“Target Audiences” and other Vile Ideas, Pt. II.
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After the wide range of responses to my initial conversation starter, the best thing to do is clarify what I said and offer a constructive vision, and hopefully temper my irritability.
Clarification
Here is a basic question that must be answered: where is the church the church?
We cannot resort to some ideal “invisible church” that is everywhere. Like it or not, the church is visible. This visibility not a building or an organization. It is the congregation. The church is the gathering of the people; the church is the church in the gathering. The church is an event in which God lavishes grace on us, transforming us into that which we could not have been otherwise, transforming individual Christians into a community, the true body of Christ. This gathering event, this sacrament, is the liturgy—the service of worship wherein God’s people worship and give thanks.
Consequently, when those who lead the church in worship become performers—whether they perform music, prayer, or sermons—and when they conceive of the body of Christ as an audience, they stand against that body. The only audience we should know of is the world which looks on the church. But that church can never be an audience. And when we act to make the body of Christ into an audience, we indeed do a vile thing. Read More…
“Target Audiences,” and other Vile Ideas
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Below is an abbreviated version of an article that I am currently writing called “The Spectacle and the Spectators in a Den of Robbers.” I was originally asked to share this for a newsletter that goes out to worship leaders throughout the North American Division of Seventh-day Adventists. The editorial staff found it too polemical. I might agree. Let me know what you think..
“Target Audiences,” and other Vile Ideas
At the risk of sounding cranky, I think it has become clear that Adventist liturgical practice has reached a level of such inane banality that a sustained, theologically-rigorous, and self-critical conversation is in order. I begin with an anecdote:
I recently attended a church service for young adults. The worship was plagued by mediocre, romantic music about God. Worse yet were the entertaining illustrations—video clips, jokes, and other pointless gimmicks—all of which were supposed to “drive home” the pastor’s message. That the service was profoundly boring is forgivable. That it was insulting is inexcusable.
I was told that “they are reaching their target audience.” Indeed. And here lies the problem. Too many of us have somehow convinced ourselves that “we” get it, and “they” need to learn from us. However, this is only evidence of our own need to learn—and repent.
Ministry will fail so long as we see the church as an audience, as spectators, and ourselves as the spectacle to be seen and heard. As long as we treat the church as an audience, that audience will never mature into the active body of Christ we continually urge them to be. That is, our ministry practices work against our message.
We must draw people into participation, never spectatorship. And this has its rightful place in our liturgical life, not just programs or events. Until we learn this, we will be seduced into using cheap marketing tactics and church growth models, and degrade ministry into a performance art.
As we form worship services and seek to nurture the community, let us remember our role: to assist the church in being the church, a body of participants in Christ and his mission in the world.
Sermon: 1 Corinthians 3:1-9 – Merely Human?
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Sometimes, reading from letters in the New Testament is a little bit like listening to one side of a phone conversation: you get only half of the story, and you have to figure out the other side of the story. Our text for today, a small section of Paul’s first letter to the church at Corinth, is one such case where we have to figure out the other side of the story.
And of course, whenever you’re listening in on someone else’s conversation like this, the really important question is, “Why does this matter to me?” So as we listen in on Paul’s side of his conversation with the Corinthian church, we aren’t only interested in piecing together the other side of the conversation, but, more importantly, we are trying to figure out why this matters to us. That is, we are trying listen to what Paul might be saying to us, here and now. And maybe if we listen carefully enough, through the words of Paul written to a church almost two thousand years ago, we will hear the voice of God speaking to us—this church—today.
So let us listen in. 1 Corinthians 3:1-9:
And so, brothers and sisters, I could not speak to you as spiritual people, but rather as people of the flesh, as infants in Christ. I fed you with milk, not solid food, for you were not ready for solid food. Even now you are still not ready, for you are still of the flesh. For as long as there is jealousy and quarreling among you, are you not of the flesh, and behaving according to human inclinations? For when one says, “I belong to Paul,” and another, “I belong to Apollos,” are you not merely human? What then is Apollos? What is Paul? Servants through whom you came to believe, as the Lord assigned to each. I planted, Apollos watered, but God gave the growth. So neither the one who plants nor the one who waters is anything, but only God who gives the growth. The one who plants and the one who waters have a common purpose, and each will receive wages according to the labor of each. For we are God’s servants, working together; you are God’s field, God’s building. (NRSV)
Obviously, this isn’t Paul’s friendliest letter. He sees that there is a problem with the Corinthian Christians. They are divided because they have divided loyalties. Some of them are loyal to Paul and Paul’s way of thinking, and others are loyal to Apollos and his way of thinking, and the two groups don’t want to associate with one another. And according to Paul, there is jealously and fighting among them. Perhaps those who knew Paul have forced themselves into power in the church, and are excluding anyone who came into the church through Apollos. We can’t know exactly what was happening, but it is clear that the church at Corinth was becoming a broken body. Read More…
To Be Adventist in the Year of our Lord, 2011
Periodically, someone will ask me why I am (still) that quirky kind of Christian called Seventh-day Adventist. Every time I am asked this question, I give a different answer. My answers range from simplistic—“my mother raised me Adventist”—to fatalistic—“Even if I tried not to be, I would be an Adventist”—to theological—“I found Jesus in Adventism, and am therefore committed to the Adventist community.” None of these answers are untrue, and I realize that none of them satisfy ears which yearn to hear me say that Adventists “have the truth,”[1] and boiled down to twenty-eight fundamental beliefs, no less.
Even so, I think that it is appropriate that, as we begin a new year, we revisit this question: “Why should a person still identify her- or himself as a Seventh-day Adventist, and what does it mean to be an Adventist living in the world today?” After all, it has been almost 2000 years, and Jesus has not come. If this is central to our gospel proclamation—that the Lord Jesus lives and reigns and is soon coming again—and if this gospel we proclaim is what forms our church,[2] then our gospel is a witness against itself, and we always run the risk of an identity crisis. That is, though we may argue that it is reasonable to believe in God, though we may argue that the Bible is reliable, and though we may argue that our doctrines are consistent with that Bible, it remains that we must demonstrate that the gospel we proclaim is meaningful for our lives and our world; we must demonstrate that the gospel matters, that the gospel makes a difference, that the “word of the cross” is the word of truth. That our proclamation is consistent with the words of the Bible is not enough; the truthfulness of gospel that we proclaim can only be demonstrated by how it is lived.[3]
Humiliation and Exaltation: A Great Disappointment Day Homily
I delivered this homily last night at CrossWalk’s Great Disappointment Day gathering.
Part One: Humiliation
The Way of Jesus is a movement that began and will forever continue with two simple words: “Follow me.” It is in these two simple words that the whole Christian experience is contained. All of the joy and the glory, the excitement and urgency, the sense of purpose and conviction. But more than that, in these two simple words reside shame and embarrassment, disappointment and rejection, suffering, torture, and execution.
Jesus said: “Anyone who does not carry his cross and follow me cannot be my disciple.”
Jesus said: “Anyone who does not carry her cross and follow me cannot be my disciple.”
The torture and execution of Jesus on his own cross reminds us that we are not permitted to take his words as a metaphor for some inner spiritual struggle, some death to self. No, it is in such a case as this that we ought to insist on the “plain reading of Scripture,” as some might insist for other parts of Scripture. The two simple words “follow me” must be seen, then, as a shorter, simpler way of saying, “Pick up your cross, carry it, and be ready to die on it.” The call of Jesus, the “follow me,” makes quite clear that Jesus asks us not to be willing to give all we have and die with him, as though he may or may not ask us to do so at some point in the future, but rather is a call to accept one’s death sentence from the very beginning. That is, those who are called to follow Jesus have already been asked to give all that they have and suffer death. Anyone who tells you otherwise is leading you astray, because Jesus said to his disciples: “I send you out as sheep among wolves.”
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