jWinters.com Blog

Currents: Heirloom Bibles

The state of Christianity is one that is generally cynical about how "Christian" Christians truly are anymore. Books like "UnChristian", "Jesus, Save Us From Your Followers,", and a wide variety of other books have made it not only chic to assume that the church is filled to the brim with hypocrites, it has made the general assumption of Christians (even when they talk about themselves) one that is pretty lack luster.

Image: Bibles by geowombats at Flickr

I can understand where it comes from, and I don't think it is 100% wrong to think that Christianity could use a refresher course in its own history and dogma. There are some days when I read the news and feel a little bit embarrassed to be a Christian...and a professional one that that rate.

Through Scripture, God reminds us that we're not the first people to screw up His Word. We're not the first ones to not listen. We're not the first ones to assume that we know better than He does. This is old hat to the God who led sniveling whiny Israelites out of Egypt and into the promised land, and the God who asked three of His "best disciples" to simply not fall asleep one night while He was praying to which they passed out like narcoleptic 3 year olds.

Sometimes it's not just Scripture that reminds us that all of God's people are flawed when it comes to listening to and reading his word. Sometimes the local paper tells us of those sins, and for once, at least this week, it's people from the "golden days of Christianity" that are doing the screwing up. Today I read the "feature story" from the Tallahassee Democrat. It was about Bibles as family heirlooms and how Bibles could function as a glimpse into your family's past.

Ever since Gutenberg we've been reducing the price of books so that they are generally affordable to the common person. We don't have to hire a league of monks to produce enough Bibles for churches so that we can drop some off at jail (like I did today). You can buy a Bible for pretty cheap. That's a good thing.

However, your mother or grandfather or some other patriarch or matriarch in your family may have another Bible on hand, and it probably wasn't cheap. It doesn't matter what translation it's in - because nobody is ever going to read it any farther than the cover. It's an heirloom Bible. Its only purpose is to have names and birthdays written in it.

(As a side note, I purchased a Bible that was created for the purpose of being an heirloom because it had a distinctive look and It thought it might get a few people to page through it a little more often in our church. I was aghast when I found out that the entire books of Jude and Revelation were missing. When I called the publisher of this piece of garbage they said, "oh yeah, that happens in the printing process, not many people notice though...")

The tradition of writing down birthdays, anniversaries, family trees, the day that Johnny got an "F" on his report card, and notes about your monthly menstrual cycle I'm sure is considered "cute" among some audiences. I can even see how it would be nice to have all of your genealogical stuff written in one particular place. I'm down with writing in Bibles and my current Bible has a transcription that says that it was given to me by my girlfriend Liz on Reformation Day after a tough week of my first year of ministry. Helpful to know...especially when you look at the notes beside the readings for that day.

However, the difference between that Bible is that I'm actively reading it. It's not gathering dust on some coffee table or book shelf. It's been stained by sweat, coffee, beer, pollen, sand, and countless hours of doodling inside of it with a uniball elite pen.

If you have an heirloom Bible - read it. Have family devotions out of it. Every time someone has a birthday, point out the notation in your heirloom Bible, but also point out a verse that might mean something to the person having a birthday. Then when the Daughters of the American Revolution look at the record of your family they might see something else - tattered pages of a book that was actually read and held highly in your family.

Emerging Lutheran: Are you using your "small"?

Some churches have approximately 7,000 people on their membership roles. Others have sanctuaries that can fit 2,000 people per service. And other yet...well...are pretty small.

Image: big_n_small by deolandicho at Flickr

My church, for example, has about 110 people on its membership roles and could probably fit 125 if we added a little seating. After 125, however, we would have to start looking at tearing our building down. We're architecturally designed to be a little bigger than our current size. And that's ok.

Part of the reason that it is ok for us is that we're a campus ministry. Our turn over rate is pretty high because of a pesky little thing called graduation.

That doesn't mean that we don't have room to grow. We currently have two services on two different days. We could certainly add another service if the growth of our community dictated that.

But this post isn't about growth. It's about contentedness.

Recently I read the following story from Seth Godin's blog. He had bought some clothes via Amazon.com, but they came from one of Amazon's affiliates. This affiliate was a smaller mom-and-pop type of "store" which is often run out of someone's house. I love the affiliates because they usually have really cheap prices on my dorky theological books.

However, buying clothes over the internet is a tricky thing because you can't try anything on. Because of that very issue, Seth had to send his clothes back and ask for the same thing in a different size. He received a message back from the affiliate which said, "It will take about 4 weeks for your new stuff to get to you." He sent a reply back asking why it would take so long, it didn't take them that long to get the original product out to him.

When the affiliate got back to Seth, there was a snapping email that stated that since the affiliate "wasn't as big as Amazon.com, it would take them a little longer to have the order processed."

Of course, this is anti-intuitive because you would think it would be easier for a smaller company to work faster.

Small churches get the brunt of many attacks and generally suffer from low church self-esteem. Like the guy in the 12th grade who still isn't growing any facial hair, they begin to wonder if something is wrong with their maturation process. Are they ever going to "grow up"?

This isn't helped by most para-church bodies and well meaning statistics grabbers who almost demand that every year the numbers have to go up, or there will be trouble. Some churches start to fake numbers (something analogous to putting on a fake beard for the kid that couldn't grow a mustache), and others just assume that their church just isn't cut out for greatness.

Which is generally...hogwash.

The number of people in a congregation can show some things about that congregation, just as you could deduce some things about me by the amount of cash in my wallet - but you couldn't tell everything from that.

Small churches can use their "small" in a variety of ways:
+ Small churches are generally tighter communities and can encourage a greater percentage of their membership to really "grab on" to the mission of the church. Contrast this with bigger churches which have a hard time getting even 20% of people in their community to even know what the mission of the church is.

+ Small churches can respond faster because of less bureaucratic nonsense. The less people you have, the less likely you are to have horrific systems of governance that slow everything down.

+ Small churches have an easier time of figuring out their mission because there probably isn't that wide of a variety of ideas about what the mission should be.

Now it's your turn:
+ What else can smaller churches do that seem to be harder for bigger churches to do?

+ What numbers do you think constitute "small"? What numbers go beyond small and should be considered "dying, sick, etc"?

+ What are some common "we're too small to..." excuses do you hear or imagine coming from small churches?

+ What can big churches do better than smaller churches? How can they use their "big"?

The Occasional Update: Is Balance Overrated?

I'm about through my first year of ministry (my ordination anniversary is July 22nd). It's been a fun adventure, this whole "being a pastor" thing, but as I'm looking back on my year - I can't really say that "balanced" is something that you would call my life as a pastor.

Image:Balance by Hong.Kong Phooey at Flickr

I tend to stay at work too late (made up for by the fact that I've been chronically late by 10 or so minutes for work in the morning, for about 30 minutes or an hour of staying too late). I just about refuse to blog while I'm at work, but still try to process the ministry more than a few times a week here. I have neglected things that other people don't neglect. And the list goes on.

But I'm fairly happy.

I've been to two conferences this year on "balance" in my life. I take everything that they say and think, "yeah, I should do that," but I end up getting so energized by what I do as a "professional Christian" that I devote probably at least 80% of my time to it.

I was listening to a podcast from Catalyst this past week and they were interviewing Erwin McManus from the Mosaic community. One of the questions that they asked him was "how are you balanced in your life?"

He shot back that balance was a bit of a joke to him. He readily admitted that he wasn't balanced. But then he went on to justify it. He said that he thought "balance" was a great Buddhist ideal, but that he wasn't sure it was Christian. He didn't think Jesus was very balanced in his ministry. (Although being the Son of God probably helped out with that, along with the understanding that His ministry would probably last about 3 years or so.)

This reminded me of what I routinely call "the funniest line in the Gospel of John" from John 4. Jesus' disciples go off to by food and Jesus sticks in Samaria talking to some lady who has had 5 husbands and is living with her boyfriend. When the disciples come back, one of the first things they say is, "Rabbi, eat". Jesus replies, "I have food to eat that you don't know about."

It always made me giggle because it sounds like Jesus stopped by the convenience store in Bethsaida and grabbed some beef jerky which He cleverly hid in His tunic while the disciples went off to get Big Macs at the Samaria McDonalds.

But Jesus goes on to explain His statement. He says, "My food is to do the will of Him who sent me and to accomplish His work."

It would seem, from that quote, that the excitement of ministering to this lady who was probably known as the tramp of Samaria drove away the hunger pangs that Jesus was probably having. I've had that feeling where I have said, "I'll forgo lunch, this is too important," and I've heard stories from other Christians who have had the same feeling.

Jesus did have some degree of balance in His life, don't get me wrong. Every now and then He goes off to pray. Most of the Sabbaths He probably took off (I take my pastor sabbath pretty seriously).

Yet, when I went to the aforementioned conferences, it seemed that what I was hearing was that I had to give up time "doing the will of Him who [called] me, and accomplishing His work," in order to do things like my taxes (I filed an extension).

There is a certain amount of balance that is necessary in our lives as human beings. If I don't sleep that well, the next day is probably going to involve a cat nap on my office couch. I tend to get chronic headaches too, and I can't imagine that those come from treating my body the way it probably should be treated.

However, what I fear is that our culture has given us a false impression of what "balance" in our lives really entails. Most of the really inspiring people I know don't really have the "balance" that many people think they should have.

So, as a guy still trying to figure all of this out, I'm looking for what you think.

+ Does my description of the balance (or lack thereof) in my life cause you to worry about health/sanity/etc?
+ Do you ever feel that our culture's idea of "balance" really isn't that balanced after all and doesn't give enough room for passion?
+ How do you keep a sense of balance in your life?

Emerging Lutheran: Your Pond and Your Friends' Pond

Just a couple of days ago I wrote a blog article about what pond you were fishing in. The question then was about "niche" ministries such as ministering to your specific community, the homeless, etc vs. being a church that does a more "blanket" or "carpet bombing" approach to ministry (doing stuff that appeals to the entire U.S. demographic, the Lutheran/Presbyterian/Evangelical demographic, etc).

Image: you & me go fishing in the dark by hokiechick01 at Flickr

After some time spent at the Fshbwl, I began to start asking myself a secondary question. What is the nature of the dichotomy of individuals from a church doing ministry on their own and the nature of the ministry of the church that they are a part of.

There's this family that attends University Lutheran. They rock. They're probably some of the nicest people I know, but I don't get to see them that often because the nature of their lives makes them travel - ALOT. But I stay in pretty regular email contact with them and hear some amazing stories about how they personally are bringing the message of Jesus to people who need to hear it.

They're not that involved with what we do at University Lutheran because they're just not able to - but they are involved with what the nature of the ministry at University Lutheran is - which is being Jesus-Centered, relying on Scripture, having faith in God's plan, and realizing that everything good we have in this life is a grace given to us.

As far as the pond that they are fishing in, it's not distinctly the same pond that our church is fishing in. Still, they are going about doing the work that Jesus has given all Christians to do.

I've written scads about how the nature of the missional approach to God's work when looked at by a church organization is to empower its people to go out and do personal works of kindness and making the message of Jesus understandable. This family is an example of how successful that can be.

So, to add on to the questions from that earlier post:
+ How is your church empowering people to do some fishing in their own ponds which may or may not be reachable by your church?

+ Could your church's "niche ministry" be simply empowering people?

Sermons: Do you have the antibody?

Paul's letter to the Romans has a lot of great theology contained in it, but it's not told as a story. I hope the story here and the observations help you apply Romans 8 to your life.

Image: March of Dimes Represent Polio Victims by bond_alisha at Flickr

Text: Romans 8:1-11
There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus. For the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus has set you free from the law of sin and death. For God has done what the law, weakened by the flesh, could not do: by sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh, and to deal with sin, he condemned sin in the flesh, so that the just requirement of the law might be fulfilled in us, who walk not according to the flesh but according to the Spirit. For those who live according to the flesh set their minds on the things of the flesh, but those who live according to the Spirit set their minds on things of the Spirit. To set the mind on the flesh is death, but to set the mind on the Spirit is life and peace. For this reason the mind that is set on the flesh is hostile to God, it does not submit to God's law --- indeed it cannot, and those who are in the flesh cannot please God.
But you are not in the flesh, you are in the Spirit, since the Spirit of God dwells in you. Anyone who does not have the Spirit of Christ does not belong to Him. But Christ is in you, though the body is dead because of sin, the Spirit is life because of righteousness. If the Spirit of him who raised Jesus from the dead dwells in you, He who raised Christ from the dead will give life to your mortal bodies also through His Spirit that dwells in you.

In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit, the Holy Three in One who...

Dear Brothers and Sisters in Christ,
Before 1955, the word Polio meant fear to thousands of people in the world. Polio, a devastating viral disease that would leave people paralyzed and dead, ran rampant in this country. In it�s height, it was thought to have had infected sixty thousand people with three thousand of those cases ending in death.

But in 1947 a man by the name of Jonas Salk began experimenting with ways to stop the advance of this deadly virus. At the time it was known that someone who had been in contact with a weakened strain of the polio virus would not only live, but also develop an immunity to the virus. Through a variety of different tests, Jonas Salk came to the conclusion that if there were a way to introduce a strain of the virus that had already been killed into the human immune system, that human would develop and immunity to polio. Jonas Salk began collecting, culturing, and killing polio viruses with formaldehyde and began testing � starting with monkeys, then his wife, and his children.

Today, polio has largely been eradicated from the United States and several other countries because of Jonas Salk�s work.

Our reading from St. Paul�s letter to the Romans today is a fantastic reading about how it is that you have the assurance of that you are not condemned, that you live with the Spirit of Christ. But honestly, some of its language can bog us down a little. It seems a little dry. It doesn�t seem like there is a story there, instead, it seems like you�ve just started to take Theology 101 with your guest professor, Paul the Apostle.

Paul says some things in this reading that you need to let sink in to really understand. One of the things that he continues to talk about is this �Spirit� character that he seems to think very highly of. We would probably think highly of Him too except for the fact that we�re afraid of saying �Holy Spirit� too much. Those kinds of people make other people nervous. If I say �Spirit� too much, you might start wondering when I�m going to pull the snake out and start asking people if they think they *really* have faith. It is a shame that the Holy Spirit has been reduced to something feared by quite a bit of the church and Christians. Maybe it�s because the Holy Spirit is the only member of the Trinity that people really don�t believe they can control�we assume we can control God the Father and the Son because we direct our prayers to them. Somehow, when we get into this idea of a slot-machine God, we assume that we can at least sort of control the two other members of the Trinity � but we�re never given that assurance with the Holy Spirit, He stands smirking at abeyance.

And then this issue of the flesh comes up. Paul is certainly less interested with the flesh than he is with the Spirit. He really doesn�t seem to like the flesh. And of course that puts us off. We have a good reason for being put off. Look at your hand. Look at the face of the person next to you. There seems to be something there�flesh. As easy as it is for some of us to seemingly hate ourselves, it�s still tough for us to say we don�t like our skin�blemishes and all.

And so, really, when Paul is talking here in Romans about liking this Spirit thing that we�re generally afraid of and not liking this flesh thing that seems to be sort of stuck to us � it doesn�t make us that happy. We realize who we are. We realize that we�re flesh, we�re sinners, and that we don�t love God as we really should. We realize that when Jesus said �Love the Lord your God with all your heart, all your mind, all your strength and all your soul,� that the flesh came in and said, �He didn�t really mean all of it�in fact, maybe He just meant, �enough to get by��.

And that�s where we�re stuck. We�re stuck with that realization and somehow wondering how it is that Paul can start this off by saying, �There is no condemnation for you.� It sure looks like there is. That condemnation is called the Law. Now it�s important to see that the Law is really not a bad thing. It is, in fact, a very good thing. God gave it to humanity when He created us. He made His Law so that if we kept it, we would live fantastic lives forever. But the problem is that this Law, it is good, but it is not good for us. We�re flesh. Many thousands of years ago we got this mutation from two people named Adam and Eve. Some of the decisions they made had a lasting effect on humanity, their mutation away from God separated us. It made the Law, which is good, no longer good for us.

Are you wondering why I told that story about Joseph Salk yet? Are you wondering why I asked the question at the beginning of worship, �Do you have the antibody?� It�s because through that story, our relationship to the flesh and the Spirit is a little more understandable. We can take it.

God saw this mutation in human beings and knew that there was only one way to destroy the mutation. It was through an antibody. He knew that in order to make this antibody, He would have to send His only Son to this earth to live in the midst of our infection. Jesus came and lived among us and willing chose to live in this disease infested earth. And then on a cross, He did what no one else could do. He took our disease, our virus, our infection, up on the cross. There He took our disease and killed it and gave us the antibody.

Today you have that antibody, which is the Spirit, it has been given to you in your Baptism. You have been given the Spirit of Christ and because of that you need not fear death. You have been given the antibody and you will live.

Emerging Lutheran: What's wrong with this picture?

I found this rather compelling ad campaign on one of my advertising blogs that I watch. It's a good campaign. It got me to take notice from the picture alone, I can only imagine how well it must have worked with people who were actually walking by these statues.

Look at the picture:

Image: I Believe In Advertising - The German Foundation for Monument Protection

That's right, these cathedral statues are begging to be kept up - not by a church, but by the German Foundation for "Monument Protection". Take a good look at your church tomorrow. What's it going to take to keep it from becoming a "monument"?

Emerging Lutheran: What pond are you fishing in?

So after being trained at the Campus Missionary Institute (CMI) and doing some reading on my own, I've developed a curiosity about the specific niches and purposes of individual churches.

Image: "Hands across the ocean...across the waves... across the water ..." by neloqua at Flickr

I remember a series of articles from Outreach magazine that discussed churches having niche ministries, and how having a church that focused on one thing was, in their eyes, a good thing. This isn't to say that churches should only do one thing (i.e. working with the homeless), but that having one specific thing helps focus a congregation on the needs of their specific community, in other words - what pond are you fishing in?

Often, this niche is presented in the form of a "mission statement". The problem that I have with mission statements is that they're usually an exercise in verbal futility - they don't say anything, or at least anything that tells me how this congregation is different than any other Christian church that I might attend.

This said, I firmly believe in what the early Lutheran reformers considered to be the "signs of the Church," Word and Sacraments. Any church that does not have Word (preached, read, and heard) and the Sacraments of Communion, Baptism, and Forgiveness of Sins I think is a church without the necessary signs of being a church. (I also think that churches with anemic views of Word and Sacrament are in danger of being anemic churches.)

My church reaches out primarily to college students. At this present time I would say that we have a second community that we reach out to - the homeless of Tallahassee. However, we don't have any homeless people who are active members of our community. If we only help homeless people out by way of food and other necessities, but don't at least invite them to receive Word and Sacrament - are we really a community that can say our "niche" is homeless people?

I have been toying around with a new concept in my mind lately with all of this "niche ministry" stuff. I call it "reaching out to the dechurched." In many ways, what a campus ministry does is reach out to the dechurched and those in danger of being dechurched. "A church to come back to," might be some verbiage that a church reaching out the dechurched might employ.

What do you think?
+ Is niche ministry a sham? Should churches be as wide in their outreach as possible? (Consider this Sunday's reading of the parable of the Sower)
+ What is the "mission" of your church? What kinds of people is your church currently reaching out to?
+ In the earliest church (the Scriptural Acts community and those churches identified by Paul) a "niche" ministry? Or is it broader?

Sermons: Are you an immigrant?

This sermon was preached loosely from my manuscript you see below. I had been distracted all morning with stuff going on with my body. Ech. Anyway, this sermon idea came from how close the poem "The New Colossus" that is found at the base of the Statue of Liberty sounds to what Jesus says in Matthew 11. It was also a great time to brag on my folks from University Lutheran.

Image: Freedom by Pixel Quadro at Flickr

Text: Matthew 11:16-19, 25-30

[Jesus spoke to the crowd, saying:] �To what will I compare this generation? It is like children sitting in the marketplaces and calling to one another, �We played the flute for you, and you did not dance; we wailed, and you did not mourn.� For John came neither eating or drinking, and they say, �He has a demon� the Son of Man came eating and drinking and they say, �Look, a glutton and a drunkard, a friend of tax collectors and sinners!� Yet wisdom is vindicated by her deeds�
(Jump to vs. 25) At that time, Jesus said, �I thank you, Father, Lord of heaven and earth, because You have hidden these things from the wise and the intelligent and have revealed them to infants; yes, Father, for such was Your gracious will. All things have been handed over to me by my Father; and no one knows the Father except the Son and anyone to whom the Son chooses to reveal Him. Come to me, all you that are weary and are carrying heavy burdens, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you, and learn from me; for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy and my burden is light.�

In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit, the Holy Three In One who takes our heavy burdens upon Himself.

Dear Brothers and Sisters in Christ,
At the foot of the Statue of Liberty, there is a plaque with a poem by Emma Lazarus called �The New Colossus.� You may not know all of the words to this poem, but I am sure that a few lines may sound familiar to you:

�Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free, the wretched refuse of your teeming shore. Send these, the homeless, tempest tost to me. I lift my lamp beside the golden door.�

Between 1820 and 1920, one hundred years of this nation's history, that poem captured the experience of 34 million persons who immigrated to America, many of them passing by the Statue of Liberty. It is not a poem recounting the heroism of the Revolutionary War heroes. There is no mention of George Washington or Thomas Jefferson. It is a poem, rather, about those who would make this country what it is today � but who were then simply �huddled masses yearning to breathe free.�

In our Gospel reading today, you heard something that sounded similar to that poem spoken from the lips of Jesus. After praying to His Father in thanksgiving, He seems to turn to the crowds and says, �Come to me, all you that are weary and are carrying heavy burdens, and I will give you rest.� You can almost imagine Jesus speaking those words to those 34 million immigrants to the United States, just as Emma Lazarus spoke her own words to them.

Yet in 1920, Immigration statistics begin to change. Because of some of the booming numbers and because some were beginning to notice a recession was beginning to take place in the American economy, immigration laws began to exclude more and more would be immigrants seeking to walk through the �Golden Door� that Lady Liberty watched over with her torch. Suddenly, instead of echoing Jesus' words that all who were weary and heavily burdened should come to him, our nation was singing a different tune, it was reciting a different poem.

Many in the worldwide church have shut their doors, or at least have been accused of creating an atmosphere in which the doors of the church appear to be shut. Church has become the home of the middle classes and of the morally elite. In many ways, we have gotten away from the words of Jesus which have said, �Come to me, all you who are weary and are carrying heavy burdens.� Instead, we have become indignant, perhaps even irate at times crying out in the marketplace, �We played the flute for you and you did not dance, We wailed and you did not mourn.� Let me put that in church terms for you, �We hosted a contemporary service, and you did not come inside, we had a Bible study and you did not feel it was important.�

It has been almost a year since my ordination. A few words from the sermon that was preached on that day by my friend and mentor, John Roth, have stuck out to me. �We are living in an age when the church is different than when I began.�

Dan Kimball, a note worthy pastor and Christian author, tells a story of when he first started attending church. Like many of the weary and heavy burdened today, Dan grew up in a home that was not culturally Christian. He didn't grow up going to church or reading the Bible. He was about 20 years old and had been studying a Bible just out of curiosity, when he walked by a small church with what he called a scrawled sign out front that said �Bible study today�. When he walked in, he found three people sitting in a circle and all smiling at him. He tried to nonchalantly take a seat when an elderly man handed him a thermos cup full of liquid. �Here,� he said. Dan drank it right away and said, �What is this?� �Ovaltine� came the reply, �would you like some more?� After wondering to himself if this was a cult and if he was going to wake up in some strange place, he said, �sure.� What developed was about a year's worth of time of going to that Bible study and then worship. Dan went on to become one of today's most prominent young pastors because of that church that held a torch to the Golden Door of Scripture. Because of that church that held a torch to the death, resurrection, and forgiveness found in Jesus.

That is why I am proud to call myself the pastor of this community gathered at University Lutheran Church and Student Center in Tallahassee, Florida. When I hear complaints that the worldwide church has closed it doors and has stopped taking in immigrants, I smile defiantly. That is not our church. We have opened our doors to the homeless of the InnBetween program and HOPE community. We have opened our doors to the demographic that is most in danger of never engaging the Gospel � college students. We have opened doors and have continued to open doors. Soon we will begin to contact recent move-ins to our neighborhood here. We have lit our lamp and we have held it by the Golden Door of Jesus. We have proclaimed to this campus and this community that Jesus is here, that Jesus is here for the weary, that He is here for the heavy laden. We have proclaimed His easy yoke and His light burden and will continue to do so.

July 4th has came and went. Around this time, we hear many stories of the heroic and famous people of our nation. We hear of patriots, soldiers, politicians, and inventors. We celebrate this nation founded and made into one of the greatest nations in the world not normally by those who were born within its borders, but by immigrants to this land.

Each and every person here is an immigrant to this land of the Golden Door. I am not talking about this land of the United States, but rather to the land of God's Kingdom. Each and every one of us have been heavily burdened, we have been weary. We have brought our yokes to the cross of Christ. He has taken our infirmities, our sins, and our status as aliens to God's kingdom and He has taken it upon Himself on that cross. He has made us citizens of this Kingdom of His Father. He has paid our price with His life, His Body, and His Blood.
Now we stand on this land with the torch of the His Gospel in our hands. We stand as stalwartly as Lady Liberty. We speak her poem, but we speak it as the church, as the people of God holding the light to the Golden Door:

�Not like the brazen giant of Greek fame,
With conquering limbs astride from land to land;
Here at our sea-washed, sunset gates shall stand
A mighty woman with a torch, whose flame
Is the imprisoned lightning, and her name Mother of Exiles.
From her beacon-hand
Glows world-wide welcome; her mild eyes command
The air-bridged harbor that twin cities frame.
�"Keep, ancient lands, your storied pomp!"� cries she
With silent lips. �Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me,
I lift my lamp beside the golden door!�

This church is not like a brazen giant, but she is a mighty woman, whose torch and flame of Scripture is the imprisoned lightning, the Mother of those exiled by sin. Because Christ has said to us, �Come to me, all you who are heavily burdened,� we say to the world, �Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breath free, the wretched refuse of your teeming shore. Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to us,� we lift our lamp beside the golden door of Jesus Christ.

Currents: Whose Stuff Is It?

So I finally got around to opening up my latest copy of "Christianity Today", and I was reading the little news bits when this one struck me: Denominations Join Episcopalian Diocese in Fight Over Church Property.

Image: Manhattan Sign by The Impression That I Get at Flickr

The story explains that 16 other denominational bodies are putting their noses into the business between the Episcopal Church in America and their more conservative defectors, the Convocation of Anglicans in North America. If you don't know what this is all about, it centers around the Episcopal Church's choice to "ok" an openly practicing homosexual bishop and a few other things.

Those who were at odds with what had been pretty much the only Episcopalian church in America said "we're out of here" and formed their own churches, predominantly calling themselves "Anglicans" as opposed to "Episcopalian" (the two terms used to mean the same thing).

There is a church here in Tallahassee, St. Peter's Anglican, that split away from St. John's Episcopal. It was a messy split and lots of feelings were hurt on both sides. Since there were two factions within the church, it makes sense that one side had to go and find property someplace else. St. Peter's Anglican found some property and is doing quite well.

However, what happens when your entire congregation votes to leave the church body that you were at least formerly a part of? A lot of it depends on who holds the deed to your congregation's physical place and stuff (endowment funds, projectors and electronics, etc).

11 churches in Virginia are using an old Virginia law to say, "it's our [expletive] church, and we'll do with it as we [expletive] please." 16 denominations don't agree, including a Lutheran body - the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America.

I know that in the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America (ELCA), they probably are siding with the Episcopalians and not the Anglicans for two distinct reasons:
a.) they have established altar and pulpit fellowship with the Episcopalian Church in America
b.) they, in effect, "hold the deeds" to their churches - if any church of the ELCA leaves, it leaves the property of that church in the hands of the ELCA.

I would be interested in how many of the 16 denominations that agreed with the Episcopalians in this case also hold the deeds to their member churches....hmnnn...

p.s. By way of contrast, another Lutheran church body (mine), the Lutheran Church Missouri Synod (LCMS), allows its member churches to hold their own community/congregational property. In most cases, if a church felt led to leave the LCMS, they would also take the church property with them.

This is not a random choice, but something that deals directly with how church communities/parishes etc are viewed in Lutheran Church Missouri Synod theology and ecclesiology (how the church is put together). The LCMS, as a body, views itself as many congregations who are bound together as a confederacy around certain principles. The local congregation, however, is autonomous and can make any decision it wishes to - including the decision to stop "walking with" the LCMS on certain issues.

For example, if a congregation suddenly felt led to ordain an openly practicing homosexual pastor (clearly against the norms of the LCMS because of the LCMS view of Scripture), it could do so and still consider itself a congregation. However, they would no longer consider themselves a congregation of the LCMS, because they were not united behind the same principles as their brother and sister congregations.

Additionally, the administration of the LCMS is not considered to be a part of the "Church", but rather as something para-church that stands outside of this gathered confederacy to give it structure and form.

Confusing? You bet, but in times when individual communities are making hard choices about allegiances, it's good to know.

Some questions:
+ Do you think churches should hold property rights, or church bodies and denominations? (some convincing arguments can be made both ways) What are your reasons?

+ If your church suddenly lost all of its property (buildings, electronics, books, etc) and had to start from scratch, what kinds of issues do you think you would have to start facing first? How would you solve those problems?

Form: Wall-E, Robots, and the question of "Purpose"

I listen to NPR because I'm a big dork and I occasionally hear something that is completely out of my usual circle of reading/listening/etc. Today the folks at NPR were talking with someone (I got in the car too late to hear who) who was intricately involved in the animation for this summer's animation blockbuster hit, Wall-E.

Image: Clockwork by johnnybotts at Flickr

The thing that they said that interested me happened when a caller phoned in a response to the question "What is your favorite animated character?" This lady liked Donald Duck because "he was more human," she thought than other animated characters.

The interesting response came next. The animator started talking about how robots (like Wall-E) were different characters than "organic characters" like Donald Duck. The difference came in terms that reminded me all too much of the implications of the 1st Article of the Apostle's Creed (namely, that we are creatures of a higher level creator - God).

This animation authority said, "A robotic character always has to have a purpose for being created." An "organic" character can be understood as to have been created by biological happenstance, but a robotic character has always been created by a "higher being", and that the higher being always creates with some sort of purpose for the created being in mind.

I think that reflects interestingly on the way that we see our own existence on this earth. We generally go about our lives believing that we have been created by biological happenstance and that we either have no meaning, or that we supply the meaning to our lives. We shudder to think that we have been created for purpose...after all, that would mean that we were nothing but robots, or at least that is the cultural implication.

This "robotic" understanding of the tension between our status as created beings and our status as people free in Christ could prove as a list of interesting metaphors for human life, i.e.:

+ Some robots defy their created purpose (I have heard that this is part of the story of Wall-E). In humans, defying created purpose is called "sin", and doesn't create a cute little free robot - but a monster robot which has imperfection at its core. An appropriately bleak picture of created things defying their purpose may be seen in films like I, Robot (which, by the way, is not based in anyway on the short story of the same name by Isaac Asimov) or even the Terminator movies.

+ Some robots that don't defy their created purpose run the risk of looking like dweebs. C3-PO from the Star Wars series is not exactly a robot that I would like my life to be modeled after. If I was created as C3-PO, I would likely want to defy my created purpose. That is when looking at our "design specs" is important, we have been created for a purpose, AND we have been created in the image of our creator. We need not worry being dweeby C3-PO's because our God created us with His image of strength, power, and let's face it - coolness.

+ There are not many images of "free" robots. The closest I could think of would be robots such as those depicted in the "Transformers" series. These robots have been seemingly created for a purpose, and there are heroic robots which fulfill their purpose as well as defiant/rebellious robots which always end up destroying things (as much as they seem to be "building" empire). For those who remember the series "the Go-Bots", this motif is presented in a slightly starker fashion. Freedom is something that is granted to Christians via God's truth, which is found in Christ and only accessible through His work.

All of this may prove more interesting as you think of some of your favorite robots and what/who they were like. Consider the following questions:

+ What were some of your favorite robots from literature, tv, and film?
+ Did they act in a way that made them seem more "created for a purpose" or a way that made them seem more like they were "finding their own purpose"?
+ How does the absence or presence of a clear purpose affect how "free" they appear to be?

and...
+ The story line for a "Christian robot" story would seemingly have to address the questions - What was the original purpose that the creator of the robot had in mind? How did that original purpose as well as the initial freedom get lost? Are most robots today still free and just without purpose, or are they not free and without purpose?

The Gospel According to AFI - Love Like Winter

I just started this category because I found some spiritual content in this song, "Love Like Winter" from AFI.

Lyrics from Metrolyrics.com:

Warn your warmth to turn away
Here It's December,everyday
Press your lips to the sculptures
And surely you'll stay (love like winter)
For of sugar and ice...I am made, I am made

It's in the blood,It's in the blood
I met my love,before I was born
He wanted love,I taste of blood
He bit my lip,and drank my war
From years before,from years before

She exhales vanilla lace
I barely dreamt her yesterday(yesterday)...
Read the lines in the mirror through the lipstick trace: "Por Siempre."
She said,"It seems you're somewhere,faraway."
To his face.

It's in the blood,It's in the blood
I met my love,before I was born
She wanted love,I taste of blood
She bit my lip,and drank my war
From years before,from years before

Love like winter...Oh...Oh...
Love like winter...winter...3...4..

It's in the blood,It's in the blood
I met my love,before I was born
She wanted love,I taste of blood
She bit lip,and drank my war
From years before,from years before

Commentary:

Warn your warmth to turn away
Here It's December,everyday

...I had a hard time with this. Technically, we never warn people to "turn their warmth away" from God. Yet, in a day of self-glorification theology, perhaps we should look to the cross. The cross is not a warm place. It is a cold place where our Savior died. When we urge people to go to the cross, perhaps it should come with the warning: "turn your warm fuzzy images of Jesus away." This is not the warm and fuzzy Jesus, this is Jesus dying on a cross for your sin.

It's in the blood,It's in the blood
I met my love,before I was born
He wanted love,I taste of blood
He bit my lip,and drank my war
From years before,from years before

...This is really the heart of where I found Christian spiritual content in this song.
"It's in the blood (repeat)" reminded me of Christ's sacrifice on the cross which sets us free. It was a bloody event, one that He knew was coming. The night before He was betrayed He took a cup and said of it, "Take, and drink, this is the cup of the new testament in blood, which is shed for you for the forgiveness of all your sin."
"I met my love, before I was born" reminded me that Jesus knew who you well before He died on a cross for you. When He died, some 2,000 years ago, He had YOU in mind. He had met the one that He loved, YOU, before you were born.
"He wanted love, I taste of blood" was a hard one. Certainly, it is hard for us to imagine biting the lip of Jesus (next line), and from that obtaining the forgiveness that His blood gives us. Yet this stark imagery of biting the lip that feeds reminds me, at some level, of what we do when we take His Body and His Blood for our forgiveness. We don't simply allow it to trickle into our mouths, we bite, we chew, we actively seek His Love with our mouths.
"He bit my lip, and drank my war//from years before" - Certainly when we take Jesus' Body and Blood, we are "drinking His war" that was waged upon that cross. His war was won. It was won for us, and when we take the Lord's Supper, we take a "drink of that war from years before" (about 2,000 of them).

She exhales vanilla lace
I barely dreamt her yesterday(yesterday)...
Read the lines in the mirror through the lipstick trace: "Por Siempre.
She said,"It seems you're somewhere,faraway."
To his face."

"I barely dreamt her yesterday..." Another one of those of us whom God actively participates in creating. This is apparently a younger girl whom He feels He "barely dreamt yesterday" but is one of His children nonetheless. He reads the lines between our lives that exclaim to Him "por siempre" (for ever). That is who we are, and how we exist in His eyes, even if at times we say "It seems you're somewhere, faraway."

Artist Information: We have no indication that anyone in AFI clings to the Christian faith. Christian motifs do show up in AFI songs from time to time, sometimes in seemingly mocking ways. Please choose your music carefully.

+ What do you think? Could this song be played as a "communion song"? Or a song explaining communion? Why/why not?
+ Did you come up with anything else in the song that you thought was spiritually significant? (i.e. did you do anything with the line "For of sugar and ice...I am made, I am made."?)

New Category: The Gospel According To...

I've been dreaming of putting this blog category together for a long time. My "Gospel According to Buffett" category has gotten quite a few hits and has helped people from a youth group going on a mission trip to Key West to someone who is just a die-hard Parrothead looking for some spirituality to put into his listening routine.

Image: vinyl 4 by dacran at Flickr

And so now I'm opening the category up to all artists. I just found some spiritual content in an AFI song, so I figure if I can do it with AFI --- the door is open to all artists.

Here's what this will be:

+ A copy of the song (usually, I'm assuming, a YouTube video, because they're easy to embed)

+ Lyrics (when available)

+ My commentary on how we can listen to the song as listeners in Christ

Here's what this category will NOT be:
+ A wholesale approval of the artist(s) or the song - some songs may have some content that is very congruent with a Christian way of thinking about life, but the artists may not be Christian and the song may not have overtly Christian overtones.

+ Understandable. I blog for me. If something makes sense to me, then I'll write about it. It may not make immediate sense to you why I think "Servitude" by the band "Fishbone" qualifies. That's what the comment boards are for.

+ Infallible. Sometimes I may posit something into a song that simply isn't there. Tell me when/if that happens.

+ Appealing to your ears. I think a lot of music is trash. You may think my music is trash. That's ok. Jesus isn't trash, and I hope you'll at least listen to hear Him screaming through the music.

I come at this with thanks to my father, Walt Winters. My dad, while we were in the Philippines, produced a radio program which sought to reach out to those who did not believe in Christ by putting Christian meanings on songs. One such song that I remember from those days is his explanation that Madonna's song "Like a Virgin" was an appropriate metaphor for the Christian seeing him/herself as an untouched virgin before the discerning eye of God.

Thanks dad!

in Christ,
jW

Marketing the Church: Wow...telemarketing blogging

I've mentioned before that I've found some interesting things while calling Lutheran churches in Florida to see if they know of any college students who might be attending a Florida or Georgia state school.

Image: Brimstone Handset by Spidra Webster at Flickr

I usually don't blog while I'm at work, just on principle. But today I decided I would make a log of some of the interesting stuff I found and my reflections on certain calls:

+ There is a church that has a "glee club" in Punta Gorda, they also list their organizational policies on their website. Ahh, the picture of the modernist church.

+ The amount of pastors who have no clue if they have any students going into college is staggering, but then there are some that seem to know every student in their church - and if they don't - are willing to look them up and get back to you.

+ Bad secretaries tell you to call back on Monday or another day, and when you ask if they can take your information down - they act like it's a real chore for them.

+ I'm surprised at how many church office answering machines tell you that the church office hours end before 5pm (i.e. 9-4, 9-3, even one 10-2).

+ "Campus ministry" is apparently not an understandable term to some people as I have been connected to two grade school principals as a result of my request for "students who were going into colleges or universities".

+ "Our church doesn't have any young people" is too often something that I hear on the other end of the line.

+ Apparently almost every church west of Pensacola in Florida should be shut down tomorrow. Over half don't have webpages, and the greatest amount of churches with no answering machine come from here. Somebody needs to pray for them.

+ There are some pretty neat webpages out there, and lots of interesting sounding worship venues.

+ Some people are so helpful that it about knocks me out of my chair....these helpful people are rarely pastors, but sometimes a pastor goes out of his way.

+ People are more willing to help if you let them know that sometimes students and campus ministries don't connect because information isn't forwarded on.

Sermons: What kind of legacy are you going to leave?

FSU has a section of campus that is called "Legacy Walk", and at one point in it stands a statue of three figures - the Integration Statue - which shows three different example students whose started legacies for their people. University Lutheran has a monument erected in honor of the beginning of our legacy as well, it's the cross in the front of our building.

Image: IMG_0847 by little koz at Flickr

Text: II Timothy 4:6-8, 17-18
As for me, I am already being poured out as a libation, and the time of my departure has come. I have fought the good fight, I have finished the race, I have kept the faith. From now on there is reserved for me the crown of righteousness, which the Lord, the righteous judge, will give me on that day, and not only to me but also to all have longed for His appearing. But the Lord stood by me and gave me strength, so that through me the message might be fully proclaimed and all the Gentiles might hear it. So I was rescued from the lion�s mouth. The Lord will rescue me from every evil attack and save me for His heavenly kingdom. To Him be the glory forever and ever. Amen.

In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit, the Holy Three In One who has reserved for us the crown of righteousness.

Dear Brothers and Sisters in Christ,

This year, over 600 students at Florida State are going to be the first people in their families to go to college. Compared to their peers, these students have a somewhat more daunting task ahead of them. They will be more likely to drop out. They will be more likely to work outside of school for over 12 hours a week. But for those that achieve a degree, they will begin a legacy in their family that has never accomplished before, a legacy that will likely affect their children and their children�s children. These students, these legacy makers, hold an indisputable place in the future of not only their families, but for our culture as a whole.

In today�s reading from St. Paul�s second letter to Timothy, Paul describes the nature of his legacy that he is handing over to young Timothy from Ephesus. In today�s Gospel reading, Jesus predicts the nature of Peter�s legacy in the Christian church. Both of their stories are heroic epics of men who make part of the legacy of what we call Christianity today. Both of their stories are stories of legacy.

Yet, much like many of the first generation students at Florida State, these men had stories before they began their legacies, stories that did not seem to hint at the time of the legacy they would leave behind. Peter was a simple fisherman from the town of Galilee. He had joined with his partners Andrew and James in a fishing enterprise which Peter probably assumed would take up the majority of his story to the world. Paul was the pupil of a prominent Pharisaical rabbi named Gamaliel who probably assumed that his place in life would be to keep the strict laws of the Torah in a Jewish community for the rest of his life.

But then Jesus showed up in their lives. For Peter, as a man walking by the sea shore demanding Peter to follow Him. For Paul, a light from heaven and a voice that asked �Why are you persecuting me?� It was at that moment in these men�s lives that their legacies changed in prominent and impactful ways. Peter�s legacy was changed from that as a prominent businessman on the Galilee seashore to the leader of the church in Jerusalem. Paul�s was changed from that of a man who would have been a prominent force in orthodoxy, to the leading missionary of what was considered a heretical teaching. Because of these two men, the church is what it is today.

So what will you leave behind as your legacy? Who will remember you ten years from now? Twenty? Fifty? Some of you here are freshman just starting your academic lives at FSU. How will you change the world? How will you change this campus? How will you change this church? How will you change the church at large? Will you be known as the stalwart defender of the church? Or will you be its persecutor? Time will only tell us, but the stories of these two men, Peter and Paul, do tell us the reality of our legacies.

The reality of our legacy is that it will end. Peter is said to have been crucified upside down next to his wife. Paul was beheaded just outside of Rome. Both of these great men, as many great deeds as they did, met death and so will you. This world is not your legacy, Peter and Paul both knew that. They knew that without Jesus, their legacy was a dead body hanging upside down on two wooden planks. They knew that without Jesus, their legacy was a headless body in a pool of blood. They knew was that their legacies were tied with the legacy of the One they followed. They knew that without Christ, all that they did was worthless and dead. Do you really think that your legacy, if it is not Jesus� legacy, will be any greater than theirs?

Sir Nicholas Winton was a stockbroker in 1938 when Hitler�s troops began to march into Czechoslovakia. In his gut he knew that something evil was underfoot. He quit his job as a stockbroker and began to charter trains, raise money, and transport Jewish children out of Nazi occupied Czechoslovakia and Poland. Because of him, 699 Jewish children escaped what would have been imminent death in Nazi prison camps.

Vera Gissing, one of the 699 children who escaped remarked, �He did not only save 699, he saved a generation. We have had children and grandchildren. Because of him, there are about 7,000 of us alive.�

When Jesus died on that cross, when He rose again, when He paid the price for the crown of life that you have because you believe in His work, He saved not only you. He saved a generation. He saved you and the people that you meet here. He saved you and the people that you will meet and share His love with. He made a legacy for you. Peter and Paul knew that legacy. You know that legacy. That legacy is the legacy of Jesus Christ. That legacy is yours to live.