the view from her

The way I see it, there are a couple of ways to think about it.

1.: The Carl’s Junior viewpoint (2007):
“Don’t bother me… I’m eating.”

2.: from George Herbert (1593 – 1633):
“Thou that hast given so much to me, give one thing more–a grateful heart.”

I had the opportunity to attend the Sticky Teams conference this week. Here are some of my favorite points from the main speakers:

[In churches] “We confuse connecting people with being friendly. It’s hard to assimilate new connections into old relationships.” ~ Larry Osborne

“You can have change without growth. But you can’t have growth without change. And you can’t have change without pain.”
“The Gospel is all about change.”
“We’re equipped with the gifts of grace needed to fulfill the calling God put on our lives.”
~ Gene Appel

“The Church is Plan A for our cities. There is no Plan B.”
“Learn to embrace ‘last’ as your first choice.”
~ Chris Brown

“The most important day of your ministry (or marriage) is not the first day, it’s the last day.”
“If you want to kill yourself for the Gospel, don’t get married!” [A great perspective on 1 Corinthians 7:32-35.]
~ Mark Driscoll

USA Today recently posted an interesting column called The Truth About Evangelicals. Written by “as left wing a Democrat as they come,” the article generally critiques defining mainstream Evangelicals by their colorful extremes (i.e John Hagee).

Joel Hunter, an Orlando megachurch pastor puts it this way:

“The media have been too eager to feature a simpleton image of evangelicals. Our part of the faith community is, on the whole, intelligent, accepting of diversity, and wanting the best practical solutions for the common good.”

This last sentence is especially interesting to me as we near the beginning of yet another election year. Because at their core, elections are primarily about voting for someone with “the best practical solutions for the common good.” Radio host Hugh Hewitt once commented that if Catholics, Mormons, and Christians could put aside faith differences and recognize that they share the same values, they could create a voting bloc with some real power.

I think we confuse voting for our values with voting for our faith. Would a President Mitt Romney promote Mormonism? Possibly. Would it also put Mormonism under incredible scrutiny? Probably. I’m old enough to remember my Baptist parents’ horror at the thought of a Catholic John F. Kennedy in the White House. Yet in hindsight, America survived those years of a “different faith” influence just fine. Religious freedom is one of our founding values after all.

It’s nearing the end of September. One year from now we’ll be neck-deep in mud-slinging, negative campaign ads, hyperbole and wild misrepresentations by both parties. To Christians who define their faith as being followers of Christ I say: Remember that your faith informs your values, but you are not voting for your faith. Vote your values and for the candidate who most closely shares them. (To be clear, I’m not an advocate for Romney. He’s just the obvious example.)

Our duty in this country – and as followers of Christ – is to vote for solutions that improve the common good. Not just the Christian good.

In creating and nurturing an amazing corporate culture, Fast Company reports Method’s “method” lies in distilling their purpose into these five core values:

• Keep Method weird
• What would MacGyver do
• Innovate, don’t imitate
• Collaborate like crazy
• Care

Translated for the Church:
• Find your unique personality
• WWJD (the obvious answer, but… what if we really asked that in every situation?)
• You’re not Saddleback or Willow Creek – be who you are
• Collaboration, not competition (Can churches collaborate? They should.)
• Care (see point 2, above)

(via Stan Endicott)

The Center For Church Communications is launching a cool new resource for churches called “OUTSPOKEN – Conversations on Church Communications.”

The book, which releases this Thursday, Sept. 15 at Story in Chicago, features perspectives from more than 60 church communications pros. “Outspoken covers everything from general marketing to writing, outreach to design, leadership to websites,” so it will be an invaluable resource for churches all across the country who are passionate to be more effective in their communications.

You can get a free preview here.

Researchers hail recent “Scientific Advances on Contraceptive for Men,” though they’re still not quite sure they meet the “stringent safety and effectiveness criteria that female methods do.” Also, they’re still not sure men will actually use them. Hmm. Now why do you suppose that is?

Let’s review. Women used to have relationship power. Back in the day, a man had to court a woman, make known his intentions, and stake his reputation on marriage for the privilege of a woman’s romantic favors. Now, men can have sex with any or every woman they choose. Wait… why is that? Oh yes, because women were liberated in the 60s. We were freed from the onerous burden of a man’s commitment. (Yeah, who needs that?)

Supposedly, birth control aided our liberation. Now both men and women could have all the uncommitted sex they wanted without worrying about the possibility of creating children together. Except that, in the case of an unexpected pregnancy, only one person in the relationship was pregnant. To see it one way, now men didn’t have to be either committed, or responsible.

Which kind of explains why science has been working on a product since at least the 70s that still won’t be out for 10-12 years. That’s almost 50 years. It’s a good thing that group wasn’t working in technology – we’d all still be using pencils. Assuming a high percentage of scientists are men, one begins to suspect a lack of motivation.

Why would a man ever want to use male birth control? Though I’ve intentionally been using broad generalities, in today’s culture of course there are exceptions. There are women who enjoy uncommitted promiscuity or who try to trap a man by getting pregnant. There are men who accept responsibility for fathering a child, and see male birth control as a way of owning that responsibility. There are lots of reasons people have sex: loneliness, romance, love, manipulation, procreation or recreation – to name a few. Sex is a marketing tool, both trivialized and idealized.

I guess it’s like G.K. Chesterton said (with considerable foresight, since he died in 1936): “They insist on talking about Birth Control when they mean less birth and no control.”

In the ongoing discussion about gender “roles” for husbands/wives, and men/women within the church, it seems as if we base our beliefs about this subject only on the teaching of Paul (1 Cor. 11, 1 Cor. 14:34-35, Col. 3:18-19, Eph. 5:21-33, 1 Tim. 2:11-15, 1 Peter 3). Yet it should be equally, if not more significant to examine Jesus’ example in interacting with women, as we pursue his example in all other things.

Over and over again, Jesus defied social convention, and even Jewish law. He allowed women to travel with him. He talked alone with them. He accepted lavish displays of love and emotion. He allowed them to question – even challenge – him. (That behavior would be scandalous… even in today’s church.)

My favorite example is the story of the woman at the well (John 4:1-42). The sequence of events is as follows:
1. Jesus stops at a well in Samaria.
2. The disciples go off to buy food.
3. Jesus (alone) speaks to the Samaritan woman.
4. They have a conversation from water to living water, her marital history and living situation, which turns into a theological discussion about worship and ends with her recognizing that he is the Messiah.
5. The disciples return, surprised to see the situation.
6. The woman returns to her town, and with her words persuades both men and women to come hear the message of Christ.
7. The disciples remain preoccupied with the food situation. “Jesus, eat something.”
8. Jesus has a conversation about sowing and reaping, “…look at the fields! They are ripe for harvest.”
9. The woman returns with “the harvest,” and many people of the town become believers.

The woman is clearly an evangelist – she goes home, tells her story, gives an invitation and literally brings the the people of her town to Christ. In the meantime, the male disciples were taking care of dinner. (That’s my favorite part.)

Consider this: Jesus knew a harvest was coming, yet he didn’t send the disciples to the town to preach.

So. Do we continue to selectively accept as literal Paul’s admonition to not allow women to teach, and ignore Jesus’ example? Or, should we seek to find an understanding of Paul’s teaching in the cultural context of the churches for which those teachings are intended that provides harmony with all of Scripture?

It’s been another tough year here in America – the recession lingers on, wacky politicians, epic tornadoes and tsunamis. I update and repost this list every year because I think it’s easy to forget some of the most important reasons why America is still a great place to live. So here you go – reasons I love living in the U.S.A. on our 235th birthday:

1. The 4th of July. Barbecue, parades, sparklers, fireworks.
2. We have the prettiest flag.
3. You can drive anywhere without asking permission. Even across state lines. And stay as long as you want.
4. Blue jeans.
5. You can love or hate books like Rob Bell’s “Love Wins,” or The God Delusion, but they’re not forbidden.
6. We have real cowboys.
7. And Indians.
8. You can freely mock the President. I think we often take that for granted.
9. The Freedom of Information Act. Our government will voluntarily give you information about itself.
10. You can send a letter to any one of over 111 million homes, and it will be delivered to precisely the right one in only about two days, for just 44 cents.
11. New England clam chowder.
12. Alaska and Hawaii.
13. You can have as many children as you want.
14. Libraries. All the books you can read – 6 at a time – for free.
15. Thanksgiving Day.
16. The Bill of Rights.
17. You can paint your house any color you want. (Unless of course you live in a California homeowner’s association.)
18. Baseball.
19. An efficient sewage system. Pretty sure we take that for granted.
20. Microsoft and Apple. (Um… you’re welcome.)
22. Jazz.
23. Gospel music.
24. Rock ‘n Roll.
25. Water you can drink right out of the faucet.
26. “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal…”

In the discussion about women’s roles in the church, Phoebe can be a difficult character for complementarians to face. In Romans 16:1, Paul introduces her with, “I commend to you our sister Phoebe, a deacon of the church…” The problem is immediately apparent: a woman as deacon – who is a leader in the church. The debate typically involves downplaying her role of deacon as somehow less than elders, though all are clearly designated as overseers of the church.

So Paul is commending Phoebe, a woman who is an overseer of the church. Wait… is this the same Paul who says he doesn’t permit women to teach, except in children’s programs? Who gives men “headship”? And he’s commending a woman leader? What gives?

I recently came across the following compelling perspective on Phoebe. The Christians for Biblical Equality June e-newsletter (which unfortunately is not posted online) contained an article by Dr. Michael Bird (PhD, University of Queensland). He typically looks at Phoebe in Romans 1 with his classes, and discusses the meaning of “deacon,” “benefactor,” and the role of letter carriers in antiquity. He then asks, “So then, if Phoebe is a deacon, Paul’s benefactor, and he trusted her to take this very important letter to the Romans, then Phoebe must have been a woman of great abilities and good character in Paul’s mind. Do you agree?” Invariably the class agrees.

Next, he asks, “And if the Romans had any questions about the letter like ‘what is the righteousness of God?’ or ‘who is this wretched man about half-way through?’ who do you think would be the first person that they would ask?” He then adds (rather provocatively), “Could it be that the first person to publicly read and teach about or from Romans was a woman? If so, what does that tell you about women and teaching roles in the early church?”

“Think about it people. This is Romans—Paul’s letter to unify the Roman churches and to prevent a potentially fractious cluster of ethnically mixed house churches from ending up like Galatia where there were painful divisions over Law and Halakhah—the oral interpretation on how exactly to obey the Law… This is Romans, his greatest letter-essay, the most influential letter in the history of Western thought, and the singularly greatest piece of Christian theology. Now if Paul was so opposed to women teaching men anytime and anywhere, why on earth would he send a woman like Phoebe to deliver this vitally important letter and to be his personal representative in Rome? Why not Timothy, Titus, or any other dude? Why Phoebe?”

Since presumably no one would think that Paul contradicted himself, it seems that taken at face value, he apparently had no problem with women having speaking and teaching roles in the churches. It should follow that the Church likewise commend in their ministries young women whom God has gifted with leadership.

More significant takeaways from last week’s Q Conference:

Steven Garber spoke of how vocation is integral to the mission of God. “Most of what God is doing in the world is being done through the vocations of his people.”

This idea was reiterated by David Kinnaman of the Barna Group, who challenged the Church to focus on connecting with teens and 20-somethings through their giftings and vocation. This demographic is largely missing from many churches, primarily because of our “mass production approach.” This means the Church is losing young artists, scientists, politicians, etc. We must mentor and encourage their gifts and calling.

Jennifer Wiseman, astrophysicist, presented incredible pictures from the Hubble space telescope, some from as far as 200 million light years away. Rather than Christians being threatened by this information, she suggested it shows us more of God – His patience and the scale of time. She sees that we have imperfect interpretations of both Scripture and Nature, and so the two can compliment each other.

Rick McKinley of Imago Dei talked more about the Church in the city. (See yesterday’s post for more about Imago Dei’s unique partnership with the city of Portland.) He identified two portraits of the Church.
Portrait 1: The church exists for itself, Pastors exist to build the church, and Disciples exist as resources to build the church. (Church staff – how many times have we been guilty of using volunteers as resources to accomplish our goals?)
Portrait 2: The church exists for the world, Pastors exist to equip disciples, Disciples exist to announce the reign of Christ in the public square.
McKinley’s premise is that our job is not to “fix” the city, but to serve it as citizens, and this partnership is how the city will actually save the church. (Consider that in light of today’s political posturing.)

And Kevin Kelly of Wired Magazine talked about technology, which gives us new choices we didn’t have before. And new solutions can bring new problems. When “bad technology” happens, the solution isn’t to do away with it. Just like the proper response to a bad idea isn’t “stop thinking,” it’s to come up with a better idea.

There’s so much more. Thought-provoking and often challenging – why we love Q.