c. scott andreas

I’m reading Shane Claiborne’s book The Irresistible Revolution.

In this excerpt, he talks about his experience visiting the church in Iraq:

“I was invited to worship services nearly every day while in Iraq. The Christians in Baghdad gave me so much hope for the church. One of the most powerful worship services I’ve ever experienced was just a few days before I headed home. Hundreds and hundreds of Christians from all over the Middle East had gotten together — Catholic, Protestant, Orthodox. They read a statement from the Christian church directed to the Muslim community, declaring that they love them and believe they were created in the image of God. Then we sang familiar songs like Amazing Grace. We said the Lord’s prayer in several languages. They led us to the cross and prayed a prayer similar to the one Jesus prayed when he was on the cross: “Forgive us, for we know not what we are doing.” Hundreds and hundreds of people continued to try to get into the service and ended up gathering outside with candles. It was holy.

Afterward, I was able to meet with one of the bishops who had organized the gathering, and I explained to him that I was shocked to find so many Christians in Iraq. He looked at me, puzzled, and then gently said, “Yes, my friend, this is where it all began. This is the land of your ancestors. That is the Tigris River, and the Euphrates. Have you read about them?” I was floored — by my ignorance and by the ancient roots of my faith. It is the land of my ancestors. Christianity was not invented in America…how about that?

The bishop went on to tell me that the church in the Middle East was deeply concerned about the church in the United States. He said, “Many Americans are for this war.”

I nodded.

And he asked, “But what are the Christians saying?”

My heart sank. I tried to explain to him that many of the Christians in the US are confused and hope that this is a way God could liberate the Iraqi people.

He shook his head and said, very humbly, “But we Christians do not believe that. We believe ‘blessed are the peacemakers.’ We believe if you pick up the sword, you die by the sword. We believe in the cross.” Tears welled up in my eyes as he said, “We will be praying for you. We will be praying for the church in the US…to be the church.”

This is the second post in a multi-part series on American History X and the Kingdom of God. Click here to read the first.

In the first post in this series, I offered a brief description of American History X and suggested that it converses with the story of the Kingdom of God in a variety of ways. Here’s one of them.

American History X can be seen as an ideological struggle that manifests itself in real, physical ways. A rhetoric of white power led to violence against racial minorities (primarily blacks and hispanics, both of which were referred to in alternate terms). Perhaps more importantly, however, is the fact that hate breeds hate. Though Derek’s violent speech and actions near the beginning of the film are directed against minorities, he soon found himself screaming at his mother and hitting her, grabbing his little sister by the hair, and shouting down voices of wise authority in his life. It appears that the medium is the message — a rhetoric of hatred is not capable of bringing peace.

Similarly, Paul writes in his letter to the church at Rome that followers of Christ are to “be transformed by the renewing of [their] minds.” He establishes a direct connection between patterns of thought and patterns of behavior. We’re also commanded by Christ to bear fruit as God the Father enables us. Here, a transformation of the spirit through the infusion of new life enters into the world in real, tangible ways.

Living in such a manner has the opposite implications from those we see at the beginning of American History X. Rather than violent speech of power and violence, we find words of humble and love restoring peace and respect to broken families, communities, and nations in the Kingdom. This is a kingdom that does not “force” itself upon those in its proximity, but one to which people are drawn by its fruit.

In the film, Dr. Sweeney, an incredibly wise black high school English teacher has a conversation with Derek (the former neo-Nazi protagonist):

Dr. Sweeney: There was a moment…when I used to blame everything and everyone. For all the pain and suffering and vile things that happened to me that I saw happen to my people. Used to blame everybody. Blamed white people, blamed society, blamed God. I didn’t get no answers ’cause I was asking the wrong questions. You have to ask the right questions.

Derek: Like what?

Dr. Sweeney: Has anything you’ve done made your life better?

Like Paul, Dr. Sweeney suggests that the nature of our minds, attitudes, and motives are directly responsible for the conditions in which we live, our welfare, and the welfare of those around us. It seems that we have an imperative to renew our minds. As we observe this transformation occuring by the work of the Spirit, we’re able to watch the Kingdom breaking into our flesh and the lives of those around us in real, tangible ways that have immediate implications for life today and for eternity.

welcome,

c. scott andreas

I just finished watching American History X with a few friends while molting and eating a bowl of ice cream (quite a Friday night, eh?). Over the next few days, I will be smashing this film and the Kingdom of God together. It’ll be a trip.

I’m not sure that I would recommend it to those who are uncomfortable with intense “adult themes” — it’s certainly not for the faint of heart. But it is a film that conveys an intensely powerful message which I believe we need to hear…whether or not we’ve a swastica tattooed over our heart (as the protagonist, Derek).

For those who have not seen the film or do not wish to, here’s a brief description of the plot:

[ possible spoilers ]

Derek, disillusioned by crime and poverty in his neighborhood, slowly begins to blame ethnic minorities and illegal immigrants for the situation he sees around him. Taking charge of the neighborhood, he forms a white supremacist gang to purify the streets. Hatred bred hatred; Derek began to abuse family members, hitting his mother and sister in short order. After killing two black men who’d attempted to break into his car, he was sentenced to three years in prison.

While away, his younger brother Danny came to idolize him — he sought to replace him in the area’s rising neo-Nazi youth culture. A respected teacher encourages Danny to investigate his brother’s past the night he was released from prison on parole.

Derek attempts to set his brother right, explaining to him the brutal story of transformation that came to define his life while in prison. Near the end of the film, he’s asked to enter back into the problem and begin to set things right, stopping the cycle of violence by confronting those who perpetuate it.

I’ll leave the rest of the tale for your DVD player to tell. Watch the trailer here.

[ /possible spoilers ]

In a few strange, intriguing, and problematic ways, I saw images of the Kingdom and our present reality in this film. If you have the opportunity to watch it and feel comfortable doing so before reading these next few posts, I’d recommend that you take it.

all the best from the pacific northwest,

c. scott andreas

We launched the official Sacred Space site today.  I’ve been writing over there lately, which has come at the cost of content here.

Check it out at http://www.sacredspacepdx.org!

Sacred Space is a city-wide urban renewal project sponsored by Imago Dei in Portland, Oregon. On August 12, nearly one thousand church and community members will partner together to bring new life to fifty spots around the city.

I’ve been tasked with developing the visual identity for this project. So far, this has consisted of a logo, letterhead, business card, DVD cover, and training pak labels.

Most significant, however, is a short promotional video that I wrote with a few others, then shot, edit, packaged, and distributed. Watch it below, or download an iPod Video-compatible version here.

sacred space 2006 :: click to play

[ I posted this comment at Church Marketing Sucks this evening.
If you’re from CMS, skip to the next post. Thanks. — csa ]

Though I’ve since moved to a new area, I spent two years with a church that had a very interesting goal:

It grew to split.

Today, this congregation is about ten years old and numbers only 350. Yet it has spun off four or five new congregations in the surrounding area (and one in South America).

A few interesting notes:
- This church lies in a small town of ~8,000 people.
- This church’s web site has been “offline for maintenance” for several months.
- The banner hanging above the front door is a Rick Warren / National Ad Council mashup of white text over a black background saying “got purpose?”

My point here is that Christ reaches people without slick, original marketing, too. Though the bulletin employs both Comic Sans and enough exclamation marks to excite Ben Stein, they still “manage” to live out the missional journey of a life with Jesus Christ guided by his Holy Spirit quite well.

I work in cross-media design to help churches and their ministries establish visual identity. I don’t care for church signs that employ puns. But I love my job. And I always get excited when I hear about people who have become interested in a church I’ve worked for as a result of a promo piece.

But I’ve spent most of today designing a DVD cover and running proofs through a finnicky printer. And I spent a good portion of this evening with a young woman who has severe vision difficulties but a beautiful heart. The promo disc doesn’t mean anything to her, but the Spirit of God has touched her life through the community in a profound way. Which of these is more important?

There’s a part of me that longs for the simple days of MS Word and a B&W copier.

Let’s just remember what “marketing” and “growth” are for: to help communicate effectively the good news of Jesus Christ, and to add to that number of communicators.

But which is more important? That the gospel is lived, or kerned?

I promised to weigh in on the comments to my “approaching exile” post just shy of two weeks ago. Apologies for the delay.

My essential point was that a life of difficulty can often spur greater innovation, fervor, urgency, and vision than one lived without trouble. In this post, I attempted to map this onto the church at large. If our culture is approaching a point at which basic biblical concepts and stories are not readily understood or accepted (and I believe it is), then I believe that as the body we are faced not with despair but with a challenging opportunity to reach new people in new ways with the good news of Jesus Christ confirmed by the love that necessarily flows from it.

In his comment, Ben described it as a “very exciting time” — I would certainly agree. Many old methods, metaphors, and ways of explaining are fading slowly but surely into unfamiliarity (though many thankfully remain). My thinking assumes that the church must adapt to remain (or perhaps become) accessible to the culture God wishes her to bless. I am more than confident that the body will adapt, as I see it occurring in many, many places — the questions are how, when, and with what degree of friction.

How might our culture respond to the message of Christ communicated authentically, relationally, and beautifully? I pray that doors may bust open…with people running into the church, but also with people running out of it!

I watch with eager anticipation and joyful hope to see how God’s church is evolving and will continue to evolve, just as it has done so throughout history.

I’d love to hear more from Ben on this. Paul, too!

Paul engaged my thoughts a bit more critically. He offered some handy bullet points, which I’ll use as well.

1) Concerning my use of the word “myth” –

I believe that the death and resurrection of Christ (as elements of scripture) do “symbolically convey to us in a deep and meaningful way some kind of deeper truth about ourselves and how we should interact with the world,” as Paul summarized. However, to speak of them as simply “stories” without historical basis or reference to reality would defeat their purpose, rendering them absolutely impotent.  What use is a story about a God who died and rose again to forgive our sins if He did not in fact do so?  Here, he becomes something on the level of a cosmic Paul Bunyan, offering an invented explanation for the origin of the Land of 10,000 Lakes that does not correspond with reality and is useless to us today, other than perhaps for the purpose of amusement.  As the other Paul wrote in 1 Corinthians 15, “if Christ has not been raised, then our preaching is in vain and [our] faith is in vain. We are even found to be misrepresenting God…”

Brian McLaren speaks of the reality of Christ’s death and resurrection as elements of “the story we find ourselves in.” For if these events were not rooted in history (or perhaps better, reality), then we would not be speaking of “the story we find ourselves in,” but rather “the story we have chosen to bring meaning to our lives.” That said, it happens that these two are one and the same, for the Resurrection is a reality that occurred at a specific moment in time, but continues to shape and define our reality as believers today.

This is what I mean by “myth” in the context of historical Christianity.

That said, I must say that I find “anthropocentrism” an interesting framework for criticizing a “post-liberal” theology (which is not my own), considering that the relationship between humanity and creation as described in the Bible through the interpretative framework of more conservative theologies is quite anthropocentric (for better or for worse). But I don’t want to light that fire here.

2) On “basking in the sun” –

Paul caught me making an irresponsibly-broad generalization here. However, he refines my essential point by showing that the phenomenon of “prospering on the outs” is one consistent with church history. He wrote, “the Church of God survives and even thrives in the darkness of this world.” Amen.

This evening, I read McLaren’s chapter on features of Anabaptist and Anglican Christianities that appealed to him. He cited the Anabaptist (in this case, Amish/Mennonite/Quaker) resilience in light of popular criticism and the pressures of a consumptive modern society as a redeemable element. (Chapter 13, A Generous Orthodoxy)

Mapping this theme onto present events and personalities in our “our modern, or post-modern day world” might be a bit more difficult, as analogies are necessarily fallible. However, I would argue that we do not live in a post-modern culture — in fact, American society as I’ve experienced it is very much rooted in a modern epistemology. I regard this as neither good nor bad, but merely a fact. In my original post, I wrote that we often confuse life in a society in which the story of Christ is not implicitly regarded as true with the epistemological framework of postmodernity. This is an idea that I would like to expand on at some point.

3) Regarding the ministry of the Spirit –

I love Paul’s reference to Jesus’ dialogue with Peter at Caesarea Philippi. In fact, I believe that the answer to this question lies in the text itself. Rob Bell at Mars Hill (Grand Rapids, MI) spoke on this passage in Matthew 16 a couple weeks ago. The fact that Christ spoke these words at Caesarea Philippi is quite significant. We’re given little background concerning the purpose of this journey; it is conceivable that Christ led them here to speak these words alone, though such a conclusion would be irresponsible. If I recall Bell’s teaching correctly, Caesarea Philippi was considered to be one of the most “immoral” spots around…certainly somewhere that good Jewish boys would not venture. The particular rock in question marked the site at which spirits were believed to move between Earth and the other place…and not friendly ones, either. So here we have Jesus standing with Peter who is probably feeling a little bit edgy.

And He says, “on this rock I will build my church.”

Christ and His Spirit today have dominion over all — in fact, if His holiness is so great that the foundation of the church can be laid upon the most evil ground and thrive, this certainly says something about the power of God and His ministry today.

Here, Paul revives the age-old question of content and form, medium and message. I suggest that the message is of central importance, but it is the medium that makes this message intelligible. “Una lectura de la carta de San Juan” would not make much sense to a white suburban community, but might teach and edify a Hispanic faith community. It is the medium that changes, but not the message. The same is true with epistemologies; Christ is just as true in modernity as in postmodernity…it’s simply a question of how we understand and speak of this truth. But in all cases, salvation is the work of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit — not a clever video or an altar call.

I’m a little tired of talking about epistemologies, I think. That’s all for now; more on the rest later.

grace and peace,

- scott andreas

[Middle English exil, from Old French, from Latin exilium,
from exul, exsul, exiled person, wanderer.]

I spent an hour at a Seattle’s Best café inside Borders watching the rain pummel disaffected hoosiers as they scurried about the plaza’s sprawling wet desert of a parking lot.

While drinking a cuppa, I read a couple chapters of McLaren’s A Generous Orthodoxy. I say that not to preface this thought, but to give you an idea of the waters in which I’m teabagging my mind at the moment.

“The church functions best when in exile.”

I should first say that though this statement is a product of my own mind, I don’t think I agree with it. But the nature of this disagreement is rather complex. I’ll explain this in a few articles, but for starters, here are three premises (which you’re free to disagree with).

1. From the time of the ancient Israelites’ slavery under the Egyptians until the oft-suppressed rise of Jewish religion as we know it today, the Jews have largely existed under (or in opposition to) a larger host culture. That is to say, Judaism is essentially a religion of diaspora. Though this group of people has ostensibly existed and on occasion thrived, it has done so without political authority or even respect — often in disfavor and persecution.
2. Christianity in its various forms, as ostensibly the default religion of modernity in the West, has enjoyed almost 1700 years in the sun beginning with the conversion of Constantine in 312 until some time in the last three decades.
3. Today, we find ourselves in a culture that is less likely to accept or understand Christianity or its mythology (in any of it’s “official” 33,830 forms) as implicitly “true.” That is, individuals now must identify themselves as “Christian” and explain what that means — this identity is not simply assumed (or understood). Conscious engagement of biblical narrative (though still very much alive in the poets of our age) is very slowly but gradually fading from popular American discourse.

I often wonder what many Christians mean when they talk about “ministry in a post-modern world.” It seems that many confuse postmodernity with life in a culture that does not implicitly accept “Christianity” (as we’ve built it) as “true.”

We speak a language that has been “Christian” since its emergence as we know it today. Here, I speak of English as a “Christian language” from a diachronic perspective. In other words, English is a Christian language because it has been teabagged in biblical themes, both birthing, communicating, and transforming them.

But though our words and metaphors are steeped in centuries of Biblical myth as a framework for reality, we find ourselves approaching a time in which this myth will become less-understood by and less-accessible to our secular neighbors. As fewer and fewer recall or are subjected to years of flannelgraph indoctrination, we’re left of distillations of Noah’s Ark as “the time when God destroyed the Earth while Noah and his family floated in a boat with all of the animals.” Tales of the apocalypse are not stories of a renewed creation, but “when the earth will be destroyed like in Armageddon but Tom Hanks won’t save us.”

Perhaps the heyday is nearing its apex. For what are we without our language? And who is our God in a language that speaks of him as many speak of the NSA?

As Rob Bell said, should we turn up our noses, purse our lips, and say “People just don’t care about truth any more?” This seems like a logical response…and one that I’ve seen. But is there a better alternative? Can we productively engage it? And what might this look like?

Check back soon for more. I’m enjoying this.
Until then, what do you think?

c. scott andreas