Another thought on church shopping and polarization

Yesterday’s post on church shopping and cultural polarization reminded me of a question I’ve been cogitating on for the past week or two.

What would it look like if we were forced to go back to attending local community churches? How would it affect our view of what was necessary in a church and what things were “essentials”?

Say gas prices spiked to the point where we couldn’t afford to drive the 10 miles each way to our church of choice. Our choices are now walking or riding bicycles on Sunday morning. In my neighborhood, that would limit my choices to four churches, one Catholic, one United Church of Christ, one “Community of Christ” (which I know very little about) and one Lutheran Church Missouri Synod.

In our 2008 church search (not limited by driving distance) we didn’t really consider any Lutheran churches; would a walking-distance limit change my mind? Probably, given my options. Another possibility: would we canvas the neighborhood to see if there were other like-minded evangelicals who wanted to meet in a house church with us? Seems like an option, but it also seems somewhat fractured and silly given that there’s a LCMS church in the neighborhood.

See how quick the criteria changes? All of a sudden I’m thinking about what might be “good enough” rather than finding the church that’s exactly what I want. So what I’ve proved (to myself, at least) here is that in my non-distance-limited church choosing I’ve unconsciously made a tradeoff, choosing a church that more closely aligns with my doctrinal and worship style comfort zone above a local church that would have me going to worship with my neighbors.

This isn’t an unusual trade-off; it’s one that our suburban culture has widely adopted. Gas is (relatively) cheap, driving everywhere is natural, and so we spend time in the car to associate, or shop, or worship, with those of our choosing rather than those of our neighborhood. And this post isn’t really all that different from a slew of other blog posts and books wrestling with the suburban culture and longing for a true local community.

But it’s a challenging exercise to think through. What churches would you have as options? What would you do?

Church shopping and cultural polarization

CNN.com has a blog post today exploring “How Church Shopping is Polarizing the Country”. Written by law professors Naomi Cahn (George Washington University) and June Carbone (University of Missouri Kansas City) who have recently co-authored a book on cultural polarization, the particular focus on church shopping intrigued me. Heck, I was church shopping not all that long ago. I’m helping cause cultural polarization? I must know more.

Fascinating (and saddening) are their definitions of the two polarized camps: traditionalists, who “…believe in an eternal and transcendent authority that tells us what is good, what is true, how we should live, and who we are”, and modernists, who “…would redefine historic faiths according to the prevailing assumptions of contemporary life”. Modernists, they note, “…have become less likely to attend church at all.”

In previous generations, they say, both modernists and traditionalists tended to attend the same churches, typically right in their community. Today, though, the ability to church-shop has the traditionalists seeking out churches that affirm their “personal values”, and has modernists staying home.

The authors lament the decline of the mainline Protestant denominations that in previous generations housed both camps, and complain that today’s evangelical churches (full of like-minded traditionalists) are self-reinforcing in belief, and that evangelicalism’s close ties to the Republican Party serve to marginalize those who might be in agreement politically but not religiously (or vice versa). In the end, they say, traditionalists group together and talk only to themselves, and modernists leave church altogether, resulting in an increasingly polarized society.

There are certainly places where I disagree with the authors’ views on the topic. I think that Protestants seeking churches where their beliefs are shared and reinforced is a good thing. And drawing rosy pictures of a post-WWII generation where everyone attended the same community church regardless of what they believed only serves to hide the fact that those weak, any-belief-is-OK churches in large part helped cause the modernist/traditionalist divide we see today, by valuing the form-over-substance mindset that was eventually cynically discarded by Generation X.

However, within the microcosm that is the evangelical church, there are good lessons to be learned here. We need to be vigilant to ensure that we limit our “distinctives” to the fundamental Gospel truths. As soon as our teaching, or even our church culture, becomes, even by way of unspoken assumptions, ’the gospel plus conservative politics’ or ’the gospel plus homeschooling’ or ’the gospel plus pre-millennial dispensationalism’, etc., we will alienate those who either desperately need to hear the Gospel or who could be vibrant, participating members of our local body.

The good news that Jesus Christ is Lord of all is polarizing. We should not be surprised when law professors find it so. But there is still a lesson for us here: let the Gospel be polarizing, not the cultural things we are so apt to add on to it.

So, I just invented a new word.

Fidgetoid, n. an object with which one fidgets.

A Google search reveals no substantive results, so I’m gonna call this a new one.

It came up after this Tweet from Geof:

I’m a fidgeter at a desk. I fidget. My current object of fidgeting is a UAH Hockey puck that Coach Cole gave me. Indestructible.

My reply:

@gfmorris A hockey puck is a good fidgetoid. Can cause some damage if you get mad and throw it, though. :-)

There you have it: language evolution in progress. I can only hope that my language hero, the late William Safire, would be proud.

Well, we joined.

After taking quite a bit of time to make our decision, Becky and I yesterday became members of Stonebridge Church (EFCA). For a while we were wondering if enough members would show up to form a quorum so we (and 14 others) could be voted into membership, but eventually enough trickled in to make it official.

It feels good to have made the decision and committed to a body of believers. We are very thankful that God has led us to this fine group of folks as we continue through life’s journey.

Staying Organized: What Tools should I Use?

Some weeks at work are calm, with just a few meetings and only one or two things to keep track of. Then there are weeks like this week, when the meetings are numerous, the to-dos are flying left and right, and the number of things to keep track of increases exponentially. It’s about at this point that I start to despair that I will ever actually keep track of it all. I’ve had a hodge-podge of tools that I’ve tried to use in the past, with only middling success. I’d love to find the right tool (or toolset) to meet my needs, so I’m throwing it out here to help organize my thoughts, and to open it up for any input my multitude of geeky and resourceful friends might have.

What I Need (or at least really want)

  • Calendar to keep track of meetings
  • Ability to attach notes to meetings - would allow me to keep track of my thoughts in preparation for the meeting.
  • Task manager to organize and prioritize tasks. Tagging/filtering for work/personal/etc would be a bonus.
  • Ability to take notes/record meeting minutes. Once they are in the past I don’t necessarily need to tie the meeting notes to the calendar item - rather, I’d like to just be able to tag and search the notes when necessary.
  • Ability to reasonably input data from my work computer when I’m at my desk. (If I have a mobile device, if at all possible I don’t want to have to step away from my computer to enter the data into another device.) I guess this implies syncing w/ my work PC.
  • Ability to sync w/ my work calendar would be a bonus, but seems like a low-probability item given that IT restricts syncing w/ the company network to company-issued devices.

What I’ve tried in the past:

  • Google Calendar - this syncs fairly well with my iPod Touch. However, this is limited by the fact that I can only sync it at home during the evening (no Wifi access at work). It also doesn’t provide much useful ability to attach notes to meetings.
  • Tasks - This nifty web-based tool from Alex King is serviceable for recording to-dos, including recurring items, etc. Works great any place I’m actually at a computer.
  • Evernote - tried it for a little while, but it didn’t seem exceptionally usable. There is an iPod Touch version but again I run into the syncing issue. I need to be able to sync more often than once per day.
  • Notebook - this retro analog device works well with a #2 pencil or black ink pen. It’s great for recording notes but quickly it gets messy and disorganized. It works best when I bring it back to my desk and then copy to-dos into Tasks or onto a paper task list.

A little analysis

OK, so let’s face it: my desire for something that stays synced up on a regular basis is a limiting factor. Given that syncing with my work network is unlikely impossible, I’m pushing myself toward a personal device w/ some sort of over-the-air network connection.

When I posted my first lament on twitter this morning, Mark Simoneau recommended Cultured Code’s Things. And I’ll admit, it does look pretty sweet. It doesn’t specifically do calendar integration, but it does very nice, slick task management, including tagging, categorizing, grouping into projects, etc. There is an iPhone/iTouch version available, which will sync with the desktop. The only big hangup for me is that it only runs on a Mac. Which makes this Windows-office user a sad panda.

I’m tempted at times to just go to using a paper daily planner. Advantages: it allows me to take notes, add agenda notes to calendar entries, input method is relatively quick. Disadvantages: no syncing, sorting, or searching.

So any thoughts from you all out there? I’d love to just go with a solution like Things on a 3G-enabled iPad, but that’s $700 I can’t afford right now.

The freedom to chill the heck out

Just found a link to a great thought that Jared Wilson posted back in January. Given that it’s only a paragraph, and it’s a good one, I’ll quote it in its entirety.

Yes, people watch too much TV and play too many video games and spend too much time on the Internet and what-have-you. But the proper response to our media over-saturation is not a rigorous attention to the explicitly “spiritual” in every margin of life. Be a Christian, not an ascetic. Don’t be lazy, but realize that Jesus Christ did not die and rise for you so that you would stress out about whether you’re being spiritual enough. So take a nap. Watch some television. The gospel frees you to chill the heck out.

Doctrine good, stories bad?

I have learned much over the past several years from brothers and sisters of the Reformed theological persuasion. I love and respect them deeply. But the good Dr. Daniel J. R. Kirk today puts his finger on a point which has provided me some unease in my conversations with my Reformed brethren, saying it, as usual, more succinctly than I could.

Quoth Daniel:

Doctrine Good. Stories Bad. That’s the mini-theme of this month’s Christianity Today.

I begin with the most egregious offense. There’s a short inset on p. 26, snipped from a book by J. I. Packer and Gary A. Parrett (Grounded in the Gospel; Baker, 2010) entitled, “The Lost Art of Catechesis.” The point? Back in the old days, folks used to have to learn their theology. That waned for a bit, but was revived in all its glory in the Reformation. Doctrine. The church has to learn its doctrine.

When did this all go astray between then and now? When Sunday Schools entrusted instruction to lay people and rather than teaching people theology substituted “instilling of familiarity (or shall we say, perhaps, over-familiarity) with Bible stories” (26).

Daniel, though, strongly disagrees, and he hammers it home here:

This is the classic inversion of sola scriptura: no longer do we really want you to do what the Reformers did (read your Bible), we want you instead to read and memorize what they said after they had read their Bibles.

And that is the unease I’ve always had w/ the Reformed types. So often when asked a question, they don’t respond w/ Scripture, but rather with a quote from one of the Confessions or with a paragraph from Calvin or Edwards or Spurgeon or Packer.

I know, I know, those Confessions are a distillation of the church’s understanding of the whole Scripture over the years, and useful as a doctrinal reference and as a safeguard against taking any single Scripture passage wildly out of context. But Dr. Kirk makes a great point here: our first priority and focus should be to the Scripture, and the Confessions and Institutes need to come later.

I’d love to hear from some of my Reformed buddies on this one. And yeah, I’m afraid what I might be in for when they pile on. :-)

Bullet Points for a Monday Morning #5

  • We have high temperatures in the 50’s forecast for this week. Incredibly thankful for spring to be making an appearance.
  • Stayed up too late watching the Oscars last night. Have watched only two of the films nominated across all categories: District 9 and Star Trek. One of these days I’ll catch up on some of the others. Very little time for watching movies these days.
  • Star Trek is the last movie I’ve watched in a theater. Before that I think it was The Dark Knight the year before. At least that gives us lots of choices to watch on DVD.
  • Three day work week for me this week. Then on Thursday we road trip to Indiana. Becky and the girls will drop me off in Indianapolis where I’ll hang out/ride along with Andy Osenga for a couple days while he plays some house shows.
  • Becky and the girls will head up an hour north of Indy to visit some friends who moved there from CR last year. Everyone is pretty darn excited about it.
  • Have the details lined up for Andy O to play a “house show” at Brewed Awakenings in CR on Monday, April 19th. Hope to get the “official” confirmation from Andy this week so I can start publicity in earnest.

Another interesting thing about the Canadian anthem

A follow-on to yesterday’s post about the superiority of ‘O Canada’:

I was not surprised to read that there are official lyrics in both English and French for the anthem. I was surprised a bit, though, at the stark difference in the message of the two versions.

First, the familiar English version:

O Canada! Our home and native land!
True patriot love in all thy sons command.
With glowing hearts we see thee rise,
The True North strong and free!
From far and wide, O Canada,
We stand on guard for thee.
God keep our land glorious and free!
O Canada, we stand on guard for thee.
O Canada, we stand on guard for thee.

But compare that with this English translation of the French lyrics:

O Canada! Land of our ancestors,
Thy brow is wreathed with a glorious garland of flowers.
As is thy arm ready to wield the sword,
So also is it ready to carry the cross.
Thy history is an epic Of the most brilliant exploits.
Thy valour steeped in faith
Will protect our homes and our rights
Will protect our homes and our rights.

A very different flavor to those, eh? An “arm ready to wield the sword”, but also “ready to carry the cross”. And rather than the English version standing on guard for the country, the French version stands in protection of “our homes and our rights”.

Fascinating how they’ve chosen to keep the tune and meter the same between both versions, and accepted the inevitable difference in lyrical content.

On the superiority of the Canadian national anthem

Watching the winter Olympics over the past two weeks, I caught at least a few of the medal ceremonies, including at least a couple (including the one after the amazing hockey game yesterday) where the Canadian anthem was played. Each time I was struck with the same thought, which I finally voiced on Twitter yesterday: that the Canadian national anthem is highly superior to ours. One friend expressed the same thought, but another quickly disagreed. So, let me offer a few thoughts in defense of my assertion.

Reasons that ‘O Canada’ is superior to ‘The Star-Spangled Banner’

  • Singability. The purpose of a national anthem is to be sung, right? ‘O Canada’ has a nice, singable melody, and a total range of just one octave, suitable to most voices. ‘The Star-Spangled Banner’, on the other hand, has a range of an octave and a fifth, which is a range typically only well-handled by professional singers. Live performances should be opportunities for national pride, however, when the US anthem is involved, they are more often adventures in vocal torture.
  • Inspiring Language. ‘The True North strong and free.’ What a marvelous turn of phrase. And who can fail to be moved when singing “God keep our land glorious and free”? The Star Spangled Banner is just about a flag, with the bit about the country being sort of tacked on at the end.
  • Using words that people actually are familiar with. With exception, perhaps, of the old English “thy” and “thee”, “O Canada” is composed entirely of words that one might use in everyday writing or conversation. “The Star Spangled Banner”, by comparison? Spangled. Perilous. Ramparts. Gallantly. Ugh.
  • Actually mentioning the name of the country. “O Canada”: 4 mentions, not counting the title. “The Star Spangled Banner”: 0.
  • Not beginning and ending with a question. Questions typically belong in plaintive, whiny songs, not broad anthems. Starting off “O say can you see?” and ending with “O say does that star-spangled banner yet wave?”, while presumably intended as rhetorical flourishes, doesn’t impart the same sort of solidarity as “O Canada, we stand on guard for Thee”.

Sadly, any attempt to change the US anthem at this point would only result in choosing something worse. “God Bless America” is too overtly theistic to get official sanction; “America the Beautiful” has many of the same issues as the current anthem (hard to sing, odd words). There are occasional odd choices proposed, too, similarly troublesome. For instance, Woody Guthrie’s “This Land Is Your Land”: written by a communist sympathizer. And who wants to hear a folksy protest song played at the beginning of every sporting event and solemn political occasion?

Being a loyal American I will continue to honor my country by standing when the national anthem is played. But I will at the same time regret that our inferior anthem ensures that we will never have a scene like the one that played out in the Canadian hockey arena yesterday, with 18,000 victorious fans singing the anthem at the top of their lungs.