The Melheimian Sabbatiblog

Head to the Heart or Head to the Realtor

You can anesthetize most of the human brain and the heart keeps pumping. Anesthetize the heart, however, and the brain quickly dies. Whatever we do as the church, we have got to become heart specialists. Our pulpits must preach to the heart. Our classrooms must reach to the heart. Our homes must strengthen and nourish the heart. Our entire system of delivering the Good News must shift from primarily efforts of the head to primarily efforts of the heart.

The head is a modern target. The heart is a pre-modern and post-modern target. We don’t live in a modern world any longer. It will serve the church no useful purpose to continue to target the past. Preaching to a crowd that doesn’t exist will only assure a future where the crowd actually does not exist. People won’t come back if their hearts have not been touched by the church. They can’t come back. (You can’t come back to a place you’ve never been.)

The church that doesn’t head to the heart might as well head to the realtor.

MV0044WordinMyHeart

Sneaking Up Olympus

 

I'm working on Meaning for my DMIN, and in my conversations today with colleagues, we spent some time on the meaning of culture, the meaning of power, and the question of who will be pulling the strings of society when the Wikiworldview and collective voice becomes more and more a part of the shaping of views and news in our kids lives.

It got me to thinking: In the ancient world, the Gods sat atop Mt. Olympus, frolicing, partying, warring - totally out of reach by the rest of us schmucks slopping around in our muddy and miserable existence down here. Only once in a while did they descend to the mortal realm to mess with us, pull our strings, mate (and create a demigod) and only every so often do our bidding begrudgingly.

Who decided what was going to happen? Only a very few at the very top. The rest of us were out of power, out of our league, and out luck.

So, you gotta ask yourself - has much changed?

Who decides fashon?

In "The Devil Wears Prada" world, only a few.

Who decides what's cool?

Six movie studios... and Steve Jobs.

Who decided what a person's work is worth?

The team owners who decide $50M is fair for Derek J? A multi-national board who okays a $10M bonus for a CEO who after he slashes a thousand people's pensions off his budget?

Who decides on a war?

In the geopolitical world, only a few gods at the top pull the strings.

The rest of the poor schmucks do their bidding, salute the flag and go off to die in the mud.

I'm wondering if the Wikiworld collective voice and hive mentality will gain enough power to one day sneak up the mountain and let a little air out of the gods tires?

If and Maybe...

If we could pull the pews and face eachother around round tables...
If we could serve a feast for the neighborhood instead of a styrofoam wafer and a Mogan David... and only a sip at that...
If we could make the sober a little more light (or tipsy?) and the drunk a little more sober (or thoughtful)...
If we could play the music people are listening to instead of the music their grandparents thought was new when they were teens...
If we could greet one another with a holy kiss...
If we could spill out into the streets dancing...
If we could send out as many as we take in...
If we could tell the soul-less institutions to go to hell, and the sick souls to go to heaven...
If we could lavish our love and attention on the children instead of telling them to sit still and be quiet...
If we could see next Sunday as our last Sunday... ever...
If we could preach like this was our last Sermon... ever...
If we could sing like a million voices was backing us up...
And pray like we were all alone, naked, in the presence of the Living God...
Maybe church would be different.
Maybe the margins would move in... and the inside would move out.

Rich

Chalk Up One for the Athiests

53% of Protestants don't know that Martin Luther started the protestant reformation. That's just out from a survey released today by the Pew Forum.

Turns out athiests and agnostics know more about the core teachings, history and leading figures of major world religions than Christians do.

Of course, knowing the facts and living them aren't the same thing. I just hope they don't do another survey on applying faith to life and discover that athiest are more Christ-like than Christians, too.

 

Three Questions for the Doctorate

Here's what I woke to this morning, from the deck of our cabin on German Lake.

I begin my DMin work in a week with Len Sweet, and just had to fill out a brief online form with three questions. Here they are:

1. Briefly describe your ministry context:

I am the founder of Faith Inkubators, a Christian education systems think tank and learning organization working on parent-involved models of education with the church as reinforcement - not replacement - in the faith nurture of children. I have about 2200 churches in our network, testing our methods, using our materials, attending training events, etc. Most of these are from my own Lutheran world. A growing number are UMC.

2. Briefly state your research topic/problem:

I am working on the living end of the dying mainline church, and wondering how we might be used to bring Christ to families, and families to Christ in a world where church is often last on the crowded and over-committed priority list of families here and in Australia. How can we harness the most effective means/methods, the most dedicated people, and the most effective times along the faith journey to plant, nurture, and grow the seeds of faith? What are best-practices in education, based on our latest understanding of teaching the way the brain learns? How can we harness the tools of the moment and prepare for the tools of the future? Where do the arts fit in with this tech-savvy generation? Where do the latest social networking tools fit? How can we help families hold together in a world that can tear them apart?

3. Why are you exploring THIS topic/problem?

20 years ago, after two suicides of young men in my youth group and after taking over the call of a youth pastor who committed suicide in a large church,  I began searching for better models of ministry to teens and their parents. I experimented for a few years on more effective faith incubation systems, then took a sabbatical from parish ministry to learn, network, teach, and experiment with a small but growing network of pastors who wanted to ditch the classroom model of learning and go to a stronger community-focused model. At that time, I thought it would be about a one year break from the parish. I'm still on the quest.

Parents have been, are and always will be the most important faith mentors for their own children, whether we as the church choose to admit it and support them or not. We cannot unteach in 52 minutes a week what the rest of society teaches the other 10,028 minutes. Pastors and youth workers will not be there for the long-haul in a child's life. The best, most dedicated, most motivated, and most consistent youth workers possible are parents. I believe it's high time the church gives the parents back to the kids. I also believe it's time we kill the parentless drop-off spiritual warehouse model (Sunday School) of faith incubation before it kills the church, and replace it with a parent-engaged cross-generational learning community that supports the family rather than segregating it on Sunday morning.