National Youth Workers Convention 2007

I attended the National Youth Workers Convention at St. Louis just this past weekend and I am trying to wrap my head around the things I took away from the conference.

By the way, see this cool picture of St. Louis? If you look out of my hotel window you saw the arch! Pretty cool. I left the hotel plans up to my cousin from La Croix, MS and he DELIVERED!

Okay, THOUGHT #1: There is something going on within the church which is more reflective of the larger culture. Some refer to it as post-modern, others as "emergent". There are those who embrace the change and others who strongly oppose it. Case in point, I was in a seminar with a well-known speaker explaining the emergent thinking going on within the church. During that discussion an audience member called the speaker a heretic! I couldn't believe it, myself. I wanted to start a Flatfoot 56 Irish-smackdown brawl right there! If you know that you strongly disagree with the speaker why pay the money to come to the seminar and throw verbal bombs like that one! But it is reflective of a greater issue within church history. Whether one wants to admit it or not, the church evolves in it's thinking and that is not always a bad thing. Yes, cults and extremist groups have spun out of the mainstream church. But if you look at all of the major figures of church history, whom today we now praise as reformers, movers and shakers, they were all labeled as godless heretics by the church in power at the time. Not to say that no one is above criticism. But what I am saying is that if someone breaks out of the mainstream way of thinking and comes up with a new way of looking at church and culture that challenges the old structures of interpretation then watch your back! I personally am glad to see those who are coming up with new ways of thinking about church. All to often the church is 20-30 years behind the times. It is about time that we engage the culture in its current context and analyze, critique and synthesize our current context into our faith.

THOUGHT #2: Redeem the culture, within the culture! I honestly believe that so much of 20th century was an embarrassment in how the church handled culture. We pulled out of the mainstream culture and created this ghetto sub-culture within Christianity with our own artists, musicians, writers, and film industries. They were made to entertain us and us alone. God forbid if a Christian musician collaborated with a "secular" artist to make a good song. (For those of you old-timers, "The Next Time I Fall" by Amy Grant and front man for Chicago, Peter Cetera). I am so tired of sugary, sweet, family friendly, so-called Christian crap marketed to the church. Of course the mainstream church has lost all sense of taste and has rotted it's teeth on the fluff of the Ghetto Church of Buddy Jesus. If you go to any museum and look at art prior to the 20th century, you will see a huge Christian influence dating back to the first century. Then Christian themes all but disappear at the 20th century. Because instead of engaging culture and trying to be a significant impact and influence with mainstream culture, the Christian community all but pulled itself out. A lot of this has to do with a horrible eschatology that corrupted the mainstream church. But I will save that for another blog! (Thanks to Jerry Jenkins and Tim LaHaye we are still dealing with this even today.) The point in my ramblings is this: we need to engage mainstream culture and redeem it! Mel Gibson proved that it can be done. And he also proved that any real movie based on the Bible will most definitely earn a strong rated-R, and that is not a bad thing! Only when the grace, mercy and forgiveness of God is contrasted with the darkness of sin, separation, alienation and corruption will the true message of the Bible be truly appreciated, understood and received. Doug Fields spoke about ministry envy and I understood what he was saying but it wasn't until Hollywood producer Ralph Winter spoke that I fully understood Doug's message, because if I could steal any ones job it would have been Ralph's. What an amazing testimony of a man impacting culture and making movies that ask the deeper questions and explore issues that we all face, and contrast the dark areas with the light.

THOUGHT #3: I simply love the Skit Guys and I have never laughed so hard in such a long time as I did at their stuff. It is always great to have someone break through all of the seriousness of many of these themes at conferences and the situations that many of us find ourselves in and just make us laugh so hard we hack out a lung. I laughed harder at these guys than most of what I have seen on the Comedy Channel. And these guys make me laugh that hard without any other influences causing me to laugh more than I would normally laugh! I mean it is REAL GUT-BUSTING laughter! Not only that, but these guys are now in a commercial for Southwest Airlines. Once again, guys who are having a great influence on the church but are good enough, and talented enough to begin breaking out into the mainstream culture and having an impact much bigger and broader that just the church culture. Do it guys!

Well, that's my thoughts for now. I would love to hear yours!

And the Wheels of Church History Go Round and Round

This was a monster of a book but it was very true to its title. Bruce Shelley goes through all of the time periods of the church and puts it in terms that were easy to understand and in many cases there was never a dull moment. In fact, you would never guess by the size of the book, but at times, it seemed to me that he was skimming the service of many of the event, giving me just enough of a taste to want to cry out for more. The most powerful thing I learned that seemed to be an all-too-common theme is the constant temptation of the church to want to gain political power in order to control people from the outside-in, instead of doing the harder task of loving and serving people until God changes them from the inside-out. From Constantinople, to Rome, to Geneva, to New England and, dare I say, to the present, we see Christians gain political control believing that they now have the power to establish the kingdom of God here on earth. But in every case throughout all of history, power corrupts and absolute power corrupts, absolutely. It is surprising to me that the early Christians who remember suffering persecution to the point of hiding in catacombs, now became the ones doing the persecution; or that great reformers like John Calvin and Martin Luther, who broke away from a church system that became corrupt and began inspiring people to look to the Bible for themselves, would then turn around and condemn to death people who come to different conclusions than them; or that places like England and Ireland would become countries of intense persecution between Catholics and Protestants.
So I guess my question is this: if all of these lessons in history are there for us to learn from, why is it that it almost seems we are on the verge of repeating the very same mistakes over and over again. The Reformers broke away from a church that allowed itself to become corrupt with power robbing people blind to fund their building projects. Have you seen any of these "Super Walmart" size churches going up all around? I would dare to guess just how much of their budget is actually a part of their empire-building as opposed to real ministry needs within their community.
As a college student in the late 80's I remember being sickened with what was considered evangelical television back then. It was full of charlatans, fakes and frauds yet they drew in the thoughtless masses because they put out a "christian pop-culture" that their mindless audiences ate up. And it really hasn't changed much since then. Now we have a Republican party that has essentially seduced the evangelicals of our country into thinking political power will solve all of our problems YET AGAIN! Read history! It doesn't work. It will not work. It will never work until Christ himself sits on the throne. Even then I have to believe that he will be proned to rolling his eyes at us idiots every once in a while wondering if he still has the free pass to smite us in the desert and start over again. It is time for the church in America to rise above politics and act as a unified body of Christ bringing the best of traditional and progressive thinking to the table and honestly debating the issues and seeking God through it all. And by all means, serving the poor, lost and persecuted. It is time for us to look in the mirror and ask ourselves why we seem like narrow-minded jerks to most of the people out there. Our actions should win people over to Christ, not repulse people away from Him (not Him really, more like us. Or as Bon Jovi would say, " We give God a bad name."). It is time we stop thinking that church history pauses at the end of the New Testament and then picks up with us! The absolute height of arrogance! We need to learn from the giants who came before us, in all of their ugliness and beauty, from every time period that came before us. We need to listen to their voices cry out so that we learn from their failures and flaws and see how God still used them anyhow. Since we are surrounded by such a great, great, great host of witnesses . . .