Author: winncollier

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Firefly


My earliest years were spent in Middle Tennessee. Murfreesboro, to be exact. We lived a few miles out Franklin Road, with vast stretches of farmland between us and town. Our small community centered around a youth camp and working ranch. It was a magical place for a young boy to actually be a young boy. Horses in our backyard. Six thousand acres to roam. A mountain to climb and camp. Rodeos every Friday afternoon during the summer. But the fireflies – those haunting, hovering flashes of greenish-neon light flickering just within reach – are one of the enchantments I remember most. The long, sticky summer days surrendered to the Tennessee evening air; and, just around dusk, the sky began to dance.

My friend Wil and I would chase a couple fireflies down and gently release them into our Mason jars, with a bit of grass stuffed in the bottom and tin foil (with air holes pencil-punched in) wrapped over the top. Even now, remembering, I feel a twinge of that boyhood mystery, when I was caught up in friendship and stories and twilight evenings chasing flashes of light across the backyard.

A few nights ago, we were in Tennessee visiting friends. As the sun began to settle, the fireflies appeared. And our boys, Mason jars in hand, entered the ritual. We were probably only thirty miles from the spot where my firefly memories are rooted, but I am aware that the years and experiences, the disillusionment and the knocks, the questions – and the joys too, have taken me a long way from those simple summers. Laughter comes a little harder, and cynicism a little easier. Friendship is harder work, love more fraught with danger and uncertain outcomes. The world can be scarier. I’m less naive, less trusting. I haven’t run barefoot at dusk for quite a while.

But. A lot has stayed the same. I’m still drawn to twilight space. Our front porch, the sun setting over Carter’s Mountain, tea in hand, is one of my favorite moments. Miska and I will talk or read or just sit together quietly and bid farewell to a good (or bad) day. Mystery is a friend of mine; whenever someone acts as though they’ve got life figured out, I find myself thinking they are full of the brown, smelly stuff. Thanks to Miska, I even like to dance (it isn’t pretty but it’s passionate). And friendship and love – those are high words in my book. I’m not sure I understand all that much about what they mean, but I’ve tasted enough to know I’ll fight for them – and spend my days chasing their glimmer and life.

I’m also drawn to twilight spaces in the soul. I find myself pulled to people and to stories where light and dark are vying for attention. I just had coffee with a friend who shared his three-year journey of brokenness and heartache – and his turn toward hope. That’s twilight, as I see it. And, amid our conversation, I almost swear I saw a few flashes of light dancing just within reach.

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To Live {why the church.5}

He felt…another kind of awake. {Colum McCann, Let the Great World Spin}

Jesus is our shalom…creating within his body a new humanity, a new way of being human. {St. Paul}

In these bodies, we will love / In these bodies, we will die / And where you invest your love, you invest your life. {Mumford and Sons}

Perhaps the plainest way to say it is this: the church exists because Jesus rose from the dead.

Easter happened, and Easter is the prototype for all God’s intentions for the world. God did not raise Jesus into the spiritualized psyches of his followers. God did not raise Jesus by enshrining Jesus-ideals into an ethical philosophy for cultures to emulate. God raised Jesus’ rotting, blood-crusted flesh from a dark, musty cave. Dead Jesus lay in the tomb, but alive Jesus walked out.

So now, whenever we hear the prophets and the apostles speak of God’s cosmic project of New Creation, we know what they are talking about. Dead things coming back to life. Old things restored, new. Not ideals, but a reality. Physical. Present. Body, God’s Body.

The church is what happens when resurrection gets to work. Humans are communal creatures. I feel a bit silly pausing to make this obvious point, but… Without friendships, we are lonely. Without a love or a child or an intimate relationship, we are not whole. When we call someone a hermit, we aren’t passing a complement. We are hardwired for committed, intentional, sustained, I’m-with-you-even-when-I-don’t-like-you relationships. Against this, though, we all have horror stories and vast mounds of disappointment. Maybe we’ve given up. Maybe we’ve settled for something shallow or cheap, imitations. Maybe we’ve grown cynical – perhaps the most damaging turn of all.

But resurrection happened, and now we’re discovering what it means to be alive. In other words, we’re learning anew what it means to be truly human. And to be human means, at least in part, to live a physical, particular, embodied life within God’s physical, particular, embodied community, the church. If God were only trying to elevate disembodied souls into distant heaven, perhaps the church wouldn’t matter much (other than to organize, strategize and get this work done efficiently – but I think I’ve sufficiently run that horse into the ground). However, if God is reconstituting (resurrecting) the whole of his good and beautiful creation, well then, the church (the physical, embodied people of God) becomes ground zero.

Knowing this, we could never act as though the community of God is merely a means to something God is doing. Rather, the community of God rests at the heart of what God is doing. And God is doing a heck of a lot. God’s mission is to rescue and love and remake and welcome and forgive and embrace and basically overrun this whole sorry mess with the wonder of resurrection. The old Hebrew word works best: shalom. Wholeness. Well-being. Utter, comprehensive goodness.

This is God’s mission. Not ours. God is doing resurrection. And God will resurrect in a God-way, a Trinitarian way – forming a people who begin to live in Trinitarian love and begin to embody resurrection in the tangible spaces, the streets and dining room tables and nursing homes. It’s slow. It’s messy. Most days, it looks like an absolute disaster. But if relationship and communities, if each and every individual story, matters – then this is the only way.

Here’s the crux of why I need church. I need church because I’m selfish and cynical and proud and a shadow of my true self. I’ve lived among death for too long, and I want to live. I want to be a human alive, a human resurrected. And true humanity is physical, relational, with others, over the long haul. I need the church because Jesus rose from the dead, and I want to rise up from among the dead too. I want to learn “another kind of awake.”

////

So, I’m not sure when I’ll return to this series. Might be done. However, I would love to interact to any questions this raises for you – especially if you are struggling with finding your life and place within a physical community, a church. Why do you struggle with this? What questions do you have? Why do you think that maybe it isn’t important? Email me (winn [at] winncollier.com) or post here. If it’s the sort of question I could interact with on the blog, I will. If it is more appropriate just for email dialogue, fine too.


[further why the church? posts:part one, two, three, four]

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Writing Notes

The past couple weeks, I’ve had a fresh burst of writing energy toward a new book project (coy look interjected here). I haven’t felt this writing vigor for a while, and I receive the gift with open arms.

But today, once again, I’ve come up blank. Zilch. Nada.

Amid the vast blankness, I’ve been handed time to think again about this maddening art I love. My cursor over on my other page sits there, blinking at me, taunting me – so I defiantly move over here to write down what I want to remember – and, if you are a writer, what I hope you’ll remember.

//surrender the quest for brilliance//

Most writers I know have flashing visions of receiving that gold-embossed envelope (okay, I have no idea if it is actually gold-embossed but that’s the way I conjure the moment) acknowledging, with accompanying accolades, that we have won the National Book Award. However, most of my fantasies are slightly less ambitious (but only slightly). I’d like to receive a phone call from my editor, breathless, over this masterful prose of mine she has just read, singularly unlike the work from any of her other vagabond writers. I’d like for The New Yorker to get in line behind The Atlantic, wrangling to publish this writer (me) who, “writes with unparalleled grit and beauty – a new literary light.” (And, yes, they are free to use my quote)

Dreams are fine things; I’m a fan. However, something gets twisted when we aim to write words that are monumental. Most of life is plain, simple, and most writers are plain, simple people. Our job is to give away what we have. Most days, that’s going to be a little trace of life, a whiff of love. A story here. A question there. Maybe we will stumble upon something that opens up new terrain, or maybe we will just stumble. Whichever, our writing must be true. If we aim for brilliance, chances are we will only create dull fabrications –  because most of our days (and most of our words) are not brilliant but ordinary.

We can hope for brilliance – that’s a good hope, I think. But we do best to shoot for truthfulness and the hard work of simple, elegant craft – and then hold it out to the world with an open hand.

//read…but not like that//

Every writing advice I’ve ever seen says that writers should first be readers. True enough. However, we are tempted to read with a critical eye, comparing someone else’s skill to ours. This is all the truer when we face the deep abyss of our own lackluster writing, sitting there with nothing but the reminder of someone else’s “genius.”

Here’s the deal: every book you read, every article or blog post is not an indictment against you (but this blog post is, definitely). Seriously, we can’t read others through the eyes of what their work says about us. We have to move through our jealousy over others’ successes. Who can say why they succeed and we don’t. Or why they turn a sharp phrase or have such an amazing quick wit or are so freakin’ remarkable. Maybe they’re just a better writer. Maybe the timing was right for them. Maybe the Green Publishing Goblins just have it out for you, and you will always and forever be screwed (well, probably not that).

None of that matters. Really. Though the Amazon rankings suggest different, we are actually on the same team. We are all artisans of beauty, truth and goodness. And, God knows, our world needs all the beauty it can get. Thank the cosmic muse for every good word that finds it way free. And pray that here and there, along the way, you set a few free as well. I bet you will.

//yeah, that//

Cliche alert: Writing is hard work. Annoying, I know. Book club legend has it that Cormac Mcarthy wrote The Road in a single sitting. I doubt it, though that would explain the whole no punctuation thing – the man was in a hurry. (And if it is true, and McCarthy did write The Road all at once, first draft, forget my previous paragraphs – Cormac is a grade-A literary punk and I hope he rots in the very, very bad place for…ever.)

I feel like there’s much more to say here, but “hard work” pretty much sums it up. And my editors have always told me “less, not more.”

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Seeing on Father’s Day

It’s Father’s Day, and I respect the cracks about Hallmark-fabrication and commercialism and the bit. In our house, though, we have a motto: Any reason to celebrate. Miska says it something like this: “In our world, we have every opportunity to be sorrowful. We will seize every opportunity to throw a party.” Mother’s Day, Valentines, St. Patty’s, Groundhog Day if we thought we could get away with it. If it invites a celebration, we’re there.

Today I have been celebrated, and it feels good. I received new sandals and a new camping chair. The best part, though, was our stroll downtown. I talked with Seth most of the way there and then with Wyatt most of the way back. Seth, per the usual, was concerned about what kind of beverages he would have (the boy loves his drinks – we’ll be watching out for that), and Wyatt has hit upon a fascination with the histories of World War I and II.

We had breakfast at Cafe Cubano and sat outside on the pavilion seating, under the shady trees. Miska had everyone share five things they loved about dad. I must say – that was rather enjoyable. I love it when the boys run out of things to say and resort to simply adding on multiple adjectives. By the end, I was the most awesomest, coolest, everest, bestest, in the whole, whole, whole, whole wide world dad – to infinity and beyond.

It’s good to be a dad.

Here’s the essence of my job, as I understand it: to see my boys, to truly see them. I don’t mean merely acknowledging their presence – I mean seeing who they are, their deep, true self. I mean seeing the Wyatt and the Seth God is crafting way down in their bones, the Wyatt and the Seth God has in mind for them to be. The Wyatt who will be alive with courage and see the truth – and call evil to account. The Seth who will hurt with the broken and run headlong into the muck – and be a renegade of joy.

My job as a dad is, in the words of an old Christian apostle Paul, to “see with the eyes of my heart.” I know there’s much more to see, years to take in. These boys have a lot of texture, nothing quaint or shallow here. Many days, I will fight my own distraction and boredom and irritation and selfishness. Other days, I will run up against their lethargy or silence – or worst, their walking away. There will be stretches when I wonder if it matters or if they will ever care about a lick of it. It’s going to take a lot of patience. A lot of love. A lot of Spirit. I’m in.

Because I see, I see…

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Mumford and Sons

Every once in a while, I stumble across a musician (or group) that captures me. It has happened again – I’m enraptured with Mumford and Sons. Four Londoners with an innovative yet old-time take on folk and bluegrass (and with just the right bit of British accent), these fellas were born to sing (or sang). With names like Marcus Mumford, Country Winston, Ben Lovett and Ted Dwane, what other profession could they take on, really? I guess they could have been Texas sheriffs or oil rig hands… I’m glad they chose music. Any band of friends that describes themselves as “misty-eyed men” is more than alright in my book.

They recently played at Bonnaroo, and you can listen to the concert below. Or you can purchase their album Sigh No More for $7.99.

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God’s Body {why the church.4}

The church is not an ideal to be striven for; she exists and they’re within her. 
{Georges Bernanos, Diary of a Country Priest}

In retrospect, I can say that I joined the church out of basic need; I was becoming a Christian, and as the religion can’t be practiced alone, I needed to try to align myself with a community of faith. {Kathleen Norris}

Church is the core element in the strategy of the Holy Spirit for providing human witness and physical presence to the Jesus-inaugurated kingdom of God in this world. It is not the kingdom complete, but it is a witness to that kingdom.
{Eugene Peterson}

We are tempted to think of the church primarily as a human affair, our human arrangement to try to get religious stuff done. We believe God wants us to follow certain principles and directives, that God wants us to make our world better – but it’s up to us to figure out how exactly to go about it. Church, in this paradigm, is the way we organize our religious activity for the greatest efficiency and broadest impact. God gives us the goal (sometimes articulated as getting to heaven or raising healthy families or transforming society), but the energy, the strategy, the humph — well, that’s all us. It makes sense then that when the church isn’t “working,” when it doesn’t seem efficient (and it rarely is) or productive, we should take our leave. We cancel our membership in the club and go look for another, more productive stratagem. Or we just give up, dog-tired and disillusioned.

However, the church is not what we are making of the world. The church is something God is making in the world. The church is God’s creation, not ours. The church is first an expression of what God is doing (and has been doing since In the beginning…). The church exists as this physical mystery crafted from the raw material, the timber and stone, of God’s people — those people whom God is “fitting in brick by brick, stone by stone, with Christ Jesus as the cornerstone that holds all the parts together.”(Eph 2:21)

And this imagery of God as a master craftsmen fashioning a strong, sturdy abode is pitch-perfect for how Scripture describes what God is up to in and among us. God does not meddle primarily in theories or abstractions. God’s core impulse is incarnation. God always goes physical. Christian faith is not ideals and principles and morals separated from the mortar and sinew of physicality and relationships. Christian faith is always embodied. This is why Paul would say, “we see [God’s people, the church] taking shape day after day—a holy temple built by God, all of us built into it, a temple in which God is quite at home.” (Eph 2:22)

We see it. We touch it. We live in it, with others. We experience it. We love (and are loved) within it. We are frustrated by it. We hope for it to be more. We are surprised by the grace it offers. We find it clunky. We find it strange. And we know deep down that we are missing something true whenever we are distanced from it…And, in those distant spaces, we often sense a yearning within us to return home.

It almost sounds like, well, a family.

Family is about right. Paul uses precisely this picture to help us grasp a sense of the church’s essence (Eph 2:19). Scripture gives us multiple other images as well (one theologian counted ninety-six), all unique and varied, multi-faceted. However, what we will notice with almost every image is its physicality. It is something of substance, something tangible, something you can get your hands on, something you can live in or with. Something you see. The church is a city (Rev 21:2), a tribe/people (I Pet 2:9), fishermen (Mark 1:17), salt (Matt 5:13), branches on the tree (John 15:5), God’s farm (I Cor 3:9), God’s building (I Cor 3:9) and a letter (2 Cor 3:2-3), to name a few. The church is not a philosophy,  an ethical system, a warm, gooey sentimental feeling. The church is flesh and bones.


It’s popular to say we like Jesus but we don’t like the church. I understand; I’ve said it myself. However, Jesus and the church are inseparable. The church is Jesus’ body (I Cor 12:27). The church is how Jesus embodies himself in the world. The church is how God goes physical. To say we want Jesus but not the church is like saying we want love but not marriage. Or friendship without the tangible commitment of time and presence, desiring some vague notion attached to the concept of friendship without the hard work of actually being a friend.

My hunch is this: many of us give up on the church because we expect both too much and too little. We expect too much because we have been sold big jugs of grade C moonshine. It never tastes as good as promised. We’ve bought an ideal, what the church is supposed to be, a place where no one is lonely and everyone gets their God-fix and we are always fulfilled (or quickly moving that direction) — and we are certain to see tangible, immediate results of how our life is better, our kids are clean and keen, and our world is being transformed before our very eyes. But we aren’t an ideal. We are a family. And families have weird uncles and feuds and kids who get carted off to jail. Families have lots of love and rich stories, but there’s always pain and disappointment and seasons where it’s just plain vanilla, unexciting. Families need to forgive and to repent. And keep becoming more and more who God has in mind for them to be. However, there is something of profound beauty and value embodied in a family, even amid all its lunacy and disfunction.

At the same time, we expect too little of church. We miss the mysterious and everyday ways God takes on flesh and bone. We need eyes to see how we are being formed into a new kind of person, amid a new kind of community. These long stretches of commonness — living with others, hearing each other’s stories, discovering our vocations, working through the irritation of friendship with people who see the world differently than we do, raising our kids, loving (and being annoyed by) our neighbors, working through the joys and pains of our marriage (or singleness) — are the necessary, mundane ways God has chosen to take up residence it this world.

Every bit of this is physical, every bit necessary. There is no other way.

[further why the church? posts:part one,  two, three, five]
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All the Football Craziness

I don’t think I’ve ever mentioned football here – or any sport topic for that matter. But a little bit of Winn-trivia: I’m a big college football fan. I’m Texan, what can I say? All this chatter about the demise of the Big XII brings back nightmarish memories of when the Southwest Conference crumbled. And if you know nothing of this dark day, simply let me say – those were days when giants walked the land.

The most probable endgame scenarios I’ve read leave Baylor and their Golden Wave Marching Band out in the cold. The one kid completely left behind. It’s a sad tale for the little university that could. Baylor is in Waco, Texas, my hometown. I spent many a Saturday at Floyd Casey Stadium hoping against hope for the Bears. I spent many a Saturday dejected and disappointed. Many.

Baylor is a Baptist university. It’s relatively small. It has a cuddly Bear for a mascot. The administration didn’t allow students to dance there until 1996. They’ve always had a couple strikes against them.

A few articles and favorite lines:

On whether Baylor’s Baptist affiliation will hurt them finding a new conference:

“The last time we checked, the Baptists still scored six points when the ball crossed the goal line,” said Lori Fogelman, a spokeswoman for Baylor.

//Yes, six points are the same. Only, no touchdown jigs that shake anything below the waist.//

“Pac-10 always has been allergic to Brigham Young, another church-based school,” one sports writer said. “A Baptist friend of mine says Baylor actually is quite liberal in Baptist eyes, but I don’t think that’s a concept Berkeley recognizes, liberal Baptist.”

//Yeah, probably not.//

And then a piece from Joe Posnanski on how the football conferences are built for ratings and dollars, end of story. Greed, says Posanski, birthed the Big XII and will end up killing it.

The conference was built for television sets. And Texas had the most television sets.

//All fine and good – so long as we all are clear that Texas has the most.//

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Tadpoles and Sacraments {why the church.3}

The church is a sacrament of the world’s possibility. {Luke Timothy Johnson}

The church is not ideal. {Eugene Peterson}

Queenlight shines through things, through everything. {David James Duncan, The River Why}

Last Saturday, the Collier men hit a bike trail that, for most of its winding path, runs alongside the Rivanna River. The loop tracks a couple miles with meandering curves and a couple narrow passes, cutting back and forth between dense forest cover and green open spaces. One of the boys’ favorite spots is where the trail dips under Free Bridge, creating a short, eerie stretch Seth has dubbed, “The Tunnel of Doom.”

I enjoy these experiences. I appreciate the quiet and the wind in my face. I enjoy Seth and Wyatt, very much. Still, for me, it’s fundamentally a bike ride. I mount my brown Specialized Hardrock, and I ride, there and back.

Wyatt and Seth understand these Saturday jaunts differently. Usually, we’ve only been on the trail a few minutes before our leader (Wyatt, most often) pulls over and, quicker than I can catch up, has his bike down, his helmet off, backpack undone. Time to snack. After a few rounds of Cheez-its and Fruit Roll-ups (indeed, dad supplies nutritious fare), we are back on the trail. But not for long. We need to stop under the overpass because the boys want to touch the water and jump in the mud and throw dirt. Later, they detour to pick up rocks for their collection. Rocks. And by rocks, I mean gravel.

The ultimate detour, however, is when we stop at Tadpole Pond. Pond is a bit generous. It’s an 8 inch deep, 4 foot wide hollow in the bankside granite. More of a large dimple really. But this spot is magic because a couple weeks ago we discovered hundreds of tadpoles swimming there; and we spent a good chunk of time catching those fast, slick little boogers. Tadpole Pond is now the main attraction. So we stopped; and the boys renewed the chase. A couple they caught (all catch-and-release, of course) had sprouted micro-legs. A few were teeny-tiny frogs. Most were still just tad-poling around. For at least 45 minutes, the boys rollicked with their slimy friends. They even named a few (Charlie, Bob, Tim and Charlie.2).
Instead of chomping for them to hurry up, I made a choice (this once) to let the quest to get on with the ride recede for a bit. I laid back on a cool rock under the refreshing shade. I listened to my boys laugh. I watched the tree branches sway. I was present, and at least for the moment, I understood that getting there and getting back really wasn’t the point. The ride and the river and those poor little tadpoles offered a generous invitation to experience the joys of being a father and the pleasure of having sons. My boys’ detours are not a hurdle to my completing our ride. Our rides are an opportunity for me to be on detour with my boys.

What I’ve tried to say is that the church isn’t only about “the ride,” about getting God’s stuff done. The church is God’s invitation to experience, receive and participate in the messy, detourish ways that God is forming a new kind of community in his world. And this new community is not theoretical or abstract. It is physical, embodied. What does God want to do here, now, with us? Scripture tells us that God desires to form a people, a community, who enjoy and embody his very presence in the world (and we must remember, God is Trinity: perfect, divine community). God does not have a metaphysical philosophy for us to spread or an individualistic moral agenda for us to carry out. God wants us. God wants us as his people in his world.

And terms like these – us and people – are inherently, inevitably, always plural, communal, trinitarian. When we look for what God is up to, we find God alive, active and present among his creation. God amid God’s community. To say we can enjoy God’s hope for us without being bothered by God’s community is like saying I can experience the joys of being Wyatt and Seth’s dad without being bothered by tadpoles.

And this touches on what we mean when we say the church is a sacrament. A sacrament provides a place where heaven and earth meet, a physical moment of grace. A sacrament, by it’s mere presence, mysteriously offers an encounter with the Trinity. A sacrament doesn’t have to do anything, anything other than carve out a physical space where hope and life and God come to us. In the Lord’s Table, we taste mercy. In baptism, we are drowned by God’s love. In marriage and friendship and on crisp mornings above the timberline, God arrives amid words and kisses and sunrises. Physical. Present. Mystery. Sacrament.

So, in the church, amid laughter and repentance and relationship, amid works of mercy and justice, (all messy but all necessary) God touches us. God loves us. God is present. What the Eucharist offers each of us with bread and wine, the church offers to the world with presence and tears. And joy, lots of joy.

A note to my pastor-friends: If we sell the church on utilitarian terms (“God and church will make your life work” or “Our main purpose is to get busy doing God’s work”), we shouldn’t protest when people leave the church for utilitarian reasons (“it isn’t working for me” or “I’m burned out”). We’ve spotted the consumerism rampant in the way people use the church, but have we owned up to the consumerism riddled throughout the ways we motivate and lead?

A note to my leave-church-behind friends: God’s community doesn’t always “work.” I’m sorry if someone told you it did. And working isn’t exactly the point. There’s something there, for sure. But there’s something else first. God is first, what God is doing in you – and in you with others. Sometimes, you really need a few detours. You need an afternoon of tadpoles.

_______

I have more to say, but I’m curious where this is taking you. Any push back or questions or brimming hopefulness? I’d love to interact and see where we might head next. Peace.

[further why the church? posts:part one,  two, four, five]

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Healthcare for Dummies

Miska has endured foot pain for a couple months now. Multiple appointments (and shots with very large needles) later, they’ve scheduled her for an MRI. We have a high-deductible insurance plan, and so we will be responsible to foot (sorry) the bill. Of course, this means I want to know how much it will cost. How much do I need to come up with by next Tuesday? Sounds reasonable, wouldn’t you think?

However, after three phone conversations, no one – no one – can tell me what the charge will be. I understand when it comes to the results that they can’t say with 100% certainty if a red tea detox for weight loss will work, because a treatment result can vary, but how on earth the price can be uncertain is beyond me. How could they have no idea the price of a treatment they are proposing. In the words of the last agent I spoke with, “We can’t follow that paper trail. It goes too far.”

Can you imagine anyone doing business with a Chevy dealer who said, “Just sign the contract. We’ll tell you in a couple weeks, after you’re home and have already put the first ding in your fender, what you owe us.” Nothing good could come of such an arrangement, other than a fatter paycheck for Mr. Car Dealer.

I’m no economist (really), but I have enough brain noodles to know that this scenario has inflated prices written all over it. If I have no incentive to watch out for my costs and (more unbelievable) if medical providers have no responsibility to tell me what in the sweet name of Mary I’m going to be charged for something, no wonder my insurance rates go up 20% a year.

The next time I receive an insurance premium bill, I’m going to write them back: “Just keep providing me insurance. I’ll tell you in a few months what I’m actually going to pay.”

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The Economy of Church {why the church.2}

Not what a man is in himself as a Christian, his spirituality and piety, constitute the basis of our community. What determines our brother-hood is what man is by reason of Christ. Our community with one another consists solely in what Christ has done to both of us. {Dietrich Bonhoeffer}

We are part of God’s great renovation project for human beings. We work, but we work resting. {Richard Foster}

Being a dad is a significant job. We have a crucial task to raise our children to be moral, virtuous adults. The world needs better people, more civic-minded citizens who will live and work to serve society. The most effective tool to change culture and counteract rampant violence and greed is to raise a generation who, when their time comes, will clean up this mess. My first role as Wyatt and Seth’s dad is to instill good values in them so that they can in turn utilize their skills and influence to change their world for the better. If I properly leverage my fathering efforts, providing my sons with the correct mixture of affection, discipline, vision and training, I believe our world will improve.

******

What a bunch of rubbish. Are you repulsed by me reducing the wonders and joys of fatherhood to a formula to implement some cause, even a cause as noble as improving the world? Are you agitated that I would suggest maneuvering fatherly love for a calculated agenda rather than simply cherishing and nourishing ones God has given me to love and share my life with?

Many of us, perhaps unwittingly, think of church in these same sterile, exploitative terms.

Many of us talk about the church primarily in terms of what the church is to do. We know God has a vision for his world, to love and renew and restore it – and we understand the church sits at the nexus of how God intends to get on with this vision. Our response, however, often follows typical American entrepreneurial fashion. We see a job to be done, and so we roll up our sleeves and mastermind a strategy – and then push and prod to work it. In this schema, the church is primarily God’s publicity arm. God tells us his action priorities, gives us a range of resources to utilize for the enterprise, and then we amass the energy and effort to make it happen. Essentially (perhaps this will sound familiar), God leverages his efforts, providing his sons and daughters the proper mixture of vision and affection and instruction – and then God watches for us to make the operation take shape.

Thankfully however, God’s intentions for his people in his world do not begin with what we are to do but rather with who we are. Unfortunately, we are much better at arranging our activity than we are at knowing our identity. We are competent (in varying degrees) at exegeting culture and formulating (or critiquing) structures and adjusting both our theology and our praxis. We can start a movement or an anti-movement. We can organize a church’s leadership flowchart and motivate people to works of justice and mission and mercy (and to opening their wallets). All good things, but they aren’t the starting point. Or the ending point, for that matter.

Eugene Peterson recently shared his concern that many of us have “no ontology of church. It is all pragmatic – what we do for God.” We prioritize our responsibilities and maneuver our tasks, but we have no comprehension of what our presence (just the fact that we exist in God’s world) actually means. We don’t know who we are to be, and we keep jumping to what we are supposed to do in order to make up the gap. This kind of activity will always be hollow. And, for many of us, it has worn us out.

In this way of things, the church is always looking for the next fix, the next idea, the next angle or inspiration or cultural sea change. Whether we are progressives with our social agenda or conservatives with our evangelistic blitzkrieg, what we share is our conviction that everything rises and falls on God’s expectation that we make something happen. We are just trying to figure out what to do, dammit!

Of course, we can not talk about the church without talking about the church’s work in the world; but we must talk about God’s work within the church first. We are to live in community, but the Spirit has made us his beloved community first. We are to bring shalom to our neighborhoods, but Jesus has made us a people who receive and experience shalom first. We are to announce God’s love to the world, but God has first made us a people drowning in his love. (This touches on my hesitation with some “missional church” language, where we define mission primarily in functional terms while we relegate other portions of the church’s essence to serve as only a means to a “missional” task.)

This distorted vision of God’s dream for the church falls flat, leaving us empty and disillusioned. I’ve lost count of the number of my friends who have walked away from Christian community because they felt as though they had been exploited and misled. Much of our church talk of creating meaningful relationships ends up feeling as though it is really only a ruse to keep people in the seats and writing checks (buns and funds). A lot of the strategies and ministry pushes lead to more activity but rarely to more life.

If we act as though the merits of church are ultimately defined by results and getting things done, we shouldn’t be surprised when people pack it up. No one likes being used for results. And truthfully, on these criteria we don’t always stack up that well against the competition. The church has its moments, but other movements have had their successes too (the ONE campaign has had better luck addressing third-world debt than any collection of churches I know). Depending on your concern, better bang for your buck might move you elsewhere…if results or bang for your buck is the name of the game. But perhaps we have irreplaceable, intrinsic value far richer and deeper than the bottom-line, more essential even than the results we churn out. Perhaps we should follow Peterson’s advice and “eliminate success from our vocabulary.”

Defining the church first and foremost as God’s way of getting things done makes God the ultimate utilitarian. God cast as an industrialist, myopically focused on efficiency and production. No wonder we feel used. If we are merely commodities in God’s economy, what is our inherent beauty? Thankfully, we are not merely economic units to fuel divine output. Chastened capitalism may be the best arrangement humans have cobbled together, but God does better.

God certainly has grand purposes for his world, and our vocation is certainly right smack in the middle of how God intends to set the world right. However, I’m pleading for us to work from first things before we move to second things. God has not placed a people in his world simply to carry out his agenda. God has placed a people in his world to embody and revel in – and serve as an encounter with – the Trinity’s divine love.

What if the church’s mere existence in the world is itself a central piece of God’s work. What if God’s people are a Trinitarian sacrament, a community whose presence offers tastes of laughter and righteousness and restoration, glimpses in the now of the new creation that is to come. But I’m getting ahead of myself…

[further why the church? posts:part one, three, four, five]

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