52 Churches

I always feel bad for women with large feet–they have to fight transvestites for the few size 11 and 12 shoes that any given store carries, and they always have to pay full freight for their footwear–but neither transvestites or tender men threaten my existence as a woman. For that matter, I don’t find competent, manly men (or competent or manly women) threatening, either . . . which is probably why I find the position of Vintage Faith and the Acts 29 Network on women in church leadership fascinating . . .
From the booklet “On Becoming Men”:

And his instructions are particular: deliver this sacred trust to faithful men who will be able to pass it on. Men. In 1 Timothy 3, Paul instructs Timothy to find men who can be elders, pastors, teachers, and leaders in the local congregations. In fact, as you step back and look at the Old and New Testaments, you see a theme: God calling men. It is blatantly true that when God has something he wants to accomplish, he almost always calls men like Noah, Abraham, Moses, Joshua, Ezra, Nehemiah, Peter, or Paul. God is looking for a few good men. But the sad reality is that there are few to be found who have the character and the qualifications to lead in God’s church, and they few that are qualified have often done a poor job of passing that on to the future generation. And so our generation, especially in the American Church, is one of effeminate men who don’t know the first thing about responsibility, authority, or leadership.

Or, from the Acts 29 piece on the qualifications of a church planter:

Even a cursory reading of the Bible reveals that when God wants to get something done He starts by selecting a man to lead that change. Examples include sparing humanity (Noah), founding a nation (Abraham), liberating a nation (Moses), establishing a throne (David), building a Temple (Solomon), preparing hearts (John the Baptizer), and redeeming all of creation (Jesus).

And, church planting is no different. Simply, before God can build a church plant He must build a church planter. Acts 29 exists to find the men who sense that God has called them to plant a church, assess those men to see if they are indeed qualified for God to begin His work with, train those men and help them to plant a church that will, in turn, plant other churches. Therefore, we are very particular in seeking a particular kind of man and this article is intended to clearly articulate what type of man we are seeking.

First, we are seeking a man who is qualified to be the founding elder of a church plant who is so exemplary that God would be happy to then have other men in the church aspire to be like that man. Elders are the male leaders of the church who are also synonymously called pastors, bishops, and overseers throughout the New Testament (Acts 20:28; Ephesians 4:11; I Peter 5:2). The elders are men chosen for their ministry according to clear biblical requirements (I Timothy 2:11-3:1-7; Titus 1:5-9).

How fascinating it is to predicate being “real men” on first eliminating half the competition for leadership on the grounds that God so ordained it. This isn’t anything new . . . it’s just a new version called “complementarianism” . . . it’s like “polygenesis” or “separate but equal” . . . euphemisms that deny the full humanity of a group of people (in this case, women). Complementarians are the first to argue exactly the opposite: that they in fact are championing something women have lost (in most cases, their femininity or some feminine essence), it’s just that women can’t preach, teach, pastor, guide, lead, or hold positions of authority in the church . . . because that makes the church too feminine.

So the sermon last night, part four of a four part series that focused on Christian Identity as [family, missionaries, servants and] learners was hard to take seriously . . . not because it wasn’t pretty good stuff . . . in point of fact, much of it was quite compelling . . . but because it was predicated on first discounting the role of women as fully human.  (A serious complementarian would be incensed at my characterization of his position as such . . . the focus for a complementarian is like that of the bigot . . . on the “equal” part of “separate but equal” . . . despite the clear historical fact that “separate” created, enforced, and maintained the inequality.

And it’s not that I think every woman ought to be in every position of authority in the church . . . I don’t.  I just don’t think that the happenstance of having a dick should be the basis of decisions for leadership.  It is this kind of phallocentricism that got the RC into the position of recruiting, keeping, and protecting pedophiles as clergy while excommunicating women and the bishops who ordained them for following the call of God to serve.

And a good portion of last night’s sermon sermon was about how to be church, instead of just attending church. For that matter, the pastor, Steve Hart, started by saying that he wanted last night to be the last time those in attendance “attended church.” One of the things the Vintage Faith community is doing to achieve that, is to occasionally not have the Sunday gathering, and to encourage the congregation to get out and do the work of the church . . . to meet with their Missional Communities and pray for their neighbors, or have them over, to eat together, to practice community.

It was all pretty good stuff . . . but he seems to be struggling with how to put these great principles into practice. For example, while he acknowledged that there were probably a bunch of people in the congregation who were new, and weren’t part of a missional community, he didn’t take the next step to say, “Okay, so come to my place and meet with my group next Sunday,” or “After the service, the leaders of the different missional communities will be available in X place, so you can find and meet them.” He talked extensively about the things that we could learn from each other . . . he noted that the Vintage Faith community wasn’t that great about meeting new people and making connections . . . and that there was a need to have someone teach this to the congregation . . . but he didn’t make the leap from the principle to facilitating . . . to making it happen. (For one thing, this might have been a great time to stop, and get people interacting specifically with each other).

But this disconnect (between principle and praxis) permeated this church. Throughout the sermon, he elicited responses from the congregation . . . but the room was set up for a lecture style sermon: the room already set the expectation that the focus of the service would be band music and a sermon. If you want people to talk to each other, to engage, and to have the give-and-take style of a seminar, you have to set a different physical expectation.

If you want to set your congregation free from being church attenders . . . you need to stop setting up performances for them to attend.

* * * Original note * * *
We’re going to go to Vintage Faith tonight. I haven’t told Michael yet, but it seems to be aligned with Mark Driscoll, instead of Dan Kimball, which he was kind of thinking, based on the name. The inlaws are here visiting, so this is probably the best fit . . . the mil twitched a little when I suggested hitting the Zen meditation service.

More later, or perhaps tomorrow . . . after we’ve gone, anyway.

. . . cowboy church . . . at the fairgrounds, in the Rodeo building.

My friend says now I need to find the Bikers for Jesus service.

Yep, I wore my boots.

Yep, Pink

Nope, I didn’t wear my hat.

We weren’t sure what to expect at cowboy church . . . well, except maybe cowboys.  It was a small gathering (about a dozen) . . . I think they generally have more folks, and seemed to expect there would be more.

You’re probably wondering how I ended up at cowboy church.  I was actually trying to find information about the cowboy church in Newman Lake, where I live.  Out on Trent Rd., in a church building that seems to currently be a Seventh Day Adventist congregation (but not the SDA we went to in OO at the beginning of the year), and there’s this metal sign, with a cowboy, that says, “Prairie Cowboy Church” on it, 10am, Sunday.  We haven’t made it to that service, and I thought that there might be more on a website somewhere, so I started looking around on the net.  I didn’t find that cowboy church, but I found Diamond J Cowboy Ministries, who have “Eastern Washington Cowboy Church” every so often at the Spokane Fair Grounds, including this Wednesday. But they’re by no stretch of the imagination the only cowboy church around . . . there’s whole networks* of cowboy churches nationwide. (There don’t seem to be, though, any in, say, Massachusetts or Maine, and only two in New York).

Cowboy Churches seem to be, in large part, tent-making ministries. “Tent-making” is church-jargon for “preaching isn’t my “day job”” . . . Al Parsons, for example, is a professional rodeo announcer and has a ranch. It would be interesting if groups like the All Nations Christian Center were run by tentmakers. There’s something that just seems less liable to edge toward the abuse of power and the self-serving collection of money when the leader of a religious organization has a job that supports h**self.

Part of the Diamond J vision is “to reach the farmer, rancher, rodeo cowboy, and those associated with the western world lifestyle not being reached by traditional methods. Sometimes, folks feel that the church has been too churchy for the world and the world too worldly for the church. Our intention is to break down the religious walls and meet people where they are.” The service was a casual time of “testifying” (which seemed to mostly be “praises” and prayer requests), followed by a sermon, prayer, and a coffee hour fellowship afterward. They seem to often have at least one guy with a guitar show up, but he wasn’t there this particular evening.

* It is interesting that what qualifies for listing in the directory is in the “legal” section of the website. Like the biker ministries I’ve looked into, cowboy ministries seem to tend toward literal, conservative, evangelical, semi-charismatic theologies . . . which I guess is something I expected of the cowboys, but maybe not so much from the bikers.

One of the things that the initial emerging/emergent movement scrutinized was the impact of praxis on faith. That is, how what you do impacts what you believe. (Most people accept that what you believe impacts what you do . . . “I believe in tithing, therefore I give to the church” or “I believe in safe driving, therefore I obey the speed limit,” but the writers were questioning how what we do impacts what we believe. The placement of furniture was one of the first changes these folks made, because, they felt, that the action of sitting in rows facing a speaker, as for a lecture, was one that emphasized the congregation’s role as audience and consumer. Because they felt very strongly in the priesthood of all believers, and an active, vibrant role for the congregation, they moved the furniture around so everyone was facing everyone else, moved the pastor into the congregation, took the band off the stage . . . and, by their action, impacted their faith.

Back on Week 13, you may recall we went to a service called The Well at St. Luke’s in Coeur d’Alene. This particular service does many of these things: seats in the round, a sermon style that specifically elicits congregational participation, a communion that is hands on, universal, participatory.

I’m not sure what the original vision for the 9am service was . . . I wasn’t part of the planning, and the few announcements I caught on it were sort of vague. One of the elements is a quilt with toys that was placed on the floor in the front for babies and toddlers to play on. Another was the willingness to let the toddler set wander the church during the service. (One little girl, about three, walked up to the side of the altar, and spent several minutes staring up a the ceiling fan, until a second little guy, probably just over one, approached her, at which point, she booked it back to her parents, leaving him to wonder what he’d done wrong, and then to toddle around, a bit wobbly, until he decided to head back to his parents).

The service itself was an abbreviated form of Rite II, with a short sermon, and several “contemporary” songs (played on guitar, fiddle, and banjo, including: Let Us Break Bread Together On Our Knees (Traditional), This Little Light of Mine (1920), Lord I Lift Your Name On High (1989), Come, Now is the Time to Worship (1998), Be Lifted Up (2003)), and short Eucharist, wrapped up in just over 30 minutes.

I’m not certain who the target audience was . . . one of the organizers said it was too early for her kidlet(s), and the age of the children in attendance jumped from <3 to the 5 junior high/highschool kids (four of whom came with the priest, the other, Farmergirl). Fr. Brian mentioned that the service was in flux, and might change as it went along . . . but no specifics on what that might mean. There were 35 in attendance, not including the 10-o'clockers who wandered in at the end of the service. It'll be interesting to see where it's gone at the beginning of next year.

You may recall, back at Week 33, we meant to go to Pancakes in the Park, and found out, last minute, that the date had passed. Anyway, my same friend Emalee, who let me know that I was a week off last time, sent me an email letting me know Breakfast #104 was happening, and we jumped at the chance. We also called our friend, Elaine, to let her know we’d be on her side of town, and she decided to come along, too.

Pam and Tom and Zac provide the pancakes (and their home, and their hospitality, and their generosity, and their vision) and coffee, and the rest is a potluck. We took along homemade granola (minus the nuts, plus some more oats, a cup of wheat bran, minus the ginger and plus some orange peel) and Nancy’s plain yogurt . . . other offerings included a huge bowl of fruit, a warm blackberry cobbler, cinnamon rolls, juice . . . I feel certain there was more, and I simply didn’t see it. Children played in the driveway, at least three dogs came and went and wagged their tails at everyone, babies were passed around . . . I made a baby cry*.

There is something magical about coming face to face with people over food. There’s something intimate and bonding and personal about sharing “units of self**” . . . which is probably what makes invitations to dinner so compelling. In these moments, we slow down and focus on each other, on the food we’re sharing, on the moment at hand. This is perhaps what is so pernicious about fast food (even beyond the fat and the sugars, the degradation to the environment, and the poor treatment of workers)–we gulp it down, alone, in our cars. It nourishes neither our bodies, nor our souls.

The sweet languorous pace of the Passover meal, from which the Christian communion originates, is shared with the closest of family and friends, and includes not only the Seder meal, but a full meal following, is one of the best western examples of this tradition. Often, as I’ve ruminated here, communion is reduced to a drive-by fast-food meal . . . even for those of us who cherish it, it can be rote, isolated, and unfulfilling. A wafer and an antiseptic, disposable undersized plastic shot-glass of knock-off Welch’s grape juice tagged on to the end of a service without community leaves one hungering for so much more.

I like to feed people, and I like to eat with people. But I think, in my spiritual life, I’m left hungering for those kinds of connections . . . the great feast around the table, the delight other people have digging into warm food and close conversation. My favourite church day of the year, since we’ve moved to Spokane, is Christmas Day, when we go down to ECOR early early in the morning, turn on the heat, and start baking all kinds of wonderful things . . . eggy casseroles, yeast breads, fruited oatmeal . . . and the smell of bacon and cinnamon and homey cooking fills the fellowship hall . . . and, although the congregation is always relatively small, more than 95% stay, and sit, and eat, and share, before going back home to their trees and relatives and gifts. My derived happiness is not at all hurt by the associate priest’s poetic waxing that lasts nearly until Lent . . . he knows the power of supping with others.

There really is something magical about fellowshipping over food.

* In my defense, I didn’t set out to make the baby cry, but what I did was pretty dumb. She was having fun, sitting in Elaine’s lap, playing with my hand, and I decided to find something else interesting for her to play with. Across from the table was a bin of dress-up clothes the older kids had ransacked, and I grabbed a teeny teddy bear from it. That didn’t make the baby cry, but it looked like maybe it was a dog toy, so I decided to find something else, and settled on a red mohawk wig, which we petted for a while, stroking the furry red mohawk, and then turning it around to feel the rubbery “skin” portion. Then I decided to put the mohawk wig on. The baby was okay for about half a second, and then decided she did not think the universe was right and wanted it put back. Now. I had the wig back off before she let out the first scream, but it was too late. The baby was not to be consoled, even as Elaine turned her around and cuddled her close. Bad, Jen; bad, bad, Jen. No more pancakes for you.

**Some time ago, Michael read me something where the author spoke of food as “units of self,” which, literally, food is. What you put into your body becomes part of your physical self, and the author spoke of his investment in food and thus in himself.

Delighting Farmergirl’s heart is our occasional pastime, and a trip to ECOR does it for her everytime.

As we’d gone to the Evening Prayer service Friday night, we headed out to ECOR’s Grandparents Sunday service and Bar-B-Q (which does not, as it turns out, involve barbecuing any actual grandparents), which kicks off the beginning of the church year, and heralds the return of the “Lake People”*.

*The “Lake People” don’t really exist. They’re like leprechauns or fairies, really . . . they exist in the culture of Spokane (and elsewhere, but they’re particularly pronounced here). During the summer, the population of local churches dwindles as people are “at the lake.” I can say with some authority that the population of lakeside churches does not increase in the summer, they, too, have “Lake People,” an irony which is not lost on me (or, probably, their clergy).

We attended ECOR in the summer of 2002, and returned to it when we moved to Spokane in the summer of 2004. Because having two summers with no intervening months, we weren’t expecting the return of the Lake People in the fall of 2004. Combined with having just left a small church plant (and conditioned from that experience to welcome new faces), we flubbed several times, asking multi-generational Lake People if they were new?

“No, I’ve been going here for 8 years . . .”

“Um, well, hi! I’m new!”

ECOR, like most local churches, has a core of folks who are nearly always there, even during “lake season,” and it has the Fall-through-Spring folks — the Lake People. The weird thing about the Lake People is that, unlike E.B. White, they doesn’t seem to go for a whole month at a time, and they don’t seem to come back to the church when they come back to town. There is one gal I know who goes to the lake for the entire month, but she leaves in September, when all the other Lake People are returned to school and work. It seems, in general, that people need a reason to skip church (for that matter, one generally needs to move out of town to quit a church), and “going to the lake” seems as good as any. For that matter, it’s become an ironclad excuse for skipping in the summer, deeply ingrained into the Spokane culture, crossing most denominations. I hope I am managing to express my amusement a this whole idea . . . because that’s where I am . . . mildly amused. But both (skipping church and leaving a church) are interesting sociological phenomena, as well.

This impulse I have to greet people-whose-faces-are-new-to-me was not eliminated by interfacing with the Lake People in the fall of 2004. For that matter, I’ve come to believe that greeting people is an essential function of the church. So yesterday, I greeted a couple I hadn’t met before, and said, “Are you new here?” before I could even stop myself. Then I continued with, “I really shouldn’t ask that, as I haven’t been here since last year myself, and you could have been going here all these months,” but it turned out it was their very first Sunday at ECOR, having just moved to the Valley from other parts of town. (Whew!)

Fr. Brian preached the Parable of Pike Place Market (my sermon title, I don’t know what his was), about how fun and welcoming and enjoyable Pike Place Market in Seattle is, and how the ECOR ought to be the same . . . or continue being the same (fun and welcoming and enjoyable).

So we’re back to that question of creating community . . .

I wish you could have been there. 

Fall feels like it’s blowing in early this year, and Lake Pend Oreille is beautiful.  Much of this region was carved out when the ice dam to Glacial Lake Missoula broke during the Ice Age Floods and carved out a lot of what is now Washington and Idaho. Much of our rocky terrain is due these events, and the sheer rises of the surrounding mountains (and the drop-offs in the water–and the amazing depths of Lake Pend Oreille) still show signs it. Around the lake, there are of course beautiful mansions, historic lake homes, and family camps, but there are also huge portions that are state and federal lands, uninhabited, and beautiful. The few deciduous trees in the area (and the understory of shrubs) is beginning to turn like a delicate, tentative version of New England’s wild flamboyant fall landscape. The landscape and the clouds above were reflected in the still water of the lake, occasionally disturbed by the splash of the fish that eluded JP’s line.

Our friends JP and Barbara Carver are the clergy at Holy Spirit Episcopal Church in Sandpoint, ID.  When we learned they have Evening Prayer on the Lake, we decided we’d better get up there before the boat’s back out of the water (October). I think the high yesterday, in the city, was 71F, and we cast off after 6pm last night, so we were very glad to have taken our coats along (though JP was in shorts and short sleeves, and didn’t look the least bit uncomfortable). He took us out to Clark Fork, to a small inlet near a public dock, with still waters between the mountainside and a marshy island, where we dropped anchor, enjoyed the view, had evening prayer*, then chatted and ate cheese and crackers and wine until twilight.

We got home quite late (it’s nearly 2 hours up to Hope, Idaho from our house), but the drive was well worth it. (Also, being in Idaho, we scored some cheap diesel before heading back across the border). This morning found us all still snuggled under the covers in the chilly house at 9am.

*Evening prayer is an Episcopal worship service that doesn’t have communion, and thus doesn’t require a clergy person. The Carvers have been doing Evening Prayer on the Lake on Friday nights for about 5 years now, with anyone who’d like to go. If you find yourself on Lake Pend Oreille in the summer, give them a call.

This morning was the fifth message in an 8 part series based on A Heart Like Mine by Cindy Valenti-Scinto, called “One is Not the Loneliest Number” (which is also the fifth of eight chapters in the book). I’m not sure what the book’s chapter is about (we didn’t buy it, although Scinto was in the lobby, autographing copies), but I’m pretty sure the sermon was tied to the book only by its title. Without reservation, I can say this was not the worst sermon we’ve heard (All Nations Christian Center holds that dubious title), but it might be a close second. There were four pages of fill-in-the-blank sermon notes, but here’s the highlights:

Discovering God’s will for your life will include facing the issue of
loneliness.
3 Biblical Truths That Can Help Us Deal with Loneliness
BIBLICAL TRUTH #1: God is omnipresent.
BIBLICAL TRUTH #2: The omnipresence of God does not mean that God is present in
exactly the same sense everywhere.
BIBLICAL PRINCIPLE* #3: The omnipresence of God is applied by
cultivating a consciousness of God’s presence at all times.

(Farmergirl attended the youth service downstairs, and reports that her sermon included the line, “Don’t take a theology class in college, because it’ll mess you up and you’ll go to hell” . . . if that’s a fair representation, then the sermon we heard gets knocked down to #3).

Throughout the sermon notes (and projected on screen, and repeated by the pastor) was the exhortation to “Please turn in your Bibles to [book, chapter:verse citation].” How do you know to bring a Bible to church? Is it a denominational thing? How is that knowledge transmitted? How many does a family — say, of three — bring? One each? One to share? Between the three of us, we have 83 years of church attendance–some where near 4,000 services we’ve attended. Why don’t we know the answer to this question?

A portion of each of the verses he wanted us to look up (about 15 passages) was printed in the sermon notes . . . and those same pieces were also printed on screen — but never the entire passage, which just seemed really wrong: it doesn’t cost anything but a few minutes to make a few more PowerPoint slides . . . why not make it available to folks who didn’t bring Bibles (as they’re not supplied in the pews), to guests, and to folks who — for whatever reason — don’t have them along?

You may recall toward the beginning of the project, Farmergirl wasn’t clear on how to use the fill-in-the-blank sermon note format (she thought you were supposed to provide your own answers, not use the ones the pastor gave out. I’ve begun to wonder what the point is of the fill in the blank? To keep folks awake? Make sure you bring your own pen? Is it a “participation” gimmick?

And, most importantly, how does the author decide what words ought to be “left out” to later be filled in? Here’s the blank fill-ins from this morning, in order:

loneliness comfort omnipresent attributes infinite
omnipotent omniscience omnipresent trinity
relates exactly immanent transcendent dwell
Gentile unbelievers eternity in cultivating acknowledge

Ultimately, the sermon was that God is always with you, therefore you’ll never be lonely, because what you’re experiencing (loneliness) is a lie . . . it’s not real.

And I can’t help but think — now hold on just a cotton pickin’ moment — why does this sermon not exhort those in attendance to “be with” and “befriend” others, to open up about our individual loneliness, to create community, to be the body of Christ — the presence of God — to each other and to the world? After the sermon, he did a lonely altar call (not a call to the altar, literally, but asked people who felt lonely to stand during the time of prayer) — what a perfect time to say “Hey — look around you — you’re not alone in your loneliness. Hey, church, look around — ask these folks at the coffee hour what you can do to ease their loneliness. Hey, lonely people — this is the perfect place to ask and receive what you need.”

But there wasn’t any of that. Just that we ought to “cultivate God’s presence” and “practice God’s presence in [our] lives.”

I’m not against praying throughout the day . . . (though I’m not sure God’s “omnipresence is applied by cultivating a consciousness of God’s presence at all times”), but I am pretty sure that Kingdom living is done, not alone, but in community.

* Yes, I know that this list is two Biblical Truths and a Principle. I’m only copying what was in the handout. They were on three different pages . . . the writer probably lost track of the wording through the outline.

Yesterday we picked up a new toy for Michael (it’s a planer), and today he said he didn’t really want to go to church at all, but at least could we go as late as possible? Since he was otherwise occupied in his shop, Farmergirl and I went to ECOR for the 10am service and sat with Miss Charlotte, the church matriarch who pitches everytime I see her for our return. As it turned out, this was also the day of the youth group’s trip to Silverwood, the local theme park, which they lobbied to take Farmergirl along on, so I left her and headed back to the ranch with intentions to take a nap, and head to the Refugee service at Jacob’s Well at 7pm after we picked her up.

After the nap, I decided to double check the Jacob’s Well website . . . which was good . . . kind of. They’ve moved the Refugee service to 2pm, and the ECOR youth weren’t due back to the Valley until 5pm. So I scrambled to find another evening service time, and settled on Redeemer Lutheran’s 7pm Elevate service.

It was all going swimmingly well . . . we picked up Farmergirl, went for Pho at a new place (actually, a former Pho place that’s changed hands), and headed out to find the funky Lutheran service. There was no one there. The parking lot was empty. The church was dark. It was still 23 minutes until 7, so we waited. Every car that came down the street slowed . . . for the train tracks that were before the turn in. At 7 minutes before the hour, a silver BMW started to swing into the lot, and we breathed a sigh of relief . . . and she popped the U-ie and went back across the tracks.

At 4 past, we gave up in despair, and went around back to find Farmergirl, who was on the playground. There, we ran into the very sweet cleaning guy who said, in a thick eastern block accent that they used to have an evening service, but he thought they were taking a break.

So . . . no service for week 34. Yet. We have two we’ve scouted out: Vespers on Tuesday at 6:30 at St. John the Baptist Church Self-Ruled Antiochian Orthodox Christian Archdiocese, or the 7pm service on Thursday at New Hope Church, to complete our attendance at all the churches on Harvard Rd. in Otis Orchard.

Check back later in the week . . . I’ll have something for you by Friday.