oharaville :: renew oakland

December Event: Make Something! Parties « The Renew Project

Posted via web from oharaville’s posterous | Comment »

Renewing Our Minds About... Church

I went to church for the first time last Sunday. One of the pastors approached me and asked about my experience. I didn’t like it.

My dislike wasn’t stemming from anything that was wrong with the service. The music was great, the preaching was well executed. The people were friendly. I simply didn’t enjoy sitting there and taking it all in. It felt… dirty.

For my entire adult life and much of my childhood, going to church was the past time of somebody else.

I was one of the few. The proud. The church leadership.

Most of my weekends were overstuffed with elaborate preparations: song lists, teaching scripts, transitions, training and communicating with volunteers - these were just the tip of the iceberg. Often there were last-minute trips to get that one odd piece of the worship gathering puzzle that somehow slipped through the cracks but had to be in place lest the entire operation grind to a halt. I didn’t have the luxury of sitting - and if I did, it was always in the context of being pastoral. Smile, nod, offer guidance. Smile harder.

Yet there I sat, rear end attached firmly and squarely on the cushioned chair designated for my spiritual formation, and came to a screeching, heart-pounding realization.

This is not working.

My pulse began to race. Is this what I spent so many hours, so much passion, so much of my life cultivating - an environment where people sit and wait for it to be over? I looked around the room. Are we really experiencing transformation right now? Are we breaking through into the newness of life that we hope for? Or are we simply rehearsing our social norms - going to church because that’s what good Christian people do on Sunday mornings? Beads of sweat dripped down my forehead as I contemplated the absurdity of my professional existence.

Then, sweet redemption showed her face. I glanced a row ahead of me and noticed a Teen Challenge guy - someone I’ve never met who must have recently entered the substance abuse recovery program - furiously taking notes on the message. For him, this moment was pure gold, a bridge to hope. The realization slowly washed over me that spiritual formation has less to do with the cultural expression of church life - music style, setting, preaching, etc. - and more to do with our heart posture toward the One we worship, and our heart posture toward one other.

The issues surrounding Christian subculture are as real as they are entrenched in the corporate psyche of its’ inhabitants. We need to have honest conversations about the way our marketing strategies do more to create an unhealthy consumer mindset among people who should be taking risks and cultivating shared vulnerability. We need to address the dualism that is shaped by the way we glorify and deposit a majority of our energies toward one or two corporate gatherings every week. We really need to do something drastic about re-framing spirituality as a reality shared, participated-in, and developed over time instead of a thing packaged, delivered and consumed over the course of a 90-minute time slot.

Our response to these and other inter-related issues like social justice, being a part of a neighborhood ecosystem and good resource stewardship will determine the shape and texture of the church in years to come. They’re important. But the magic of transformation isn’t found in shelving one cultural identity in favor of a different flavor. At its root, transformation is about who we are becoming. The cultural context of our Gospel will continue to shift and change as our world evolves. Our need to embrace and receive the embrace of our Creator and our fellow brothers and sisters is a constant.

Jesus never got mixed up in the pithy political arguments of his day - instead, he always approached hot-button issues with an uncommon clarity. Recognizing each person as uniquely loved and cared for by the Father, he called each of us to act on our responsibility to each other and to God, loving one another as he loved us.

May our lives be transformed by the renewing of our minds.

Renewing Our Minds About... Food

I realize I’m late to the table on agriculture, urban renewal and the mind-body connection, but a few Spirit-inspired encounters have really turned my heart toward the potential for urban farming collectives to transform local economies, create access to nutrition, and develop an overall sense of reality in a virtually-enhanced world.

One of my first encounters with agriculture-based renewal came from my In-Laws. Serena’s parents raised livestock on their land in Napa for a few years, and I was able to take long walks with my son and help him make the connection between the hens and the hogs and the eggs and the bacon. Then I began to notice how passionate some of my urban-dwelling family members were during their visits. I eavesdropped on conversations about composting and backyard herb gardens and began to hear the ever-so-faint pulse of ecological discontent.

Not too long ago, my aunt who lives in Oakland loaned me Farm City, a book by local author and urban farmer Novella Carpenter. Novella’s story about cultivating good earth in the Ghost Town neighborhood of Oakland’s flatlands shook something loose in my soul. Suddenly I found myself asking as many people as I came into contact with in Oakland what they knew about urban farming. I was surprised and comforted to find a groundswell of interest - a farm here, a classroom studying a theology of stewardship there - and slowly I began to connect the dots. And then lightning struck: within a week, three unrelated people encouraged me to start reading anything I could get my hands on by Wendell Berry, a farmer-theologian who has written poetry, novels and essays. I am now poring over the internet and reserving what I can find at the local library from this kindred soul. An excerpt from one of his well-known essays, The Pleasures of Eating:

We hurry through our meals to go to work and hurry through our work in order to “recreate” ourselves in the evenings and on weekends and vacations. And then we hurry, with the greatest possible speed and noise and violence, through our recreation — for what? To eat the billionth hamburger at some fast-food joint hellbent on increasing the “quality” of our life? And all this is carried out in a remarkable obliviousness to the causes and effects, the possibilities and the purposes, of the life of the body in this world.

A few short years ago, I would not have been convinced that these are spiritual concerns, much less the domain of a professional minister of the gospel (which I was). As long as people were choosing an eternity in heaven with Jesus, our eating habits didn’t matter. In fact, my experience with youth groups seemed to reinforce poor eating habits with pizza and soda parties, trips to fast food restaurants, and the like being incorporated into the life of the group -  sometimes even the persona of the youth pastor.

Now that it’s trendy to be exercise discipline with our behavior when it comes to sexuality and money, I wonder when the church will begin to cultivate a new imagination when it comes to food? At what point will we begin to re-engage our sanctified imagination and enter anew the creation story as wise and benevolent caretakers of the world around us? Having begun to see first-hand the negative effects of a disembodied food economy, with kids eating bags of chips for breakfast and making fast food a major supplier of daily caloric intake; and the misleading doublespeak of food marketing with terms like “value meal,” I’ve begun to see the redemptive beauty of local, in-season fruits and veggies springing forth from nutrient-rich composted soil. I want to help educate families to become aware of their relationship to food, and innovate with others new pathways for sustainability. It is as spiritual a pursuit as helping an old lady across the street with her groceries - perhaps even more so, because it’s an opportunity to help her determine what goes in the grocery bag and into her body.

Think about it: what if our churches looked less like shopping malls and more like farmer’s markets?