Who is here to serve whom?

A different perspective on church property conflicts

Higher judicatories in the Episcopal and Presbyterian Churches have been locked in conflict – and sometimes in court – over the property and other assets of congregations trying to leave their authority. Judicatory officials explain this as protecting the interest of the larger church in the property of particular congregations. But this shows an unsettling attitude about the relationship between the congregations and the larger church.

It’s an attitude I saw many years ago, when an associate Presbytery executive explained the presbytery was only going to fund new church developments that were likely to grow quickly to 100 people attending services. It wasn’t practical for the presbytery to fund smaller congregations because they wouldn’t produce enough mission giving for the presbytery to get its money back.

This guideline has a kind of managerial wisdom to it. It’s important to invest money in enterprises that will produce a good return. That’s clear at an individual level: if I invest money in a CD or money market fund, it’s important to invest in one that will produce an adequate return.

But there are other expenses that aren’t measured by the income they produce. Buying a pair of pants or a dozen apples is not like buying a Certificate of Deposit. I expect the CD to produce an income stream, or at least to produce a satisfactory profit on the initial expense when I cash it in. But for the pair of pants, just having something to wear is enough. For the apples, just having something to eat is enough. I don’t expect to make a profit on selling them some day.

Further, the expenses are primary; the investments are secondary. Investments do not exist for themselves, they exist to provide income to fund expenses. Investments are the means to the end of providing for expenses. In terms of the examples, I buy CDs so I’ll have money for apples, but I don’t buy apples so I’ll have strength to buy CDs.

Church governing bodies have investment and expense items as well. There are things they legitimately need to show some kind of profit or return. Pension fund and endowment assets, for example. But there are other things they don’t expect to produce a return. For example, when a North American Presbytery sends mission support to Ekwendeni Hospital in Malawi, there’s no expectation of ongoing income. Just knowing it’s a place where people are finding healing and care is enough.

Presently, the Ekwendeni Hospital is a ministry of the Church of Central Africa Presbyterian. But if circumstances change and, say, the Roman Catholic church would have to take over running the hospital, the North American Presbyteries that supported the hospital wouldn’t require a payment or other settlement as a return on their investment in the mission. The years of faithful ministry there would be return enough.

Which is the proper relation between the Diocese of the Presbytery and the congregation? Is the congregation like the endowment funds, useful so long as it produces an income stream for the judicatory? Or is it like the mission projects, sufficiently useful because people find opportunities for worship and praise there?

Are congregations a means to an end, useful for the mission giving they send to higher judicatories? Or are these worshipping communities ends in themselves, the purpose for which the higher judicatories exist?

When a congregation leaves the sphere of a judicatory, the response is usually to seek some kind of payment or other property settlement. The rationale is usually something like to protect the interests of the larger denomination and the future work of the church. But what if the judicatory were to respond “the interests of the denomination were well served in the years this has been a vibrant worshipping community”?

To me, the latter sounds like a more fruitful attitude.

That's Not What We Wanted

The unintended outcome of the fight against violent media.

'Parent seminar examines violent media content' was not the headline in the paper the other day. Though by all accounts it probably could have been, and maybe should have been. The parents who went to the seminar came back challenged and motivated. The informative presentations opened their eyes to some important new challenges. They felt empowered to deal with them.

It was probably worth an article in the news paper, except it wasn't really news. Parent seminars have been examining violent media content for years. The parents who went to this seminar could have been the children and grand children of parents who had gone to similarly informative and challenging seminars years before them.

I am of an age to remember when Marshall Dillon was the dangerous character who needed to be reined in lest impressionable children get the idea that the best solution to problems is to shoot the bad guy. And to some extent the campaign worked. The Gunslinger Sheriff gave way to heroes who thought, talked, or charmed their way through conflict. This was not an entirely bad thing as television told artistic and creative stories about characters like Columbo, Banacek, and Rockford. (Movies made a similar transition.)

But there's still a market for violent media. And since it's no longer fashionable for heroic role models to be the physically aggressive type, other kinds of characters have filled the void. In the old days, the violence of the sheriff or soldier taught us the proper use of force was to defend others. The message was use your violence for a noble purpose, not for your own advancement but for the good of others. These are the sorts of people others admire.

In these new days, sheriffs and soldiers have given way to outlandish characters like those in the WWE. The "matches" staged under the WWE banner feature people showing precious little self-discipline. With what seems to be reckless abandon, they act out unrestrained, atavistic aggression. Observers are entitled to ask if civilization has really advanced much beyond the Roman Coliseum.

It has advanced at least to this extent: the performers practise and train to avoid any lethal danger in their combat. But even this is no real advantage, for the audience of impressionable children who watch don't see it. They just see one fighter pounding an opponent's face into the mat. And they get the message loud and clear: use your violence to do what ever it takes, by any means necessary, to get what you want and be the last person standing in the ring. Then you will receive the cheers of an admiring audience.

Now a new generation of parents must learn to cope with the violent images children face. But now it's a much more dangerous kind. Marshall Dillon could be persuaded to lay down his gun for the sake of the greater good. But for the new, nihilistic, impulsive violence, such appeals are literally nonsense. It wonders, How would laying down my gun help me get what I want? and dismisses the request. The new violence can only be restrained by someone using violence against it. Which society must figure out how to do, and quickly.

Maybe we need to welcome Marshall Dillon back to clean up Dodge…

That's my child… or is it?

It's all in the eye of the beholder — but should it be?

The lead from Sky News sets up the tragic disagreement:

A woman left infertile after cancer treatment says she feels "distraught" after losing a five-year legal battle to try to become a mother using her own embryos.

In 2001, Natallie Evans and Howard Johnston went through an in-vitro fertilization procedure and had six embryos created. Evans hoped to use the embryos to become a mother after she completed treatment for ovarian cancer.

Just a year later, though, Evans and Johnston had an irreconcilable split, and he was no longer willing to be the father of her children. Unfortunately, because of her cancer treatment, those embryos were her only chance to carry and give birth to her children. As a result of her loss at the European Court of Human Rights, the embryos probably will be destroyed within the month.

She said: "I am distraught at the court's decision. It is very hard for me to accept that the embryos will now be destroyed and I will never become a mother....
I would ask Howard to consider whether he could ever permit me to have the children I so dearly long for, and which he was happy to consent to when the procedure took place to create these embryos."

Johnston, on the other hand, was glad the court affirmed his argument. "I want to be able to choose when and with who I become a parent."

Evans seems to feel Johnston made that choice when he consented to create the embryos was a decision to become a parent. And there's a kind of logic to that. What did Johnston think he was choosing to do when he agreed to help create the embryos? What did he think the goal of the process was?

But Johnston is living within the letter of the current law in the United Kingdom: the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Act requires consent from both man and woman at every stage of the process. Anna Smajdor, researcher in medical ethics at Imperial College, London, seems to think the letter of the law doesn't reflect real life:

No couple can guarantee an ongoing relationship, and both parties need to understand and accept that the creation of embryos together is a reproductive endeavour which cannot simply be revoked.
If this seems risky or unpalatable, consent should not be given in the first place.

Parenting, the act of creating and nurturing a child, is a project that can't be revoked. It is an unbroken flow of events extending across years. In the normal order of things, the only stage of parenting where consent can be given is at the beginning. After that, ongoing consent is not necessary — no matter how much a parent might complain "If I'd know this was what I was getting into, I'd have made some different decisions."

Only the intervention of science creates discrete "stages" at which consent must be reaffirmed. They are artificial in the most literal sense of the term: products of human artifice. For Evans, the embryos were the children she hoped for, children she was committed to bear and rear. For Johnston, those embryos were just a burden, binding him to a bad memory. Who is seeing reality clearly?

Science has created a new reality that encourages people there are places where the decision to become a parent can be revoked. Perhaps it's just the eye of this beholder, but that seems to be a rather more dangerous and uncertain environment for a growing child

A whole mission: make both poverty and greed history

The theological conflict in the worldwide Anglican communion has produced its share of intense heat. But that’s a post for another day. The encouraging thing is the conflict has also produced its share of intense light. The conflict has provoked some deep thinking about just what the purpose of a church is.

Ugandan Archbishop Henry Orombi offered this reflection

It is not enough, however, to “make poverty history.” We must also “make greed history.” That is why it is not enough to substitute support for the Millennium Development Goals for the fullness of the Biblical understanding of God’s mission in the world. Evangelism, repentance, a personal relationship with Jesus Christ, and Biblical discipleship are as much a key to the fulfillment of the Millennium Development Goals as all the programmes and strategies we will put in place. And we have and will continue to put them in place. But, the whole counsel of God in Scripture must be proclaimed and embraced as the only way to the full and abundant life that Jesus promises.

For a generation, the church has had difficulty striking a proper balance between its temporal and eternal mission goals. On the one hand, some focus on the command to feed the hungry. On the other are those who observe people don’t live by bread alone but on every word that proceeds from the mouth of God.

The conflict between personal morality and social justice is a false one. The church needs both to be powerfully faithful in its mission. A church that focuses on social justice to the exclusion of personal morality tends to have little relevance in the day to day lives of members. On the other hand, faithful teaching personal righteousness is never just about the individual; it always includes the duties and obligations we have to each other.

Does God really send people to hell?

The new movie (and earlier book) The Bridge to Terebithia offers lots of opportunities for reflecting on ultimate issues.

If you don’t believe the Bible, one girl tells another, God will send you to hell. The other girl can’t believe that. Waving an appreciative gesture at the beautiful creation around them, she says God doesn’t have time to send anyone to hell. He’s busy creating all this beauty and wonder.

The notion that God sends people to hell continues to astound me. Surely people find their way to hell through their own choices and actions.

Wherever the Bible describes God’s action, design or desire regarding salvation, it talks about how God “desires all people to be saved and to come to the knowledge of the truth.” (1 Timothy 2:4, ESV)

Admittedly, all people do not come to that knowledge and find salvation. But that’s because of their choices; it wasn’t God’s idea for it to turn out that way.

The original consequence of sin was very specific. God tells Adam, “cursed is the ground because of you; in pain you shall eat of it all the days of your life... By the sweat of your face you shall eat bread, till you return to the ground, for out of it you were taken; for you are dust, and to dust you shall return.” (Genesis 3:17-19, ESV)

God does not say he is cursing the ground because of the man’s sin. The connection between the man’s sin and the curse is more direct, more immediate. The curse comes from the sin, not from God’s action. As the Bard might have said, "The fault lies not in our God, but in ourselves."

God’s desire is to bless us and lead us to an eternal promise. Continuing to blame God for things that are truly and properly our fault simply gets in the way of seeing his offer of salvation.

It takes all voices to remember correctly

Blogging from the Association of Presbyterian Church Educators conference in Philadelphia:

If our memory of our heritage is the foundation of our faithful future, and it is, then it's important to remember properly. Frances Taylor Gench, plenary speaker at the APCE conference, suggested that was not an easy task. Like urban myths in repeatedly-forwarded notes across the internet, interpretive mistakes tend to take on a life of their own. Often, it seems, an eternal one.

For example, there is no biblical evidence that Mary Magdalene was a prostitute. So why, Dr. Gench asked, does that description seem to persistent and pervasive in popular imagination? Even Andrew Lloyd Webber (in Jesus Christ Superstar) has Mary respond to Jesus as just one more man among so many she'd been with. Why did this one scare her so?

Another example Dr. Gench offered was the woman Jesus met at the well in John 4. Okay, so she'd had an unconventional life and had been married many times. The text doesn't explain the situation, and Jesus doesn't use it as evidence of bad character. So why is the history of preaching full of sermons with salacious speculations about her character?

A more accurate memory of these and other stories about women in the bible would be very beneficial for the self image of women in the church. And Dr. Gench is probably right.

Though as I checked my memory of sermons I'd heard about these women. I couldn't remember hearing a minister preach myths like the reformed prostitute Mary Magdalene. And I do remember at least one or two being explicitly cautious about speculating where the text is silent. On the other hand, a news magazine had a sidebar to an article about the DaVinci Code detailing the history of preaching about her that mentioned it as a prominent theme, so somebody's preaching that way.

Dr. Gench had her own theory to explain why new insights into biblical characters had a hard time gaining traction in the church: the f-word. These interpretations came from Feminist Scholars. And people don't listen to feminist scholars. So she's on a crusade to get people to get over their negative opinions of feminist scholarship. After all, a feminist, she suggested, is just someone who thinks women are human.

If feminist scholarship is treated with suspicion, perhaps a better response is to ask why that suspicion exists. And here I see more than a little irony. After all, feminist scholars were among the inventors of the "hermeneutic of suspicion." That's an approach that presumes texts are written by people with an agenda. We don't trust what is written but stay alert for any signs of suspicious or unfair rhetoric.

And surely it is true some – and I repeat, some – feminist scholars have let their enthusiasm for the cause shape the way they have handled data. Some assertions have been shown to be based on rather thin support. If historic distortions by white males justifies a suspicious approach to their writings, surely it's only fair to apply it to all human writings. All people have agendas, prejudices, and axes to grind.

The best answer is not to "get over" our fear of feminism – or of evangelicalism, or of any other group who is "not like us". The best answer is to embrace truth wherever it comes and listen with an open mind. The best answer is to be fair in our discernment: no individual or group has a monopoly on truth. But no individual or group is completely excluded from it either.

Holding to the heritage

Blogging from the Association of Presbyterian Church Educators in Philadelphia:

The theme for this year's conference involves flying forward and looking back. And so the opening evening focussed on looking back.

Our preacher, the Rev. Bill Carter of Clark's Summit, PA, opened with a service celebrating the counter cultural attitude biblical faith takes toward the past.

When it comes to making progress, the cultural expectation is to look to the future. Any thought of the past is dismissed with the thought that itÂ’s water over the dam, or under the bridge, or something.

But the Bible takes a rather different opinion. Places like Psalm 78 stress the importance of holding to the past, not dismissing it. The mighty works and wise commands of God are things each generation is to teach the next "so the next generation would know them, even the children yet to be born, and they in turn would tell their children. Then they would put their trust in God." (Psalm 78:6,7, NIV)

The culture tries to get over the past so it can move beyond it into a new future. But the historic Christian faith has seen the past, not as something to be put behind us or something to be gotten over, but as the foundation for whatever is to come. A faithful future will not come in opposition to our past, but in continuity with it.

The importance of memory in finding a faithful future makes the work of the teacher crucial. The teachers must remember the stories accurately. Then they must take the lead to show the community how to pass these stories along to the children.

It is always a temptation for each generation to think it have finally resolved the great questions and figured out the mysteries, and there are only greater heights ahead. But that is a temptation. People who don't keep a good grip on their memories and heritage are like characters in Chuck Jones cartoons who do things like stand in midair wondering where the building around them went. Eventually they figure it out and plunge to earth.

A moment of silent remembrance please…

Blogging from APCE in Philadelphia:

It was a sad shock to read of the death of Lois Anderson and her daughter Zelda White. Lois was a retired Presbyterian Church missionary. She and her husband Bill had served some 40 years in Africa.

For generations, the Anderson family has been arguably the first family in missions in the old UPNA stream of the church. Their exemplary dedication to proclaiming the gospel and seeing the Church of Jesus Christ grow has been passed faithfully from generation to generation. Their dedication and achievements have been an inspiration and a challenge to me. It has been a privilege to meet Bill and Lois and other members of the extended Anderson family.

This is just the latest in a series of tragic events to affect this family. And it is all the more shocking since they should have been safe in a diplomatic car traveling near Nairobi, Kenya, often considered one of the more stable African cities. But a carjacking turned deadly with tragic consequences.

May the peace which God promises his faithful servants fill the heart of Bill Anderson and all of his extended family. They have done so much to share the love of God with others. May they feel it now.

It does take a village: a better solution to children and violent media

Every few months, some public interest group or another highlights something most of us realize. Children live in a more violent world these days. It's not that the town they live in is more dangerous. But, since children tend to view the world through their imaginations, when the things that fuel their imaginations are more violent, their world is more violent.

Movies and music are more violent. There are more violent images, and those images are themselves more graphic. At the same time, that violence is more meaningless and random. The increase in violence in video games is off the charts. A generation ago people played "Pong" and "Space Invaders"; now it's "first person shooters" whose major purpose is to splatter as much realistic blood and guts across the screen as possible.

Interest groups that study the environment in which children grow up find themselves desperate for answers. There are few simple ones. A media columnist reported on one group's attempt to Do Something. "[C]oalition leaders acknowledged that 'legislation is rarely a perfect solution' – and yet they pressed for changes to the laws."

Changes, the columnist was probably correct to point out, that would almost certainly be ineffective. And what would be effective? Antonia Zerbisias wrote, "[T]he solution lies in one place alone." New paragraph for emphasis. "The power switch." Another new paragraph for emphasis. "You have the power." One more new paragraph for emphasis. "Use it."

I dispute the connection between the power switch and the power. The best illustration of that was at a conference a couple of months after one of Madonna's more outrageous creations was published. "How many of you are aware of Madonna's latest project?" the speaker asked the assembled parents and teachers. Dozens of hands — representing almost everyone in the room — went up. "How many of you are aware of it because you sought out information about it?" Only a couple of hands stayed up.

We don't have to turn on the power switch to pull the objectionable stuff into our families. It's so pervasive in culture, it pushes its way in uninvited. The solution lies in another place, one more difficult to reach than the power switch or the halls of government.

It lies in claiming the best meaning of the proverb "It takes a village to raise a child." Once we knew that meaning. Adults endured restrictions and inconveniences for the sake of children. Magazines were inconveniently stored behind counters. Etiquette kept us on our toes regarding deeds and words when children were present. There were many things in the "you can't do that on television" file.

Gradually life changed. "I'm entitled to my rights of self-expression." "When did your kids become my problem?" "Who do you think you are to stigmatize the things I choose to read?" Society became less concerned with the environment in which children were growing up and more concerned with maximizing the choices and options for adults.

Perhaps the best example of this is in efforts to regulate content on the Internet. Courts will not permit any regulation that encumbers adult access whatever adults want access to, no matter what the effect on children. And so the village has rejected its responsibility for its children.

We need to reclaim the best meaning of "it takes a village to raise a child." It's not a rationale for more government programs. It is a recognition that all the various choices we make affect the vulnerable children around us. It means we need to be willing to give up some things and endure a little inconvenience for the sake of the children.

If we can't make that choice in this generation, how will we live in the next?

What's missing from Mainline religion: the need for transcendence

"Is God Dead?" asked a seminal cover story in Time magazine. Yes, the western European cultural leadership eagerly affirmed. Not so much that God was alive and now was dead, but that the myth of a "Most High God" beyond this world was no longer a vital reality. It was no longer a living part of our culture.

A generation of church leaders embraced this insight, and developed what they called a secular Christianity. It would be a faith perfectly suited for the modern age. It was a faith that let go of outmoded and irrelevant concerns about heaven and eternity. It was a faith that would focus on the urgent and immediate concerns of human compassion and service. It would be a modern, relevant faith, worthy of the embrace of a new generation. It would focus on real problems like hunger and employment.

The trouble was, the new generation did not embrace it. People stayed away in droves. The "mainline" churches that embraced the new secular gospel (mostly members of the National Council of Churches) saw their attendance drop sharply. The Christian churches that were able to maintain their attendance were those that embraced the old fashioned ideas of transcendence.

At the heart of the traditional view of Christianity is Jesus Christ as simultaneously human and divine. He is the very power of God in human form. And yet, he is also one with us in our weaknesses and challenges. In his life we can see a hope of something more for our lives.

Perhaps the place where that plays out most dramatically is in Christ's struggle in the Garden of Gesthemene. On that night, he was seized with the enormity of the task before him. The gospel accounts don't explain why, they simply report his desire to let the task pass. Was the task too big? Too difficult? Too painful? Too much? It was too something, and so Jesus asked that the cup pass from his lips; a way of asking that he be excused from the task.

And yet he went beyond that: not my will but thy will be done. In that choice, Jesus found the power to be and do more than his humanity could do on its own. And in that we can find the hope of power to be more than we can imagine now. (The picture to the left illustrating that is "Getsemane, harjoitelma Savitaipaleen kirkon alttaritaulua varten" by Magnus Enckell, 1902, from the Finnish National Gallery.)

And in that victory, there is hope for all people. We also can find the strength to do things we find too much. We also can be more than we can imagine. When modern religious leaders moved away from transcendence, they moved away from that hope, from that victory. They moved away of what made a religion worth professing and following. No wonder people stayed away.

As Anglican blogger Captain Yips observed,

there's always something we can't do, don't want to do, that stands in the way, and every one of those mirrors in small the reluctance Jesus felt that Thursday night in the garden. I'’d rather not do this, Father. But of course, he did. And that is why Jesus is the way to the Father.
All this is missing from Social Work Anglicanism, why it has become a shell, a political action committee.

A transcendent God is not an empty myth. It is instead a real hope what we can be more than we ever thought was possible. Far from being a dead idea, it's a realty that makes life worth living.