God outside of video screens

This week's issue of the United Methodist Reporter is focusing on camping and retreat ministries. I think any of us raised in the church can think back to those old Methodist camps and what an impact they had on us. My first experience with camping ministry was at the Wayland Springs Camp in Imboden, Arkansas. No air conditioning, leaky cabins, and 100 degree heat. It was awesome.

If anything, getting kids to engage in camping and retreat ministries is more important now than ever before. With their technological addicition to Playstations, XBox, the Internet, IM, iPods, etc., etc., it is hard to get them to look up and look around for the beauty on God's good earth. The last couple of years that I taught Confirmation Class, we had a rule that there were no cell phones or iPods on our weekend retreat at the end of the Confirmation experience. By their reaction, you would have thought we told them they were going to have to go without food for the weekend.

In my column this week, I talk about why I think getting out of the asphalt jungle is important in our relationship with God. Check it out.

Dreading the Eucharist

A good friend of mine, Jenny Redding Rhodes, is working on a degree in special education at Vanderbilt University which focuses on adolescents with eating disorders (and she's also an M.Div graduate of Vanderbilt Divinity School). Jenny has just written an article on the way that people with eating disorders experience church life. Some of her comments are heart-breakingly shocking:

"Many eating-disorder patients have told me that they participate in the Lord's Supper only half-heartedly at best. They feel compelled to take Holy Communion because Jesus commanded us to do so. Because some see Holy Communion as God's reward for virtuous or faithful service, they refrain. All of them dread the Eucharist because it involves food."

You need to read this article. The link goes to the main page for the current issue of the Reporter. Scroll down to find Jenny's article, which is entitled, "Anorexics mirror, distort Wesleyan 'perfection'."

Obviously, we all know that eating disorders afflict thousands of Gen-X'ers. But many sufferers remain hidden by a veil of secrecy or shame. Jenny's commentary begins to help us know how to embrace those who experience anorexia, bulimia, or other related disorders.

"I forgive, I forgive"

There is a great irony contained in the more violent Muslim responses to Pope Benedict XVI's speech a few days ago, in which he quoted a medieval Byzantine emperor's comment about Islam spreading its faith through the sword. The bombing of Christian churches in the West Bank and Gaza strip, the call for the pope's assassination by radical Muslim leaders, and the execution of an Italian nun in the Somali capital of Mogadishu would seem to confirm the emperor's observation.

The fact that the pope's remarks were not intended to criticize Islam per se, but were rather part of a larger academic speech on faith and reason delivered to an audience at the University of Regensburg in Germany, does not seem to matter. Such nuances are lost on a wing of Islam that seeks to impose its will, not by the sword, but by the death squad and the suicide bomb. Regardless of the way Christians and the Christian faith might be villified with impunity in the Muslim world, even obscure academic references that may appear critical of Islam apparently deserve to be met with violence and intimidation. And therein lies the irony in the whole story.

Charles Krauthammer's most recent column in the Washington Post is insightful. I don't typically share Krauthammer's politics, but I think he's right on when he says, "'How dare you say Islam is a violent religion? I'll kill you for it,' is not exactly the best way to go about refuting the charge."

But here's the most compelling part of the whole saga to me. It's about that Italian nun who was executed as payback for the pope's comments in Mogadishu. Apparently, after she had been shot and as she lay dying on the street, she repeated over and over, "I forgive, I forgive." Her last thoughts and last words were of grace and forgiveness. One cannot help but see her imitation of Christ, who said from the cross, "Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do."

When Dietrich Bonhoeffer decided to leave the safety of refuge in the United States to return to Nazi Germany in 1939, he made a decision that helped to seal his fate on the gallows of the Flossenburg Concentration Camp. Reinhold Niebuhr would later say that his action belonged to the "finest logic of Christian martyrdom." We might say the same for Sister Leonella, who must have known that carrying out her ministry in a city controlled by radical Islamists might eventually make her a target for violence.

Christians are not sinless, and as soon as we start to play the 'moral superiority' card, we immediately slip into that most pernicious of sins - pride. But contained within the larger story of our own violence and rebellion against the will of God is a narrative that embodies the truth of Jesus' message. It is a narrative of love, of forgiveness, of redemption, and of hope. That narrative has been lived out by the early apostles, the early martyrs, the medieval mendicants, latter-day saints like Bonhoeffer, and now by Sister Leonella on a dusty street in Mogadishu.

I hope I would have the same faith that she did if I were put in her situation. I don't know that I would. But I draw strength from the witness she has given the world.

Give me money, Jesus!

The cover story of the September 18 issue of TIME Magazine asks, "Does God want you to be rich?" The story looks at that movement in American (Protestant) Christianity that is perhaps best exemplified by Joel Osteen and his Lakewood Church in Houston, TX. It goes by a number of different monikers: the Prosperity Gospel, the Gospel of Health & Wealth, Name It and Claim It, and Prosperity Lite are a few mentioned in the TIME article.

The approach, as I understand it, goes something like this: God is a good and generous God who loves his children. Besides wanting his children to enjoy eternity with him, God also wants his children to enjoy in material abundance here on earth. Besides, isn't that what Jesus means when he says, "I have come that they may have life, and that abundantly" (John 10:10)? So the faithful are called to be grateful for what they have, in the expectation that their gratitude will be met with a showering of material blessings by God. Expecting blessings is the first step to receiving blessings. Wealth is a sign of faithfulness.

I admit that I have a fairly visceral reaction to this approach to the Christian faith when I encounter it, whether in a TV program, in a magazine article, or on the street. I think the Prosperity Gospel is perhaps the most disturbing development of an American Christianity that is rife with disturbing developments over its history. I find myself agreeing with the magazine's comment that, "Most unnerving for [Joel] Osteen's critics is the suspicion that they are fighting not just one idiosyncratic misreading of the gospel but something more daunting: the latest lurch in Protestantism's ongoing descent into full-blown American materialism."

So let me offer a few, completely unscientific observations about the Prosperity approach to the Christian faith:

1. The Prosperity Gospel could only have developed in contemporary America. We live in a land where the good life is seen almost exclusively as the achievement of a certain level of income, a certain size of home, a certain number of vehicles in the garage, a certain level of intelligence and ambition in our children, and the complete avoidance of anything resembling uncomfortability in the ability to satisfy our "felt needs."

2. The Prosperity Gospel points the emphasis of our faith away from Jesus Christ and toward ourselves. In this sense, it encourages a certain idolatrous preoccupation with me and what I think I need.

3. The Prosperity Gospel blames the poor for their poverty, by implying that they simply don't have the proper faith required to become rich.

4. The Prosperity Gospel rejects serious study of the Bible and the Christian tradition. It ignores the story of Israel and the story of the Christian church in favor of a false story concocted to appeal to the very worst in human nature.

5. The Prosperity Gospel knows nothing of Christian discipleship as a call to deny oneself, take up one's cross, and follow Jesus Christ.

(As a sidenote, I think we would do well to ask the converse question of the TIME article: Does God want you to be destitute? I believe the answer to that question is no. God doesn't want us to be either spiritually or materially destitute. Our Savior preached the good news and fed the hungry. We are called into a relationship with him whereby we are fed in both ways, specifically through the church he has established. And when we answer the call to discipleship, we are called to go forth and feed others - both the poor in spirit and the poor in body.)

The very fact that such a movement as the Prosperity Gospel exists is a call for the church to repent and proclaim the evangelical faith passed down to us through the ages. And the truth of the matter is that God is asking us to do exactly what is contrary to human nature: give up what we have to follow Jesus. We begin to know the fullness of salvation at the point where we willingly sacrifice on our own ambitions, treasures, careers, incomes, and yes, even lives.

If the devil is tempting you to seek "Your Best Life Now" as the true path of faith, go read Job. Then read the Sermon on the Mount. And then a life of St. Francis. And then go work amongst Christ's poor and find out what he means when he says, "The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to preach good news to the poor" (Luke 4:18).

And never forget that sometimes the devil comes in fancy shoes and slicked back hair, wearing an expensive suit and waving a Bible in the air.

What makes a Gen X'er???

The term "Generation X" means a lot of things to a lot of different people. For some, it's positive. They know exactly what being a Gen X'er means, because they know intuitively that they are Gen X'ers. And they are comfortable with that cultural tag to describe their particular experience in the world.

Others simply can't stand the phrase. They think it is a term void of meaning, or else it even creates hostility. I admit that I am baffled at the latter response when I get it. All I can figure out is that these folks think it is just another media attempt to catalog and pigeonhole something that is, in reality, too complex for that.

I think Generation X is a helpful term. What's more, I think the pop culture literature that has grown up around it is fascinating. The term itself goes back to a survey of disaffected youth done by a couple of Brits in the 1960s (and it was actually Baby Boomer youth their book was concerned with, but no matter). Billy Idol used the name for his band in the 1970s. But the "modern" use of Generation X came into popularity with the publication of Douglas Coupland's novel, Generation X: Tales for An Accelerated Culture, in 1991. It was then that the media really grabbed ahold and ran with the term.

So what does it mean to be a Gen X'er? I write about that in my most recent column in the UM Reporter. This is something I've done before and probably will do again in the future. I guess a part of me feels the need to defend the term, if for no other reason than because I have a column and a blog based on its inherent usefulness. If "Generation X" is really empty of meaning, then "Gen-X Rising" doesn't make a lot of sense, does it?

To me, being a Gen X'er is not so much about having been born between certain years. It's more about a common experience. The saying goes, "Here today, gone tomorrow." A more appropriate one for our day might be, "Here today, gone by 5:30." And it's that common experience - shared by many of us in our formative years - that makes Generation X a reality.

Read the column and you'll see what I mean. And as always, I welcome your comments.

New Bishop for North Texas

Since the death of Bishop Rhymes Moncure on Aug. 19th, the North Texas Conference has been without episcopal leadership. Today that changed with the appointment of Bishop Alfred Norris to serve out Bishop Moncure's term (which ends in 2008). The Rev. Robert Schnase, bishop of the Missiouri Conference, made the announcement of Bishop Norris' appointment in a pastoral letter earlier today.

Bishop Moncure died at the Baylor University Medical Center in Dallas, several days after undergoing surgery on a brain tumor. Bishop Norris is a retired bishop, who served the New Mexico, Northwest Texas, and Texas Conferences.

Why is this important? Because bishops are the general superintendents of our connection, and we need their leadership. Their highly visible position as the leaders of the church gives them an unparalleled ability to articulate a vision of gospel faithfulness that the church can move toward. Bishop Moncure's death (like that of the recent death of the Rev. Done Peter Dabale, bishop of Nigeria) is a real loss to the body of Christ. But we can place our hope in the Holy Spirit, who will surely raise up new leadership to show us the way forward.

Gen-X Rising Blog Debut

Hello, cyberworld! This is my first official post on this blog, so let me offer a little background...

For the past couple of years, I've been writing a column for The United Methodist Reporter, called "Gen X Rising." It looks at issues concerning the church and the Christian faith from the perspective of a Gen-X'er. Along the way, a couple of people suggested that I should expand my writing into the blogosphere (specifically into that happy corner of cyberspace known as the Methoblog community). I've wanted to do that for sometime, but it took awhile to get going.

I am a United Methodist pastor who has been serving appointments in campus ministry and the local church for the past five years. I left my appointment in June to return to school, and I've really missed the preaching and teaching I did on a weekly basis. So starting the blog just makes sense. I'm not planning on preaching in my posts : ), but I will be sharing my views on issues that I think are important to people of faith in Generation X. Because I'm a Methodist pastor, a lot of this will probably center on the UMC. But I won't limit what I write to Methodist topics.

I'll continue writing my column for the Reporter as well. Here's my most recent column online. If you have any comments or suggestions about the blog or my column, feel free to post a comment or e-mail me (andrew@mandatum.org).

Enjoy the blog!