The Melheimian Sabbatiblog

New He Qi Sketch

Here's a new piece my friend He Qi just sketched for the ELCA's Global Mission Event logo for the new year.

Any comments before we send it off?

Complainers or Producers?

I received a link from a friendly FINK to a 26 year old pastor who's blog I now appreciate. Among other things Bill Barnwell has said recently on his Wilderness Crier blog :

"As it appears right now, Christians appear to be happy consumers of technological and cultural advancement, but not very good producers. Every day Christians benefit from using scientific and technological information and tools that make our lives better. Ironically and whether it’s fair or not, Christians have the worst reputation of impeding science and/or being indifferent to cultural advancement. They appear content rather just talking about how bad the world is and pat themselves on the back for doing their very best to keep from interacting meaningfully with the popular culture.

This simply should not be. Up until relatively recently and contrary to widespread misconceptions, Christians were always on the cutting edge of society and making history. Today "progress" is a word that scares many Christians. They equate it with theological liberalism or a softening of moral standards. This discussion has nothing to do with those things and I certainly have never advocated that. This has to do with Christians and their place in society and whether or not they truly want to influence it. Rather than wishing that we could return to 1955, (an era still reflected in probably most Protestant churches today)

Christians need to move forward and realize that the world is changing with or without them on board. Robert Bork warned Christians that the popular culture and society was "Slouching towards Gomorrah." This is in part because many Christians have chosen to abandon it or have no idea how to function in non-Christian circles. Perhaps the greater concern today for Christians should be that they are Slouching towards Irrelevancy. What makes all this most ironic is that Christians just assume the non-Christian world should just adopt their worldview and vote their way on political issues just because they say so without offering much incentive. There is no real reason for many of them to do so right now.

Both Christians and non-Christians would benefit from a greater free exchange of ideas and cultural contributions offered by the faith community. Today the areas that could make the biggest difference in terms of influencing popular opinion – TV, movies, music – are areas that Christians ignore (or instead their focus is on substandard Christian countercultural entertainment). The arts should rightfully be seen as a high calling with great potential by Christians rather than something to be indefinitely avoided. Economically, Christians can and should look for ways they can invest into their community and the Internet with products that could make people’s lives better and more interesting (and no, there’s nothing from a Christian standpoint that says people are never supposed to enjoy themselves).

With a little creativity, risk, and investment, there’s nothing stopping a Christian from putting his or her own highly popular product on the web for the masses to consume. Basically, it’s time for Christians to think about what they can produce, not just what they can consume (or ignore). When Christians decide to move on from the 50’s and become producers as well as just consumers and apocalyptic cultural dropouts, they will finally rediscover their historical roots of being influential cultural movers and shakers in the world that they live." December 20, 2006

Bounce over to Bill Wilderness Crier and if you like his stuff, consider doing a blog attack with your  friends.

Tell him Melheim the FINK sent you.

Death and Passing

With the old year soon to pass away and the new to come, I thought I'd share something on death and life.

My friend Craig T lost his father last night.
He writes:

Dear Friends,
After a battle with lung and brain cancer my dad Paul Roland Olson at age 81 moved on from death to eternal life tonight at 8:03PM in his room at home in Brooklyn Park MN with Marilyn his wife of 58 years, 5 children and a grandson surrounding him on all sides.

He was listening to us till the very last breath and had a tear in his eye. He was listening to "I Commit Myself To You" on the radio as he left his mortal body. With no speech for a week, he used his face, arms and smile to speak the last week. Amazingly, many of his best friends came to the house in the last 3 days to say goodbye to his face and tell stories as he smiled, gave thumbs up, pointed fingers, gave hugs and shed tears as each person came and went. A highlight was three of his remaining grade school buddies who he played basketball with for Edison in the State Finals, went to war with at 17 and played golf with till this summer. They came by to pay last respects. It gave me a whole new meaning to "life long friends" who'll always be there till the end. (what stories they told to dad in honoring him in front off his children).

His eyes had been closed since Wednesday night but 5 minutes before he passed, he opened those bright blue eyes to look at everyone.

Breathing each second he suddenly gasped for air and after 15 seconds gasped again. On the fourth time he gasped and slowly let his breath go.

So natural, so powerful, so graceful, so humbly we come and we go.

Some people use the word death.

Some use the word "passed" as in "passed away" or "passed on".

I like passed.

It sounds like we've accomplished something and moved on to the next level.

Bless you, Craig, and those who wait with you on this side of eternity.

(Drop Craig a note if you get the chance at cto@praise2worship.com)

From My Friend in Bethlehem

"Jesus Is Born"

This just in from my friend, Pastor Mitri Raheb at the Lutheran church in Bethlehem:

Dear Sisters and Brothers:

Salaam from the little town of Bethlehem.

Our Christmas message this year will not focus on the Separation Wall or the struggle for political control between Fateh and Hamas. Rather, we would like to invite you to visit the people living behind the Wall as they prepare for Christmas. We invite you to watch a short clip produced by the students of Dar al-Kalima College; to listen to a short Arabic Christmas hymn performed by our Bethlehem Star choir; to enjoy a few snapshots featuring our program for the elderly “Ajyal”; to get introduced to some of our artisans as they produce a Christmas banner; to enjoy the work of one of our art teachers exhibiting his oil paintings for Christmas.

It was around this time that the Divine opened a window for humanity to see and know Him through the child of Bethlehem. This is why we open this window to invite you to see the people  of Bethlehem, our beneficiaries, as they celebrate the coming of Christ to their town.

We wish you all a Merry Christmas, and a blessed 2007.

Rev. Dr. Mitri Raheb

The Staff of the International Center of Bethlehem, Dar al-Kalima College, and the Health & Wellness Center.

Back to Rich:
Please consider visiting www.annadwa.org and especially their gift store for cards (like above) and gifts. Take a look at some of their authentic Christmas presents by their artists. Since tourism is one of their only means of income (and since you still may need some unique Christmas presents), consider ordering directly from them. I hope to help them connect some of their young artists with some of ours in 2007. If you've got ideas for their art, connections with places who might sponsor an artist in residence, or other ideas on how to break down walls and build up friendships in 2007, let me know.

Quality School

One of the foundational books of my beginnings in educational theory as it applies to Christian faith formation was Wm. Glasser’s "The Quality School." In his book, Glasser says, "In the quality school, everyone is the teacher."

There are only three criteria for the Quality School according to Glasser:
On graduation day in the quality school:

1. Every student can speak intelligently about the subjects they’ve studied
2. Every student can write intelligently about the subjects they’ve studied
3. Every student can TEACH the subjects they’ve studied

How can that happen unless they’ve been speaking, writing and teaching the subjects to one another all along?

A lot has been written lately about the stupidity of giving multiple choice (ABC) and true/false tests to kids. They can guess themselves to a reasonable grade, but do they really understand the stuff? Most educational pros today would give a resounding "no" to that. Grades don't mean they understand. To know that a kid understands it,  you need to listen to them explain it (teach) to someone else.

So, ask yourself: How well can your kids explain what you just taught them to someone else? How many people do you ask them to teach after they've just been taught? How many times are they up in front of a class, in front of a congregation in worship, or in front of a video camera sharing their insights, understanding and take on the subjects they've taken from you.

If they're done once they've taken the course and the test, you may have wasted all of your time. If, on the other hand, they're only beginning once they've taken the course from you, and they're asked to now start sharing with others (their stories, their arts, their music, their perspectives, their experience with the truth of it, etc.) you may have created a quality faith school.

Dis-Eased

Is the mainline church diseased?

Let's take a look:

Dictionary.com Unabridged (v 1.1) - Cite This Source dis-1

a Latin prefix meaning “apart,” “asunder,” “away,” “utterly,” or having a privative, negative, or reversing force (see de-, un-2); used freely, esp. with these latter senses, as an English formative: disability; disaffirm; disbar; disbelief; discontent; dishearten; dislike; disown

 
So much for dis. How about ease?

Dictionary.com Unabridged (v 1.1) - Cite This Source ease   /iz/ Pronunciation Key - Show Spelled Pronunciation[eez] Pronunciation Key - Show IPA Pronunciation noun, verb,  eased, eas·ing.

–noun 

1.	freedom from labor, pain, or physical annoyance; tranquil rest; comfort: to enjoy one's ease.

2.	freedom from concern, anxiety, or solicitude; a quiet state of mind: to be at ease about one's health.

3.	freedom from difficulty or great effort; facility: It can be done with ease.

4.	freedom from financial need; plenty: a life of ease on a moderate income.

5.	freedom from stiffness, constraint, or formality; unaffectedness: ease of manner; the ease and elegance of her poetry.

–verb (used with object) 

6.	to free from anxiety or care: to ease one's mind.

7.	to mitigate, lighten, or lessen: to ease pain.

8.	to release from pressure, tension, or the like.

9.	to move or shift with great care: to ease a car into a narrow parking space.

10.	ease out, to remove from a position of authority, a job, or the like, esp. by methods intended to be tactful: He was eased out as division head to make way for the boss's nephew.

---

[Origin: 1175–1225; (n.) ME ese, eise < AF ese, OF aise, eise comfort, convenience < VL *adjace(m), acc. of *adjacés vicinity (cf. ML in aiace in (the) vicinity), the regular outcome of L adjacénsadjacent, taken in VL as a n. of the type nūbés, acc. nūbem cloud; (v.) ME esen < AF e(i)ser, OF aisier, deriv. of the n.]

So, are we by definition diseased?

Seems to me the thousands of mainline pastors I deal with have more than their share of labor, pain and physical annoyance, concern, anxiety, financial need, stiffness, pressure... go down the list.

So, is the church diseased? Separated (di) from all the good stuff God wants for us?

Yes. By definition, most clearly yes. So, church doctors out there, what's the prognosis? And what can we do about this in the weeks and months ahead?

In this season of advent as we await the Prince of Peace, maybe we should think about treatment for the diseased church. I'm open to prescriptions and treatment suggestions. Send them on, but before you do, remember this:

Babies bring labor, pain, physical annoyance, concern, anxiety, financial need, some stiffness and pressure, too.

But then, they also bring hope.

Torture

Friends

I have a friend who walked into the company he started on Monday and was fired.

I have a friend who will be spending his second Christmas without his fun teenaged son.

I have a friend who will be spending her first Christmas without her husband.

I have a friend who will be spending his last Christmas on this side of eternity.

I have a friend who was fired from his church in Ohio this week because he tried to implement the radical (literally "to the root") concepts for family ministry that I taught him. He tried to tell the parents that he would be the best ally they ever had in the Christian parenting of their own children, but he wouldn't do their job for them.

I have a new friend who left Ethiopia, won a documentary award at Cannes, and now can never go home.

I have a friend who ran a major Lutheran publishing house for 39 years and now they never call him.

I have a friend who didn't last three months in her new call to a local mega church.

I have a friend who wrote a letter to her Bishop to tell him he was completely wrong and out of order (according to Robert's Rules) when he allowed a voice vote to overturn a paper ballot instructing his synod to use only officially sanctioned curriculum from the national church publishing house rather than my material.

I have some wonderful, brave, and hurting friends.

Take a look around.

So do you.

Art is the Lie

Art is the lie that helps you see the truth. - Picasso

I was mulling over the words "art" and "artificial" and "artifact" this morning while looking out my window at the 20 x 20 ft Christmas card I hung last week. Digging around online I found this:

American Heritage Dictionary - Cite This Source

ar·ti·fi·cial   (är'tə-fĭsh'əl)  Pronunciation Key     

adj. 

1. 1. Made by humans; produced rather than natural.
   2. Brought about or caused by sociopolitical or other human-generated forces or influences: set up artificial barriers against women and minorities; an artificial economic boom.
2. Made in imitation of something natural; simulated: artificial teeth.
3. Not genuine or natural: an artificial smile.

Question for the day: Are you artificial?

Worship, Art & Liturgy

"What are you Melheim? Lazy or Stupid? If you are lazy, that's no excuse! If you are stupid, that's an excuse!" - Dr. Demitri Georgicas, my first (but not last) Greek Professor at UND whenever I messed up on a translation in front of the class

Hold that thought. I'll get back to it in a moment. First a question: Who does the art for your corporate worship? Professional artists? Only adults? Only people who have been dead for 100 years?

Here's another question: What are you - lazy or stupid?

Why in the H-E-Double Toothpicks wouldn't you want the kids of your church sharing their art every week?  Why wouldn't you feature their interpretions of the texts ALL THE TIME - not just on a youth Sunday? Why wouldn't you celebrate their art  and make it both seen AND heard as part of enriching the worship (and pulling inactive parents into worship) every week in every worship?

Why shouldn't they be singing the texts, signing the texts, arting the texts, acting the texts?

If liturgy is the "work of the people" why not let the children of your church do some liturgy to be featured on your PowerPoints every Sunday during the offering this year? ("The offering that didn't fit in the plate today is sponsored by our Sunday School kids who have studied the preacher's text and have illustrated it for your enjoyment and education...")

If worship is the "vehicle that brings worth to God" then why not let the children's art bring some worth go God on your bulletin covers every Sunday in 2007?

And who is the star of your children's sermons? If the answer is the pastor, you're both lazy AND stupid. Why shouldn't the children's sermons be done by the children?

Why? At the risk of sounding preachy (shudder... this coming from a preacher) it's because we are either:

1. Lazy
2. Stupid

Let's get active and smart.

Kids will drag their parents and friends if they are a significant part of the worship experience every week. They're the best evangelists and faith interpreters you've got.

Use them or lose them.