Growing Up in Faith

This post will be a followup to my previous post on growing up in our society.  In it, I discuss the disappearance of adulthood, why growing up is still valuable, and a few thoughts on how one might go about growing up.  In this post, I'd like to consider the same principles as they apply to Christians and the Church.

How do we grow up in faith?  What's the road map for spiritual maturity in our Western churches today?  For the most part, there is a pretty consistent formula that is presented to us.  Come to church regularly, develop a personal devotion time at home, give more tithes and offerings, volunteer more at church, and be part of a small group.  These things are all excellent steps to growing up as a Christian.  But are they all that we have as a Church?

I'm not certain, but I'm pretty sure it
never works like this.

The Bible has a few places where it talks about "growing up" in the faith.  Paul, in 1 Corinthians 3, talks about growing up from being infants to eating "solid food."  The author of Hebrews 5 may have borrowed this language, if he isn't Paul also, to talk about growing up from milk to solid food as a mature spiritual adult.  Other places that talk about spiritual development, such as Ephesians 4, tend refer to issues of good works.  Does growing up in faith and practicing these good works of the life of a disciple, then, refer to things like tithing and being active in serving the local church?

I don't believe so.  Just as our society may have traded a child/adult divide for a world in which adults act like children, is it possible that our Church has allowed spiritual maturity to be optional and even forgotten what it means to be a spiritual adult?

I was talking the other night with a youth worker who helped parents understand that their children having doubts about their faith wasn't a thing to fear.  Many of our spiritual forefathers struggled with great periods of doubt and pain and even anger at God.  Doubts may be one of the first, and most recurring, stages of spiritual maturing.  If we are afraid to enter even these stages, our growth will probably be stunted.

Sometimes churches may inadvertently limit the possibilities for spiritual growth by failing to offer sufficient challenges.  Most churches try to keep Sunday morning services approachable for new believers and guests of members.  Where, then, does the growth come?  Small groups are the obvious answer, but many churches struggle to find enough qualified small group leaders to lead groups, and many small groups focus on the common need for community as much if not more than the need for deep growth in spiritual maturity.  The new movement in small groups is to make them missionally-oriented, which is also valuable, but still not places for emphasizing the "solid food" of spirituality.

And what exactly is that "solid food" of spirituality?  I'm inclined to think that tithing and volunteering are more likely traits that Paul and the Bible authors would have considered infant prerequisites, not qualities of a mature disciple.  What other paths might be available for spiritual growth that aren't highlighted in our churches?

Spiritual maturity
probably requires great
amounts of facial hair.

My first instinct is to look to the past for examples of spiritually mature forefathers.  The giants of the faith that we think of, such as Ignatius, Hudson Taylor, St. Francis, William Carey, Luther, Calvin, Wesley, St. Patrick, Hildegard, and so forth are all quickly noted.  They were marked by radical devotion to the faith, prolific authors and musicians, fearless missionaries, and more.  They are excellent examples, and of course Hebrews 11 gives us a great introduction to the faithful even further back in history.  What types of paths do they show us?  Here's a few that jump out at me:

• Monasticism - When's the last time you heard that term in your church?  Have you ever heard your church encourage a young person to spend an extended period of time in isolation and devotion to rules to grow in spirituality?
• Liturgy of the hours, Celtic and Puritan prayers - Throughout history, people have taken "pray without ceasing" to mean to regularly interrupt yourself to pray.  The Celtics and Puritans have a great tradition of having prepared prayers for various occasions.  One could imagine having prayers printed above the coffee pot to pray every morning!
• Heart prayers - Some spiritual fathers have described meditating on simple prayers such as the "Jesus prayer" (Lord Jesus, Son of God, have mercy on me, a sinner) to the point that they actually become as natural as breathing, and that each breath literally reminds them of the prayer.  Now that's praying without ceasing!
• Prophetic and charismatic - While many are afraid of charismatic gifts, I can't help but think that 1 Corinthians 12:31 is a key part of spiritual maturity.  Eagerly desire more spiritual gifts, even the scary charismatic ones!
• Friars and Clares - Founded by St. Francis, these orders emphasized poverty as necessary for discipleship.  We think that's extreme, but it sounds a lot like what Jesus taught...and yet voluntary poverty is never considered a virtue in our churches.  We don't even really challenge people on stewardship!
• Mysticism - Some Christians may fear cultish behavior when getting into mysticism and spiritual experiences, but they've been a part of Christianity for two thousand years.  Under proper guidance and spiritual authority, they could be incredible parts of Christian discipleship.
• Contemplation and Examen - Spending time in meditation can take all sorts of different forms, whether contemplating Scripture or, as in the case of Examen, contemplating oneself.  Self-awareness and charting one's own spiritual growth would fit in well with our society's love of to-do lists and strategic plans.

These are just a few - it's not meant to be an exhaustive list, and one is not more right than another.  They are all different paths, and people can go down separate paths and still walk with God on each of them.  My point is that they are all paths that we've largely forgotten in our modern Church, with its emphasis on "morning quiet times" as the primary objective in spiritual growth.  Many of them are challenging and audacious, but then again when has the easy route been the best one?  Those challenges that are hardest are often the ones that we get most excited about, and the ones for which we most rise to the occasion.

Some people lately have been kicking around the idea of the "Dones" as a subset of the "Nones" - as in those Christians who are quitting churches and not looking for new ones because they are "done" with church.  Nones as a whole are those who have no church affiliation or religious beliefs for whatever reasons.  This article is an example (although it blames "dones" on a lack of community).  I believe that part of the desire of those in my generation to quit church is because we aren't being challenged enough.  Even if the community is nice, it does eventually get tiring to keep hearing the same basic sermons over and over again, and keep getting solicited to volunteer for the same programs over and over again.  After a while it just gets boring.

If we're having the challenge of lots of Christians walking around whom our church fathers and apostles would consider to be spiritual babes, and we're having the challenge of Christians leaving churches and wandering on their own, perhaps it's time to revisit the idea of spiritual growth.  Perhaps churches could take a look through history at the ways that Christians have experienced spiritual maturity, and present some of them to their members.  I'd like to see church pastors and growth leaders becoming experts in leading spiritual growth.  Too many spend all their days planning church services and doing the logistics of small groups.  These jobs are of course critical and good, but where's the actual spiritual growth leaders?  If Christians aren't challenged, we will never grow, and we are likely to get bored and wander.

Time To Grow Up!

Growing up is hard to do!  I'm 29 years old and somehow it doesn't feel quite like I could be old enough to be a grown-up.  Am I really an adult?  Surely I am, but it must be something peculiar about our society that someone who has lived nearly three decades can not quite feel like an adult.

If you're up for a longer, more academic read, I'd recommend The Art of Manliness' recent blog post on "The Rise and Fall of the Secret Society of Adults".  For the majority of you who won't read it, here's a quick summary.  For much of human history, childhood didn't entirely exist - kids were simply miniature, deficient adults until they were fully capable of doing all the things adults can do.  However, at some point, children began to be seen as something to be nurtured and taught, and there became a separation between children and adults.  Adults dressed differently, talked differently, and understood things that children couldn't.  In very recent times, however, things have reversed to where once again there is little distinction between children and adults, but this time it's the other way around: adults now are just like kids but bigger and older.  The author has a point - adults now dress like kids, talk like kids, and rarely grasp at complex subjects.

It's hard to say whether people are right who say that adolescence is a 20th century invention, but the term certainly seems to be.  Once upon a time, however, a child who had hit puberty was basically an adult.  Teenage years are now spent in school and under the authority of parents.  Many youth now spend up to age 22 or 23 in school, with college, few living what could be seen as a marginally independent or self-sufficient life.  The rise of "boomerang" kids who continue to live dependent on their parents after college and the growing confusion of my generation as to exactly what we want to do with our lives means that it's not uncommon for people nearly 30 to be still unmarried, on a murky career path, financially insecure, and largely immature.  I'm certainly not blaming anyone or even saying that there's anything inherently wrong with this system.  After all, when life expectancy is 50 you have to grow up much faster.  When it's 80 you can take your time.  I merely want to point out that growing up is vastly delayed in our society from where it was even 100 years ago.

I do feel, however, that there is still inherent value in growing up, whenever it does happen.  I don't believe it makes sense to bring down all of society to an 8th grade level.  Who doesn't recognize a certain bit of beauty in the powerful orations of history from men who spoke at a highly educated level?  Isn't there still some reverence for those who can read and learn from works of literature more advanced than Hunger Games?  I ought to take the moment to tangentially say that I don't mean to venerate adulthood at the expense of having a youthful heart.  It was just last week that my coworkers and I took a break to invent games involving a miniature soccer ball and an empty trash can in our office.  You can grow up without giving up fun and frivolity.

Why grow up, however?  What's the value to society in having adults who are grown up?  In other words, why shouldn't all of society dumb down to the lowest common denominator?  Firstly, I believe the qualities of adulthood are highly valuable to society.  A developed sense of personal responsibility, greater self-control, a desire and capacity to contribute meaningfully to the world, and expanded maturity for leadership and wisdom are just a few of these qualities.  Secondly, as the aforementioned wisely note in another post (most of the way down), you can't have an entire society dumbed down - somebody still has to get things done.  The world of childhood, adolescence, and young adulthood is only possible because of the world of adulthood.  Thirdly, because although we have all sometimes remembered our youth fondly and longed for days when we could relax without a care in the world, being an adult is immensely satisfying.  Making a positive contribution to the world, taking care of business, learning about and mastering complex subjects, and serving those around us are benefits of adulthood that we miss if we remain in the comparatively "easy" world of childhood.

I'm interested in what kind of things are part of this growing up process.  There aren't a lot of resources available for people to learn how to grow up.  You kind of have to go searching for it.  For example, I decided a couple of years ago that it was worthwhile for its own sake to dress like an adult (getting married and actually having the money to buy real clothes was elemental to this point, as well).  I "dress up" for work, parties, and events without anyone expecting me to, and you'll probably have a hard time seeing me in public without a collared shirt of some sort.  Why?  I am an adult, and my clothing both has an impact on me and on the people who come into contact with me.  When I'm dressed like an adult, I behave like an adult, and people perceive me as an adult.  Dressing like an adult doesn't make me an adult any more than sitting in a garage makes me a car, but these sorts of details are like individual puzzle pieces to a great collage.

What other things are helpful to the growing up process?  Trying to spend more time in the company of people older than I am is probably a key part of it.  Trying to learn how to have adult conversations is necessary.  Reading literature and following current events are two other things that I'm trying to do.  These things, I believe, help to reclaim a bit of the "secret society" of adulthood.  I'm also conscious of how I spend my free time.  While many in my generation are playing video games, I am learning things, working on my house, volunteering, and spending time socially.  I'm ready to grow up and start to work on a new definition of what it means to be an adult in our new Western society!

Outsourcing Christian Responsibilities

Blunt post coming...sometimes I feel like writing a quality piece, and sometimes I just feel like saying something.  This is the latter.

Is it possible to outsource the responsibilities of a Christian?  I'm not sure, but I think we Americans are sure trying.  Let's see if I can situate the scene: we've got a culture that encourages taking the easiest route to things, a church culture that encourages a wide gulf between "professional" Christians and other Christians, and a church culture that rarely teaches the harder parts of discipleship, preferring to allow anyone in.  Every once in a while you find exceptions (the Art of Manliness blog comes to mind for the first, Watermark Church comes to mind for the third where I understand they revoke your membership if you are not involved beyond Sunday morning).  I think most people would agree with these three qualities of our society, so if we connect them, we get...outsourced responsibilities.

Okay this picture isn't really related, I just think
it's funny.  And maybe hitting a bit too close to
home for "incarnational" types.

I believe that it is possible, today in our broader Christian church, to hire missionaries and pastors to do the jobs that the Bible calls all Christians to do.  There are pastors out there making a full-time job out of being part of their neighborhood associations, school PTAs, volunteering to lead community activities, and write blogs.  We call it "incarnational" ministry and extol the value of being part of the community and cultivating what is already there, which is excellent and beautiful.  Except...this isn't a special calling for missionaries and pastors.  These things are the general responsibilities of all Christians.  This isn't a criticism of missionaries who are raising support and making a full-time job out of this.  I hope that their extra free time enables them to take these activities to the next level and develop something strong and sustainable.

No, this is more an observation that we all need to be involved in our communities.  We may not have all the free time to do ten fun things in our community every week, but we can all do one or two.  Ten people involved in two things each every week is better than two people involved in ten each.  If we cannot get involved, maybe we have gotten ourselves too busy for our own (and our community's) good.  Since moving into a new neighborhood this fall I am trying to figure out a variety of ways to get involved and get to know people.  I'm no expert but I know that this is a non-negotiable, and it's not part of my job...it's part of my responsibility as a Christian.  Thank you to the pastors who are leading the way in this...now let's go find one and join them in what they're doing!

Where is All the Quality Journalism?

What is the role of a journalist?  It's a rapidly-changing world these days - every word is up for grabs for re-definition.  Journalism is a blurry field right now.  Just where are the distinctions between formal news, alternative news, and amateur blogs?  People have long been upset that the formal news services are owned by big-business interests and tend to lean a bit partisan, but I think we have a bigger problem today.  This blurring of the lines has led to a confused and misinformed population, which I think is a very dangerous thing.

I'll take two examples from current events.  First, the big one everyone knows about - Ebola.  This was a crisis in Africa, then we got a few cases here in the USA and media coverage exploded (this act in itself is a bit shameful, but that's another topic).  Sadly, despite the very clear and repeated coverage from the formal news services that Ebola is NOT a very transmissible virus, and despite the fact that we've known about this virus for almost 40 years, alternative news sites and independent bloggers are continuing to spread confusion and panic.  The sign that they're having an impact is that even pretty respectable people believe that the formal news services and the government are withholding key points of information to intentionally deceive us.  This is so absurd it doesn't even warrant continuing.

The second case is a smaller one, and it concerns a recent news story that the mayor of nearby Houston was forcing a group of pastors to turn over their sermons for inspection.  This was so rapidly pulled out of context that even my own church sowed some fear yesterday that we're nearing the point when the government will be snooping on what we say in church.  The truth is so far from that - in fact the lawsuit began when Christians sued the government related to the government's claim that churches had misled citizens in signing petitions.  The city has clearly stated that they never had any intention of scrutinizing the church's sermons, but merely wanted any information related to how they promoted the petitions.

Alternative news services are a dangerous curator of content in a social society, where people rapidly and easily share media among each other.  Although it's often recognized that this rapid sharing also comes with a benefit - a very short memory - it's still dangerous to see journalism that is so sharply and intentionally one-sided spread so widely.  It seems that the formal news media, who once upon a time attempted to be nonpartisan, have been forced to share the stage with overtly partisan services.  And it's then further compounded by independent bloggers expressing their unfounded and uninformed opinions (the fact that this would include me is an irony not entirely lost on me).  Sadly even the formal news services, bowing to this pressing competition, often prefer to exert a competitive advantage through rapid-fire soundbites and quick-response breaking news, which can reduce them to poorly-researched articles, mistakes arising from speculation, and more.

Where is all the quality journalism?  Where are the writers who are producing long-form articles that attempt, in an unbiased way, to analyze issues and events and present a more thorough understanding of them?  Why are we, as Western news consumers, so short on attention span that we can't process journalism like that?  Back to my question - what is the role of a journalist?  I believe that their role today is to strike a balance between presenting the breaking news and disseminating understanding to the population at large.  They must be able to clarify things and communicate them concisely and accurately.  Specialization will be needed so that journalists can actually understand the issues they are reporting on.  The industry needs a new code of ethics. The citizens of a developed and educated nation deserve better.

People Weren't Meant to Live this Way

I was especially inspired the other week by a phrase I heard on TV.  To catch up, watch this video about a man's journey to find his mother.  She was from the jungles of southern Venezuela before she married an American and moved to New Jersey.  After some six years, on a visit back home, she decided she couldn't go back to the States.  She said, "People weren't meant to live this way." (2:45 in the video)  In particular, the isolation and unfriendliness of the people stuck out.  Indeed, most of the people in the world today (and especially throughout history) live communally.  We modernized Westerners are a bit unique in that we don't.

Take security, for example.  In Dallas, if you want to secure your belongings, you lock them up and get an alarm system.  Last summer living on the outskirts of a city in Peru, when some youth were harassing our compound, our security guard urged us not to be afraid, saying "I know their families."  Or how about finances.  For my family, if we want to ensure that we'll be financially taken care of later in life, we open IRAs and sock money away.  In a community mindset, you raise your kids well and be a blessing to many people around you, and nobody will let you struggle.  What about people around us?  In my apartment complex, the number of patios with never-used furniture signals our desire for something we never make time for.

I'm interested in the community we might be missing.  I don't think the issue is intellectual - we know we're missing it.  Loneliness is rampant in the States.  As I mentioned, we all have patio furniture.  We do say hi to people when we walk the dog.  We're frequently encouraged by videos that remind us to notice those around us.  As of today, 38 million people have seen that video.  But we won't change.  Culture is accelerating around us, there's too much pushing us away from each other.

There's nothing wrong with any of these developments, most of them are beautiful and useful and meaningful.  But they are rapidly sweeping away an entire way of life that even survived industrialization...but has succumbed to technologization.  We won't return to an older way of life, and I'm not suggesting we try to.  But somehow I long not to allow it to be forgotten.  There's too many valuable artifacts from it.

Are there ways in which we've built our lives in ways that people just weren't meant to live?  I think there may be.  This post isn't going to change anybody's life.  That's fine.  Mine hasn't entirely been changed yet either.  But I'm thinking about things, at least.  Maybe that's all we need to do - just be conscious of what has gone before and what is happening now.

Paying attention is a good start.  Reading books is another.  Being willing to think about other perspectives, in a both/and mindset rather than an either/or, will get us a long ways.  Simply interacting with people who live differently will transform us.  I suspect that, although David Good's mother (in the CBS video) probably largely returned to her life at home, she was forever changed in some ways.  And I guarantee that David is forever changed by experiencing her life.

Up, In, Out...and Around

In Christian ministry, the triangle "lifeshape" made popular by 3dMovements, the group that came from a remarkable ministry in Sheffield, England, has become very well-known.  They popularized the idea of boiling down the essentials of a Christian life to 3 directions - in, out, and up.  Essential discipleship for a group, then, is to reach in (fellowship), out (mission), and up (worship).  The same goes for an individual, which was perhaps first popularized by Henri Nouwen.  His integrative spirituality led him to propose that spirituality is intertwined with psychology, ministry, and theology.  Thus, for him the authentic Christian life was a series of three movements: from loneliness to solitude (in), from hostility to hospitality (out), and from illusion to prayer (up).  These three directions of life are very useful for patterning life.

I'd like to propose an addition.  Perhaps it's intuitively contained in the "out" portion of both ideas, but I think it warrants being identified as unique.  I'd like to mention a third model here, one from Christian development circles.  Bryant Myers described transformational ministry as one that restores fundamental broken relationships: those with ourselves, God, others, community (systems), and the environment.  In the currently popular book When Helping Hurts, the Chalmers Center combines others and community to make a four-fold model of ministry.  I'd like to do it differently: combine community and environment to make a pyramid, rather than a triangle:

The ministry model might call it participation.  The Nouwen pattern might call it the integration of spirituality and vocation.  He could have called it the movement from isolation to involvement.  I call it the piece that reminds us of the connectedness of all things.

I strongly believe that we live in a connected world, and that thus our life isn't involved simply in movements up, in, and out, but also in the participation with what is around us.  One of the most beautiful and most neglected pieces of Lutheran theology is Luther's concept of vocation.  We have a job, we have a community, we have a government, an economy, an ecology, and countless other systems that we participate in daily.  This "fourth" movement of the spiritual life leads us out into that world as disciples.  Our participation in the world is part of our spirituality.

What happens in this movement to the "around"?  We engage with the world and its systems.  We contribute meaningfully and positively to our workplaces.  We engage with our community on their terms, rather than simply on ours.  We have some involvement in the political and economic issues that so powerfully affect us and others.  We participate meaningfully with the environment as God's gift to us to be cultivated and nurtured.  We even recognize broken and sinful systems, such as those of oppression, poverty, and suffering, so that we can be salt and light in the world.

So, as individuals and as faith communities we can see our discipleship as ministering to ourselves, others, the world, and God.  Let's separate the "around" from the "out" to especially remind ourselves that our positive influence isn't just limited to the people around us, but to the systems as well.  It bridges Luther's split of the "two kingdoms" of God and the world, bringing us out into both as citizens of both.  It conveniently reminds us of the 4 points of the cross.  It even brings us back to the people of God in exile, in Jeremiah 29:4-14, seeking the peace of the city, participating in the city, and living expectantly for His return.

What do you do with free time?

It's no secret that for the past four or five years, I've almost completely eliminated free time from my lifestyle.  Of course I was working full time, but in the past five years I've also done an 18-class masters degree, helped start and run Ndoto for a couple years, helped start nonprofits in Ethiopia and Peru, dated, gotten engaged, and married, started playing softball regularly, volunteered for 12 weeks in South America, and tried to maintain some sense of relationships, at least with family.  Basically, "unscheduled" time has been something that happened only every few weeks.  I have no regrets over how I've spent my time, but there is one unfortunate consequence.

I'm not really sure what to do with myself when I'm not "working."

I realize that there's something dangerously wrong with me when I decide to take an evening off from work and then can't think of anything to do other than slouch on our sofa in front of the TV.  I suspect that, if calculated, I would be found to spend at least 75% of my waking hours in immediate contact with some sort of digital display, whether a computer, a TV, or my phone.  Most of my relaxation time is dependent on digital screens too, including TV, movies, and games.  How did I get so dependent on a technology that is so new, in historical terms?  For all of human history, how did we survive without these digital devices?

It's tongue-in-cheek, of course, because humans seemed to get along just fine doing all sorts of things, like "going outside," as I think it's called.  I hear that once upon a time, people actually sat together and didn't do much of anything, except perhaps talk.  It's rumored that there was a time when families played games together (before the Wii).  A few people had these things called hobbies.  But for the most part, people lived dreadfully boring lives when there wasn't instant digital entertainment at their fingertips.  Glad I live today.

This summer, I finish my grad school, and I have to say I have had a bit of fear regarding not having schoolwork to occupy large chunks of my evenings and weekends.  What, oh what, will I do?  I'd like to give my eyes a rest from digital screens for a while, so I'm starting some controls now to keep me from going down that road.  I've already started trying to drastically limit my use of a phone prior to breakfast and after 10pm.  It helps me get in bed faster and up sooner and probably helps my sleep quality.  I'm also thinking of giving my brain a rest from all that thinking, and working with my hands a bit.  Simple carpentry and gardening sound very pleasant to me.  And, I think I'll work on rebuilding those relationships I've let slide in several years of constant working.

Of course, if/when we end up having kids, that'll all change, but maybe I'll just get them addicted to digital displays from a young age so I can continue with my gardening.

Where We Are Heading

Over a few beers a couple weeks ago, some friends and I got to discussing the future of self-driving cars.  It seems like we're headed that direction in a hurry, and I'm fascinated by the implications of that.  Don't think it's happening?  Look around you.  For some time we've had cars that can parallel park for you.  Now we have cars that can hit the brakes for you to avoid a collision.  Driverless cars already exist, and several companies are predicting a mass-market version by the end of the decade.  Perspectives differ on exactly how they will spread into the market, whether extremely slowly or rapidly, whether all-at-once or just by implementing certain features at a time, but I think we are undoubtedly heading that direction.

Why wouldn't we head that direction?  We humans are overall terrible drivers.  We make an enormous number of mistakes, whether it's because we are not paying attention or because of things we just can't know.  In 2012, 34,080 people died in motor vehicle accidents, meaning you have about a 1 in 10,000 chance of dying in a given year on the roads.  Those odds are far too high.  How could those odds be decreased?  By taking the human factor out.  The government is already calling for car manufacturers to accelerate plans for cars to talk to each other.  The next step will be for cars to drive themselves.

What happens when cars are capable of driving themselves?  Well, lots of things, if you think about it!  It totally changes the game.  We need fewer police officers and traffic lights, which saves the government money (they can either cut taxes or spend it on something else more useful).  We won't need to pay as much in car insurance (there will be fewer wrecks, and if there is one you're more likely to be owed money by the manufacturer of the car's computer than another driver).  Most households will only need one car (you can just send it back to get another family member once you're at your destination).  You could even monetize your car when you're not using it, through a smartphone network like Lyft.  You can rest, work, or do anything else you'd like while commuting to work.  We won't need such large roads, as cars will move more like a flock of birds and less in traffic jams.  We may even need less parking spaces, if cars aren't staying where their owners are!

There are things to be considered in all of this.  Cities are moving to be more pedestrian-friendly.  How does this coexist with new developments in driverless cars?  Cities also traditionally expect infrastructure investments to last at least thirty years, meaning that investments taking place right now will still be in place when we have self-driving cars.  Thus, if city managers aren't taking the future into account, they are making mistakes as we speak.  Or, are there more challenging ethical issues to be considered, based on the fact that computers will not be able to avoid all collisions?  Additionally, how do we ensure the safety of a system that could be hacked, reprogrammed, or damaged?

I love thinking about the future, and I'm excited for what could come in the future - a safer, quicker way of moving about!  I'd love to hear your thoughts on the subject in the comments!

Why I Became A Hippie

Over the past six months or so, I think I've become a hippie.  A few intentional changes to my life, and a few more planned in the near future, might warrant a few derogatory terms or critical glances.  After all, nobody really likes the tree-hugging organic urbanite except other tree-hugging organic urbanites, right?  What's the deal with those hippies, anyways?  I think a little explanation might be in order.

The story kind of begins last summer.  My wife and I abandoned our desks for twelve weeks to volunteer with a mission organization down in South America.  There were a variety of experiences in Bogota, Quito, the Amazon rainforest, and Lima, but most of our time was in the desert in north Peru.  Sometimes I think that taking a step away allows you to see things with a different perspective and learn a lot.  Then I read through Jen Hatmaker's book Seven.  It's a printed blog of a rebellion against excess, or, dare I say it...a hippie journal.  Then I enrolled in a new class at seminary reading the New Testament.  Reading it again was eye-opening in a number of ways.

All those things combined changed my perspective on a lot of things.  My first insight was that all of my life is interconnected spiritually.  Of course I've long known that my Christian faith isn't confined to Sunday mornings and just before mealtimes.  But I don't think I had ever thought about something as silly as recycling as part of my faith before.   I hadn't thought about how my purchases might be part of my faith.

Another insight came from periodically touring the city garbage dump in Trujillo, Peru.  Some friends had a ministry there, and we went a few times.  People worked there, in the dump, sorting through the trash to look for things of value to sell.  It was a pretty horrific scene - noxious fumes, smoke, smell, grime, animals...all you can imagine.  Startling but Obvious Realization: Trash goes somewhere.  Here in America we're great about pretending that trash bins are the final landing place for trash (they magically empty themselves too).  It's utterly invisible to us, but that stuff does end up somewhere.

I also realized that nature is a great thing we've tended to forget about.  There's a natural cycle to things, from soil to plant to plate, from season to season, so forth.  The earth yields a great deal of bounty that we don't see because it's not as marketable.  And I feel a bit more alive when I'm eating such natural and simple products.  My whole body feels different when cleansed of processed foods and artificial things.  Where we lived, most of our food was also almost entirely locally-created.  It's nice to think that when you buy something, your money is actually continuing to cycle into the community you are living in.

My parents raised me to be reasonably conscious of energy usage and whatnot, but with my newfound connectedness to the earth, I feel more responsible for my little segment.  Christian development literature speaks of breaking free from poverty in terms of four fundamental relationships: with God, yourself, others, and creation.  Now I think I have an understanding of what it means to be reconciled to creation.  Thus, the changes I've been making in my life that might be, I admit it, hippie-ish.

1. Consciousness of our garbage.  I am now working hard to recycle everything I can.  When we move into a house I will begin to compost.  My goal is to reduce our waste disposal to less than the combined amount of composting and recycling.  Shouldn't be too difficult.  Along with this comes saving trimmings from veggies to make broth and tossing meat trimmings and bones into a pot for stock.  Reducing waste comes in all form.
2. Better food choices.  It's worth paying a bit more to get local and/or organic food.  Our food prices are artificially low due to government subsidies, unhealthy shortcuts, and artificial ingredients.  I don't mind paying the real price to support a small business or get products that don't make me wonder what I'm putting in my body.  Part of this is knowing how an economy works, and being conscious of where my money is ending up, as far as I have control of it.  This, to me, is really what stewardship is about.
3. Loving the earth.  Our planet is beautiful, and full of bounty.  It's a miracle, and it supplies our every need, even those we take for granted.  We have got to appreciate it, admire it, and take care of it.  I look forward to composting and gardening, just to be more connected to the earth.  In our concrete jungles it's too easy to live separated from what gives us life.

Learning to Love the Church Again

This post is going to be hard to write.  It's hard because it's reasonably autobiographical.  The thoughts, however, apply to many.  The roots of church-dislike began outside the Christian world.  Secular humanism as a worldview naturally mixed with Christianity to produce a sort of spirituality that commonly espoused, "I am spiritual but don't like organized religion."  It's not a surprising philosophy, and many have commented that within it there may even be a kernel of something that could restore Christianity to the type of movement that Jesus founded.  Unknowingly, however, as this became the dominant American philosophy on religion, syncretism (the mixing of religious beliefs) re-appeared to allow the idea to take a strong hold within our churches.  This is where we find ourselves today with many church-hoppers and those, like me, who struggled within the churches we called home.  Our fervor for God hasn't diminished, but we are disturbed and sometimes angered by our churches.

People have many reasons for disliking their own churches.  My church mishandles money, they say.  My pastor is dishonest.  Our leaders care more about numbers than about people.  The worship music is low-quality.  I feel lost in the crowd.  The church doesn't care about mission to the community or internationally.  What makes this anger at our own churches so prevalent and challenging is that most of the assertions are probably pretty accurate.  Our churches are, by and large, massively broken places where we mistake a family for an organization and go in a different direction than where the Holy Spirit is going.  We don't get mission, and don't care for people as we ought to.  All that is to say that when I speak of learning to love the church again, I don't mean learning to ignore its problems, or learning to realize that the church actually is on the right track.  I mean learning to love it.


Perhaps the task I'm up against is really to talk about the word "love."  It's probably being confused with "like."  I make a point to tell my wife that I love her, but I also make a point of telling her that I like her, because they're different things.  You can, and probably should, love things that you don't like.  Not liking something is a feeling you have based on yourself - your own preferences or values.  Love is entirely other-focused.  Love doesn't change based on what the other person does.

That's what I mean when I talk about learning to love the church.  When I left church-work to be a businessman at a ministry nonprofit, I actually left my church too.  For about a year and a half I hopped among a variety of churches.  I came back a few years ago because I felt God calling me to (it was part of the journey that inspires the title of this post).  It's taken me a while, however, to feel like I could love the church.  Still not sure I'm there, honestly.  And it doesn't stop at my church.  In my job we work with a number of broken churches, and I see some unfortunate situations.  I can look at many of them and think, "That's not the church that Jesus founded, that isn't what He wanted it to look like."  But I have to look at them and then think, "That's exactly the church that Jesus loves."  After all, that's what Jesus said.  He calls the Church as His bride, and there's going to be a wedding.

Some speakers have made much of the wedding traditions surrounding Jesus' culture when he called the Church His bride.  The marriage is arranged, and the "betrothed" are for all intents and purposes now married.  However, the groom leaves to go prepare a home, and the bride begins to prepare herself and the affairs of the wedding.  After a time, the groom comes back to get her, there's a procession to the new home, and then there's a huge party.  If we, therefore, are the bride of Christ, our role right now is to prepare ourselves.  I'm concerned, however, that in our (read: my) efforts to criticize the church into being what we think it ought to be, we've missed Christ's own instructions of what we are to be.

A Bible concordance search of the term "one another" leads to a quick survey of what God says the church should be like.  He doesn't, unfortunately, mention things in the way we wish ("Then Christ said, 'No church shall spend more than 50% of its annual budget on a new building.'").  He just doesn't.  Instead, He says:

"Be at peace with one another." - Mark 9:50

"How can you believe, when you receive glory from one another and do not seek the glory that comes from the only God?" - John 5:44

"You ought to wash one another's feet." - John 13:14

"Love one another: just as I have loved you, you also are to love one another." - John 13:34

"Outdo one another in showing honor." - Romans 12:10

"Live in harmony with one another." - Romans 12:16

"Welcome one another as Christ has welcomed you." - Romans 15:7

"To have lawsuits at all with one another is already a defeat for you.  Why not rather suffer wrong?  Why not rather be defrauded?" - 1 Corinthians 6:7

"When they measure themselves by one another and compare themselves with one another, they are without understanding." - 2 Corinthians 10:12

"Aim for restoration, comfort one another, agree with one another, live in peace." - 2 Corinthians 13:11

"Through love serve one another." - Galatians 5:13

"Bear one another's burdens." - Galatians 6:2

"Be kind to one another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another, as God in Christ forgave you." - Ephesians 4:32

"...bearing with one another and, if one has a complaint against another, forgiving each other..." - Colossians 3:13

"Encourage one another and build one another up, just as you are doing." - 1 Thessalonians 5:11

"See that no one repays anyone evil for evil, but always seek to do good to one another and to everyone." - 1 Thessalonians 5:15

"Let us consider how to stir up one another to love and good works." - Hebrews 10:24

"Do not speak evil against one another, brothers...Do not grumble against one another, brothers." - James 4:11 and 5:9

"Confess your sins to one another and pray for one another." - James 5:16

"Show hospitality to one another without grumbling.  As each has received a gift, use it to serve one another." - 1 Peter 4:9-10

"Clothe yourselves, all of you, with humility toward one another." - 1 Peter 5:5

"Beloved, if God so loved us, we also ought to love one another." - 1 John 4:11

I give such a long list on purpose.  If you just read a third of them and then skipped to this paragraph, go back and read them.  I know that's what you did, because that's what I always do.  In addition to being a great list of instructions - each one that could convict each of us at different moments - together as a whole they paint a great picture.  Even with omitting the verses that repeat a call to love one another (there's a lot), we can still see a picture of great love.  It's overwhelming love, in fact.  Counter-cultural love.  And it's the love that I'm not very good at, which is why I'm writing this post.

If we are thankful that God, through Christ, accepted us as we were - as messed up, broken people - then we ought to do the same for our brothers and sisters....and for our churches.  If we accept Christ's forgiving love, but judge our churches for not measuring up, the Spirit is quenched within us.  We are not allowing It to work, and we are being bullies.  You can't be forgiven a great debt then turn around and demand payment from others.  In the same way those of us who are married know that, when we were engaged to our spouses, we knew we were marrying very imperfect people.  We loved them anyways.  Christ is engaged to the Church, and He knows it's really messed up.  If we seek to be more like Christ, we will seek to love the Church the way He does.  He doesn't give up on the church and put His energy in parachurch ministries.  It's through the Church that God reaches into the world, and I would even go so far as to de-capitalize that and say that it's through the local church that God reaches into the world.  If we minister to people but never connect them to a church, we are not ministering fully to them.

Just to be clear for us ministry folks, I do not believe that we have to connect people to megachurches, or even mid-sized churches.  I believe there is a lot of promise in home-based churches, just like they looked for much of the first century of the Church.  But we must establish churches if we won't connect new disciples to existing ones.  We cannot live and operate as Christians seeking to do ministry without engaging with the local church.

So, back to me.  I frequently don't love the church.  Disagreements over direction, actions, priorities, and more cause me to put up a wall, and sometimes when I show up on Sunday morning my heart is far from ready to worship God.  This is my sin.  My job on Sunday morning is to worship God.  Anything I've let distract me from that has become, by definition, an idol.  I need not gloss over challenges, but I must not become disgruntled, cynical, or divisive.  None of this means that we can't disagree strongly with a brother or sister at a voter's meeting.  It has to do with our attitudes, not our preferences.  This is how I'm learning to love the church, despite the challenges.

What can we do?

1. We need to reconsider our mental states on Sunday morning as we drive to church.  It's easy to focus on the things we don't like, or the people we don't like.  As we drive to church, we need to redirect our thoughts to, "I look forward to being with God this morning, and I'm thankful for the unique opportunity that my church gives me for that."  We can of course be with and worship God any time.  The music, the sermon, the sacraments, and the community, however, are unique.
2. We need to accept one another in brotherly love.  We don't have to agree or even entirely like each other.  When I read the list of instructions above, however, I see a family.  We love each other despite our disagreements and differences.  Christ accepted the ugliness that I was and am, and I ought to similarly accept others.  If I'm avoiding somebody on Sunday morning or harboring anger, the love of Christ is not in me.  A disagreement I'm having with someone should not even begin to affect the warm handshake or hug with a smile that I offer them at church (what's the modern translation of a holy kiss, anyone?).
3. We need to spend real time together.  If I'm really generous with my time and get to church 15 minutes before the service starts, and leave 10 minutes after it ends, that's only 25 minutes I've granted to the community, likely with at least a dozen people.  How much relationship, or honesty, or love, have I shared in the 2 minutes I had with each person?  Almost none.  Unity, which Christ calls us to, requires honesty, and honesty is impossible with these sorts of shallow relationships.

Practical Advice for Managing your To-Do List

I've been asked by some people for my system of organizing my tasks that I've developed.  Over the past several years of working at LINC North Texas, my job description has continually had more and more things added to it.  I work in a variety of different areas and tasks at once, constantly juggling projects as diverse as building maintenance to accounting reports, and from video production to researching in scholarly journals.  I've had to constantly have an eye toward enhancing my capacity, continually monitoring and giving myself feedback to improve.  I believe that anyone can grow their own ability to work efficiently and effectively.

One common criticism is that personality rules the day when it comes to effectiveness at work.  This is undoubtedly true, and different types of responsibilities also require different ways of managing work.  If your job is to develop relationships, the way you organize your work will look very different from someone whose job is to keep the wheels of a warehouse running.  However, whether the task is a person or a form, it's still a task, and it still needs to be managed well.  My own personality isn't nearly as high-organization as you'd think - my dominant characteristic is relational and I chafe in high-detail organization and management duties.  Still, here's a few of the things I've learned, with my own systems included for example.  Hopefully there are universal applications in some of these things, and some adaptation can work for a variety of different types of personalities and roles.

1. Environment matters.

The very definition of productivity.

Or is this your preferred work environment (Jack included)?

It's not surprising, but the environment you're in makes an enormous difference in how productive you are.  I, as an extrovert and team-oriented person, shrivel into near-worthlessness if I'm stuck alone for 8 hours...unless I have a single, exciting, and results-bound project to work on.  If I know I'm going to be alone in the office, I can't have 5 different minor tasks planned, or some really mundane data entry, or a long-range ongoing maintenance task that will never go away.  It needs to have a definite finish point.  I also know that my mindset will be affected by the clothes I wear.  If I wear jeans and a polo, I have a very different mindset at my desk than in a dress shirt and slacks.  It's just subconscious.  Lighting matters, though in the office I'm in I am unable to make it what I want it to be.  I could go on, but you get the point.

Organize your physical space as well.  I have 4 different types of papers that I constantly deal in - bills, contributions, receipts, and HR papers.  So I have 4 filing trays for them, plus a fifth for other stuff that I should probably hang on to for a while but don't want sitting out.  There's always those papers you are currently involved in, so I have one stack for those.  There's also always those papers you are working on, but you are waiting for something before they become relevant to you again.  Those go in a different stack so they don't clutter my direct workspace.  You can also think about what you're looking at.  Your mindset at work will be different if you're looking at a computer, a bookcase, a picture of your spouse, or a window.

Make sure some things are not immediately convenient to you.  Researchers have long known that sitting at a desk for long periods of time is not good for you in a variety of ways.  Frequently getting up will help you physically and also mentally.  For me, the copier and my files are in a different room.  I also recently removed the trash can from my desk.  I found that the majority of my stuff was recycling anyways, so now I have to get up every time I throw something away or recycle it.  A final note - figure out whether music helps you, and if so, what kind.  Music helps me a lot, but only if it's reasonably gentle and light on vocals.

2. Don't let things fall through the cracks.

One of the quickest ways to non-verbally inform a coworker that they are not important to you is to ignore them.  Whether it's not replying to an e-mail, or forgetting things they've asked you to do, when we let things slip through the cracks we are not just decreasing our effectiveness, we are letting our teammates down.  A little bit of systems thinking is necessary here.  How does communication happen in your workplace?  If e-mail is heavily used, you've got to become a master at managing your e-mail.  Set up a system for yourself - an e-mail in the Inbox means one thing, an unread item means another, an archived item still another thing.  Yes, you can mark items "unread"!  My system is not to delete something out of my inbox until no more input is needed.  Thus, my inbox constantly carries around a manageable list of items that will need followup at some point.

From time to time, audit yourself to see if things are falling through the cracks.  Think through the system - how could something get lost?  Patch any hole you think of with some kind of plan.  The solutions will be as varied as the problem and as varied as your personality.  Your workplace of course contributes to this.  I have one coworker who builds armies of different-colored post-it notes around her on her desk.  Everything is somewhere visible there.  If the communication in your workplace is more verbal, have a designated "meeting" notebook where you take notes every time you sit down to talk with someone.  Once you get back to your desk, incorporate the notes into some sort of a to-do list.  Which brings me to:

3. Manage your action items in three ways.

There are three ways of seeing your to-do list.  The first is as a broad overview of everything you are working on or need to work on.  This can include some very long-range projects and things that are permanently on your desk.  The second is as a "Steven Covey First Things First" way, where you identify and prioritize the things that need to get done.  The third is as a simple to-do list of what you plan to get done in a set period of time.  If you have a wide variety of responsibilities like me, employ all three methods for optimal effectiveness.  For me, I have a piece of paper permanently on my desk where I have a list of projects organized by area of my job.  Currently I have 4 large sections, 12 projects, and 21 action steps on it.  I also have other areas of the page marked out as a shopping list (since I do purchasing for the team), as a "parking lot" (things I'd like to do someday, but not for a while), and for "open items" with my supervisor that we need to discuss at some point.

For the second way of seeing the list, I flip to the back side of that list of projects.  I have five weeks at a time (that's how much fits on the page).  For each working day over the five weeks, I decide on one "goal" for the day.  One project that will be the majority of my focus for the day.  I usually plan out the week on Monday, sometimes leaving the last day or two to plan once I get closer to be more flexible.  I've learned which days I won't accomplish any big tasks on, and I've learned each week needs a "catch up" day for all the little things that didn't fit elsewhere.

For the third way of seeing it, I keep an online "to-do" list.  It's a daily list.  Each day before I go home I plan the next day's to-do list, based off my first two planning pages.  If something didn't get done, I leave it on there for the next day.  Over time you learn to realistically understand how much you can get done with the other demands that will appear unexpectedly.

These ways of seeing your tasks will vary widely based on your role and personality.  I have known people who have a list on their to-do of people - anyone who comes to mind that they want to connect with for any reason.  Your projects may take the form of questions or problems if your job requires more critical thinking.  Perhaps an entire day is devoted, not to "Do all the expense reports," but to "How do I improve the teamwork within the accounting department?"  An entire week may be dedicated to "What can we do to regain market share?"

In conclusion....

This is all about finding something that works for you.  These general headings are universal - environment, plugging the holes, and managing tasks.  The systems, however, will be widely varied.  The one constant throughout, however, is awareness.  You have to be aware of your own systems, however they've developed.  Not having a plan is, in fact, a system in itself, though an inefficient one.  Improving capacity and effectiveness in these ways will take some time and some creative thinking, and some time developing the systems.  You may have to do some major cleanup of your e-mail box, or design a Word document you can use as a graphical illustration of projects.  This kind of work, however, will always prove worthwhile.  Covey calls it "sharpening the saw," as you are taking time away now to make your future work better and easier.