Perceptions from a Pewboy

The emergent church is a topic that has…uh…”emerged” frequently in our blog conversations. Many of us, I think, are endeavoring to deepen our understanding of the nature and content of this important ecclesiastical movement. This is no simple task given the fact that the theology of the emergent church resists and even decries convenient analysis and typological pigeonholing.

That said, I recently read what, for me, was a tremendously helpful article concerning the emergent church. The article, entitled “Pubs, Clubs, and Alternative Worship,” is found on the website for the Generous Orthodoxy Think Tank. Written by Kevin Corcoran, a professor at Calvin College, the article is essentially a reflection on the emerging and alternative worship movements in the United Kingdom.

Particularly interesting to me is Corcoran’s assertion that “emerging Christians tend to be theologically pluralistic and quite suspicious of tidy theological boxes” and that “they believe that God is bigger than any theology and that God is first and foremost a story-teller, not a dispenser of theological doctrine and factoids.”

I am also intrigued by Corcoran’s suggestion that “emerging Christians are also allergic to thinking which fixates on who is going to heaven and who is going to hell, or on who’s on the inside and who’s on the outside. They stress the importance of right-living (orthopraxy) over right-believing (orthodoxy).”

If any of you choose to peruse the article, I would be very much interested in hearing your thoughts and reactions. The article can be found here.

Yesterday, I treated myself to a cinematic double feature. I saw the 3:15 showing of “Cloverfield” and the 5:00 showing of “Juno.”

“Cloverfield” is a frenetic, spectacle-rich, and highly entertaining New York monster movie filmed entirely with the hand-held video camera of one of the characters. (Think “Blair Witch Project” meets “Godzilla” meets “Independence Day.”) The cinematography imbues the film with a very personal quality, thereby highlighting the rawness of the characters’ emotions and buttressing the sense of realism that permeates the film. Also worth noting is “Cloverfield’s” refusal to provide any elaborate explanation concerning the monster’s origin. Did it come from outer space? Or the sea? Or an underground cave in Central Park? The fact that these questions are left unanswered only serves to highlight the characters’ sense of confusion and uncertainty about what is happening in their city. It is difficult, in fact, not to think about September 11th, 2001 when watching “Cloverfield.” Both settings illuminate the advent of an unanticipated monster in a city that is left horrified and crippled in the wake of the monster’s destruction.

Be warned, however: The Internet Movie Database forum on “Cloverfield” is replete with complaints concerning motion-sickness resulting from the intentionally shaky cinematography. The perpetually vibrating footage produced by the hand-held video camera can certainly produce headaches and nausea! Have a Dramamine handy.

Now, to “Juno.”

“Juno” is the story of a bright and creative teenager (named “Juno”) who finds herself unexpectedly pregnant. The film chronicles Juno’s journey from her child’s conception to his birth and all of the decisions, conversations, and relationships that she faces along the way.

I rarely say this about a film, but I really fell in love with “Juno,” and I did so for a number of different reasons. I fell in love with it because of the way in which it beautifully personalizes a delicate issue (specifically, teen pregnancy) that is all too often reduced in contemporary discourse to little more than statistical analysis and moral pronouncements. I fell in love with it because of the way in which the film offers a spot-on critique of the simplistic and dismissive way with which pregnant teens are often dealt while at the same time avoiding the temptation of taking potshots at the pro-life position. (In fact, one of the film’s minor characters, a teenaged pro-life advocate who stands in protest outside of an abortion clinic, actually provides the message that sends Juno on a redemptive journey toward maturity. With her poor grammar and her simplistic placard, this pro-life teenager is a bit of a caricature, to be sure. But, unlike many films, “Juno” does not treat the pro-lifer’s message as the antiquated thinking of an unenlightened mind. Quite the contrary, the film seems to sense that there is something good and noble about a teenager’s willingness to choose life.)

Most of all, I fell in love with the film because of the wonderfully funny and heartfelt performances of its actors. Ellen Page is a revelation as “Juno.” Her Oscar nomination for best actress is well-deserved (as is the film’s Oscar nomination for best picture). Page’s performance is as witty as it is poignant, as insightful as it is playful. She creates a teenager on screen who marvelously counterbalances her sarcasm with tenderness and whose toughness is undergirded by a palpable vulnerability.

The cast also includes Jennifer Garner, Jason Bateman (who co-starred together in last year’s “The Kingdom”), Allison Janney, and J.K. Simmons (the gifted character actor who plays J. Jonah Jameson in the Spiderman films). The screen chemistry among the ensemble of actors makes the interaction of their characters a pleasure to experience. They make us want to hear their story. Beyond that, they make us care.

“Juno” is the first film written by Diablo Cody who has a background in both blogging (!) and stripping (!!!). Her screenplay is brimful of clever banter and references to popular culture that are both humorous and appropriate. Jason Reitman (Ivan’s son) directed the film. Jason Reitman’s last film was the powerful satire “Thank You for Smoking.” I’m sensing a deft touch in his directorial style.

In the aftermath of the revelation of Juno’s pregnancy, her stepmother offers this heartfelt comment: “Someone’s going to get a special blessing from Jesus in this garbage dump of a situation.” In many ways, that proclamation is the theological conviction that drives the entire film. To be sure, “Juno” is not specifically Christian in its tone or content. But, as a believer, I had no difficulty discerning the redemptive presence of Jesus in the film and, not surprisingly, he was doing what he always does—bringing special blessings out of garbage dumps.

Today, January 18th, is my sixteenth wedding anniversary.

Sixteen years ago, I stood at the altar of Grove City Grace United Methodist Church with Tara Lynn Rivetti, my beloved soul mate and the woman of my dreams. It was a cold and snowy day (my favorite kind of weather, by the way). Inside the sanctuary, however, no one seemed to care about the weather. We sang. We celebrated the presence of God. And we asked the Lord Jesus to strengthen and equip as we made the sacred, beautiful, and wonderfully absurd promise to love, honor, and cherish one another for the rest of our lives.

It was the best day of my life. Tara looked radiant. My father officiated. All of our family and friends were present. Nobody fainted! Sixteen years later, and I am still praising God for the joy of that covenant-making day.

In sixteen years, Tara and I have experienced more joy than I could have ever imagined. We have stood together in ministry and seen the Spirit bring precious souls to Christ and bring other precious souls into an even deeper relationship with him. We have led worship together at weddings and funerals, on Christmas Eve and Easter Sunday, through the contemporary rhythms of “Shout to the Lord” and the ancient poetry of “A Mighty Fortress Is Our God.” We have traveled around the world and seen the richness and diversity of God’s good creation. We have forged blessed relationships with our wonderful in-laws, thereby seeing our family expand in beautiful ways. We have created a home environment that is a context of mutual encouragement, tangibly-expressed love, laughter, and prayer.

We have also experienced profound sorrow during the last sixteen years. We have lost both of Tara’s parents, to whom we were very close. We have seen my father embark on the hard journey of Alzheimer’s Disease. We have stood with members of our church family through their cancer, their divorces, and their depression. Even through tears, though, Tara has helped me to discern the steadfastness of the joy of the Lord—a joy that, unlike transitory and superficial happiness, is not dependent on one’s circumstances, but upon the unwavering embrace of our sovereign God. I pray that I have helped her to discern that joy even half as much as she has helped me.

At the risk of sounding sappy (and the good Lord knows I’ve been accused of that before!), I will tell you that Tara is my favorite person. She brings a sweetness and a pure heart to every situation she enters, and she rarely gets enough credit for this. She is insightful and funny, playful and poetic. Having been raised Baptist, she has the evangelical fervor that those brothers and sisters bring to the table. But she is enough of a Wesleyan to have come to love the interpretive wisdom that results when we view God’s Word through the lenses of tradition, reason, and experience.

In short, Tara is the bomb! I am thanking God for her, even as I type these words.

I am writing this post from a resort called The Homestead in Hot Springs, Virginia. It is the place where we spent our honeymoon sixteen years ago. We have made it a priority to return here every five years in order to…well…remember. We would have come last year (on our fifteenth anniversary), but my mission trip to Africa caused us to delay our return to The Homestead for a year.

It is a beautiful and wintry day here in Virginia, and Tara and I are looking forward to experiencing it. I simply wanted to spend a few moments sharing these deeply personal reflections with my brothers and sisters in the land of blog. Thank you for listening.

And thank you, ever-present, always-creative God, for my marriage. Thank you for the way in which you have matured Tara and me and deepened us through the covenant that you enable us to share. And thank you for the way in which marriage has equipped us to cherish even more abundantly the urgency of the bride of Christ and the goodness of the Groom for which she waits.

Sometimes it takes a spiritual survey to bring a guy out of his new year’s slumber and back into the realm of blogland!

LifeWay Research, the Nashville-based research arm of the Southern Baptist Convention, surveyed 1,402 unchurched adults last spring and summer.  (For the purpose of this survey, “unchurched” was defined as the condition of not having attended a religious service at a church, mosque, or synagogue for at least six months.)  I am no great fan of surveys, but I suppose that they have their place in cultural analysis. 

As one might expect, the responses offered by those surveyed to church-related questions are unsettling.  72% of those surveyed, for example, believe that the church “is full of hypocrites.”  79% believe that today’s Christianity is more about organized religion than it is about loving God and loving people.   And 44% agree with the statement “Christians get on my nerves.”

Results of the survey prompted Ed Stetzer, LifeWay research director, to put into words what many of us have already come to understand from personal experience:  “We no longer have a home-field advantage as Christians in this culture.”  To put it in a more heartbreaking way, a home-field advantage these days means as much to the church as it does to the Pittsburgh Steelers. (Ouch!)

Particularly troubling to me is the survey’s revelation of the fact that 61% of those surveyed believe that there is no difference between the God of the Bible and the gods and spiritual beings depicted by world religions such as Islam and Hinduism.  As Stetzer notes, “non-churchgoers lean toward a generic god that fits into every imaginable religious system, even when those systems contradict one another.” 

Of course, flying in the face of this cultural proclivity to theological syncretism is the “scandal of particularity” invoked by the conviction that Jesus is Lord and that he is the way, the truth, and the life.  Questions abound concerning how this conviction can be lived out graciously but firmly in the company of those who wish to make Jesus, Mohammed, and Buddha interchangeable. 

The survey simply reinforces what I have come to believe about the urgency of helping church people to understand that the current church has far more in common with the church in the book of Acts than it does with the church of the 1950’s or 1960’s.  By that I simply mean that the current church, much like the church in Acts, finds itself surrounded by a non-Christian (or, if you prefer, pre-Christian) population that will require relentless innovation and authenticity and an equally relentless commitment to experimentation in ministry.  All of which is to say that one of the church’s primary challenges is to stop acting as though it is living in a culture that supports its story and instead devote its energy to finding new ways to make that story known to the spiritually hungry and broken people for whom that story is a foreign language.

In his comments on the survey, Arthur Farnsley, administrator for the Scientific Study of Religion, asks a question that, though tongue-and-cheek in its tone, nevertheless gets to the heart of the matter:  “Is there a workshop for churches on being less annoying and hypocritical?!” 

Yeah, I suppose that there is.  It’s called “[letting] the same mind be in you that was in Christ Jesus” (Philippians 2:5)  It’s a workshop that lasts a lifetime.