Good

Last night was a good night. We had the third of our Sunday night gatherings for Jr. Highers in the confirmation program. It was a great night. Nate Burleson did the music. Happy Fun Time did improv comedy, Erik Steen did a great job with the videos, Pastor Peter did the talk, along with Tom Tipton... The whole thing flowed. It was what we wanted it to be.

I came home last night with the sense of "this is why I do what I do." It is a program. Programs are not a magic panacea that answers all problems or issues. Far from it. But when it does work, they are tools. And really, if we are going to do programs, and we should, shouldn't we do them well?

The theme was "God Creates." The primary focus was on how God continues to create...to be active in our world... Externally and internally. It is a matter of being able to name God in the midst of that process.

My hope is that God continues to create within our process.

Old Vision

"If you're going to do things like you've always done them, you're going to get what you've always gotten."

I'm at at conference sponsored by the ELCA this weekend. The conference is a gathering of 250 people who are either synod evangelism specialists, or are a part of the Christian Educator's Network. It's been an interesting event. There are big parts of it that have been driving me crazy.

I can't seem to get anyone to understand what I mean when I talk ab out "language" as being a key to evangelism. Unfortunately, this event isn't about that.

I've heard mostly stuff that is repackaged from the past:

• Hospitality needs to be a priority.
• We need to live the story.
• The story has power.

None of these things are wrong. But every time that they were spoken, I cringed just a little. They are the same things that we have been saying for what...10? 20? 30 years? And how well has that worked for us so far?

The ELCA has shrunk in membership. 10% of ELCA congregations have grown by an average of 1 member per year over the last 10 years. (Yes, I typed 1 member.) That means the other 90% have been stable or shrunk.

Evangelism hasn't worked for us.

Is it our culture?
Is it our methodology?
Yes.

It is not our theology and it is not our message. They are a constant and they are life-giving.

But we need a new language. Or maybe new languages. We need to speak to a culture who doesn't "get" us. We need change. I don't know what that change is yet, but we need to figure it out. It is a problem that needs to be solved.

I'm not sure that the people who are here are capable of figuring it out. I'm not sure that our church, institutaionally, has the courage it takes to make the kinds of changes, or to think in creative ways necessary to institute change.

More on the event later...

At the Smithville Methodist Church

At the Smithville Methodist Church
by Stephen Dunn

It was supposed to be Arts & Crafts for a week,
but when she came home with the "Jesus Saves" button,
we knew what art was up, what ancient craft.

She liked her little friends.
She liked the songs they sang
when they weren't twisting and folding paper into dolls.
What could be so bad?

Jesus had been a good man,
and putting faith in good men was
what we had to do to stay this side of cynicism,
that other sadness. OK, we said, One week.

But when she came home singing
"Jesus loves me, the Bible tells me so," it was time to talk. Could we say Jesus doesn't love you? Could I tell her the Bible is a great book certain people use to make you feel bad?
We sent her back without a word.

It had been so long since we believed,
so long since we needed Jesus as our nemesis and friend,
that we thought he was sufficiently dead,
that our children would think of him like Lincoln or Thomas Jefferson.

Soon it became clear to us: you can't teach disbelief to a child,
only wonderful stories, and we hadn't a story nearly as good.
On parents' night there were the Arts & Crafts all spread out like appetizers.
Then we took our seats in the church and the children sang a song about the Ark, and Hallelujah and one in which they had to jump up and down for Jesus.

I can't remember ever feeling so uncertain about what's comic, what's serious.
Evolution is magical but devoid of heroes.
You can't say to your child "Evolution loves you."
The story stinks of extinction and nothing exciting happens for centuries.

I didn't have a wonderful story for my child and she was beaming.
All the way home in the car she sang the songs, occasionally standing up for Jesus.
There was nothing to do but drive, ride it out,
sing along in silence.

APOD: 2005 November 7 - NGC 7635: The Bubble Nebula

APOD: 2005 November 7 - NGC 7635: The Bubble Nebula

An amazing photo from space

Bethel Lutheran of Biloxi Katrina Volunteers

Bethel Lutheran of Biloxi Katrina Volunteers

What is Honest

A friend of mine made a comment last weekend that I have been wrestling with. He said that in his prayer life, it was becoming more important to him to "just be honest."

Intersting.

Why would you not be honest in prayer? What good would it do to not be honest, if God is indeed all-knowing.

It's not about God, is it? It is about our own need to put ourselves in the best possible light, for God's sake and even more for our own. We are always trying to justify ourselves...to rationalize to ourselves, to make ourselves right.

It can't be done.

So how to be honest in prayer? I suppose I need to just start out figuring out how to be honest in life.

That's a different topic.

Academy

I'm in San Antonio for a planning meeting for the adult "Academy" at the ELCA Youth Gathering next summer.

I love the creative planning and dreaming process. The opportunity to dream about what kind of training the people who bring young people to the Gathering need, is really going to be fun. This is especially true when working on an project with the Gathering, which really has resources to throw around.