Category Archives: imagoDei

Crisis in American Christianity

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I suggest that the primary problem that is at the heart of the creeping
crisis in American Christianity is a spiritual one – not merely
financial or lack of members or the presence of young people or
unresponsive structures or antiquated thinking (1960’s and 1970’s
thinking, that is the antiquated thinking I’m writing about), but a
spiritual problem.

What is the single thing that the Christian
Church provides humanity that no other organization or institution or
system offers?  It is squarely Jesus Christ! Redemption –  forgiveness,
healing, and restoration between God and the rest of humanity.  That’s
it.  Period.

The Christian Church is not needed for social work,
political activism, justice seeking, or most anything else, except new
life in Christ. (Not that we don’t have something to say or do with
regard to those other things, but our engagement with such things is on a
primarily different plain than is secular society’s.)

Until we
recognize the reality of spiritual crisis, no matter what “change” we
engage in to correct other presumed crises within our churches will
bring about the results we seek or bring about the reality of the
Kingdom of God in the world around us.

New and new again

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Stained glass at St John the Baptist's Anglica...

Stained glass at St John the Baptist’s Anglican Church http://www.stjohnsashfield.org.au, Ashfield, New South Wales.

I’m beginning to realize that much of what is passing as “innovative change” in the Church has more to do with attempts to force the continuance of late 20-Century “church” than to truly move into the reality of the emerging 21-Century.  We tend to put new cloths on the same-old-thing and call it innovative and new.  It isn’t. We deceive ourselves when we do such things.

There are examples all around of truly innovative thinking and methodology within American Christianity, if only we will open our eyes to see.  And, if we will be humble enough to learn. Yet, when we do see, it does not mean that we abandon who we are authentically in crass attempts to gain, whatever it is we want to gain. It means that we take our authentic best, and in my case the best of the enduring Anglican Tradition of Christianity, and figure out how to translate such enduring faith for emerging generations

How Shall We Then Live?

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So, as part of my “Ministry Portfolio” that is needed as I look for ministry positions within the Church, we are supposed to post a link in our online portfolio to examples of sermons.  Most Episcopal Churches do not record the sermons of preachers, although more are doing so.  There isn’t the “tape ministry” turn “.mp3” recordings of preachers sermons culture within the Episcopal Church as has been common for a long time among Evangelical churches.

Anyway, I’ve started recording some of my sermons… because that is what is expected these days by those who make up search committees.  Here is my sermon at St. Paul’s Church Carroll St. in Brooklyn, NY.  The text comes from James, Proper 20 of the Revised Common Lectionary.

Communion Without Baptism

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Considering what is going on in the 2012 General Convention of the Episcopal Church right now with regard to resolutions related to changing the Church’s reaching to official acceptance of the unbaptized being given Holy Communion, I want to make more accessible the piece I recently wrote on the topic.

The piece that I wrote focuses to how emerging generations (younger folks) may or may not engage this issue (topic, point of contention, disagreement, fight, or whatever-else-it-might-be-called).  Primarily, what I say is that if we make this change for reasons related to “welcome” or “inclusion” or the removal of supposed “obstacles” to new people coming to our churches, that such reasons for such a fundamental change may play well with liberal-minded, Baby-Boomer sentiments, but it will be irrelevant for younger people.  Younger people deal with such issues from very different perspectives.

So that anyone who may want to read the essay/commentary without wading through irrelevent stuff, I have made a “Page” for my 2-cents worth of commentary.  Of course, you could just scroll down.

Here is the link:
http://www.hypersync.net/mt/communion-without-baptism-emer.html

Finding love…

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Code/Space, Story Telling, and Artificial Intelligence – we all just want to find love. 🙂

A presentation by James Bridle at a recent Lift conference entitled, “WE FELL IN LOVE IN A CODED SPACE”

From an airport check-in space (just a warehouse with angry passengers if the software fails) to the fact that most of our culture and literature now abide/live in “coded spaces.”

After giving a “canonical” example of an airport check-in space being turned into “warehouse of angry people if the software fails,” James Bridle goes on to say:

I want to push the metaphor… I suggest that most of our cultures lives now and particularly our literatures are lived in code spaces.

We live in a world where we increasingly outsource our memories and experiences to the network; which is fine and good but it has these intensive consequence for us. Our time is spent in negotiation with the network in order to understand these memories and experiences that we have. Our experiences are co-created with these repositories of memory experiences and so on online and on.

The rise of…

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A very interesting article entitled “What The Rise Of Depeche Mode Teaches You About The Rise Of Digital Design” comparing the rise of digital design today with the rise of synth-pop of the ’70’s & ’80’s (oh, how I remember “Cars” by Gary Numan!)

“After the explosion of synth pop onto the world stage, the press and industry were forced to recognize it as music and embrace it as an art form… For designers, after a pretty decent amount of struggle, we are just barely starting to see the acceptance of digital design as something people should care about.”

Frankly, I see a very similar thing happening within our Church (and that would be the Episcopal Church). I can point to some folks who are doing the rising stuff and in the midst of struggle are making their way (it is, frankly, attitude, belief, and approach more than programmatic anything).  They aren’t really those we hear lot about – or are more often than not put forward by the powers that be! That is just the way it is. Soon, however…

—————–

Speaking of “Cars,” here is Gary Numan in a surprise 2009 appearance at a NIN concert in London:

What kind of change?

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We
keep hearing so often how we must change our structures – change our
organizational, institutional way of being – because the structures of
the organization are failing us.

I don’t have a problem with
organizational change, but it is too easy to believe that the problem is
with the structure itself. Sometimes it is, but more often than not the
problem comes down to the people inhabiting the structure! The problem
is us!

WE have to change, and if we do change the old
structures may well work just fine. If we don’t change within ourselves,
all the restructuring in the world will make little difference!

How We Live…

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We live in a cultural situation right now that looks far more similiar to the early Christian experience than for the past 1,000  years in the West. The following quote is an equally fit description of the American landscape with regard to living the Faith at the beginning of the second decade of 2012 as it is of their lives back then:

“Because the church in the second and third centuries maintained a parallel existence with other faiths in the multireligious culture, Christian identity depended upon a radical focus on Jesus, even while maintaining contact with people of other worldviews.” (Kenda Creasy Dean, “Almost Christian: What the Faith of Our Teenagers Is Telling the American Church“; p. 91.)

Restructuring? Reorganizing? For the sake of the faith of the emerging generations, what we must remember to do is put all of our eggs in one basket – Jesus Christ. We must refocus and live in such ways individually and in community that no one can look at us and not notice the cruciform way we live that reflects our complete devotion to live as Jesus lived, even in suffering for the sack of others.

How we live makes a difference, but the difference begins with for whom we live!

A Generation In Transition

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I just came across the findings of the “2012 Millennial Values Survey” conducted by Georgetown University’s Berkley Center for Religion, Peace & World Affairs.  The title of the analysis paper is, “A Generation In Transition: Religion, Values, and Politics among College-Age Millennials.”  I’ve just perused the 51-page document, but it looks very interesting!!

Download the .pdf file here: http://publicreligion.org/site/wp-content/uploads/2012/04/Millennials-Survey-Report

Let us affirm our faith…

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For those who have ears to hear! The following quote comes by way of Kendra Creasy Dean in her book, “Almost Christan: What the Faith of Our Teenagers Is Telling the American Church” (2010), p. 70. Dean was one of the researchers for the “National Study of Youth and Religion.”

“Creeds are articulated beliefs. The theologian William Placher defends the importance of creeds by citing Lionel Trilling:

‘It is probably true that when the dogmatic principle in religion is slighted, religion goes along for awhile on generalized emotion and ethical intention — morality touched by emotion – [but] then it loses the force of Its impulse and even the essence of Its Being…

‘Even if I have a warm personal relationship with Jesus, I also need an account of what’s so special about Jesus to understand why my relationship with him is so important. If I think about dedicating my life to following him, I need an idea about why he’s worth following. Without such accounts and ideas, Christian feeling and Christian behavior start to fade to generalized warm fuzziness and social conventions.'”

Find the book on Amazon.