My guess is that enough time has passed since my last post to this blog, four years ago, that no one is going to read this. I've been thinking for awhile that this would be a good space for me to write whatever is on my mind without worrying so much about who is reading (no one) and what they might think of me and what I have to say.
I first created this blog as a place to reflect on my experience five years ago as a commissioner to the Presbyterian Church (USA)'s General Assembly in Pittsburgh. The title was born of my ambivalence at being sent. This reluctance, I've discovered, isn't limited to service to the institutional political life of a North American mainline Christian denomination. It's a reluctance that infuses what I do even as I continue to do it.
This past Sunday I wasn't in the church that I serve as a pastor. Instead, my mother-in-law and I went to the Catholic parish that she belongs to in Slidell, LA. It's a beautiful church, rebuilt after Katrina washed out that part of the north shore. Like many churches, its lay out is cruciform, with pews on three sides of the raised chancel. Hanging from the ceiling is a large crucifix, and behind that the back wall is made mostly of clear glass windows that look out on a large oak tree draped with Spanish moss. Beautiful.
I haven't been to a mass in awhile, but I used to attend every Wednesday when I attended a Jesuit High School. Between that and my liturgical education I was able to follow along pretty well. But just in case I got lost, there were laminated guides to the liturgy in the pew in front of us. Even so, attending that church made me keenly aware of how out-of-step my understanding of Christianity and the church is from the vast majority of its practitioners. It wasn't just the particularly Catholic language about Mary ("our mother"). It was the whole vibe that being there created for me. Like I was on the outside of it: the language, the music, the theology. It occurs to me that that is what coming to the church I serve is like for people unfamiliar with what we do.
I think I have a better sense of why people stay away from church. It really does feel like drinking the Kool-Aid. How can I lead people of faith when so much of the language that we traffic in sounds so ridiculously absurd to me? "Do you also wish to go away?" Jesus asks the twelve after many disciples stop following him. Peter's response, "Lord, to whom would we go?" Which makes me think of this moment from the movie An Officer and a Gentleman-
I first created this blog as a place to reflect on my experience five years ago as a commissioner to the Presbyterian Church (USA)'s General Assembly in Pittsburgh. The title was born of my ambivalence at being sent. This reluctance, I've discovered, isn't limited to service to the institutional political life of a North American mainline Christian denomination. It's a reluctance that infuses what I do even as I continue to do it.
This past Sunday I wasn't in the church that I serve as a pastor. Instead, my mother-in-law and I went to the Catholic parish that she belongs to in Slidell, LA. It's a beautiful church, rebuilt after Katrina washed out that part of the north shore. Like many churches, its lay out is cruciform, with pews on three sides of the raised chancel. Hanging from the ceiling is a large crucifix, and behind that the back wall is made mostly of clear glass windows that look out on a large oak tree draped with Spanish moss. Beautiful.
I haven't been to a mass in awhile, but I used to attend every Wednesday when I attended a Jesuit High School. Between that and my liturgical education I was able to follow along pretty well. But just in case I got lost, there were laminated guides to the liturgy in the pew in front of us. Even so, attending that church made me keenly aware of how out-of-step my understanding of Christianity and the church is from the vast majority of its practitioners. It wasn't just the particularly Catholic language about Mary ("our mother"). It was the whole vibe that being there created for me. Like I was on the outside of it: the language, the music, the theology. It occurs to me that that is what coming to the church I serve is like for people unfamiliar with what we do.
I think I have a better sense of why people stay away from church. It really does feel like drinking the Kool-Aid. How can I lead people of faith when so much of the language that we traffic in sounds so ridiculously absurd to me? "Do you also wish to go away?" Jesus asks the twelve after many disciples stop following him. Peter's response, "Lord, to whom would we go?" Which makes me think of this moment from the movie An Officer and a Gentleman-
This is my call. Jesus alone has the words of life for me. As reluctant as I am to lead in a tradition where so much of what gets said and done in the name of Christ is either embarrassingly stupid or revolting in its meanness, I cannot quit it. I've got nowhere else to go.
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