As Fast as You Can…?

I drove the minivan today on an 80-mile stretch of I-17 in Arizona.  I felt like I was of Richard Petty talent in a minivan race of NASCAR.  After driving the RV on interstate roads and local highways I’ve noticed a slight difference in the acceleration ability between our Honda Odyssey and the Jayco Greyhawk.  Just a little.

Kinda like my Odyssey… without Homer. Let that one sink in a bit.

It was difficult to keep my foot off the pedal and not go for broke – after all my minivan does have balls the size of church bells for a family sedan grocery-getter.  There (to Phoenix) and back again (not a hobbit’s tale) in about 3 hours with some heavy traffic on the return side of the trip – not to mention, two stops to plug the baby.  (She’s so stinkin’ cute, but she doesn’t hold on to that pacifier when it is just me in the car)

While in Phoenix I met with a good friend, the one responsible for this career in ministry.  Back in 1996 Pastor Ted, as I have known him, told me I should go into the ministry.  He said I had a ‘gift.’  I politely told him he was full of sh_t.  Four years later, I was in the ministry.  He was right.  I was wrong.

Pastor Ted is the kind of pastor I want.  The man exudes unconditional love – for all.  He and his ordained wife co-pastored a large UCC in the Phoenix area.  Notice the past tense.  He’s now off on a new-church start with a whole new set of perimeters that any established church would find too nonspecific.  But before I derail my train of thought, Ted is the person you’d find on all those, um…er… those TED talks – inspirational.  His laugh and his love for others is contagious.

The point is he and his wife are no longer there and not by their own choice.

Churches can be brutal.  They can be brutal in countless ways.  Any non-Christian may wonder why we worship a God whose symbol is an ancient Roman tool of torture and inevitable death – the crucifix.  I believe the answer is, quite frankly, that some Christians want to put it back into practice…on their own parishioners or even their own pastors.

Some will say churches have lost their significance.  Some will say the Church isn’t a relevant source of inspiration for their spirituality to feed from.  From the ‘Spiritual-but-not-religious’ to the agnostic to the atheist to even the regular worship attendee – they’re almost right.

It’s not that the Church has lost touch with the general population, but it has lost the ability to be unconditionally compassionate, empathetic, simpatico.  It’s exchanged unconditional love for self-righteousness, occasionally for righteous indignation.

If anything else, the guy is handsome.

Recently, Rob Bell, thought of as one of the leaders of the emergent church movement, made the news as being openly supportive of gay marriage.  To my dismay, a few of my colleagues started hating on the fella because he’s just now doing this instead of doing this back when he was the lead pastor of his start-up church in Grandville, MI, called Mars Hill Bible Church, not to be confused with Mars Hill in Seattle, a church that is far from proclaiming marriage equality.

Here’s my take: (And so glad you asked)  First, Rob has never preached against marriage equality.  In all his work and teachings, all I’ve ever heard from Rob, aside from occasional and appropriate satire, was a positive message about following Christ.  Boiled down into two words – love others.  That’s it.  Period.  I know Rob started this church on his own.  I know the first Sunday’s attendance was over 1,000 people.  I know that many of my friends and their friends were leaving mainline denomination churches in droves to attend worship in this converted, nearly-abandoned mall – yes, a friggin’ mall.  The place is gigantic.  I also know that my personal feelings toward this Rob Bell phenomenon were not pleasant at first.  I was just as pissed at Bell, calling their worship ‘candy store’ theology…until I attended a service at Mars Hill Bible Church…and learned something new and something about myself in the process.  In its heyday Mars Hill would see about 12,000 people file through its doors on a worship Sunday.  That’s A LOT of people.

Did you know, just off hand, that Ben Fold’s Five Song for the Dumped makes for an awesome prelude to worship?  Give me my money back, give me my money back, you… (they didn’t sing the lyrics, but the house band rocked it!)

Second, I belong to one of the most progressive mainline churches in America – the United Church of Christ.  Which, of course, is almost unapologetic in its progressiveness.  It’s known as The Church of Firsts – ordaining the first African American, ordaining the first woman, and ordaining the first openly gay minister.  Sweet.  Matter of fact, in everything the U.C.C. stands for it is about 20 years ahead of other mainline denominations.  Not bad for a smaller denomination compared to the Presbyterian Church, PC(USA) or the Evangelical Lutheran Church of America (ELCA), or, the overwhelmingly huge Catholic Church. (They are, by the way, Christians)

What bugs me about the U.C.C. are the following:

• It’s the UnitED church OF Christ and not the UnitING Church IN Christ.  It’s like we’ve hung the MISSION ACCOMPLISHED sign on all of Christianity.  Oops… not yet, people.  If anyone reading this has been to a General Synod of the United Church of Christ during its business meeting portion of the event then you’d know that being united  is harder than it looks in print.
• Because of their radical stance on social justice issues like marriage equality, the U.C.C. estranges people in their own denomination.  What?  How can that be?  Due to this beautiful and complex phrase called local autonomy, any local church can believe in a manner acceptable to their local church as long as they’re not going off the deep end, which, for the U.C.C., is occasionally hard to see where that ‘end’ really is.  Still, the faster it goes, the more people are left behind… more on that in a moment.

I live in a more conservative area of Colorado.  I preach there, too.  I preach in a church that considers itself “theologically diverse.”  I am also an advocate of equality for all the world’s people.  I also despise the use of the word queer to describe a people I find as beautiful as the rest of the straight world.  Doesn’t queer mean things like odd, strange, unusual, funny, peculiar, curious, bizarre, weird, uncanny, freakish, eerie, unnatural, unconventional, unorthodox, unexpected, unfamiliar, abnormal, anomalous, atypical, untypical, out of the ordinary, incongruous, irregular, puzzling, perplexing, baffling, unaccountable; informal fishy,spooky, bizarro, and freaky.  I think those that argue for and support equality for all people don’t find gay people to be any or all of the above…on the contrary.

In the communities to the east and west of our humble community there were two more U.C.C. churches.  Notice the past tense.  They now have joined another denomination – the Conservative Congregational Church Conference, a.k.a The Four C’s.  These two churches felt as if the national office of the U.C.C. were forcing upon them the belief of marriage equality.  For many local church members, and sadly, many local church ministers, the phrase local autonomy didn’t matter.  The national office stepped off the deep end of belief.

Now, I don’t believe words like conservative or  liberal belong in theological conversations whatsoever.  They only serve to cause division rather than, say for example, unite.  Oh… there’s a concept.  What if we had a uniting Church?

Even within the U.C.C. there is rabid division – you can be O&A (Open and Affirming) or Faithful & Welcoming (still recognizing homosexuality as sinful gig) or you can be…well…you can just be.  Kinda like the church I serve.

But then, I would be accused of not being prophetic enough.  So I should just risk it all and tell my congregation to accept gay marriage and “get over it” if they don’t.  At the same time, I’d lose a majority of my congregation by verbally pushing that social justice issue…all up-in-your-face about it.

What many of my peers fail to realize is how many Christians we piss off by telling them point-blank it’s my way or the highway.  In a denomination that believes, or so I thought it did, in unification of Christians, telling other Christians who simply can’t wrap their minds around an opposing view that they are wrong simply doesn’t fly.

I heard of a pastor in Stone Mountain, Georgia who did just that.  Told his congregation that marriage equality was they way they were going to go.  End result?  Nearly half of a 6,000 member church left.  And those that left were probably pissed.  Not just the members that left, but the children of said members and maybe even their children.  So, while advocating for social justice for all people (something I deeply believe in) that church managed to divide over one theological issue, sending thousands into the abyss of resentment, digging in their heels for a battle anytime a chance at unification may rear its ugly head.

Rob never told Mars Hill he was pro-marriage quality.  Why do that and risk angering 6,000 people who desperately need to hear a message of love?  Just because it’s the right thing to do or there’s no better time than the present?  For who?  Also, who decides when the right time is for such an announcement to be made for this particular environment?  There is more than one social justice factor to consider.

But there’s another way.  And this way takes time.  This was always takes time.

Ask yourself these questions:   Have you ever noticed social change on a day-to-day basis?  From today to tomorrow, do you witness change on a global scale?  What you look back on the past 20 years of your life (if you’ve lived that long), how has life changed?

Truth is, we see change far better in the rear-view mirror than looking at the pavement in front of us.  Yes, change does happen.  Mostly in small increments.  We could say that the State of Colorado signing into law a civil union bill is massive change.  But how long, again, did it take that to happen?  It wasn’t overnight.

I often sit this way when I’m on my throne.  Wait… is that too much information?

When the Israelites are in Babylonian captivity under the rule of Nebuchadnezzar, the prophet Jeremiah wrote to them telling them to build houses and settle down there.  He told them to seek the prosperity of the city in which they now live, not just for themselves but for the sake of the city.  He told them that after 70 years God would come for them.  (Jeremiah, ch. 29)

70 years?  Why 70?  Why not just one?

How many generations of one family can you fit into 70 years?  Perhaps four?  One new generation every 20 years, for example, would make four generations in 70 years.  What happens when the ideals of one generation pass away?  Then the next?  Then the one after that?

Slowly with time and the quite literal death of old-shool thought, the world changes.  To change a societies way of thinking overnight, whether it be secular or theological, is nuttier than a Nutter Butter.

The methodology behind Jeremiah’s madness was to teach the Israelites to love their new digs.  To love those around them while maintaining their faith beliefs and practicing them just as they always had done before.  Keep doing what you’re doing with that LOVE thing, people! is what Jeremiah was preaching.  Love one another.  Regardless of their beliefs.  Even if they can’t change their mind as fast as the generation before them – love them.

To tell them they’re wrong, that the older ideals of theology just aren’t relevant anymore is to tell them that they aren’t relevant anymore.

I’m not willing to do that to anyone.  But I am willing to love all.  Unconditionally, no matter their speed of their faith, even if they never come to agree with me.

A good friend, April, wrote this.  I happen to admire this writing as it relates to this lengthy one of my own.

We are a society bent on winning, sometimes at all costs.  While we may believe it is all the right reasons sometimes it is just to piss off the ‘other’ party and set them back a decade in progressive movement.

It is okay to lose.  How you show love in the process makes the difference.

I don’t think we should drive as fast as we can to that final destination – we risk hurting others.  We risk hurting others who have faith, just a faith that’s lived differently than our own.  We should not forsake them.

I do believe we should keep on ‘driving’ per se, knowing it may take us 70 years to change.

Love… It really does win.  I have two of these stickers on my beloved RV – I may need to adhere a few more…

Oh, and Rob, thanks for your opinion, no matter when you spoke it, it’s all good!  By the way, I’m rolling through LA next week… can we meet?  Coffee?  A donut?  Some good conversation?  Please?