diacrisis

John Chandler writes:

I love this idea, but I must admit it is still threatening to me as well. What does it mean for me to pastor a community of people that are so engaged outside of the church that it can’t be measured? How can we shape a community that celebrates well the stories of what is happening outside of our structured times together?

Jesus and Paul seemed to foster engaged communities just fine and they didn't even have cell phones. If your definition of "pastor" doesn't coincide with what Jesus, the shepherd did with his sheep then I urge you to consider whether you've allowed your culture to dictate that role more than your ultimate role model has.

In short, we've allowed our pastors to become pale imitations of CEO's, setting "vision" for churches, managing professional Christian staffs, maximizing stakeholder value, and running Robert's Rules of Order into the ground. Jesus didn't have a vision other than "get back in the Kingdom, you stupid lost sheep." He had a "professional staff" of fishermen and tax-collectors, not MFC's and MBA's. He promoted and modeled sacrifice. And as far as I can tell, he never ran a business meeting.

You know, Ephesians 4 does mention some gifted church roles other than pastor: apostle, prophet, evangelist, teacher. How many churches do you know of that have an apostle or prophet on staff? I mean in their title. Doesn't that sound kooky and anachronistic? "Mornin, Apostle Frank!" "How are you, Evangelist Dorothy?" But I've been in plenty of churches where "Pastor Mike" was a perfectly normal appellation, and even some where you could hear people say things like, "oh, didn't Pastor give a great sermon today?" Why don't we give the same weight to the other gifts/roles?

You might even argue that the others should receive more attention, since they come first and word order can imply importance in Greek. You could also argue that the roles mentioned in Ephesians aren't a perfect bulleted list; the particles change in such a way that the categories probably should be read as "he gave some to be...:

• apostles, yes

• but also prophets

• but also evangelists
• but also shepherds-and-teachers"

...as if "shepherds and teachers" are nearly equivalent.

So, how can you "shape a community"? You can't. You can guide it. You can say, "the pasture of the kingdom is over there, guys." Don't even get me started on our fascination with measurement.

You want to celebrate stories? Ditch the "structured times". Tell me how much of the Old Testament consists of, "and then Hishbah the high priest went up to the altar and prayed the same prayer he prayed the week before, and gave the same offerings, and lo it was recorded in this book to be repeated at feasts forever." Structure grounds stories, but the stories worth celebrating are always about deviance from those structures.

Try this: duck the relentless pressure from stockholders, CEO's, and Bible college professors to "build something that lasts". Try making a church that has no Platonic existence outside of the people who minister and those whom they serve right now. We build social systems to insulate us from the poor judgment of tyrants, and are then surprised to find we are equally insulated from the good judgment of saints in creative works of service.

If you look at organizations throughout history, they're rarely started by teachers--start your new community with an apostle, prophet or evangelist instead.

Our Russia team was not allowed to mention the word "God" on their recent trip to orphanages there, but was allowed to say things like, "the Creator of the world said such and such." This forced them to rediscover some of the titles God has had throughout history.

What is the Biblical precedent for labeling the persona of God?

In an excellent essay, Michael Gilleland demonstrates that it was considered rude for a disciple (of, for example, Jesus) to utter the name of their superior, whether to his face or when absent, but elevating when the Teacher mentioned the name of the underling. I don't feel the need to defend Saint Benedict, as the author apparently does, but the analysis of asymmetric forms of address between superiors and underlings in hierarchic societies is top-notch.

Is it a dishonor yet today to call Christ by the name "Jesus" instead of Lord, Teacher, Master? Postmodern Western society would certainly say it isn't. I know lots of Christians who prefer to value Jesus' pronouncement that we are his friends over those more asymmetric roles, but even that passage says we're his friends (φίλοι) if we do what he commands us. So there's still some inequality involved.

Look, your parents were authoritarian and saw clear boundaries between acceptable behavior for peer interaction and acceptable behavior for interaction with superiors and underlings. So in your rebellion you've spent your whole life fighting that, and now teach your kids those lessons at every opportunity. The funny part is that you're overloading them to the point that they will reject your lassez-faire approach to religion, and will respond by fighting for more austere forms of religion. So don't be surprised when your kids mention the name of Jesus less and less. You may interpret their preference of "Lord" over "Jesus" as a slide into Docetism or form criticism, but if you rarely use the word "Lord", you may simply be at the opposite extreme, for "...no one can say, "Jesus is Lord," except by the Holy Spirit" I Cor 12:3b. Even the demons know his name; maybe their use of his name as an address was an insult.

How far should we allow our culture to dictate our relationship with Christ? Should we carry our American appetite for iconoclasm over to the very person of God and make him our best buddy? I'd prefer to say "no" but I'm a tiny grape in front of the steamroller of progress. What I can do is choose myself to address and discuss the Christ with respect.

"Please turn in your Bibles to..."

Heard that one before? Oh, every sermon ever? Yeah.

I don't want to knock the good people who have donated so much time and money to buying Bibles for their local church pews, but is it really a good idea to have your entire congregation reading the Sunday passage off a page? Maybe I'm just lazy, but in case you didn't notice, someone always reads it aloud anyway. And here I am using my own oculomotor nerves like a sucker.

Stop reading along in your Bibles in church. Listen instead of reading.

Text spoken by another is more understandable than text which is read to oneself. I proved this when I ran my spontaneous Shakespeare company; there were plenty of occasions when a spontaneous actor would read lines aloud from a script and not understand those words themselves, yet the audience understood them quite well (and that was Shakespearian English!). Studies of aphasic injury to Wernicke's area show us that subvocalization is critical to understanding what we read with our eyes, but there's something about actually hearing audible words that makes that comprehension more resonant.

When hearing speech, our other senses (especially the kinesthetic) produce an associated emotional response that aids in comprehension. Reading, which requires us to minimize movement and the distractions of our other senses, can't do that. Reading printed text can also lead to "passive" reading, where the visual cortex processes symbols but the auditory/semantic processing is quiescent. Surely you've done this many times, especially with the Bible and especially with well-known verses--you read a passage and are completely unable to explain or even remember what you read just moments before.

Closing your Bible and listening will do several things:

1. Increase your understanding.
2. Express solidarity with the billions (trillions?) of Christians throughout history who never got to read the Bible.
3. You'll understand better the actions and reactions of Biblical characters, most of whom rarely read, if at all. Jesus' audience for the Sermon on the Mount had no recording equipment other than their own ears. You might also start to believe that oral traditions can actually be better transmitters of semantics than written ones, which tend to transmit syntax more accurately.
4. You can use it as an opportunity to improve your phonographic memory. But keep in mind that memorization can actually reduce comprehension--recollection from memorized text can actually skip some of the semantic-processing portions of the brain.

Ignorance is strength, and that ignorance is maintained through shared hatred, triumph, and self-abasement, so maybe I'm crazy for asking you to experience more emotional impact during a sermon. Definitely read the passages again in the pew or at home until you've supported whatever febrile spirit-led conclusion your pastor threw out this time. But take the opportunity every Sunday to focus your attention on the spoken word when it's read for you.

"Jesus Christ" has two connotations in English, both of them bad. Either:

1. It's a common curse, or
2. It sounds like "Christ" is Jesus' surname.

Both of them get worse when you add the middle initial "H".

So please stop saying it. I recommend using one of the following instead:

1. Christ Jesus
2. Jesus the Christ
3. Jesus the Messiah

Odd how so many old hymns prefer #1 to "Jesus Christ".

Previously, I wondered if speech was a critical component in our talkingtogod. I posed the question, "what if God can't hear you unless you pray out loud?"

That question was facetiously rhetorical. But now we get to the question of vows. Here's Deut 23:21-23:

When you make a vow to the LORD your God, you shall not delay to pay it, for it would be sin in you, and the LORD your God will surely require it of you. However, if you refrain from vowing, it would not be sin in you. You shall be careful to perform what goes out from your lips, just as you have voluntarily vowed to the LORD your God, what you have promised.

Ah so. Note particularly the mention of lips. Actual heard vocalization is the issue here, folks. If you think it, who cares; if you speak it, it's binding.

There's even a whole category of offerings for this--if you've ever read the phrase "votive offering" in your Bible and never bothered to look it up, it means a sacrifice given in fulfillment of a vow. For example, here's Judges 11:30-31:

Jephthah made a vow to the LORD and said, "If You will indeed give the sons of Ammon into my hand, then it shall be that whatever comes out of the doors of my house to meet me when I return in peace from the sons of Ammon, it shall be the LORD'S, and I will offer it up as a burnt offering."

Too bad that "first thing" was his only daughter. But he kept his vow. Is that at odds with your concept of what God approves of? Could he really prefer vow-keeping over a human life? I like what Alan Friedman (pdf) has to say on this point: "A person who invokes a neder (vow) or a sh’vuah (oath) places upon himself, upon others, or upon objects a status equal to a commandment from the Torah... "Giving one’s word," then, is not so much a point of honor as it is a sacred and binding obligation... breaking a pledge — that is, desecrating one’s word — is not just a personal failure; it is a chillul ha-Shem, a profanation of God’s holy Name." In our Society of Fairness we easily forget that punishment "was always...the sovereign's personal vendetta. The excess of punishment had to respond to the excess of the crime and triumph over it" (Abnormal, pp 82-3, but the subject is covered in much more detail in Discipline and Punish).

The power of speech is so strong that Jesus contradicts the words of the Father:

Again, you have heard that the ancients were told, 'YOU SHALL NOT MAKE FALSE VOWS, BUT SHALL FULFILL YOUR VOWS TO THE LORD.' But I say to you, make no oath at all... But let your statement be, 'Yes, yes' or 'No, no'; anything beyond these is of evil.

"The ancients were told" by God himself. I shouldn't have said "contradict" because you all think God never changes and I'm going to be stoned. But too late now. At any rate, Jesus still apparently allows people to speak aloud. I've heard many exegetes claim that he meant your 'yes' and 'no' should be as strong as oaths anyway, so the oaths are superfluous. I don't think that's right, given the Deuteronomy context; rather, he seems to be saying (along with a whole lot of other Rabbis) that speech at the obligation/binding-level of vows is to be avoided completely.

Aside: I have to laugh at Barnes' conflation of oaths with profanity. It really is quite comical and... quaint. I think it's pretty obvious that Jesus is deprecating true oaths as well as false ones. Matthew Henry missed it badly, too, and thinks Jesus means "oath" as calling God as a witness to the truth, instead of "oath" as a promised human act of sacrifice.

So, bottom line: don't ever make promises to God out loud, but if you ever do by mistake, you damn well better keep your promise. If you make promises to him in your head, fine--that's just neurons firing away in blissful irresponsibility. Don't sweat it.