from Iowa) who are also volunteering this week, and according to one of them who came in May, there was little traffic. Apparently much of the traffic comes from poeple communting from Baton Rouge where a lot of displaced people moved.

Like the owners of the house we are tearing apart. Fran and Fred who are now renting in Baton Rouge near one of their daughters, lived in this house for 53 years before Hurricane Katrina. Fred will be 78 next month and Fran is 74. They both greeted us warmly as we pulled up to their house. They are so thankful that we are helping them--we overheard them several times on their cell phones talking with friends and family and mentioning that people from Boston were helping them clean up. Fran brouught a trunkful of food and soda and was constantly offering it to us.

We were told that their house was "prisitine", an irony of the highest order if you were to walk in and look at it. "Pristine" means that it had been entered already and the furnishings had been taken out. The team from the other church was "first entry" into their house down the road. That means that no one had entered it for 13 months--pictures still on the walls and the furnishings strewn all over.

In any case, it was bracing to walk into a house that had been devastated by hurricane and flood. The walls are green with mildew and mold, and the odor isn't particularly pleasant either. We started sweeping the debris out first for safety. Then some started tearing out carpets and taking them out to the debris heap, others began attacking the kitchen, others the the lower finished basement level. Fred and Fran are fortunate because the water rose only to about 8 feet and their second floor was spared.

One of the more touching moments was watching Fran and Fred who were sitting outside on the driveway as Fran who had recovered an old receipe container was slowly going through them reminiscing about different meals she had made through the years. When they had evacuated before Katrina in the rush they had forgotten to bring all of the old photo albums, so they were all lost.

All eleven of us worked hard, taking short breaks every 45 minutes or so to hydrate ourselves. Fortunately, a front had gone through on Sunday night and the humidity had gone down, so the weather was beautiful. At the end of the day, there was a gigantic pile of debris in the front lawn that was picked up by a truck dedicated to picking up debris.

One of the most striking things about our experience yesterday was the neighborhood--it is like a ghost town. There is almost no one living in the neighborhood and across their street and down a little way from their house there is an empty school. We ate lunch at baseball park where no one was playing baseball, and which, in fact, had just been cleaned up two days before.

As for prayer requests, please keep Fred and Fran in your prayers. Fran was having a difficult time yesterday afernoon. Also pray for us that we will work well and safely together again.

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Day 1

It's 6:20 a.m., we have finished breakfast are making bag lunches and will be heading off to our worksite by 7:00 a.m. which we are told will take about 30 minutes to get there. We will be doing demolition work at a home where the water level reached ten feet. Demolition work means tearing out all floors, wall board kitchen cabinets--everything but ceramic tile that is embedded in cement. The goal is to expose the studs and let the inside dry out. Some of the homes have been shut up for thirteen months so you can imagine the sight and smell when you first open it. We cannot do any work until the homeowner arives and gives us permission to enter. We will head back to our "home" around 4:00 p.m. to avoid rush hour traffic.

Our "home" is behind the First Union Presbyterian church and our "houses" consist of plasticized corrugated cardboard pods. Believe it or not, they do keep the water out--last night we endured about a half hour torrential downpour. Other than a stream of water running across on the floor, there were no leaks from the roof.

Please keep us in your prayers today as we head out for work that we find a good rhythm together and that we make a good connection with the homeowner we will be helping.

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Prayer for the Day

O Lord, to be turned from you is to fall, to be turned to you is to rise, and to stand in you is to abide for ever. Grant us in all our duties your help, in all our perplexities your guidance, in all our dangers your protection, and in all our sorrows your peace; through Jesus Christ our Lord.

--Augustine

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Heading Out

In a few minutes I get picked up to head to the airport for our mission trip to New Orleans. The plane takes off around 11:00 a.m. and we arrive in New Orleans around 5:00 p.m. We will be staying at a FISH volunteer village in Luling, LA. FISH stands for "First in Service and Hope" and is an outreach ministry of First Union Presbyterian Church. FISH believes that it has been called and led by God in their efforts to provide service and hope to those who shave suffered from the effects of this disaster. Please pray for our flight down there and that we will humbly serve in whatever tasks that we are assigned.

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Prayer for the Day

Holy Spirit,
as the wind is thy symbol, so forward our goings,
as the dove, so launch us heavenwards,
as water, so purify our spirits,
as a cloud, so abate our temptations,
as dew, so revive our languor,
as fire, so purge out our dross.

--Christina Rossetti

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Heading for New Orleans

I leave tomorrow with 10 others on our mission trip to New Orleans to help contribute to the ongoing reconstruction of that hurricane-devastated city. I understand that there is internet service where we will be staying and am planning to blog every day about the previous days works and any other observations that I might have. I am also hoping to include some pictures of New Orleans and the work that we are doing each day in the blog and hope that you will take time to stay in touch with us by checking in on the blog each day. I can't guarantee that the technical aspects will all come together, but I am hoping that it will. Please keep us in your prayers. I will also share any specific prayer requests that arise. For now, I would appreciate that you pray for our trip down and back, and that we can make a small difference in the work that we do.

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Prayer for the Day

Grant, Lord God, that we may cleave to thee without parting,
worship thee without wearying,
serve thee without failing.
faithfully seek thee,
happily find thee,
and forever possess thee,
the one only God,
blessed for all eternity.

--Anselm

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Notable by Their Absence

A new study by the Barna Group (Ventura, California, website: www.barna.org/FlexPage.aspx?Page=BarnaUpdate&BarnaUpdateID=245) has found that many teenagers who have been active in church in one way or another separate themselves from the church when they enter their 20's. The study found that six out of ten twentysomethings who participated in church as teenagers have now distanced themselves from the church. Only 20% of twentysomethings who were actively involved in their churches as teenagers have continued to stay engaged. Compared with older adults twentysomethings are less committed to the institutional church, less likely to read their bibles or pray, less likely to volunteer their time at church, and less likely to give financially. Sarah Cunningham, a twentysomething herself, has written a book entitled Dear Church: Letters from a Disillusioned Generation that helps us non-twentysomethings understand this generation. While our congregation doesn't have many twentysomethings (and we value those who are part of our church family) in part, I think because of demographics, we have many teenagers who will likely follow this course. What thoughts do you have about this phenomenon? What can we do to change this trend?

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Prayer for the Day

Lord, I am a countryman coming from my country to yours. Teach me the laws of your country, its way of life and its spirit, so that I may feel at home there.

--William of St. Thierry

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Prayer for the Day

Be thou a light to my eyes, music to my ears, sweetness to my taste, and full contentment to my heart. Be thou my sunshine in the day, my food at table, my repose in the night, my clothing in nakedness, and my succour in all necessities. Lord Jesu, I give thee my body, my soul, my substance, my fame, my friends, my liberty and my life. Dispose of me and all that is in as it may seem best to thee and to the glory of thy blessed name.

--John Cosin

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Desire

I have been taking a CD course on Buddhism that I am enjoying. I like learning about other religions and comparing them to Christianity, noting both areas of confluence and divergence. At the heart of Buddhism is the notion that "All is suffering." This understanding is addressed by the Four Noble Truths: 1. the truth of suffering; 2. the truth of the origin of suffering; 3. the truth of the cessation of suffering; and 4. the truth of the path which leads to the cessation of suffering. Suffering, in this account is the result of desire and the goal is to free the person from desire, in part, through the process of meditation.

Christianity notes the reality of suffering, but understands its origin and solution in a different way. Suffering is the result of rebelling against God and God's order which then infects and deforms human desire which leads to suffering. The problem is not desire itself but desires that have gone awry. The solution is not the elimination of desire, but the transformation of desire to its original created "goodness" as a function of God's incredible love and the "new person" we become in Christ. Our desire's ultimate object is God, and all other desires become ordered by our ultimate desire. I would be interested in hearing your thoughts and feelings about desire and the place that it plays in our lives.

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Here is a quotation that I found at the Mars Hill website:

[O]n the personal level, if mobility is the material mark of globalization, its spiritual mark seems to be, for lack of a better term, secularity, in the broadest sense — the weakening of
tradition, the loss of individual and cultural memory, the fading of those forms by which transcendent order has heretoforebeen made incarnate in daily life.

-- Joshua P. Hochschild, Globalization: Ancient and Modern
(The Intercollegiate Review, Spring 2006)

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Whom Do You Trust

I think that I would argue that trust is one of the most important qualities of relationships, whether it is between two friends or in groups. Not being able to trust has serious ramifications for any organization. Ask Patricia Dunn, the former CEO of Hewlett-Parkard who was trying to smoke out who was leaking company information. Her way of addressing it led to her firing.

Trust is crucial for the church as well, it seems to me. To effectively carry out mission and ministry, we need to trust one another. Trust is key in Thomas Bandy's model of governance as well. As we continue to grow as a discipleship church and transform our governance model in a way that is congruent with the discipleship model, we need to trust God and one another in the process.

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Prayer for the Day

Father,
give us wisdom to perceive you,
intellect to understand you,
diligence to seek you,
patience to wait for you,
eyes to behold you,
a heart to meditate on you
and a life to proclaim you,
through the power of the Spirit
of our Lord Jesus Christ.

--Benedict

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Be Prepared--Not

I was catching up on some reading and came across an article in the 8/28/06 issue of Time entitled, "Why We Don't Prepare." The author, Amanda Ripley, was referring to our national proclivity not to prepare for catastrophes like hurricanes, floods, tornadoes, earthquakes, etc. She writes, "...a review of the past year in disaster history suggests that modern Americans are particularly, mysteriously bad at protecting themselves from guaranteed threats. We know more than we ever did about the dangers we face. But it turns out that in times of crisis, our greatest enemy is rarely the storm, the quake or the surge itself. More often, it is ourselves." In psychological terms this pattern of behavior is referred to as denial. Denial is a powerful way of protecting ourselves from the truth because we fear that the truth is too painful to accept. Clearly denial operates at all levels: from the personal through small groups, through larger groups, to whole nations. Have you ever taken time to reflect on how much denial might be at work in your own life?

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Prayer for the Day

Write your blessed name, O Lord, upon my heart, there to remain so indelibly engraved, that no prosperity, no adversity shall ever move me from your love. Be to me a strong tower of defence, a comforter in tribulation, a deliverer in distress, a very present help in trouble and a guide to heaven through the many temptations and dangers of this life.
--Thomas a Kempis

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Prayer for the Day

God be in my head, and in my understanding;
God be in mine eyes, and in my looking;
God be in my mouth, and in my speaking;
God be in my heart, and in my thinking;
God be at mine end, and at my departing.
--Unknown

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Thought for the Day

It is not possible to love an unseen God while mistreating God's visible creation.
--John Woolman, Journal

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Does God Like You?

I read an interview with James Alison, a Roman Catholic priest and author, in the latest Christian Century. He has written a book entitled On Being Liked. The interviewer asked him, "What does it mean to say that God not only loves us, but likes us? Why do we need to hear that?" Alison responds by saying, The word love, alas, is so abused. In my book I wanted to remind people that sometimes being told that we are loved really means: 'My love for you is so strong that I wish I could suppress all the bits about you that don't measure up to my standards. In fact, if you become someone else, then I might actually like you and enjoy you as well.'"

He caught my attention. I asked myself, "Does God like me?" It feels a little bit weird asking the question, to be honest. It made me wonder when I say that I love someone if behind the words I sometimes have the meaning which he suggests. What do you think? Does God like you? What difference might it make in our lives if we believed that God actually liked us?

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Overload

Over the last several years I have found that I listen and watch news less and less. I guess you could say that I suffer from "information overload." I do a lot of skimming: the newspaper, magazines like Time and Newsweek from the secular side of things and Christianity Today and The Christian Century on the religious side of things. The internet provides news headlines as well. My questions is, How do you stay informed from a broad perspective without becoming overwhelmed? How do you navigate through the information jungle?

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Thought for the Day

"God allows himself to be seen in ordinary things, even when they are darkened by shadows."
--Jean-Pierre De Caussade, Abandonment ot Divine Providence

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A Prayer

O God, who by thy Spirit in our hearts dost lead men to desire your perfection, to seek for truths and to rejoice in beauty; illuminate and inspire, we beseech thee, all thinkers, writers, artists and craftsmen; that, in whatsoever is true and pure and lovely, thy name may be hallowed and thy kingdom come on earth; through Jesus Christ our Lord.

--Prayer found in St. Anselm's Chapel, Canterbury

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Body Work

I'm going to head out in a little while to work out. I have done this for many years and I have found that my working out on a regular basis "generalizes" to other areas of my life. What I mean is that the discipline of working out somehow seems to help me with the discipline of having my morning devotions, seems to help give me discipline to do other things that I might be tempted to let slide. I know that if my life is feeling out of control, the act of going to the gym and working out helps to give me a greater sense of internal control. In this regard, I found this quotation by Teresa of Avila from The Way of Perfection particularly apt: "Our bodies have one fault: The more we cater to them, the more things they want...This is not a trifling matter. God will help us to gain mastery of our bodies." Does my experience resonate with anyone?

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Today's Prayer

God guide me with your wisdom,
God help me with your mercy,
God protect me with your strength,
God fill me with your grace,
For the sake of your anointed Son.

--Traditional Gaelic prayer

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Big Bucks

Does God want you to make big bucks? That is the feature article on the September 18, 2006 time magazine article that I received in the mail yesterday. The by-line reads, "Yes, say some megachurches. Others call it heresy. The debate over the new gospel of wealth." The article quotes Joel Osteen, the popular megachurch pastor from the Houston area who touts "prosperity": "I think God wants us to be prosperous. I think he wants us to be happy. I think he wants us to enjoy our lives. I don't think I'd say God wants us to be rich." Megachurch pastor Rick Warren, author of The Purpose Driven Live says, "This idea that God wants everybody to be wealthy? Baloney. It's creating a false idol. You don't measure your self-worth by your net worth." What do you think about this? What is the place of money in the lives of Jesus' apprentices?

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Prayer for the Day

Another prayer from Carmina Gadelica:

God with me lying down,
God with me rising up,
God with me in each ray of light,
Nor I a ray of joy without Him,
Nor one ray without Him.

Christ with me sleeping,
Christ with me waking,
Christ with me watching,
Every day and night,
Each day and night.

God with me protecting,
The Lord with me directing,
The Spirit with me strengthening,
For ever and for evermore,
Ever and evermore, Amen.
Chief of chiefs, Amen.

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Confessions of a Poor Prayer

I believe in prayer and the power of prayer. I believe it is meant to be like the air that we breathe. God, I am certain, wants our lives to be a living prayer. My problem is that as long as I have been at it, I still feel like an infant trying to take its first steps. Just when I think that I'm in a good rhythm with my prayer life it seems to fall apart. I must confess that some of my quiet times in the morning--times when I like to read, pray, and meditate--are really quiet. I fall asleep, in other words. Sometimes I am so sleepy when I read that I can't remember a word that I have read. Not infrequently I will tell someone that I will pray for them and several days later I realize that I have forgotten to pray for that person. Sometimes I am so agitated or distracted that I can't concentrate. And so it goes. In the end I comfort myself by falling back on God's grace, knowing that God rather than being angry with me, misses the time we could have spent together. I am also aware that God is far greater than my fleeting awareness and that God is patient. Do you struggle in your own prayer life? Do you have any tips that might help me or others grow in our prayer life?

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Thought for the Day

The best time to plant a tree was 20 years ago. The second best time is today. --Chinese Proverb

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Thank You

Yesterday's celebration of my ten year anniversary with the church was overwhelming! Thank you for the celebration, the kind words that were said and the cards that I received. I feel blessed to have been called to pastor at the United Church of Christ in Medfield, that you have been a people where I can make mistakes, learn, and grow to become a better pastor. I believe that God has been very gracious to us over the past ten years and I have the conviction that that is all preparation for even bigger things that God wants to do through us. Jim Collins, business guru and author of Good to Great, encourages companies that seek to be great to have BHAGs: big, hairy, audacious goals. I think that we are ready to implement BHAGs. What ideas do you have? What would you like to see us shoot for?

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A Prayer for Grace

Here is a prayer from the Carnina Gadelica, a Gaelic book of verse and prose.

I am bending my knee
In the eye of the Father who created me,
In the eye of the Son who died for me,
In the eye of the Spirit who cleansed me,
In love and desire.

Pour down upon us from heaven
The rich blessing of Thy forgiveness;
Thou who art upper most in the City,
Be Thou patient with us.

Grant to us, Thou Saviour of Glory,
The fear of God, the love of God, and His affection.
And the will of God to do on earth at all times
As angels and saints do in heaven;
Each day and night give us Thy peace.
Each day and night give us Thy peace.

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Thought for the Day

God has granted you the morning, but he does not promise the evening. Spend each day as if it were your last. --Lawrence Scupoli, The Spiritual Combat

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Kindness

In his book, Simply Christian, N. T. Wright notes the importance of kindness in life. He quotes Ephesians 4:32 which reads, "Be kind to one another, tender-hearted, forgiving one another, as God in Christ has forgiven you." He then comments, "The command of kindness asks that we spend our time looking not at ourselves and our needs, our rights, our wrongs-that-need-righting, but at everyone else and their needs, pressures, pains, and joys. Kindness is a primary way of growing up as a human being, of establishing and maintaining the richest and deepest relationships."
What if we were to take this admonition from both Scripture and N. T. Wright to heart? Sadly, churches are often places where a lot of unkindnesses occur. What do you think?

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Thought for the Day

It is a serious waste to let a day go by without allowing God to change us. Richard Rolle, The Fire of Love

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Thanks to Mary Ellen

Although I have been blogging now for about two weeks in order to get the feel of it and try to get myself up to speed, today is that we have launched our new website. Mary Ellen Slater is the one who has redesigned and updated it and put her considerable technical and artistic talents to work. She and the staff have spent hours and hours putting it together in a coherent fashion. We hope that you will find the website useful and that you will check it frequently. We also welcome your comments and suggestions about improving it. Please don't hesitate to give us feedback because our goal is to constantly monitor and improve it. I also welcome suggestions from you on improving my blog page. What do you think about the new website and this blog?

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Quick Fix

The 9/5/06 issue of the Wall Street Journal had an interesting article entitled, "A Popular Strategy For Church Growth Splits Congregants." The by-line read, "Across U.S., Members Divide On making Sermons, Music More 'Purpose-Driven'." The article enumerated instances of churches whose pastors or lay leaders were persuaded by Rick Warren's model of church growth and then tried to implement them in their own churches. The results were far from favorable in the churches that the article covered. Members were either voted out of the congregation and/or the congregation split.

Frankly, I suspect that the problem was not specifically Rick Warren's model, but the way in which the clergy and the lay leaders went about implementing change. The real issue is how do leaders go about introducing significant changes in a church in such a way that the church can absorb, adjust, and ultimately thrive? I that the churches discussed in the article might have split if another model were introduced to the congregation and handled in a similar manner. Changing the direction of a church includes a number of variables such as its history, tradition, polity, etc., but in many ways it is like trying to change the direction of an ocean liner. It takes time for the whole process to occur. It is important to understand the "rate" at which change can occur and finding the rate is not always easy. In any case, I think the leaders pushed too hard, too fast, and didn't give the congregations time to discuss and wrestle with the changes that they wanted to make. They were looking for a quick fix.

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The Demise of Zoroastriansim

The New York Times had an interesting article today on Zoroastrianism, an ancient religion, about 3000 years old, based in Persia that at one time was spread across the eastern Mediterranean. I remember studying about it and being intrigued by it in the Religions of the World course I took in college. It is estimated that at its peak it had 40-50 million adherents. Today the number of Zoroastrians numbers in the tens of thousands, and those who practice this faith are afraid that it might well die out in the next generation. Judaism encountered it especially during the exilic period and it is said to have influenced some of its concepts. For a variety of reasons--persecution, assimilation by other cultures and religions, by a low birth rate of those who practice this faith, to mention a few--have colluded over the centuries to cause its steep decline.

For me it raises the issue of my own faith--what keeps a faith vital and alive. I, of course, would say as a Christian that I believe Christianity is true in a way the Zoroastrianism is not, and this is certainly problematic to a faith's enduring vitality. However, people of other faiths would no doubt say something similar, and the fact that something endures is no guarantee that a belief is true. What do you think is essential for keeping our faith alive and preventing it from becoming some kind of relic?

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Cosmic History

The feature article for the September 4, 2006 issue of Time is about cosmology--how the stars were born. I love reading these articles about the universe and its history. The more that scientists discover, the more awe-some the creation becomes to me. Perhaps it sounds simplistic, but as scientists unravel the secrets of the universe, far from squeezing God out of the cosmos, it inspires greater wonder and greater awe in me. I am led to say with the psalmist, "The heavens are telling the glory of God; and the firmament proclaims his handiwork. Day to day pours forth speech, and night to night declares knowledge."

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More than Adaptive

An article in the "Ideas" section of Sunday's Boston Globe (9/3/06) caught my eye: "Survival of the Harmonious." The byline reads, "Mounting evidence suggests that human abeings are hard-wired to appreciate music. What researchers want to know now is why our distant ancestors evolved music in the first place." Researchers have concluded that humans are hard-wired to be musical and they are now shifting tneir focus to the question of how: how did this happen. This is a difficult task given the constraints under which they operate. The only reason allowable that it has to have some adaptive benefit-adaptive for survival, that is. Given the closed material universe in which evolutionary psychology exists, I thought much of the discussion was quite thin and implausible.

Quantum physicist and Anglican theologian John Polkinghorne offers a far more plausible explanation. While holding to an evolutionary view of human development, he does not paint himself into the corner of scientific materialism, the view that only matter and energy exist. As he writes in his book, Exploring Reality, "...elusive to evolutionary explanation are many human aesthetic experiences. What survival value has Mozart's music given us, however profuoudly it enriches our livs in othyer ways?" If you live in a room with only one window, your view of the world will be greatly curtailed. Polkinghorne argues

For the religious believer, the source of these (rational, moral, and aesthetic) dimensions lie in the unifying will of the Creator, a fundamental insight that makes it intelliglible not only that the universe is transparent to our scientific enquiry, but also that it is the areena of moral decision and the carrier of beauty. Those dimensions of reality, the understanding of whose character lies geyond tyhe narrow explanationry horizon of nautral science, are not epiphenomenal froth on the surface of fundamentally mate4ial world, but they are gifts expressive of the nature of this world's Creator. Thus...aesthetic delight is a sharing in the Creator's joy in creation, just as the wonderful cosmic order discovered byscience is truly a reflection of the Mind of God. Thinking about human experience in this way affords the pssibility of a satisfyingly unified account of multilayered reality.

It is infortunate that those stuck in the materialist mindset blind themselves to the greater possibilities to the richness and variety and meaningfulness of the universe.

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The Standard and Reliable Model

In the New Testament the word "disciple" occurs a total of 269 times according to Dallas Willard. Do you know how many times the word "Christian" occurs in the New Testament? Three times, and Willard notes that in all three cases it referred to the disciples. Interesting. The Great Commission found in Matthew 28 says, "Go and make disciples of all nations; not "converts" or "Christians" but disciples. Over time it seems the word "disciple" took on the meaning of a more committed or a more deluxe model of what it means to be a Christian. But, as Willard notes in his latest book, The Great Omission,

The disciple of Jesus is not the deluxe or heavy-duty model of the Christian--especially padded, textured, streamlined, and empowered for the fast lane on the straight and narrow way. He or she stands on the pages of the New Testament as the first level of basic transportation in the Kingdom of God.

It seems to me that this understanding and way of living is precisely what we are about at the church. Discipleship is not an optional add-on feature in which some choose to invest and others don't, it is the essential thing.

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Changing Lenses

I want to pick up on yesterday's subject and continue to reflect on the secular vs. the spiritual world. It is a false dichotomy, and the one of the reasons that the Western church is in such poor health is precisely because it has baptized this unhealthy and inaccurate view of creation. Orthodox theologian, Alexander Schmemann, in his small and powerful book, For the Life of the World, wrote

...nowhere in the bible do we find the dichotomies which for us are the self-evident framework of all approaches to religion. In the Bible the food that man eats, the world of which he must partake in order to live, is given to him by God, and it is a given as communion with God. The world as man's food is not something "material" and limited to material functions, thus different from , and opposed to, the specifically "spiritual" functions by which man is related to God. All that exists is God's gift to man, and it all exists to make God known to man, to make man's life communion with God. It is divine love made food, made life for man. God blesses everything He creates, and, in biblical language, this means that He makes all creation the sign and means of His presence and wisdom, love and revelation: :O taste and see that the Lord is good."

One can only imagine how different the church would be if we had our minds transformed to understand that the whole world is the place of God's presence, and that the division into the secular and the spiritual is fundamentally a false one. Following Jesus as his apprentices involves our changing the lens with which we see the world, so we can see it as God sees it, not as the world would have us see it.

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The Real World

When I was in Senior High School and then in college, I struggled with a bifurcated world. There was religious history and there was secular history, and in my own developing mind there were virtually no tangential points. It was as if there were two important parallel universes that never intersected. It was in the last couple of years of college that the two independent universes made their first contact and even interpenetrated each other. It was an exciting time for me to make this integration.

It seems to me that many Christians have a similar problem in terms of living in their "religious world" and their "secular world." In fact I was just tempted to write "real world" in place of "secular world." For indeed the secular world has its own operating laws like the law of gravity or the laws of thermodynamics, and the religious world has its set of laws like love your neighbor as yourself. The problem is that most people believe the laws of the religious world don't do very well in the secular world. Since most people experience that most of their life is lived in the real or secular world, the religious world is like a tidal pond, small and isolated until the tide--the real thing--returns.

For apprentices of Jesus, however, this dichotomy doesn't carry much weight, for they know that in Jesus God's world and the secular world have intersected, and that the secular world is in the process of being restored to the way it was originally meant to be. Actually the mission of Jesus is to restore the world into wholeness under God's reign. Disciples of Jesus are called to live in this world even though the world isn't particularly kind or accepting of God's reign. Indeed we are meant to be agents of this healed world. I will pick up on this theme in tomorrow's blog.

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