Messiness + Genuineness = Authenticity

Yes, I know that starting with a math problem looks frighteningly similar to my beloved pastor’s book ( If you haven’t read it go to http://www.relevantbooks.com/ and look at the sample chapter for Understanding God’s Will. Then order it for yourself :) Anyways, this is the easiest way I could think of to explain exactly what authenticity means to me. Let’s say you’re coming over to my apartment for a visit. If you are a cute guy, or someone else I feel I must impress, I would frantically clean my bathroom, throw my dirty clothes in the closet, and make the neatest piles possible of my mail and important paperwork. I would want to make a good first impression, especially if you’re a single male. Maybe this is just me being southern, but you generally want to put your best foot forward for company.

However, if you are my good friend Josh Brewer, who I know by now that I will never marry, I don’t care what my house looks like. I’m just glad to see you. You know I’m not the neatest person in the world. You’ve seen my unmentionables lying on the floor in my bathroom and my kitchen sink brimming with dirty dishes. The same would be true of my biological family. There are some people in life that you can let you guard down with. You don’t feel the compulsive need to hide all your mess from them because you know they’ll love you in spite of it.

Stan Grenz, one of my favorite theologians, says that ultimately, and I am paraphrasing here, being a Christian should be like being at home. I can quite honestly say that I am no where more at home than when my heart is aware of the love, presence, and person of Jesus Christ. Sadly, I can also say that there are so many churches that neither give the semblance of home or the warmth that comes from a family that truly loves each other. The good face put on for visitors is all too often a front to disguise the mess that is beneath the surface.

My wish for the Church is that we would give people a place to feel at home. A place where it is safe to let down your guard knowing that you’ll be loved, protected, and helped rather than being judged, looked down upon, or excluded. Sometimes church people make others feel that life is perfect and that we should always act perfectly and put on a perfect front no matter what. The truth is that life is really messy and faith can be too. For me authenticity means not expecting people to “have it all together”. It means letting people be real about who they truly are, not disguising hurts, doubts, questions, or struggles, but feeling comfortable enough to share them. This does not give people a free pass to sin, but it is actually the first step to helping people in the battle against sin- finding people who will love and help you. To grow in our faith, we’ve got to learn to be real about the messiness in our lives. We must allow people to do this.

How can our churches become places that feel like home- places of confession, places where we share our struggles, and places where we can voice our questions and doubts and feel safe in doing so? I definitely don’t have that all figured out, but I think it’s the right question to be asking. I hope it’s the question that churches will begin asking more and more.

A Good Start to a Conversation about the Church

Ok, what I am about to post is a narrative on my thought and feelings about the emerging church and it's worship. It's not exactly how I planned to start my series, but I had to do it as a part of my final exam in my "Worship in the Emerging Church" class. I hope it will be a good way to begin this conversation. It's all I have time for right now at least. (Two finals down, two left to go!) So here you go.....

Two weeks ago, I enjoyed a true treat within my community of faith. During, the music portion of our worship gathering, we sang only hymns. I loved it. Some of the songs, I had not heard in years. Many I sang countless times while growing up in strictly Baptist churches. The versions of the hymns the surprisingly good makeshift worship team (Crowder was out of town, along with Dutton, and a few of the girls who usually lead worship in their absence) sang would be pretty foreign to most congregations. There was a little U2 mixed into a John Newton hymn which would undoubtedly make some of our forerunners cry blasphemy. For me however, the songs felt strangely like home, although the places where I first encountered them will most likely never be home again.

All of that to say that emerging churches, like the one I am a part of, are indeed embracing the things of the past while not ignoring the needs of the present and future contexts of the church. To me there is something authentic about this, and from what I am beginning to understand and experience, the desire for authenticity is at the heart of so many emerging churches. The best summation I can give for who and what emerging churches are trying to be is in the form of a question that many continue to ask: “How do we strive to live together as the people of God in the rhythms of God in the world today?“

Whether what’s going on with emerging churches is new or old will continue to be matter of debate for some time. As best as I see it, it is a both/and as opposed to an either/or situation. It is, in many ways, a group of people embracing ancient elements of the faith. As discussed in class, we are in many ways trying to embrace that which is most central and core to our faith- Jesus Christ, the Kingdom of God, and what it means to love God with all one’s heart, soul, mind, and strength. While Jesus preached this so long ago, our world has evolved into a very different place. Just as the audience that first heard his words was shaped by their particular culture, we too as people in 2005 are not unaffected by our culture. Time did not freeze for the world, nor, in all honesty, has it for the church, although there are particular times in our history people embrace as the “most Christian” and many likely wish they could freeze time there. Emerging churches are different and new because so many things about people and the world in which we live are new. At the same time they are ancient because theirs is a faith of the ages, and we are living in a new chapter in the story of the ages. People’s wants and needs are different than they were fifty years or five thousand years ago, yet in some ways they are much the same. Therefore, it stands to reason that the way we worship God and love God and seek to share His love looks both new and old in our world today. Emerging churches understand and embrace this, and therefore they are offering a home to so many in people who consider themselves postmodern and are offended or confused by many churches who have not yet embraced these days, or who are trying to ignore them.

I am reminded of the term Scott Bayder-Saye so appropriately titles “relevant resistance”. Within my community of faith, we often express this as “being counter-cultural in the best way possible”. To me, both these things mean choosing to live and walk as Jesus did- not preaching condemnation to outsiders, but being a light to the world through the way we love God and each other and live our lives with honesty and integrity. Both now and in the time of Jesus, this was the best way to be relevant in the world yet not be like the world. This would be the opposite of being counter cultural as some seek to be- preaching condemnation against those with uncertain spiritual backgrounds, and expecting everyone to live according to what you and your denomination or particular church believe is right. I don’t believe emerging churches are perfect in practice or theology, but no church is. It is my prayer that emerging churches and all the buzz around them might help us all rethink the way we worship both inside and outside the walls of a church building- that we would be truly authentic in the way we love and adore God and each other.

I'm so incredibly sorry

Well, I've been going crazy trying to catch up on school work, and blogging has surely fallen by the wayside. Just finished a 20 page paper yesterday, and so today is a much needed break from school work. I've been thinking about what to say about the church and my dreams for it, but sadly, I just haven't had the time or the inspiration to write my thoughts down. I'm going home to Mississippi a week from tomorrow. I'll be there for a few days before Josh and I head to the Emergent Convention in Nashville. I'm really looking forward to that, and I'm sure I'll come back with lots to say. Sorry life is boring right now and there's not much to say. I miss ya'll, especially on a lonely and disappointing day like this. I feel the Waco blues coming on, so I'm glad that I'm about to bust out of dodge. I wish I had something genius to say to you instead of this meaningless crap I'm writing down, but I think that I'll make a list of things that I love just to make myself feel better.

1. Coco's snowcones
2. Donald Miller
3. My Church
4. my new Amos Lee cd
5. Exams are almost over
6. Mississippi
7. My family
8. Outback Steakhouse
9. Reef flip flops
10. My new favorite show Grey's Anatomy

aaah, and did I mention you? I'm feeling better already.