Thousand Acre Church

Angela and I have this ritual that has developed out of an enjoyment of Italian fast-food and used books.  Every so often, on date night, we will go to Olive Garden and stuff ourselves.  That gluttony is followed up with a trip to our oh-so-impressive used Christian book store, Baker Book House.  They are located so near one another that it is hardly worth visiting one place without visiting the other.  It is the ultimate in date night indulgence.

Last night we enjoyed the never-ending pasta bowl (which, by the way, does eventually “end” in spite of my taste buds and common public usage of the English word “never”).  Then we jumped the puddle over to Baker.  While enjoying the aroma of stacks of used books, I searched for a book that seemed consumable.  Every time I go into Baker I look for particular “artists” in the used stacks, N.T. Wright, Walter Brueggemann, Marcus Borg, Miraslov Volf, etc.  Sometimes I find a book that I am looking for, but most of the time I don’t.  Last night I found no books, but it felt like a book found me.

While looking through the “W”’s in the “New Arrival” section, a book peeked from behind the steel frame on the very edge of the bookshelf. The title The Bible, Violence, and the Sacred: Liberation from the Myth of Sanctioned Violence begged me to pursue further examination. I pulled the book off of the shelf and flashed through the pages, index, and table of contents. “Yeah,” I thought, “this would be cool to read, but I gots lots of books already. I’ll carry it around the store while I continue browsing. But, I promise I won’t buy it.” What followed that internal conversation was the head game that only other bibliophiles can appreciate. I will boast that I usually overcome the desire to be defined by the acquisition of books, and I tend to leave Baker (and other bookstores) empty handed. On this evening, however, my will could not resist the reemergence of my wife from the stacks with a book in her own hands. Her eagerness to do the “if you get that, then I get this” thing overwhelmed any intention of mine to pass up a book which I knew might be “out of bounds” for an Evangelical Christian, even for one recovering from hard-lined traditionalism.

We went to the counter for check out, and in a last chance effort to satisfy my conscience, I asked the woman behind the counter to re-shelve my selection. Triumph was short lived when a “$5 off your next purchase” coupon was handed to me with the receipt for my wife’s purchase. “Well. Why don’t we go ahead and ring up that $8 used book I just asked you to re-shelve? That comes to three dollars, right?” You can’t beat that! It ended up that my math was not quite accurate in the Baker universe where used-books were already on sale for 30%. They wouldn’t apply the coupon to my purchase, but by that time my will had been so beat-down that no effort to resist buying the book was possible.

I don’t know why I got this book. I’m intrigued by the book’s content, but my evangelical heritage (which is committed to certain forms of divine violence and sacrifice) seems at-risk when faced with the author’s exposition of biblical stories. I can’t comment on what I’ve read so far except to say that the book is appropriately provocative. In the end I can’t point the finger at Angela for gleefully dealing her book for mine or at the bookstore for appealing to my recently renewed zeal for the Dave Ramsey envelope system and bargain hunting. I’d prefer deferring the blame to God and his providence. It’s his fault I’m reading this book, even though I tried soooo hard not to purchase it in the first place.

The naughtiness began last night. By now, I am fully engaged in its pages. Boy meets book.

Sigh…..

Deeply inhale….

Exhale….

Okay.  Now I’m ready.

There was a child abducted from the nursery at our church yesterday.  The child was found after surveillance videos were reviewed.  An email went out shortly after from the executive pastor with the subject line reading “Positive Outcome of Sunday 11:00 situation”.    You can read the news report here if you are curious.

I’ve been stewing this whole thing in my head.  I’ve read most of the comments people made on related news articles.  I’ve reviewed the alleged perp’s Facebook page.  I’ve held my wife in tears as she thought, “The child was Samuel’s age.”  I’ve made inappropriate sarcastic comments about security at Chuck E. Cheese in my social networking updates.  Etc…

Now I’m gonna dump a big fat blog about it.

I’ve got too many thoughts for just one post.  If you give a crap what else I might think besides what I write today (and most healthy minded people won’t), then come hang out with me Friday or Saturday night while Angela is on a scrapbooking binge at a bed ‘n breakfast.  I’ll settle for one blog post and try to keep it concise.

This situation sucks!  For everyone.  This is gonna be messy, and there will be some casualties.  Church friends: this is gonna be stupid-messy-sucky.  Bear with it, and bear it together.  There will be a healthy amount of finger pointing and probably a bit a un-healthy finger pointing as we process this situation together.  We will work it out.  The crummy dialogue has to happen as a healthy way of gassing (expressing) ourselves to one another.  Hang in there.  Feel free to express your feelings.  For example, I would probably say, “I feel disappointed, scared, insecure, overprotective, angry, and unsure.”  Now that this whole crappy thing happened, we need  to commit to one another and have the kind of uncomfortable conversation that sometimes healthy families have.  Just step into it if you need to get something off your chest.  For my part, I’m going to spout off on my blog and then shut-up.

I agree with a lot of what I’ve read about the appropriateness of our church’s security system and background checks.  We have it down, and that’s all good.  Our kids are probably just a little bit less safe at church than they are at school, and that’s safe enough for me.  My problem is not with the limitations of our childrens’ ministry’s (editor’s note: notice the rare and highly prized double possessive noun) security system.  My problem is that I think the event yesterday exposes a weakness in the way we do church.  “Drop the kids off with people I barely know on the way to get coffee to drink while I’m entertained in an hour long service” is not a Sunday morning mission statement I would be proud to admit, but I’ll admit it all the same.  What bothers me, and what I think might bother people observing how we do church, is that we claim to have a certain edge in the loving-relationships department when we compare ourselves to your average club or bowling league.  After all… this is church… we are a family… we value community… blah, blah, blah.  A kidnapping by a background-checked nursery worker brings us in to the light… we have a long way to go.

I hope that my church uses the shock of yesterday’s tragedy to motivate people to get to know one another better.  I’ll be taking stock of how well I know the people I leave my kids with on Sunday morning.  We could even maybe think about how effective (or not) our small groups are at fostering loving relationships.  I’d like to challenge you to consider how committed you are to sticking with it at your church when things get weird or offensive or even *gasp* unbiblical (after all if you bail, then who will correct our hermeneutics).  I’m dead serious!  If you were thinking about leaving before, its too late now.  If you bail out now, I’ll just stand on the corner shout that you’re a cowardly opportunist who left when things got hard.  Just kidding.  Seriously, KCCers… please stay with us.  We need each other (well I need y’all anyway… you’d get along fine w/o me).  We need to know one another.  We (and I) could stand to know the people that work in the nursery well enough to be comfortable leaving our kids with them.  That’s what I’m taking out of this whole thing.

BTW - I’m gonna sign up to work in the nursery.  I was a little nervous about passing the background check.  As long as they don’t read my blog, I think I’ll be alright.

I love you.  I love KCC.  You’re stuck with us.  I don’t care how bad we F-up this childcare thing.  You’ll see Sam in the nursery next week.

There’s been an email going around called “The Obituary for Common Sense”.  I received it twice, both times from well-intentioned people (one of them was my mom).  If you haven’t read this clever piece by Lori Borgman yet, then you can read it here.  It was originally published on March 15, 1998 in the Indianapolis Star.  To sum it up… it’s a cutsie editorial type thing which bemoans the death of Common Sense.  Unfortunatley, though, Common Sense is alive and well, and I think he’s stunting my spiritual growth. He might be affecting you adversely as well, but I’ll let you decide that for yourself. [Read more →]

“The way we best show our love to the whole world is to love with a particular passion some little part of it.”  - William Placher

Something to think about.  Note to myself: You don’t have to change the world, you can just apply yourself to some little part of it.

Last week in Sunday school we were presented two options, drawn as two ends of a spectrum: Liberal Christianity (represented by The Shack) or Traditional Conservative Christianity (represented, I think, by Michael Youssef in The 13 Heresies of The Shack). This is how it usually works, you know. You are “with us” or “against us”. “In” or “Out”. Usually, the sensitive facilitator will dutifully include, “I’m not going to tell you which one is right, or how to believe. That is for you to decide.” This is how we have seemed to do theology for years in my experience in the Church. [Read more →]