Okay, a Rant (part 3)

If you're just joining this program, already in progress, you may want to start with the two previous posts. The brief catch-up is that, from a rather grumpy disposition, I'm deconstructing a video that you can see by clicking here.

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7. "Church is for wimpy girly men."
Thomas says, with Scotty glowering beside him, "You want to say that again?"
tag: . . .

Where to start with this? There's so much that rubs me the wrong way here.

How about: "Real men" obviously are threatening, however good-naturedly or humorously the threat may be delivered. That the threat is the only text to answer the excuse tells us something: we expect men to be violent if their great god, "masculinity," is threatened.

Or maybe I should start with: Does this mean that wimpu, girly men are NOT welcome?

I realize I consort with a minority population. I'm part of that minority population. As a gay man, I cringed at this section. I cringed at the thought of transgendered friends seeing it. It is, quite possibly, the most UNwelcoming piece of the video.

And seriously, what is wrong with straight men that the need this sort of constant reassurance? "Don't worry, going to church won't make you less of a man! See? We have a couple of burly men who could smash you to pulp right here!" Why would I, as a gay man who (I've been told) exhibits a range of gender expression, be enough of a threat to keep straight men away, anyway?

I've tried to imagine a similar section directed at women, but they all come out so offensive that I can't publishe them on my blog. Which would sort of make the point about how offensive I find this particular excuse/response.

By the way, notice how there is no tag line at the end? It's as if the producers of the video couldn't find a polite way to say, "church isn't just for fags!" So we just have a final shot of the manly men with their names. That should say it all, right?

And perhaps what troubles me most---since I'm going on about realistic expectations in these posts---is that this may be the most honest section in the video. The church does lack men, men do tend to see "mother church" as feminizing (as if "feminine" were a bad thing), and men do tend to get threatening if they're accused of being less than "real men." Whatever those are.

What do I want a video like this to say? "All gender expressions are embraced as aspects of the Image of God" would be a lie (never mind creating unrealistic expectations) in the vast majority of churches.

So this section sipmly hits me on all the tender spots. It farily truthfully expresses what most congregations want and makes me realize all over again how far the church is from being a safe place for LGBT folk.

8. "If you knew me and what I've done, you wouldn't want me."
Retired pilot Mike answers: "If you knew me and what I've done, you wouldn't be worried."
tag: Forgiven.

This would be more powerful if didn't immediately assume that what these people had done was maybe had an affair or some other sin not punishable by civil law. As awful as that is, I think that's where churches are with this kind of forgiveness. I think if Mike had told us he'd committed heinous war crimes in Viet Nam or Iraq, we would be relieved that was all that was bothering him when he came to us for for confession and a word of grace.

It would also have been more powerful if we were told that everyone at Mike's church knew that he had molested a child but that their love had turn him from that destructive and life-shattering behavior.

It would have been a lie, but it would have been more powerful.

The sad, likely fact is that Mike may have had a profound, life-changing experience of God's forgiveness, but he probably keeps the particulars from the majority of his fellow church goers. He probably talks to people just like he spoke in this video: "If you knew . . . "

But he's probably not going to let them know, because most of us longtime church members know that it's not safe to tell everything. There may be very close friends who know Mike's past, but not everyone, I can nearly promise you. We're kind of back to the previous bit about how the church is full of hypocrites and preach forgiveness while shunning the forgiven.

I sound very cynical, don't I? Well, here I am. And there's a thin line between being a cynic and just paying attention.

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And I'm not done here, yet. I have to stop here for the evening, but I'll try to get the rest done tomorrow. There's at least one more part to this rant. Maybe two. But we're through all the "excuse/response" portions of the video, so we're close to the end of my general grumpiness with this video.

Okay, a Rant (part 2)

Read the previous entry first, if you're just wandering by. The short introduction is I'm ranting for a few days about the video that you can see by clicking here.

Okay, so we're up to this excuse:

3. "All they care about is your money."
Geoff, CFO, replies: "They care about me, not my money."
tag: People are priceless.

You know what? The church cares about your money. Flat out, any congregation is really interested in what you put in the offering plate. In many cases (at least in my denomination), the welcome package comes with a box of envelopes for said offering.

To a certain extent, that's fine. Stewardship is important. Supporting your congregation is important. You want a place to meet, in climate controlled comfort, with a staff to make sure everything gets taken care of, we all have to chip in. Furthermore, speaking again for my denomination, a portion of the money goes to places beyond the congregation. There are local to national to international programs that are supported by our offerings. This is very meet, right, and salutary. The church should not be only looking at the local, at the needs and wants within one congregation's campus, but should, indeed be participating in alleviating the effects of hunger, disease, and disaster everywhere. And so, the offering plate is, in fact, coming to you for your ease of chipping in.

Hopefully, the congregation will care about you, too. Hopefully, the congregation will care about you more than your money. Sometimes, that gets out of balance, though, and at the very least, it sometimes can feel like the church cares more about your money than about you. The church needs to keep aware of this.

I may be splitting hairs here and looking at the subtlties more than any video could address---but that's part of what I'm writing against. This soundbite evangelism too easily creates false expectations.

4. "Is there some kind of dress code?"
Ingrid, a mom, answers: "Yes. The code is: wear some clothes."
tag: Come as you are.

I hope this is mostly true. It's truer than it used to be. The last two congregations I've belonged to saw Sunday morning worshipers in everything from suits to shorts, heels to flip-flops. Some people want to honor the house of God by wearing their very best. Some find the house of God to be the one place where they can relax and dress casually. I think both are legitimate pieties, so long as no one is forcing anything on anyone. I mean, it's just clothes. Wear some and don't worry about what everyone else is wearing.

All of which to say, while individual congregations may vary, I have the feeling that this is most realistic of the video's answers.

5. "Church just makes me nervous."
Mary, a consultant, tells us: "I was nervous at first and then I felt right at home."
tag: Right where God wants you.

I don't have a huge quibble with this, except for the, again, false expectation---or promise---that you're going to fit in and just relax into this new place. Why someone feels nervous by church is more important than any kind of platitude about being "right where God wants you." Cultural, familial, and institutional history for any individual will make this much more complex than the video suggests. And as I suggested in the last post, I've been a church member my entire life and I don't always feel at ease with it. Why would I expect someone to settle in if only they would just give it a go?

6. "I'm not sure I believe everything that you believe."
Donovan, sales manager, says: "But you can still belong."
tag: Doubts welcome.

Wow. I think there exists places where doubts are truly welcome. Maybe. But seriously, who feels safe saying out loud all their doubts in a chruch setting? I've known agnostics who served on church councils, but I'm pretty sure they never expressed it to the whole council.

Doubts welcome? Maybe some places. But, personally, I wouldn't go into a new congregation wearing them on your sleeve.

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I'll stop here for tonight. That's enough for a single blog post. These were the less annoying sections of the video, so I may not be sounding like a ranting lunatic as I may feel. Just remember: I'm Lutheran. We have a more subtle ranting style.

And the next section is the one that set me off the most, and if you know me, you can probably already guess why.

But that's for tomorrow.

Okay, a Rant (part I)

If you intend to read all of this, you might want to go get a beverage or maybe something to eat. This might take some time.

As I said in the last post, I'm not a very good mood for talking about churchy matters. The whys are mostly not for public discussion. But Miles has pushed me on this, and it's fair. So I'll start here.

I realized that I was carrying some anger and maybe not fit for blogging on spiritual matters when this fairlyinnocent, pleasant, well-intentioned video set me off. Watch it here and see how pleasant it is.

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Okay? Now, what about this pleasant video, a friendly invitation to church, would set me off and make me want to rant for a few pages?

For the most part, I think this video sets up unrealistic expectations for a visitor looking for a church. And . . .

Well, let's just take it piece by piece, excuse/answer by excuse/answer.

1. "I can't come to church until I get my life together."

Lisa, hairdresser, says, "Church is how I got my life together.
tag: A place for new beginnings.

I'll start by saying taht I find this actress really appealing. (I assume it's an actress, not a real hairdresser. I'm willing to be proven wrong.) And I've known people who have the experience of joining a church and it being a very grounding experience for them. Thanks be to God. This is how it's supposed to be.

That's not my experience, exactly. I grew up in the church and it was a great way to grow up. I mean that and stand by it. As an adult, however, I tend to find deeper involvement in the church to be a little . . . I don't have the right word. Stifling? Damaging? Those words sort of work.

I'm reminded of a line from Sting: "Men go crazy in congregations, they only get better one by one." That's more my experience.

But again, I find the actress to be appealing in her quirky, awkward way. She pulls off a sort of redeemed ledge-sitter. I'm happy for her. I just don't believe it's everyone's experience and I'm not sure it's an expectation that many congregations can meet.

2. "Church is filled with a bunch of hypocrites."
Randy the pipefitter says, "And there's always room for one more."
tag: Imperfect people welcome.

I admit, this always sets me off when people say it. I used to work with a supervisor who always said the definition of "religion" was "hypocrisy." Of course, he was also the supervisor who was constantly telling workers to do more work and less talking while he spent hours most days in spirited conversation about college football.

I can't deny the church deserves its accusations of hypocisy, but that's because it's always easier to preach morals than to preach grace. Once you set yourself (plural or singular "you") as a paragon of morality, you're going to screw up and probably in some really big public way. It's just that simple and we all do it, with or without religion. It just seems the church does it in flashign neon.

So in this case, everyone kind of annoys me, the excuse-maker and the promise of welcome tot he imperfect. You're going to get judged at church. Someone's going to shun you at church. And at work, and at the grocery store, everywhere you meet people.

Maybe---and this is only maybe---at church, there's a mutual understanding that repentance from judgment and shunning is desirable, a goal to move toward. And I do believe that's worth something. It's just a far cry from a promise that imperfect people are unconditionally welcome.

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Okay, I see that this is going to go on longer than I even realized. I actually have this written in long hand (which is not how I usually blog), and I think it's best if I break this up into individual posts. I'll try to add some everyday. It looks like it might be a 4-part rant. Feel free to tell me how unreasonable I'm being so far. I feel a little unreasonable, which is why I stopped blogging for a while (even before I saw this video). Just don't stop here. I think I'm going to come to a point . . .

Hiatus

It surprises me more than a little, but I've actually been asked about the lack of new posts here.

Kinda makes me feel missed and stuff.

It has been two months since I posted here. There have been similar "quiet periods" in this blog's history, and I've never even attempted to be any kind of regular with the postings (except, maybe, during some liturgical season, perhaps---and then I think I've always failed).

This one has been a little different in that I'm not exactly without things to say, but I am without much nice to say.

Which is to say, my current relationship with church (the institution) is a bit on the rocks lately. And while that doesn't necessarily have much to do with a relationship with God---well, it kind of does, actually. You can't have a relationship with the Head of Christ without the Body of Christ. Well, I guess you can. It's just awkward. If not unnerving.

Anne Lamott has said that if it happens to you, it's yours, and you can write about it. If the people involved don't like it, they should have behaved better. (I'm paraphrasing or else I'd put it in quotes.) I'm not quite there with that sentiment, despite sort of going with it recently with some things I wrote for a dance film I worked on for Frame Dance Productions. I prefer writing fiction for a reason.

So, my silence here is the result of not wanting to write screeds and diatribes. It comes from not desiring an unfair advantage of having a forum where others do not (although this blog is hardly a huge forum---then again, I'm not particularly interested in dueling blogs, either). I do still believe in kindness, grace, mercy, edification, and loving those you really want to smack. Ranting doesn't help much. And, besides, that's what private dinners with close friends are for.

So . . . yeah. For now, a silence. I've come close to breaking it a couple of times recently. Maybe I will sooner than later. I just thought that since I was asked, I might explain.

However opaque and/or oblique that explanation may be.

Adopting Evangelism

Recently, I had an exchange with a longtime friend, the Rev. Cindy Beck (a pastor of the ELCA). In the course of this email exchange, she said:

"How do you become part of a family? Birth, marriage, and adoption. Adoption is when the family seeks YOU out. Nowhere does one become a part of a family by looking around at pretty houses, visiting them during dinner and asking, 'Wow, you are a great family, can I join you?' Nope, doesn't happen that way. If it did, I would be living in a beautiful house with rich people who support me unconditionally."

I've been thinking about this and trying to form a blog post around it. Then this morning, I read this article at Living Lutheran and I realized Cindy's words work all on their own, without any editorializing from me.

For now, anyway.

Ecclesiastical What Ifs

When I was in seminary, I had to do a yearlong internship. Interns get handed lots of projects that usually include a lot of recruiting.

Seventeen years later, I don't even remember what I recruiting for in this particular instance, but I do remember this story:

One particular fellow had expressed interest in whatever it was. One night, we had something going on at the church and his wife was there. She came up to me and said apologetically, "He's so sorry, but he's going to have to say no this time. He's so busy right now with Boy Scouts and the Volunteer Fire Department, he really doesn't have the time. He feels really badly about it."

In the moment, I just said okay, and started thinking about who I was going to ask next.

But this stuck with me. Here was a man, an active member of the church, also being active in his community in ways that were really significant. It's not as if he were going home after work and watching TV.

No, it finally dawned on me, he was out in the world, being salt and light, being among people other than Christians, doing good things. Why should he feel bad about that?

It seems that there must be other ways to be the church than simply being busy at the church building.

This is one of those posts where I don't have answers, but a few questions (some answers implied, some not, but all open to discussion).

What if Sunday morning were the center of our Christian life. What if it was the time of the week when we all came together to worship, lament, praise, hope, pray, sing, eat, hear, and speak?

What if rather than spending so much time trying to find ways for people to get involved at the church, we were instead asking about---and encouraging!---ways that people are involved in the world? Where are you salt and light? Where did you add savor to the world? Where did you illuminate a dark corner? Praise God! Thanks be to God! Is there a need over there for more help? Can I help leaven that loaf, make it rise? What if people saw us engaged in the world, in whatever way God calls us, and were amazed at how we moved in the world, not just holed up in the church, maintaining the organization?

It seems like a big, but maybe just a subtle shift in thinking about what a congregation is or does. There are always administrative needs to be taken care of. There are always people needed to count and deposit the offering, to prepare and wash the communion chalice. But it also seems there are always endless needs beyond our church walls. What if rather than a council with many committees that can't find members, we had a council with more support functions, that were less about recruiting people to be involved at the church (although some of that is obviously needed), but were there to help make sure that people were involved in the world?

I don't have a clear picture of what this would look like. I think in the end it would create less work for the administrative staff (including pastors). I think it would open us up more fully to the movement of the Spirit---following gifts and callings rather than proscribed slots on a committee that may not be needed anymore. I think it would turn people toward thinking about a Christian life that is lived 24/7, rather than just when we are in the building with the steeple. I think it would be evangelism in the root meaning of the world---I think it would be Good-News-bearing to the world.

This feels even more incoherent than usual. I'm so close to the current model of how we do church that even as I brainstorm about a new way, I find myself thinking "that'll never work."

But there needs to be another way of doing church, a way that encourages and rewards people like the man in in my opening paragraphs. There needs to be a way of being the church that doesn't make someone involved in ministry feel guilty for not being involved in the church.

Pentecost 2011

It's the birthday of the Christian church.

What do I say about it? Today, I think I say something vulnerable and honest and hope we all find some grace along the way.

I have a love/hate relationship with the church. This was not always so. There are people who used to joke about how much Neil loves church. And it was true and on some days it still is. But it's not like it used to be.

Sometimes you start to notice things you wish weren't true, and you wish it so much that you think denying it will keep you from noticing it. But the funny thing about noticing is that once something is noticed, it's terribly hard to un-notice it.

It's hard to un-notice all the ways that the church is often racist, sexist, homophobic, and self-preservationist. (Is the last a real term? Spell check allows it. I hope it communicates.) There are privileged people, for whom the church has never been anything but great. I think I was one of those people until about 10 or 15 years ago.

I should have an actual narrative to go along with this shift. I don't have one. The narrative thread is thin, or else it's presented in anecdotes, disjointed scenes that don't connect so much as stack up. I can say that I tried leaving the church. Gave it a go. I'm a failed ex-Christian, but I have sympathy for the successful ones.

This is not the post about the church I've been thinking about writing. I hope I get to that soon.

But on this Pentecost, I'm really thinking about this: I do love the church and all the great things it accomplishes---disaster relief, building hospitals, things like that. And I hate the church when it becomes a bloodless institution bent on preserving itself while letting bloody people suffer. I love the church and all the ways that it lifts up the lowly and offers possibilities to traditionally trampled people and I'm appalled when I see it tramples those people still.

But what are you going to do? The church can only be made up of the people available in any society. As much as we might have flashes of transcending and unwinding the sinful systems of racism, sexism, homophobia, and self-preservation at the expense of others---we'll be made up of people who are caught of in those systems, people who are, to varying degrees of consciousness and will, racist, sexist, homophobic and out for no one but themselves.

People like me. And, I suspect, like you.

So ultimately, I stay because as a gathered people, there's hope (often thwarted but never defeated) that we might sometimes step outside those sinful systems and be---however briefly---better.

We might hear the call to turn around, change our hearts and minds, and look. The Reign of God is at hand. Sometimes the church still reminds us of this. Sometimes the church is this.

As you might suspect, I'm in a period when I'm not entirely enamored of the church. The temptation is to walk away. I'm not doing that. Instead I'm praying with the ancient Hebrews and the early church, and the generations since:

Come Holy Spirit! Renew the face of the earth!