Roots

I sat in a Jerry Rushford class (at Otter Creek Church) recently in which he talked about the need to maintain some of the great hymns of Christian faith in the repertoire of in-and-out Sunday worship gatherings. By "great hymns" he is not referring to hymns locked into the 1950's rhythm and verbiage (though not all of those are necessarily bad). He's referring to the hymns of John Wesley et al. Hymns that give the contemporary church deep roots. Hymns that remind us of the many men and women who've set out to follow the teachings of Jesus for almost two thousand years now.

During his class Rushford traced the history (Paul Harvey style) of well-known hymns. We followed his teaching by singing stanza's from each hymn.

I've noticed a shift in many of our students at Rochester College over the past few years. The ones who seem to be engaged on deep levels with the teachings of Jesus and his mission for them in the world--they are not satisfied with simply grabbing an emotional experience on Sunday morning. They view worship as part of their lives of confession. When they sing, for instance

O to grace how great a debtor.
Daily I'm consigned to be!
Let thy goodness, like a fetter,
Bind my wandering heart to thee.
Prone to wonder, Lord I feel it,
Prone to leave the God I love;
Here's my heart, O take and seal it,
Seal it for thy courts above!

. . . these students are connected to all the lips who confess God's presence in the precise incarnation of these words. If the church forgets where she comes from she will be a widow in the present and an orphan in the future.

Rushford ended his class with this remarkable line, "When the church flaunts here contemporaneity and disavows her roots with the past, she often limps when she was called to run."

Highlights of the Weekend

Kara, Lucas and I have been in Nashville recently, getting ready for our big move to Nashville to work with the Otter Creek Church. Here are some of the highlights from our recent trip.

1. Time with Otter Creek Church. Between meals with staff and elders, worship on Sunday, we felt a great sense of peace about the family we are joining and the mission of being the church together. I still have important work to do in Rochester over the next six weeks, but I'm eagerly anticipating joining the OC Leadership Team. I will be writing much more about this new adventure in the coming weeks and months.

2. Lowry Family. The Lowry Family hosted us while we were in town. They truly embody the gift of hospitality. My favorite moments were the passionate times of story in the family room while we devoured ice cream. The Lowry's vision for Lipscomb is palatable and exciting. I can't wait to see what the next several years look like at DLU.

3. Christian Scholars Conference. In addition to spending time with Otter Creek and house-hunting (more in a moment), I attended and participated in the Christian Scholars Conference. I'm biased, because Barbara Brown Taylor teaches where I'm doing my doctoral work, but her presentation on "The Power of Story in an Age of Twitter" was incredible. I have a writing class with her next week at Columbia Seminary. Needless to say, sending the pre-course writing assignments was the toughest e-mail I've sent in a long, long time.

I presented on a panel tackling the topic "Theological Education as Spiritual Formation." The discussion was lively and challenging. I'm still processing the implications of what it looks like for professors, in the words of Earl Lavender, to shift towards thinking of themselves as "missional coaches."

4. Tokens. Thursday night allowed us the space to finally be a part of Lee Camp's creative genius known as Tokens. Part Prairie Home Companion . . . part social commentary . . . set to incredible blue grass music . . . I describe Tokens as unassumingly subversive. Lee's interview with noted historian Hubert Locke was one of the highlights for me (Locke is from Detroit).

5. House Hunting. Let's just say we saw 31 houses. The house we got was the 31st house we walked through. Sara Barton was our arbitrator through this process. It was exhausting but worth it.

Soon, I'll write a blog about Jerry Rushford's class at Otter Creek Church on the role of hymns in our modern church experience. Powerful material.

Dear Lucas

My twin brother (Jason) holding Lucas
Kara's creative genius at work

His first Tigers hat

Kara made my first Father's Day a memorable one (as you can see from the previous two images). Here's part of the sermon from yesterday (Lucas's uncle Duncan held him on stage while I spoke this blessing over Lucas).

Dear Lucas,

You were born in a fascinating time, 2009. This is the year America swore in its first ever Black President. The Red Wings almost one another Stanley Cup and the Pistons learned how hard it is to replace a leader. North Korea is . . . well . . . being North Korea. Cold Play continues to dominate the music charts and television continues to put out better material than movies (when you are older I’ll tell you about a guy named Jack Bauer). Oprah still rules the world despite the fact that Al Gore invented the Internet. America is in the midst of two wars (Iraq and Afghanistan). Jay Leno is no longer the host of The Tonight Show. John Updike (famous writer), Chuck Daly (former coach of my favorite basketball team, the Detroit Pistons), Paul Harvey (America’s storyteller) and Hellen Suzman (Civil Rights advocate from South Africa) all died in 2009. It’s been an interesting year. What a time to be born!

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Christianity on the whole continues to struggle in the U.S. while the faith flourishes in South America (Pentecostal Roman Catholicism), parts of Asia and Africa (which now has more Christians than the U.S.). By the time you turn twenty-five, there might be less than 50 million Christians in the United States.

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I can’t wait to teach you to throw a two-seam fastball, how to defend someone who’s faster than you in basketball, the proper way to shave, the definition of a good book, the power of film, how to tell a story, and what it means to be dedicated servant. But more than all of those things, I have some specific prayers I bring to God on your behalf. These are the things that matter most to me. I hope this is a blessing to you as you grow in God’s Big World.

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I pray you will know God as your abba father. The Psalmist tells us that you were “fearfully and wonderfully made” Lucas. The Psalmist also tells us that God knew you in your mother’s womb. God is so passionate about you he has your name, not your initials because God cares about the details of life—God has your name tattooed on the palm of your hands. “Father” is Jesus’ chief metaphor for God. In Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount, he refers to God as “father” (abba) fifteen times. In his day, that was as scandalous as describing God as our “mother” today. The point was not so much about gender as an all-loving God who is interested in the details of our lives. There’s nothing you can do to cause me to love you more. There’s nothing you can do to cause me to love you less. No matter where you go, or what you do, I promise that I will try to be the kind of father who points you toward the Father Jesus so beautifully embodied.

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I pray you will, as a result of knowing God as father, have Sunday eyes, loving people without conditions. You are entering a world that is drunk on division. We try to divide and create tribes for any possible reason. You will be tempted to allow racism, sexism; classism, elitism, and bias enter into your heart. Those attitudes are not from God for God has no “grandchildren” or “stepchildren”—only children created in his image. Friday eyes see people for who they are. Sunday eyes allow you to see people for who will one day become. Paul said that when we are immersed in the Jesus Story we are a new creation, therefore we see others in a completely new light. I will try to model this in front of you as I interact with others.

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I pray you will be a risk-taker. If you want to be a concert pianist, be the best concert pianist you can be. If you want to build homes in Trujillo, Honduras, be the best carpenter you can be. If you want to practice medicine, do so with every ounce of energy. Whatever you do, don’t play it safe or give in to the societal pressures to “have it all” and live the “American dream.” Whatever you do, do it as if you are doing it for Jesus himself. I promise to not be the dad who lives my dreams through you . . . Even if that means I give up sports to learn the intricacies of concert pianists.

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I pray you will possess a deep humility. You are entering a world under siege. Evil and sin do not reside “out there” among “them.” Rather, the Bible teaches us that evil runs right through the middle of us. As you grow older, you will make mistakes. You will make choices that will hurt yourself and others. The more you own your secrets and scars the less your secrets and scars will own you. Jesus teaches us to be the same person in secret as we are in public. His brother was so moved by this teaching he told a group of Christians that “confessing sins to each other” was vital in the spiritual life (James 5:16). I promise to emulate this by sharing my own shortcomings with you.

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I bless you today with every ounce of fiber inside of me. As you grow in God’s big world may you come to know that you will only find rest when you rest in God. May you become the person God dreamed you to be when he gave you to your mother and I. God’s gift to you is your life. What you choose to do with your life is a gift back to him. I will never be the same because of your presence in my life.

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Peace,





Dad



P.S. I know the "---" are not grammatically correct but it's the only way I could format the page for blogger. If blogger no longer exists by the time you are old enough to care, I tell you more about it.

Christian Scholars Conference at Lipscomb University

One of my alma maters, Lipscomb University, is hosting the Christian Scholars' Conference in Nashville Thursday through Saturday. The conference's focus is "the power of narrative." Thus, the speaker line-up (Locke, Robinson, Taylor, and Collins) reads like Cabrera, Pujols, Fielder, and Jeter for baseball fans. 

The largest newspaper in Tennessee did a fantastic piece on the conference recently. Click here to read the entire piece. Here's a snippet.

Those who equate religion with guilt and repression will welcome recent surveys that chart declines in traditional faith.

But religion's decline, if it happens, means other grand narratives must pick up the slack. What will emerge to infuse life and civilization with meaning if the old spirituality recedes?

Society flirts now with the removal of a whole set of ancient coordinates — belief in the soul, the power of blessing, the wisdom of the past, the mystery of an invisible God who oversees history, and a moral code that respects inwardness, practices courtesy and condemns cruelty.

If those fade, then what? The world scrambles to find replacements — conspiracy theories, anti-semitism, the dream of winning the lottery or becoming a high-maintenance celeb. Science becomes the new faith.

Writer Marilynne Robinson says that won't work.

If you think this focus sounds interesting, you need to make plans to attend another Lipscomb Conference led by David Fleer in October. I'm proud that my alma mater is taking the task seriously to incorporate the story of God into the emerging cultural landscape. 

Life and Art

Stephen King is arguably the most popular fiction writer in recent American memory. In his memoir/guide to becoming an effective writer, he warns the writer that might me tempted to shape their life around their craft instead of their craft around their life.

I suggest the metaphor works well for academicians, pastors, teachers, athletes, writers, and anyone else who tends to become addicted to their "craft" at the expense of those closest to them (something I regularly confess to . . . though I have to admit that since Lucas's arrival, I have done almost no serious writing and I'm perfectly content with that . . . for now).

King begins by talking about the massive oak desk that sat, for six years, in the center of his writing room.

For six years I sat behind that desk either drunk or wrecked out of my mind, like a ship’s captain in charge of a voyage to nowhere. King confesses the chaos that this led to, the sheer egocentric view of life that ultimately tore his personal and family life apart.

A year or two after I sobered up, I got rid of that monstrosity and put it in a large living-room suite where it had been, picking out the pieces and a nice Turkish rug with my wife’s help. In the early nineties, before they moved on to their own lives, my kids sometimes came up in the evening to watch a basketball game or a movie and eat pizza. They usually left a boxful of crust behind when they moved on, but I didn’t care. They came, they seemed to enjoy being with me, and I know I enjoyed being with them. I got another desk—it’s handmade, beautiful and half the size of the T. rex desk. I put it at the far west end of the office, in a corner under the eave . . . It starts with this: put your desk in the corner, and every time you sit down there to write, remind yourself why it isn’t in the middle of the room. Life isn’t a support system for art. It’s the other way around.

See Stephen King, On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft (New York: Scribner Publishers, 2000), 101-102.

MISC.

Excellent article on Tim Keller's passion for Manhattan. I love the "localness" of Keller's gospel. It's good and right.

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You can listen to a dialogue sermon Patrick Mead and I did on "heaven" (May 3rd) from a scientific (Patrick) and theological (moi) perspective. I also did the first week in this series (April 19th) at Rochester Church.

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I really appreciate Barbara Brown Taylor's question in An Altar in the World: "What is saving my life right now? What is saving my life today?" For me the answer changes. Today: Kara's love for Lucas is saving me today. Definition of save--rescue from my propensity to live according to the wrong story. That is, I play the wrong part, I take on the wrong role.

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Rochester College has launched a MRE degree in missional church leadership. Mike Cope wrote a good blog about this recently. Mark Love is a perfect fit to lead this focus and for Rochester College in general. The program can be done long distance. If you are a minister/lay person interested in learning more about the missional church perspective, you will want to investigate this program.

Lucas in Real Time

Here's a short video for our family and friends Kara put together last night per Lucas's birth. Enjoy!

Lucas Joshua from Kara Graves on Vimeo.