Notes From Jon

It’s election season, and I have to confess that I’ve been looking at the yard signs around Kenbridge lately. With all the normal red and blue signage for the major candidates, a few yellow and black signs have caught my attention, saying things like, “Yes 4 Marriage” and “Virginia 4 Marriage.” All these signs make reference to a Virginia constitutional amendment vote coming up in November during the general elections. I confessed that at first I was somewhat ignorant, and thought, “I need to check into this… is someone trying to get rid of marriage?”

When I received a form letter from Jerry Falwell in the church PO Box (which, strangely enough considering my theological position, happens pretty often), my interest was even more piqued. I went online and did some preliminary study, but other things kept my attention so I decided I’d come back to the issue later.

Then a couple of weeks ago, as I studied during one of the more quiet parts of the day (while the girls are asleep), I heard feet on the steps outside, then someone pounded on the door and rang the doorbell several times. I jumped up quickly – first, because the manner of the knocking made me wonder if someone was in trouble to come so violently to my door. Second, I knew the ruckus might wake the girls. So I ran to the door… only to find there, in the middle of a pouring rain, an honest and sincere man in a cowboy hat.

He introduced himself and we talked briefly, then he put a manila envelope in my hands. “I’m here on behalf of the Virginia For Marriage group, and they asked me to go around handing out these Pastor’s Packets.” Considering the name of the group, I had the feeling I knew which side of the fence he stood on. I wanted to ask him to talk to me a little about it, but we were both cold and wet by now, and I didn’t want to invite him in because the girls were asleep. So I thanked him, said something along the lines of, “Thanks… can’t guarantee I’ll use all this stuff, but I’ll certainly read it.” He looked at me uncertainly as we shook hands, then glanced back over his shoulder a couple of times as he went back down the sidewalk.

I came to the office later in the afternoon and pulled the packet out. I scanned it. I looked more closely at some parts. In many places I saw lists of things the amendment would do. Most of them were something along the lines of, “Limit marriage to one man and one woman,” “protect the institution of marriage from activist judges who would try to legislate from the bench” (somewhere I’ve seen this exact language before, I just can’t remember where). They were also careful to show that the amendment won’t “take away existing rights from anyone,” that it won’t affect wills, employment benefits, or agreements between unmarried individuals. I assumed (rightly, it turns out) that these statements were in response to the claims of the amendment’s opponents.

There was a letter from Liberty University’s legal counsel, explaining that it was legal for churches to work in favor of this amendment (nowhere saying it was OK to speak against it). Accordingly, there were also bulletin inserts, links to sermons, a letter declaring Nov. 5 as “Marriage Protection Sunday,” and an “Adopt a Precinct” program whereby a church can agree to be active in their area promoting the passage of the amendment.

I looked far and wide through the packet for the actual wording of the amendment. It was hard to find. On one brochure, in the tiniest font used in the entire 10-page packet – almost an afterthought – was the wording of the amendment itself:

That only a union between one man and one woman may be a marriage valid in or recognized by the Commonwealth and its political subdivisions. This Commonwealth and its political subdivisions shall not create or recognize a legal status for relationships of unmarried individuals that intends to approximate the design, qualities, significance, or effects of marriage. Nor shall this Commonwealth or its political subdivisions create or recognize another union, partnership, or other legal status to which is assigned the rights, benefits, obligations, qualities or effects of marriage.

I couldn’t help but feel somewhat insulted. Do these well-meaning folks not trust their readers and constituents to be able to read this proposed amendment for themselves? I could look it up on the internet for myself, but I imagine that many other people just look at the interpretation and never think to see what the original says. Sure, give me your interpretation of it, but at least let me see the information for myself!

I’m still mulling the matter over a few days later when I get a phone call at the church office. On the other end is a more softly-spoken member of the same group, telling me about the amendment and what it will do. Thinking this is simply a grass-roots phone campaign, I listen patiently, and learn a little more about the matter as I hear him explain it. He offers to bring me some information. I offer my thanks for his phone call, but tell him I already have the information I need to make my decision.

Finally, he concludes by asking if he can bring me a packet, some bumper stickers and yard signs to hand out to my congregation. At this point, I realize he’s soliciting me as a pastor. For some reason, this makes me angry. I try to keep calm as I explain that I plan only to make my people aware of the issue and the fact that there’s a vote, and to encourage them to vote their own consciences. I plan to stay neutral on the issue as a pastor.

There is silence on the other end of the line. Finally, as if he hadn’t heard me correctly: “So you plan to be… neutral?”

“Yes, from the pulpit,” I explain. “I have my own personal opinion on the matter, of course. But as a pastor, I don’t feel it’s my place to tell people how to vote. They have minds and spirits – they can decide on this issue for themselves.” Here, I was speaking something I’d never put into words before, but realized this was my stand on the matter.

More silence. Finally, he said, “Well, OK then…” in an uncertain voice that left me feeling he didn’t think too much of my decision. I hung up the phone, wondering whether I might find a big pile of signs on my front yard the next morning.

I can’t get past a couple of points that stick out to me in all this hooplah. First, while I’m certainly no political expert, I can recognize a ploy when I see one. It’s no accident that this issue is coming up at the same time as mid-term elections. Make all the points about the morality of the matter you want, but timing and presentat
ion tell us what’s really going on. Even Jerry Falwell admits this.

Second, I can’t get past the fact that these people who have solicited me – be it by coming to my front door, calling me on the phone, placing yard signs around town, or sending me a form letter – have a certain expectation of me. I’m a pastor, and, like all other folks who work in very visible public positions, I have a little alarm that goes off when I realize someone has placed their expectations on me.

Nowhere in any of this literature or solicitation was I asked, “Have you considered taking this to your congregation?” In no place was there even any room for doubt or question that good Christian pastors might decide NOT to make this a congregational issue. No need to think about this, to look at both sides of the issue. It was just assumed: “Of course you’ll vote for this and encourage other people to as well – we’re all Christians, right?”

My personal feelings on the amendment aside (please know that’s NOT the issue I’m talking about… feel free to ask about my own feelings, which might or might not surprise you): I feel insulted, and I feel that my congregation has been insulted, that someone would ask me to tell them how to vote. God gave all of us brains, and the Holy Spirit works in our lives to convict us and guide us. I am amazed that Baptists – of all denominations – would encourage this kind of activity, considering our strong emphasis on the priesthood of the believer.

If you are a Virginian, I encourage you to VOTE on November 7. Notice, I don’t say “I encourage you to vote YES,” or “I encourage you to vote NO.” Rather, I encourage you to look the matter over thoughtfully and educate yourself, pray over the matter, then vote as you feel God has led you. For education, you can check out both sides of the argument – va4marriage.org, or votenova.org. Or just Google “Virginia marriage amendment” and see what you come up with.

Be informed. Search the scriptures. Ask God to guide your conscience. Then vote. I think that’s a guideline we can all live by, no matter what our political persuasion.

For those of you who might have logged on here in the last 24 hours, you may have noticed that I removed a post about our recent ordeal with the town of Kenbridge over our satellite dish. It was an emotional issue to me – considering we’d found ourselves on the “wrong side of the law,” and in an effort to make it funny, I employed a very negative tone.

If you read that, I apologize. Fact is, that story could have happened in any small town over any kind of issue. But it’s something I should have kept to myself. I did not mean to make fun of Kenbridge in any way, or to speak negatively of anyone in the town – including those who, either from neglect or inability to do so, have let their own properties get into disarray. I imagine that at the busiest point of the summer when I hadn’t had time to get out and do yardwork, a few folks in town must have wondered, “When is that Baptist preacher ever going to mow his yard?!”

I’m embarrassed to admit that all the hooplah was over something so simple and yet luxurious as a satellite dish. I had talked myself into thinking maybe that the “right to have 100 or more channels” had been somehow written into the Bill of Rights. Fact is, satellite TV is one of those things most of us would be better off without. I’m not even sure we watch enough TV to make it worth what we pay for it. Here we are, spending HOW MUCH a month on TV, when people around the world don’t have enough to eat?

So all this to say two things: 1) I’m sorry if you found that post offensive. After I reread it, I found it offensive too. And, 2) Thanks, Mom, for helping me see things from a different perspective.

A couple of weeks back, I put up a post so depressing, if anyone read it you probably wanted to start Lexapro. I was whining about being in a desert, wondering why I wasn’t happy. All of us get to this point at times, I think. We usually call it a “pity party.”

I got the needed jolt. A few days after that, I went to a meeting in Richmond for new ministers in the Virginia Baptist Mission Board. John Upton, our Executive Director, had several good words to offer, but there was one point at which he seemed to know what I was going through. And the basic idea was this: Our “cutting edge” is different, no matter where we are, and we’re to be on our own cutting edge, not someone else’s.

I’ve recently (past two years) begun looking seriously at the Emergent conversation, thinking about the ways the Global Church is headed in the next decades. To me, that’s intriguing, even if I’m not always comfortable where the theology leads. And while it’s interesting to look at, that is currently another church’s cutting edge. It has affected my preaching and my ministry, and so my own cutting edge has been pushed. But that kind of church won’t make it out here for quite a while to come.

Or will it? Is that kind of church even possible in a rural setting? I’ve long been thinking about the context here – how most folks here have heard the Gospel and have been to church, but few have probably seen a living example of the Gospel. That, I think, is where Emergent thinking has a lot to offer in my own setting: An idea that’s different enough that people in a Gospel-soaked culture might notice something different.

I think one of the reasons I’ve taken so long to get a post up (other than just the simple fact that I’m a busy person, but that’s no different from anyone else) is that I’m always waiting to make some profound statement. The problem is, those don’t come along very often. And when they do, they’re hard to articulate in a short amount of time (see some of the VERY long posts below).

So maybe I ought to just start posting when I’ve got five minutes to write something. Like today.

This morning, I had an email in my inbox about how corrupt congress is (this e-mail, by the way, has been going around for a several years, and the numbers haven’t changed… hmmm). I looked around on the web, and found some sources that are a little more respectable in their approach. I even saw a blurb on CNN about this as I sat in the breakfast room at the hotel this morning. It’s all people are talking about – congress is corrupt.

OK… is anyone surprised by this? Big revelation here. Let’s see, we live in a democratic society and elect people who represent us – not just in voice, but who literally represent us in lawmaking and policy. Should we be surprised that they, on the whole, ACT like us too? I imagine if you took some of those statistics (the real ones, not the made-up ones), and expanded them to a national level, we’d find that congress pretty accurately represents who we are as a people.

We ELECTED these people, put them on the ballot and put them in office. If they do something good, everyone’s saying, “Oh yeah, I voted for him.” But suddenly, it’s not anyone’s fault when the skeletons come out of the closet.

It’s just funny to me. I don’t know why.

After reading this recent article at EthicsDaily, I only had one reaction.

Wow.

There are several things disturbing about this story to me, besides the fact that I’m pretty sure some of the stories being told are either embellished or downright false.

First, Warren says in his own book that his style of church will not work everywhere. Of all the places in the world you’d expect a hard time implementing a California-based church model, the Deep South would be on the top of the list to me. Living in Birmingham, I saw several churches try it, and many of them are now in shambles. The main problem is that Warren’s model is more lay-driven, while many Deep South SBC churches are still very top-driven (much as they may try to deny it).

A church is a living organism. You can’t go to India and uproot a rubber tree, bring it to the desert climate of Arizona and plant it there. It will die. It does not have the characteristics needed to live in that kind of environment. You cannot take a postmodern seeker-style church model, uproot a traditional church, and replace the roots. It’s silly. And it’s usually done in the name of gaining members.

Second, while I’m sure some of these stories were exaggerated or made up, there must be some element of truth to the way the Bellevue church staff is behaving. And my question to all those raising their hands in protest is: Did you not expect this? Did you look at Gaines’ past actions? Did you see how his Gardendale Church was run before you brought him to Memphis? I visited the church in Gardendale on a couple of occasions while I was in Birmingham, and am not in the least bit surprised – just from my observations of his worship leadership – that some of these stories might be true.

This is sad to me on so many levels. Bellevue is a great church with a deep history of doing God’s kingdom work.

Just in case any is actually reading my blog from time to time…

I’m also posting on the blog of a friend of mine, and that conversation (currently on the topic of God and evil) is taking up most of my blogging time and energy at the moment. Check it out if you have time. It’s waitingtolive.wordpress.com.

Also, I’ve completed work (for the time being, there are still a few bugs to work out) on the Kenbridge Baptist Website. Included in this launch is a blog that will contain my weekly sermons. They can either be read directly from the blog site, or from a page embedded in the church website.

Who knew I had this much time to write?!

Once again, I turn to the familiar cry of Jesus on the cross. “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?”

Why am I here, God? Why have you brought me to this place? I love the people, I love the work (when I’m able to give myself to it fully). But I feel out of place, like a wildflower planted in the middle of an interstate. Or maybe more like a weed in a garden. I don’t know.

In the last two years, I’ve read and prayed and thought of a different kind of Church, a different kind of Christianity. And my soul resonates with that. My mind rejoices in a faith that seems less like a straightjacket, and more like a comfortable pair of sweats. My spirit rejoices that a God who seemed so distant for long time now seems just a bit closer, just a bit more like a God I’d want to know. My heart quickens to think that this deep thirst may be closer to being quenched… or at least, satiated for a while.

But I feel like I’ve been paraded by the beautiful fountain, only to be led out into the desert. I feel dried up, abandoned, helpless. Where I am now seems like the opposite of that place I want to be. All those things that I have talked about the Old Church being? All those stuffy flannel-board images of God, all those meaningless repetitions of prayers and songs? That’s where I am. And it doesn’t seem my “new kind of Christianity” is making much of a difference.

Why am I here? Surely I am in the place God wants me to be, but why is it that – no matter how much I may see a place and think it’s where I need to be – why is it that when God puts me there, I almost immediately begin to feel it’s not right? I know it MUST be right. The circumstances behind it, the affirmations of the Spirit, everything shows me that God has brought me here.

So why do I feel like “here” is a desert, and not a lush pasture?

The life of a disciple… what does it mean? This morning, as I was preparing to get to work in the office I took up a copy of Fisher Humphreys’ new book, I Have Called You Friends. In that book, he discusses several NT images for following Christ. The first is “Disciple” – a term that seems to have been so overburdened with baggage that it carries little meaning anymore.

Humphreys suggests using the term “Apprentice” instead, one who follows a master around watching him closely, learning from him what to do. An apprentice to a plumber follows an experienced plumber around, all the while watching and listening to what the master does and says, so that one day this apprentice can one day be a master plumber as well.

For some reason, when I looked at that statement, all the baggage fell off the term “disciple” for me. I could suddenly see myself as one of those disciples, following Jesus around, watching his every action and listening to every word. I was standing there by the seaside, when he came to me and called me to follow him. Like the others, I looked around and wondered whether he had really meant ME. But, sensing that there was more to this than just a simple decision, I stood and followed him.

For some reason, I feel this has revitalized me… has the potential to transform me even. But I don’t feel like this can be done alone. I feel as if this has to be a community thing. I’ve long felt that it would be easier to live the life of a disciple in a community of believers who are encouraging each other and lifting each other up in prayer.

But does such a community exist? Can I find such a place? Can I help CREATE such aa place?

Sometimes I lose God.

When I was a child, I experienced the same scary experience that most of us have experienced: losing a parent. Though I know it happened many times, I remember one store in particular. It was a huge clothing outlet store in central Alabama. I was probably 8 years old, and my parents had come here to waste hours poring over things that were only a tiny bit cheaper than they could be gotten elsewhere. There were no toy stores in this outlet mall. Sadly the only store that caught my attention was a Black & Decker outlet… and drastically reduced metric crescent wrenches are only interesting to an eight-year-old for so long.

On one of these trips, I whiled away the time by letting my imagination roam free. It only seemed I was weaving through the racks where my mother was browsing – actually, I was weaving through the rain forest, looking for a tiger. As I let my reality catch up with my imagination, I stopped and looked around… and experienced that sudden sense of panic we all remember from some time in our lives. I had lost her. I looked in every direction for my mother, still not panicked enough to call out her name. I quickly backtracked, went to the places I knew she’d been. She wasn’t there. I kept looking, and now my fear had caught up with me – I began to cry.

It seemed like an eternity, but it was probably only a minute or two. When I found her, I expected her to be anxiously searching for me as well. But she turned from examining a blouse or something, looked down at me, and asked why I was crying. Didn’t she know? Hadn’t we been lost? Wasn’t she as panic-stricken as me? Wasn’t she bursting with joy to know we’d found each other at last?

No. In fact, she’d known where I was the whole time. She’d watched me from over the top of the clothing racks, wondering why I was weaving so erratically through the store. Turns out that if I’d simply stopped and taken time to look, I would have seen her watching me, waiting for me to come back.

Sometimes I lose God. Like when I lose my sunglasses, only to find they’ve been on my head the whole time. Like when I got lost in the city, trying to get back to my skyscraper hotel – even though I never lost sight of it, I couldn’t quite figure out how to get back there.

Sometimes I lose God. But I’m never lost. And I’m always glad to be found.

How do we deal with terrorism? For centuries, philosophers, preachers and politicians alike have all realized that our greatest enemies are not those who inflict pain, but those who inflict fear. Fear itself is our greatest enemy. Terrorism is the worst possible kind of act we can perpetrate against other human beings – not because the kinds of things terrorists do, for whatever reason, but because of what their acts inspire: Terror.

For instance, no matter how loudly and often we say we will not let the terrorists win, have we not let them win already? For instance, let your mind take you back to a plane flight you took before 9/11. In your mind, wander through the airport and notice what you see… or what you DON’T see. Fear, nervous people looking over their shoulders at someone with dark skin or wearing robes. So many security checks and measures that we actually utter a sigh of relief when we get strapped in and listen to the safety demonstration given by the flight attendants (who’d have every thought we’d be relieved to hear THAT?).

Where will it end? At each point in your imaginary wandering through the pre-9/11 airport, you can probably remember when and why they had to put those measures in place. Remember when they put in those huge TSA bag scanners? Remember when they started taking scissors, knives and nail clippers away? Remember when you had to start taking off your shoes? Remember when you had to dump all your makeup and water bottles in a big bin at the front of the security line?

I joke with people these days and say, “Before long, some terrorist will find a way to weave a bomb into his clothes, and we’ll all have to get on the plane naked.” But funny as that may seem, most of us only give a nervous little chuckle as we think, “You know, I wonder if that really COULD happen…”

We can’t defeat terrorism by trying to make sure we can filter out every kind of bomb they can make. There will always be a newer way, a way that will make us all shudder when we find out how close we came.

No, we can only defeat terror by not being afraid. All through the Bible, we see angels and other messengers of God saying, “be not afraid,” and we have to wonder whether there’s a message there for us, too. A fellow minister and mentor once taught me something I still have to remind myself to this day: “The opposite of faith is not doubt. The opposite of faith is fear.” Do we have enough faith to “be not afraid?”

Seems so easy to relegate the fight against terrorism to the folks behind the scanner at the airport, or the soldiers overseas. But the real fight, the one that matters, takes place in your soul and in mine.