Filing this under “friendship” and “spirituality”. Compliments of LetsRun.com.
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Category Archives: Spirituality
‘Financial Crossroads’
The pastor just wrote. Said, “We are at a financial crossroads in this journey of Good Shepherd’s renewal.”
But Good Shepherd has had serious budget issues for ten years so I’m not sure that’s the correct metaphor.
Churches, schools, and other non-profits often get used to perpetual budget crises. And struggle to step back and take a wide-angle view of what to let go of given economic scarcity.
Can You Explain This To Me?
A few days ago I was cycling southbound on the Chehalis Western Trail (CWT), a gem of Thurston County public infrastructure. And thanks to attentive parents, I successfully dodged a few 3 year-oldish riders on those amazingly small bikes that darn near enable babies to ride home from the hospital under their own power.
And I wondered what would it be like to be three years-old, to live through the 21st Century and check out sometime in the 2100’s? On the surface, probably pretty great since technology and medical advances continue to amaze and you don’t have to go the Department of Motor Vehicles in person anymore. And some of us don’t have to go to gas stations. And global poverty is way down. And despite Fox News propaganda, crime is down. And despite serious income inequality and low savings rates, people can find jobs and the economy is resilient.
And yet.
I wouldn’t want to be my tiny CWT cycling friends because if I had to capture the current zeitgeist in one word it’s “sad”. Despite continuing substantive improvements to our quality of life, a critical mass of people in the (dis)United States seem, for lack of a better term, sad. Why is that?
And why don’t I know the answers to that. Does my multi-layered privilege blind me? Short answer, of course.
I don’t think I’ll beat myself up for not knowing, because as I tell my students, “It’s okay to not be okay. And it’s okay to be okay.” Still, I would like to better understand why you are sad or why people you know well are sad. Is it as simple as the rent is too damn high or is it climate anxiety or is the answer more abstract, philosophical, even spiritual?
If you accept my premise, that we’re in the grips of a wave of sadness that shows no signs of abating, please enlighten me as to why. Thank you in advance.
When The Big Church Eats The Little Church
In the business world, “mergers and acquisitions” is a common phenomenon. Larger, better financed businesses regularly purchase and subsume more vulnerable ones. Now, according to this article, we’re entering a church “M&A” era where larger, younger churches are taking over much smaller, older ones.
The crux of the issue is that “The average Christian congregation in the U.S. is in precipitous decline, with just 65 members, about a third of whom are age 65 or older, according to a 2020 pre-pandemic survey.” Our local Lutheran congregation has approximately 150 members, about two-thirds of whom are age 65 or older.
Given the declining number of people attending church, should we assume collective spiritual longing has ebbed? Have we, for whatever reasons, become more materialistic, more secular, more Western European and Scandinavian?
The aforementioned National Public Radio article makes me think not. It suggests that young adults still find existential questions just as compelling as previous generations. It’s just that they want more vibrant spiritual experiences.
Here’s the conundrum. The 65+ crowd is holding tight to church traditions that are familiar and comforting to them. Like old hymns, and in the case of many Lutheran churches, Norwegian jokes. Traditions that unwittingly create distance between those on the “inside” of the tradition and those left “outside” them. Thus, leaving the older, smaller churches less diverse with respect to age, ethnicity, class, and life experience more generally. Which makes them even less welcoming to younger seekers.
I guess we shouldn’t be surprised that we’re in the process of having far fewer, albeit larger churches. Why should churches be any different than big box stores or airlines or mega-tech companies or any other sector of our economy where we’ve seen constant consolidation to the point where dated anti-trust laws are proving inept.
The challenge for the new, larger churches will be creating somewhat diverse, close-knit communities within their larger congregations. Communities within their community where people make friends, are known, and genuinely connect with a small group of people that are somewhat different than them.
The Southern Baptist Convention Is Long On Misogyny
In today’s Wall Street Journal there’s an essay titled “The Competition for Believers in Africa is Transforming Christianity and Islam.”
Here’s how it begins:
“On a recent Sunday morning in Lagos, Nigeria’s biggest city, members of the faithful clutched their hymn books and chanted God’s praises as they danced to the beat of tambourines. A preacher led the congregation in praying for the health of their children and success at work.
The service resembled Pentecostal Christianity, a movement that originated in the U.S. and has swept Africa in the last few decades. But the participants weren’t Christians. They were Muslims, practicing an ecstatic style of worship that has developed in response to the challenge posed by Pentecostalism. Across sub-Saharan Africa, religion today is in ferment as different versions of Christianity and Islam vie for believers—a contest that is transforming both faiths and disrupting long-established terms of coexistence.”
If one accepts the premise that world religions are in a competition of sorts, maybe it also makes sense to think of Christian denominations as being in a type of competition. If you’re a pastor, how do you get people to attend your church and not those that are closer?
And if you’re Southern Baptist, how do you get people who believe men and women are created equal, are of equal intellect, work equally hard, and are at least as good leaders, to attend your church when your denomination explicitly excludes women from leadership?
A quick google search for “What do Baptist believe about women’s role?” produces this gem:
“Southern Baptists believe that God created man first, then woman; consequently, this sequence renders women subordinate to men, and undeserving of authority or leadership over them.”
How convenient for the patriarchy.
Banking their future on gender inequality, the Southern Baptist Convention is long on misogyny. Imagine the New York Times trying to compete against the Washington Post and the Los Angeles Times with only male reporters. Or imagine Microsoft trying to compete against Meta and Apple with only male software engineers. Or imagine an all-male publishing house or independent bookstore competing against ones with equal numbers of smart, capable, hardworking women. Similarly, fill in the blanks for any public sector organization seeking to maximize their contribution to the common good.
I understand why so many SBC men buy into and promote the male superiority paradigm, but I don’t understand at all how so many SBC women passively accept the related conclusion, that they are inferior.
Rise up SBC women. The future of your denomination depends upon it.
Robertson’s Legacy continued
Spent hours in the car listening to podcasts yesterday. In this one, I learned the following about Pat Robertson.
- He said a man whose wife has Alzheimers and doesn’t recognize him should divorce her and find somebody else.
- He said adopted children might bring demons into the homes where they lived.
- He said people with Aids in San Fransisco were wearing rings that had little knife edges on them so they could infect other people.
Imagine a Legacy Like This
The New York Times on the life of Pat Robertson.
“He suggested. . . that Americans’ sinfulness had brought on the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks against the United States, and that the earthquake that devastated Haiti in 2010 was divine retribution for a promise that Haitians had made to serve the Devil in return for his help in securing the country’s independence from France in 1804.
He said that liberal Protestants embodied “the spirit of the Antichrist” and that feminism drove women to witchcraft. He called for the assassination of President Hugo Chávez of Venezuela. He maintained that his prayers had averted hurricanes. And he condemned homosexuality as “an abomination,” linking it at one point it to the rise of Hitler and declaring that it provokes God’s wrath, as manifested in natural disasters and even the death and destruction of 9/11.”
You Go Girl
Lauren Daigle, according to the New York Times, has crossed over into the pop world with greater success than anyone since Amy Grant in the early ’90s.
She comes across as very likable in the Times profile. And what a voice.
This paragraph is funny.
“She wrote some songs with Shane McAnally, a Nashville hitmaker who is gay. And because the themes on her album are less faith-based than in the past, she knows some will count what’s referred to in the CCM (Contemporary Christian Music) world as JPMs (mentions of Jesus Per Minute) and find the music too worldly.”
Inside The Swiss Clinics Where The Super-Rich Go For Rehab
Subtitle: For the ultra-wealthy and the super-famous, regular therapy won’t do.
Unsettling.
The clinics seek recurring revenue more than their clients’ health and well-being. Some financial advisors are “fiduciaries” meaning they have a legal/ethical responsibility to act in their clients’ best interests.
To prevent these types of clinics from proliferating, the mental health profession should have a similar type of designation. Absent that, they may weaken the public’s trust in the mental health profession.
The Southern Baptists Say ‘No Way, No How’ To Saddleback Church
From the New York Times:
“The Southern Baptist Convention on Tuesday decided to expel one of its largest and most prominent churches, Saddleback Church in Southern California, over the church’s installment of a woman as pastor.”
Good move to nip that whole gender equality thing in the bud. If you let women be pastors, they’ll probably want to pick the music, weigh in on the budget, shape long-range planning, and chip away at the rest of men’s work.
The Southern Baptists are like some Middle Eastern and Southeast Asian states that somehow think they’ll be perfectly fine operating at 50% capacity.
Pressing Pause 