Serial Church Joiners and Leavers

I grew up in the Lutheran Church – Missouri Synod. In high school, I attended a Southern Baptist church. In college, I didn’t attend anything.

After getting married and moving to Houston, we visited several churches and landed at a 12,000-member Methodist church (no one called them “mega-churches” back then). We enjoyed the people in our “young marrieds” Sunday School class, but doctrinally, well, let’s just say the Methodist Church was changing back then. We visited other churches and joined a non-denominational congregation called Spring Branch Community Church.

When we moved to St. Louis, we visited churches all over town; we discovered that churches were very different from those in Houston – more traditional, more denominational, less of the community we had at Spring Branch. We joined a Reformed Presbyterian congregation. A couple of years later, we found a small church similar to the one we had in Houston.

Then we bought a new house and the commute to church became a problem. So we joined a closer Evangelical Free congregation, and stayed there 15 years. Things changed, and we left. Six years ago, we joined the church where we worship now.

Except for the 15 years at the E Free church, we’ve been rather nomadic, following a similar path trod by millions of other American Christians. It’s a journey well recognized by Michael Spencer in Mere Churchianity: Finding Your Way Back to Jesus-Shaped Spirituality. His own path has been even more diverse, including checking into emergent churches, house churches, church renewal, church revival, media church, small groups and Catholic and Orthodox churches. (I’ll admit to having an attraction for the Catholic Church; I grew up a Lutheran minority in Catholic New Orleans.)

And if you ask what the next stop on the church tour will be, Spencer would say – there isn’t one. You’re not going to find what you’re looking for because it doesn’t exist. The perfect church doesn’t exist, and we serial church joiners and leavers can prove it.

“There is only one reliable constant,” Spencer writes. “There is God, who is moving people out into the world. This is a Spirit-led evolution of the movement Jesus started. It is a process of God moving Christians out of pews and toward the Kingdom that Jesus promised. And there is no predicting where that journey might take a person. But if it takes him or her outside organized Christianity, why would we argue with God about it?”

I may be wrong, but I don’t expect I’ll be moving outside organized Christianity. But I think Spencer is right, that there is a huge amount of ferment and change going on, and the future will look very different from the past.


We’ve been discussing Mere Churchianity with Nancy Rosback at Bend the Page and Fatha Frank at Public Christianity. Check their sites for more discussion.

Saturday Good Reads

So many good things to read, so little time. Here’s just a taste of the good stuff I found on the web this past week.

Prose

“I Want to Be a Vampire” by Peter Pollock for New Day Rising.

“Growing Up” by Linda Chontos at Linda’s Patchwork Quilt.

“How Current Publishing Models Undermine Quality” by Mike Duran at deCompose.

“Outside the Frame” by Kathleen Overby at Almost Paradisical.

“Why I Art – Part 1” by Karen Eck at Karenee Art.

“Mount Pisgah” by Cassandra Frear at Moonboat Café.

“When Paragraphs Become People” by Jennifer Dukes-Lee at Getting Down the Jesus.

“Finding Your Muse” and “Tunnel Vision” by Kathy Richards.

“Iran’s Students: Interrupted Lives” by Maureen Doallas at Writing Without Paper.

“Polishing” by Michelle DeRusha at Graceful.

“Just a Pen and Paper” by Duane Scott at Scribing the Journey.

“Why is faith so hard?” by Jeff Dunn at Internet Monk.

“Wood Obstructs My View” and “I Died Yesterday” by Michael Perkins at Untitled.

“How Poetry Got Religion Again” by Peggy Rosenthal for The Image Journal.

“Hymns, Heartbreak and Healing” by Sandra Heska King.

“What the Servants Knew” by Jeanne Damoff for The Master’s Artist.

“Roads” by A Simple Country Girl at Aspire to Lead a Quiet Life.

Poetry

"Looking Glass" and "Red" by Nancy Rosback at Poems and Prayers.

"Tell her," “Repetition” and “Old dogs and new” by Melissa at All the Words.

“Psalm 91” by Jerry at Under the Door Frame.

“Collander” by Kathleen Overby at Almost Paradisical.

“Musings around Giverny and Vernon” and “Seasons of Extravagant Tears” by Maureen Doallas at Writing Without Paper.

“Howling at the Moon” by Justinian at Delight and Glory and Oddity and Light.

“Home” by Pete Marshall.

“13/30” by Brian Miller at WayStationOne.

“Sand” by David Brydon.

“Playing Pretend” by Karen Eck at Karenee Art.

“Fairy King” by Laura Boggess at The Wellspring.

Paintings and Photographs

"Three from here and there" by Kelly Sauer, Claire Burge and Sarah Gabriel.

“Moonlight over the Sea,” oil on panel, and "Autumn Efforts" by Randall David Tipton.

"Greyscale Gray Skies" by Steve Gravano at Take a Look Around.

“Falling” by Michelle DeRusha at Graceful.

“His coat of many colors” and “How to See God: the Light of Brokenness” by Ann Voskamp at A Holy Experience.

“Blue Jays” by Jessica McGuire at Jezamama.

“One Night Before Six” by Erin Kilmer at Together for Good.

Laity Lodge Writers Retreat

I blogged quite a bit this week about the writers retreat at Laity Lodge. Quite a few others did as well. Ann Kroeker did a post entitled "Echoes" that pulls together the links for virtually all of the posts.

Photograph: Lamp, by Nancy Rosback. Used with permission.

A Poetry Workshop - Part 3

The poetry workshop led by Scott Cairns at the Laity Lodge writers retreat extended over two days, Friday and Saturday. Each session was three hours of discussion and readings, with some additional hours (for me, anyway) for the overnight assignment.

If someone had told me that by following Sam Van Eman’s blog New Breed of Advertisers almost two years ago that I would end up a writer for The High Calling and in a poetry workshop in southern Texas, well, who’d of thunk it? And read a poem I’d written to a group of people I scarcely knew? Who’d of thunk that, too? Two years ago, writing poetry wasn’t even on my radar scope.

But there I was, sitting with 11 other people, listening and talking, listening and commenting, being part of the silence after each poem was read.

At the Sunday worship time, I found myself sitting between two of the poetry workshop participants, Cameron Lawrence and Joan Fry. Another participant, Brian Williams, was sitting on the other side of Cameron. (At the brunch afterward, I would sit with Joan and still another participant, Jean Dunham.) In a few short hours, poetry had created a bond.

So, I’ve written this, for Scott Cairns and all of the workshop participants (Brian Williams, Cameron Lawrence, Joan Fry, Jean Dunham, Bill and Diana Bridgman, Mary Earle, Angela Carlson, Olga Samples Davis and Verbie Ann Helyger).

Workshop

We sit circular,
approximately,
holding pages filled
with hope and
desire and not
a little anguish.
And he says,
the opposite of faith
is not doubt;
the opposite of faith
is anxiety.
We nod.
Tentatively, then
more boldly, we read,
our words suffused
with Spirit, a cascade
of worship.

Photograph: Waterfall at the dam, Laity Lodge; courtesy of my cell phone.

A Poetry Workshop - Part 2

After Scott Cairns had given us our assignment at the Laity Lodge writers retreat – a poem based on a “dark saying” or difficult passage of scripture – I went back to my room at Song Bluff House to write. I wrote four drafts and decided I was done. And then off I went for a walk and trail hike, and rejoined my virtual-now-real colleagues with the High Calling Blogs for dinner and an after-dinner program.

The next morning, I woke up shortly before 5 a.m. I was wide awake with the sudden realization that what I had written was all wrong. I sat there on the side my bed and wrote two more drafts, continuing to work it, a word here and a phrase there, tried a new framework, and finally told myself I needed coffee. After walking down to lodge and finding the coffee, I sat in the empty, quiet Great Hall and wrote three more drafts. After breakfast and devotions, it was time for the workshop.

I had posted poems on this blog before, and those posts have always been the ones I am most sensitive about (this one is, too, because the poem is below). I think there’s something about me and poetry that involves a certain vulnerability.

But never had I read to group of real people before. Never had I been in a poetry workshop before. Never had I sat thinking about the critique and commentary to come.

After a short discussion, we started. I didn’t go first. I didn’t even consider going first, or even third. Part of me hoped we’d run out of time before I had to read mine, and part of me wanted badly to do this.

Each of us read our poems. Each reading was followed by a discussion and commentary. And something rather remarkable happened.

As each poem was read, a kind of silence descended upon us. We were all listening, and listening closely. With each reading, something was building. It was as if we were in church, listening to scriptural and liturgical readings. It was more than moving. It was often overwhelming.

We didn’t run out of time, and it was time for me to read my poem. The passage I had selected was Joshua, chapters 5-12, when the Israelites are invading the Promised Land and are instructed to destroy all men, women and children, and even the farm animals in some cases. Total eradication of all human life.

This is the poem I read:

As for me and my house
A meditation on Joshua 5-12

Would I have been cleansed
in the wilderness, or buried
in the sand as a submission
to the cleansing?

That man wielding the
great sword, that man
commanding the Lord’s host,
that man who makes ground
holy,
would I have obeyed, even
unto death?

Could I have stood in that
Jericho doorway, and plunged
the sword into the mother
and then the child? Or the child
first and then the mother?
And plunged that sword again
at Ai and Makeddeh,
Libnah and Lachish,
Eglon and Hebron,
Hazor and Anab, Jarmuth and
Gexer and Bethel and Aphek
and Tirzah and Megiddo and…

When the man who makes
ground holy turned over
the tables of shekels and
talents and doves, shouting
at thieves and robbers,
would I have conspired
to kill him, becoming yet
another submission to the
cleansing?
Or would he have
cleansed me?

(Last draft composed 10/3/10 in the Great Room at Laity Lodge, prior to the start of morning devotions.)

When I finished reading, and finally looked up, there was the familiar silence. Scott Cairns was staring at me. No one spoke, and for a moment I thought I'd produced a real turkey. And then he and the others began to speak, rather softly. People were kind.

“You have two poems there,” Scott said. “And that’s great. It’s a good day when you can write one poem. Two poems is a great day. And they should be published on facing pages in your collection of poems.”

I don’t think the poem is finished yet (or is that poems?). But it stands in a line of events last week that started with a devotion on Thursday by Gordon Atkinson and continued through another devotion by Gordon and communion on Sunday. In fact, the words Gordon spoke both times are the bookends for this poem.

And something’s changed.

Photograph: View from atop Circuit Bluff, Laity Lodge; courtesy of my cell phone. I think of it as looking out toward a kind of Promised Land.

A Poetry Workshop - Part 1

At the High Callings Blogs staff meeting at Laity Lodge last week, we joined the writer’s retreat conference on Thursday evening. On Friday, the workshops started, including ones for fiction, spiritual writing, non-fiction, song writing and others.

I had signed up for the poetry workshop, led by Scott Cairns, a poet and professor at the University of Missouri – Columbia. (Yes, I see a certain irony in traveling to the Hill Country of south Texas for a workshop led by a man who lives an hour and a half from my house in St. Louis.)

At the workshop, 12 of us gathered in a circle, and Scott began the discussion by asking what, exactly is a poem? How can poetry apply to scripture? Could we learn something from how the Jewish commentators explicated their scriptures? He read a prose poem by Jorge Luis Borges entitled “Legend,” about Cain and Abel meeting long after the great drama (and Abel’s murder) in the Book of Genesis. This is what I wrote as I listened to the poem and the discussion:

Listening to Borges

I was listening to a poem
by Borges and wondered,
did the mark upon Abel
become the mirror that
became the mark
upon Cain?

Scott had so many good things to say. I don’t think I’ve known a more gracious workshop leader, and as this was my first poetry workshop, I had a lot of questions about what might happen. Among several other things, he said, “To understand tradition, you have to be humble. Arrogance has no understanding of tradition.” And this: “Let the mind descend to the heart to hear the text in a different way.”

I felt completely at home in the discussion, until he rather innocently asked each of us to name a passage in scripture that we found to be a “dark saying” or particularly difficult. Most of us could think of at least one.

And then he said, “Now, your assignment is to write a poem about it and read it to the rest of us tomorrow for comment and critique.”

I had posted poems online before – and they are always the postings I’m the most nervous and sensitive about. But I had never read a poem I wrote aloud to a group. Not to mention doing so with the expectation of comment and critique.

Oh, my.

Photograph of Scott Cairns by University of Missouri.

Virtual Staff Becomes Real Staff

For the retreat at Laity Lodge with the High Calling Blogs (HCB) staff, we drove from San Antonio west to Kerrville, and then another 20 or so miles west. Then south for quite a ways, turning off on a road of crushed rock (I’d guess limestone but I’m no rock expert; I sort them into ugly, pretty and common).

We drove for a few miles in the darkness, and then descended to the river. We went straight in and followed the river road (or road in the river) for what seemed like the equivalent of three or four blocks. And then a steep turn upward back on to the road. Eventually, four of us were dropped off at Song Bluff House – Gordon Atkinson, David Rupert, Sam Van Eman and myself. It was actually quite a nice residence – three bedrooms, two baths, large living and dining area, and perched on a bluff about the lodge’s youth camp. It was well after midnight, and we all crashed.

Breakfast the next morning was at 8, and then a devotion time followed by the staff meeting. Gordon led the devotion on Matthew 7:21-24, and I should have known something was up when I wrote the following in the journal I carry everywhere now:

Change Psalm

My heart is the Lord’s
My hands are the Lord’s.
My ears are the Lord’s.
My feet are the Lord’s.
My will is the Lord’s.
My hope is the Lord’s.
My desire in the Lord’s.
My desire…
    My…
        Lord…
            The Lord…
The Lord is my desire.
The Lord is my hope.
The Lord is my will.
The Lord is my feet.
The Lord is my ears.
The Lord is my hands.
The Lord is my heart.

The meeting started with a short presentation on the history of the Foundation for Laity Renewal and the Howard E. Butt family, and the lodge property itself. HCB editor Marcus Goodyear discussed the upcoming merger of the High Calling site with the High Calling Blogs site. Then Laura Barkat, HCB managing editor, talked about the importance of trust. We had lunch and then a telephone conference with the site design firm on the new process for entering content.

One of the best parts of the meeting was to talk with people I’d been working with online for more than a year in some cases. I had just worked with Sam on a Random Act of Poetry post for HCB. I’d worked with Marcus on several projects, and had been communicating and then working with Laura Barkat since the summer of 2009. And I work closely with Bradley Moore, aka Shrinking Camel, who’s my editor at HCB for posts on work.

But then there were all the others, people I had followed on Twitter and Facebook, left comments on their blogs, traded emails with from time to time: Gordon and Sam, Ann Kroeker, Laura Boggess, Claire Burge, Dan Roloff, David Rupert, Cheryl Smith, Dena Dyer, Deidra Riggs, Dan King (the Bible Dude himself!), Ann Voskamp and Jennifer Dukes-Lee.

When you read people’s writing for a sustained period and work with them online, you gradually form a picture of what they must be like in person. And for me there were no surprises. Well, not exactly. Sam Van Eman is a lot more serious on his New Breed of Advertisers blog than he is in person. Not that he’s wild and crazy. Well, not hugely wild and crazy. Okay, he’s kind of a crazy guy in a reserved sort of way.

That evening, we joined 50 or so other writers for the opening reception of the regular writer’s retreat. As I looked across the Great Hall, I noticed a tall man who looked a lot like someone I had seen before at my church in St. Louis. When he sat at my table at dinner, I realized he was the guy from my church. He was as surprised to see me as I was to see him – neither of us knew the other was a writer. (It’s a big church.)

I ended the evening by walking back to Song Bluff House, about a half a mile from the main lodge. The next day, Friday, we’d begin the workshops. I would be participating in the poetry workshop with Scott Cairns, a poet and professor at the University of Missouri in Columbia (who lives about 90 minutes from my house). All these Missouri connections…

Photograph: Laity Lodge, Great Hall building from across the Frio River, courtesy of my cell phone.

Watching Water

There is something
calming about watching
water with its algae-emerald
cast and so clear that
you see clusters of
dogpaddling turtles
circling each other with
no particular purpose
except to circle, then
gliding off in search of
new meanders; catfish
so large they look like
those prehistoric fish
netted up by
Japanese whalers; and
flows of wind sheening
across the surface
like silver knives.


Poem composed 10/2/10 on the balcony of the Great Room at Laity Lodge, near Kerrville, Texas. Submitted for One Shot Wednesday at One Stop Poetry.

Photograph: The Frio River, taken from the Circuit Bluff Trail, Laity Lodge, courtesy of my cell phone.