I cannot tell you how excited I got when I opened my feed reader this morning and saw the writeup on a young adult-led initiative in the United Methodist Church. At first I was excited that I’m friends with 3/4 of the leadership team…and then when I saw what they were doing, I realized I didn’t need to be biased towards my friends; their actions and project speaks for itself.

It’s called Spark12:

From the UMNS article: The United Methodist Church is taking a page from the tech startup world, and the resulting initiative enables young adults to be leaders in ministry.

Called Spark12, it is an incubator for social justice ministries developed and implemented by young adults. It is one way the denomination is working to develop principled Christian leaders, one of four areas of focus adopted by the 2008 General Conference, the church’s top legislative body.

From their website: Spark12 is designed to help to support the most promising ideas and individuals as they strive to bring innovative solutions to a world in need of transformation. Those selected as Spark12 fellows will receive funding. They will also have their ideas vetted by mentors with expertise in a related field and by peers eager to perfect the work of the team. Spiritual coaches will help them to remain grounded and oriented toward doing the most good. Our fellows will be challenged to refine their vision, learn how to express their goals, and be networked with people/organizations that might be inclined to support an idea like theirs.

We believe our process will allow participants of Spark12 to be more successful than if they had to go it alone. We suspect that their innovations will have a greater impact on more people more efficiently. We know that the world will be a better place when their spark is allowed to ignite.

Read the full article at UMNS here: Young adults lead social justice startups by Tita Parham.

As the Call To Action is (for better or for worse) moving us from boards who lead initiatives to grant-dispersing entities that support local or global ministry initiatives,  it seems that the young adults are leading the church in modeling how such a move might look. Here’s how it works:

Teams of one to three young adults ages 18 to 35 will submit ministry proposals to an executive design team…as well as representatives from general agencies, profit and nonprofit advisers and young adults. The design team will determine which ministries they will fund during each cycle.

The young adults leading the ministries have 12 weeks to launch, using funding from various investors, including general agencies, local churches, existing ministries and individuals.

“Twelve weeks is just long enough for a young adult to take a semester off (from college or seminary) without penalty and long enough to get a foothold in a project,” Casperson said. Spark12 “is meant to be a catalyst — (to) create a good, solid foundation.”

The projects must be innovative, with a social justice focus. The motivation must be the team members’ response to their faith and the belief that God is calling them to undertake the ministry. Team members need not be candidates for ordained ministry.

Regarding the types of programs to be funded, Casperson said the design team has left that “deliberately open and deliberately vague” because they don’t want to limit ideas.

“The goal is making a difference in the world,” Casperson said. “The focus is to do something truly sustainable.”

Even though spark12 is not merely a grant-dispering group but is a full breadth of ministry support team, the spark12 approach does address many of my concerns with grant-dispersing entities:

• The Leadership and Design team represent a commitment to diversity. It’s really nice to not look across the table and see a bunch of white males like me.
• The scope of programs is “deliberately vague” to allow for the full spectrum of possibilities to be considered, not dismissed because they don’t fit into rigid outlines.
• The evaluators ARE young adults and ARE working with young adults so the evaluators have more in common with the applicants.
• Their approach to guidance is more about coaching than directing, more about supporting the internal strengths of the applicants and context than directing from top-down the direction. This is a shift becoming more popular in counseling, spiritual direction, and ministry consultants, and I’m glad to see it here as well.

Finally, as with anything associated with del Rosario, Casperson, Joe Kim, or Scriven, Spark12 is extremely social media connected with Twitter and Facebook pages.

I hope the Hacking Christianity community passes this on to social justice-lovin’ young adults who might take advantage of this and apply to be one of the first initiatives. Check out their website to apply (deadline is the end of June but seriously: get on it) or to donate to the cause.

Thoughts?

My pastor in high school was Rev. David Stephenson, who is now a Reverse Missionary to Bolivia. On one of his many trips to the region, he sat next to someone who had the following conversation:

I sat next to a guy on the airplane on the way down here yesterday, and he asked what I do.  He didn’t seem religious, so I just told him about my work with Engineers In Action. He seemed shocked to find out 1 in 9 children die by the age of 5 (found out from the government that it is reduced to 1 in 10 – Progress! Around 10,000 less children died in 2010 then in 2007! Yay!)

He then said, “Why are you saving those kids lives? They’ll just add to the population explosion and add to the problem of hunger.”

Holy carp. I nearly flew out of my seat when I read that line. We have no idea how David handled such a statement. Actually ::reads more:: looks like we do! David continues:

The engineer in me (charts, graphs, numbers, spreadsheets, science) screamed for me to say, “It would actually be better for the world if YOUR children died, because they use 100 times more food, 1,000 times more potable water, and 10,000 times more energy and oil (I made up those numbers – but you get the point). But the pastor in me said, “No Dave, don’t speak the TRUTH to this guy. He couldn’t handle it!”

What I did say was: ‘The problem is not having enough water or enough food. The problem is getting to the water, to drink and to irrigate with. There is good clean water in virtually every town of Bolivia. It’s just below ground. Down 20, 30, 50, 100, 150 meters there is clean water just waiting to be used to drink, water livestock and irrigate crops…God’s given us the water and the technology of how to clean up the surface water and how to reach down into Pacha Mama and drink from her stores of clean water. We just need people who will sacrifice a little to bring water to those who do not have it.”

To me, the statement reeks of teleological ethics, or ethics that are focused on outcomes not methods. To a person whose ethical system revolves around results, then saving dying children certainly doesn’t help the population problem which seems like the bigger problem.

But to me and to hopefully most sensible people, the bigger problem would be if we sacrifice children and third-world countries as our method to deal with the population problem. If we lose our soul, what have we gained not only as Christians but as humanity?

With Bolivia, the water is under the surface and people like us know how to get down there and retrieve it. If God has given us this knowledge through the privilege of our country of birth, then we are called to share that knowledge to help others reach the same level.

One final point is that usually problems are linked: the problem of population growth would seem to be fixed by killing more people off, but as David has observed, it seems to be fixed by healing people!

There is an odd phenomenon that happens. As the infant mortality rate falls, eventually so does the pregnancy rate. We have seen it over and over here in Bolivia. There is a lag time of a generation, and therefore some population growth for 10-20 years. But often times the birth rate will come back into alignment. But obviously, once you solve one problem, it leads to an additional need (good plentiful potable water leads to sanitation issues for example). That is why we stay involved in communities for 5 years or longer, building those additional facilities that are needed.

As Paul writes in Hebrews 12, “let’s run the race that is laid out in front of us.” Help us remind ourselves that Missions is not a sprint but a marathon: one lived out in relationship with others, one with ethical considerations to methods and outcomes, and one that is constantly allowing questions of how we run the race being as important as finishing it.

Thoughts?

(Image Credit: Bolivia & Oklahoma Methodist Partnership, used under Fair Use)

This is a great video from the GBGM taking to heart the issues surrounding poverty (in all its forms).

Check it out:

Website: Ministrywith.org | HD version of the video: Youtube.com

On old-timey maps (the ones where the world was flat and you would fall off the edges), they would write hic sunt dracones in the unknown regions, literally “here be dragons.” This term denote dangerous or unexplored territories…places where the wise need not dwell. Places where you should avoid if you don’t want to get hurt.

This phrase came to mind last night when a new twitter friend had the following update on her page:

Talked at lunch with seminary peeps about how we R called 2 speak against injustice but were afraid 2 due 2 hurting our ordination process.

For adventurers, they were called to venture out and either avoided the pitfalls or engaged them head-on, well equipped for the perils or dragons ahead. For young clergy, they are following their calling as well…but the sentiment is that they are still being watched over, evaluated, and potentially tossed for following their passions and convictions. “Here, there be dragons” indicate areas of our pastoral maps where we know we will get into trouble if we engage controversial topics and the temptation to simply avoid them seems insurmountable but simultaneously unfaithful to our calling.

I am young clergy: 31 years old and fully ordained in the United Methodist Church. I don’t have any words of significant wisdom for my fellow young clergy who are only a few years in age (but years of significant steps) behind me. But here’s a few suggestions that might better equip young clergy for when they decide to engage the dragons, using examples from my own life.

Two disclaimers. One, these aren’t prescriptive but subjective comments that may or may not be relevant to your context. Two, while I’ve been accused of being unfairly critical of the BOM process, I’m not writing this to dissuade candidates from ministry but to equip candidates out of my own mixed experience. Okay? Okay.

1. Use the language of your community.
   • In our study on Everyday Justice, I noticed much of it including recommendations to advocate for stronger government involvement. I knew this would not fly with my congregation, so I used the language of freedom. We want to be free to make our own choices, but we should want that for others too. For coffee growers who are paid low amounts for their beans, we want their children to have the freedom and opportunity to move beyond the plantations. For cocoa beans picked by slaves, we want their freedom. For coastal communities impacted by ocean litter and pollution, we realize our freedom is infringing on others’ dignity. By framing justice issues in values that are relevant to your community, they hopefully will be better received.
2. Establish trust both with your community and with your Board of Ordained Ministry (BOM).
   • In my community, I worked closely with the local school for 16 months before I engaged them about incidents of bullying in the schools. By getting to know the community and not wearing an agenda on my sleeve, I established trust and firmed up a relationship before I engaged the shortcomings in the community. Then when I did, my information was both received well, and the schools were able to show to me the areas where they were making progress. It was illuminating on both sides of the table…illumination that might not have come if I hadn’t done the work of building the relationship beforehand.
   • Similarly, establish trust with the BOM.  They are looking to gauge your spiritual journey and your fruits as a leader…and believe it or not, they’ve also had to balance spiritual leadership with righting injustice before! I talked about using children as servers in the communion service (the church had outlawed it in the past) and was called out on it by board members who were concerned that children can’t understand what they are doing. I didn’t even have to answer: another board member spoke up and said that I clearly have a high regard for children’s participation because I had talked about it before. By being consistent and establishing values early on with your Board, they can help you out even against themselves. [note: this is hard to do when your evaluators change via quadrennium shifts or internal reorganizations]
3. Fuse the justice issue with pastoral concerns for your community.
   • My first parish was shared with a Brazilian congregation. There was a big raid on undocumented workers at an area factory that ended up with parents being wisked off to detention and leaving children to have to stay with relatives, friends, strangers. None of our partner congregants were involved, but I used that incident with our congregation. “How would you feel if Petrus was left without parents. Or Angelina? The kids didn’t do anything wrong!” Talking about immigration issues and nuances was more effective when the congregants knew people who could be impacted.
4. Be wise on how to engage justice issues.
   • If you know your BOM has struck down candidates who have advocated for immigrants, LGBT, or, in the worst cases, fair trade coffee…then be wise about how you engage. John Meunier clued me in to a entry from John Wesley’s journal:
     

     My favorite story about John Wesley is one he tells somewhere in his journal. He is getting ready to do some field preaching. He looks down at the ground and sees a lot of fair sized rocks and dirt clods spread about. These are ready ammunition for his heathen foes and the mobs stirred up by his critics in the church. So, he moves to another field where the rocks are not quite so big.

     Hilarious. But wise. I have seen progressive clergy that irritate their congregation just because…without thinking through it, like an adolescent disagreeing just to be disagreeable. They walked into a field with ready-made consequences. Don’t do that, but that doesn’t mean you do not engage. It means you engage on a different field. For example, if you want to offer an after-school tutoring program and the parlor with the fancy furniture is the best place for it, you could hit this head-on and ruffle feathers and make people feel bad for their felt values of cleanliness and respecting property…or let it go. Meet in another room, removing the concerns for the furniture. After it has been established and people have found inspiration, then you will have your advocates to move it to the parlor. Removing obstacles to ministry and mission needs is part of your role as pastor, and picking a field with less rocks may be the wiser path that still leads to a justice effort.

5. Ground your BOM paperwork in John Wesley and Doctrinal statements.
   • The UMC has a myriad of doctrinal statements and resolutions relating to the social issues. When I talked about justice issues in my paperwork, I had the least contention when I tied them back to Wesley. Wesley advocated for prison reform. Wesley visited a man accused of sodomy in prison. The Book of Resolutions has statements on abortion, immigration, collective bargaining, and LGBT concerns. By tying your perspective with reasoned reflection on the UMC’s often-very-nuanced positions, you cease being a “lone voice crying out in the wilderness.” Even if the BOM or your mentors say “that position may be where the UMC is but it’s not where your local church is” then saying “and as a connectional minister, that’s my role is to bring the local church closer to the global church” shows your understanding of your role in a congregation in a faithful way.
   • One note: if your advocacy doesn’t find any substance in the very wide areas of the Book of Resolutions and Discipline….well, you might want to rethink it!
6. Gather a community to reflect on how it is going.
   • It can feel lonely in ministry, even more so when you are wading into controversial topics. It can feel like it is you against your congregation, your community, the entire world. So rely on community for endurance.
   • Talk to your friends. Keep up on facebook to vent or share ideas. Search on twitter for people who are enduring similar struggles. If you are in seminary, you are guaranteed to find a higher number of justice-oriented people there. 
   • Talk to your mentors (the ones not required to report on your progress) and get wisdom from seasoned clergy, even if it doesn’t seem related. I have gotten so much from an elder minister who did civil rights marches in the 60′s and had super-relevant thoughts about such efforts today on completely different topics. Wow. Inspirational.
   • Most importantly, Talk to God. Pray about it, keep a journal about it, reflect on scripture about it, and simple spiritual renewal will sustain you through the difficult times.
   • Christianity is lived out in community, and Christian convictions require community to be sustained and inflamed. You’ll make it. It gets better.

Remember that “here, there be dragons.” You must be equipped and prayerful in how you advocate for justice issues. Wading into controversial topics as a young clergyperson can have devastating results, as Chad Holtz will tell you. And even if you are wiser than I, the power is not on your side when it comes to your ordination process. However, being clear about your calling, connecting it with your congregation, and informing it with UMC doctrine and tradition will be appreciated by the faithful people who evaluate your process. And in the sad cases when there is unreasonable animosity or prejudice or hypocrisy on the other side of the table, they will have to stick their own necks out and risk being called on it. And that may lead to change in the BOM itself. Rock on.

Thoughts from candidates or clergy in the process, or clergy already through the process who have more life experience and can offer thoughts?

Discuss.

(Image credit: Allan Näslund “Here Be Dragons” 2010)

Something about me: I have a strong distrust of flashy campaigns for mission organizations. Back when I was in high school, our church youth group did the 30 Hour Famine by World Vision. Great idea, flashy logos, pre-packaged info packets for the youth minister. I mentioned it to my dad and he researched and saw that only a portion of every dollar raised actually gets to the hungry children.  While the organization has bettered the percentages since then, it was a wake-up call that flashy logos and marketing costs money, and my donations were paying for it rather than going to hungry third-world children. I call it glamissional efforts “glam-missional” whereby the flash of the giving is bigger than the actual help…and trendier too.

That was 13 years ago. Today, enter TOMs shoes. All the rage with my youth is TOMs shoes: you buy a pair of hipster-savvy shoes and another pair is given to needy third-world children. It’s called BOGO giving: Buy One Get One. In other words, if you buy something for yourself, it helps other people.

They do great works, donating millions of shoes and hiring locals to distribute the shoes (this will be important later). Shoes may not seem like much to some, but saving youth especially from soil-borne illnesses and infections. Clearly, TOMs shoes is doing great works and changing lives across the globe.

I don’t have a problem with the successes or with the people working at TOMs.

However, the problem I have with a setup like TOMs shoes is what Zizek calls cultural capitalism, defined as “how we may do good things within the structures of a bad system, while in fact contributing to it.”  In other words, it’s essentially “personal redemption for being a consumer” that makes buying things feel better. (h/t tumbledore)

In my own congregation in a rural town, we did a book study on Julie Clawson’s Everyday Justice book. It talked about the plight of coffee farmers who are severely underpaid for their crops, cocoa beans picked by slave children, and sweatshops that make clothes. Clawson challenged us that every time we buy one of those unethically grown-or-made products, we support this system of injustice. I challenged the 12-person study group to find fair trade coffee, chocolate, clothes in our town’s stores. They found some coffee (at Wal-Mart, oddly enough), but mostly they could find products that gave 1-5% to a particular charity, ie. Chocolate that gave 1% back to the Rain Forest.  That sounds like a good buy. But according to Clawson (and Admiral Ackbar)…it’s a trap :

The most frustrating thing is when I find an item for sale…which will donate 1 percent of its profits to some charity cause. This helps the buyers feel good about their purchase but distracts from the underlying justice issue. What we need instead is for public awareness of these issues to increase and for the demand for clothing made ethically (in all aspects) to increase. (Everyday Justice [Kindle location 1347])

TOMs shoes may give to the needy and help people in very real ways (hookworm is horrifying), but there are difficulties. While manifold, I see two ones as most important: effectiveness and creating dependency:

1. Zac Mason crunches the numbers (charitably towards TOMs) and sees that TOMs shoes are not that great a deal when it comes to effectiveness of the dollar when compared to other needs:
   

   For $1,969 you could give 72 kids in Ethiopia a pair of shoes which will inevitably rip and degrade into rags within a few years – or you could send your money to a Peace Corps Volunteer or Oxfam or Water Aid to build one row of concrete latrines at a school which should last for decades. For the price of sending TOMS Shoes to a school of 1,000 kids for 2 years, you could build 13 latrines at 13 schools to benefit the health of tens of thousands if not a hundred thousand kids over the course of 25 years.

   Giving a child in Ethiopia a pair of shoes might very well be a moral thing to do, but when a development agency or NGO is pursuing some sort of public health agenda they have to do these kinds of calculations to determine which of many policy options available to them are worth the expenditure of finite financial resources. If you are going to donate your money to some sort of humanitarian cause, you should do the same kind of math to determine which charity you feel best deserves your money.

2. Actions like these, while commendable, create dependency not independence. Like women suckled to Nestle’s formula, any free aid eliminates or reduces demand for the product given. With the exception of Ethiopia (per a more-than-cursory web search), TOMs does not buy their shoes from local vendors. So they are made, assembled, and shipped from overseas…and only distributed by “local partners.” I wonder what the shoe vendors in those countries feel about having free shoes everywhere? It is an example of creating dependency on free shoes rather than empowering local merchants.

All that said, it’s not like the competition is much better. The alternatives are much more expensive (Sawas are twice as expensive as TOMs and twice as less-trendy, but they are locally-made shoes).

The dilemma with TOMs shoes is an example of the conflict between charity and justice. TOMs shoes is a charity, digging wells and latrines is justice. Charity takes care of a person’s immediate needs and required repeated actions. Justice takes care of long-term systemic problems and is slow-moving but helps more people. Both are required actions as part of Jesus’ command to “Love Thy Neighbor” but both require reflection on the fruits of such efforts.

However, there are other organizations to support. Instead of charity feeding for a day, it is closer to justice changing the structures of hunger.

1. Heifer Project International, while in the same boat as World Vision for only a portion of proceeds go to the needy, teaches independence not dependence by showing farmers how to plant, people how to care for livestock, and so on.
2. Micro-loan distributors (like kiva.org) get money directly to the people who need it not for a handout but to start their own business or empowerment effort. Such efforts create, again, independency not dependency.
3. Organizations where 100% of your donation goes to the needy. If you are United Methodist, donating to an Advance cause (like was advertised for Japan and Haiti recently) results in 100% of the gift reaching the needy.

So, am I gonna stop my youth from wearing Tom shoes or lecture them? Not at all, I’m no hater and I want to encourage my youth to reach out to others. But I will (and do) talk to them about the difference between a charity gift that makes you feel better, and a justice gift that honors both the recipient and yourself and changes the reason “why” people are shoeless or hungry.

And it may not be flashy.

But that’s okay.

In the words of Zac Mason (quoted above):

I’m not saying that you should not give to charity – all I’m saying is that before you give whimsically to just any humanitarian-sounding cause, first take into consideration that it is possible that your unconditional generosity might just distort incentives to such a perverse extreme that any good that they might have achieve in the short run might be negated by the greater harm that they might cause in the long run.

Get informed about the effects of Buy-One-Get-One efforts. Ask yourself the real motivations you have behind the purchase. And find out from people on the ground as to the effects of a charity, not just the # of people helped.

Thoughts?

Articles referenced: A Tryst with Toms | Something to Think About | Does TOM cause more harm than good? | TOMs Shoes: Good Marketing, Bad Aid | TOMs shoes are not the right fit.

Two experiences today that illustrate the range of calls to build the kingdom of God through activism.

I was wondering why my friends were changing their facebook profiles and today I tried to read why. One of the facebook trends this past week was to replace your profile picture with a cartoon character from your childhood. I didn’t participate. It wasn’t like doppleganger week where you posted the celebrity most like you (which was just fun) it actually had a point:

Change your facebook profile picture to a cartoon from your childhood. The goal? To not see a human face on fb till Monday dec. 6.b Join the fight against child abuse copy & paste to your status and invite your friends to do the same.

Like posting your bra color to promote breast cancer awareness, it wasn’t just humor but was a form of slactivism: a passive action to promote a cause. It is light and can bring in more people to the conversation, but for the most part slacktivism really doesn’t make meaningful change. As the Snopes article on this trend (which wasn’t began by the organization it says it supports anyways!) concludes:

Whether the “cartoon characters” meme began as a group participation lark (akin to seeing how many college students can be stuffed into a Volkswagen), as a way of waxing nostalgic about one’s younger days, or as a genuine effort to raise awareness about children’s issues, those truly interested in striking a blow against child abuse need do far more than just swap their profile picture for one of Scooby Doo. Real problems don’t disappear as a consequence of acts of slacktivism; they’re fought through the mechanism of donation of time and/or money. The character one needs display to the world is not that of a cartoon, but of a benefactor.

My second experience was reading the story of UM clergyperson Rev. Lorenza Andrade Smith who was arrested during a sit-in protest of a US congresswoman who changed her stance on seeking more legal protection for children of undocumented workers: children who obviously had no say in entering the USA illegally. That’s her picture above.

But the pastor’s activism isn’t just a one-day affair:

Along with two of the student strikers, Rev. Andrade Smith is on a complete fast–refusing water, as well as food. Supporters of the Methodist pastor and the students conduct daily vigils in front of the detention center.

“We’re completely exhausted,” said Felipe Vargas, a PhD student in History, Philosophy and Education Policy at Indiana University, who was born and raised in San Antonio, “but our spirit is stronger than ever. When we launched this hunger strike, we had no idea we would receive such wide support.”

So while the rest of facebookdom was changing their profile pictures, one of my UM clergy sisters was fasting in jail while standing in solidarity with her parish and her community.

I have zero problems supporting clergy who break victimless laws while advocating for victims of injustice. I have clergy friends who have been arrested for protesting Columbus Day and breaking the bar at General Conference as forms of activism. Obviously if you hurt someone while advocating for someone, then you are creating more victims so there’s a line in activism. But to draw attention to an issue through personal harm and professional damage is a form of activism few actually embrace, including me.

So here’s another blog post that is, honestly, slactivism: writing about an activist without actually participating in seeking change. But read more about the Rev. Smith and her support of the DREAM act on UMC.org and Huffington Post and hopefully not offer judgment from our armchairs but instead offer prayers for Smith, her community, and a resolution to this entire situation.

When I was a pastor in the Boston area, I got into the social justice opportunities that my good friend Anthony sent to me, particularly the protests for living wages for hotel workers, security guards, produce workers at Shaws, etc. As a clergyperson, it was my honor to offer a religious presence to remind people that God is on the side of the oppressed.

So I’m SUPER sad to have missed this particular protest. I doubt I woulda been rockin’ with these folks, but it would have been great firsthand!

So in solidarity and so others can see the creative joy that beckons people to ask what is wrong with the world, here’s a protest of unfair wages and firings of hotel workers at the Boston Hyatt.

Genius! Keep up the good work!

I love it when two divergent views appear on my radar within seconds of each other.

Earlier this week Bishop Will Willimon posted an article that equated clergy effectiveness with numerical growth. He was pushing-back against clergy who protest the emphasis on numerical growth in conference reports about church effectiveness, as well as providing support for church growth as a standard for measuring whether a clergyperson should be reappointed.

How do we Methodists define effective clergy? We do it with one word: growth. Effective clergy know how to grow the church in its membership, witness and mission.
…
Wesley sent pastors to those areas where, in his estimate, there were the most souls to be saved. He told his traveling preachers not just that they ought to read, but also put a number on it: at least five hours a day. Wesley also kept a close eye (with charts in the annual “Minutes”) on how much money was collected each year — for Kingswood School, for new preaching houses, for the pension fund, for operating expenses. The annual conference was invented, not just as opportunity for worship and fellowship, but mostly for the purpose of everyone rendering account and confessing their numbers.

Read the whole article as Willimon seeks to legitimize number-counting by presenting its history in the UMC.

At nearly the same time as I read this article, my facebook friend LBH linked to an excerpt from a book by Graham Power “Transform Your Work Life” that has this provocative nugget:

Where is the best place to ‘shine your light’ and be ‘the salt of the earth’ (Matt 5:13–15)? You need to shine your light where it is dark of course! For many years I made the mistake of thinking that a church’s success is measured by its seating capacity (how many people are in worship on a Sunday). The truth is that a church’s salt, its real worth, is measured by its sending capacity. God does not care how big the ‘salt shaker’ is, rather what God is concerned about is how much salt is shaken from the salt shaker, and how much light the church shines in the darkest places of society.

Let me ask you another question, if your church were to close its doors this week, who would notice that you are not in ministry any longer? Of course the members who worship in your congregation would care, but would the homeless in your area notice? Would the hungry and the abused of your society realise that you are not operating anymore? Would your closure have an impact on the sick and the elderly people in your community? How about the schools and businesses in your community; would they notice that you are no longer ministering in the community?

When Jesus said that He would build his church and the gates of hell would not overpower it (Matt 16:18), there was a clear assumption that He builds his church at the gates of hell! One of the most loving things we can do with the church is to send it to hell. We need to find the places of suffering, brokenness and need, and be the church in those places so that Jesus can build his church there.

Wow. Boom.

So which of those do you see as more effective? A church that fills its pews with numbers? Or a church that empties them in service to God and neighbor?

Of course, this type of conversation quickly turns to ridicule as people say that of course both are important.  The number-aficionados quickly say either (1) missions leads to growth or (2) only one of the above is countable and thus comparable to other churches.  Both are true but one is troubling.

I wrote the following section before but it bears repeating.  Bryan Stone, a professor at Boston University School of Theology, expands on this debate in his book Evangelism after Christendom: The Theology and Practice of Christian Witness.

When the mission of the church becomes a mission of numerical growth, quantitative influence, and geographical spread, evangelism is easily reduced to whatever means, method, or gimmick will facilitate that mission. Conversion then becomes a lowest common denominator decision or experience that will allow a church, without too much embarrassment, to claim an individual as its own. (page 272)

The problem for church leaders, of course, is how to gauge “success” without playing the numbers game. Stone continues with something of value to us at Hacking Christianity:

Evangelism can be measured by how fully inclusive is our “reach” and how thoroughly we refuse to allow that “reach” to be domesticated by the political boundaries and economic disciplines of the [world]…the measure of Christian evangelistic reach is its openness and hospitality to the poor, the stranger, and the socially ostracized. (pp. 273-274)

But of course, evangelistic openness is not quantitatively evaluated, and church growth with Gospel integrity lacks a checkbox in any church report.  Numbers are absolutely not evidence of fruits of the spirit.  I could put on a dog and pony show with laser lights and Justin Bieber as the singer and my numbers would go up as fast as my integrity to the Gospel goes down. Conversely, I could close the church doors and say that we ought to go out and help our neighbors one Sunday morning and there’s not a single place for that type of outreach on my conference reports. None.

My geek cred suffered for a few years while Battlestar Galactica was on TV…I missed out on the entire season. So I borrowed the DVDs and am working through them now slowly. I’m on Season 2.5 now, so lay off the spoilers, please!

The basic premise is that Cylons (robots that look like humans) have declared war on humanity and infiltrated the fleet of starships.  The remaining survivors have to deal with outside attacks and internal suspicions of Cylons in their midst.

There’s another war going on, however: how much can you dehumanize the other? They regularly call the Cylons “toasters” and have no guilt over killing them in combat no matter how human they look. The crewman who illegally killed a Cylon in custody barely got any punishment.  Another (kinda…) Cylon in custody is called a “thing” regularly by even the Commander.  And yet there are some who treat the Cylons like people, with dignity and grace. It is this internal conflict of how to be at war with the other without demonizing/dehumanizing the other (even if they are really not human) that is really interesting.

There’s a scene that is really painful and exemplifies this conflict.  (I am outlining basic points without revealing who Cylons are.  Please be respectful of this in the comments) In the episode Pegasus (Season 2.0, Episode 10), a female Cylon in custody is raped (or attempted rape…there are alternate scenes) by an officer who has raped and dehumanized another Cylon in custody.  She survives and the scene ends with her crying with a blanket held over her body.  You cannot watch the scene and not see the Cylon as a human woman who has just been violated by people who do not treat her as a human, and is saved by people who do.

But that’s not the scene I’m talking about.  In the next episode Resurrection Ship (Season 2.5, Episode 11), the Cylon is examined for trauma by a doctor who has this poignant exchange:

Doctor: Your fluid and electrolytes levels are stable. [minor edit for spoilers] You do have a cracked rib though. Hairline fracture, which means it’s gonna hurt like hell for a while. But, I’m not seeing any signs of permanent damage from the attack.

Cylon: The attack. Is that what we’re calling it now?

Notice how it is a non-human who is commenting on how inhumane it is to refer to rape as anything other than rape. And a subtle reference to this internal conflict of dehumanizing the other.  It is easier to violate the other when you don’t see them as human (even if they aren’t human in the sci-fi show, they are at least humane).

I am reminded of a 2007 courtroom case where the judge outlawed the use of the word “rape”…in a rapist’s trial!  They could only use the term “sex” (not even “sexual assault”).  Feministing’s commentary is worth reading.  Here’s a snippet:

Bowen testified for 13 hours at Safi’s first trial last October, all without using the words rape or sexual assault. She claims, not unreasonably, that describing what happened to her as sex is almost an assault in itself. “This makes women sick, especially the women who have gone through this,” Bowen told the Omaha World-Herald. “They know the difference between sex and rape.”

When we dilute violence by calling it names other than what it is, then we do injustice (again!) to the victims.  And a sci-fi show about treating even non-humans like humans exposes how our language in our real world dehumanizes human women!  Powerful. Poignant.

I did not expect to write about rape and science fiction today, but I cannot let this moment pass without reviewing the way how our language dehumanizes human experience.  I hope you got a little notion of that from this post today.

Thoughts? (please, no spoilers!)

My friend John Meunier is holding me accountable…I can’t write anymore on Glenn Beck than I already have:

• Glenn Beck declares war on United Methodism
• Glenn Beck v. UMC, part deux

Unfortunately,  UMC.org has us linked on their front page (see attached image) and I’ve already had a surge of comments in the past few hours, including some unfortunate ones whose authors have received prayer and comments have been deleted.

However, I hope the blogosphere will forgive me if I don’t really want to talk about Glenn Beck, or his sources, or who misinterpreted what.  Let’s instead talk about Justice.  Here’s some great links to read:

1. Kevin Watson has written an extensive article “Prooftexting Wesley” that comments on usage of Wesley’s mantra “no holiness but social holiness.”  He accurately calls us to accountability when we prooftext Wesley…including this blogger! We had a further conversation about social justice v. social holiness where Watson makes this important comment:
   

   I also do not see social justice as antithetical to social holiness. My point is that social holiness is prior and broader. In Wesley’s understanding, I think social justice would come out of social holiness. It would be one part of it, but not the entirety. Or, as we become more holy we become more just. In some ways it may help if we remove “social” and think about holiness and justice. I think most people would agree that these two are not the same thing. However, most people would also agree that a holy person would not be unjust. Likewise a holy society would be a just society.

2. Commenter Rev. Jeremy Peters unearths this article about John Wesley’s historical interactions with the prison system that exhibits both care for spiritual concerns along with physical concerns:
   

   Just how familiar John Wesley was with the prisons of his day can be gauged from the fact that in a period of nine months he preached at least 67 times in various jails — institutions that he had been known to describe as nurseries of “all manner of wickedness.” Indeed, it was because of Wesley’s often fearless criticism of prison conditions that he was sometimes banned from visiting inmates there.
   …
   In 1759, Wesley walked to Knowle, near Bristol, to see a company of French prisoners of the Seven Years War. His report was revealing. “About 1,100 of them, we are informed, were confined in that little place, without anything to lie on but a little dirty straw, or anything to cover them but a few foul, thin rags, either by day or night …,” he said. “I was much affected and preached in the evening on ‘Thou shalt not oppress a stranger; for ye know the heart of a stranger, seeing ye were strangers in the land of Egypt.’ (Exodus 23.9)”

3. Slacktivist has an important perspective on why “social justice” is an oxymoron:
   

   Justice is, by definition, social. Justice, by definition, is something that exists only between and among individuals and groups of individuals and groups of groups. One might argue that “social justice” is redundant, but one cannot oppose “social justice” without opposing justice itself.
   …
   Let me be clear: When Glenn Beck asserts that justice is incompatible with the Gospel and with the teachings of Christ, he is not following the Pauline/Augustinian argument that perfect love transcends justice (“Justice that is only justice is less than justice,” in Reinhold Niebuhr’s phrase). He is, rather, saying that justice itself is a bad thing.

4. Finally, being linked to again is Eugene Cho whose comment here still echoes in my mind:
   

   But [Cho's church] Quest does speak (and attempts) of pursue mercy, justice, and humility not because they are code words for some sort of agenda but because they are central to the Triune God. How can you read the Scriptures or examine the life and ministry of Christ and not sense that mercy, justice, and compassion – particularly to those who are marginalized – aren’t dear to the heart of God?

   Please don’t leave your churches just because they have the words “social justice” on their website. If you want a good reason to leave your churches: Leave if the gospel of Christ isn’t being preached and lived out. And thankfully, justice is an integral part to the gospel of Christ.

So, that’s a smidge of justice.  It’s an inherent part of the Gospel, and an inherent part of Wesleyanism, an inherent part of practically every swath of Christendom, and an inherent part of every form of interpersonal interaction.

And I’m thankful for this whole situation so we can all better articulate what justice is and why it is important.

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