Worshiping Community in the Worshiping Community

I've begun to see a pattern lately of people accidentally worshiping community instead of the Trinity. Their search for Christian fellowship leads them to believe that community is an Biblical ideal to build towards, rather than a current reality to be participated in. Christ has purchased our fellowship in full. Our job is to acknowledge it in its every form and participate in it wherever we find ourselves among fellow believers. Don't LOOK for the ideal. BE the ideal.

Psalm 84 and the Theory of Relativity

The first time I heard Psalm 84, it was put to song, and I didn't understand it. One day anywhere can't possibly be as good as a thousand elsewhere, right? It's over too soon. Well, I was stupid. Time is relative in many ways. That one day would last much longer than the other thousand.

The Greek uses two words which we commonly translate in the Bible as "time." Kronos refers to the quantity of time, or the measurement of duration. This is where we get our word "chronology." Kairos refers to the quality of time, or the measurement of meaning. It's more like a season.

September 11, 2001 was, chronologically, just another day. As long as the earth kept going, September 11 was going to arrive, live out its commanded 24 hours, and disappear forever. But humans are not mere counters of things. We need to know why the numbers are significant. We are creatures of meaning. For humans, this day seems much larger in the collective memory than the day preceding it. I would venture to say that not many people recall with clarity where they were standing at 9:30 am on September 10, 2001, but the day after was different. It was not just another day. It was a much, much, bigger day. Lives have been dramatically changed. Global policies have shifted. Art has been created. Some say it was the last day of the 20th century, even though chronologically that's nonsense. Even greater weight than this can (and should) be given to the days of Jesus death and resurrection.

The past 10 days of my life were much longer than thousands of the days that preceded them. I had the privilege of traveling to beautiful places and encouraging people with my gifts in fruitful ways. I'll spend a long time unpacking them, reflecting upon them, making decisions based upon what happened within them. I don't recount them by day or hour, but by themes and motifs. In some ways, I'd prefer to do as Mary did, and keep them to myself, pondering the wonder of it all.

Time in the chronological sense will pass away, but the rich and gracious seasons of God's loving action toward us will roll on like an endless tide. Better is one day like that than any other indeed.

The Worship Tension Spectrum

Inspired by some conversations with Memphis Area Worship Leaders, I began to think about the way some worship values compete with one another, and I began to craft the following spectrum with the help of my scholarly friend, Dr. Jason Hood. I intend to use this to help my own church think through our worship identity and to then use our conclusions as a touchstone to help us avoid any unnecessary conflict. I have attempted to give fair voice to all without exposing my biases. I thought this might help others think through these things for their own churches.

The Worship Tension Spectrum
We cannot order our worship with intentionality if we are not confessing and communicating our values. These are not necessarily mutually exclusive concepts, but they do create tension when we attempt to pursue them simultaneously. What does your church value? Are your worship efforts being hindered by duality of vision? Is there another tension you're dealing with that's not listed here?


1. Performance vs. Participation

• Performance – God’s transcendent nature is best imparted through displays of excellence in presentation.
• Participation - God is most pleased when the whole congregation has ownership and involvement.

      Tension: Excellence is typically produced by limiting productivity to the specialized. 

2. Attraction vs. Discipleship

• Attraction – If more people could only get in the door, then they would be transformed by the gospel.
• Discipleship –If people could only be transformed by the gospel, they would bring more people in the door.

      Tension: Discipleship requires effort and obedience, which is unattractive.

3. Targeted vs. Inclusive

• Targeted - Focusing on the fewer interests moves people with greater efficiency toward Kingdom goals.
• Inclusive - Creating an environment enriched by diversity is a Kingdom goal.

      Tension: Diversity requires compromise, which hinders agility

4. Dynamic vs. Conservative

• Dynamic – Meaning emerges spontaneously from the immediate context of the worshipers.
• Conservative – Meaning is preserved within the proven liturgies and traditions of the Church.

      Tension:  Spontaneity can create competing authorities

How Many Paces from the Shire is Mordor?

The argument usually goes, the New Testament was written by and to people who came from a Jewish or Near-eastern background. They understood things like "priesthood" and "burnt offering." We don't. We understand "paparazzi" and "Twitter feed." People in the West today need to have the gospel contextualized in their own culture so that they can understand. Sounds reasonable.

Then I started to think about the LARP phenomenon. Let's use Lord of the Rings as an example. How many LOTR junkies do you know that actually come from Middle Earth? And yet if you ask them questions like, "Who were Beren and Lúthien?," or "Who was the final Steward of Gondor?", they will reply with such disdain for amateur questions, you would swear they had a hint of elven blood coursing through their virgin veins. They intimately know the history, even as far removed from the world of origin, because they buy the story. More than that, they actually prefer the story to their own. They have chosen to exchange their own  anecdotal lives for Tolkien's epic, meeting their buddies on the weekends for some live action role-playing, and spending the rest of the week obsessively osmosing their trilogic tome of devotion (not to mention The Silmarillion and other apochryphal texts!). You would not dare suggest to them that we update the imagery for something a bit more culturally relevant. They would call upon the Uruk-Hai to feast upon your flesh, because if it's worth living for; it's worth learning about.

Obviously this isn't the end of the discussion concerning contextualization. It doesn't really address how to explain the allure of The One Ring to an unregenerate who just doesn't see what all the fuss is about, or why it's reasonable at all to practice such "escapism." I'll save that for another time. Suffice to say, the argument that we need to reconcile foreign imagery to our own culture's vocabulary in order to experience it fully is a load of orcwash.

“No horse blankets”

About a mile from my house stands Berclair Coin Laundry. Berclair is a racially diverse area, mostly Hispanic and black, with a small remaining core of white elderly survivors from its heyday as a nice Memphis suburb. We’re also seeing an influx of young families since the houses are well built and inexpensive. When I pulled up to the empty parking lot, I noticed the sign overhead:

<-- Laundry Parking Only  -->

Because they carry the heavy Laundry

APPRECIATE

I immediately recognized the syntax as an indicator of an Asian-American proprietor. A few more signs inside the otherwise empty museum of washing machines confirmed this suspicion:

“Please, pick your dryer sheet up, because don’t hurt slip down everyone.”

“Please, use rag for wipe out, if water leaks on floor

because be dangerous slip down, don’t hurt everyone."

“No horse blankets.”

Ok, that last one was perfect English, but the fact that we were 20 miles from anything remotely equestrian made me giggle. These illustrations serve to set the tone for the language barrier that caused a great deal of frustration in my conversation with the Laundromat’s owner, Phillip. I couldn’t pronounce his real name, and I guess that’s why he goes by Phillip. He could tell that I had no idea where to put my quarters, which machine to use for my oversized bedspread (the occasion for my visit), or how to even open the thing, so he came to my rescue with a great deal more patience than I would have had for someone as clueless as I was. I noticed as he rose from his desk that he had a pocket Bible and I leapt at the opportunity to ask him about it.

What follows is the result of a LOT of repetition, hand-motions, and failed attempts to cross the linguistic divide. He knew barely enough English to run a Laundromat and I know absolutely zero Korean, so this conversation took well over an hour.

Phillip was 48 when he and his wife moved from South Korea 8 years ago. Their two sons are in their late 20’s and live in New York. When I asked him why he reads the Bible, he said because he wants to go to Heaven. I asked him where he attends church, and he said he doesn’t go and then said something about the Antichrist. I dared to press further, asking if he knew about the Korean Presbyterian Church about a hundred yards south. He said, yes, that’s the one he was asked to leave. Mesmerized, I continued the investigation, and he launched into how he had been studying the Bible through correspondence for a few years and had come to the conclusion that the church had misinterpreted the passages about tithing, so he had confronted his pastor and asked for a refund of his 30 years’ worth of tithes. They had, of course, refused, and then he went on a diatribe about how all churches were money-making scams and that he needed to only trust the Bible because pastors were liars. I decided at that point not to tell him what my job is. Also, for some reason there was quite a bit of hostility toward the Catholic Church. I’m sure this kind of talk was what led to his dismissal. He then pulled out his Holman Atlas, Strong’s Concordance, Korean, Chinese, NIV, and KJV Bibles and showed me all the discrepancies he had discovered. He showed me where the Korean version had omitted the second half of Genesis 2:20 because of a cultural philosophical disgust at the idea that God would have looked for a suitable mate for Adam from among the animals. He really wants to learn Greek and Hebrew, but new languages are hard at his age, he says.

Then things got weird.

Phillip believes that the Trinity is a false doctrine based on his conviction that Jesus and the Spirit are the same person. We should not be waiting for Christ’s return, because he already came back at Pentecost. Since it’s Jesus who’s talking to us now in His Spirit, we’re all apostles. He showed me a stack of Korean sermon CD’s that I think are probably the original source of his hard divergence from the orthodox path. The thing I find most fascinating about that is, apparently the Korean Church still practices church discipline to the degree of excommunication. It’s not even practical to do that in Memphis, which has more churches per capita than anywhere else in the world. If we disagree with the leadership we can just go anonymously to another assembly. And boy, do we.

¡Viva La Revolución! - Righteousness and Che

Although it is difficult to tell by the modern roster of celebrities, fame was once a byproduct of true greatness and not mere novelty. Ernesto "Che" Guevara is the kind of man whose mystique and mythology is more hypnotic to me than any modern celebrity could hope to be. His renown is the result of an idealism so unwavering and active that it changed the face of Western politics in a matter of mere months. The world is still shaking from his legacy. An Argentinean doctor on a quest to discover an earthly cure for human suffering, Che met Fidel Castro in Mexico City and decided to help the Cuban revolutionary in his mission to overthrow his government and begin a Communistic way of life for the Cuban people. After a brilliant and successful guerrilla campaign, Che could have enjoyed the adoration of the public and the status of a statesman. Instead, his restless soul beckoned him to aid the Bolivian people in a similar endeavor, one to which he ultimately gave his life.

Politics and social ethics aside, I can't get over how dedicated this man was to the dignity of humanity. The motivation Christianity provides for such a passion is far more rooted than is Communism, yet here was a man who found within himself an intensity of conviction that I simply cannot muster despite my most sincere efforts. My temptation then becomes the desire to justify Che before God and man, partially because of my starry-eyed crush on the Argentinian and partly because if God is not pleased with a man of such selfless justice (methods aside) as Ernesto Guevara, then what hope do I have?

But this is something I must not do. Isaiah 64 tells us that all the righteousness of men is like filthy rags before a holy God. Not even the heroic life lived by a man like Che Guevara (or if you prefer the pacifist Gandhi, you're welcome to substitute) adds up to the perfect standard required for a relationship with Yahweh. This righteousness is only attainable for men by the blood of Jesus. Knowing that I now have this imputed righteousness, I can work out my salvation inspired by the examples of men greater than I, but releasing the anxiety of trying to add up to the goodness of Theresa or the passion of William Wallace. God's Kingdom will prevail. Human dignity will be restored. Justice will be served to the oppressed and their oppressors. Even the greatest men are in need of grace. We labor faithfully knowing that it is Christ who works in us and through us. 

¡Viva La Revolución!

Legacy

My wife cut and enjoyed gorgeous flowers from our yard today. They are the remnant of a woman's labor of love many years ago. She has long since passed away and we do nothing to nurture the flowers at all. We just bought an old house and we're benefiting from the fruit of another person's work, at least until her legacy fades. Eventually, if we do not learn the art and invest the time into gardening, the beds will all be overgrown and the flowers choked out.

While I am encouraged at the prospect that the fruit of my own labors will have lasting effects far beyond my sight, I also pray that I will be diligent to pass down the art and science of my trade to the next generation. Otherwise they will become as arrogant and blind as our own generation, boasting in the flowers of faith they enjoy all around them while ignoring to learn the craft and work that produced them.