Identity

One of the primary gifts of the story is that of identity.  Knowing our story confers upon us that sense of identity that is critical to both formation and purpose.

The story-less life produces a vacuum that demands filling and by God or by another source it will be filled. Typically, in the absence of the internal pressure created by a storied life, we will adopt the dominant narrative of the world immediately around us. This is more unconscious than conscious though we will become actively committed to the promotion and preservation of the narrative we assume.

Even when that narrative is “they should have no story except the story that they choose when they had no story.” (Hauerwas)

In 1984 a book by Thomas Oden was published called, Care of Souls in the Classic Tradition. In this brief but important book, Oden voices his concern about the shift in pastoral care from the Classic tradition, wholesale, to a modern psycho-therapeutic version. Oden laments the lack of familiarity with our story, illustrated by the neglect in the system of formation for pastors for reading and familiarity with the Classic work on pastoral care by Gregory the Great. In place of our story, Oden demonstrates, we adopted the dominant story of the day that focused on the works of Jung, Freud and other psycho-therapies, to provide pastoral care to help people sort out their issues.

Oden wrote, “So pastoral theology has become in many cases little more than a thoughtless mimic of the most current psychological trends.  Often these trends, as psychologist Paul Vitz has astutely shown, have been bad psychology to begin with.” (Oden, p33)

In 2011, Eugene Peterson’s memoir, The Pastor, as published.  Among the many insights about the storied-life or the importance of the narrative, The Pastor, illustrates over and over again our tendency to assume the dominant narrative of our times when we’ve become disconnected from our story.  This is not a problem exclusive to pastors, this is a human problem. But when those who are charged with the care of souls have become disconnected from our story, what hope can souls have to do anything but the same? When pastors have lost the plot, how do those we shepherd not become “twice the child of hell” we ourselves have become?

In The Pastor, Peterson tells the story of a young pastor who had been part of their “Company of Pastors” that were seeking to recover the plot of our narrative that education and church experience has driven out of them or perhaps had simply failed to transmit to them. A young pastor who had been part of the group for seven years was moving on to “multiply his effectiveness.” Peterson tells about the lunch they shared before this young pastor, Phillip, left.

The more he talked that day over our plate of breadsticks and bowls of vichyssoise, I realized that he had, despite the Company of Pastors, absorbed a concept of pastor that had far more to do with American values – competitive, impersonal, functional – than with what I had articulated as the consensus of our Company in Five Smooth Stones. That bothered me. It didn’t bother me that he was changing congregations – there are many valid, urgent, and, yes, biblical reasons to change congregations.  But Phillip’s reasons seemed to be fueled by something more like adrenaline and ego and size. (Peterson, p156)

In Oden’s experience, our story-less experience found us taking on the dominant narrative of pop-psychology as pastoral care. In Peterson’s experience, this same lack of conviction or coherence about the story we are in, led us to adopt the story that good pastoral care is about growing bigger churches.  Peterson writes, “…the momentum of what was being termed church growth was gathering.  All of us in the Company agreed that it was misnamed.  It was more like church cancer – growth that was a deadly illness, the explosion of runaway cells that attack the health and equilibrium of the body.” (Peterson, p158) The work of the Company, to reinforce the nature of the story we find ourselves in, for one another, gave them a perspective on the dominant narrative of church growth, that many will not share.  Knowing what story you are does that.

It often moves you to the fringe. It makes you a threat to the dominant narrative. And the keepers of the dominant narrative will first try to get you back and then failing that, they will mock you and if you persist, will exile or eliminate you.

It happens for to men and women at work who live in a way consistent with their story but contrary to the dominant narrative. When your story is love and the dominant narrative is fear or resentment, love becomes the violence that threatens the system. And you will be stopped. The workplace can be hostile unless you adopt the dominant narrative.

It happens to pastors who invite people to live a story that is different from the dominant narrative that they have adopted when they did not know the story they were in. We have in our minds a story about what a pastor is, does and should be and should do. When our pastors don’t conform to that story, we do not question our story, we question the pastor – their knowledge, their character, their aptitude and their proficiency.

It happens to millennials when they won’t dance to the same tune we love.

A friend who trains people in a particular field related some training day stories to me. One of those stories was about the amount of work my friend has to do to bridge the understanding gap between older members of the workforce with the newer. The younger members worked their shift but when their shift was scheduled to be over, they went home. The older members were living a story that saw this as a lack of commitment, a poor work ethic, an unwillingness to be team players. The younger members story was that they worked to live, they didn’t live to work and they would not give up family time or play time to conform to the story their older counterparts were living. Both had the same job description, both were doing the job they were asked to do but both were living in stories that made them critical of the other. And both felt an internal pressure for the other to adopt their story as the common narrative.

In the U.S. right now we’re experiencing an incredible clash of narratives. I am both fascinated and appalled by what I see. It’s the classic experience of the bigger brother grabbing the little brother’s arm (sorry, Brad, I did you wrong) and using it to smack his little brother in the face while he keeps repeating, “stop hitting yourself, stop hitting yourself, stop hitting yourself…” You will accept my dominant narrative even while you know that it is not the story we are in.

This is the ongoing challenge for us all. What story are we in? What makes us believe that is our story? What Company are we a part of that supports or challenges (or does both) the story we think we are in? How have you determined the narrative by which you are living your life, making your choices, evaluating reality?  Will you accept the dominant narrative or will you speak and live prophetically, declaring a different story through which others will find hope? Can you clearly articulate for others the story in which you find yourself?

When the Prophetic Community Speaks to Power

Stanley Hauerwas describes our current generation: “America is the exemplification of what I call the project of modernity. That project is the attempt to produce a people who believe that they should have no story except the story that they choose when they had no story. That is what Americans mean by “freedom.””

Becoming detached from our story has serious consequences. We forget who we are and how to live as people of the story. This “no story” life results in us making up our own story as we go along which creates terrific anxiety or terrific apathy. Another outcome of a “no story” life is that we tend toward acquiescence, we let others tell us what our story is.  The Orwell novel, 1984, is an extreme example of this outcome.

As a pastor in the United States, what I’ve observed is that this “no story” existence has resulted in followers of Jesus who’ve adopted the story of America as our story.  At worst, this comes out as Nationalism and at its least worst it comes out as what C.S. Lewis described as, “Christian – and.” (Screwtape, letter 25) Wherever we land on this spectrum, the “no story” existence means we are not living in our true vocation as the prophetic community of God.

Here’s Hauerwas again, “The story that you should have no story except the story you choose when you had no story obviously has implications for how faith is understood. The story that you should have no story except the story you choose when you had no story produces people who say things such as, “I believe Jesus is Lord – but that’s just my personal opinion.” The grammar of this kind of avowal obviously reveals a superficial person. But such people are the kind many think crucial to sustain democracy. For such a people are necessary in order to avoid the conflicts that otherwise might undermine the order, which is confused with peace, necessary to sustain a society that shares no goods in common other than the belief that there are no goods in common.”

The outcome is that instead of the prophetic community of God speaking to Power, we tend to ingratiate ourselves in the hope that we might get some of that sweet, sweet power. That would be the Sadducees for those keeping track of where the Bible is in all this.  The other side of this same coin are the Pharisees who are still after power but attempt to achieve it through corporate righteousness that requires God to transfer the power to us. (Almost every charismatic gathering I’ve been to in the last 20 years.)  In either case, we do not speak to Power as the prophetic community of God.  The Sadducees sought compromise, “Where can we find our place in Rome’s story?” and the Pharisees sought dominance, “We will rule our own people to righteousness by fear and intimidation and that will lead us to power.” 

But our story, the story Jesus is telling, is neither of these two or any other besides the His own. Our vocation, our destiny, our “it’s written on the wall” story, is that we are called to speak to Power as the prophetic community of God.

So if it’s not option Sadducee or option Pharisee, what are we to be? (Edited: I am not meaning to imply by this question that those who voted in the recent election are either Sadducees or Pharisees. I mean for these and other groups of their time, Essenes and Zealots for example, to stand in for various stories we adopt as people with "no story." - thanks for calling me on this Daniel.) First and foremost, we live the story of Jesus and by living that story faithfully (which is not the same as perfectly), we prove it over and over and over.  And second, like the first, we see that our allegiance is never (and by never I mean never ever) given to any Power other than the King and His Kingdom. We support, with our lives, no human policy that conflicts with the King’s Way.

The problem, of course, is that we have preachers and pastors and theologians like Niebuhr, who assure us that God has, in fact, called us to make America great again. That being the very best kind of citizens is what following Jesus is all about.

Imagine the dilemma of those first century Jews when they have been told the story in their day was either the Sadducee story of go along to get along, the Pharisee story of control to get control and the Zealot story of kill and take control. And then along comes this nobody carpenter’s son from, of all places, Nazareth and Galilee telling them, “You have heard that it was said, but I tell you…” calling them to the story as He told it and no one else.

And he spoke to Power. And just to prove he had authority to speak to the Power, He spoke to the Powers and disarmed and defeated them. Everything we have to fear that keeps us bound to having no story, Jesus disarmed and demonstrated His authority over.

Jesus spoke to Power.

In Luke 22, when they come to arrest Him, Jesus confronts their hypocrisy and indicates they are working on behalf of evil. At the end of this chapter, His words seem less than respectful to these God appointed authorities, so disrespectful that they want to see Jesus killed and they turn to the Power to which they are beholden.  When Jesus came before Pilate, He has little regard for the Roman government official and Pilate sends Jesus off to Herod. Before Herod Antipas, Jesus speaks by remaining silent, a silent protest, the Word of God becomes silent to speak to the Power. This was a defiant silence, make no mistake, an aggressive silence, a deafening silence.

When the prophetic community of God speaks to the Power, we do so like Jesus did. The authority to do so comes from our faithfulness to living the story that Jesus is telling. It looks far less like Facebook posts and blog posts and marching placards and far more like people who invited refugees to come live in their home, even when the Power says, “you will not.” It looks far more like people who live integrated and not segregated lives, even when the Principality says, “we will burn you down!” It looks much more like people who turn church buildings from empty halls during the week into hostels for those without shelter from the cold, even when the Powers say, “you’re not zoned for that!” It is the confident declaration of truth and righteousness in the way that we live, birthed from a story of love and mercy, that finds a way to feed hungry people in Moore Square, even when the Power says, “we will arrest you.”

But please understand this story is predicated on understanding a hard reality of that story: “I have been crucified with Christ; and it is no longer I who live, but it is Christ who lives in me. And the life I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me.” As dear St. Francis asked, “how many rights does a dead man have?”

May we live each day and each moment of each day as the prophetic community of God and live as people who know our story.

My Problem with Worship interlude: (A multi-part post in which I offend many friends)

One of my favorite stories about worship leading comes from Eddie Espinosa.

Eddie tells a story about one of the members of his worship team coming to him to complain that worship had become boring and flat.  His band member zeroed in on the problem, Eddie always had a prepared set list for worship and what he needed to do was toss the list and follow the Spirit.

Eddie listened, didn’t argue and took in what his bandmate was telling him.

And then he went home and prepared for worship the next Sunday just the same way he always did.  He prayed, listened, considered songs, listened and came up with a list.

But this time he made two small changes.  He hid the list.  He didn’t give the list to his bandmates.  The other change was that he asked God for permission not to follow His lead.  What he meant was that while he normally would drop in a song if he sensed the Spirit leading in a particular direction in the midst of worship, this time he would stick to the list, no matter what.  He felt God was with him.

Sunday morning the band sound checked, ran over a couple songs, seemingly at random and then chilled until the service started.  Once the worship service started, Eddie played his set list just as he had prepared it, start to finish.

Worship went so well that his complaining bandmate came to him after the service really excited.  Instead of complaints he told Eddie how amazing the morning worship had been and he told Eddie he knew exactly why it had been so good…because he’d thrown out the list!

And that’s when Eddie told him the truth.  He’d used the list, just like he had every other time. And he’s done the songs in the order they were on the list, just like every other time.

Eddie’s story isn’t about making a list or not making a list, but it does reveal just how subjective our singing experience can be. 

As a worship leader I’ve led some Sunday mornings where I was pretty sure God had left the building and I wished I could’ve gone with Him.  And then mid-week I’ve received an email about how “powerful” the worship time had been that week for someone there.  Other times I’ve felt like we were in the groove and if we were ever anointed it had been that Sunday, only to have another leader tell me how flat and dull worship had seemed that morning.

As a preacher, I’ve preached sermons I felt went nowhere and sermons I felt were almost worthy adding to the back of the Bible.  And just like with the worship songs, the reactions from others have been contrary to my own experience and perspective.  There’s a lot of subjectivity that takes place on a Sunday morning but to be honest, most of the pressure for how a morning goes lands on the worship leader.

They succeeded/failed to create the atmosphere for the Holy Spirit to move.

They succeeded/failed in getting hearts to open up to what God wanted to do.

They succeeded/failed in ushering us into the secret place.

It wasn’t me screaming at my wife on the way to the service, or yelling at my kids all morning to get them ready.  It wasn’t that I haven’t looked at my Bible app since we left the service last Sunday.  It has nothing to do with my total disengagement with prayer since the last Amen the previous week.  The problem rests solely with our worship leader not jiggling the right levers that got me with the feels.  It was the poor song selection.  It was the bands lack of attention to their transitions.  Or it was simply because the stupid fog machine broke down between first and second service and I can’t get my praise on without diffused light and copious amounts of fog.

Worship is a performance but it never has to be entertainment, even if we are entertained.  A performance is something we do together, share together and own together.  Entertainment is something we grade, we consume and when it doesn’t keep us engaged we move on to another vendor. 

Internal. External.

There is a subjective nature to our worship service that begs for leaders, senior leaders, who will trust their worship leaders and work collaboratively with them.  We need senior leaders to communicate with our congregations that we are all responsible for our worship experience and Sunday mornings are the summation of our experience that started on Monday morning and not a pep rally to get us through the week.

and thus I conclude this interlude...tomorrow I conclude my ranting...

on worship.

As always, leave your comments after the beep, I love to hear from you.

*Eddie's story appeared in Things they Didn't Teach Me in Worship Leading School, Tom Kraeuter, Emerald Books, 1995.

Dear Friends Who Preach and Who Listen to Preaching

I’ve said before how much I love preaching as an art.

As a result, I listen to a lot of preaching, past and present, and find something beautiful in almost every message. 

Almost.

There’s a contemporary trend that seems to be wildly popular and often the homiletical approach of some preachers of very large churches – as well as some very normal sized churches. 

Honestly, it has much more to do with orientation than it has to do with size.

This trend usually develops a message in one of two ways with both achieving the same broken result.

The first way which seems very popular today is the allegorical sermon.  These practitioners and artists will spend a lot of time in the Old Testament turning the narrative into allegories about modern day struggles and issues and how to overcome them, how to live in victory, be a success, get a win. 

It’s very American, very much in tune with our modern zeitgeist.

The second way which also seems very popular today is (what I will call) the therapeutic sermon.  These practitioners and artists will take a relevant, contemporary topic and piecemeal scriptures together (or sometimes not) that support their thesis about how you and I can deal with common problems, struggles and issues we face and come out as winners, overcomers and with the best life now.

Several years ago, I was part of a 3-week summer English camp in mainland China.  Our goal for the camp was to teach conversational English to teens and young adults as a means to building relationships and sharing our faith.  One method we used was to share Bible stories as English lessons and in the midst of our lesson, bring up our faith.  I was surprised, the very first time I did this, to discover that my “atheist, communist” students already knew the stories I was telling them.  Instead of being surprised by the parables or the stories, they spoiled the endings which they knew by heart.

I was confused. So I asked them to tell me more.

What I discovered was that in the same way I had been taught Aesop’s fables or tales of Greek mythology, like Pandora’s Box, these students had been taught a lot of the Bible but it hadn’t told them anything about Jesus.  The story of the Prodigal Son was, for them, a lesson on the importance of family loyalty.  David and Goliath, overcoming adversity.  Loads of Bible.  No Kingdom.  No Jesus, the Autobasileia.  It was like getting a vaccination, just enough to immunize us from the real thing.

And this is what scares me about a lot of preaching I listen to.  Lots of stories with life lessons, lots of allegories that turn the Bible into a cleverly disguised self-help book, great moments that would easily make an Oprah segment or a TED talk, but they’d play in atheist classrooms in China as easily as a gathering of saints in Chicago. As a pastor I get emails offering to teach me or sell me programs of successful preaching plans for a year.  Ways to plan your preaching around peak times of the year for visitors and ways to capitalize on the natural rhythms of holidays and special events to build interest and attendance.  I have friends who visit other churches or watch them on-line like I do and I inwardly cringe as they extol the buzz they feel coming away from these services that are obviously designed to, like Hans and Franz, pump *clap* you up.  But my taste in Germans leans much more towards Bonhoeffer than it does Hans and Franz.

My personal litmus test has become “David and Goliath.” If a preaching pastor takes that text and turns into a Malcolm Gladwellian story of triumph over adversity or any version that makes the story of David about how you and I can face down the giants in our lives, I know that the paramount goal of the message is not the Kingdom, it’s the crowd.  It’s not telling the story of Jesus, it’s telling the story of me, in which Jesus briefly appears as a supporting character.  It’s not about transformation, it’s about self-actualization.

If the medium is the message, the message is, “it’s all about you.”

Stanley Hauerwas once said, “…the story that we should have no story, except the story we chose when we had no story, it is a story that has at its heart the attempt to make us tyrants of our own lives. But no one is more lonely than tyrants. Since they must always distrust everyone around them, because they know that they want their place…” The unintended consequences of preaching us into the center of the story is, as Hauerwas observes, that we are made tyrants of our own lives. This kind of message, unintentionally, does not bind us together, it drives us apart. We’re always at odds with each other and in conflict or tension with one another as we vie for our place at the center of the story. And there can be only one.

But Jesus tells a better story, Jesus is a better story, and his Kingdom offers a better story than our self-centered services and self-centered messages tell. Jesus is the center of the story, and we’ve all been invited to join a story that formed us and forms us, we did not form it.  We become a part of the story and that story makes us open to the stranger, the other and causes us to recognize that this isn’t my story, it’s not about me, my rights, my destiny but about Jesus, the Kingdom and his story, the one he tells and the community tells together.

There is a better story than the one that’s all about you, and I’m very sure there’s a better story than the one that’s all about me. And I think the best preaching we can all do is to tell the story of the Autobasileia. That means we’ve got to immerse ourselves in our story and live that story, not just talk about it. Especially not just talk about it.  That story needs to permeate our day to day lives, our relationships, our vocations, our conversations, our calendars and our check/cheque books.

I know, I'm not the official voice on "how to preach right," I'm just a nobody who isn't impressed with the Emperor's new clothes. And I'm convinced if I let the Emperor go out like that, I'm complicit and responsible by virtue of my silence.  There is a better story.

Why I Don't Write A Book

With my tendency to rant and my ability to keep going on a topic that the people I'm conversing with have long since moved past on the attention train, I've been wondering why I don't write a book.  Here's why.

I write.  I share what I write here and in person almost every week with a group of people who mean the world to me.  I do write.

But a book.  Deep down I have this certainty that birthing a book would be like publishing a Facebook status update: it would be swallowed up and disappear within the volume already being published.  The people who would read what I write already do.

Like a story about two fishes I heard this week, I'm already doing what I love to do.  And that's pretty good.