Missing Members

12"What do you think? If any man has a hundred sheep, and one of them has gone astray, does he not leave the ninety-nine on the mountains and go and search for the one that is straying?

13"If it turns out that he finds it, truly I say to you, he rejoices over it more than over the ninety-nine which have not gone astray.

14"So it is not the will of your Father who is in heaven that one of these little ones perish.

-Matthew 18:12-14 NAS

My wife and I have been members of at least one church at all times for the past 17 years. Our attendance and our involvement has varied some, but I don't think we ever missed long enough to earn the term "unchurched." I'm glad for that, but I know that a major reason for our regular attendance is that we've always lived in a town where someone knows us.

The first place we lived was near her parents, and my wife Amy was a member at the Catholic church where we were married. Now we live in the same town where I graduated from high school, and I have become thoroughly obligated to attend the church where I was confirmed. We had a brief window of opportunity when we first moved back to skip out on church, but it was closed pretty quickly by friends and family who simply insisted.

Before too long, I found myself teaching an adult Sunday school class (can we come up with a better name than Sunday school, it sounds so felt-panel and koolaid?) and then a pastor informed me that I may well be teaching this class forever, so now I'm pretty much locked in.

The fact that I am connected to this area is a big part of why I'm expected to attend. But that's rare in this area. We have lots of transplants -- people who come from all over, who find it easy to attend occasionally, or not at all. We have had people who have joined our church one Sunday, and a year later qualify as unchurched. A year after that and we remove them from the membership roll.

We know what we should do about this, and we try. Small groups, phone calls, not overwhelming new members, but making sure they know what's expected. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't. I think we do have to be more intentional, and I think a good portion of that responsibility lies on the pastor's shoulders, because that is who people go to when they are thinking of joining the church, even if the reasons for joining have more to do with the congregation.

One of our pastors mentioned one time that he occasionally lost sleep over members who quit. We should all be more concerned about the missing members. My mother is one of the ones who no longer attends. I remember her making me go when I was under 18. She quit coming when our previous pastor offended some friends of hers. Her friends have been back for over three years. Now she's waiting on a new pastor. I don't expect to see her in July. Even though she has friends and family at the church, it's not enough to combat the things she'd rather do on Sunday morning.

And I suppose that's what I have to remember the most. Despite all our planning, our intentional work, members still have a choice. We can't make them come, and once they come, we can't make them be disciples (though my tendency towards legalism says we should try a little harder). When all else fails, we have to turn to God and ask that His will be done. Help us find the missing sheep, Lord, and help them to rejoin the flock.

Avalon Acres

I own part of a farm.

I don't really, but I do share parts of two farms. I actually participate in community supported agriculture, on two different fronts. One area is in my local church. For three years now, I get a whole lot of beef in my freezer in January or February, from cows that I pass just about every day. I go to church with the people who raise these cows. I helped organize the wedding of their daughter, who has watched my kids on several occasions. When someone stole money from me, they helped me cover the costs of what was taken. I've even had occasion to be angry at them.

The other part is with an "official" CSA, and I'm not nearly as tied to the community that it comes from. The farm is over an hour away and if I ever happened to be just driving by, I would be seriously lost. But I'm still glad for it, and have seen the farm, and met some of the ones that have done the work. This farm has the Avalon Acres name.

As the result of work from a local reading group, several families have been participating in this through the winter, taking turns going to pick up the food and bringing it back to distribute. It's been great. It's not organic, but it's raised by people who care about what they're doing and want us to share the harvest with them.

If you're in most of Middle Tennessee, or the Jackson area of West Tennessee, you can participate too. I haven't balanced out the cost vs. the grocery store, but the difference in other areas is phenomenal. The quality of the meat (we'll soon find out about the vegetables)is great. Yes, there are downsides (I have no idea what to do with hog jowl) but I am glad that about 80% of the meat I eat comes from within 100 miles of my house.

There are many reasons for the resurgence of interest in small farms. Books like Fast Food Nation and movies like Supersize Me have reminded us of our separation from the origins of our food. Opportunities like CSAs and fair trade purchases shouldn't just be about assuaging our guilt, but about being closer to one another.

Find out more about Avalon Acres or Community Supported Agriculture in your area. CSA Avalon Acres

Conference differences

At the same time that I rail against the bureaucracy of the church, I also get angry about lack of good technology. Do I contradict myself? Of course.

Compare and contrast:

The Memphis Conference webpage

The Tennessee Conference webpage

And, the Tennessee Youth Conference page

and Memphis Youth Conference Page (yes, it is in fact, 5 years old)

Organized church

When I was in my college days, I had issues with organized religion. Then I got over it. Now I'm in yet another phase, that may pass, which is primarily against organized church. Maybe reading Leithart had something to do with that, but I think it had more to do with acquaintances I've made through the Ekklesia Project. People who are members of cell churches, house churches, new monastic groups all make me wonder how things might be different.

And then I read Wendell Berry, and he gives the passage below which sums up a lot of things I have been thinking for a while.

(from Wendell Berry, What are People For? God and Country.)

The organized church comes immediately under a compulsion to think of itself, and identify itself to the world, not as an institution synonymous with its truth and its membership, but as a hodgepodge of funds, properties, projects, and offices, all urgently requiring economic support. The organized church makes peace with a destructive economy and divorces itself from economic issues because it is economically compelled to do so. like any other public institution so organized, the organized church is dependent on "the economy"; it cannot survive apart from those economic practices that its truth forbids and that its vocation is to correct. If it comes to a choice between the extermination of the fowls of the air and the lilies of the field and the extermination of a building fund, the organized church will elect -- indeed, has already elected -- to save the building fund.

Don't build ugly sanctuaries.

The building that our church worships in may be the prettiest church in the county. If it's not, I have no doubt that the prettiest church in the county is another Methodist church. We're lucky. We have no competition in that regard. There are no high church Presbyterians, Episcopalians or Catholics to outrank us. We don't even have a Lutheran church, so we're the only ones who think in terms of pretty when we build.

I know the "If it looks Catholic, we shouldn't do it" protestant history of why my Baptist and CofC brothers and sisters worship in such plain surroundings, but I don't think their rationale holds up. And I know there are pretty Baptist churches out there, just not in this county.

There are some issues with having a pretty sanctuary. I know that, but I don't see how having an ugly one is the alternative. My preferred alternative would be NO sanctuary.

I've mentioned before how I'm not sure what to think about new church starts. Part of my hesitancy is because it seems like all new church starts come with a mortgage. Granted, because Methodists believe that the sacraments should be given by an ordained elder, it would be difficult to have new Methodist churches that are cell groups of 10 or 15 people, but does that mean we shouldn't do it?

The words kyriakon and ekklesia have both come to be "church" but it seems to me that despite our "I am the church, you are the church, we are the church together..." type hymns we still are tied to the buildings almost to the point of idolatry. I suppose that's why some make ugly sanctuaries, as a way of fighting that, a way of making the space less attractive, more utilitarian.

Cell churches, house church, "new" monasticism all intrigue me. They seem to help emphasize the people of God rather than the house. Maybe they'll help us all to be less tied to our buildings, whether they're pretty or not.

Leaders on War

Robert E. Lee: "It is well that war is so horrible. For we should grow too fond of it."

George Bush: "I must say, I'm a little envious."

"If I were slightly younger and not employed here, I think it would be a fantastic experience to be on the front lines of helping this young democracy succeed.

"It must be exciting for you ... in some ways romantic, in some ways, you know, confronting danger. You're really making history, and thanks."

Stuff and more stuff

I am somewhat drawn to monasticism. Even in high school, when I knew very little of what it might mean to take such vows, a friend and I discussed it as a possibility. He was hard-pressed to find a good Baptist monastery though. I guess there really aren't many Methodist monasteries either.

Friends of mine are "new monastics" though they're part of a group that's been around longer than that term. They have my attention. I wonder what it would be like. They're not just men, they are families, and they work together and live together, not sequestered, in the world, but not of the world. One of them, will hopefully be visiting us next month. I look forward to seeing him.

One of the things which I think draws me to this sort of living is the necessity of not having too much stuff. I don't know how it happens that I have 6 stainless steel travel mugs when 2 years ago, I just wanted one. Why it's possible for 3 of our family members to be on a computer at once (and if I really wanted to, it wouldn't be difficult for all four of us to do so) is explainable, but it's probably not good.

Enough about me. Here's an old article about new monasticism. Jon Stock, mentioned in the article, has also worked with others on a book about it. It's the pic above. I haven't read it yet, but I'll discuss it when I do.

http://www.christiancentury.org/article.lasso?id=1399

Nedroid

Nedroid is someone I know of solely through the internet. His art has a children's sense of wonder to it, but he obviously looks at the world with a perspective that is somewhat different from most people. He has a store here: http://nedroid.com/shop.html and the rest of his artwork is at www.nedroid.com.

I love Google.

I know that it may be a problem, but I really love Google. I shouldn't. It's the big guy, the heavy-hitter, the Goliath of the internet. But they can do amazing things.

Try it. www.books.google.com.

Play around with it a little while. See what you can find. If you have a google account, you can add books to your library, much like Library Thing (which I also highly recommend) except with bookmarks to full texts of some books.

Do you have a copy of the 1905 Methodist Hymnal? Congratulations, you do now. You can download it, print it, do whatever you want with it. Want to read about Wesleyan conferencing prior to the 100th anniversary of Methodism? Help yourself.

I know, I'm totally geeking out on this, and there are certainly other ways of coming up with these books, but this really is an example of the good things of which the internet is capable.

My Perfect Church

This entry is heavily inspired by an article in Relevant Magazine. I don't know much about the magazine, but the article's worth reading if only for the acknowledgment of similar frustrations.

Of course, I'm not in the same age bracket as the author, but there are some things on his top ten list that I'd love to see. But instead, I'm going to work on a list of 10 things I like about my church.

1. When we decided to start a food program, there was no vote, no forms to fill out, just people who showed up and worked.

2. Members of our church started a thrift store. The money they make goes to help people who can't pay their utility bills, or don't have enough food. When they decided they needed a bigger building to do this work, the church voted unanimously in favor of spending the money. They've been doing this for more than 10 years.

3. A man who once spent many of his nights living under a nearby bridge now has a home in his name, and a life that he enjoys. This is entirely due to the grace of God and the people whom he worked through in our church.

4. There are many Sundays each year when three generations of several different families are present for worship.

5. Many of our members have had their weddings in our sanctuary, and some have had their funerals there as well. Funerals in a church sanctuary somehow seem so much more reassuring, perhaps because we don't gather there ONLY in times of death.

Ok, so that's 5. This might be a good blog tag sort of thing. Pass it on.

New Churches

The church I attend is 100+ years old. I have been associated with it (sometimes living other places, but returning to visit while away) for 27 years. Yikes. Now I feel old.

I understand that new church plants grow, and that United Methodists see this in the Southern Baptist church and hope to emulate it. I know that the UMC has things to offer that simply aren't offered in any other church. I understand that my congregation is fairly static in membership numbers because we don't conscientiously reach out to people who have no church background. But I don't know that I think that a constant building effort by the church is the way to fix that. Those churches will become old some day too.

This article is what brings me to think about this topic currently: Amid Growth...

Teaching

I'm a teacher. I don't get paid for that skill, but I use it in Karate and at church. I'm decent at it, and more importantly, I'm willing to do it.

But I need something. I can't keep teaching like this. Karate isn't too bad right now, since it's bodily involved, but the classes at church are not inspiring me, so I know I'm not inspiring my classes. I've read about the different learning styles, and I understand how different people learn from different styles, but nothing has jumped out at me in recent weeks.

Maybe it's because I'm in about the third month of the book of Acts and I need a jolt. Maybe it's the fact that my class seems perfectly happy to just sit back and listen to the few who have questions. Or, that they practically refuse to argue with me. Are they afraid that if they hurt my feelings I'll quit teaching?

Preparation helps, and I can tell when I'm better prepared. I should work on that, since it's one of the things that I can actually do. I can't make the students care more. I can demonstrate how much I care. Keep trying.

High speed fast

Starting tomorrow I will be without high speed internet access for six straight days. I know I'll survive, but SIX DAYS?! I'm headed to the land of the ice and snow (Syracuse, NY) so I'm sure I'll enjoy myself, but really, six days? Maybe a neighbor of my sister-in-law will have an open wifi connection. How will I do without great videos like this one?

Christmas decorations

I always liked Christmas decorations. My father used to put up the big lights that would eventually burn your house down if you weren't careful. I'm not as interested in decorating as he was though.

Last year, someone who thought they knew where I lived said "Your house looks really nice." I guess they realized that I had no idea what they were talking about so they added "with the Christmas lights...". I thought for a moment. We put up a lighted wreath on the side of the house, a small tree (and I mean small, a two foot potted fake tree with a string of lights) and one other wreath. We liked it, but it certainly didn't catch your eye from the street.

I paused for a few seconds and then had the sense to ask "Where do you think we live?". That's when we worked out that the house they were talking about is this cute little Victorian house about a block away from mine, where they put out lights and decorations for almost every holiday. Seriously. Pink flowers for Valentine's Day. They're retired, so more power to them.

Last year some neighbors of ours hired someone to come in and put their lights up. It looked nice, and the thought of not having to untangle lights, and even worse, put all the lights away after the season is over was enticing.

But what really is the point? Let's skip all the "Jesus is the reason for the season" slogans. Let's just say it's ok if you want to decorate your house for Christmas and put up lots of lights. The retired couple down the block get a lot of fun out of doing their decorating. People stop by and say "that's really pretty." You might admire a neighbors yard and say "Wow, that took a lot of work." If they hire someone to do it maybe you could say "Hey, nice job finding even more ways to spend money during the holidays."

I'm beginning to sound like Andy Rooney.

I did enjoy a Christmas parade tonight and the Jackson State Community College jazz choir, Innovations, put me in the Christmas spirit this weekend. The site adventconspiracy.org has me thinking of other things that might help me be less grumpy this year. If the Grinch can grow to embrace the season, maybe I can too.

Yancey on Wesley

Christianity Today has a brief article by Philip Yancey about his travels through England while reading Wesley. It's worth a read.

One of our most difficult challenges as Christians is to order our desires—to maintain a proper balance between our investment in this world and in the next.

Article is here.

Unspoken creeds

I love the creeds of the church. Apostle's, Nicene, Korean, Masai, etc.,. They help remind us of who we are in relationship to God. They are one way we demonstrate our Christianity.

Even churches that are opposed to creeds are usually not opposed to what's contained in them. And almost all churches have creeds, even if they do not use them. Those who say "no creed but the Bible" will find themselves hard pressed to find such useful descriptions of the Trinity in scripture as they will in the creeds.

But unspoken creeds are less about God, and are only useful as a means to examine ourselves and what we've come to demonstrate as belief though it may have no scriptural basis. For example, at our church, one part of a church creed might include "We believe we should gather together at 11 a.m. on Sunday morning for one hour of worship. Anything beyond that is purely voluntary."

Certainly, we would never say such a thing, but our actions speak it.

At a church retreat several years back, we had a person along with us to help with the children during events designed for parents only. She had been around our church quite a bit, even though she was a member of a different Christian faith tradition.

During the weekend, we shared the eucharist, and she was puzzled by this. Apparently at the church she was part of, one of the unspoken creeds was "the eucharist is to be shared in a church building."

John Wesley wrote a brief statement called The Character of a Methodist in which he lays out the various scriptural principles which guide him and other Methodists.

In his summary he states:

If any man say, "Why, these are only the common fundamental principles of Christianity!" thou hast said; so I mean; this is the very truth; I know they are no other; and I would to God both thou and all men knew, that I, and all who follow my judgment, do vehemently refuse to be distinguished from other men, by any but the common principles of Christianity, -- the plain, old Christianity that I teach, renouncing and detesting all other marks of distinction.

That's of course what we'd all like to say about our church. We're just doing what it takes to follow Christ. It's the very reason that the predominant church in my town refuses to take any name besides "The Church of Christ".

But let's face it -- John Wesley was being intentionally obtuse for this argument. Surely he knew that Methodism had become associated with a different frame of worship, with "social gospel" ideas and an evangelism that went beyond the activities of the Anglican church from which it came.

Those are good parts of an unspoken creed. But as I mentioned with the 11 o'clock worship tradition, we might have some areas we need to examine in our unspoken creeds that are not as kingdom directed.

Unspoken statements such as "we'd prefer you have a first shift job so you can come to regularly scheduled activities" or "we believe you should have time to teach Sunday school if you bring your kids" or "we like wooden pews and if you're not able to get out of your wheel chair, you can listen at home on the radio" might be some of the things we're projecting that go without saying.

I'm going to spend this week thinking of some of my own unspoken creeds and confessing them. It's certainly easy for me to point them out in others, so I shouldn't have any trouble identifying them in myself. Pray for me.

Hallelujah

In his book Slam, Nick Hornby mentions the singer Rufus Wainwright. I hadn't heard of Wainwright, but when I looked him up, I found that I had heard him, oddly enough, in the soundtrack to Shrek. However, the song Wainwright sings on the Shrek soundtrack is a song by Leonard Cohen. It's "Hallelujah" and has been performed by dozens of musicians (including a rather dreadful version by Bono). This song has something of religion in it. It mentions David, refers to Samson and of course the chorus is Hallelujah.

Cohen wrote a lot of verses to this song. Artists pick and choose. Some leave out the David passage, but it's beautiful poetry:

Now I've heard there was a secret chord
That David played, and it pleased the Lord
But you don't really care for music, do you?

It goes like this
The fourth, the fifth
The minor fall, the major lift
The baffled king composing Hallelujah.

Ok, that's enough from me. Listen to the song.

Local fun

For years I lived within 2 hrs. of the Jack Daniel's distillery and didn't take the tour. Whiskey is ok, but I just didn't see how the tour could be very interesting. Then I went, and it was great fun. Lynchburg is a nice small town and the people who give the tour like their jobs.

Now I live near Century Farms Winery, and it's a good tour too. I wasn't expecting much, honestly, but it was a pretty weekend and it was a new place to me, and it made for a great trip.

Muscadines right off the vine, beautiful roses, a HARD working family making wine on a farm that has been in use for 150 years, and a great tour of the vineyard and some good wine to sample: time well spent. The kids even learned a little something and didn't get bored.

Then we followed it up with a visit to a restaurant and shops we'd never visited. Artopia is in Jackson, in a building that was a hotel decades ago, then a boarding house, and then a planned children's museum that got scrapped when "the tornado" hit it. But someone saw fit to fix it up and there are lots of small shops in it, as well as a decent restaurant, Cafe Capone. We had chicken parmesan, some great veggies and salads and dessert for the price of a Burger King meal.

So, all within easy distance of where I live there were places that were relaxing and enjoyable. I wonder what other places I'm missing?

Red, red wine.

There doesn't seem to be much discussion about alcohol on the blogs, even the Christian ones. I have teetotaling friends and moderate drinker friends. The church I am part of encourages AA and Alanon groups to use our facilities for meetings.

When I first moved back to the rural West Tennessee area I now live in, a fellow church member invited our family over to their home. She couldn't figure out how to ask if we'd like beer or wine. She had made a similar statement to another member of the church and had been judged pretty harshly for suggesting such a thing.

Our pastor at the time did not drink until his children had gone to college. Not because he was ashamed of it, but because he wanted them to know it just wasn't that important.

I like wine. I like beer, I even like a shot of whiskey now and again. That's not very Methodist of me, in terms of what the Book of Discipline says. I suppose I should dislike it as much as I dislike the lottery that Tennessee now has.

Maybe there will come a time when I take as much pleasure in a cup of tea (I have had some really great teas before)as I do in a glass of porto. I don't think that my moderate consumption is a stumbling block to others in the faith. But I suppose we should think about it anyway.

Today, I am going to a winery. It's small, it's local, and it's owned by a relative of a friend of mine, which makes it even more fun. It's a gorgeous fall day, the sun is shining bright, and I look forward to a day of enjoying God's creation. Pour yourself a glass of wine, a cup of coffee or a glass of tea and enjoy it with me.

Peace.

Shock Doctrine

Naomi Klein just released a new book. She was hoping for a blurb from Alfonso Cuaron, director of Y Tu Mama Tambien and Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban. Instead, she got this film.

Watch it, but not with children around. Sights and sounds are meant to be provocative.

The video has done what it was intended to do, which is to create an interest in the book, as well as start some discussion, so that's why I'm posting it.

The biggest thing I wonder about is this statement which is from the economist Milton Friedman. "Only a crisis, actual or perceived, produces real change."

I think that statement might be true, regardless of how it is then abused by the powers and principalities. The followers of Jesus certainly changed after the death and resurrection of Christ. Alcoholics speak of reaching rock bottom before they improve. People diagnosed with serious illnesses evaluate their lives.

Klein goes from the specific to the general and states that entire nations can be susceptible to the shock doctrine as well. She uses 9/11 and several natural disasters as evidence.

The nature of change is what actually interests me. I have heard it said that change of less than 20% is not really change at all; that incremental changes are just us trying to do what we can when we sense a problem but aren't really willing to do anything about it.

I'll use my church as an example. A few years back we went through several months of evaluation and statements of who we are and what we believe as an attempt to make better disciples. Nothing has really changed. We added a program here, scheduled some classes there, but essentially the same things that went on then are still going on.

Contrast that with the churches in Mississippi and Louisiana that are still involved in Katrina cleanup. They are substantially different churches than they were prior to the hurricane. One church with which we've partnered still has about 100 people a week that they house, feed and equip to work in the surrounding areas. This is a church that is not much larger than the groups they host.

So can those churches, like the group that I worship with, like me, truly change? Without a catastrophe? Without a huge split? Without a burned down sanctuary? How has your church changed?