Waiting on the Spirit (Reading Acts 1 Together)
On Wednesday night, for the first time in a while, our community group cracked open a Bible and read Scriptures together. Seasonally we had been spending some time on different aspects of formation and caring within our community – trying to share more and create a space for openness and honesty and, from that space, spending more time praying together.
We also always start off with a meal, and sometimes time can slip away when fifteen people are crowded around a dining room table laughing and sharing life together. I’m glad we spent as much time as we do eating together and embracing the normal patterns and rhythms of life (eating, socializing, laughing, etc.). It’s a good weekly reminder that in the everydayness of life there can be a sustaining spirituality.
But, it’s pretty easy to get stuck in the “everyday spirituality,” and we want to make sure that we’re grounding ourselves in something that’s not fleeting, so we spend time reading Scriptures that have been the church’s book for a few thousand years (and, much of it, the people of God’s book for many more thousands of years). This next season we’re going to be wading through the Book of Acts and opening ourselves up to hearing God’s voice speaking and God’s spirit prompting us to respond and change and grow and bear fruit.
So we read Acts 1:1-14 together on Wednesday. We read it twice out loud, with two different voices. One time we just listened, the second time folks read along. We talked a bit about how the act of reading audibly and communally (and especially a book that seems as odd and foreign as the Bible) feels a bit odd at times. But I think it’s an important practice, even if it’s weird, that moves us out of the norm of everyday life.
Acts 1 is a pivotal moment – a hinge for the church. It seems weird that Jesus is resurrected from death (his first departure) only to leave again (his second departure, recorded in Acts 1). And he only spends 40 days post-resurrection “teaching on the kingdom.” Why not longer? Why only 40 days? Why leave when you have a perfectly good resurrected body? Why leave when there’s surely so much more you can teach and share?
But he leaves, and he tells his followers to wait.
- Wait, because in a few days, this will make sense.
- Wait, because in a few days you’ll experience the spirit of God, which Jesus describes as the father’s gift (1:4), the new baptism (1:5), and the power for witness (1:8).
- Wait, because once you’ve received this gift, you’ll understand why this chapter of the story has to end.
- Wait, because you wouldn’t believe it if I told you now what’s going to happen next.
So they wait. Acts 1:14 says “they all joined together constantly in prayer, along with the women and Mary the mother of Jesus, and with his brothers.” They wait and pray.
The church doesn’t have to live in an Acts 1 reality, but many of us do live in an Acts 1 reality. We’re content with the nominally or culturally different life we lead, or we’re confused or frightened or unsure of what it means to live in the power of the spirit.
For those of us in that space - the Acts 1 space – Jesus speaks to us through the Scriptures, calling us to “wait and pray” because there’s a new reality coming that will change your life and, if you’re open to it, can change the world.
Seminary Education is Not Enough
I’ve been thinking about theological education lately. Partially because I finished a graduate degree from a seminary a few years ago, I work at a seminary, and I work at a church. There’s also been some buzz around the internet about what theological education should look like going forward – see Patheos, my friend JR Rozko’s posts on theological education, 3DM’s Future of Theological Education initiative, and Fuller’s Seminary of the Future project.
Most of the conversation seemed to point out the flaws in the academic institution of seminaries, but I’ve been thinking about the role of the local church in theological education and pastoral formation. I wrote up some thoughts that were published today in an article called “Seminary Education is Not Enough“ at The Burner Blog. Here’s a snippet:
While there are divergent ideas and suggestions, the general theme of this conversation is that (a) seminaries have not done enough to provide the practical training necessary for effective ministry leadership and (b) seminaries should change to meet the shifting needs of the 21st century church.
I certainly believe that good seminaries must be innovative and flexible, with a grasp on the pulse of the church, but I struggle with the idea that the problem lies with seminaries, and suggest that both the problem and solution actually exists within the local church congregation.
Read the Book First: Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close
This weekend I read Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close by Jonathan Safran Foer. One of our housemates had been recommending Foer’s books to me for a while, and when I heard there was a movie version coming out I wanted to try and read the book before having the chance to see the film.
So, so, so, so glad I did. The book is awesome – a fascinating story set in the aftermath of 9.11 from the perspective of a brokenhearted 9-year old. The story pendulums between charm and sadness, and the prose is broken up by images, visual art, and other “clues” leading the main character (Oskar) and the reader on a path of openness and healing.
I’m looking forward to seeing the movie – it looks great!
But, really, really, really consider reading the book first.
Seth Godin on Declaring Victory
Seth Godin has an excellent blog, and this was an excellent post on that blog. As someone with a tendencies to have more ideas than available time, this is a good reminder to not bite too much off, and to bite, chew, and swallow those things I choose to go forward with. Mmmmm….ideas.
Declaring victory
Whenever you start a project, you should have a plan for finishing it.
One outcome is to declare victory, to find that moment when you have satisfied your objectives and reached a goal.
The other outcome, which feels like a downer but is almost as good, is to declare failure, to realize that you’ve run out of useful string and it’s time to move on. I think the intentional act of declaring becomes an essential moment of learning, a spot in time where you consider inputs and outputs and adjust your strategy for next time.
If you are unable to declare, then you’re going to slog, and instead of starting new projects based on what you’ve learned, you’ll merely end up trapped. I’m not suggesting that you flit. A project might last a decade or a generation, but if it is to be a project, it must have an end.
One of the challenges of an open-ended war or the Occupy movement is that they are projects where failure or victory wasn’t understood at the beginning. While you may be tempted to be situational about this, to know it when you see it, to decide as you go, it’s far more powerful and effective to define victory or failure in advance.
Declare one or the other, but declare.
Faith, Worship, and Practice in an Multi-Faith World
I stumbled across this Christian Century article (roundabout through Tim Challies) about chapel at Harvard Divinity, which began with Unitarian leanings but has transitioned into what is now essentially a multi-faith religious studies graduate program. The article describes their approach to shared worship practices at the divinity school chapel:
These days our community worship is led by one of the religious communities in our school. We begin with brief opening words (our beloved Protestant forms persist!) and a lifting up of the prayers, hopes and longings collected in a notebook at the door of the chapel. Then we enter into the practice of a particular religious community, joining in where we can, maintaining a respectful presence where we feel we cannot. Each week, as the distinctiveness of each tradition becomes visible, we can see more clearly the differences between our ritual practices, our holy books, our music and our conceptions of the divine, and we see the family resemblances, the shared concerns—what Thomas Merton called the “wider oikoumene” of the human family.
I’ve spent some time working/ministering in an intentionally diverse interfaith environment, so this article (and some of the responses it’s provoked) was interesting. A few thoughts come to mind:
(1) Interfaith worship is different from interfaith dialogue. Personally, interfaith worship raises more questions in my mind than interfaith dialogue (which I think is really, really important).
(2) We should appreciate the diversity in approaches to religious/ministerial education. A multi-faith religious studies program (like Harvard) should be differentiated from an inter/multi-faith ministerial training program (like Claremont and GTU) from a inter-denominational school (like Fuller) from a denominational school (like Princeton or Bethel) from a church- or para-church-based program (internships, residencies, coaching/mentoring programs, etc.).
We live in a big world, and it’s important to understand different traditions (whether within our own religious tradition or outside of it). We live in a big world, and it’s okay that different people have different approaches. I don’t think every minister should study in an interfaith educational setting, but I do think that it’s important to have encounters with people of other faiths as you go about training and preparing for ministry.
(3) Inter/multi-faith experiences/encounters can often be uncomfortable and disturbing. Some of my interfaith experiences have been unpleasant and uncomfortable (in a negative sense), but others have been really rewarding and educational. In both positive and negative encounters, I’ve come away with a renewed desire to better understand my own tradition, its theology and history. This is a good thing!
There it is – let me know what you think!
Any thoughts on theological/ministerial training in a diverse setting?
Any inter/multi-faith encounters that have been particularly good or especially bad?
Book 7: Blood Meridian (McCarthy)
Dark. Bleak. Violent. True of all the McCarthy novels I’ve read, but particularly so of Blood Meridian.
McCarthy writes with few, if any, rules. His characters are complex, his dialogue nearly indistinguishable from his prose. You read hoping that the world described is actually fiction and not as broken and profane as the story conveys. But you’re not in luck because even though the ending is confusing and open to interpretation, “war is [Blood Meridian's] god” and the possibilities are not hopeful or redemptive.
I love reading McCarthy, because his writing is strangely poetic and beautiful, but I’m glad that, when all’s finished, I can put the book down and find myself back in a world filled with meaning and hope!
This is Book 7 of hopefully many that will be read and posted about during Christmas Break 2011!
My Top Ten Albums of 2011
Here they are in order:
1. Bon Iver – Bon Iver
I really like this album. I’ve listened to it a lot. Sometimes I listen to it on repeat. Here’s a little confession: I don’t know any of the words. I’m not sure, though, if you’re supposed to know the words. To me, the beauty of this album is that it conveys emotions and feelings through the sound of the lyrics, rather than the ideas expressed in the lyrics. At least that’s what I get when I listen to it. It’s all relative, right? (sounds like pop postmodernism/emo/hipsterism, which is fitting for Bon Iver)
2-10. _______________
I don’t know if I really listened to any albums that came out in 2011 other than Bon Iver, so I’ll just leave these blank.
Disclaimer: I did actually listen to several other albums that came out in 2011, and I even liked some of them. I just really, really liked Bon Iver this year.
Book 6: Teaching to Trangress (hooks)
Started this one a while back and finally had a chance to finish it. Teaching to Transgress is a series of essays on pedagogy, the role of a teacher, gender, race, feminism, etc.
Throughout the essays, some of the main themes are engaged pedagogy and education as freedom. Typical education primarily gives power to the educator and, in a sense, holds captive those being educated – captive to the instructor’s agenda, biases, etc. Education as freedom does not attempt to avoid the power differences present in a teaching setting, recognizing that there is an inherent power difference between a teacher and students, but works to engage students in experiential, impassioned, accessible, and disrupting education.
Here’s a great quote that I posted earlier, when I had just begun reading this book last year (it took me a full year, but I finished!):
When education is the practice of freedom, students are not the only ones who are asked to share, to confess. Engaged pedagogy does not seek simply to empower students. Any classroom that employs a holistic model of learning will also be a place where teachers grow, and are empowered by the process. That empowerment cannot happen if we refuse to be vulnerable while encouraging students to take risks. Professors who expect students to share confessional narratives but who are themselves unwilling to share are exercising power in a manner that could be coercive. In my classrooms, I do not expect students to take any risks that I would not take, to share in any way I would not share. When professors bring narratives of their experiences into classroom discussions it eliminates the possibility that we can function as all-knowing, silent interrogators. It is often productive if professors take the first risk, linking confessional narratives to academic discussions so as to show how experience can illuminate and enhance our understanding of academic materials. But most professors must practice being vulnerable in the classroom, being wholly present in mind, body, and spirit.
- bell hooks, Teaching to Transgress, 21.
This is Book 6 of hopefully many that will be read and posted about during Christmas Break 2011!
Book 5: Body Politics (Yoder)
Body Politics by John Howard Yoder is fantastic. I first read it in my second quarter of seminary, 4 or 5 years ago. This was my second time reading through this short (80 pages!) but profound work of theology.
The subtitle is “Five Practices of the Christian Community Before the Watching World,” and the five practices discussed are:
- Binding and Loosing (the practice of forgiveness and restoration in community)
- Baptism
- Eucharist
- The Fullness of Christ (spiritual gifts in community)
- The Rule of Paul (open meetings)
Two of the five really stuck with me this time around – binding and loosing and spiritual gifts.
Yoder approaches forgiveness and Matthew 18 as a necessity for the Christian community in all breaches, large or small, all with an ultimate goal of restoration and redemption – both for the individual and for the community. Yoder writes:
To be human is to be in conflict, to offend, and to be offended. To be human in the light of the gospel is to face conflict in redemptive dialogue. When we do that, it is God who does it. When we do that, we demonstrate that to process conflict is not merely a palliative strategy for tolerable survival or psychic hygiene, but a mode of truth-finding and community-building. That is true in the gospel; it is also true [if such practices are followed] in the world (Yoder, 13).
His work on spiritual gifts in a Christian community challenged me. He pushes for (a) multiplicity of gifts (b) offered by Christ (c) to all in a Christian community. So, not everyone has the same gift, Christ gives gifts (they are not simply things we are good at or, as Yoder says, it is “not mere human potential”), and gifts are given to all:
Probably one of the reasons modern Protestants have difficulty in taking seriously the novelty of the doctrine of the multiplicity of gifts is that we think we already understand it. We equate it with commercial and industrial models of cooperation and teamwork about which we already know. The apostle, on the other hand, says that it had not already existed or functioned before. It rather had to be achieved by Christ (Yoder, 39).
Each bearer of any gift is called, first of all, to reciprocal recognition of all the others, giving “special honor to the less comely members” (Yoder, 50).
There are as many ministerial roles as there are members of the body of Christ (Yoder, 60).
Very good stuff. Good reminders, good challenges, good encouragements.
This is Book 5 of hopefully many that will be read and posted about during Christmas Break 2011!
Book 4: Insurrection (Rollins)
This fall I had two chances to hear Pete speak during his “Insurrection” speaking tour, so reading the book was a good way to hear a more organized and slow-paced version of the general concept. The slower pace was especially appreciated, since Pete’s a fast talker!
Reading was a different experience than listening, and I found myself less convinced by the breadth of Rollins’ argument – or, maybe more accurately, I recognized what I felt were limitations or boundaries on the “usefulness” of Rollins’ “pyro-theology” project that I didn’t pick up on hearing him speak. I’ll write a bit more about this later, but overall enjoyed the book.
This is Book 4 of hopefully many that will be read and posted about during Christmas Break 2011!
