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5 min video

Retiring from Evangelism

I am done trying to convert people from the old ways – it is time to live into the new ways.

Nearly 20 years ago I attended the Billy Graham School of Evangelism and even over the last 10 years, as my faith has changed, adapted, expanded, and evolved, I have labored to help those who wanted a bridge to a new kind of faith.

In the past, I have held a deep sense of obligation to help those who were asking questions to get a sense of how things were assembled … or for those who were in transition to find a landing spot for their new conviction.

I didn’t want anyone to get left behind. We live in a time of constant change and fluid social settings. I always tried to account for various perspectives and to give a generous a framework as I could imagine.

I am satisfied that I have done that well.

No longer will my primary concern be explaining the faith and providing access points for those who want to understand. I have left a substantial bread-crumb trail for those who are looking to migrate.

Starting in 2019 my primary concern will be professing faith that works in the 21st century and postmodern context.

I am retiring from evangelism and moving to profession – from apologist to professor.

It takes a lot of energy to account for and attend to the various perspectives and then to frame them and present them in a way that any genuinely interested person could gain access. It has been a wonderful 10 years and it has been a very formative experience.

I will now put my energies toward a constructive and innovative project where my primary concern will not be translating or explaining for those who believe a different way … but professing a forward-leaning faith for those who are interested.

I am done trying to convert people from the old ways – it is time to live into the new ways.

Here is the upside: because Protestantism (in general) and Methodism (in particular) provide me an already assumed structure  – complete with content, praxis, and institutional frameworks … I will be free to play off of the as-is always/already and put my energy into the:

  • Playful
  • Irreverent
  • Creative
  • Poetic
  • Whimsical
  • Melodic
  • Critical
  • Ironic (and at-times)
  • Transgressive

I am moving from being a builder who feels obligated to provide a constructive apparatus for those who are migrating and need a completed faith that they can live in (which is now available), to an artisan or song writer or analyst.

This is a big shift for me.

I have spent the last 10 years honoring, explaining, translating, and mediating between the Evangelical world of my upbringing and the new constructive, philosophical, and diverse approaches of the late 20th and early 21st century.

Those who have wanted to make the migration have largely done so – I leave them to be the new translators, practitioners, and guides. Evangelicalism has changed even more than I have in the last 10 years. It has become something in its contemporary manifestation that I barely recognize from my youth. [1]

I have thought about this long and hard. I am at peace with this change. I am confident of the timing. The reality is that Evangelicalisms is a closed-system (or what system theory would call a ‘bounded set’). It is has its own borders, its own gatekeepers/guards, and its own internal logic.

I will still be available to help those who are genuinely asking for clarification but I am retiring from the business of attempting to convert anyone.

I want to thank you all for the support and feedback during this journey. If you unsubscribe, I bless you and wish you well. If you choose to continue on, buckle up … some changes are in store.

____________________

[1] Evangelicalism (and its charismatic offspring) has its own operating system (based on inerrancy) where the Bible becomes a science text book, a history book, a counseling manual, a financial spreadsheet, an explanation of world religions, a road-map to the future, and guide the end-times/afterlife . The evangelical operating system is incompatible with nearly any other program that you might seek to run. It is an all-or-nothing- machine.

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Christian Politics

Normally I am allergic to modifiers. I find them deeply suspicious.

Why reference someone as female comedian or author? You don’t call Stephen King a male author or Jerry Seinfeld a male comedian.

Randy Woodley is often referenced as a Native American theologian. That is fine… but why am I not introduced as a white theologian?

The worst is ‘biblical’. Every time I hear it used I think to myself, “this is probably going to be inaccurate and untrue”.

People talk about biblical marriage but that is an imaginary. There are between 9-15 types of marriage in the Bible. It is the same with a ‘biblical’ worldview. There are 6 different worldviews in the Hebrew and Christian testaments. People want to say that scripture speaks with one voice … but have you read it ? I wish it did!!  It just doesn’t.

All of that is to say that I DO have one modifier that I find helpful: Christian.   Not like christian bookstores, or christian radio stations, or christian colleges.

I find the modifier ‘christian’ helpful when it comes to politics and the underlying motivation behind them.

Watch the short video and let me know what you think.

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Formula For Success?

Is this a formula for success?  Not everyone thinks so!
Focused Intensity – over Time – multiplied by the ‘God’ factor
I always pay attention when push-back does not follow a predictable bell-curve.
In this case, the concerns were equally divided into quarters.
Watch this 5 min video and let me know what you think.
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Worship Words Determine Faith

The early churches developed a saying:

The rule of prayer is the rule of faith

As we have moved through the centuries, things have changed. Our worship communities have moved from being centered on prayer, to sacrament, to preaching … and now many are centered on music.

I am proposing that now, the rule of worship is the rule of faith.

Watch this 5 minute video and let me know what you think.

you can also check out “changing words to worship songs“.

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Believe Different Things Differently

A short video (5 min) about how  progressives and liberals not only believe different things than conservatives and evangelicals … but they believe them differently.

From Missions to Eschatology -they both believe different things and they hold those beliefs differently.

Let me know your thoughts.

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Top Ten Theologians

Here are the 10 theologians who have influenced me the most:

Randy Woodley (Shalom and the Community of Creation)

Bonnie Miller-McLemore (Practical Theology, Web of Meaning)

Sheila Greeve Davaney (Theology at the End of Modernity)

James Cone (The Cross and The Lynching Tree)

Wolfhart Pannenberg (Prolepsis, The Ontological Priority of the Future)

Elizabeth Johnson (Quest for the Living God, She Who Is)

Schreiter & Bevans (Contextual Theology)

Richard Twiss (We Dance Our Prayers, Rescuing the Gospel from the Cowboys)

Elaine Graham (Transforming Practice, Public Theology in a Post-Secular Age)

Paul Tillich (Ground of Being, Courage To Be)

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Be Brave (it might not work)

Here is a short encouragement that I shared with a seminary class recently.

Be brave. Be bold. Be daring. … it probably won’t work anyway.

The systems is so powerful and so dominating that it can absorb, adapt to, and even appropriate any protest or critique.

Parables, by the way, are not earthly stories with heavenly meanings.

Parables are earthy stories with heavy meaning.

Parables come in underneath your radar when your defenses are down … and then ask you to subvert, undermine, and interrogate the presumptions that you came in with from the as-is structures of the powers that be. 

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Civility or Resistance?

Last week on the Peacing It All Together podcast, Randy and I talked about ‘the call for civility’.

Next week at the church’s pub-chat, the topic is the same.

Randy and I came up with 3 ideas about this and I want to reflect on them here.

First, it is important in ‘The Argument Culture’ (as Deborah Tannen famously called it) that we don’t prioritize policing people’s tone or vocabulary. Yes, we don’t want to inflame the situation and make it worse… but policing tone is not our highest priority.

The bigger issue is committing to stay at the table. Part of problem right now is that people can tune each other out, turn the channel, unfriend or mute voice they don’t agree with. Our self-selecting news feed becomes an echo chamber and bubble.

Staying at the table even when things get heated is an important first commitment.

Second, humanize – don’t demonize those with whom you disagree. A gift (or grace) that we can give our fellow members of the human race is to spend our time and energy imagining them as more fully and faithfully human. It is a dangerous thing when we make people into non-human things like monsters and animals.

Third, if push comes to shove (as they say) make sure that you punch up and not down. Focus your critique and concern on those who have more resources and influence than you do. Don’t take swings at those who are marginalized or disadvantaged.

Use your voice, your influence, and your resources for those who have less access to influence, fewer resources, and less power than you.

Is there any that you would add to our 3 suggestions?

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Trinity of Belief

There are 3 elements of belief that overlap and interact to form what we generally refer to as ‘faith’.

I am fascinated with how these layers stack up and both empower the other layers but also limit the options of each other.

The 3 elements are:

  • narratives (story)
  • practices (action)
  • relationships (connection)

Narratives are powerful because the stories that we tell ourselves – or the stories that we are told and buy in to – frame our actions and give direction to our relationships.

Each of us live in a story.

Practices are important because ideas don’t just remain ‘theories’, they translate into actions, habits, and ultimately practices. Some of these are intentional, others are by default. Regardless, they reinforce the story that we live into and they connect us with others who become our community.

Relationships are vital because we are essentially (and fundamentally) social creatures. There is not one aspect of human existence that isn’t relational. We are born into a family of origin, and even the words we use to form our own thoughts are given to us. In fact, who we are connected to defines us as much as anything else and determines what we are allowed to believe or not allowed to believe.

  • Our stories frame our experiences and inspire our actions.
  • Our practices em/body and en/act our beliefs and ideas.
  • Our relationships connect us to a web of meaning and creates community.

It is the interplay between these 3 elements and specifically the spot where they overlap that has become my fascination.

Here is a short video – let me know your thoughts.

The reason that I call it the ‘trinity’ of belief is because each of the 3 elements can correspond to a ‘person’ in the Christian trinity: the story of God (the Bible is primarily narrative), Christian practices are founded in the incarnation and embodies presence, the Spirit is how we all connect to one another (community).

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