We've had an outstanding discussion going here on the nature of how we do church, considering both the Marketing and the Emergent trends that are prevalent in evangelical churches right now. But Dana's comment on the Marketing post got me thinking about where the arts fit in to the task of doing church. If using "glitzy" programs as a way to market the gospel is not what we want to do, then does this diminish the role of the arts in church? Is there no, or very little, room for things like music, drama, and visual arts? No way! I actually see the arts as gifts God gave to his church for use in accomplishing his purposes.
Consider first that much of what we consider to be classical art was developed by Christians for use in church. The Sistine Chapel, for example, is a church; but it's most famous for the stunning Michelangelo painting that adorns its interior (left). Or take music: many of history's most famous compositions were written for use in church services and other spiritual functions. Or how about architecture: a visual art form that Medieval churches used dramatically to lift worshippers' hearts toward God. And we could go on - drama, sculpture, poetry, and even more contemporary activities like film-making are all artistic forms that can and should be used in the service of Christ's kingdom.
The "Glitzy" Church Again?
This is different from what I referred to before as the "glitzy church" in some important ways. Marketing churches certainly tend to put the arts front-and-center (especially music and drama), but the presence of the arts is not what defines the Marketing model. Rather, this methodology is defined by marketing the gospel of Jesus in the same way businesses seek to sell products. Thinking of church in these terms leads us to use anything and everything that will catch people's attention and help a church "gain market share." And any medium that works is fair game: anything that attracts people, including multimedia technology and some artistic endeavors, is capitalized on. Any medium thought not to be attractive is jettisoned. The point is, the Marketing model is not defined by the presence of the arts. Rather, the Marketing model determines if, how, and when the arts are used in church just like it determines if, how, and when certain things get preached from the pulpit and if, how, and when everything else in church life happens.
So non-Marketing churches will utilize the arts, possibly even a lot. But the way they're utilized and the thinking behind using them is markedly different. To start exploring how this is so, let me focus on the inter-dependence of two of the church's most important functions: preaching and the arts.
Why Preaching Needs The Arts
Preaching - the declarative, clear explanation of what God has said - is God's ordained method for bringing sinners to salvation (Romans 10:14 - just hover without clicking to see the verse pop up). It is also God's primary way of making his will known to the human race (Titus 1:3), and the command of God for church members (2 Timothy 4:2). Preaching is so critical because if we don't understand God we can never know him or follow him rightly. So many different ideas exist in the world that knowing how God wants us to live can be bewildering, which is why all things of value to our relationship with God begin with right knowledge. Doctrine is the foundation of the Christian life, and accurate preaching is how we establish ourselves in accurate doctrine.
But a foundation by itself is not a whole building. Preaching is aimed largely at the mind, but right knowledge is only the beginning of the Christian life, not the end. God made us not only intellectual beings with a rational mind, but emotional beings with a heart. And it's at the level of heart passion where so much of human living takes place. What good preaching needs is something that can reach beyond the mind and touch the heart, stirring the imagination and drawing out the emotions. How can we do that?
Why The Arts Need Preaching
But by themselves such emotionally evocative experiences are un-anchored, un-tamed, and perhaps inaccurate. People can be made to feel fear when there is no real cause for fear. Similarly, we can be made to feel calm and reassured when perhaps we should be very afraid. We can be made to feel angry at times when anger will only be harmful, and we can be led to trust people who are not trustworthy. Perhaps greatest of all, as the great Puritan theologian Jonathan Edwards explained so powerfully in his book The Religious Affections, the love of our hearts, designed and fit for God alone, can be made to rest on lesser things.
And this is why the arts need preaching. They need to be steered, harnessed, and guided so as to ensure that the feelings they evoke accurately reflect who God is, and what he wants from us.
Preaching without the arts is like a boat with no throttle lever: you can point it in the right direction, but it has little power to go anywhere. And the arts without preaching is like a speed boat with no steering wheel: fire it up and it'll go, but you have no control over where it ends up -- and no way to avoid crashing into the rocks.
So where does this leave us as we think through how to do church? Speaking for myself, it leads me to value the role of the arts and to even want to explore further ways they can be utilized to further the purposes God has given his church. (Are there art forms we don't use enough in church? What would it look like if we did so? Interesting things to think about...) But music, drama, painting, lighting, storytelling and architecture never self-justify. That is, they don't exist in the church for their own sake, but rather because they partner with the full declaration of God's preached word to draw the community of faith deeper into the truths that God has given us to live by.
I don't know many things more able to do so than well-planned, and well-executed, art.
Heart & Mind - Art in the Service of the King
The Adrift Church?
I discussed the dominant trend in evangelical churches today (the Marketing trend) in my last post. But this isn't the only trend, and in fact it's already being fast supplanted by a very different way of doing church: the Emergent movement. Most have at least heard of the trend referred to as "the emerging church." This is a general, umbrella phrase used to describe a wide variety of ideas that can be very different from one another, but nonetheless share some common bases.
Great Questions...
It is interesting that the emerging church movement grew largely from opposition to the Marketing church movement. An increasingly large group of Christians, consisting mostly of younger generations, looked at the Marketing churches that their Baby Boomer evangelical parents have built and concluded that these churches are shallow, superficial, and (one of the hip new terms) "inauthentic." This generation, already characterized by cynicism and saturated with image-is-everything culture, has increasingly concluded that the big personalities, big buildings, and big programs of the Marketing churches are missing something essential to the Christian gospel.
In other words, they have many of the same criticisms I have about Marketing churches. Emergents are asking great questions about things like the nature of biblical community (being authentic), and the impact of the gospel on how we engage with the problems and challenges of our communities (being missional). Anyone who knows me knows that I think these are extremely important and well-timed questions which the church needs to be asking.
...Not-So-Great Answers
So then, would I classify myself as part of this emergent trend? No, not really. And the reason is simply that while the movement began with some well-timed questions, major portions of it have proceeded along the road of some very dubious answers. To understand why, one need go no further than understanding postmodernism, which is the cultural ocean in which emergents are generally swimming. Postmodernism is explained more fully here, but at its heart is the belief that no one can ever really know what's true in any objective sense. We don't have knowledge, all we have is opinion. And in an effort to "do church" in and connect with a postmodern culture, many of the leading voices in the emerging church movement have begun with postmodern assumptions and sought to understand Christianity from that vantage point.
But what happens when I view all this through the framework of postmodernism, with its denial of knowable truth and its inherent opposition to any over-arching meaning-story? What happens is the whole Christian enterprise as it's existed for centuries crumbles, and gets replaced with a me-centered journey of self-discovery that lacks any grounding in revealed truth. The emphasis shifts from learning to exploring, from the truth outside to the feelings inside, from conforming myself to expressing myself, and from the destination to the journey. Whatever value such an approach may be thought to have, it is not orthodox Biblical Christianity. Such churches are adrift on a sea of postmodern uncertainty, un-anchored to any solid basis from which to make sense of the church's mission.
Oddly enough, despite their great differences, the Marketing movement and the Emergent movement share a couple things in common. First, both are seeking to accommodate the gospel of Jesus to the larger culture: Marketers to the post- WWII consumer culture of the Baby Boomers and Emergents to the more recent postmodern culture of the Gen X-ers. However (despite the fact that both movements contain some outstanding individual churches which are exceptions to this rule) the movements as a whole have capitulated too strongly to the cultures they're trying to reach. It's the classic missionary problem: how do we speak the language of a foreign culture so as to communicate the gospel of Jesus? The trick (which missionaries have understood for centuries) is that one has to be careful not to change the message itself in the process of translation. But this is harder to stay objective about when you're trying to communicate to your own culture. Marketers have granted too many of consumer-culture's basic assumptions about how life works without thinking carefully enough about how those assumptions alter the gospel. Similarly, Emergents have granted too many of postmodern-culture's assumptions, also underestimating how much those assumptions change the very Christian faith they're trying to communicate.
Secondly, both movements tend to make the same mistake: minimizing truth, theology, and doctrine. But they do it for very different reasons. Marketers minimize it because such things are not thought to be wanted by the public. Spiritual seekers aren't "shopping" for doctrine, they're "shopping" for inspiration. So if churches want to "close the sale," they need to box up doctrine and put it in the back room, and place the glitzy programs and inspiring environments in the front window to attract passers-by.
Similarly, Emergents minimize doctrine because it smacks of arrogance. Postmodernism demands "how can anyone know they're right?" Worse yet, such certainty is thought to be the source of conflict and evil in the world -- relics of an uncouth and even barbaric past. Intelligent, sophisticated people have learned to think in "shades of gray" and to admire "nuance" as opposed to crude, unenlightened statements about absolute right and wrong. Definitive statements of doctrinal truth simply stand no chance with such a mindset.
The Glitzy Church?
So, I'm sitting here on a Saturday morning sipping a fabulous mug of Peet's coffee, and thinking some big thoughts - specifically, thoughts about church. That may seem kinda', well, obvious since church leadership is my career! But I mean more than just thinking about next Sunday's sermon, or the needs of our particular congregation at the moment, or the many activities that constitute the church calendar. I mean thinking about church: ho we do church, and why we do it the way we do it.
Think about it: what aspects of Christian doctrine are most likely to be unappealing to a postmodern, individualistic culture like ours? The same aspects that have been unappealing to every culture in every time: ideas like sin, guilt, judgment, and the authority of God in the lives of men, just to name a few. Consider:
- is Jesus our maker, deserving of our submission and graciously offering us forgiveness of our rebellious nature against him, as the gospel has declared for the past two thousand years? Or...
- is Jesus the world's best self-help guru; a chummy chap who stands by ready to enhance our dreams, ameliorate our disappointments, and enable us to achieve our personal goals?
But this is about more than just preaching - it's about how we understand the church's entire mission. And it touches every facet of church life, from how funds are allocated to how the pastoral staff spends its time to what the participation of individual members looks like. If the goal is to market the gospel as a product, everything will be affected.
So why have I been thinking about all this lately? Well, two responses come to mind. First, the big picture always come to the fore when you're about to hire new staff, as Harvest is preparing to do. As our modestly sized church begins the process of seeking a full time associate pastor to work with worship & arts as well as other responsibilities, the "Marketing question" becomes important: how much of this person's time will be devoted to building performance-oriented programs and activities vs. supporting the church's core functions of biblical community, truth-based personal transformation, and serving our community as conduits of grace?But second, the truth is I haven't been just thinking about these things lately. In fact, I've never stopped thinking about them since I first came to pastor at Harvest. As I told the church at that time, God impressed upon me a burden to help build the church in the mode of serious engagement with the Bible, and with the deep questions of life. I came here with the deep-seated conviction that the church marketing experiment of the past couple decades, though begun with admirable goals, has gone largely awry. And it's time to shut 'er down. It's time to get back to a deep, rich, and delightfully counter-cultural Christianity. A Christianity that challenges our natural perspective, and gives a greater meaning to all of human life. In other words, time to get back to historic Biblical Christianity.
So says this one man anyway. But enough of my musings. I'm wanting to hear from all of you too, because I want to engender a discussion here. Please consider posting up a response to this question: what church experience in your own past caused you to grow most notably as a Christian?
Imago Dei
This post is a bit long-ish, but the topic warrants some thought I think, so I hope you'll bear with me. Thanks to Kimberly, Jerry, and Ann who all left excellent comments on my recent post regarding evangelical fatigue and angst with respect to the pro-life movement. You guys brought up some important points, actually stealing some of my thunder in some cases, which is great! I particularly appreciated the recognition that the movement early on focused perhaps too much on the overturn of Roe v Wade, and that some of the current fatigue comes from seeing the Roe decision still standing.
Francis Shaeffer and many others have correctly pointed out that politics is downstream from culture, meaning that the collective view of the population shapes the law much more than the law shapes the collective view. An important implication is that attempting to change the law first is a really tough proposition -- swimming upstream, as it were -- as pro-lifers discovered in the 70's and 80's. This is true despite the fact that changing the law at first appears to be the less daunting task. After all, a law change is a concrete goal, whereas shaping the hearts and minds of fellow citizens is a much larger and more amorphous task. But law change turns out to not be so easy at it might first appear, and is of more limited value than heart change even when achieved.
History speaks volumes...
In preparing for this weekend's message I've spent some time refreshing my memory on one of the world's greatest subjects: history. I combed back through many of Western civilization's greatest human rights advances and saw again how Christians were almost always at the heart of these efforts. I will briefly share 4 examples in the service tomorrow: infanticide in ancient Rome, slavery throughout Europe's history, poverty in 20th century India, and segregation in the American south (seems appropriate just after MLK day, eh?).
But there are dozens more I could share if time permitted. Consider that the 19th century's suffragettes, and actually the whole roots of the feminist movement, were Christian. Or consider how Christian missionaries and nationals were the impetus behind stopping the burning of widows on their husband's funeral pyres in India. Or how, beginning with the efforts of Jim Elliot and Nate Saint, Christians helped transform native Waodani culture in Ecuador from a genocidal violence that nearly wiped the entire tribe out. Or how Christians opened weekend schools (the original Sunday School) to educate slave children in colonial America (I wrote my undergraduate thesis in college on such efforts). The list goes on and on.
What do all these examples have in common? One phrase: Imago Dei. That's Latin for Image of God, one of the core tenets of Christian theology. These Christian efforts were all driven by a passionate belief in the inherent value of all human life regardless of age, gender, health, socioeconomic class, ethnicity, or any other distinction people tend to draw in order to justify treating others inhumanely.
But these efforts all teach us something else too. They were hugely successful - indeed they shaped western civilization itself - because they were multi-faceted efforts. Government forces were almost always complicit in the injustice in question, so each effort had a political component which pursued just laws. But the verve - the real fire - of these movements in each case came from a virtual army of unknown "soldiers" of compassion, who labored in obscurity and sacrificed personally to meet the needs of the downtrodden; comforting them and helping materially while drawing the unwilling attention of reluctant societies to their plight. It was this action and attention - this faith lived out (hmmm... sounds like James 2:26 doesn't it?) - that gradually transformed the hearts and minds of people, and often enabled just political solutions to follow.
Where do we go from here?
Which brings me back to Roe v. Wade and the current struggle we have with rampant, no-cause abortion in our beloved country. I greatly appreciate Ann's comment on my previous post, which I thought very honest and accurate. We often have a zeal for the truth, which is outstanding! Never let anyone tell you that's bad, because not one worthwhile thing in this world has ever been accomplished (including our redemption) apart from zeal for truth. But this sometimes leaves us fighting feelings of frustration, fear, even hate (hopefully directed toward the current state of affairs, not toward people, which is never justified). We have much better uses for our energy than fear and angst! I think the pro-life movement going forward needs (and will in fact pursue) two major things:.jpg)
1. More action Because a thousand mundane acts of genuine compassion are far more potent than a big flashy campaign of any kind, I see an even more energized pro-life movement at the grassroots level engaging in a myriad of mom-supporting and baby-protecting activities that will save thousands of lives even before the law changes. From supporting unmarried single moms and Pregnancy Resource Centers, to adoption and working to make adoption more affordable, to starting and/or supporting ministries like The House of Ruth or 5 Rock Ranch, to talking openly and honestly about the sanctity and seriousness of sex, marriage, and fathering. Think about it: if we conservatively assume that only 5% of Americans are evangelicals, that's 15 million people (and more than that are pro-life). How would our culture be impacted by 15+ million Jesus-lives in our midst?
2. Better reporting of the action that's already taken place
And while much more can be done if we put our hearts and minds to it, the truth is a lot of this action already takes place. For example, I know many people in my personal circle of relationships who have adopted children (even though they had their own biological kids already), taken in pregnant teen girls who feel they have nowhere to turn and given them a place to live, volunteered countless hours counseling and emotionally & financially supporting them and their babies, and in hundreds of ways made a huge difference in the lives of women. But how often do you hear their stories? Honestly, this is the question that has haunted me this week because the answer is "not enough." And those of us who have communicative abilities and who don't mind rattling a few cages and swimming against the cultural current as graciously as possible had better get more busy trumpeting what the heroes of compassion are really doing. Sorry, that last line is directed at myself more than anyone else, but hey: this is my blog, right? :)
None of this is to say that legal/political efforts should be abandoned. Quite the contrary, there is already widespread public support for laws that limit the availability of abortion, which is why full disclosure and parental notification laws get passed successfully (I'll comment on FOCA under another heading - this post is already long enough). But as we petition our political leaders, let's also ask God how he would have us use our talents and abilities to make a difference in the lives of moms, dads, and babies in our own community to the end that not only are innocent babies' lives spared, but the hearts and minds of our fellow citizens can be moved by seeing a Jesus-life in action.
After all, when we put faith into action in this way we're carrying a torch that has been passed from one generation of Jesus-followers to the next for over two thousand years. That's some cloud of witnesses.
Some thoughts on Dubya
I'll get back to the abortion/sanctity of human life discussion I started a couple days ago shortly. But first, I want to offer some thoughts on the Bush presidency as it enters its final days. And how appropriate -- without knowing it I started drafting this post on the very day president Bush gave his farewell speech.
My conclusion after reflecting on eight years of George Bush in the White House is that a lot of positive came out of his administration, and the world is better for his two terms. I know that puts me in the minority as of right now, but I suspect that the current hostility toward Bush will cool, perhaps with the passing of the current generation, and that looking back many of his positives will be more evident than they appear to many today who have grown so accustomed to reviling the man on sight.
In fact, president Clinton said something in the waning days of his administration that I think applies to Bush as well. I'll paraphrase Clinton since I don't have the direct quote, but the effect of it was 'I'm not nearly as bad as my worst detractors have portrayed me, nor am I nearly as good as my staunchest supporters have claimed.' Considering that the scuttlebutt on Clinton ran the gamut from "He's the Antichrist!" to "he's the best president this nation ever will have!" I thought it a well-grounded way for him to look at all the talk. Which brings me to Bush: man, I thought the anti-Clinton jargon was heated (and it was) but I've never seen anything quite like the irrational, spiteful vitriol that has been hurled against W. All presidents have political enemies, but the Bush hatred seems to have blinded many people, especially in print and television news, to much of the good that Bush used his office to accomplish. I'll mention just a couple of the things that are most significant to me.
First, Bush's entire presidency was marked by a dedication to human dignity and human rights. And I'm not only referring to his opposition to abortion, but also to things like his standing firm against the current irrational mania to pursue embryonic stem cell research when non-embryonic stem cell research offers much more promise and has produced more real results (that's the subject of a whole post unto itself). Bush also listened to a bipartisan coalition of activists who were working against human trafficking (a safe, sterilized way to say sex slavery) and passed some of the most robust legislation against that evil to date. He also became extensively involved in pressuring the government of Sudan (where I have traveled 4 times) to stop its genocidal war on civilians in the south of that nation, helping broker a ceasefire that remains tenuously in place to this day. And when Darfur erupted later and Khartoum sought to weasel out of responsibility for it, Bush sent his top diplomat (Secretary of State Powell) to the region, signaling the seriousness with which the USA was taking human rights in a nation in which we had no large security interest. On the home front his faith-based initiatives were intended to partner with groups that make a real difference in the lives of prisoners, the poor, and the outcasts of our country rather than merely opening the bureaucratic checkbook and calling it compassion. But he did open the checkbook for good causes too, typically in the aid of the forgotten, such as helping cure thousands of Africans from malaria (a curable disease that still kills millions each year, usually amongst the poor) and treating AIDS on the continent. Sadly, most of these efforts got little press.
The common theme behind all these efforts is a simple and yet profound one which resonates deeply with me personally: that strength exists for the defense of the weak. Not for their exploitation, as happens in so many nations. I believe that honors God's intentions in creating strength. The president of the United States, while far from omnipotent, is probably the single strongest person in the world in terms of influence, and I think Dubya understood that and sought to use his position for purposes that went beyond himself and petty partisanship.
And then there's the War on Terror... I don't want this to get too long but one can't comment on the Bush presidency and leave out perhaps its most identifiable facet. I'm mixed on this: on the one hand there's the glaring absence of WMDs in Iraq (though this exposed gaping holes in the intelligence networks of all NATO nations as much as it reflects on the Bush administration, despite what the vitriolic Bush bashers screamed) and there's 4,000 dead American soldiers which is never a good thing. Yet the War On Terror is bigger than just Iraq, and while I have mixed feelings about our involvement in that nation I also recall that in 7 1/2 years since 9/11 Al-Qaeda's ability to sow chaos and death has been severely curtailed through the military, diplomatic, law enforcement, and financial coalition of nations Bush put together. Many terrorist attacks in Europe have been discovered and thwarted before they happened, and significantly not a single attack has taken place on American soil since - a fact that no one even dared to dream might be possible in the aftermath of the World Trade Center attack, when we felt so vulnerable to terrorism. Though Bush must bear responsibility for the failures and missteps particularly in Iraq, surely he deserves credit for what has gone right.
To be sure he has had his major blunders. Underestimating the aftermath of toppling Saddam Hussein is certainly one. And on the home front, I have nearly pulled my own hair out more than once as I've watched him spend more government money than many "big-spender Democrat" presidents ever did. This was another miscalculation on his part: I think he sought to take issues away from his political opponents by championing their own causes, but in the end he only earned the ire of his own supporters by doing so. Still, many today seem all too happy to blame Bush for other people's misdeeds; an example being the current economic crisis, which in reality began long before Bush was in office (and when, incidentally, the White House and Congress were both controlled by his political opponents). I realize that getting blamed for everything bad and credited for everything good comes with the Oval Office territory. But that dynamic also explains why I'm still part of the 30% or so of people who have an overall favorable view of George W Bush's presidency: he's been too easy a target for the angst of a nation.
And I'm not alone. A very well-written reflection on Dubya can be found here, and another one here. I recommend reading both of these short articles, regardless of your opinion of the Bush presidency. Even if they don't change your mind, they at least provide food for thought.
So as the prez makes way for his successor and prepares to glide into the Texas sunset, I bid him an appreciative farewell, remaining mindful of my disappointments with him, yet convinced that history will remember him better than his contemporaries do.
Signed,
An unashamed member of the 30% (or whatever we're down to nowadays...)
Flagging?
I'm back in the "blogging saddle" after a Christmas season break! And there's something on my mind for which I'd like your input.
In a couple weeks Harvest, like many churches around the nation, will spend a Sunday emphasizing the sanctity of human life.
Now here's my question: what was your first reaction to that sentence?
I ask because I'm sensing that there's a wide variety of reactions today to Christianity's historically pro-life worldview, particularly within evangelical circles. First off the phrase "sanctity of human life" seems to have become a euphemism for fighting abortion (even though it refers to something much broader) since that's been the main focus for the past few decades in our country. And I see evidence of mixed feelings about the fight against abortion amongst evangelicals.
Some seem to be experiencing "abortion fatigue," for lack of a better term -- becoming emotionally worn out from a long fight that seems to have produced few gains. Others appear to have become frustrated at such fatigue amongst fellow evangelicals, pounding proverbial tables and becoming shrill in their efforts to "rally the troops" and keep up the fight against this heinous evil. And then there's a palpable anxiety some evangelicals are experiencing, stoked in no small part by the fact that we're about to inaugurate a president with 100% approval ratings from some of the most pro-abortion organizations in the land.
Fatigue. Frustration. Anxiety. Not a real great mix of emotions.
Interestingly enough every evangelical Christian I hear or read still says they're 100% convinced of the evil of abortion, even those in the "fatigue" camp. This intrigues me: evidently evangelical Christians are not re-thinking their theology (despite what some in the "frustration" camp might believe) as much as they're re-thinking its application.
Of course the question is, where do we go from here? I have some thoughts (no surprise, I know!) and I'll share them soon both on this blog and with the church. But first I want to hear from you.
When it comes to the sanctity of human life, what is your sense of where evangelical Christians are at? Why do you think this is so?
Winter Wonderland, and Wild Man Tommy
The snow and ice have hit Portland thick, and we've had some great opportunities to enjoy it!
Below is a video of a sled running the kids and I took between storms at the hill near our house. The snow at the bottom of the hill was just melting, but the sledding was still excellent. Wild man Tommy was steering our sled and turned so hard he almost threw me off at the top! I love the primal "I love speed" roar he uncorked at the bottom of the hill:
That was 2 days ago. After 36 hours of snowfall, it looked a bit different today! Some pics of...
...our house
...our deck!
The sledding hill:
Our street:
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