McDonaldization

A few quotes from the introduction of a fairly new book on small groups called "The Relational Way"( by Scott Boren). Well I suppose it is not technically on small groups because the sub-title states "From Small Group Structures to Holistic Life Connections." Really it's about the concept that to really connect with our world we need to stop playing church and start living in authentic relationship with one another. It captured my interest because I have been thinking that there must be a 21st century structure parallel to the household model of the first century church. What is the key societal relational structure of our times? Where do people (outside of immediate family) connect with one another in meaningful ways? Scott Bowen talks about the fact that this actually doesn't happen much because of the McDonaldization of our culture. Here's the quote.


The fast-food industry and the drive-thru experience serve as metaphors for how life works today. The pace of life, the demands on time and the expectations of efficiency and production rule our lives. The fast-food way of life also acts as a kind of parable for modern spirituality. It paints a picture for how many people approach God and the church. For instance, some people treat God as if he is the voice coming through the speaker at a drive-thru sign. As a result, instead of sitting down with God and communing with him, they only set forth their requests of him. They drive thru whenever they need God to meet some pressing need, usually in the form of financial burdens, emotional problems, physical ailments, or the need to discover God’s will. God has been reshaped into the image of a provider of spiritual goods and services to meet individual needs. As a result, the Bible serves as a book for quick answers to modern-day problems.

In the same vein, this way of doing life has infiltrated the church. Pastors and church leaders find themselves under intense pressure to meet the expectations of people who are looking for the drive-thru God experience. Spiritual shoppers are looking for the “God-made-easy” church, and if one church does not provide the right goods and services, then the spiritual shopper drives down the road to another church.

The authors of the book Stormfront state, “What we, as discriminating shoppers of spiritual goods and services, finally want to know is, How will believing in this god improve my quality of life? Bottom line, what does this deity do for me?” Low-cost
spirituality, prepackaged words from God, limited time commitment and non-invasive programming will always attract a crowd because the crowd has been shaped by the fast-food life.

While there was no official link between church and state in North America, the church remained at the center of our culture. As the western church has developed through its various manifestations and denominations, the purpose of the church has morphed into an organization that attracts people and meets their spiritual needs. The center of the church has become the Sunday morning event with the goal of making that event attractive enough to draw in observers from the culture … the goal of attracting people has a limited return on its investment.

The church finds itself in the midst of a culture that it is no longer equipped to understand or reach. It calls people to Jesus by trying to attract them to events and services, but those very people now view the church as increasingly marginalized, irrelevant, and even unattractive.

Today is a day that God is reforming the church. He is calling the church from one place to another, much like he called the Israelite slaves out of Egypt to the Promised Land. The call is not to new programs or even to new ways of doing small groups. The call is to a new way of being the people of God. This requires transformative reshaping of both the corporate church and individual lives.

The Joys of Management

I went to some random site the other day and read this joke - good enough to use on Sunday and good enough to post. It reminds me of the Dilbert cartoons.

You must be in management

A man in a hot air balloon realized he was lost.
He reduced altitude and spotted a woman below.
He descended a bit more and shouted, "Excuse me, can you help me? I promised a friend I would meet him an hour ago, but I don't know where I am." 

The woman below replied, "You are in a hot air balloon hovering approximately 30 feet above the ground. You are between 40 and 41 degrees north latitude and between 59 and 60 degrees west longitude." 


"You must be an engineer," said the balloonist. 

"I am," replied the woman, How did you know?" 

"Well," answered the balloonist, "everything you told me is, technically correct, but I have no idea what to make of your information, and the fact is I am still lost. Frankly, you've not been much help so far." 


The woman below responded, "You must be in Management." 

"I am," replied the balloonist, "but how did you know?" 

"Well," said the woman, you don't know where you are or where you are going. You have risen to where you are due to a large quantity of hot air. You made a promise which you have no idea how to keep, and you expect people beneath you to solve your problems. The fact is you are in exactly the same position you were in before we met, but now, somehow, it's my fault".

The Blogging Life

I've taken a bit of a vacation from blogging. At times it just seems pointless or overwhelming. There is a cartoon that has been making the rounds on various blogs that captures my feeling sometimes. You've probably seen it but I thought I would post it anyways.



I'm not a fresh faced voice on the blogging circuit and I don't always think that I have lots of new ideas. The rehashing of used ideas gets old quick. I also don't think blogging is just about "Wow look what I found!" There is just too much information out there and it is there for anyone to discover. However there are a number of things that I come across that stimulate my thinking and that it would be nice to share with someone. I get a chance to share some stuff as a pastor in the congregation of the saints but that is limited. I also like to blog because it keeps a record of what I have been thinking and at times it is a record of where I have been surfing.

I also found that there were times when all I would do is blog and think about ideas about blogging and then check to see how many visits I had in the previous day. That feels shallow and unproductive. I do appreciate those who are able to blog "on the side" while actually doing other useful work. I wonder how they do it at times. It really is a unique ability (maybe some would call it a gift). For example I have often wondered how Scot McKnight at Jesus Creed is able to read the number of books he does, review them, write books, teach his courses at the college that employs him and then post on his blog 4 or 5 times a day. These posts are not just "Oh look at this." They are well thought out posts where he continues the dialogue in the comments section. I would say that he has a gift. I on the other hand do not.

However, I will continue to blog for now. I will also stop the hosting of our website (www.hillschurch.ca) because it is just too static. I will migrate some of the information here as a post. If I have new pictures I will post them here (or post a link to them) and information is not really current enough on a website to be of any real use. I would like to keep the domain name and create a link from there to here - if I can find a cheap way of doing that.

So I'm back for now. I want to keep some of the ideas I have for my DMin posted on occasion. That also helps me process some of my thinking. So with the hillschurch stuff and the DMin stuff and the ideas that come along to inspire and encourage, maybe I will be able to average 5 or 6 posts a week.

We'll see.

My Heart is Moved

I was just reading the blogs written by Jared and Kirstyn.
I love the raw honesty of this generation.
They inspire me.
They want to live full out.

They have compassion for the unlovely and have no patience for pretense.
I don't ever want to be pretentious - especially with them.

They have a quick willingness to do anything and go anywhere that is not clouded with the caution or disillusionment of having lived on this earth 50 plus years.
I envy their passion and their enthusiasm.
I want to fan it into fire and join them in the passionate flame.

I'm proud of them - and I think God is too!

I choose to speak words of life over other people. I choose to speak words of life over myself.

The promise of the sunrise drives me on.

I am not afraid to dream big dreams.

Your heart is free. Have the courage to follow it.

It's hard to trust God; Giving-everything-back-to-him-constantly hard. But I'm going to do it. Because I don't know what else to do.

This is a great inspiration for me in my search for passionate life.

In case you hadn't guessed, the italicized words are quotes from their blogs.

New "Air"

Well I suppose I'm not completely back. I have allowed myself to step into the deep waters of computer maintenance and upgrades. MacWorld 2008 didn't help either. But more about that later.

The things you have to do to just get back up to speed. After picking up my laptop I needed to reinstall all my programs - which is time consuming in and of itself. But I also needed to try and remember all the programs that I had downloaded (mostly freeware) that I use on a regular basis. It is sometimes a long process where you suddenly realize that you used to use a particular program to do a certain activity - then you look for it online and download it.

I also ordered more RAM which came today and needed to be installed as well.

And now my son is actually thinking of buying a new laptop - which brings me back to MacWorld. Steve Jobs always presents a Keynote Address where he explains the new things they are releasing. Maybe it's only interesting to Mac geeks - but it is part of the Mac mystique and Apple really does push the technological envelope (pardon the pun - Steve Jobs pulled his latest thin laptop out of an envelop during his keynote).

In case you haven't heard or just don't follow the goings on in that parallel universe where all the planets are Apple shaped, the folks in Cupertino (Mac headquarters) have released a new thin laptop called the Macbook Air - already being dubbed the "Airbook." It really is thin and has a high "Wow" factor.



It's called the Air because there are no cables and the loading of programs is done wirelessly. It really is cool.



However I don't think that my son will get it. It doesn't have enough ummph for him (not enough ram or hard drive space).

I'm Back

I have my computer again - finally. (Do I need to apologize for not blogging?)

I know it shouldn't have taken that long but it did. Here's the story.

On Thursday (December 27th) I heard a high squeaking sound from my computer and the Powerpoint presentation I was looking at refused to load. I tried to fix permissions (equivalent to running a program to make sure your registry items are accurate in a Windows machine) but that took a really long time and didn't help. I realize now I should have stopped everything and tried to back up my recent work. I realized my last backup was a few months ago and I lost my emails, addresses, bookmarks and some of the work I had done. I lost some recent docs I had been working on and most disappointing was that I had lost all of the recent audio recording I had done with my daughter. I think I lost some photos and some songs but those were not significant and can be replaced (songs) or copied from my wife's computer - which has all our recent photographs.

On Friday, I took it to a friend of a friend to get it repaired. You know the drill - my friend (a Mac guru who I called on Thursday evening) said "I know someone who fixes Macs out of his home. He's a great guy and can do it real cheap!" My friend's friend told me it should be ready soon - maybe even this evening but Monday for sure! Wow! Great!

On Monday I found out that my friend's friend's Mac expert was out of town on vacation over Christmas and New Year. Tuesday was New Year's Day. Wednesday I went snowboarding with Jared. Thursday was busy so I called on Friday. The response? The hard drive they ordered hadn't come in yet. Monday I called again. It should be in today. On Tuesday they told me they were having difficulty finding the hard drive I wanted - shortages due to the Christmas season.

So Tuesday afternoon I picked it up and took it to CPUSED (or BeamEcho) the guys I originally was going to take it to. It was ready by Wednesday at lunchtime - and at a cost roughly the same as what the other guy would have charged me.

The lesson in all this ... ?

Backup! Backup! Backup!

And go with the guys you know will fix it fast and right.

Crash!

My hard drive bit the dust today. Fortunately I had most of my stuff backed up - except for some recording I did for Kirstyn.

No blogging for a couple of days while I get it replaced. (I'm blogging from my daughter's computer.) I won't be emailing much either.

The Word

In the beginning was the Word and the Word was with God and the Word was God. In this season where some amazing words capture the spirit of Christmas - words like "incarnation" or "Emmanuel, God with us." Or words like light, hope, joy, love and gift. The simple, powerful beauty of their ability to communicate and evoke meaning and feeling. With the beautiful simplicity of these powerful words it's amazing that we can miss it by trying to be too precise and too descriptive and too wordy when we attempt to describe spiritual reality.

This little piece that follows was on Roger Von Oech's site entitled Creative Think. You can look at the link to see how he talked about this text, Someone called it a quote from the "Over-Intellectualized Bible." It's great for seminary students university professors and pompous readers alike. It makes you glad that Jesus spoke so simply, yet deeply.

THE OVER-INTELLECTUALIZED BIBLE
And Jesus said unto them, "And whom do you say that I am?"

They replied,

"You are the totaliter aliter, the vestigious trinitatum who speaks to us in the modality of Christo-monism.”

You are he who heals our ambiguities and overcomes the split of angst and existential estrangement; you are he who speaks of the theonomous viewpoint of the analogia entis, the analogy of our being and the ground of all possibilities.”

"You are the impossible possibility who brings to us, your children of light and children of darkness, the overwhelming roughness’ in the midst of our fraught condition of estrangement and brokenness in the contiguity and existential anxieties of our ontological relationships.”

“You are my Oppressed One, my soul's shalom, the One who was, who is, and who shall be, who has never left us alone in the struggle, the event of liberation in the lives of the oppressed struggling for freedom, and whose blackness is both literal and symbolic.”

And Jesus replied, "Huh?"

if even God doesn't get it, perhaps we missed the point?

Aren't you glad that He said, "I am the Way, the Truth and the Life!"?

Being Nice at Christmas

It’s Christmas Eve. The Christmas songs have been playing in our local mall since November 18th – when Santa Claus came to town – or at least it was when they set up that throne with the oversized red and green decorations in the centre of the mall. I remember groaning when, on Monday the 19th of November, as I walked into the gym, I heard the familiar strains of Jingle Bell Rock, and It’s A Holly Jolly Christmas. Oh, no! It’s too soon!

But there were other days when I wondered if all these carols may actually be having some kind of impact. I distinctly remember stopping in my tracks, as I walked through the mall in my decidedly Jewish neighbourhood, after hearing “Born is the King of Israel.” That got me thinking. Why is it that people say Christmas is the nicest time of year? That people are kinder and more giving and drive their cars more politely during this season? Why do they say that they wish that people would act like it was Christmas the rest of the year?

Here’s my theory. I actually think that there is a spiritual shift in the atmosphere during this season because the message of Christ is preached through the all-Christmas-music stations, and non-stop in every single mall, and at least partly on almost every radio station and printed in the newspapers and sent into homes with advertising and definitely Christmas cards. Granted some of the motivation for that “preaching” is self-serving commercialized greed and some of those songs are Christmas drivel (dogs barking out Jingle Bells??). But even with wrong motivations the message is effective. Paul said it this way in Philippians 1:

15It is true that some preach Christ out of envy and rivalry, but others out of goodwill. 16The latter do so in love, knowing that I am put here for the defense of the gospel. 17The former preach Christ out of selfish ambition, not sincerely, supposing that they can stir up trouble for me while I am in chains.[c] 18But what does it matter? The important thing is that in every way, whether from false motives or true, Christ is preached. And because of this I rejoice.

I remember hosting our first Christmas party in our Jewish neighbourhood (something that has become a yearly tradition). We thought we would sing some Christmas carols because a couple of our neighbours said they loved Christmas carols. I think they meant things like “Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas” or “Rudolf the Red Nosed Reindeer.” But we sang stuff like “Hark the Herald Angels” and “Silent Night” and “Joy to the World.” Have you ever paid attention to those words when surrounded by 25 of your Jewish neighbours?

How about Hark the Herald Angels Sing? Check out these lines!

Christ, by highest heaven adored Christ, the everlasting Lord
Veiled in flesh the God-head see Hail the incarnate Deity

Hail the heaven-born Prince of Peace Hail the Sun of Righteousness
Light and life to all He brings Risen with healing in His wings
Mild He lays His glory by Born that man no more may die
Born to raise the sons of earth Born to give them second birth

Or Joy To The World?

He rules the world with truth and grace And makes the nations prove
The glories of His righteousness And wonders of His love

Or “O Come O Come Emmanuel”
O come, O come, Emmanuel,
And ransom captive Israel,

That mourns in lonely exile here Until the Son of God appear.
Rejoice! Rejoice!
Emmanuel, Shall come to thee, O Israel.

Or even “Angels From the Realms of Glory”
Come and worship! Come and worship! Worship Christ the newborn king!

There are three options when one listens to lyrics like this.
1. Fall down and worship the King of Kings acknowledging Him as Lord at His birth – or at least be touched or moved by these lyrics to take this time of the season more seriously.
2. Be offended.
3. Ignore it and be consumed by the consumerism and greed of the season.

I choose to believe that at least some of the first is happening – even while much of the world continues on blithely unaware that spiritual forces are at work making them act nicer than they normally would. Thank God for small miracles!
Merry Christmas!

And His Whole Household

I have not been able to get this concept (households and hospitality) out of my mind over the past week or so. Scot (over at Jesus Creed) has been talking about infant baptism stemming from passages in Acts (16:15) where whole households were baptized at once. Although I posted a comment there I have very little interest in infant baptism per se but this concept of household salvation is what has been capturing my mental energy.

I think the “household” concept needs some clarification and expansion. Based on some of the research of Birkey (The House Church), Judge (The Social Pattern of Christian Groups in the First Century) and Banks (Paul's Idea of Community), to think of a household as parents and children and a few servants drastically simplifies the term. Households were led by a supporting patriarch and its size was limited to his ability to support the family. Although some households were small - just scraping by so to speak, most would have had some level of ability to support a number of people. It would have certainly included extended family, servants and/or slaves (and their families), and possibly close friends (and their families) all living in the same estate or under the protection of the householder. They would have engaged in business enterprises or agriculture together and would have remained together - possibly for generations - with leadership being passed down through the male heir.

This does not mean that everyone was wealthy - or that everyone necessarily lived in the same house. It means that those with substance kept others in their employ and as part of their households and so had a certain responsibility for them. We may have some difficulty understanding that in our culture because we have have become a culture that traffics mostly in money as currency as opposed to work, or goods. It is similar to work situations today where we provide a service to a company (householder) in exchange for money which we use to buy or rent a house, buy clothes, food etc and establish a life.

The interesting part is that people believed and then their whole households also believed. For example:

John 4:53
Then the father realized that this was the exact time at which Jesus had said to him, "Your son will live." So he and all his household believed.
Acts 11:14
He will bring you a message through which you and all your household will be saved.'
Acts 16:15
When she and the members of her household were baptized, she invited us to her home. "If you consider me a believer in the Lord," she said, "come and stay at my house." And she persuaded us.
Acts 16:31
They replied, "Believe in the Lord Jesus, and you will be saved—you and your household."
Acts 18:8
Crispus, the synagogue ruler, and his entire household believed in the Lord; and many of the Corinthians who heard him believed and were baptized.

When the householder believed (and therefore changed his behaviour and his values and his business practices) those in his household who were dependent on him also believed (and changed their behaviour). What Scripture doesn't always connect is that many times this household then became the location for a new church. This is certainly the case in Philippi where the church met in Lydia's house.

This is an interesting missiological strategy. The genius of the early church was its ability to use a key social structure in the Roman world (the church that met in households) to propagate and nurture the growth of the Kingdom.

What are we to make of this? Should all churches become house churches to better propagate the Gospel? Maybe - in China, or Korea or India - but not in Canada, or in USAmerica, or in Europe. The individualistic mindset of Western culture militates against that option. House churches in the New Testament were a response to the sociology of the first century. They just fit. It was pure genius.

The question that poses itself to me is: What "just fits" in our postmodern Western post-Christendom culture? What is the sociological structure or system that will allow the Gospel to have such an impact as it had in the first century?

I don't know what it is ... yet, but it has got my mind whirring all week.