Strong Fences

I can only think of a few childhood moments that struck me as so revelatory as the time that my increasingly reclusive grandmother admonished , "Strong fences make good neighbors." My grandmother had many wonderful qualities, but a healthy balance of extroversion was not one of them.

I'm afraid that side of my grandmother would be enjoying our culture more and more with every passing year.

We have so many fences between us. Here in Minnesota we are fast approaching that time of year when physical neighbors never see one another outside of their automatic garage doors. We know each other only by our tail lights. We have lots of relational fences, inhibitions that keep us from sharing our lives with each other in any meaningful way. Just a few nights ago I was running along one of my regular routes and tried to offer a simple "Good run" to another runner passing me in the opposite direction. But even that small effort fell victim to an iPod fence.

As our vision discernment conversations at First Lutheran have attempted to assess the needs of our external community, the need for friendships, connection, and a sense of community has frequently been identified as pressing. (I can't help but wonder, of course, if those of us in the church are really much better off in this regard. We've got a long way to go.) The more I look around, the more I agree and the more I realize how much fencing we will need to break down. This is not going to be easy. For some reason, we really resist getting closely connected with other people. Even though it brings deep joy to life, we seem to avoid it.

Would any of my readers like to chime in with their comments on the barriers that keep us from establishing genuine community with other people?

Disciple making

I blogged about this same topic on Saturday, but I got fired up about it again yesterday. What if we could design a simple, clear process for helping people to grow as disciples? Wouldn't that be great? (And, yes, I have read Simple Church, in case anyone is asking...)

The thing that got me thinking about this was Sunday's annual presentation of Bibles to third graders. This year we happened to have several (infant) baptisms scheduled right before the third graders got their Bibles. This created a very interesting sequence. First I stood up front with the parents and sponsors of the baptized children, asking them about their commitment to nurture the faith of this child that we were baptizing into the Christian community. Our baptismal service gives me the opportunity to charge them specifically to bring their children to corporate worship; to teach them the Lord's Prayer, the historic creeds of the church, and the 10 commandments; and to "place in their hands" the holy Scriptures. We as a congregation also promise to work with them and support them in this commitment to their children.

Then, right after the Baptism, the 3rd graders and their parents stood up to receive Bibles that our congregation purchased for them. My colleague, Pastor Angie, explained to the parents and children what these Bibles are and how to use them. And in this juxtaposition of events, even a dunce like me could see that we were doing something right. We parents and congregation members were honoring one of the promises we had made at the baptisms of these children 7-8 years ago. -- And we are working diligently to ensure that we consistently honor the rest of them too.

All this made me think about how great it would be to act just as intentionally for our whole community, and not just for our children and students. Being a Christian in a non-Christian world is no small thing. If we expect to grow together as disciples of Jesus, we really ought to invest some careful, strategic thought in a process that facilitates exactly that result. And then we ought to invest some disciplined, strategic effort in that process.

Make Disciples. Novel idea.

Confirmation

Giving an opportunity for Christian adolescents to confirm their faith is an old tradition. Without doing some homework, I couldn't say exactly how long Lutherans and other kinds of Christians have had a rite like Confirmation, but I know it's been a very long time.

As we had rehearsal today for tomorrow's confirmation service, I was having three thoughts:
1. This is such an important time in our students' lives. I'm so glad for the excellent job that has been done especially by our student ministry staff during the years leading up to confirmation.
2. This is such an important time in our students' lives. I wonder how we could help shape students into followers of Christ even more effectively and faithfully than we already do.
3. This is such an important time in our students' lives. I wonder how we could take this faith formation process and adapt it for the life of our whole church community. Maybe we could call it "conformation," all of us being conformed to the life of Jesus - though possibly in some very non-conformist ways.

Change and...Politics?

A speech you'll never hear from a major political candidate. For all kinds of reasons.

Faith?

That's a word that gets used an awful lot, though I'm rarely sure that we know exactly what we mean by it. "Well, I guess you've just got to have faith," we say. Faith in what? Or whom? To do what?

Obviously I know that when Christians say this they mean faith in God. But I wonder how often we reflect on what we're trusting God to do? Is it something that He has promised to do? And if not, is it appropriate for us to trust God for something God has not promised?

I'm thinking about this today because of the confluence of two books I'm reading. The first "book" is the book of Galatians that we're studying carefully at First Lutheran right now. The second book is a recent publication by Christian Scharen called Faith as a Way of Life. What I'm thinking about in particular is the Christ-content that Galatians gives to the word pistis or "faith." Faith(fulness?) is first of all Christ's, and then it is ours. In this context faith is not blind trust or hopeful optimism, but it is conformity to the mind and obedience to Jesus.

I've only just begun reading Scharen's book, but even the opening pages provoke me to ask what kind of faith he proposes as a way of life. It doesn't take long to sense that he is thoughtful enough to avoid any vacuous notions of faith, but I'm eager to see how a Galatians-like Christ-faith will shape his proposal. And I'm even more eager to see such a thing shape our lives.