Faith Resources and More

It makes sense. When you truly read the Bible, there is no doubt that early Christians, including Paul and the evangelists, believed in a physical resurrection of Jesus. And yet many strands of Christian and secular traditions help to paint a far different picture of death and the promise of resurrection that overwhelm those Biblical reports. Tom (aka N.T.) Wright argues for a re-evaluation of those traditions and an honest look at the Resurrection in his book and companion DVD study Surprised by Hope. I have wrestled with Dr. Wright’s book for the past two weeks, at times cheering him on and at other times, finding myself very challenged by his perspective. He has been a favorite author of mine since I began my tenure at the Interfaith Resource Center. As one of the finest contemporary theologians of our day, he is amazingly approachable for those of us who are not trained in that potentially difficult discipline.

But what about this pivotal resurrection experience? What does hope of a transformed body in resurrection look like? And what does it all mean? I have often felt a certain dis-ease as I look at the Gnostic world-view (and heaven-view) and notice its similarity to our own contemporary understanding. Not because Gnosticism was declared heresy many thousands of years ago and therefore I am obliged to dismiss it. Rather I recognize the dangers inherent in that path, not the least of which is a blatant disregard for this world and a haughty superiority about the next. That is precisely Wright’s point; that an other-worldly view of what God did in Christ inherently leads to a self-serving view of the Church’s mission. I, for one, will allow the challenges of Dr. Wright’s book to confront my calcified view of Christ’s resurrection and our call to mission. That may include what, on Brian McLaren’s Passion Week blog, he calls “courageous risks” (http://www.brianmclaren.net/archives/blog). It calls for action, not merely theological reflection. And that’s truly what it’s about.  Now am I ready to meet the challenge? Have a blessed Easter.

When you think of the term evangelism do you think of  folks in their Sunday-best knocking on doors in the neighborhood or high-end marketing campaigns that cost a small fortune? Neither of those images sit well with many mainline Protestants. What does evangelism really look like and has it gotten a bad rap. The word evangelism derives from the Koine Greek euangelion, meaning good news. So yes, those who come knocking on your doors, whether you hide or not, are fulfilling one interpretation of how to spread the good news. Expensive marketing campaigns might also qualify as a legitimate way of reaching the unchurched you haven’t heard. But the early church spread the Word effectively and passionately without expensive ad campaigns or the danger of knocking on hostile Roman doors.

What is your church doing? Last fall while my husband was struggling with a heart problem, I notified my board that I needed to be close at hand and might miss one or two of my traveling obligations. I received several affirming responses, but was surprised for one member to go further. His church sent my husband a get well card signed by a good number of members of his church, Limestone Presbyterian Church. Now let me make it clear, we are not members of that church, nor has my husband attended before. But this church sends get well cards to anyone who has been added to their prayer list. It was that little expression of concern… a reminder that the body of Christ cares. It is just one special way that one particular church shows that it cares. What is your church doing? Many do caring things for their own communities, but our call is to minister to the wider community. There are many ways your congregation can reach out to evangelize and spread the good news. Want more ideas? Contact me at director@interfaithresourcecenter.com. Have ideas? We would love to hear what your church is doing.

“What do you think about Godly Play?,” someone asked at the Episcopal Diocese of Delaware Convention on Saturday. I was quick to respond positively, with a qualifier. “Although some have challenged this opinion, I believe Godly Play is strongest as a beginning curriculum for kids 3 to about age 8, like the Montessori educational philosophy from which it springs.” Montessori teachers will disagree with me, pointing out the successes of using the teaching method with significantly older children.

With it’s stunning array of hand-crafted manipulatives including an exquisite hardwood ark, Godly Play can be quite expensive to launch. However many churches choose to contain their cost by enlisting the help of talented members to stock their shelves with fine alternatives. That has the added benefit of involving and investing people in the program who might not otherwise take an interest in children’s Sunday School.

Probably one of the most valuable and central tools of the program is the church year calendar… a circular wooden ‘puzzle’ with 52 pieces for each Sunday in the year. It is a powerful visual aid to help children understand the liturgical year, a fairly abstract concept for youngsters to grasp. The color of the pieces corresponds to the colors of the liturgical year, so that kids can delight in picking out those same colors hung on the church altar. Lessons include the biblical stories as well as later modules in early church history and recently published components for highlighting the lives of the saints.  “So what do you think about Godly Play?” I welcome your comments on how Godly Play is working for you.

I have known Tom Davis for nearly 7 years and he has been a friend of the Interfaith Resource Center a lot longer. Early on, I understood that Tom is a person of passion and among his many passions interfaith relationships and technology figured prominently. Since he retired as a pastor in the New Castle Presbytery, he has devoted much of his energy to honing his skills in technology for congregational development and evangelism and perfecting a previously untapped gift in photography and video production. Tom has an artist’s eye, producing stunning nature photographs, many of which are posted on flickr.com including as those linked here http://www.flickr.com/photos/tcd123/sets/72157623456981915/show/

I attended a recent technology workshop led by Tom at the New Castle Presbytery retreat. He managed to cover the basics of web savvy church development in a very digestible format and to provide the highlights of some of the trendier vehicles for church recognition including the latest hot site, twitter. His previous experience in teaching was fully evident as he reduced the complexities of negotiating the internet to fully understandable information. He offers trainings and consulting for churches (http://www.teledavis.com) anxious to upgrade their web presence economically. All of his web advice is sensitive to the limitations of congregational ministry and the unique opportunities for ministry that the internet provides. I invite you to visit his blog at http://blog.teledavis.com/. Tom is scheduled to offer his next class at the Interfaith Resource Center in May. To inquire about schedule and to register, contact the Interfaith Resource Center at director@interfaithresourcecenter.com.

Ever wonder what it felt like to live during the period of the Renaissance and the Reformation? According to author Phyllis Tickle, we know very well what it felt like because we are living in just such a tumultuous era now. That seismic shift underneath contemporary society’s feet has happened before; in fact,  it has happened about every 500 years since the time of David. And with each transitional shift in culture, the great Abrahamic faiths have emerged with fresh vision. It’s not just about religion, as it wasn’t exclusively about religion during that last great upheaval, but religion undergirds much of human culture. Religion provides the raison d’être for culture as a whole and subsequently, religion and its institutions cannot ignore the quaking that is beneath our feet.

At the Diocese of Easton Convention this past Saturday, I had the privilege of hearing the author talk about changing Christianity and the culture that is changing around it. My compliments to Bishop Shand who made it happen and served as our delightful host. Fortunately I had read the book allowing me the privilege of wrestling with her thesis before she stood before me. Her style of presentation is energetic, delivered with great wit, clarity and ultimately hope. I invite you to visit her website and to view the You-tube link. (http://www.thegreatemergence.com/)  She has nailed a generation many years her junior.

What is all this about? Ms. Tickle gives a delightful and sometimes frightening overview of 21st sensibilities and what the organized church faces as we address many local issues, struggle to address many parochial issues and move toward a vital journey forward. In it, she addressed the impact of the internet and it’s myriad opportunities for anonymous community development. She highlighted the public personae that Christianity possesses… the cultural perception of Christians are intolerant, judgmental, and mired in the past. And she noted that the coming generations are no less spiritual, but they are less likely to commit to faith communities, especially those structured with modern frameworks.  For me, the challenge to address the new epoch is exciting. We are, after all, part of the wave and can no more stand in opposition to it than we can stand firm against a tsunami. Some things are not to stand against but to ride. I encourage you to read The Great Emergence: How Christianity is Changing and Why. I guarantee that you will never look at church quite the same way again.

Deep Church: A Third Way Beyond Emerging and Traditional by Jim Belcher may be the book that I needed to read at this time. It’s hard to say but sometimes a writing is simply right for the moment, but my guess it goes beyond that. Dr Belcher composes a compelling analysis of the struggle between the Emerging Church and the forces of the traditional evangelical movement. He is in the midst of the dialogue, knowing many of the major spokespeople personally. He does what no other author, to my knowledge, has done. He has interviewed many of the significant voices of the emerging church movement and tackled the criticisms laid down by their opponents. He lays out seven points for discussion and deeper exploration that acknowledge the disparity of both sides and proposes a more profound and rewarding path toward wholeness.

Dr Belcher is an acknowledged evangelical in the Reformed tradition. As I explored what he had to say on the current clash of cultures, I reflect on what this dialogue means for a thoroughly mainline Episcopalian. Am I out of the loop? Does my tradition engage culture in the same way or have we stepped out of the interaction entirely? We are, after all, talking about the same faith, the same Lord, the same tradition? Interestingly enough, many of the third way paths that Dr Belcher articulates resonate with my ‘middle way’ psyche. For example, he raises up the deep worship of the church and it’s components including the full engagement of the Nicene Creed as measure of the Deep Church to which he aspires. The Nicene Creed is at the core of my faith… a statement I affirm weekly with great warmth. And yet, when he discusses Deep Culture or Deep Evangelism, I know that my tradition has it’s work cut out for it.

And so I ask, is the paradigm envisioned in this powerful book the third way or one of several ‘third ways?’ How do the mainline churches glean the best of what the emerging church movement has to offer while remaining true to their own tradition? Or are only the evangelical churches at liberty to fully address the shift in culture that challenges the Christian faith to revisit who Jesus really called us to be. As I queried in the last entry, ‘Who do you say that He is?” The emerging culture says that the Lord Jesus brought a message as relevant to this world as to the next. We need only hear that, embrace the paradigm shift and find a way to exhibit that truth to the culture at large.  I will come back to this book again because I believe that it holds key truths with which to wrestle if we care about our faith.

I have over the last few months immersed myself in the writings of some of the finest thinkers at the vanguard of the emerging church movement. The journey has been a compelling one that will inform much of my thinking on congregational development into the future. My most recent encounter is the book Deep Church: A Third Way Beyond Emerging and Traditional by Jim Belcher (InterVarsity Press, 2009). I will review Dr Belcher’s book in a future blog, but for the time being, I wanted simply to digress a little into the world of imagining and imaging Jesus.

One of the little-known videos at the IRC is titled Picture Perfect Jesus and tells the story of Warner Sallman, an otherwise undistinguished artist who made a career of depicting the head of Jesus. You know the painting, it is probably imbedded in your psyche. After initially creating the image, Sallman traveled the country giving lectures and reproducing the image in charcoal before audiences in mostly rural venues. Sallman’s Jesus is heir to the Victorian Jesus of Carl Heinrich Bloch and Ford Madox Brown. These are the images of Jesus that found their way ubiquitously into stained glass windows and Sunday school classrooms. In these images, Jesus is physically beautiful, benign, and gentle.

Yet the gospels reveal a man of compassion but also a man of fearlessness known for his challenging, counter-culture thinking and a spiritualism that is far from other-worldly. For me, none of those Victorian and post-Victorian images resonate.

While the dome mosaic pictured at left of Christ Pantokrator (All-Ruler) at the Katholikon in Daphni near Athens (c1100) may provide an image that is, in contrast, too extreme in the opposite direction, I find the comparison genuinely compelling. In fact so compelling that many who attend my lectures on early Christian art react very negatively to the image. Stylistically this Christ is related to many other Pantokrator images throughout the area, including that at Osios Loukas (St. Luke) also in Greece. What draws me to the dome mosaic at Daphni is the power of the image. This is not a benign, beautiful or gentle image. Christ here is clearly Mediterranean in ethnicity, and older beyond his 33 years. As with any Pantokrator image, it is intended to portray the majesty and power of a God to whom all knees must bow. For me, it also portrays the enormous weight of his charge of assuming the sins of the world and the strength of character that could stand against the power of the Roman military and political structure. As you exercise your devotional life this Lent, I invite you to challenge your vision of Jesus the Christ by meditating on this more provocative image of great wisdom.

I was recently given a copy of For Heaven’s Sake! Parenting Preschoolers Faithfully, by Marilyn Sharpe. I have found it a delightful read. It captures what is for me the essence of the parenting experience… that is, that no other experience in life quite surpasses the spiritual journey of sharing your life with children. The author helps us feel the inspiration that makes raising children very much a two-way street… you point out God-moments to them while they share God-moments with you. Ms. Sharpe’s suggestions for parenting are gentle, full of the serendipity of life, while offering practical applications for life’s common challenges  to living with young souls who need encouragement and correction. This would be a great gift for a new mother or grandparent.

As I look into the delighted eyes of my two-year-old grandson, I understand that knowing God is one of the unique treasures that I can share with him. I am again enjoying the spiritual journey as I once did with my own daughter and son. I’ll keep you posted.

Thanks to Tom Davis and Danny Schweers, we are now up and running with our Interfaith Resource Center Blog. Book reviews will be a regular part of our posts and suggestions on how to bring 21st century sensibilities into our faith communities while staying true to who we are. I will look forward to visiting with you. Paula