The True Self

It seems more clear all the time that who I really am has been encrusted over the years by layers and layers of self-protection. This is what the contemplatives call the artificial self or the false self.  What also seems just as clear is that openness to realism and honesty about who I've become is the only path to finding rest in God.

Thomas Merton said, " The first step toward finding God, Who is Truth, is to discover the truth about myself: and if I have been in error, this first step to truth is the discovery of my error."

OK, but how am I to find the truth about myself? I was taught that the path to this revelation is the Scriptures -- they will guide me to the core. And in part this is true. But, what I am beginning to discover is that the Word can take me only so far, and what is actually needed is some sort of revealing and healing from the Spirit of the living Christ. 

Said another way, I weary of carrying this body of death around on my back. I weary of always protecting my ideas and programs and ego. But, how to let it go? I cannot seem to do so on my own.

In my experience, the only way of healing is the sustained silence of contemplative prayer. Whatever personal healing and the resultant spirituality I have in my life, I have experienced through the gift of silence in this "letting go" prayer. What this practice has succeeded in showing me is just how destitute I am spiritually, and just how wounded I am as a person, which I believe is the first, but painful, step to healing. Quoting Merton again, "Pride makes us artificial and humility makes us real." Humility is the first step, and honesty about oneself will humble us every time, but most of the time the truth of who we really are is much too painful. That is, we must have help to gaze on it.

What is also interesting is something I discovered without looking for it. I have found something I have talked about for others but never expected for myself. I have found hints of God's love waiting for me in the silence and the self-darkness. It seems I still flinch at the my ugliness, but God does not have the same problem. I am finding that he can look at me as I really am.

The Last Generation

On this Sunday past I presented to our church what I see as our challenges and our future. I did this as part of our Lenten journey, which theme this year is emphasizing taking responsibility, and which meant this time our conversation described the need for us to take responsibility for our church.

Our challenges are not unlike those facing other churches our size and age. They are mostly demographic -- the numbers are against us -- and they ask how we will respond to the fact that our church is rapidly aging? The upshot of this challenge is simple: In the next ten years we will have many funerals and even more retirements. Add to this the several younger families who have left for the greener pastures of the mega-church and you see how this means that, unless some sort of discontinuous change occurs, I am pastoring the final generation of this 75 year old congregation. It's difficult to reach any other conclusion.

And this is the point with what I closed my message on Sunday morning, saying, even if we are in fact the final generation, we are not called to worry about that fact. Our calling, if we are to be a Kingdom outpost in this small corner of the world, must mean we focus on one thing only -- mission, being found faithful and building the Kingdom of the Christ. That is, loving people, feeding the hungry (and these numbers are growing), and most importantly not worrying to attract people to the church. Instead, we minister to them as we have opportunity whether they ever walk into our building or not.

Often, I am privileged to meet with a man who will soon leave the area to plant a new church in the Southwest. He is excited and full of hope and faith. Usually, for a few hours after meeting with him I experience a time of wondering if this may be a direction that I need to consider. But then I remember my calling here to this blue-collar steel town.

My ten year anniversary at this church is very close, and what is interesting is that in the midst of all these challenges, I have no real desire to be anywhere else. This is a faithful church; a church with a great history of missions and ministry, and a great missional work that is still occurring. So, I am content. You see, these aging people need a pastor, too (even if he is aging as well), and this community needs this congregation.

Architecture For A New Church + Graphs

View more presentations from Mark Powell.

Finding Faith

In the March 24 edition of The Christian Century, the Reverend Jeffery Johnson offers a personal essay on the late John Updike. I have already shared my thoughts about this great man of letters when he died (go here), but the Reverend Johnson’s words provoked some additional thought, especially a reference he made to an essay Updike offered in a 1999 New Yorker magazine. The essay is entitled, The Future of Faith: Confessions of a Churchgoer, and what with the Reverend Johnson's brief quotations and with the title of the essay, I was hooked. So, I went to the New Yorker site, found the article and purchased it.

First, let me say that the essay is a stark reminder of just what we lost with Updike's death. This writing is more evidence (if any is needed) that we're not likely to see another writer with his gifting. In fact, what seems to always drive his words -- and this essay is no exception -- is a relentless honesty about himself, and more to the point here, he is honest about the struggle to maintain faith -- for him a Christian faith -- within the frame of the modern/post-modern (obviously, my words, not his).

This means the essay carries with it the background music of a dirge. It is heavy with the scent of loss and of the idea-decay found in late, Western Christianity. In fact, one comes away from the reading with the distinct idea that Updike would like to have finally escaped the capture Christianity made of him as a youth, but he was unable to do so because he knew that the desire for most of us that there be, "something more" to the world evades all attempts at loosening ourselves from faith.

This reminds me of a comment I heard N.T. Wright make recently about why he thinks Dawkins and Hitchens and the like are writing militant anti-religious tomes. He believes it's because, to their disappointment, religion seems to be making a come back in the "secular" West.

Well, a comeback or no, the form of the faith found in Christendom will certainly not stage a revival. The world in which that faith grew to maturity is now lost and gone forever. Updike writes:

“Where many fathers, some of them described in late-Victorian novels, conveyed to their sons an oppressive faith that it was a joy to cast off, my father communicated to me, not with words but with his actions and mournful attitudes, a sense of the Christian religion as something weak and tenuous and in need of rescue.”

And later he confesses:

“...I maintain my own Christian connections, which have wound through three Protestant denominations but left little trace, I fear, in the spiritual lives of my children.”

All this, in turn, reminded me of a book title I saw one time: The Bold Alternative: Staying In The Church In The 21st Century. This idea of staying with the church indeed may be the most bold challenge facing us. The mainline churches are worst hit now with sagging attendance because they were the first hit within Christendom, but the carnage is far from over. Evangelical churches, and even mega-churches, once they finally cannibalize the weaker churches and those formerly Catholic, will likewise, finally, succumb as well. The tide is going out now, and nothing can stop it.

I would assert that the only hope for “the faith once delivered to the saints”, if it is to survive the next few generations in the West, and if it is still to be called "Christian", is to remind ourselves that what Jesus teaches us and most especially offers us is a new life and a new way to live. That is, we have been given the most precious gift of all in this life we have, and anything that undercuts this life, even and especially a form of Christianity, must be left behind.

Practically, this means that the calling of the church is not self-preservation or self-promotion. Instead, the calling of the church is life, the life of this world, the life of the person we know who does not have food or clothing or, well, life in abundance. We must love this world because we have no other. We must love this world because the calling to follow this first century carpenter includes the idea that all of life hinges on one life, and that community is comprised of bringing others to potential. Said another way, the politics of the moment -- whether republican or democrat -- pales in comparison to the the great gift we have been given of this world. Until we get this right, I see no reason for anyone to give us a second look.

Seeking the Lost

During afternoon prayer yesterday I was reminded of the Zacchaeus story in St. Luke's Gospel, chapter 19. You know the account. It's the story of a tax collector behaving badly, running amok with such a deep avarice that it finally led to all-out theft.

At the end of the account, St. Luke tells us that when Jesus decides to offer himself to the un-antiseptic risk, that of going into the home of the sinner and eating with him, "the crowds were displeased." But, Jesus here as in other places did not care for the crowd's opinion. That is, popularity and a following were not the goal.

OK, then, so what was the goal? The Evangelist tells us: "Jesus responded...I, the Son of Man, have come to seek and save those like him who are lost."

The roles are fairly straightforward here -- the Savior, the sinner and the crowd, but what might not be so clear is our place in the story. Rarely, would we place ourselves on the side of the crowd, but that is exactly where we are when with our mind if not with our mouth we assign someone or some group a place outside the circle of grace.

No doubt, most often we probably feel more aligned with the Savior, as those who are called to do his work, but we must be very careful here, as well. Our motive in any ministry endeavor is critical. So much so that things done to build our kingdom and not God's are certainly suspect.

Perhaps the least used role and the most appropriate is that of the sought for sinner. What comfort there is in the hope that the Savior still seeks those who are lost in avarice and theft. And how comforting to hope that the Savior is still hunting us out of trees and terraces, from backyard barbecues and designer boutiques, and (tell in not in Gath) even our churches.

While I understand the historic doctrine of justification, I also understand, personally, the on-going pursuit of the Savior for the lost man. Said another way, I do not presume with levity on the grace of God. Instead, I am grateful for the relentless truth that God can somehow hunt me down in spite of my stony heart, one that is hard from possessions and privilege. This means I probably need the Savior to seek me out everyday.

Take Our Moments and Our Days

I have recently discovered a new prayer book and I would like to recommend it to you. I have done this before (go here and here), having used the Liturgy of the Hours, the Common Book of Prayer, and Work of God with some regularity, but I am now using the anabaptist prayer book, Take Our Moments and Our Days. The layout is similar to the others just mentioned, but its flavor is somewhat more natural to me.

Some might ask why a prayer book? A prayer book offers the discipline of a daily "rule," (go here) or a daily structure to and for prayer. The ongoing routine allows one to create an inner drive toward prayer and an awareness of the sacred nature of the day, and the repeated practice allows one to easily find that daily, well-cut track toward the Holy. Likewise, using a prayer book such as the one here described, offers the one disciplined by it an opportunity to be touched by scriptures and shaped by them. This process is called lectio divina, or a sacred reading of the TEXT.

I began using this form of prayer after reading (and using) Robert Webber's book, The Prymer: The Prayer Book of the Medieval Era Adapted for Contemporary Use. Webber's adaptation deeply touched my prayer life, and the subsequent reading of other books, sought out as a result of this initial exposure to ancient prayer practices, changed my ministry.

Americans becoming less religious, study shows

what we know intuitively, and what the pew study opened to us, has now been confirmed and creased more deeply in a rather quiet and unobtrusive way. according to a major national survey released monday, americans are becoming less religious.

go here to download & go here for summary. I share a few of the highlights:

• # of people claiming no religious identity has risen 15% since 1990...
• while a few groups have grown the overall drop is significant...
• mainline denominations have been hardest hit...
• some groups have grown by offering emotional and personalized experiences...
• there is growing a greater tolerance for diversity while eschewing respect for authority...
• 27% of Americans do not expect to have a religious funeral...
  

this is just more evidence of what i call the great christendom crack-up (go here and here and here). there are serious questions facing the western church, questions we must ask ourselves -- and answer -- if we are are to come out of the great crack-up alive.  here are a few that i am currently asking myself and our church:

• Does the church have an identity or value apart from the kingdom?
• Is God concerned about the world or just my personal soul and the souls of my family?
• How do we connect with our City?
• What is God up to in our City, and what does God want to do here?
• Is being a good Christian measured by how many times we walk into a building?
• Are we just as much church when we are sent into the world as when we gather?
• If we really are the body of Christ, then how can we live in that reality? How can we live out that truth in our city, so that the city sees this truth?

Lenten Posts from my CCBlog Group

hey gang: 

what follows are some of the lenten posts for 2009 found in the CCBlog group of which i am a part. there is some excellent, thoughtful writing here:

Lent 2009
Don't Eat Alone     The Connection     Pastor's Post
Faith at Ease     Holy Vignettes     I-YOUniverse
Where the Wind    As the Deer     The Other Jesus
Mark Powell     Getting There     Ellen Haroutunian
Theolog     Welcoming Spirit    Living Word by Word
Where the Wind     Faith in Community     When Grace Happens
Theophiliacs J. Stambaugh     Theophiliacs A. Hunt     Everyday Liturgy
Available Light     Work in Progress     Allan Bevere
A Diner at the End of Time     The Painted Prayerbook     Just Words
The Church Geek     Breaking Fast on the Beach     The Pocket Mardis
Reflectionary     One Hand Clapping     Unorthodoxology

the reality of evil

this morning a man walked into the sanctuary of a sister-church in the community just north of us and shot the pastor, killing him. he was a husband and a father.  

Lent As Sacred Time

thinking about lent and the christian calendar i remember hearing os guinness talk about jean-francois millet's famous painting, the angelus. he made the point that the painting shows sacred time breaking into secular time. notice how the peasants pause from their normal routine when the church bells call them to prayer. in contrast, he notes how today, secular time breaks into sacred time when watches and phones ring or vibrate, reminding the congregation that 12 noon on sunday has been reached and it's time for the service to end.

dear LORD:

help me to allow sacred time to be the rhythm of my life. allow me to recognize each moment as sacred and as a gift. may i see that true spirituality includes all of life, not just some sunday morning activity. and may is see the beauty of your presence in the mundane, in the simple and in the usual routine. amen.

Reading Lent

reading for lent this year has led me back to thomas merton's book, Dialogues with Silence, which is actually a compilation of his prayers and drawings. i have read this several times, but not in several years, it having fallen behind a shelf and into obscurity. 

this book could easily be read in one sitting, but that defeats the idea of hearing the prayers of this contemplative as he wrestles with his relationship with God. if nothing else, the honesty contained in the prayer-words are very instructive in a lenten sense, showing how we should open ourselves to the gaze of the Almighty in a long established prayer pattern that comes from the earliest days of the faith.

what is in view here is the monastic idea of detachment, the example of which may be seen if we think about a text like this one:

1 John 2:15
Do not love the world or anything in the world. If you love the world, love for the Father is not in you.
1 John 2:16
For everything in the world--the cravings of sinful people, the lust of their eyes and their boasting about what they have and do--comes not from the Father but from the world.

the struggle here concerns the idea of detachment, how we allow the life-long callings of the Christ to impact our choices about wealth, and possessions; what the biblical materials call, "the world." 

when i think of detachment i think of the john michael talbot song, i abandon myself. this sunday past i put together some pictures with the song during my sunday morning conversation for the 1st sunday of lent:

of course, this detachment, this letting go, pushes us hard in the direction of lent, but one wonders if the life of detachment is possible in our world were multiplying attachments tie us hand and foot, and when even the speed of life alone shoves against time for silence and solitude. 

what must be remembered is what merton regularly reminds us, that the warp and woof of true spirituality is the consistent realization that God is not far away at all, as if the Almighty was off in the stars somewhere, but, in fact, he is as close as the air we breathe. so that the real movement of lent, ultimately, is attachment, attachment to the presence of the LORD.