You’ve probably read the rhetoric on both sides of this issue, but I’m hoping to provide some clarity to better understand what’s going on. Of the eight people who will read this post, three will agree with me, two will think I hate the police (I don’t— I’m thankful for them and wear an armband to remind me to pray for them every day), two will think I’m racist (that’s likely, but I’ll get to that), and one accidentally tapped on this article while reaching for the TV remote.

What privilege?

In my years as a foster parent, it became clear to me that we are, all of us, post turtles. We didn’t get where we are by ourselves – we are the product of history, both global and familial. When I was a kid, my blue-collar parents assured me that I was going to college. They expected it, and they constantly encouraged me to live up to my potential. What I didn’t understand at the time was that my potential had a lot more to do with my environment than my brains and grit. Even though he grew up poor, if Abraham Lincoln had been black, you wouldn’t be able to finish, “four score and seven….” A white child in a middle-class school and with supportive parents is much more likely to graduate college than changing any one of those factors. It’s not that changing those environmental factors makes a person less capable — we all depend on encouragement, both from people we care about and from society as a whole. I received it from every direction, and I’m thankful for it. But because I’ve been so blessed, I have the opportunity and responsibility to use that blessing to benefit others.

All cops have racial bias (and so do you)

A frustrated (black) police officer friend told me, “We don’t get up in the morning looking to shoot black people,” and given the fear of riots that often follow in recent years, I believe that the overwhelming majority of police officers fear ever being in a position where they need to shoot someone, much less a black person, yet it still happens to black people more than it happens to white people under similar circumstances. Why? Because we all have racial biases and preferences. If you don’t think you do, take the test and see how it measures your gut reactions.

But we inherit prejudice from our environment, whether a racist joke heard as a child, the overwhelming majority of superheroes, CEO’s, media personalities, and politicians being white, or attitudes of family members. And even if we reject those attitudes like Harry Potter rejecting Slytherin, they’re still in our subconscious whispering lies from the pit of hell, telling us that melanin quantity affects a person’s trustworthiness. Like it or not, we really do inherit sin from our parents (Psalm 51:5), and it affects us on a gut level. Reject those ideas for the lies they are, but know that a piece of you, admittedly a tiny piece that you hate, has to wonder why 50% of black men end up behind bars at some point if it’s not genetic.

So if everyone has racist tinnitus, what happens when a police officer finds themselves in a situation when they need to make a snap life-or-death decision when they sense a threat and need to take control of the situation? In a Blink, instinct, not conscious thought, they make the decision. Hindsight can’t retrieve a bullet, but police officers get judged by those who understand what it’s like to want to live to go home to family at the end of a shift, but not always in a court of law, which both exacerbates and is a symptom of the problem. And that doesn’t make it right — black parents shouldn’t have to teach their children the safe way to handle a traffic stop, nor should they have to worry every time their child goes out at night. 

Good is the enemy of great

We have undeniably come a long way since the Civil Rights Movement in the 1960s, but it’s easy to draw that comparison and think that our current situation is good enough, and people of color should just be thankful for how far we’ve come. (If you threw up in your mouth a bit at that thought, kudos.) But compassion and complacency rarely go together. Racism will always be a problem, so we can never be satisfied with the status quo and must always seek improvement. But responding to unjust violence with unjust violence or to hatred with hatred just exacerbates the problem. Rioting makes things worse, but at the same time, we can’t dismiss riots without looking into the heart of people that are upset to the point of violence and attempting to look at the world through their eyes. We have to ask, “What would it take to get me that upset? And given what happened, why is my blood not boiling to the extent that theirs is?” From a position of privilege, we can also ask, “Could what happened to them ever happen to me?” and if not, why not? The correct answer is not, “…because I don’t break the law,” because neither did all too many of those who were ruled cases of mistaken identity.

So how do we fix it?

This is a problem as old as humanity, so it should be obvious that there is no quick fix. But if you’re ever going to make things better, you have to get to the root of the problem and address the problem, not the symptoms. What causes those snap decisions? What causes that anger and the subsequent extreme actions? 

HOPELESSNESS

When an officer feels like this is their only option to get home safely at the end of a shift, when a population feels like they’ve run out of options, having tried everything else, that violence and destruction are the only possible solution to the problem, these are symptoms of hopelessness. Hope doesn’t stop looking for alternatives. 

So where does hope come from?

Through my work with TreeHouse, an organization dedicated to ending hopelessness among teens, I’ve seen hopelessness turn into hope. It starts when we recognize the lack of and need for hope in others. It starts when we recognize the inherent value of every person and strive to treat people according to that value. It starts when we demonstrate to others that they are not alone, because we are for them. It starts when we demonstrate to others that they have a future to look forward to, not to dread, and we will do what we can to make that happen.

As a Christian, I believe that every person has inherent value, because they are bought by the blood of the Son of God Who willingly submitted to institutional injustice and police brutality (Matthew 26:67) for all of us. I believe that God loves every person without strings, regardless of their actions, identity, or circumstances, and He has invited us to experience that love, both by receiving it and giving it by choosing to care enough about others that we’re willing to make sacrifices (Romans 12:1-2) to attend to their needs.

And this hope must be given on every level, starting with each of us as individuals in our spheres of influence, then from whatever organizations we’re connected with, then seizing opportunities to get to know people who are different from us to help us see through their eyes if only dimly, then from every level of society, like police departments that are training their officers in implicit bias, government on every level seeking institutional disparities and letting hope drive them to find alternatives, believing that those alternatives exist and not giving up on finding and implementing them, confessing our failures and seeking not just forgiveness, but reconciliation.

The riots over the death of George Floyd are headed down the road toward my home as I write this, but even though I’m nervous for my family’s safety, yet my heart breaks for the wave of hopelessness that’s flooding our city.

What can you do today to bring hope to someone? I started by writing a blog post to encourage hope. Feel free to comment with ideas.

As our world responds to the COVID-19 outbreak by staying home, many churches are scrambling to keep the Body of Christ connected. At Saint James in West St Paul, thanks to some expertise among some of our staff, a passionate commitment to the Gospel, an a deep desire to bring the love of Christ to our entire congregation and beyond, we’ve quickly developed a collection of methods to bring church to the church.

Services

Since we’re not meeting live, there’s no reason to livestream the services, so we record them in advance and release them on our YouTube channel on the day of the service, recording multiple services on the same day but scheduling their releases for the correct Sunday and Wednesday (Lent services). We also embedded the service playlist on the front page of our website for easy access.

We also mail out DVDs of services to shut-ins, cable access channels, and nursing homes, and we’re working on using Dropbox for the cable access channels and nursing homes to avoid contamination.

Bible Classes

Because we have Google’s G Suite (free for nonprofits), we can use Google Meet for Bible classes. The leader speaks on his phone or laptop, and participants can either click a link to join in or call a phone number, thus allowing people to listen and ask questions live. Using a handheld recorder, the leader also records the class for those who listen on the website or subscribe to the podcast.

Youth Group

We’re using a combination of Google Hangouts & Google Meet for youth group. They tend to prefer Hangouts, since they already have it installed on their phones, but Meet is a decent option, too. It’s easy to have discussions, and for our first session, we played a combination of Charades and Pictionary. You can find plenty of word games online, or you can find a shared game like Kahoot. You can also use Google Jamboard for whiteboard games like Hangman.

Sunday School

Our teachers are sending lessons to the students’ families via email: the Bible reference and a summary and discussions questions for families to use with their kids, along with craft and other activity suggestions. They’re also calling each family every week to see how everyone’s handling the situation, reporting to pastors or elders if care is needed.

Committee Meetings

Each of our current groups uses whatever works for them. I’ve used Zoom (which has a free option, but the paid option is currently free during this situation) and Google Hangouts/Meet, but there’s no shortage of options. Workplace from Facebook is also currently free. Again, Google Meet has the phone-in option for offline members. We’re also looking into GoToWebinar for congregational voters’ meetings.

Ministering to Offline Members

I’ve already mentioned some offline strategies, especially conference calling via Meet. We’ve also implemented a call-in option (using our phone system) with a recorded service (like a voicemail message, but only an OGM) so people can call and listen to the most recent service at their convenience.

We also have a group of volunteer “phone angels” who are calling everyone (specifically offline people, but hopefully eventually checking in with everyone), weekly when possible, to see how they’re doing, making sure they can access services and classes, and offering to pray with them.

We also offer a weekly update via our website and share all new content to our Facebook page, along with our emailed and printed (sent with DVDs) Daily Prayers, which includes a Bible reading based on the pericopes and an accompanying prayer.

I’ve been looking at the leaks of Apple’s upcoming announcements for hardware & software. Looks like some cool stuff coming, but more consolidating what can already be done under their own roof. That said, it got me thinking about all those years of doom back in the 90’s and beyond. Apple is now one of the most valuable companies in the world at nearly a trillion dollars in a tight and fluctuating race with Amazon, Alphabet (Google), and Microsoft, each constantly inching each other out. Remember when Steve Jobs cut a deal with MS as a means to barely stay afloat? How the mighty have fallen! And how did this shift happen? Seems pretty obvious: Apple embraced mobile & Internet early. MS focused on the desktop, making them the Kodak of the silicon valley. Even Windows 8, which tried to be mobile, essentially tried to cram a desktop system onto mobile devices, whereas Apple is showing how it needs to happen, gradually bringing mobile to the desktop.

What can churches learn?

Now, think about most churches, especially Lutherans. We’re notoriously behind the curve. We take a wait-and-see attitude with just about everything. At best, we look at corporate strategies and mimic them. At worst, we refuse to learn from the private sector and act like the Amish, just stopping innovation a few years later than they did.

We seem to think that, since the message of the Gospel doesn’t change, we need to use the same means of transmission that we’ve used for the past 500 years. But why 500? The reformers embraced the printing press, the hot new technology of the time. Yet as we find ourselves in the biggest communication shift since, we’re slow to embrace it. Yeah, most churches have websites (Yeah, most. Not all. That’s like not being listed in the Yellow Pages 50 years ago.) that look like they were designed 20 years ago. Few churches have a social media strategy. Few churches take a hard look at technology and communications trends and try to get ahead of the curve and thus always lag behind. But churches are in the communications business!

“But technology is expensive!” Some is. But social media is free. And truly social social media that focuses on relationships and interactions instead of ads for events and services doesn’t require paying for boosting posts — those posts boost themselves thanks to social media algorithms. And churches are in the relationship business!

How can we know what’s next?

But predicting the future is hard without a vision of seraphim and God’s throne in the temple! (Isaiah 6) Which direction is the curve heading? It’s not difficult to figure out, and it’s the same geeks who brought us the technology that are leading the charge in the next big change. Mobile technology has isolated us. Social media has made it worse by providing pseudo-relationships. Everybody is hungry for real relationships, middle-of-the-night-crisis friends. And where do we see that happening? Dungeons and Dragons is more popular today than ever. Why? Because the best part of the game is sitting around a table with a bunch of real people, swapping stories, telling jokes, and getting to know each other. Yes, technology has infiltrated the game, but D&D Beyond and other online tools have made it easier for people to connect using pencil and paper on a table, using the technology as the tool it should’ve been all along: help to make it easier to bring people together. This is how the church should work!

Even as western culture becomes more unchurched, the church is uniquely poised to offer the culture exactly what it’s looking for, along with what they’re not expecting: hope, peace, and eternal life. If we use technology to assist in building real-life friendships, we just jumped out ahead of the curve. Even Apple isn’t there yet, although they see it. Then again, that’s what the church did 500 years ago and 2000 years ago. The same strategy has always worked. It’s time to get back to being what God designed us to be, and He has provided great tools to help us!

How will your church use technology this year to facilitate in-person interaction? Leave a comment below!

Ever notice that pride is always sin in the Bible? And the biggest one at that? There’s no exceptions. Pride is self-centered aggrandisement, the opposite of shame, and just as harmful, because it determines a person’s value based on their accomplishments instead of the seal of their Creator and Redeemer. Honor and respect, which are more honest, are encouraged, but not pride.

Parents, are you proud of your kids, because they make you look good? I’m guilty of that. But how much better to be impressed and thankful, which removes you from the equation? (And how much moreso with team or national pride?)

Are you proud of your accomplishments? What happens when you fail or find someone who’s so much better at it than you? Find your value instead in the Name given to you in your Baptism. That can never be taken from you and doesn’t depend on you to retain.

We also hear about pride in sexual identity. Gay or straight, both place a person’s worthiness on something beyond their control. I understand how someone could cling to pride as a reaction to the shame they’ve experienced, but that’s overcorrecting. Rather, if a person’s value is given to them by Christ, they’re SO MUCH more valuable, and given that it’s Christians who often try to shame the people in question (Srsly, what’s up with that? Oh yeah — pride.), they can’t argue with your God-given value.

And straight pride? Like you can take credit for that? St. Paul had something to say about that kind of pride. He compared it with used menstrual rags. Yeah, that’s the banner you want to wave around….

The only appropriate pride & boasting is in our weakness and what Christ has done for us and through us, not because we deserve it, but because we don’t.

What if we focused on communicating and demonstrating grace instead of pride? What if we saw Christ in our neighbors and responded with honor and respect accordingly?

I’ve come to the conclusion that the Christian faith cannot be practiced alone. It’s impossible. In our “personal relationship with Jesus” individualistic culture, that seems anathema, but you just won’t find that kind of individualism in the Bible.

The First Problem

The problems begin in Eden when Adam & Eve decide to go their own way, which isolates them and is expressed in trying to hide from God. They should’ve known. Of all people, they should’ve known! The first lesson taught to a human being is, “It’s not good for man to be alone.” That should clue us into the importance of the community of faith. When David is alone instead of out with his soldiers, he gets into trouble. Peter and Judas fail when by themselves. Time and again, those who try to live out their faith alone run into trouble.

On the other hand, God emphasizes that we’re not alone. His message to Elijah isn’t so much, “I’m with you,” but, “Thousands are with you.” Even Elisha finds companionship during a famine serving in a widow’s house in Zarephath. Paul reminds us repeatedly that we are the body of Christ, that we need each other. And there’s nothing alive or beautiful about a bunch of disconnected body parts.

Good or Essential?

But that just means that community is good, right? Not that it’s necessary for faith to function, right?

The commandments are given to us to show us how to live out our faith, how faith happens in real life, not just in theory. And what are the most important commandments, and actually the summary of the commandments? Love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your mind, and with all your strength.” We know why we do that. We love because God first loved us. But how do we do that? What does this mean? “Whenever you do this for the least of My brothers, you did it for Me.” Loving God is expressed by loving our neighbors. As Luther said, “God does not need your good works, but your neighbor does.” Of course, that’s why “The second is like it. Love your neighbor as yourself.” Because that’s how we love God, but that’s also how we experience God’s love first hand. Jesus was alone (forsaken by God and abandoned by His disciples) for us on the cross so we’d never have to be alone, so why would we choose that from which He set us free?!

What about private worship?

But don’t we live out our faith through worship? Gathered (AKA “Corporate” from “corpus” = “body”) worship expresses love for God, but it loves God by the act of gathering together in His forgiveness and love. The love happens when others are strengthened by our presence, and we are strengthened by theirs. The Word and Sacraments provide the context, the love that God gives to us that we gather around and in. Private worship is primarily self-benefiting unless we’re praying for others, but that’s an inherent connection with others. That’s not to say private worship (singing, praying, devotional reading, etc.) aren’t good—they’re just for our benefit until the benefits we receive are used to bless others (like offering an insight gained to someone else or being strong for others because your faith has already been strengthened).

The Christian faith is centered in love. Faith, hope, and love are 3 sides of the same coin (sic). And the greatest of these is love, because faith and hope are centered in love, God’s love for us, but are expressed in our acts of love for God through our acts of love for our neighbor.

If I’m alone, does that mean I’m not a Christian?

Does this mean that a sole Christian cannot have faith in the absence of other Christians? Of course not! That faith is practiced by acts of love for others, Christian or not. That faith originates from God’s love for us, so never confuse source and practice. Even a Christian alone on a deserted island is in community by praying for others even in a hopeless situation. By faith, we’re able to look outside of our circumstances, no matter how dire, trusting God for both our needs and the needs of others. Even the Christian alone on her deathbed inherently expresses her faith to those around her by her peace and longing for God’s presence, whereas the Christian alone on his deathbed with nobody around can still have faith, but can’t practice it besides what evidence of that faith will be left for others to find afterward.

The implications of this go beyond a simple blog post, but they flow into every aspect of life. Worship in all its forms is beneficial alone but finds its fulfillment in gathering. Interactions with others are acts of worship as we show love to them. It’s not good to be alone (even us introverts), so seek connections as you live out your callings, thus strengthening each other. Love God with all you are—visibly and sacrificially—because that’s how He loved and loves you.

English: Church attendance stamps. The second stamps in each of the bottom two rows have a Shield of the Trinity diagram. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Church attendance is down. That’s partly due to living in a post-churched culture and partly due to more activities that compete for time. People’s schedules are jammed, and for many, church is less essential than so many other agenda items. Why?

The 20th Century approach to doing church presented the church as a member-based club like the Lions, Masons, or Girl Scouts. It worked well in a churched culture, and attracted people who were looking for that sort of community, but not so well for those not actively looking for it. The Church Growth Movement came out of this mentality, essentially creating competition among churches for numbers, focusing on butts & bucks (public worship attendance and offerings).

But that’s not working anymore. Honestly, it was never really working, because we never should have focused on those markers. They’re important, but they’re not measurements of success or effectiveness, and focusing on them can actively inhibit true success.

So how do we discover the problem? Go back to the start: Genesis. God created us in His image. (Genesis 1:26-27) Trinity: a multiple unity. The first problem? Being alone. (Genesis 2:18)  God solved this by creating Eve, also in His image. And when we’re isolated, things get bad. (Genesis 3:1-8) This has been demonstrated in the lab and has massive repercussions for legislation, parenting, and especially churches.

So if we’re created for community, why isn’t the church flourishing? We gather people together every week! I was listening to a leadership podcast with Glen Jackson, the co-founder of Jackson Spalding, which talked about how to compete, and it left me asking, “What is the church’s competition?”  I realized that the answer takes us back to the first problem: isolation.

When we gather, we look at the backs of each other’s heads! It’s not community any more than a movie theater except that we know the names of more of the people around us, usually. We might know some details through prayer requests, like illnesses or anniversaries. We might know some superfluous details through small talk before or after the service, like who went to the fair and what they ate there.

But think about the people sitting around you. Do you know how they struggle with sin? Do you know their life dreams, what they’re doing to accomplish them, or why they’ve given up on them? How many could you call up at 3 AM in a crisis, and they’d be glad you called and insulted if you didn’t?

Realistically, you can’t have that deep of a relationship with dozens of people. Outside immediate family, most people could only handle about a half-dozen, tops.

The answer, then, is small groups with no more than 6 people. These can be same-sex groups like Journey Groups, interest-based groups, or anything else. Topic isn’t all that important, but they need 2 components for spiritual success: safe vulnerability (created by an informal-but-explicit confidentiality agreement and willingness to unconditionally accept and forgive each other) and a framework to promote spiritual conversations, like a topic-based discussion, Bible study, or accountability group. Groups should meet regularly, face-to-face whenever possible, and stay in touch when not meeting. Serving others together in some capacity strengthens bonds, as does enjoying some entertainment together, and welcoming newcomers into the group expands the benefit to others. (Although when the group gets larger than about 6, it needs to multiply into 2 groups so it doesn’t lose its closeness. Friends should remain friends, but they’ll often find their level of connection changing due to each person’s social capacity.)

Other forms of communication (social media, texting, phone calls, greeting cards) can supplement this personal interaction, but they’re no substitute for sharing spaces and faces.

It’s no coincidence that the church grew exponentially in its early years through this method. (Acts 2:44-47)

So why did we give it up? I don’t know. But it’s time to take it back.

A little background: When the church first started, it met with a lot of opposition. It was a pre-churched culture, where people didn’t know what Christianity was about and had never heard of some Hebrew preacher named Jesus of Nazareth. But over time, the Gospel spread, because Christians had a reputation for extreme love, like picking up discarded babies on the roadside and adopting them, or when a plague would hit a city, and the healthy would leave to avoid the plague, the healthy Christians would stay behind to minister to the sick and dying, even though many of them would end up dying in the process.

Most Western churches use the Attractional model and have used it for over a century but especially within the past 70 years. It focused on attracting people to come to church, bringing them to the property. Once on site, we hope they’ll stay based on the preaching, music, décor, friendliness, or whatever. That model worked in a churched culture where “Christian” was synonymous with “good citizen.” More or less, the Western world has been churched since Constantine legalized Christianity and essentially made it the state religion in the late 4th C. In a churched culture, politicians attend services on Sunday morning regardless what they believe, because it makes them look good to the general populace. Note that the Attractional model will increase the number of people in the pews still today, but mainly transfer growth or churched Christians, not the unchurched or dechurched.

But since the 60’s, and especially in the past 20-30 years, we’ve been moving gradually to a post-churched culture. The church is now seen with suspicion. It’s irrelevant. Evangelism is considered extremism. We find ourselves in a similar situation as the early church, where the church is no longer at the center of the culture, except people have heard of Christians and see us more as a voting bloc than a movement of love.

Figure of a Missional Perspective (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

In response to that, a new movement started in England by Mike Breen, who saw the Christian church there decaying. He looked at the way the church functioned in its early years and decided to follow the model of the apostles, so he formed “Missional Communities,” small groups (like “the 12” or even the 4 in the Gospels) centered on the Bible who would go out into their local contexts (neighborhoods, workplaces, etc.) and get involved in the community together, building relationships, inviting others into their Missional Community. Eventually, those small groups grew and split and grew until multiple groups came together for medium-sized groups (like “the 72” in the Gospels) who would have Bible studies similar to what we have here (while still meeting and serving with their small groups), and the medium groups eventually came together for large groups (like “the crowds” in the Gospels) for corporate public worship. This model has been replicated around the US with great success. I’ve talked to Mike Breen personally about implementation and spent a couple thousand hours listening to him and others who use the Missional Model. I’ve also listened to pastors from China, where they’re Baptizing 30,000 people per day where they can go to jail for it, and the model they’re using is very similar, because when trained to live their faith and pass it on to others, disciples make disciples.

Understand that Attractional and Missional aren’t mutually exclusive. Heating the church in the winter, having a website and sign out front, preaching to “felt needs” (every one of my sermons centers around a real-life question with an answer found in Christ.) and remodeling the sanctuary are all Attractional methods, and they’re necessary to seeing people come back, but they won’t get an unchurched person here in the first place. That also gets to the question of what’s our goal in outreach, but this is getting long enough already.

To this end, we’re developing Delivered Hope. So what does Delivered Hope have to do with this? It gives people who are used to a solely Attractional model a taste of what Missional outreach looks and feels like. It gets us collectively into the community, changing our focus to working with the community for the greater good. It’s a way to make it easy for people who aren’t used to outreach that reaches out.

Strange phenomena seen with churches that shift their focus to more Missional: people start showing up—not the people directly affected by or involved in the efforts. I hear this over and over. It’s as if God is saying, “OK, now that you’re shifting your focus outward, I’ll send help.” But we also need to move our focus and goals away from numbers on the weekend to number of disciples making disciples.