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Who is the Jesus we Portray in Worship?

October 13, 2009 By 7 Comments

I’ve participated in some incredibly passionate worship services over the years, but I’ve also felt captive in the pew during many passionless services. Sadly, those passionless services seem to be the normal in many Presbyterian churches today. Hear me clearly. As a young adult, I do not need flashy graphics, a loud worship band, projected images on a screen, or a cool, hip, and stylish pastor to evoke passion in worship. Passion isn’t synonymous with loud, big, and flashy.

Who is this Jesus we are worshiping? When I sit through a passionless worship service, I truly begin to wonder. I want to worship a Creator who formed the universe with a word and molded my very being from the fibers of the earth. I long to sing praises to a God, who shouts with excitement through the joys of life and holds me tightly, with mutual tears, in the pits. I want to surrender all I am to the workings of a Holy Spirit who guides my movement in ways I never dreamed possible for myself. I want to humbly bow to the most humble of babies who changed the course of history for eternity. I want to lay offerings before a God who offered His own Son to wipe away the distance I continually place between Him and I. I want to meet this Jesus over and over again, so maybe someday I will begin to understand the magnitude of a Love so grand, so extreme, and so passionate at this.

It can come in all sizes, shapes, and volumes. I don’t care. What you do doesn’t much matter to me. But how you portray my Savior, who has molded and changed my life forever, means everything to me.

Filed Under: Presbymergent Tagged With: , ,

When did Jesus get so personal…?

July 17, 2009 By 4 Comments

Surely it wasn’t Depeche Mode who awakened the church to this personal Jesus.  But it might have started somewhere around the time the greater church started issuing a space in liturgy where one could ‘accept Jesus as your personal Lord and Savior.’  Okay, so it was probably before that, but it is a fair place to start.  Sometimes I wonder if the traditions that issue this call find it awkward when followers do exactly that?  The declaration of ‘my’ has been an overwhelming call to empowerment and liberation.  My supposition is that as long as the ’my’ is synonymous with the familiarity of the tradition – empowerment is not such a threat.  It is possible though, that the greater church is rethinking its offer to make it personal.  Watching the theological evolution of a personal Jesus has somewhat dismantled the church.  Because really, are we equipped for that?  Shouldn’t we be equipped for that?

It is my experience that when we, as a collective, try to hammer down what or who ‘my Jesus’ really is, in a matter of minutes we subject ourselves ever so subtly to the sin of idolatry.  For those who refuse to believe Jesus is no other than a white man from Dallas, Texas – and for those who are firmly convinced Jesus is a woman, or is Indonesian – this is personal.  We want Jesus to identify with us.  As we are.  Why is it that we want Jesus to be exactly what we want?  In a ’my’ kind of way?  Is this really what we might call an emerging situation?  Plurality in its most infant stage?

The most rational explanation is that the time has come to understand Jesus as more than the white guy from Dallas.  Even though the female Jesus still scares the crap out of so many people – including women – we are even trying to understand the Black Jesus, the Queer Jesus, or the Chinese Jesus.  Substitute ‘my’ for whatever you are – and there you have it.  “_______ Jesus.”

I suppose it really is about knowing who we belong to from the standpoint of identity.  We now know that the answer to the question “who is Jesus?” all depends on who you ask.  We live in a time where what “I” believe is not critiqued as heavily as it once was – for good or for bad – you decide.  We no longer fear excommunication as much because we can just start over in another place.  Heresy is getting harder and harder to ’prove’.  All the “I”s find each other through technology, blogs and twitter.  They create space to dialogue.  A lively, yet untouchable space.  And most often, it is where the like minded “I”s can get together and cyber-duke it out against an opposing set of “I’s” for the entire world to read day after day because that is what we can do now.  No more Aereopagus’s.  Where you have to look your opponent in the eyes when you disagree.

Even more so, the ‘my Jesus’ critique of the traditional church has opened a lot of doors to those who have never had their kind of Jesus represented by the greater church.  And most of those doors have been opened in new spaces.  Store fronts.  Houses.  Back yards.  Industrial garages.  Away from the tradition that refuses to listen to the voice of ‘my‘.  But in my own attempt to critique even the critiquers of the church I have to ask – can the evolutionary personal Jesus stay in the church?  Monica’s Jesus wants that.  Can the ‘my’ crowd maintain a healthy ground in the greater church in order to help reform it?  Or is ‘my Jesus’ going to build a bridge and solidify plurality in a different space?  So that there are lots of ’my’ us’s?  Who knows.  My Jesus probably does.

-Submitted by Monica Hall-

Filed Under: Theology Tagged With: , ,

Who is “My Jesus”?

July 16, 2009 By 1 Comment

In his book, Generous Orthodoxy, Brian McLaren talks about the seven Jesuses he has known.  It served as a kind of faith statement for him, as he shared his journey of faith by seeing how Jesus had touched and transformed the lives of people nearby and far away.

If I have a hang up about answering “Who is my Jesus?” it in the way the personal pronoun is the first person singular. If Jesus is “My Jesus” he quits being the Jesus of someone else. If Jesus is really going to be who we believe he is, than he is my Lord and Savior, but not just for me. Jesus does not exist just to back up my opinions, or to strike out against my enemies.

But the question has been asked – Who is my Jesus?  I see Jesus as a human being growing up like I have, experiencing all of the stuff of life I have experienced, with a few things left out because of time and culture, of course.  But Jesus is fully human; he fully experienced everything we experience – even the experience of death.

Jesus is a teacher.  He went around teaching and healing, but his big thing, apparently ,was in teaching people.  He taught them about the Kingdom of God and what it looked like to live in that Kingdom.  I think Jesus is still teaching me and us today.  We still need to put our stuff aside, slow our lives down, get a check on our preconceived positions and listen to what he has to say.

Jesus is a prophet.  That’s church talk for a spokesperson of God.  He had a word from God to give to the people.  Sometimes he spoke it, sometimes he lived it.  Either way, he confronted people with God’s presence in their lives – not just to tell them that they had sinned and they needed to change direction.  But to remind them that God loves them – and us – passionately, so passionately that God will not let us go on doing things which are not good for us.

Jesus is the one who brings resurrection.  Not just eternal life, not just getting your butt into heaven.  But the one who gives us renewal of life every day, every moment.  Resurrection is not just an experience after death.  It is a ‘during life’ kind of thing.  Jesus gives us new life in the midst of life; a renewal of life that invites us to share with others all of the joy, peace and justice that following Jesus is all about.

Filed Under: Theology Tagged With: ,

The crazy balance of your mind

December 7, 2007 By 10 Comments

I share this in hopes of gaining more insight from this collective wisdom. This morning Carol Howard Merritt, alumni from APTS, discussed the financial disparity that exists out there in ChurchWorldLand. She says, “I wish that each pastor had a set amount, based on cost of living, housing, experience, and education. A set salary, where certain things don’t matter—things like ethnicity, age, gender. And certain things do matter, like how much you had to go into debt to get your seminary education.” Carol I am with you. It hurts deeply to imagine a world full of debt and suffering in a place that is supposedly home to most of the world’s wealth.

I will be the first person to admit that even our lowest standard of living is higher than many countries average daily income levels. We are not the worst. We are also sitting atop a volatile mountain of debt, spending, and imaginary power cells. What the fuck are we living for? Where is the service to Christ? Where is the transformation? We are dying as a church in the west and people say they care but they are not supporting it.

I wrote this in response to Carol’s post. I am not a pastor, but a seminarian on the verge of graduation. I am terrified to go into ministry. All of the fears you spoke of add to my anxiety. What shall I do to ensure I can afford to raise a family or even serve a congregation? I heard far too much, “trust God! It is a matter of faith.” I agree trusting God is the beginning. Where is the practice of trust when it comes to financial support from the congregations? Folks will complain, but they will not support.

We are all to blame in the decline. We are part of the problem. This stance of “trust God and if you do not then you have no faith” removes the responsibility from congregations, the Body, and all have in supporting the church. We do not train pastors for free. Is it fair and good stewardship to expect these individuals to shoulder the cost of training that is required?

We have to pay 80 dollars per ordination exam — that is 400 dollars if you can pass these antiquated monsters in the first shot. Not many do! Then there are the psychological evaluations, anywhere from 600 to 2500 dollars. Then the cost of seminary itself, from 10,000 to 15,000 per year for tuition and an additional 10,000 or so to live each year. That is about 60,000 to 75,000 in debt to begin your service with. We need to be smarter with this. If we say we are concerned with the death of the church then we need to step up and support.

The day of the full time pastor maybe behind us. I for one think it is. We must seek sustainable ways to minister in the context to which we find ourselves. Does this mean we have to do away with seminaries and the education they provide? No, the seminary education is foundational to service in the reformed tradition. We must change our lives to live responsibly and centered on Christ.

I used to joke that I wanted to open the First Presbyterian Church of Holy Rollers Bowling Alley. I am no longer joking. Is a coffee house, pub, bowling alley, or restaurant the answer? It is sustainable and attracts folks. In some areas it would respond to the desire and need of a distanced population. It would provide a place for community, care, warmth, outreach, and financial resistance. We just need folks to grasp the idea. Like one of my favorite groups would said, “Rage full on!”

In conjunction with a new way we can inventory our stuff and ask: Do we need the ipod? The newest phone? The cable TV? The two cars? The this or the that? All of this stuff is nice. What does it say about what you live your life for and for whom you live for? I am a f’king hypocrite right along with many of us. I crave the technologies! The Apple computers. The name brand running shoes, the jeans, the shirts, the designer vitamins and food. I love to eat out and am overweight and a burden to this world. I do not practice all that I preach. I need grace, forgiveness, and courage to be what I have witnessed in this world. To stand against the tyranny of consumerism and stereotypes, and hopelessness.

There is a better way. Please pray about it and pray that we can find the way to the cross and sit at the feet of Jesus. The rebel rousing Jesus that roundhouse kicks the money lenders out of a house of Prayer. WTFWJD?

Filed Under: Christian Education, Churches, Culture, Emergent, Feedback, Funding, Leadership, Networking, Ordination, PC(USA), Polity, Presbymergent, Seminary, Theology Tagged With: , , , , , , ,