Networking Made Visible

 In the Western Church, Augustine’s dictum “The Word comes to the element; and so there is a sacrament, that is, a sort of visible word” could be the bumper sticker for sacramental understanding. Don’t mind that every tradition comes to its own interpretation of what that means. Robert Jenson, however, summarizes the foundation of that phrase as, “when the Bible’s God speaks to us… it comes to and then with some ‘element,’ some piece of the external word.”[i] For my tradition this visibility allows us to grasp, sometimes literally, grace as when bread is placed in our hands in the Eucharist.

How do we grasp other intangibles though? God makes grace tangible in sacraments, but how are we able to grasp the many ways we exist in relationship with others? Are there ways for us to understand the ecosystem of relationships that we inhabit? Let’s my personal network to think about visualizing personal networks.

Thankfully the answer is yes. While it does not involve good bread or tasty wine, the best way to visualize relationships, perhaps surprisingly, is math. Graphical techniques can help us create maps of our relationships with others, and the web those relationships weave. A very good introduction to understanding network science can be found on the website for the UC Davis Data Lab.

In thinking about my network, I am going to limit my network, because mapping my entire personal network would be a grueling, nigh-impossible task. I decided to think about the people I have interacted with through my previous podcast, that is, people whom I had brought on as guests. I also included people who had talked with me about publicly presenting a topic or leading a discussion. 

The visual representation of my personal network

 I also need to define what kind of network model I am looking at. In the introduction site I linked above, there are two kinds of networks. I decided to use a two-node network to see where the people I have interacted with have mostly been connected to me. I chose four areas of life that have been important to me. First, I looked to see who was connected to the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America. Second, I looked to people who are active in academia. Third, I included people who have some public connection to discussing popular culture beyond mere fandom. Finally, I looked at people who have some connection to Campus Ministry. A sample of my data matrix is shown. If someone has a connection to an area, the corresponding box gets a value of one, otherwise the value is zero.

Choosing a two-node network seemed most appropriate in this case because it shows the arenas I inhabit, as a pastor and as a public theologian. This analysis felt more helpful than the way my network are connected to each other. Not surprisingly, because I looked at the guests on my podcast, almost everyone listed has some connection to popular culture. That makes sense given my podcast looked at the intersection of popular culture and theology and faith. However, because I have been asked or I have asked others to speak on topics outside of popular culture (e.g. White Christian Nationalism, Artificial Intelligence), I have a limited number of folks who have no connection to popular culture.

Likewise I have a great number of connections to the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America (ELCA). As a pastor in that denomination, this element makes sense. Additionally, it serves as a possible warning. I do not give any data in this visualization about member node demographics. This image does not show if my connections are men or women, white or people of color. It does not give up any other religious affiliation. I could have included a node of ecumenical partners with the ELCA, but I did not. The ELCA however is in some reckoning the whitest denomination in the United States. If my network leaned as heavily toward the ELCA as it did toward popular culture, I could easily have shared only white voices. Refining this visualization in the future, I believe I would separate the people’s nodes into different sectors like “White women,” “White men,” Women of color,” “Men of Color.” This delineation could help me suss out those distinctions further.

Even rudimentary analyses like this one give us some ability to understand what values shape our networks beyond our own internal voice saying, “of course, I have a diverse network.” I could easily have deluded myself, knowing that one of my guiding principles with the podcast was including the voices of women and people of color, voices often kept out of conversations of theology or popular culture, or even the intersection. This visualization becomes a visible word of that principle.

---

[i] Jenson, Robert, (1978). Visible Words, Fortress Press, Philadelphia, p.3

Humanities Coding in the Information Age

 

"Hello, World !" code in C++ 
Wafelack, CC BY-SA 4.0 
<https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0>, 
via Wikimedia Commons

Coding has been consistently present in my life, particularly early on. In elementary school, my classmates and I programmed LOGOS turtles to move around a screen. I have written the traditional “Hello World!” introduction code in multiple computer languages. I copied video game code out of magazines to build fighting games or create programs to play music that I keyed in. In my junior year of college, I wrote a program to simulate the chaotic system of the driven, damped, pendulum, cranking through numerical solutions of differential equations. In graduate school, I routinely used Matlab code to analyze audio signals. As my kids grew up, I introduced them to platforms like Scratch where they could begin their own projects. One of those kids is now a software engineer.

For me, coding has always been connected to the scientific endeavor, running calculations, digital signal processes, or other such work. Whether it is hubris or subject blindness, I will confess that website development hardly counted as coding in my eyes. It always felt perhaps more like a craft project people used to show off the sweaters they made for their cats.

This misguided notion of mine was formed in the age of people pimping out their Myspace and geocities pages. In the development of an inherently online existence, coding is far more important in web design for engagement to be sure, but ever more the real power lay in one’s ability to access information. The access to information is one of the most powerful currencies in this information age.

While companies and corporations want people to be able to access information in order to maximize their profit, projects that seek to inform and edify others for their own sake, are vital partners in the work toward such goals as the common good, solidarity and justice. These projects need solid coding to offer information as well as be able to create space for people to share what they know. 

One of the Inter|Urban murals in Cleveland
 from https://arrestedmotion.com/2016/10/streets-interurban-project-cleveland/

 This understanding is especially important in the humanities, as evidenced by the Painting On Walls project. Erin Benay describes the project in her case study “Art History and Action In The Rust Belt.”[i] Benay worked in the Cleveland area, as what she called an “engaged art historian.”[ii] Cleveland, like many other Rust Belt cities that suffered decline with the crumbling of the steel industry, had a robust mural tradition. Abandoned buildings make excellent canvasses for murals, after all.

Benay started a service learning course at Case Western Reserve University, in collaboration with LAND Studio’s Inter|Urban project, where students learned the history of murals and do something with that knowledge that went beyond traditional class work. Benay wrote, “I wondered how we might connect the longer history of mural painting with the more recent trajectories of urban development and public art-making that regularly appeared in Cleveland news. Even more significantly, I was curious to see if it was possible for students of art history to do something with this knowledge, rather than to simply regurgitate it in neatly conceived seminar papers.”[iii]

As the course progressed and students documented and learned about the murals, it became evident that passersby engaged the public art visually. That each of the murals was based on Anisfield-Wolf Book Awards went largely unknown. Students in the course wanted to provide access to background material and context for the murals. The murals could move beyond an object of visual engagement and offer something more.

To accomplish this end, the students created informational text about murals and placed them in train and bus platforms. Additionally, they created QR codes that offered greater information about the art. Benay wrote, “Developing a better mobile app and more sophisticated digital mapping interface for Inter|Urban would, students believed, allow this content to be more accessible to the very underrepresented populations that the texts seek to address.” [iv]

Among all of the art history, coding underlined the work that took the information to the people of Cleveland giving a broader view of the people who lived in the city. This work of coding moved this project beyond a class assignment and connected folks outside of academia.

---

tThe Routledge Companion to Public Humanities Scholarship. Routledge.

[ii] Benay, p. 96

[iii] Benay, p.99

[iv] Benay, p. 105

Sermon from Sunday Sep. 20

Moving to a new worship space made recording my sermons a bit challenging... but I think I have it figured out. So here is my sermon from Sunday Sep. 20, "God Loves {insert_name} More".

Gentile Lepers and Religious Freedom

The Kim Davis issue seems to be dying down. Kim is out of jail. The same-sex couple has their wedding license. The media is slowly pulling away from the story. So I guess it's time for me to weigh in.

Sure, I've been weighing in on friends' meme posts who don't seem to be getting things technically correct (and getting little jabs here and there since they just thought something was funny). I am not a quick thinker and sometimes I fall behind in an instant media world. But I have thought a bit about the situation... a government official refusing to do something that is part of her job because of religious commitments... and I am somewhat surprised that I have not seen anything regarding Naaman, the gentile general who suffered from leprosy.

Why Naaman? It has less to do with Naaman being healed than his response following the healing. Naaman confesses the God of Elisha to be his only God.

So he went down and immersed himself seven times in the Jordan, according to the word of the man of God; his flesh was restored like the flesh of a young boy, and he was clean.  Then he returned to the man of God, he and all his company; he came and stood before him and said, "Now I know that there is no God in all the earth except in Israel; please accept a present from your servant."  But he said, "As the LORD lives, whom I serve, I will accept nothing!" He urged him to accept, but he refused.  (2Kings 5:14-16 NRSV)

The Sacraments and Sacra-Mentality

A friend of mine, Keith Anderson, published a blog post today reflecting on some of the response following Rachel Held Evans' new book and her entrance into the Episcopal church. Much has been made that she, a former evangelical, has found value in the sacraments (for her and some in the Episcopal church, they number seven: Baptism, Eucharist, Confirmation, Confession, Ordination, Marriage, Extreme Unction (anointing and laying on hands for the sick),  ... for others they number only two, Baptism and Eucharist... but that is an old debate that need not be rehashed here.) Keith rightly points out that many mainline churches are "breathing deep sighs of relief, patting themselves on the back, and smiling in self-congratulation." 

Keith criticizes those who think if they just keep doing what they are doing, the young adults disaffected by the rock music, or coffee bars, or light shows, or anything else that tries to make church "cool" will find their way back to their pews with the liturgical tradition that has remained largely unchanged for decades. Keith writes: 

Judging from the comments I’ve seen in the days since Held Evans’s article was posted, I’m afraid that her assertion has had the unintended consequence of reinforcing the tendency toward inertia exhibited by some Mainline ministry leaders. “See, we’re fine. We don’t need to change,” I can hear them saying. “We can keep doing what we’re doing. Let’s put on some coffee, order some new communion wafers, and wait for the young evangelicals to come pouring in.”
Good luck with that.
Such interpretations of Held Evans’s post are problematic because they reinforce our maddening fixation on matters of worship, to the detriment of extending ministry beyond our church buildings, deepening faith formation, serving the poor, and helping our neighbors.

The End is Near! Final Judgment is Upon Us!

Not THAT final judgment... those on college campuses know what I mean.

Here is a message I shared with my students this week in the weekly update for the campus ministry. I share it here as well for everyone feeling burdened by exams, papers, grades and the like...

-----
Finals are upon us... a time of focus and exams and stress and work and stress and... yeah. Finals are important to be sure. There is some need to gauge how well (or not) we have comprehended the material set before us over the course of the semester. Sometimes the exams and papers seem unfair. Sometimes they are ridiculously easy. And we prepare, hopefully diligently. We do our best and place ourselves at the mercy of the faculty and others grading us.

It is important to remember though that our ultimate worth is not determined by our GPA, or the grades we earn. We make our lives more difficult when we allow ourselves to become immersed in the messages that "EVERYTHING DEPENDS ON THIS GRADE!" Our grades are necessary and can help us reflect on our courses of study and the direction for our lives.

But at the end of the day, they are partial pictures of our lives and our identity as human beings. We are loved and deemed worthy by a God who came and dwelt with us as one of us. God's love for us shows us our worth and our value.

You are a precious child of God. period. Please never forget that... and if you think you are forgetting that during this time of judgment... call me. email me. text me. Let me remind you.

Goblins, Chupacabras, Moral Atheists and Immoral Christians

Many of the books I read, include mythical or fantastical creatures. Orcs, ents, elves, dwarfs, Martians, Vulcans, and the like. Most people likely believe these creatures are imaginary. Possibly people believe they exist as cryptids, a creature for which there is mere suggestion and little proof of existence... like Sasquatch or the Loch Ness Monster or the Pittsburgh Tunnel Monster, which feeds upon faster moving traffic which explains why everyone in the 'Burgh slows down immediately before entering one of our tunnels making the traffic jam cascade behind them.

In a recent spewing, Phil Robertson opined on an imaginary violent encounter with an atheist in which the atheist's wife and daughter were raped and  murdered, followed by the castration of the atheist. Throughout this foul reflection, Robertson follows the old motif that the atheist cannot oppose such activity because he, being an atheist, has no basis for any moral judgment. The perpetrators of the evil against the atheist say in the midst of their attack, "But you’re the one who says there is no God, there’s no right, there’s no wrong, so we’re just having fun."

The View From Here: My Daughter and My Phone During Worship

A couple of weeks ago, I brought my children with me to worship. My wife was playing organ at one church. I was leading worship at Heinz Chapel for the campus ministry. How to get the kids to the zoo for the Zoo Boo that afternoon? Yes, come with me, because I was closer. No problem, although being a campus ministry service, there is no nursery available for young children, like my four-year old daughter.

So I was leading worship, but not preaching. That task fell to my Episcopalian counterpart that morning. My daughter and eight-year old son sat with me in the front pew. My oldest child, the eleven-year old boy, found a seat several rows back, behind a pillar where he could remain apart from us. And of course my daughter got antsy. So like many parents, I handed her my phone. She played a few games, but ultimately went on to her favorite activity, taking pictures. I did not count how many pictures she took, but it was quite a few. A couple of days later, I sat there deleting them. For about half an hour. At some point during the deletion marathon, I paused and realized that these photos, bad as they were, were recording the view from my daughter's perspective. Given her perch, what exactly was there to grab her attention. It appears that several things piqued her curiosity... some of them were actually service-related... but how long could anyone expect to sit still if there wasn't something to grab... and hold... his or her attention.

Countless shots of her feet and/or the floor

The pew, my jacket and the stained glass 

Her foot again... but somehow turned it into an animated gif. How did she do that?  

 Me reading along with the lector

Brother... who appears put off by the close up 

 The lector... again. 

Brother would not do well with paparazzi 

 Worship selfie

Something caught brother's attention 

Sermon time 

 Hymnal racks

 Woodwork of Heinz Chapel, pulpit, chancel and altar

Some things clearly caught her eye. Things that were going on during the service or in the space around her. The most often snapped pictures though were of her feet and the immediate space around her.

Maybe we should set more youngsters, heck why not everyone, loose with cameras during worship to see what they are seeing. What holds their attention? Are there obstacles, both literal and figurative, in their way? Of course some of these things are natural for a four-year old. Not everything will be overcome. And we would hope that as they age they begin to participate more fully. We cannot make worship appeal only to four-year olds. We do not need a lowest common denominator worship. But it cannot hurt to ponder occasionally how everyone perceives our worship... Four-year olds included.

Holy Ground at 35,000 feet

A couple of weeks ago I had a meeting in California for campus ministry that demanded a great deal of focus and attention, which of course, between that and the travel with short turn around, let me drained. So I was looking forward to the return trip where I could become anonymous and delve into the page of notes I had made for my upcoming sermon.

Because of the demands of the meeting, I had failed to check-in online exactly twenty-four hours to the flight so I was dealt a lousy boarding number. While I had managed to score a window seat on the flight out, I knew I wouldn't even get an aisle seat. I was going to be stuck in the middle.

My strategy then was simply to grab the first available center seat I came upon on on the side of the plane that would be facing north during the flight, since the north side would not have the sun shining on it. That side of the plane is cooler, at least in my mind. As I walked back the aisle, I saw my target, dropped my laptop bag in it so I could work, and stowed my shoulder bag. And then I discovered to my horror, that the guy I would be sitting next was a guy who had been loudly talking with another guy at the gate about their Italian heritage. Everyone can recognize an evangelist, whether religious or not. This guy was an Italian evangelist. His identity was thoroughly steeped in the history and culture of Italy and he was happy to talk to anyone about it. And I dreaded this.

Campus Ministry... Why I Do It...

Sometimes in campus ministry, just like in regular ministry, we don't see the effect on people's lives. With campus ministry it is a little more exacerbated, since we usually only have a person around for four years or less. But every once in a while, God's presence shoots across your field of vision so that you want to take off your shoes because you know you are on holy ground, and you are humbled because you were part of it.

One of our alums, Kelsey, is in Madagascar for a year of Young Adults in Global Mission. She has begun a blog to let folks know of her experiences... the blog post that I am sharing might be the best way to explain why I love campus ministry and the type of work that goes on there.

Ham on Nye: Sandwiching Evolution and Creationism Together

How do you get creationists and scientists together in the same room? Bring leading spokespeople from each camp for a debate. Last night, as many know, Bill Nye, the appropriately named "Science Guy" and Ken Ham, the founder of the Creation Museum in Northern Kentucky squared off in a debate of sorts, to argue their case for creationism or evolution. (The debate can be watched here)

To be honest, the event felt less like a debate and more like two ships passing in the night, like two parts of a sandwich that wouldn't come together no matter how much one chewed them. Not much of a surprise, I guess. Debates work best when the conversation takes place between people who share a common matrix of beliefs, even while they hold disagreements, even significant ones at that. Ham and Nye don't have disagreements, they are in fundamentally different universes. How each viewed science was at issue. Nye clearly supported the scientific process as it is taught and practiced in research. Ham looked at science as only a crutch for finding support of his own view. If anything supported the standard scientific model over the creationist model, Ham found ways to dismiss or discount the finding rather than question his own model.

Pastor Dad: Questions in the Dark

My wife and I have from very early on with our kids created a rather involved bedtime ritual. All of our prayers are sung, and with the exception of the first, a variation of "Now I Lay Me Down to Sleep" sung to "Twinkle Twinkle Little Star", based on elements of the compline liturgy. This bedtime liturgy evolved out of a first child who would not stay in a toddler bed alone. Many nights I would lie on the floor with my head resting on his mattress until he would fall asleep. In that time, he seemed to soothe easiest if I sang. I had lots of tunes that I would use, but I fell into the habit of singing parts of compline because I was praying it fairly regularly. The traditional tune of "All Praise to Thee My God This Night" fit the moment. And the verse which precedes the nunc dimitis, "Guide us waking, O Lord, and guard us sleeping..." even though sung to Gregorian chant was perfect before  we eventually said the Lord's Prayer.

Church of the Geek

Another project I have been working on for the past six months or so... The Church of the Geek Podcast, with the Rev. David Hansen.

Our sixth episode went up tonight. "The Ascendancy of the Geek" What happens when the outsider moves to the inside? You can find our reflection here.

Advice for Atheist Churches

A friend pointed out an article over at the CNN Religion Blog about Atheist Churches... and of course, their almost immediate fracture after seeking to spread. 

A brief excerpt from the article: 

In October, three former members of Sunday Assembly NYC announced the formation of a breakaway group called Godless Revival.
“The Sunday Assembly,” wrote Godless Revival founder Lee Moore in a scathing blog post, “has a problem with atheism.”
Moore alleges that, among other things, Jones advised the NYC group to “boycott the word atheism” and “not to have speakers from the atheist community.” It also wanted the New York branch to host Assembly services in a churchlike setting, instead of the Manhattan dive bar where it was launched.
Jones denies ordering the NYC chapter to do away with the word “atheism,” but acknowledges telling the group “not to cater solely to atheists.” He also said he advised them to leave the dive bar “where women wore bikinis,” in favor of a more family-friendly venue.
The squabbles led to a tiff and finally a schism between two factions within Sunday Assembly NYC. Jones reportedly told Moore that his faction was no longer welcome in the Sunday Assembly movement.

The split seems to be fueled by a fundamental disagreement in organization and purpose. The emergence of atheism into a more accepted existence has shown that Atheism is not in fact monolithic. With even fewer doctrinal guardians than American mainline protestants, these atheist assemblies now have to figure out who they are when engaging the larger community. 

In the midst of this discussion, I cannot help but see similarities from the early church. One of the questions Engelhart asks in the blog is if disbelief is enough to hold the Atheist Churches together. I say "No." Why? Because belief was not enough to keep the Christian Church together. I suppose it is more accurate to say that "Belief in belief" is not enough, borrowing from Stanley Hauerwas' comments that American religion is about belief in belief. (See this 2010 article in the Guardian as an example)  While the early church lived in the Roman Empire, an illegal religion sometimes persecuted harshly, the  early church could live with any profession of "Jesus is Lord!" Once they were legitimized by Constantine, the cracks in the belief began to show. Belief was not enough to hold them together. Schism and heresy began to split the Christian Church apart as leaders began to hash out what they believed about this Jesus guy and why he mattered. Throughout the history of the Christian Church, the followers of Jesus have shown with increasingly regularity that we are far more comfortable perpetrating the brokenness, sometimes over substantial matters like fundamental questions of who Jesus is, and more often over irrelevant questions like the color of the carpet in the sanctuary. What ultimately keeps the Christian Church together is Jesus, that resurrected God-Man who still shows up in our gatherings, even when we get him all wrong. He shows up in Word and Sacrament and in our life together so we can practice the grace he gives us. Belief alone leaves us Christians fractured still. It is no small miracle that any Christian Church has survived for two millennia. In the same way, I do not believe disbelief (or maybe disbelief in belief?) will hold the Atheist Church together. they will need something more.

But a bigger issue came to mind as I read the article. The Atheist Church is copying the model of the Christian Church, a model many Christian Church leaders are wrestling with because it seems outdated. The gathering to listen to people talk about stuff might be interesting (might not since not every sermon in a Christian Church is necessarily interesting to everyone), but one of the things that the Christian Church is facing, is how to engage people in those moments. And many religious leaders are altering the way the Christian Church deals with that time. We no longer live in a period where people will sit for the "Tell me" but are looking for "Show me." Don't just talk about praying. Pray. That time is being opened up for something more participatory and experiential. 

The Atheist Church needs to discern questions of identity, meaning and purpose. And they should not just duplicate the model of the Christian Church. Be true to what you believe and live into that. Make your gatherings reflect that. Even Engelhart recognizes something is amiss in this new Atheist Church movement. She wrote: 

Instead of a thoughtful sermon, I got a five-minute Wikipedia-esque lecture on the history of particle physics.
Instead of receiving self-improvement nudges or engaging in conversation with strangers, I watched the founders fret (a lot) over technical glitches with the web streaming, talk about how hard they had worked to pull the service off, and try to sell me Sunday Assembly swag.
What’s more, instead of just hop, skipping and jumping over to a local venue, as I once did, I now had to brave the tube and traverse the city.

Perhaps something was lost. in the move to a larger, organized effort. At a time when people are decrying organized religion, perhaps organized atheism is not any better. 

Why do I care though?  Why am I bothering to offer advice to atheists? Most likely because I believe the God I follow in Jesus is not the sort who observes boundaries. He doesn't just stick with his own people. He is out there. And if the Atheist Church has anything good to offer the world, it will be because Jesus is there since nothing good can come apart from him. And maybe, we in the Christian Church might learn something more about what Jesus is up to in the process. 

Church-geeking out over 2013

Here is a blog post I did for the Church of the Geek podcast page, where I look over 2013 geek/church events...  and even manage to invent a new word.

Read it here.

Happy New Year everyone!

The Lord's Prayer: Tipping Point

A colleague over on that Book of Faces shared an article about a waitress who received an evangelical tract instead of a tip. It had been cleverly designed to appear like a ten dollar bill, but the waitress quickly realized that what she had was not money at all. (see the pictures here)

Several things strike me as wrong about this. 

First, it is incredibly presumptuous to leave a tract that basically says you know the spiritual condition of a person you interacted with for mere minutes. Evidently, being saved gives one super powers to determine this. Or not.

Second, it is a poor witness. Reducing Christianity to a pie-in-the-sky vision of eternal life leaves no way to discuss the love God has for this person right now. This person needs to put food on the table and has various needs that are now not fulfilled. Sure, as the tract says, "Some things are better than money." But few waitresses I have worked with are doing that job because the money is so damn good. 

Third, it is injustice. For whatever reason, our society perpetuates the myth that tipping is something people give as an extra... a bonus for good or bad service. What we must realize of course is that the servers' wages are almost exclusively tips. The minimum wage for such workers is abysmally low, and hasn't kept up with federal minimum wage law very much at all. Don't muzzle the ox as it treads grain, and tip your waitstaff twenty percent at least. Every worker deserves to be paid. 

The tipping point for me in this discussion (yes, pun most definitely intended) is the Lord's Prayer. I realize few Lutherans would ever pull such a crappy move, because we don't generally hand out tracts (The ability to share one's faith might also be called into question... but tract leaving is definitely not about sharing one's faith). But there is also a place to turn to consider our restaurant manners in the light of our faith, the Lord's Prayer. More specifically, "Give us this day our daily bread." 

When we consider all that must happen for us to receive that meal, we cannot consider the waitress a dispensable link in the chain. To faithfully pray as our savior taught us, we are to give thanks for everything required to bring us our daily bread. And just as we would not expect the supermarket to take a "Get Saved" tract in exchange for our groceries, neither should we leave it for a person seeking to live off of that job. Being thankful is not just a state of mind, but an active response. If you feel it necessary to leave a tract, make sure you also tip well. If you cannot afford to tip, you cannot afford to eat out. 

New Project: Church of the Geek

For the past few months, David Hansen and I have been creating a new podcast: The Church of the Geek, where we talk about things in the Geek-iverse and (usually) how it intersects with the life of faith. 

After getting a few shows in the queue, we have officially launched Episode 1! (have no fear, there will be no Jar Jar Binks in THIS Episode 1)

In a few days it will be listed on iTunes. Until then you can listen to the podcast over at our site: http://geekchurch.blogspot.com/

Listening on a non-iTunes podcast platform? This is our RSS Feed.

Find us on Twitter @GeekChurch

And on Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/GeekChurch 

We hope you enjoy listening!

 

Apart from Christ

It is hard to imagine a soup kitchen turning anyone away from helping in the ministry. But I was rather shocked to read in the RNS Religion News Roundup today that a soup kitchen in Spartanburg, SC turned away volunteers. Why? Because they were atheists. (Whole story here)

In the story above, the director of the kitchen holds stereotypical beliefs regarding atheists... She mentions the devil being with them as they hand out care packages across the street. It seems she holds a very narrow understanding of the John 15 paraphrase, "Nothing good can be done apart from Christ." There are those who believe that if people are not Christian, even if they are doing the exact same charitable work that Christians engage in, it is not a good work.

This type of thinking leads directly, in my mind, to an inwardly focused, type of mission where the only good work that can be done is by Christians, and then done only within the church. The church becomes the guardian of Christ, keeping him in our little boxes.

However, the reality is far greater. It is Christ who is out and about, working in places where we might not be aware. If we see something that certainly looks good, then Christians should go investigate what Christ is doing. Maybe the people who are doing the good aren't aware that Christ is in their midst.

The soup kitchen is missing a prime opportunity to allow people who disavow God's existence to participate in Christ's mission, perhaps causing one of them to experience a hint of God's presence. Instead, they are faced with rejection and spite, further reinforcing the notion of Christians as hypocrites. It makes me wonder at times who is further apart from Christ.

We Are Family: Baseball, Exile and the Communion of Saints

I had a great Great Aunt. She was like a third grandmother to me. She supported me in many ways. She helped me get to Germany as an exchange student after my freshman year of high school. She sent me money each  month during college along with a note to "Have fun!" Evidently, she was worried I would be far too serious and engaged in my studies to do anything fun... no worries there. She was so important in my life, that my daughter is named after her (as well as my wife's grandmother, who also shares the same name).

But what I remember probably most of all is baseball. She loved the Pittsburgh Pirates. And she instilled that in me as well. She got me a membership to the Dave Parker Fan Club. She gave me an autographed baseball that she was given, with almost the entire team on it. She also would take my brother and I, along with her friend and her nephew to Sunday afternoon baseball games. I remember the first time she asked me to go. I went to Sunday school but skipped out on worship, so we could make it to the game on time. It was an amazing time whenever we went. Those trips remain storied adventures.

Hearing Voices -- Sermon from the 4th Sunday of Easter

Jesus says his sheep hear his voice. In the midst of voices that try to separate us from God and neighbor, Jesus continues to call to us because he knows and loves.

An excerpt: 

This is not to say that it is impossible to understand Jesus’ voice. We are indeed gifted with the ability to hear his gracious words. But they must be set among his whole teaching of God’s Reign and grace. And we must ask and not assume that everything that sounds good and pious is in fact. Jumping in and accepting those voices without discernment is perilous, but Jesus promises that he will be in our midst helping us discern his words from others...

Read the whole thing here.

Or listen to it.

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