March 2009 Archives

3. Wear shirts that fit. Don't raid Ed Young, Jr.'s wardrobe. Please. Heck, put on a freakin' suit if you need to. And, if you like those tight shirts, lose weight.

17. Offer some snacks and coffee, but don't brag about it. Wow! You have Starbucks. I will now come to your church. I mean, you just saved me $2.00 per week. What a bargain. Conversely, if you have fair trade (and you should!), let us know. And, don't just offer fattening donuts. You are a church and gluttony is a sin.

21. If you actually value the place of women in your church, give them something to do besides greeter, nursery or back up singer. Your words betray you.

And last... stop trying to make your church seem so cool. It is not. It is church. Church does not equal cool. Your marketing should be honest, not an attempt to show how cool and "with it" you are. The more you try, the worse you look. Just tell us who you are and invite us along for the ride. I have seen too many churches trying to be cool and being inauthentic. If you are a suburb church, don't act like a city church. If you are all suburbanites, we will notice when you move your church into the city to be edgy and then drive home to suburbia. If you don't like poor people, justice and art do not fake it just to make us come to your church. You have turned important things into marketing points and propaganda. We notice when you are faking it, probably before you do.

What then followed really surprised me. We spent almost thirty minutes in a round table talk. The average age at my table was 50 and Catholic. It was incredible hearing the voices from those in the Catholic church on how they saw the Protestant Reformation. Some quotes include:

1. We're so worried about abortion that we're missing the fact that there are wars going on.
2. Our church is being thrown into total chaos over the GLBT issue.
3. Emergence is going from exclusionary to inclusionary.
4. Words of how we feel: hopeful, excited, searching, human, very excited, energized, thankful.
5. We see you Protestants as having been distracted over the last 500 years.
6. (a Catholic) We're just now discovering we can read the Bible for ourselves.
7. I'm learning to debunk the myths of my own faith.
8. It's nice to talk about who the central authority is: Jesus.

Mike Todd reflected on the event on the plane ride home:

After an all-to-lengthy excursion into interdisciplinary method, it's time to get back into the four core tasks of practical theology. Having been through the descriptive and empirical moments, the third moment of PT is the normative moment.

It is now, after gathering data and using the best of several disciplines to interpret that data, that the practical theologian makes normative claims for the life of the church. Often, practical theology is in conversation with the other volumes of the "theological encyclopedia" at this time, consorting with the likes of biblical studies, systematic theology, and church history.

OK, this is the final part of what was meant to be a brief tangent. But Jimmy brings up an important caveat in his comment below. My not-so-hypothetical situation of a troubled teen in the school counselor's office was sanitized of the real-life complications of power. Being a trained social worker, and a special ed. teacher, Jimmy knows the power dynamics at work in a situation like this. It should come as no surprise that the pediatrician will come out on top in this hierarchy; not only does she have the most schooling, but physicians -- and the scientific reasoning they employ -- are highly regarded in our society. In contrast, social workers, psychologists, and youth pastors are often seen as dealing in data that is "soft," over against the "hard" scientific data of a physician.

However, the postmodern, hermeneutic turn has done a great service, for it has leveled the playing field. Even the "hardest" scientific data is rife with agendas and money from pharmaceutical companies. In other words, no one is capable of delivering a straight, objective account of what's going on with this boy.

There's been lots of good work done by postmodern theoreticians about power dynamics. The most famous theorist of power is Michel Foucault; I think that Pierre Bourdieu also deserves serious consideration. Both attempt to deal honestly with power dynamics at play whenever human beings are attempting to negotiate a situation, and both are downright pessimistic about the possibilities of getting through power to the other side. Of course, they're both lacking the Christian hope that God might have a hand in this negotiation...