On foolishness and rash statements

In case you're wondering…

I have no public statement about Pat Robertson's recent comments, other than to say: pastors make foolish and rash statements often. All of us. This is why the Bereans were commended. Pat Robertson is no exception.

Preparing for death

I recently finished reading Eugene Peterson's memoir, The Pastor. It was excellent! So nourishing to my soul, and both encouraging and insightful at the same time.

Toward the end, I was struck by the immense profundity of chapter 35, entitled, "Good Deaths". Here is an excerpt:

"Jan and I were visiting a Benedictine monastery, Christ in the Desert, in New Mexico. One of the brothers was leading us on a path from prayers in the chapel to the refectory where we would have lunch. The path led through the cemetery. We passed an open grave.
Jan said, "Oh, did one of the brothers die?"
"No, that is for the next one."
Three times a day, on their way from praying together to eating together, the monks are reminded that one of them will be "the next one."
And I was reminded that there is a long tradition in the church's life that the pastoral vocation consists in preparing people for "a good death." That tradition does not flourish in the American church. The widespread "denial of death" (Ernest Becker) that suffuses American culture now permeates the Christian church. But death, whether as metaphor, "I die daily," or as physical fact, "Blesses are those who die in the Lord," is given a lot of attention in our scriptures.
Resurrection does not have to do exclusively with what happens after we are buried or cremated. It does have to do with that, but first of all it has to do with the way we live right now. But as Karl Barth, quoting Nietzsche, pithily reminds us: "Only where graves are is there resurrection." We practice our death by giving up our will to live on our own terms. Only in that relinquishment or renunciation are we able to practice resurrection.
Eugene Peterson, The Pastor (New York: HarperOne, 2011), pp. 289-290.

I find that assertion both a high bar to reach for, and at the same time a gentle truth that causes me to rest a bit. And I find the idea of the pastoral vocation as preparing people for "good deaths" a fitting and apt description of what I am called to do, what I try to do with every encounter with my congregation's members, every prayer on their behalf, and every word spoken in proclamation of Scripture.

What will carry us from this point to the point of our consummation with Christ's glory? How will we live in light of the hope— or despair— that is ours based on our great need for something beyond ourselves, and Christ's redeeming work to meet that need? These are the ideas that permeate preparing for a good death.

Recipe #3: Ice Cream (home-made)

Every summer since I have been at Hickory WIthe Presbyterian Church (and for many summers as a youth minister), I have taken pleasure in making home-made ice cream for my congregation(s). Every summer, also, some people ask for the recipe for the custard I use in making the ice cream.

My recipe was given to me by my dear friend, Anne Burguet, when I first started doing this (probably during the summer of 1995). I love it, because it doesn't require cooking the custard before making the ice cream. Here's the recipe:

No-Cooking Homemade Ice Cream

Ingredients
2 cups Sugar
14 oz. Can Condensed Milk
2 Tbsp. Vanilla Extract
6 Eggs, beaten
1 pint Whipping cream
1 pinch Salt
Whole Milk

Directions
1. Beat eggs.
2. Mix sugar, condensed milk, vanilla extract, whipping cream, and eggs together thoroughly. Pour mixture into churn canister.
3. Insert the dasher into the canister. Add any other ingredients (fruit, chocolate, etc.) to the canister, then add milk. Fill to the indicated line.
4. After closing the canister and attaching the motor, pack the churn with salt and ice. Plug in, adding more ice and salt as needed.
5. When churn stops (or after 35-45 minutes of churning), unplug the churn and remove the canister. Carefully remove the dasher, scraping ice cream from it as you lift it out.
6. Cover with the lid and freeze for 1-4 hours, as preferred. Ice cream will probably be soft; serve in bowls.

Notes:
This recipe is very flexible; add just about whatever you like to it. It works great with fruit, and also with many sweet things.

A few sweet combinations I have tried that work well are: Oreos (crushed); M&Ms; coffee chocolate-chip; mint chocolate chip; peppermint patty.

If you're using cookies or candy, try freezing them ahead of time; this makes it easy to break them into pieces (and less likely that they will simply dissolve in the ice cream custard).

If you're adding fruit, cut into very small chunks ahead of preparation. Sprinkle with a light coat of sugar, and refrigerate for a few hours.

Another variation is to try different kinds of extracts instead of (or in addition to) vanilla. I've tried 1 TBSP of peppermint extract (replacing 1 of the TBSP of vanilla) with good effect.

Sermon texts for September 2011

Here are the sermon texts for HWPC for the month of September:

9/4— Acts 12:25-13:12 (Spreading the Word)
9/11— Acts 13:13-52 (Stirring Up the City)
9/18— Acts 14:1-28 (Resistance & Advance)
9/25— Acts 15:1-35 (General Assembly)

Books for August 2011

The Return of the Prodigal Son by Henri J.M. Nouwen

My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Once again, I found this book to be great food for my soul. Nouwen is so tender and pastoral, so vulnerable and honest in his self-analysis and its application to the life of a Christian. Having read and appreciated a number of his other titles, I consider this one among his finest.


View all my reviews

Bits and Tidbits, August 2011

• Tattly Temporary Tattoos. Do your kids (or you!) like to wear temporary tats? Here's a site where you can design your own! (Or choose from a collection of other user-designed ones, many of them quite clever.)
• 10 Cool Star Wars-Themed T-Shirts. Another clever user-created collection, this one extending the apparently-eternal Star Wars franchise. Some of these are quite funny.
• 50 Completely Useless Signs. Needs no explanation. Many are hilarious.
• Beware Romantic Pornography. Here's a great piece from the Gospel Coalition, discussing some of the difficulties of "romantic comedies" and how movies often skew our expectations of relationships.
• The 24 Types of Libertarian. Political cartoons always catch my eye. Are there more types than these? Maybe so— I can imagine some hybrids of these. Perhaps these are the 24 base types.

Assuming the gospel

[M]any Christians assume the gospel . . . but are passionate about something on the relative periphery: abortion, poverty, forms of worship, cultural decay, ecology, overpopulation, pornography, family breakdown, and much more. By labeling these complex issues 'relatively peripheral' I open myself to attack from as many quarters as there are subjects on the list. For example, some of those whose every thought is shaded green will not be convinced that the ecological problems we face are peripheral to human survival. But I remain quite unrepentant. From a biblical-theological perspective, these challenges, as serious as they are, are reflections of the still deeper problem - our odious alienation from God. If we tackle these problems without tackling what is central, we are merely playing around with symptoms. . . . [W]hat does it profit us to save the world from smog and damn our own souls?

--D. A. Carson, "The Biblical Gospel," p. 83 of For Such a Time as This (HT: Dane)

Inconsistency in opposition to civil unions

I understand why many Christians oppose "marriage" when it comes to gays and lesbians. As a word to describe that relationship, "marriage" is a poor one. "Marriage" is (at least in my mind) an institution that is established by God, not by the state, and should therefore be defined according to God's definition of it (which I would say He has done in His word, the Bible, declaring that "marriage" is a relationship between a man and a woman— not a man and multiple women, a woman and multiple men, an adult and a child, or two or more people of the same gender).

However, what I understand less is why many Christians single out homosexual relationships with regard to ANY civic recognition of the relationship present? Why do we oppose, say, "civil unions" for homosexuals who wish to express their commitment in the relationship, but we oppose ONLY homosexuals in this way?

There are many civic (and by civic I mean, that which is governed by the civil authorities) implications to the recognition of a relationship that marriage (and currently, with a few exceptions, ONLY marriage) brings. There are rights: to receive family benefits on insurance; to have visitation access during hospital stays; to exercising certain legal and financial options; and regarding taxation and inheritance laws. There are also responsibilities: at base, to an implicit (if not explicit) commitment to fidelity and the longevity of the relationship; to exercise responsible care and decision-making of mutual interest (think of a person's role in determining the hospital care of his/her spouse). These are, of course, just to name a few in each case. In short, a relationship that is publicly, civilly recognized is substantially advantaged in our culture.

That the relationship is based (at least in part) on sinful behaviors and lifestyles doesn't negate the fact that there is nevertheless a real relationship present. Why should that "kind" of relationship alone face the opposition that it does from Christians? Have we determined that those relationships are illicit whose origin and essence is/was established (at least in part) by sinful acts? If so, they we are highly inconsistent in our exercise of this determination.

If we were consistent, we would likewise oppose the public, civic recognition of, for example, a marriage that is the result of an adulterous affair; marriages wherein the couple had sex before marriage; and other like relationships. So, for example, the probate courts would be required to nullify an inheritance for mistresses or illegitimate children; insurance companies would not be legally allowed to provide coverage for a spouse if he/she was the former adulterous partner of their current husband or wife (and the previous marriage ended in divorce because of the adultery); a man who fathers a child out of wedlock would not be allowed to visit that child should the child be in the hospital. And so forth.

My point is this: there are MANY relationships in our society that have as their basis some sinful origin. In many of these, that sin has never been admitted or confessed, no discipline was ever exercised nor the sinner restored, and no reconciliation ever sought or achieved between the sinner and the one sinned against. Are we ready to say that we should simply not recognize these relationships, real though they may be, because of the sinful origins?

If so, we have a lot of inconsistency to clean up.

An exciting vision for the church

A little over a year ago, one of my good friends (I'll call him Joe) was being "exited" from his position as a pastor. The beginning of this happened to be at the same time as General Assembly, so I was able to spend some time with Joe as he went through it, as were some other friends. At this year's G.A., one of our mutual friends (who I'll call Steve) and I were talking and he asked how Joe was doing. Then Steve asked, "what was the real issue for him, anyway?"

I replied that, from what I understood, some of Joe's fellow Elders felt that he wasn't doing a good job casting an exciting vision for the congregation. The Elders wanted him to be doing something flashy and attractive, different from what he was doing. Joe's approach to pastoral ministry is simply to preach and teach the Word, administer the Sacraments, pray for the congregation, and visit them in their times of need.

Steve said, "That IS an exciting vision for the church!"

I agree. It seems to be trendy to shape pastoral ministry to look like Steve Jobs and Apple, or some other model of sexy and new styles of product promotion. Obviously, some pastors have had some success in drawing in larger crowds when they have approached ministry this way. And something in, I think, most of us wants our congregation and "my ministry" to stand out as distinct and different from the rest.

The problem is, there's nothing of these in the Bible as the reason why the Kingdom expands. While the growth of the first-century church has seldom been rivaled, the methodology, vision, and mission have essentially been these same things: preach and teach the Word. Administer the Sacraments. Pray for one another. Serve one another in various times of need. Build real relationships, and minister to each other within those.

Which means that my ministry shouldn't really be all that different from the pastor down the street or the one across town. And that is just fine, because it's not really my ministry, anyway, is it?

I'm reading Eugene Peterson's excellent memoir, The Pastor, and he touches on many of these same points. At one point, he directly addresses what a problem this is (and where it comes from):

This is the Americanization of congregation. It means turning each congregation into a market for religious consumers, an ecclesiastical business run along the lines of advertising techniques, organizational flow charts, and energized by impressive motivational rhetoric. But this was worse. This pragmatic vocational embrace of American technology and consumerism that promised to rescue congregations from ineffective obscurity violated everything— scriptural, theological, experiential— that had formed my identity as a follower of Jesus and as a pastor. It struck me as far worse than the earlier erotic and crusader illusions of church. It was a blasphemous desecration of the way of life in which the church had ordained me— something on the order of the vocational abomination of desolation.
Eugene Peterson, The Pastor (New York: HarperOne, 2011), pp. 112-113

I prefer Joe's exciting vision to the flashy, sexy, pragmatic approaches that I get direct-mail promotion for on a weekly basis. Don't you?

Facebook is the new AOL

In 1991, a cascading series of events led to what was, for me, a huge aspect of my life. It went like this:

• Because I graduated from high school, my mother gave me a new Apple Macintosh computer— the original LC, with a 13" (not 12") CRT monitor and the brand-new, first-ever ink-jet printer, the StyleWriter. (So +5 points for me, for my Mac-user street-cred.)
• As a new college freshman, I happily employed the use of my new credit card, pitched to me by someone on the front lawn of the student union during the first week of classes, to purchase a Zoom 2400-baud dial-up modem.
• Included in the modem box was a floppy disk for a new online service, America Online (abbreviated AOL, which always bugged me), which I also used my new credit card to sign up for in early 1992.

Yes, as it turns out, I was a charter-member of AOL's online service. Charter, as in, within a few months of first accepting users. My username then was BigEd3 ("BigEd" was already taken, and I probably could have had "BigEd1"— but I liked the number 3, 3 being part of my number on every jersey I wore in high school).

AOL was far better than the other options, most of which long ago became defunct: CompuServe, Prodigy, GEnie were all much earlier to the scene, but lacked the savvy and attractive style of AOL's early offerings. I actually tried all four— and later was a pretty committed CompuServe user (after it had essentially adapted versions of AOL's best attributes)— but at first, AOL was the real thing. It had a graphical interface, for starters; the others were command-line based (think of Dos— if you even know what that is— and imagine trying to consumer internet-like information and communications in that environment). It also had things like chat rooms (before they were so creepy), Instant Messaging, and the infamous "You've Got Mail!" e-mail.

Back then, AOL and the others were closed systems. They were envisioned as a sort of self-contained online community, which they effectively succeeded at becoming. As this was long before the mainstreaming of the internet or anything online, these were communities comprised of geeks, nerds, and tech-wizzes, but they were still communities. And they were entirely self-contained; for a year, my e-mail in AOL allowed me to e-mail other AOL users, and no one else. After then, I could send and receive e-mail to others (appending the requisite @aol.com to the end of my username), but very little else outside of the AOL world.

Little by little, AOL shifted from being a closed-system online community to becoming essentially a conduit for internet content. Now, it is something of a "start page +services" competing with Yahoo!, Google, Microsoft's offering du jour, and others. AOL was a monster in the online/tech world, but now they are merely a subsidiary entity in a (much) larger corporate environment. While AOL was once the largest service by a vast margin, now declaring an AOL e-mail address will garner snickers from some.

So much of what I see in Facebook today reminds me of AOL. Like AOL, it has emerged as the online community of choice by most, despite neither being the first on the market (MySpace, of course, pioneered the social networking concept) nor absent of competitors (Google+ merely being the most recent). Like AOL, it existed as a completely closed system for a while, and users were content because they lacked any real vision of what more openness could offer them. Like AOL, it began opening up starting with e-mail; an announcement was made months back that non-Facebook-users would be able to send "@facebook.com" e-mail to users, and vice versa.

Also like AOL, Facebook has some in-system aspects that are popular enough to remain closed for now, but which I suspect will eventually open up. Case in point: Instant Messaging / Texting. AOL was a leader in the Instant Messaging realm, and many people still have and use an AIM (an acronym for "AOL Instant Messaging") ID. At first, though, you could only use their IM service if you were a subscriber; then it was only if you used their interface (but non-subscribers were allowed in). Now, anyone can get an AIM ID and use it through whatever client they wish. Likewise, Facebook has just announced a new app for mobile phones that will allow users to employ Facebook's servers to send and receive SMS and MMS messages on their phones— thus saving texting fees. Of course, you have to be a Facebook user to make use of the app. (The inconsistent element here is that Facebook users are not paying subscribers as AOL users were. Or maybe as AOL users are— do people still pay for the "privilege" of an AOL e-mail address?)

One of the points made in the news piece is what actually got me thinking about this parallel: Brian Cooley of CNET responded to Robert Siegel's question in this way:

SIEGEL: What are some potential downsides, though, to Facebook?
COOLEY: Well, when you install anything from Facebook, you get that sort of - that tinge of invasiveness. That's something where Facebook is a, let's say a contentious entity. Whereas most of us will look at email and texting and we'll see that as, yeah, those are just generic utilities - I don't feel like there's anybody in there promoting it or bringing it to me in a way where they want something, where they have an ulterior motive.

My point is this: I've been doing this long enough that I can remember when e-mail wasn't just a "generic utility"— in fact, it was very brand-specific and tied to a particular service. And I would guess that we're not too far out from the time when such SMS/MMS conduits, whether offered through Facebook, Google, a phone service carrier, or something else altogether, will also be considered another part of the "generic utility" category.

The interesting thing is that so much of Facebook's rise and success shares markers in common with AOL that we might do well to ask: is this just a strange coincidence? Or is there a pattern emerging of how internet-based companies experience their start, surge to success, then ebb into obscurity?