Addiction in Brattleboro

When progressive Christian Brian McClaren wrote “A New Kind of Christian”, back in the early to mid ots,  I wonder if he knew he was just verbalizing an old kind of Christianity for a new audience. The progressive evangelicalism that emerged during that time eventually came to understand they were late blooming Mainline Protestants. Here in 2019, the Emergent Church no longer seems to be a thing  But not because of change in theology or drop in influence, but because they realized the redundancy of having two labels (Mainline and Emergent) for what really was the same thing, with perhaps the one and only way progressive evangelicalism stands out from the Mainline is the absence of a hierarchical church system. Other than that, let’s be real.  Same thing. So they kinda got absorbed.

A lot of petty infighting over the decade, and it turned out to be about labels.

But to be fair, a lot of the infighting was about what to do with postmodernism, whether to embrace it, accept it, or resist it, theologically and/or missionally. I don’t want to minimize how important that is.

But my question is: has the world gotten better since Christians fled to their respective “response to postmodernism” corners? And whether it has or not, which missiology is best fitted for this new world?

I live in Rural/small town New England. Brattleboro Vermont to be exact. But I would include New Hampshire and Western Mass as part of the same basic cultural landscape. The church culture in small town New England is (to me) unique. The categories are…

1. Embrace Postmodernism theologically and missionally.
2. Accept the reality of postmodernism for the purpose of mission, but do not embrace it theologically, or
3. Resist postmodernism with all our might. For it is the incarnation of Satan.

As far as I can tell, there are no 2’s in Brattleboro, Vermont. Just 1’s and 3’s. In terms of overall population, there are very few professing Christians, and nearly everyone who professes Christ is over 55. But there are church buildings everywhere. Most of those buildings house a few dozen liberal and mainline protestants in them every Sunday. Most of those churches have practiced postmodern Christianity decades before Brian McClaren  thought he was blazing new trails with the Emergent Church. In short, New England culture is postmodern, and the church is too. And if a church is not wholly of the milieu, it’s aggressively reacting against it. So that’s the lay of the land.

So with postmodernism comes outreaches of mercy, and lefty activism. Homeless shelters and food kitchens and demonstrations and social justice groups, and worship services abound. All good stuff. But nevertheless there is an epidemic of underbelly suffering affecting us all; without preference for race, religion, culture, or class. It’s officially called the Opioid Crisis, but I think an equally appropriate term for it would be “the angel of death.”

And that is an area I recently learned is without the presence of our town’s faith community. I don’t really understand why. I could theorize. But that’s all it would be.

And what is the Church’s response to this crisis? We might ask it differently: how does the church appear in Brattleboro as the city on a hill?  But I want to take issue with the question.

The postures of embracing, accepting, and rejecting all carry themselves in a way that says, “the church has the solution.”

I.e. “how is the Church going to be a city on hill?”

The mainliner exclaims, “By feeding the poor. Sheltering the homeless. Fighting for social justice.”

The  evangelical says, “By witnessing/telling our grace stories/being incarnational/doing outreach/properly contextualizing?

So if the church simply did what they were supposed to do then Brattleboro would… what exactly? Get better? Become the kingdom?

I don’t know. The blind cannot lead the blind. And the problem with the blind is that they are always the ones out in the front showing us all where to go-the ones with the answers. (Wait?…)

I can just hear us.

“Thanks Jesus for the cross, the advice, the good words, and the resurrection, but we good-hearted humanitarians, we can take it from here.  We will build a bright shining tower for you. Let’s call it, er, Babel! Yes!…Wait. Is that too on the nose? How about, ‘City on a Hill’. Without a vision the people perish, right?”

But the light of the world is Jesus Christ. And if the light seems dim it’s not due to a drop-off of zeal in the church, but maybe it’s a matter of zeal in the wrong direction, a zeal for something else, a zeal that turns our eyes from the light himself and makes Church into a blind, lifeless, and outdated coping mechanism for boomers, bound in hymnals, Bibles, prayer books, bulletins, and programs.  

I fear our eyes have been dimmed to the ancient truth that the kingdom is realized in darkness, pain, death, and devastation. It is not magically conjured into clean mainstream society by the power of positive thinking, a massive increase in adult baptisms, or egalitarian political agendas. Unless the kingdom is sought in the dregs of acute hopelessness, it will will not be seen.  And until the servants of God lay down their signs and run to the trenches they may never really see the Jesus they speak so highly of at church.

In the Gospels, it was faith in Jesus that healed the hopeless ones. He said to them “your faith has healed you” as if to shift credit from his touch to their faith. Which is odd. (Cuz I do think Jesus is the healer. Duh!) But it was as if our master considered his part to be that of simply being present when saving faith burst into bloom, as if his primary role was to be present to affirm the healing, and into bursting faith he spoke words of life. A missional model? Perhaps…

Last night at discipleship, I was asked to reflect in writing upon who I thought were my angels and messengers and what they were saying to me. I wrote the following.

My angels have human bodies. Jim, Rick, and David. (Not real names). These are recovering drug and alcohol addicts. I have heard each of them confess their need for Christ in prayer. And never were their respective prayers contrived cliched religious utterances, or merely going through the motions.  But I heard them confess their afflictions and their need for Christ in tender, but urgent pleas, as if to a parent that they had hurt, but whom also was their only resort, their only hope of salvation. Hearing these true and pure confessions brought me out of my religious stupor and I realized afresh, in my heart, that I, that we all, need Christ like that. Desperately. And that those who are know that level of need are those who have been caught in addiction.

Until I heard a desperate person in recovery cry out to God, I don’t think I really knew what contrition or Romans 10:13 was about. And to my surprise, hearing real cries for heavenly help helped me finally understand mission. Which is that I have more to learn about and from Jesus than I can teach about him. The missional question is not, how can I be a light, but, where is the light to be found?

In the Gospels Jesus is rarely found behind official podiums, but much too often for his own safety, in the derelicts of the desperate. If mission is to serve Jesus, and to serve Jesus is to serve the least of these, then serve “the least of these”  I must, but the secret of the kingdom is that the desperate turn out to be the teachers. I believe God may be found in Brattleboro’s hidden Gethsemanes, the places that middle classness cannot let tourists see, in the dark and hidden needle laced gardens of our town, where people cry out to God, not as their daily or weekly ritual, but as their real and very present need.

 

Hopes and Dreams

I doubt there has ever been a large portion of the younger generation at any period in time that didn’t insist on emotional authenticity. If there is one thing young people hate, it is the awareness or even suspicion that someone is selling them.

But I’m thirty-five now. With a wife and three kids. At that age and life stage where I’m too old to be hip and too young to be wise, and yet both old and young enough to know it.

I don’t presume to speak for my own generation It only ever feels like I’m projecting, so I might as well speak for myself.

So what does myself want? Real, real, real. That’s what I want. I want real spirituality. Not band-aid spirituality.

I feel especially ill equipped to speak for the burgeoning generation behind me.  But now that  I have been the pastor of a church made up entirely of Boomers, minus my own family, and one or two others, I feel I can say, if there is a generation I do feel ready to represent, it is (most ironically to people who know me) the oft maligned generation of my parents.

I can tell you what they want in a pastor. Comfort and reassurance in their waning years, chicken soup for the soul. The older I get, the less caustic and more sympathetic I am toward that sentiment. Still, being younger, it does leave a faint superficial taste in my mouth. But, to put on the other shoe, someday death will seem closer than life, and then I might be in some pew expecting the wide-eyed preacher to just make me feel a little less scared, especially if they are young enough to be my kid. I can’t imagine at that life stage I’d even try to pretend I’m not among the supremely wise, and be able to much tolerate rebukes about my shallowness or cynicism.

I’m also sure there is a balance between chicken soup and raw non-gmo style ministry. But I hate talking about balance. So I won’t. All hedging henceforth aside, I will speak for the one I am most qualified to speak for. In other words, this isn’t about how to get millennials into church by “being more authentic”. This is about, if you take away the salary and the  most literal pulpit I am gifted each week, how to get me into church.  Really, it is about how to get me into a Christian community at all, formal church, with steeples and deacons, or if it’s more your thing, a missional community with candles and hummus, and maybe board games.  

A real Christian community is a group of people who agree that Jesus is the creator and king of the universe, crucified for sin, risen, and coming again to drop heaven fully on earth, and want to have fellowship around these beliefs-by participating communally in the Lord’s Supper, preaching the good news about Jesus, baptism, singing, prayer, confession of shortcomings, and reflection on the Holy Scriptures known as the Bible. Their hope is that through these regular practices of discipleship, along with engagement with their neighbors, especially the oppressed, the beauty and reality of Jesus and his kingdom will be seen and embraced by their friends and enemies, their neighborhoods, and their cities.

If that is too general. I’m sorry. (Not sorry) It’s on purpose. I’m not that picky about the finer points of theology.

The struggle I have with what I affectionately call “Boomer Churches” (Reminder that I am the pastor of one of those) comes down to my inability to determine if church for them is about life, or if it is a pastime, a distraction, a safe space,…a comfort zone. When it has appeared to be the latter, it has no interest for me.

Now people congregate with their friends around common interests and ideals. Largely, that’s a wonderful thing just by itself, especially in the internet age.  However, Christian community is a specific type of community, more than a hangout. It can and should have its shallow moments. But it cannot be constituted as such.  It’s essence is a deep connection to reality.

Spirituality is about connecting with what is real, not escaping from it. I think a church gathering ought to function as a reminder of what is real and as a strong reaction against mere human nature-the felt need to never face the truth straight on, whether it’s thought too painful to bear or too good to be true, to work and entertain the truth away, every day. Either way, the real Christian communal experience is neither a guilt fest nor a feel good party, although on the emotional level, it may sometimes accompany unpleasant feelings and other times express pure joy. Sometimes, the real Christian community may foster all the feelings at once.

But when our expectations of church are the same as our expectations of drugs, food, and entertainment media, we are actively escaping real community.

When the service (to say nothing of the problem of equating “church” to “church service”) is always described as “nice”, “lovely”, “helpful”, “beautiful”, “rejuvenating”, or “inspiring” (which hopefully church is those things) and almost never as “raw”, “difficult”, “real”, “thought provoking”, “provocative”, “healing”, “life changing” or “offensive” it is time to evaluate if we are practicing communal discipleship or medication; if we are connecting with reality or escaping from it.

And this isn’t about preferring deep and melancholy to feel good and happy. Ascetic and liturgical expressions of church can be just as escapist. Not all the truths we run from are negative. Some of the hardest words for me to accept are reminders that I am loved. My fear of failure produces the habit of seeking refuge in the morose; a quality I suspect few understand, and not one I recommend.

That’s because what is great about the gospel is its ability to hold the positive and negative truths together. The truths of life, that it is all suffering, that humans without God are irreparably damaged, that the bad guys get to keep being bad guys, that death is pretty much here.

But also the truth that death has no sting because Jesus is risen, that sin is cured by the suffering of God, that the bad guys time to be bad has a term limit, that the kingdom is even nearer than death.

So when a local Jesus community gathers, it isn’t about escaping or feeling better (or worse.)  It’s about connecting to reality. It’s about connecting to Jesus. It’s about vulnerability. It’s about connecting to one another; being honest and open with one another. It’s about facing the hard, but love filled, joyful, and hopeful words of the good news about Jesus.  It’s about experiencing more than friendliness and a warm heart,  but love. It’s about mourning over the state of the world, while rejoicing in the hope of the gospel. It’s about blessing one another as we scheme ways to bless our physical neighborhoods, not retreat from its suffering, but be present in and with it. It’s not about making charitable donations, its about being charitable donations, which is as much about receiving charity, requiring a certain kind of strange and risky fellowship in the slummy parts of our towns, so foreign to most North American churchgoers

My hope for North America, for New England, for Southern Vermont, is for the existence of vibrant and explicit Jesus communities that have the inspiration and courage to creatively and wisely face the realness of the world with each other,  in all its gore, and mess, its sadness, desperation, and loss, as well as its inevitable redemption, its inherent and breathtaking beauty, its hidden hope, it’s real love, as found in Jesus.

Is this hope, this dream, this prayer, a millennial or Gen X thing? Is it just a “me” thing? Honestly, I don’t presume to speak for a generation or to a generational issue. This is my head and heart laid out. If there are any whose hearts long for the same kind of community in Southern Vermont, join me and my family in prayer. And also, if you can or so desire, dinner.

 

Church Again

“I don’t need church, but I do need Jesus.”

“I don’t need church, but I do need community.”

I don’t need church, but I do need redemption.”

I don’t recall hearing these exact words in my ears. But I’ve heard them.

To these cries of confusion I would inject the following questions:

What do you think the church is that you feel you don’t need her?

What do you think the church is that you would believe she can somehow exist without Jesus, without community, and without redemption?

If you really knew what church is, you would never say you don’t need her.

What our lost generation doesn’t need or want is an institution of materialism, dictatorial top-down talent/clout/charisma based leadership, a culture of fear based homogeneity, which employs manipulation and social engineering, making its members incapable of noticing, let alone breaking free, of their symbiotic relationship with post WWII conservatism, a culture that prizes propositional statements and tasks over people, which sees people as a means to the end of a conversion driven mission, incapable of truly accepting new members unless they implicitly agree to become “circumcised” in said culture.

We also could do without its faux remedy -institutionalized Christian hipsterdom. Just because you throw away slacks for skinny jeans, flannel graphs for big screens, Celtic drinking songs with Jesus lyrics for indie-folk drug ballads with Jesus lyrics, don’t make you a church. Not that skinny jeans, big screens, or indie folk is bad. Or that it you should never do it.Just know it’s not Jesus and not the remedy of institutionalized church.  That’s all.

You can have cool or uncool. But where can we find Jesus and his redemptive community

But it sounds like “church” needs a makeover. And I do not mean a “philosophy of ministry” overhaul. You don’t have to come or go to Church to sing great songs in a crowd, meet great people, find a sense of belonging, or be inspired by a great word. The institutional Church isn’t quickly fading because of a shortage of fog machines. She isn’t dying because the bank is being drained. (Though it is) She isn’t waning because of bad methodology. (Nor is she growing as a whole because of packaged and more effective methodologies)  Nor is it merely a lack of passion or precision for this or that theological tradition. Nor is it because of a lack of generational morals. One could argue that millennials are one of the most morally conscious generations in memory. The institutional Church has largely lost her identity as the bride of Jesus. And seekers are looking for the kingdom elsewhere.

So be it. The institutional church is on her last leg. And I for one am done with any questions related to reviving the old institutional identity.

Where will Christ’s bride, the church, be found?

Anywhere. In this broken, but beautiful world, she might be hiding behind stained glass, in denominational meetings, in conferences, (and more conferences), in a school gym or auditorium, on the back deck, or on the streets. Wherever she is, she is the broken body and bleeding bride of Christ. And yet because she belongs to Christ,  in her will be found Christ, community, and redemption. And there she will be.

So…if the institutional Church has lost her identity, what do we do?

We don’t do anything.  We pray. We repent, regroup, remind, and  re-imagine. In essence. We become the Church again.

We Don’t Do Anything

Christ Jesus is the cornerstone of the Church. That means she cannot fall. It means that eventually all institutions that don’t submit to Christ will fall. The church, if it is a church, always offers redemption. If it does not, it is not a church. Even it if it says it is. Even if it has a pastor and deacons, and a sanctuary, and even a steeple, if it doesn’t have Christ and it isn’t redeeming the time, it is one of the kingdoms that will fall to Christ’s. Christ and his church will prevail.

The other side of “we don’t” is the reminder that we are destined to screw up whatever revolution, utopia, or Babel we build and perfect in our rebellious, feeble, finite, and unholy, little brains. He has told us what is good and what is required. To do justly, to love mercy, and to walk humbly with our God. Such a word and such a life is always revolutionary already, always bubbling within the church, which is always placed strategically by God in the midst of a perpetually crooked generation. And yet she seems to always be in need of restoration and reminders of who she is and what she was made for.

But…

In spite of her being in ad nauseum need of restoration, God is merciful and patient. He is slow to anger and abounding in unending love for us. He will restore us. He will reanimate dry bones.

The sinfulness in church might seem a problem. But it is the mysterious plot point in the story God is writing that the church is a house of adulterers always in a cycle of repentance, of death and resurrection, always at the feet of Jesus, always being forgiven, always being reminded that she is not condemned by Pharisees nor God, always hearing Him tell her to go and sin no more. Somehow God uses her open brokenness to grow her and turn all alternative kingdoms on their heads. Perhaps stepping out into our brokenness in front of a broken world is the next step in finding the church again.

We Pray

If it is true that we stand in submission to the lordship of Christ over his church, then we have ample recourse and motivation to pray without ceasing, wait patiently, and watch diligently.

We Repent, Regroup, Remind, and Reimagine

All of this kind of blends together. If we are repenting we have to have some idea of what we’re repenting of, which means we have to have something to compare it to, which means we will have to remind ourselves of what we’re supposed to be, which might not happen effectively until we regroup. And I suspect that if we do all that, we will discover, that there are many things attached to our ideas about church and our church culture that will have to be repented of as well as reimagined if we are to go forward in being the kind of community Jesus would have us to be, and we might find ourselves reminding ourselves again at that point.  And that reimagining, along with recycling practices we’ve lost, or bringing up new things yet to be thought of, might also in the process bring up more things to repent of that weren’t so obvious when we were initially repenting, which might bring up more ideas going forward…

It’s all rather fluid.

But where do we start the conversation?  (Regroup)

And discuss what it means to…Love God. To Love your neighbor. What’s it look like where we live? (Remind)

On to sin, death, suffering, separation, alienation, need for redemption. (Remind)

On to Jesus, crucifixion, resurrection, gospel. (Remind)

On to discipleship. (Remind and Reimagine)

On to church. (Remind and reimagine)

On to mission. (Remind and reimagine)

Onto tearing down idols in the church that get in the way of the pure pursuit of Jesus. What are those things which are not necessary for being a church, perhaps once helpful, but now unnecessary, confusing, or harmful? What length must we go to really repent of those things? What does repentance look like? What are the necessary things; non-negotiables of being the Church?  (Repent and Reimagine)

What’s left? (Reimagine) (Repent and Remind when necessary)

That just about frames the conversation..

Christmas Eve Sermon

Now when Jesus heard that John had been imprisoned, he went into Galilee. While in Galilee, he moved from Nazareth to make his home in Capernaum by the sea, in the region of Zebulun and Naphtali, so that what was spoken by Isaiah the prophet would be fulfilled:

“Land of Zebulun and land of Naphtali,
the way by the sea, beyond the Jordan, Galilee of the Gentiles—
the people who sit in darkness have seen a great light,
and on those who sit in the region and shadow of death a light has dawned.”-Matthew 4:12-16 (NET Bible)

It’s as if wherever Jesus is there is a light. Light always wins. Darkness cannot remain darkness so long as there is light. For Jesus to say that He is the light of the world is to say that He wins, because as we’ve said, light always wins. It is to say that wherever Jesus is is victory. Wherever Jesus is the end of despair, the beginning of hope, and everlasting joy and peace. These are not just words, though in this time, we drive past them without a thought, like Christmas lights. Unless we stop to really look at them. I was struck with an unusual flash of Christmas spirit on Sunday Night as Rachel and I were driving home from our downtown frolic. I requested that we see the lights, the same lights I drive past every night. But I chose deliberately, one might say, meditatively to really see them. May the truth that Jesus is the light of the world, the hope of nations, the joy of the earth, and there very peace of God, be meditated upon tonight, in a concentrated way, in a way that our souls, amid the darkness all around, may see the light of Christ, and rejoice in the victory of God over all evil.

Sometimes it seems as if our world is falling apart. As if peace on earth and good will to men are ever beyond reach. As if the political and racial tension in our nation is about to snap, putting us into chaos, as if the poverty, homelessness, and drug culture of our own little town, will sweep our young people into darkness and oblivion. Jesus is the light in all these darknesses. The question is where is Jesus?

Jesus told his disciples that He would send them the Spirit. That He would put His Spirit in them. Paul says that the mystery of the church is the message of Christ in his Church. The Church is the body of Christ, and Christ is the head; the extension of Christ to the world is Jesus.

Ephesians 5:13-14

But all things being exposed by the light are made evident. For everything made evident is light, and for this reason it says:

“Awake, O sleeper!
Rise from the dead,
and Christ will shine on you!”(ESV)

When we wake up. Christ will shine on us. If Christ shines on us, what are we except the radiance of Christ himself? We ourselves exposed by the light, we being the light which makes everything else light. We are the presence of Christ, what Paul calls a fragrant aroma. The light in the darkness, the fragrance amongst the stench. Christ in the dirt.

A city on a hill cannot be hidden. No one after lighting a lamp puts it under a bush. The light of Christ is not for the Church. It is the church. It is for the world. If the Church is dark, it is not the Church. The light of Christ is for the darkness, and darkness cannot hide wherever the light may be. Is it possible, consider this carefully, is it possible, that we are hiding our light under a bushel, a building, a system, or an all-around lifestyle that is more like the world’s (even though our words are pretty and morals officially clean) than it is like Christ’s?

Are we where the darkness is? Or do we stand on the sidelines and yell at the darkness hoping that our voices, but not our presence, will change it?

Or are we part of the darkness itself? Have we awoken to Christ in a real way, that His light may shine on us?

Tonight may be a night to repent. Whatever it is. It is a night, not to sleep on the problem, but to wake up to the solution. To look straight at the light in all its fierceness, the light of Christ, be changed to his likeness, and go out and be the light, the hope, the joy, and the peace of the world.

Community Bible Chapel

Community Bible Chapel is my church. My role is Pastor. In other words, I’m the minister. I’m not the priest. I’m not the boss. I’m the under-shepherd for the Chief Shepherd. I teach. I equip. I encourage. I serve. I wash feet. I model Christian living. At least that’s what I’m supposed to be doing.

I’ve been the church’s pastor for three months. Three months ago 25 people considered themselves regular participants in our spiritual community dedicated to the worship of Jesus and the spread of the gospel. They called me to renew a once waxing, but now waning church. I call upon the Spirit of Jesus to rescue Brattleboro, and I know, because He has said so, that it is through his people, the Church, of which CBC is only a part, that he will do so. My concern is for the spread of the Kingdom in Southern Vermont. If this means CBC has to die, or be renewed, or transform, or whatever…The kingdom takes precedent over all. But if I didn’t think CBC had a little life left, I wouldn’t have accepted the call.

There is nothing contrary between my role as pastor and my desire and call to make the gospel known in Brattleboro. To pastor is to make disciples. Discipleship is spreading the gospel. And spreading the gospel is discipleship. Evangelism is part of discipleship. The mission is to make real Jesus followers, not mere confessors, and professors, not secular humanists versed in Christianese, not Americanism showcased as Christianity, but real followers of Jesus, washers of feet, servants, dead to the world which is passing away, cross carriers, grace advocators transformed by grace. The mission is transformation through the teaching of and obedience to the Word, Jesus, the subject and object of the inspired Scriptures.

Community Bible Chapel (CBC) is right now about 40 people gathering for worship every Sunday and in various weekly Small Groups. The median age is somewhere around 50. I am the third youngest person. My wife is the second youngest. My son is the absolute youngest.

I would say that CBC is characterized (without my influence) by friendliness, openness, and service. To these folks, friendliness is an art. And they are masters. They are not too overbearing or smothering, but not smug or unapproachable. They are orthodox in belief, but open to new ways of doing things, and willing to think through and wrestle with Scripture, not just bear the Christian status quo, or whatever the pastor says. They serve with willingness and even joy. Everyone does what is asked and no one complains. I’m excited to serve my town, Brattleboro Vermont, through serving and teaching the people of this dear Church, who bless me by just being them.

There’s a long way to go, but most of the board is already set. Our prayer is that we would become a multigenerational, multicultural, multiethnic Church, spreading the good news of Jesus and making disciples out of every man, woman, and child in Southeastern Vermont. Partner with us in prayer.