Community and transcendence

I read a very interesting essay in the Wall Street Journal yesterday. Alain de Botton writes about the loss of a sense of community that people once had from church membership and involvement, and how he envisions a secular version of that community spirit.

Identifying community meals and rituals as elements that enable perfect strangers to establish community in the context of religious meetings, he speculates on how those elements might be used without the religious context. He describes  ”an ideal restaurant of the future, an Agape Restaurant” where people come together without regard for social class, family background, professional status, or ethnic background.

Rather than leave people to figure out for themselves how to engage one another in meaningful conversation, there would be written guidelines on how to behave, what happens when, and what kind of things to talk about. People would know that it was safe to open themselves up and talk about things that they usually kept to themselves or their closest friends.

I can’t say it couldn’t happen, but I am skeptical. The basis for community among believers is not communal meals or rituals, though those certainly help foster community. What draws people together from different walks of life, and creates a place where they do not need to posture or pretend, is transcendence.

Second Sunday of Advent: Peace

I wonder how many millions of cards are being exchanged this month with the words “Peace on Earth.” I wonder also, how many millions of people consider the sentiment foolish – and the faith behind it misguided – when even a cursory look at the news shows that there is not peace on earth.

People’s real reasons for rejecting Christianity are certainly not always the same as the reasons they give – even to themselves. But I know that for some people, the fact that our world is still so plagued by wars and strife, two thousand years after the coming of the “Prince of peace,” is a strong argument against it.

For me, the traditional theological explanation that the time is still future when “the lamb will lie down with the lion,” after Jesus returns in power and glory, is satisfactory. Until then, those who follow Jesus have peace with God and with one another. (That is, they have peace with one another to the extent that they follow Jesus; examples abound of people who claim to follow Jesus fighting amongst themselves, unfortunately.) Once He returns, there will be outward peace as well as inward peace.

Perhaps this is at least part of why I find it hard to get as excited about the idea of peace as I do the idea of hope (see last Sunday’s post). Hope is by definition oriented toward the future. Peace is something that we experience to a certain extent now, and expect to more in the future – but we have no idea how far in the future that may be.

First Sunday of Advent: Hope

I see from looking at my posts from the past few years that I always blog about the first Sunday of Advent. But I don’t have any posts for the second, third, or fourth Sundays of Advent. I don’t think it’s because the theme of the first Sunday – hope – is more important to me than the remaining themes of peace, joy, and love. More likely, it’s similar to what happens to most people’s New Year’s resolutions shortly after they are made.

The first Sunday of Advent is the beginning of a new church year for those who follow the liturgical calendar. If I’m going to commit myself to develop new or better habits of prayer, Bible reading/study, or other practices to deepen my spiritual life, this seems like a better time than on January 1. Advent, after all, was traditionally a time of repentance and preparation, rather than an early start to the Christmas season.

But in practice my Advent resolutions don’t seem to last any longer than my New Year’s resolutions to lose weight, exercise more, and get more organized. Apparently I haven’t even expected them to, because my previous posts on the first Sunday in Advent haven’t given any indication that they are first in a series. I wouldn’t have wanted to say I was starting something and not finish it, so I made a point of not saying I was starting something that I suspected I would have trouble finishing.

Books: Radical

 I finally finished David Platt’s book Radical yesterday. When I started it, back on Super Bowl Sunday, I couldn’t put it down. (Admittedly, it doesn’t take much to distract me from watching a football game.) Once I was offered the chance to take it home, and finish it at my leisure, I couldn’t seem to get interested in picking it up again.

That’s perhaps not too unusual a reaction. As one of the editorial reviews at amazon.com points out,

“Sometimes people will commend a book by saying, ‘You won’t want to put it down.’ I can’t say that about this book. You’ll want to put it down, many times. If you’re like me, as you read David Platt’s Radical, you’ll find yourself uncomfortably targeted by the Holy Spirit. You’ll see just how acclimated you are to the American dream.” (Russell D. Moore, dean, Southern Baptist Theological Seminary)

Most days I read for relaxation and intellectual stimulation. I like to sit in a comfy armchair, often with a snack or at least a beverage handy. Picking up a book that makes me feel guilty for time or money I spend on my own comfort doesn’t quite fit the picture.

When I did finally pick it up again yesterday, I had another surprise. Most of what I remembered about the book was the emphasis on American Christians needing to be willing to give up at least some of their material comforts and give to people elsewhere in the world who have so much less. Apparently I had pretty much finished that part of the book, because when I started reading again, it was all about needing to take the gospel of salvation through Jesus Christ to people who have never heard, so that they will not all go to Hell.

Children and church

Like many churches, ours will start the children’s program back up next month. Last year we started going there just before the holidays, when they were busy preparing for the children’s Christmas pageant. There was a high level of involvement by children and their families, which was exciting to me. But after Christmas somehow that quickly dwindled away.

The pastor (my husband) has asked me to meet with the leaders of the children’s program to talk about doing “children’s church” instead of “Sunday School.” Exactly what the difference is seems to vary from church to church. In some churches, it seems to be merely a matter of timing – Sunday School is before church, children’s church is during church.

In my view, it has to do with the focus. Sunday School typically is lesson-centered, with the goal being to teach the Bible and how it applies to children’s lives. That’s important, but there’s more to church than learning. Adults go to church not just to learn but to worship – which includes learning but is much broader. We worship through song, prayer, hearing the Word read and preached, and giving our tithes and offerings.

I’ve heard and read a good deal about whether children should attend worship together with their parents. One strong argument for all ages worshipping together is that the Bible nowhere speaks of segregating God’s people by age groups. Our society tends to segregate children by age a great deal as it is – school is almost always age-based (except homeschool, of course), and even as the elderly segment of our society grows in numbers, it has less contact than ever before with the youngest segment of our society.

Just as a family benefits from grandparents and grandchildren spending time together, and aunts and uncles and cousins of all ages coming together to work and play, God’s family is strongest when all ages interact and share their unique gifts with one another. I find the idea of all ages worshipping together very appealing, not least because that way children do not have to make a transition from the fun of a children’s program to what may be perceived as a much more boring duty to sit through church. It also helps the adults recognize that the children are just the future of the church, they are part of the church today.

On the other hand, I have rarely attended a church where children and adults alike seemed comfortable with having all ages together. Parents of young children feel embarrassed when their children make noise or don’t sit still. Some children by nature find it easy to sit quietly (I was one of those) but many do not, and it becomes a test of wills between parent and child. I have read comments from parents who say they simply taught their children that they had to sit quietly and it’s a matter of good discipline, as with any other situation with young children. That may be true, but if so there are a lot of parents (including me) who are weak in this area.

The churches where young children in church are not an issue generally are those where a certain level of movement and noise is simply more acceptable. In particular I think of some black congregations I have visited. The large Baptist church I attended for nearly five years (until last fall) has a nursery on Sunday morning but the program for older children is after church (during Community hour when many adult small groups meet). Sometimes a toddler would walk around in the aisle, and people would simply smile. A certain amount of childish chatter was also simply taken for granted.

That same church also has Saturday evening services, and the children’s program is held at the same time. I have sometimes suspected that some parents choose to attend Saturday evening church so that they could leave their rambunctious children at KidZone while they went to worship. (Certainly the Saturday evening crowd in the K/1 class always seemed much harder to control than the Sunday morning group, though the morning program had the advantage of a number of teenage volunteers.)

I’ve had a few conversations with the children’s program director, and he is emphatic about making church a positive experience for children. He grew up in a church where Sunday School was boring (and church no doubt more so), and he wants to make KidZone a very kid-friendly environment. (He didn’t introduce this, as it was that way before he came, he simply has built on what had been started a few years earlier.) There is strong Bible teaching, but it is clearly geared to each age group. There is singing with lots of movement. There is prayer but in short segments. (I have to admit to finding it hard to keep my own mind from wandering during a ten-minute pastor-led prayer.)

I haven’t figured out exactly what I’m going to say at the meeting Sunday. I will talk about the need for children to worship through song and prayer and giving as well as learning Bible stories. I will talk about having them spend some time in the “big church” becoming familiar with the songs and prayers that are part of their parents’ worship. I will talk about having them at least sometimes be present for baptisms and Communion. I will talk about having them gradually participate more in “all-ages” worship as they get older (and suggest ways they can help lead worship even as children, such as by lighting the candles).

Ideally I would like to see a church where children feel welcome throughout the worship service, without them having to sit as still and quietly the whole time as the adults do. (Personally even as an adult I would welcome more opportunities to be active. I have to keep explaining to my husband that if my eyelids start to droop during his sermon it has nothing to do with his preaching; I simply find it difficult to stay alert if I sit passively listening for any length of time, whether in church or in business meetings.)

But I’m not sure how to get to that point, in churches that have traditionally had a Sunday School, and where noise and movement by children are seen as out of place. My 11-year-old sits quietly (most of the time), but he spends the time reading books, not participating in worship most of the time. (Sometimes he does surprise me by asking about something he just heard.) I’d rather lead children in worship using active songs and age-appropriate Bible lessons, than have them sit uncomfortably but quietly, coloring pictures or reading books and tuning out the worship service.

Will it float?

Last summer I helped out one week with the 2nd-5th grade room of the summer KidZone program at church. I don’t remember whether I was there for the entire lesson, but I was there for the Will it float? segment. This was a short video (the summer program uses a video curriculum to minimize preparation required by short-term volunteers, since the regular volunteers get the summer off), showing a man tossing various objects into a swimming pool.

Before throwing each object in, he would ask the audience, Will it float? I don’t remember what the objects were, but I know that the students – and I – guessed wrong as often as right. I wondered how many kids would go try it at home, if they had backyard pools. And I wondered what it had to do with the Bible lesson.

I had forgotten all about that by this summer, when I signed up to help again in that room. This weekend’s lesson is about loosening the Fear Knot of the fear of the dark. The opening activity was decorating pocket flashlights with self-adhesive shapes (flowers, letters, geometric shapes, etc.) made from colored foam. The flashlights, of course, were to help with fear of the dark, since sometimes all you need is a little bit of light.

Then the leader announced that it was time for our live Will it float? Everyone got in a line and headed next door to another classroom. Mystified, I went with the crowd. To my amazement, I found the children standing in a circle around a swimming pool full of water! Not a little kiddie pool either – this was one of those “easy set” pools, at least three feet high and maybe twelve or fifteen feet across.

Catechesis for the 21st century

Two blog posts that I read this morning have been percolating in my brain. One warns of the danger of putting too much emphasis on doctrine, and too little on a changed life. The other warns against letting experience become the authority rather than sound doctrine. Both are concerned with the appropriate place of doctrine, and both are no doubt reacting against an imbalance often witnessed in our churches.

Dr. Platypus commends another blogger’s critique of an article in Christianity Today, “The Lost Art of Catechesis.” The authors of this article note with dismay that the lay-led Sunday School movement has pretty much replaced the previous practice of pastor-led catechesis. Despite all the good that is accomplished in Sunday School, children who have grown up in it know a handful of Bible stories (the same ones get taught over and over again) but generally lack “for any form of grounding in the basic beliefs, practices, and ethics of the faith.”

The critique jumps on what is seen as the subordination of Bible stories to learning a set of theological statements. If that were the essence of catechesis, I would agree. Many people associate catechesis with a catechism, a set of questions and answers that constitute a systematic explanation of what a Christian is to believe and do. They were intended to ensure that Christians understood the essentials of their faith, but today they are associated with a practice of rote memorization divorced from a practical outworking of one’s faith.

How did that happen? This post at Parchment and Pen notes a changing attitude toward study of the Bible over the course of church history since the Reformation. The Reformers insisted that Scripture was the authority, rather than tradition. They emphasized study of Scripture, not only for clergy but for laypeople as well. (And they also developed catechisms to go along with that study, as the authors of the CT article noted.) With the coming of the Enlightenment period, however, people came to see reason as the final authority rather than revelation.

Taking a look at ourselves

This morning I read Michael Patton’s post at Parchment and Pen in which he “sounds the alarm” about the dearth of good teaching in evangelical churches. He quotes someone who describes American as “3,000 miles wide and half an inch deep.” It’s a criticism I’ve heard at the church I attend, one which the leadership has recently been trying to address by offering more adult classes on the Bible and theology.

Comments on Patton’s post generally agree about the problem, but add some cautions about the solution. As one person points out, in-depth Bible knowledge can certainly co-exist with shallow discipleship, because ultimately discipleship is about how we live and not just what we know. The current situation developed, in part, to avoid that extreme, but instead of producing solid disciples it often produced professing Christians with depth to neither their faith nor their knowledge.

I started asking myself just how one could measure genuine discipleship. Time spent in Bible study? Or at least frequency of Bible reading? Extent of involvement in ministry, either within the church or in the larger community? I found many discussions of the subject that emphasized that it’s not about numbers, either numbers of people involved in church programs or the amount of time they spend in those programs. And while a disciple will read and study the Bible, someone who reads and studies the Bible is not always a disciple.

Overnight with Noah

Tuesday afternoon, Al and I embarked on “a round (Bible) trip to the time of Noah,” as his official VBS ticket indicates. We had been invited by the pastor at a church we visited back in July, and I signed Al up. It made a good activity for the last week before school starts (a week from today), and I was intrigued by the idea of an overnight VBS.

There are still some churches in town that still run a traditional daytime VBS program. But as so many families have both parents working during the day, many churches have switched to an evening format. This gives adults the opportunity to volunteer without having to take vacation days from work. And at least at the church where I helped run an evening VBS, there were a lot of men involved, which (in my experience) is rare in a daytime VBS.

I don’t know this church’s reason for the overnight format, or whether they had done it before. We started at 4 PM (which would normally be early for me, but since I am working from5 AM to 2 PM this week, it was no problem), and the children participated in a wide variety of activities before heading to bed at about 10 PM. Staying overnight was optional, but required a parent or grandparent to stay also. I would guess at least half the children left before bedtime.

For me – especially having been up since 4 AM - it was nice to be there more as spectator than participant. I did greatly enjoy meeting Noah, and watching him tell his story to the children, and show them all the tools he had to use. I found myself wondering just what kind of tools were available back in Noah’s time, whenever that was. (Personally I am inclined toward the view that the flood was “universal” in that it affected the whole “known world” at the time, but was not global.)

Our Noah was careful to include no power tools, though the food and water buckets looked suspiciously like plastic. I also am fairly certain that kerosene lanterns, while quite antique in appearance, were way ahead of Noah’s time. Noah helped us get an idea of the ark’s dimensions by pointing out that it would reach from the room we were in all the way to the elementary school on the other side of the neighboring church. I looked out the door and could only try to imagine the immense proportions of the boat.

Like any VBS, this had music (how soon will “Who Built the Ark?” stop going through my head?) and several crafts, plus “pin the animals on the ark,” water games, and – after dark – a bonfire, complete with hot chocolate and s’mores. Supper was pretty good, consisting of:

• Soggy Logs
• Pitch sandwiches
• Noah mix
• Rabbit food
• Cow sticks
• Vineyard special
• Boat juice

I have decided, however, that next time I sleep on board a boat, even one disguised as a Sunday School classroom, I need extra padding under my sleeping bag.

Another church property dispute

Having grown up in the United Church of Christ, I naturally take an interest when the UCC is in the news. During my teen years, when I came to personal faith in Christ through the ministry of an independent Bible church, I left the UCC, which I came to see as having watered down the Gospel message or outright replaced it with their emphasis on social issues.

As a young adult, I discovered that there were some more conservative Congregational churches that – unlike the church my father went to his whole life – had not joined the United Church of Christ when it was formed in 1957 (the merger of the Congregational Christian Churches and the Evangelical and Reformed Church, each formed as a merger less than three decades earlier). After all, one defining characteristic of Congregational churches is their congregational polity – that is, that each congregation is autonomous, associated with other churches but not bound by an ecclesiastical hierarchy.

In Michigan, where my husband pastored a small Presbyterian church, I came to know a few members of another non-UCC Congregational church (we sang in a community Christian choral group, so I got to know members of at least a dozen other churches). I chatted briefly with the pastor after an ecumenical service I attended there, and suspected I would have been quite happy to attend there if I were in need of a church home. At the time I figured such churches must be purely independent (like the church I attended as a teen and many other Bible or Baptist churches).

Today I learned that there are at least two other Congregational denominations, both more conservative than the UCC (though as the UCC is well known as one of the most - if not the most – liberal of the Protestant denominations, that may not be saying a great deal). Center Congregational Church, in Atlanta, left the UCC and joined the much smaller but more conservative National Association of Congregational Christian Churches, after the UCC voted in 2005 to bless gay marriage.