Pastors’ Blog

Facing Up to a Hard Question: “What If the Kids Don’t Want Our Church?”

What will happen to all our stuff when the time comes that we need to downsize, move into assisted living – or die?  Derek Penwell, author, activist and pastor at a mainline church in Louisville, Kentucky, points out in a recent Huffington Post article that our kids may not want all those precious family heirlooms, like Grandma’s china or Grandpa’s golf clubs.  Not to mention the furniture and other piles of stuff that we worked so hard to acquire.  It doesn’t suit their taste.  It doesn’t fit their lifestyle.  It will end up in a garage sale or perhaps at the Goodwill.

And then he raises the painful and provocative question: “What if the kids don’t want our church?”

Dr. Penwell concludes: “In fact, in many ways, these [younger] generations increasingly think the church has been running toward the wrong finish line for years – concerned as it seems to have been not with figuring out how more faithfully to live like the Jesus of the Gospels, but in acquiring bigger and better stuff to hand down to a generation that doesn’t particularly want to inherit it.”

“You could try to convince the emerging generations that they ought to value the tools you’ve always used, that they should want to take care of them, that they’re going to need them someday, that they should want to pass them down to their children.”

“Or, you could complain about the fact that these kids just don’t appreciate what you’ve done for them.”

“Or, you could suck it up and bless them on their next wild adventure.”

Food for thought with the clear ring of truth.  Except for that part about not trying to figure out how more faithfully to live as Christ’s disciples.  That is exactly what we strive to do at First Presbyterian Church.  No one does it perfectly, but it is our goal.

So, given that, what is God calling us – our congregation – to do?  Certainly, to let the world know in whatever way we can that in fact we are striving to live the Gospel faithfully, which, to us, means loving our neighbors, “neighbors” defined as everyone regardless of any human condition, and “love” defined as taking action (not just having warm and fuzzy thoughts) to be good stewards of God’s earth and to work for justice and peace.

But also, perhaps we are being called to continue to treasure the gift that church is to us, the gift it is right now to so many people, at the same time that we let go of fears for its future.

How do we do the work that God is calling us to do within the body of Christ, at the same time that we bless younger generations in their next wild adventure?  What does that look like “in real life?”

You can read the article yourself by clicking on this link: “What If the Kids Don’t Want Our Church?”

There are 2 comments on "Facing Up to a Hard Question: “What If the Kids Don’t Want Our Church?”"
Join the discussion and leave a comment »

Good Friday Service of Taizé and Tenebrae

We are doing something a little different for Holy Week this year.  In years past, we have had both an evening Maundy Thursday service and a mid-day Good Friday service.  Most recently, the Maundy Thursday service has been a tenebrae service (more on tenebrae below) and the Good Friday service has been a Service of the Seven Last Words of Christ – seven different preachers over the course of three hours, interspersed with hymns and worship music.

We have learned a handful of things over the past years: People love the contemplative darkness of the Maundy Thursday tenebrae service, but there are a number of people who have a hard time fitting in worship on a “school night.”  Here at First Presbyterian Church, the Maundy Thursday service always has ended with Jesus’ arrest, and so those who attend worship on Thursday but not on Friday never reach Golgotha – the place and events of the crucifixion.  The Service of the Seven Last Words focuses on the crucifixion and has the appeal of spanning the hours that Jesus is traditionally believed to have been on the cross – noon to 3:00 – but relatively few people can take off work or school to come to a service in the middle of the day.  Further, the Service of the Seven Last Words revolves around sermons – words, words, and more words – when, perhaps, observance of Good Friday is more appropriately contemplative and even emotionally evocative.

Read more →

There is one comment on "Good Friday Service of Taizé and Tenebrae"
Join the discussion and leave a comment »

One Great Hour of Sharing Video

Every year on Palm Sunday we participate in the ecumenical offering, One Great Hour of Sharing.  This year they have made a stunning video, which you can watch here.  Do it.  It is lovely.

There are no comments yet on "One Great Hour of Sharing Video"
Start the discussion and leave a comment »

Ten Good Reasons to Bring Your Child to Church (well, our church, anyway)

Last Sunday night a group of parents gathered at our church to discuss Madeline Levine’s new book, Teach Your Children Well: Parenting for Authentic Success.  It was a very affirming experience for me, as both a pastor and the mother of an eleven-year-old, to be in a group of parents working hard to be good parents.  And when I say “good parents,” I mean people working hard to love their children well, and to raise them to be moral, productive people who can cope with what life throws at them.

And it occurred to me that church is a resource for these parents in so many ways, besides the occasional book group, and we don’t lift that up often enough.  So that is what I am doing.  Here are the 10 reasons that bringing your child to church is good for you as a parent and good for your child.  I am only speaking about our church, First Presbyterian Church of San Anselmo.  These reasons may or may not apply to other churches, and if they do not, well, there is a good opportunity for conversation.  These reasons are in no particular order.

1.  At church, your child will become accustomed to the benefits of silence.  We don’t sit in silent prayer every Sunday, or for very long.  But we do most Sundays.  This is positively countercultural.  On a recent trip with my son’s school, I found fifth graders to be essentially incapable of silence.  Maybe it’s because no one has ever shown them it’s a good thing.

2.  At church, your children will learn stories that are deeply a part of our culture.  They’ll certainly need to know them to be a literate adult.  They might even need to know some of them for the SAT.

3.  Not only will they learn the stories, they will learn that these stories have meaning and hold truths, even if they are not what 21^st century people would call “facts.”  At some point, when their brains are sophisticated enough to handle it, they might even learn the difference between “truth” and “fact.”  They will learn to think critically about these stories, and to apply them to life.

4.  You as a parent will be around other parents who support limits and value morals and ethics over SAT scores and trophies.  And your kids will be around other kids for whom limits and ethics are “normal.”

5.  You and your child will be plunged into a multi-generational environment.  They might even end up with a few extra “grandparents” who take a special interest in them, as many of our kids have.  These folks have a lot of parenting wisdom to share.

6.  You and your child will be around people who emphasize and value hospitality – not in the Martha Stewart sense, but in the welcoming sense.  You and your child will be in an environment where differences are valued – differences in ethnic origin, economic circumstance, developmental ability, age, marital status, sexual orientation, physical disability, and even faith, as many of our parents are married to people of different faiths or no faith.

7.  You and your child will be encouraged to build bridges across these differences as well as across other divides.  I can think of no more important skill for the 21^st century.

8.  You and your child will find role models for faith in something larger than we are who loves us beyond our imagining and draws us together.  These role models help us see that “faith” does not mean “certainty” and that questions and doubt are valued.

9.  You and your child will find role models for responding to God’s love by loving back, giving back, being good stewards of the gift of life and the gift of this good earth, and caring for all of creation, including God’s people (which is all people).  And you will be given opportunities to do just that: serving meals to people who are homeless, participating in rebuilding after natural disasters, looking for ways to end hunger …

10.  Once a week, your child will hear music that is not hip-hop, rap or pop/dance music.

Our church is not perfect – no church is.  It is not Utopia.  It is filled with humans with human flaws and frailties.  And many, many other churches could offer you this same list and maybe even a longer one.

I’d love to hear more reasons.  What are yours?  Let’s add to the list.

There are 3 comments on "Ten Good Reasons to Bring Your Child to Church (well, our church, anyway)"
Join the discussion and leave a comment »

More Time Outdoors

My recent week with fifth graders at Walker Creek Ranch in West Marin for a session of “outdoor ed.” convinces me that I need to spend more time outdoors. Out in the wild, not just at the Little League ballpark. I need to commune with nature. I need to touch lichen and watch salamanders. I need to smell bay laurel and eucalyptus. I need to feel rain on my face.

OK, so this blog doesn’t address a recent injustice or a pressing world problem.

Or does it?

I returned from the week caring more deeply for the earth and its creatures. Sounds corny, but it’s true. I returned from the week calmer, more in touch with what is real about me and my crazy-busy schedule.

If more people experienced these two things, had these two realizations, these two epiphanies, I believe it would make a difference not only in their lives but in our world.

I believe time outdoors tends to make us better stewards of the gift of this good earth.

I don’t like camping because as far as I’m concerned, a vacation shouldn’t be more work that going to work.  But I love the outdoors, and I love learning about it from naturalists and others who have a passion for this good earth.  So now, I need to figure out how to experience the outdoors without the work of camping.

Your ideas are welcome.

There is one comment on "More Time Outdoors"
Join the discussion and leave a comment »

Stand Up for Jesus

I don’t think I can say it better than Susan Russell, an Episcopal priest, in her recent blog (link below). Several people who are highly visible to the media have spouted hateful and misguided responses, implying that the heartbreaking tragedy in Connecticut is God’s judgment on our culture. This in turn becomes what people identify as “Christian.”

Our culture does deserve some judging. We are far too violent. As a young person said to me recently, “The video gamey violent culture being fed to [young men and boys] is really out of control.” And we not only seem to have the impulse to destroy each other, we have easy access to weapons to make it happen.

But amazingly enough, we are reminded at Christmas that what we get, instead is a God who comes to us as a vulnerable infant, and a Savior who preaches love, inclusion of the marginalized and an end to a code which declares some people clean and others unclean.

See Susan Russell’s blog at http://inchatatime.blogspot.ca/2012/12/dear-dr-dobson-your-god-isnt-irrelevant.html.

There are no comments yet on "Stand Up for Jesus"
Start the discussion and leave a comment »

Is Gun Control a Faith Issue?

Most of us are still reeling, stunned, from Friday’s tragic killing of 27 people, including 20 children, at an elementary school in Connecticut.  And many, including me, are wondering what the response of a faith community ought to be.

Are guns to blame?  Should we push for gun control legislation?  Is this a faith issue, or a political issue, or both?

Here are some bare facts:

In America, there are an estimated 270,000,000 privately owned firearms for a population of 311.6 million people resulting in a gun ownership rate of 88.2 firearms per 100 people.  The overall number of privately owned firearms puts the United States gun ownership at number 1 in the world as does the rate of private gun ownership.[1]  Roughly 45% of U.S. households own guns.[2]

In 2008, the U.S. had over 9,000 firearm-related homicides. In stark contrast, that same year, Japan, where almost no one owns a gun, experienced only 11, fewer than were killed at the Sandy Hook shooting alone.  And that was a big year: 2006 saw an astounding two, and when that number jumped to 22 in 2007, it became a national scandal.  By comparison, also in 2008, 587 Americans were killed just by guns that had discharged accidentally.[3]

The Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) has a 30-year history of support for gun control legislation. Beginning in the late 1960s, in response to the assassinations of public leaders, the General Assembly called for “… control [of] the sale and possession of fire arms of all kinds.”(1) In 1976 this statement was reaffirmed, but also specifically worded to “… not cover shotguns and rifles used legitimately by sportsmen …”  In 1988 these and other statements supporting gun control were again reaffirmed.[4]

Some thoughts:  Maybe it is true in a sense that “guns don’t kill people; people kill people.”  But apparently we, the people, are not able to stop killing each other with guns.  Apparently there is some violent impulse – in humans?  In Americans? – that makes us bad candidates for gun ownership.

Is this a “religious” issue?  I like the way James Martin puts it.  Martin, a popular author and Jesuit priest, wrote that gun control “is as much of a ‘life issue’ or a ‘pro-life issue’ … as is abortion, euthanasia or the death penalty … and programs that provide the poor with the same access to basic human needs as the wealthy.”  He continues: “Simply praying, ‘God, never let this happen again’ is insufficient for the person who believes that God gave us the intelligence to bring about lasting change,” Martin wrote. “It would be as if one passed a homeless person and said to oneself, ‘God, please help that poor man,’ when all along you could have helped him yourself.”[5]

There are other serious issues involved in the Sandy Hook shootings.  Adequate diagnosis and care for people who are mentally deranged is among them.

But a deranged person can do very little damage without a gun.

In my opinion, it is time people of faith put some energy behind this pro-life issue.

Martin’s quotation comes from an excellent article on the PCUSA website: http://www.pcusa.org/news/2012/7/25/gun-control-religious-issue/.

There are no comments yet on "Is Gun Control a Faith Issue?"
Start the discussion and leave a comment »

What Is the Purpose of Sunday School?

What is the purpose of Sunday school? I’ve been cogitating on this question for a couple of months, and on the purpose of religious instruction for children, generally, regardless of the time and place. If you ask most people, if you’d asked me a few years ago, the answer would probably be some variation of, “To teach them the Bible stories, especially, the stories about Jesus.”

Here is the problem with that. Here is the source of my struggle. In our culture, we have developed a distinction between fact and fiction or myth. We assume that facts are “true” and fiction and myths are “lies.” This distinction does not acknowledge that what is reported to us as “fact” is always told from the perspective of some human being. In history, in human interactions, it is nearly if not utterly impossible to determine what “the facts” are. Even if you catch something on tape, people will interpret what they see differently.

This distinction between fact and fiction or myth also does not acknowledge that great and even eternal truth may be learned from either one.

The Bible contains both what we in the 21st century would call fact and what we would call fiction. Some of its stories are grounded in fact but told from a particular perspective, reflecting the ancient cultures of the writers. Some stories are embellished to support the writer’s point of view; some stories are told and retold with different emphases. Some stories are mythological, and the facts behind the myth, if there ever were any, were lost thousands of years ago. Many of the stories in the Bible are some mixture of fact, fiction and embellishment and it is impossible, thousands of years later, to tell which is which.

So in Sunday school, we teach young children, who are very concrete, these Bible stories. Adam and Eve, Noah and the ark, Jesus’ walking on water, Jesus’ feeding the multitudes. We teach the stories as though they are fact in a 21st century sense – as though the distinction between fact and fiction can be made easily, and as though that distinction is important. And then the kids hit about age 11 or 12 or 14 or 15, and because they have the same 21st century approach to fact and fiction as the rest of our culture, they say, “This is all a bunch of lies. You’ve been teaching me a bunch of lies. The BIBLE is full of lies. I’m out of here.” And instead of growing disciples, we’ve sent more agnostics and atheists into the world.

Then, if we are lucky – if they are lucky – they come back to church at some point and discover that Scripture shapes our faith and our lives and our relationship with God and each other in profound ways – with truth that transcends any attempt to label Scripture as fact of fiction.

I speak from my own experience. And I describe what I have seen with adolescents in my congregation. In my experience, Christianity is a very adult faith. Of course we welcome children. But is traditional Sunday school the way to do that?

What IS the purpose of Sunday school? I invite your thoughts.

There are 10 comments on "What Is the Purpose of Sunday School?"
Join the discussion and leave a comment »

Fixing What Isn’t Broken (Instead of What Is)

In this week’s news is a story about a young teen who has been repeatedly bullied by her schoolmates about her ears, to the extent that her mother sought help from a charity to pay for cosmetic surgery to have them fixed.

In my humble opinion, this is fixing what isn’t broken, instead of what is.

The charity, the Little Baby Face Foundation, routinely pays for repair of cleft palates and other disfiguring maladies. In the “before” surgery photo of the teen in this story, a fourteen-year-old girl from Georgia, you would agree her ears are somewhat prominent, but they are not remotely disfiguring. She looks pretty darn normal. Nevertheless, she was taunted with names like “Dumbo.”

In the CNN interview with the girl before surgery, the interviewer says that surely there are people who would say, “This is the way you were born. People should love you for who you are.” He asked, “What do you say to those people?” The girl said that the people who would say that are right. But that the bullying was never going to stop.

Something is dreadfully broken, and it isn’t this girl’s ears. Or, her former ears, because she had the surgery. In her consultation with the plastic surgeon, the surgeon decided that she also needed her chin rounded and her nose straightened. Her nose and chin had never bothered the girl before.  She’s only 14, which means she isn’t even fully-grown; she’s not fully matured.  But the surgeon (um, the guy with a vested financial interest) thought she needed more work done.

To the tune of $40,000.

Yes, something is dreadfully broken. But what’s broken is the fact that the adults in this girl’s community – the school, the churches, the parents, law enforcement – failed her by not teaching her classmates that bullying of any kind, physical or emotional, is wrong. And by not stopping it early on, or later on, or at all.

And what’s broken is the fact that our culture has made physical beauty more important than just about anything else, especially for women and girls. It’s bad enough that women spend billions of dollars on beauty products and still hate the way they look. Now if we’re bullied because our nose or our ears or our chin isn’t just right, it’s our problem – our problem to fix by spending tens of thousands of dollars and going under the knife.

I wonder how people who need life-saving medical attention but can’t get it because of the cost, in our own country and around the world, would feel about this use of resources.

I don’t blame this girl. She is the product of the culture that created her. But shame on us. Shame on us, her elders, for handing her this culture. Shame on us for not fixing what is really broken.

The story can be seen here: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/07/28/nadia-isle-bullied-georgi_n_1712548.html.

There are no comments yet on "Fixing What Isn’t Broken (Instead of What Is)"
Start the discussion and leave a comment »

The Culture of Online Anonymity

An article posted by Lisa Selin Davis makes this profound statement: “Online anonymity creates a sense of a culture without consequences.” The article is about “trolls,” the new term for people who post hateful or inflammatory comments to people’s online blogs, op-ed or other articles, Facebook walls and so forth. I have experienced this myself. I have received derisive anonymous comments to my blog from people who disagree with my opinion or theology. I’ve also had people post profane insults on my Facebook wall – not directed to me, as it happens, but toward someone else who had commented on something I’d posted. In the case of the blogs, the hateful comments came from strangers. In the case of the Facebook post, it came from someone I know and love, and who I am certain would never ever say such things to a person face-to-face.

It’s easy enough to delete or “disapprove” these posts so they don’t appear on your Facebook page or blog. But I am concerned about the extent to which this new medium that is now so hugely a part of our lives “normalizes abuse,” as Ms. Davis puts it. Ms. Davis writes, “Only a psychotic person, incapable of empathy, or someone perpetually engulfed by rage, would say such things in public. But people feel alone when they’re typing on a computer, even if they’re in a public “place,” – a chat room, on Facebook or within the comments section of an article. MIT professor Sherry Turkle calls this ‘being alone together’; the Internet causes ‘emotional dislocation,’ so we forget about the together part.”

Is this a small thing, a minor irritation? Some teens who “forget about the together part” have used the Internet to bully gay teens so cruelly and persistently that the kids committed suicide. This is not minor. Normalizing abuse is never minor.

I wonder what the church can do, especially helping our children to understand that abuse is not normal, not online, not anywhere. My young son is compassionate in person. Will he come to think there is a different standard of compassion online than in person? My son is too young for a Facebook account, too young for a cell phone that allows text messages, although some of his friends already have texting capability. We can’t stand over our children’s shoulders all the time to see what they are sending or receiving.

One mother in the church with daughters a bit older than my son has a deal with her daughters: They can go online if they agree they have no privacy at all from her, their mother. I think that’s absolutely appropriate for a teen under 18, given the culture of anonymity.

Your thoughts?

You may read the full article at http://www.alternet.org/media/why-online-comments-are-so-toxic?akid=9147.164641.oxj12_&rd=1&src=newsletter683851&t=4.

There are 5 comments on "The Culture of Online Anonymity"
Join the discussion and leave a comment »