Aj Schwanz

My hubby’s leaving for a trip, my son’s engaging in Bouncy Toddler Endless Energy antics, and I have not so much time to blog. SO, go check out folks who do:

Wess & Zach wrote responses to my post “Bread of Life Shouldn’t Make You Choke” (Quakes and sacraments).

Brother Maynard wrote a post regarding “Church Detox: Does It Have To Be Cold Turkey?”

I love blogging’s ability to help get ideas out there: now if only blogging could provide a qualified caretaker for my son so I could actually have time to respond.

When I was a freshman in college, I hung out with seniors. One friend’s brother was the lead singer of a band and performed under a pseudonym. My friend told stories about getting to travel around with his brother on tour: meeting David Bowie, Bonnie Rait, etc. — the crazy things that one gets to do when one’s brother is a rockstar.

When I was a freshman, I was also head over heels infatuated with U2 - they were my boys (and still are). My Biography/Autobiography professor Laurel Lee Thaler gave us an assignment to read a biography: guess what I read? It was St. Patrick’s Day week, and a high school friend and I decided to sprint up to visit a friend as Seattle Pacific University on a whim. So as not to be completely irresponsible, I took my U2 book with me: I read, he drove - see how I was a good college student.

On my way up there, I was reading about a time when U2 was having problems with Spin magazine: they were reviewing U2 albums that hadn’t been released yet, and they were printing stories by a “fan” who followed the band and somehow had info into backstage information. It wasn’t very kind. U2, or someone, traced the “leak” back to the boyfriend of their opening band’s bass guitarist. The biographer talked about how the opening band’s bass player and lead singer were having problems. As the author talked about the lead singer, the name started sounding more and more familiar, but I couldn’t place it. Then finally, as Kasey and I were heading back home, it came to me: “Good Lord, this is my friend’s brother!!!!”

The first thing I did upon my return was beeline back to my friend, throw the book in his face, and say “Is this stuff true?” Why did I ask my friend that? If the author got that story right, then most likely he got the rest of the biography right. My friend’s personal experience could help validate the thoughts and ideas of the writer. My friend read it and said it was pretty dead-on (see, my friend was actually there when it happened. Yes: that means my friend GOT TO TOUR WITH U2, but that’s beside the point).

How cool was that, to read a book, and read about someone you kinda know? That’s pretty cool. Last night, I had a similar experience. I was reading more of “Emerging Churches” and came across a section in the chapter ‘Transforming Secular Space’:

Emerging churches do not occupy a reactive and defensive stance in regard to the wider culture but rather seek to engage it as insiders. As Andy Thornton (Late Late Service, Glasgow, U.K.) points out, “It is not only missional questions that drive the impetus for creating new forms of church. What plays a major role in new forms of church is simply the desire for lifelong Christians to make sense of their two worlds: their church and their culture. The people who care most about the cultural disconnect within the church are the kids of the people in church. Look at the leaders of the alternative worship scene. Almost all are kids of influential Christian people. These kids want to stop being cultural outsiders. They look to bring their two worlds together. They seek authenticity, and, in so doing, they need to end the dissonance.” Emerging churches want to stay true to both their faith and their culture. (75)

I wrote a big note in the margins: “That’s ME!” No, the authors aren’t quoting me or my specific life, but it so cries out of my experience that it felt like they had a peek into my life. I’ve always felt like I’ve lived two worlds: my school/work/real life world and my church world. Sometimes they meet up, mostly because I live in a small town where I run into folks on a regular basis. When I lived in Boise, that wasn’t the case: I definitely had a work-world/church-world/play-world. It’s not that I wanted to keep them separate, but I didn’t really know how they could ever meet up: they had nothing in common.

Why did I start on this whole faith quest? Because my friends who used to be in my church-world have moved over to my daily-life-world, and I wish everyone could meet up and get along. Life should be holistic, shouldn’t it?

I know there are critics and advocates of the emerging church conversation: everyone seems to have something to say. But reading something that so sums up my experience, something said with understanding and compassion, it makes me want to give that person a big hug and say “thank you” and listen to them some more.

I’ve been hearing a lot about church being a way of life rather than a thing to do. Heck, I’ve been one of those voices contributing to the murmur. But as each day ends the same way, I wonder what sort of steps I’ve taken towards living the life God’s called me to.

• Have I changed at all?
• Have I heard God more clearly?
• How have I carried my cross today? What does that even mean?

So many conflicting voices offer direction in my noggin: new voices that seem right, but I haven’t had enough personal experience and time to discern their centeredness; old voices of tradition justifying their place. Cultural ideas - both of America, of suburban living, of American church, of Quaker tradition. It’s enough to make me want to change my occupation to that of a Desert Father (except in my locality it’d be a Vineyard Mother).

This phenomenon doesn’t seem to be localized to my experience. Grace wrote a fantastic post about her journey and finding others with similar stories. I resonate, but I fear going through the detox process they’ve chosen to experience - would it mean I have to go cold turkey? What does that look like? What about the good things that I might miss?

I remember detoxing from caffeine - the shakes, the crankiness, the migraines. My body hurt; my emotions weren’t so much on the stable side. I remember getting lots of advice on how to get through it, but due to feeling so crappy, I couldn’t really hear much of it: I was just focused on breathing and making it another day until finally the nasties were out of my system.

Maybe it’d be better to say that it’s fasting from church (but not Church): part of that spiritual practice involves God bringing things to the surface that are dumbed down by the object being fasted from. Have you ever done that? What was it like for you? What did the Spirit reveal to you? Do you think God could ever call us to fast from church as we know it, or am I looking at a dead-end fork in the path?

Somedays wonderful things come your way: I’m so glad someone’s got a handle on things I need to get me through life.

Jason’s gone on a trip; the cat’s been freaked out by the neighbor’s dog; Judah’s got diaper rash and a cold; I missed a meeting due to lack of sitter; and my nightly injuries consist of a forked temple (thank you, son) and a cracked tooth (thank you, Soy Nuts). I didn’t know a chunk of your tooth could just fall off - some things you just don’t really want to know.

As I sat next to the bathtub where Judah was soaking his baboon butt, I looked over a copy of Cooks Illustrated. This magazine is partners with the folks who do America’s Test Kitchen which is like Alton Brown, but not as ADD and a little more anal. A copy just showed up in our mailbox today - I don’t know why, and I’m not going to ask: I’ve never been one to turn away food stuffs. Of course, they want me to sign up for a real subscription AND they’ll rush me a microplane grater. Tempting . . .

The first article/editorial is titled “Waiting for the Run,” written by Christopher Kimball (the lead host, a.k.a. guy with the bowtie) talking about having to wait to harvest sap for syrup.

If you spend much time in the country, you are used to waiting. Each year, we wait for the corn to come up, the pigs to put on weight, the potatoes to mature, the river to go down, the ground to thaw out, the rain to come, the rain to stop (I’m sure that’s a shout out to us in the Pacific Northwest), and the weather to clear for haying. Nothing is immediate. Everything is in the process of becoming. One older neighbor received a new hat for Christmas. When asked why his significant other didn’t also give him a pair of gloves, he remarked, “Well, I’m going to have to wait ’til next year. She isn’t sure I’m going to last.” No point spending money on a new pair of gloves if you aren’t going to get some use out of them.

The last part made me giggle - a nice restbit from a day majoring in “uhoh” rather than “haha.”

These past couple of weeks I’ve been antsy: I don’t know if I’m tired of the winter gray or realizing that spring’s coming or feeling something new moving this way. I’ve been impatient, and in proper generational form, I believe something should be happening . . . NOW. Folks keep saying things like “direction takes time,” “growth doesn’t happen overnight,” “God moves slowly.” But both personally and corporately, I’m tappin’ my toes waiting for my need for instant gratification to be satisfied. I don’t want to become; I want to be.

We just have to learn to be patient, to know that our time is spent in transition, in waiting rooms of our imagination. And then, one day, we wake up and realize that the sap isn’t going to run. There will be no boil, no steam, and no syrup. The fish doesn’t rise to the fly, the woods remain cold and empty, and you never see your friend again. I guess we had better learn to enjoy the waiting.

Not everything comes, even if I wait. Not everything happens the way I think it should - from days that were supposed to be spent editing rather than recouping, to spiritual changes that seem like crawling rather than running. I guess that’s why my birth certificate doesn’t say “God” on it, eh? So, how does one enjoy the waiting? I guess by reading “serendipitous” magazines and getting splashed with bubbles from the neighboring bather - that could be a good start.

Sounds like I’m really missing out at the National Pastors Conference.

Ah, Doug. Get that man some guacamole!

“They were changed men themselves before they went about to change others. Their hearts were rent as well as their garments, and they knew the power and work of God upon them…And as they freely received what they had to say from the Lord, so they freely administered it to others. The bent and stress of their ministry was conversion to God, regeneration and holiness, not schemes of doctrines and verbal creeds or new forms of worship, but a leaving off in religion the superfluous and reducing the ceremonious and formal part, and pressing earnestly the substantial, the necessary and profitable part, as all upon a serious reflection must and do acknowledge. ~ William Penn“

ìhow do we honour the reformers?

By faithfully repeating their formula?

Or by courageously following their example?î ~ Brian McLaren

HT

Is there a person in your life that you can remember who at the mere thought of them made you feel worse about yourself? Not that they necessarily did anything to bring those feelings about, but nonetheless, you felt waves of guilt or shame or inadequacy when you saw them?

I used to feel that way as a kid whenever I saw my music teachers. I had a number of piano teachers - not because of bad things, but either we moved or they moved or I finally stopped pretending that I wanted to play the piano for a while, forgot why I stopped, and started again.

I remember distinctly hating Mondays in second grade. I had eight pairs of pants to get me through the week: thatís one for each day, and then one extra while the rest were being washed. I happened to own two pairs of bright florescent pink corduroys: I hated pink, and I hated cords. So I would avoid wearing them, meaning that every Monday (wash day in our house) one of them was sitting there, the only pair of pants left to be worn.

And Monday was piano lessons day, the day where I would be anxiously trying to figure out if I could fake knowing the materials. I didnít like practicing, so I would put it off for more important things, like riding my bike or figuring out how many somersaults it took to get from the house to the end of the driveway (enough to make you nauseous); but then Monday morning the perfectionist/performance being in me kicked in, and I stressed out trying to get everything right so I could get through lessons and then ignore the piano for six more days until the dreaded Monday 3:30 lesson rolled around again.

If I had been vocal about the little hell I created for myself, my mother probably would have said:

ìIf you hate wearing these pants on Monday, mix them up. Or letís get you another pair.î
ìIf you practice some during the week, you wonít hate Monday so much, and you wonít make yourself such a nervous wreck.î

But I didnít share. And I started to avoid my teachers, which was hard when one of my piano teachers happened to be my churchís music pastor. See, they did nothing but affirm me when I played decently, and they kindly encouraged me when I needed improvement. But perfectionism combined with guilt led to me not liking them: I felt worse about myself when I was around them because I knew I was slacking off and not measuring up. They had nothing to do with it: it was all in my head - and the more I didnít talk about it, the worse it got.

I realized that I think of God and the church that way sometimes. When I look at the church building, I can easily think about how Iím not measuring up in service: not doing enough, not giving enough. In times where I seek to experience God, I can focus on how much of a sinner I am, how much Iím falling short, how much judgment I deserve. Part of it is me: areas I need to confess, places God is working on me. But part of it is the environment Iíve experienced in the church. I wonder why I didnít invite friends to church as a kid; frankly, I donít think I had any good news to share with them. ìHere, come accept Christ into your heart, and then God will constantly pick at you and micromanage your sin so that you feel like the blob of mud that you are.î

If I knew someone felt that way every time they saw or thought about me, Iíd be awfully sad.

Recently Iíve heard the purpose of the church shouldnít be about sin-management; the Good News is that the Kingdom of God is here - open for anyone who wishes to partake! I sense joy in this message, but I also wonder what it means to partake in the Kingdom of God. Can a church organization/system thatís so steeped in tradition get on board with this? What will this look like? Iím excited to find out . . .

Today my husband and I made a trip out to Gresham to bid farewell to some relatives . . . and to get first dibs at their garage sale goods. On the way out there I kept plugging on through Emerging Churches. Jason asked how it was: “good.” “How is it compared to the other books you’ve read?” “Really good.” Helpful, eh?
Driving back, I was thinking about emerging stuff. I find the book “really good” in that it articulates ideas and trends and noticings that I’ve sensed for some time but haven’t been able to communicate: it describes attributes of a holistic life - a life completely lived in the sacred where every moment is an opportunity for worship, forgiveness, community, giving.

But I could hear many folks in my mind saying, “This is nothing new. It might be said differently; it might be packaged differently; but this stuff has been around for centuries.” People offer up examples of historic figures who blazed the way changing lives and living out God’s love. While I appreciate looking to the past to recognize and honor these figures, I wonder how much good it’s really doing: it’s fairly easy to rest on our laurels of “well, this amazing person is part of my worship tradition” without actually doing anything they stood for. This is somewhat of a club mentality: we have “so and so” in our corner, so we’re secure. Somehow I don’t think it all works out this way.

When folks hear “emerging church,” there seems to be a variety of reactions - mainly “Huh? What is it?” to “OH: I’ve heard about it, and it’s New Age/going away from Christianity/Gen-X thing/not theologically sound.” A lot of that comes from folks in the emerging movement and folks in the traditional movement not conversing. But also I wonder if it comes from terminology.

“Emerging: Newly formed or just coming into prominence.”

In the American consumeristic society, for something to be new means there has to be something that’s old: old is bad, useless, not needed (at least in the marketing world where ipods are only good for a couple of months before the next model comes out rendering the former antiquated and somewhat undesired). When folks in the traditional churches hear “emerging,” I sense as though the term is a sort of subtle slam: traditional is old and useless, i.e. the way you do church is old and useless. To say something like that can strike at the core of a person: look at history where wars have been fought for centuries over beliefs regarding religious differences.

To me, it seems like the term “emerging” gets folks’ hackles up. Plus, to say that these beliefs and ideas and revelations are something completely new seems pretty arrogant as though it took two thousand years and now our “enlightened” generation figured it out.

Is there a word or phrase that could embody how God is moving among us and how we are responding? Something that respects both the new and old practices, something that is more holistic, something that isn’t Christianese, something that makes sense?

• Organic
• Rooted
• Core
• Convergent (to borrow from a friend)
• Incarnational
• ?????

What does it look like to you? How do you see God moving, and what do you call is when you partner with God in what God’s already doing?

Language is a tricky thing. If I was talking with my former roommates and said ìthe good entrance to the mall,î they would know I was talking about an entrance at Washington Square where one steps to the left into Starbucks* or to the right into Cinnabon or a step further to Jamba Juice**. On Sunday mornings we would pile into one of our cars, clad in sweatshirts and pajama pants and slippers, and drive thirty minutes to ìthe good entranceî to get food for the day: coffee, a cinnamon roll, and a smoothie (we were on a carbs-only diet - probably the reason Atkins was created). The reason my roommates would know what I mean when I say ìthe good entranceî is because weíve experienced it.

Same things happens when trying to understand the meaning of one word: generally I comprehend when itís related to my own experience. In AP English my teacher taught us the word ìcathartic,î but we didnít really get it until after one of our classmates came in and yelled about how unfair some assignment was - she went into great detail about how it was too much work, how too many other classes were asking for the same stuff, and how life was just too crazy as a senior. When she slumped into her chair after her tirade, the teacher asked, ìFeel better?î ìYes.î ìThen what youíre feeling in catharsis - you unloaded, and now you can move on.î

Scot McKnight has posted an article on the emerging church. Andrew Jones posted a quote from it. I thought it sounded good, and then I realized I didnít really know what was being contrasted/what was different. I looked up words, but they all seemed to be related. So I asked some friends for a translation:

Okay, so here’s a definition of “emerging” . . . except I don’t get it. What’s the difference between eccelsiology and theology (in practical terms, pleaseandthankyou)?

And Gregg responded, cause heís nice like that:

Eccelsiology is the study or practice of how we do church. What makes the church, “the church”? What’s its purpose, what are its practices, what does it do, etc. It’s technically a subset of theology, the study of everything
about God.

So in the case of the definition, I think it goes something like this:

The EM is a way of doing church that is shaped most by a missional focus, (an attempt for the church to do what God is doing in the world), that seeks to unite Christians for the sake of unleashing the gospel to change the world, rather than a set of particular beliefs about God that is designed to get people to believe certain things about God.

Thereyougoandyourwelcome.

I *love* people who get the BIG stuff and can translate it to me in terms that I can associate with an experience (because apparently thatís how I process information). AND I donít feel dumb. Thatís always nice, too. But now, after thinking about “the good entrance,” I’m hungry. And my hubby’s got worship practice after work: stink.

*Did you know they just came out with a new drink? I must’ve sensed a tremor in the Javasphere, because during the ETC (one moment when I wasn’t theologically in tune), I wondered why they don’t call Caramel Macchiatos just “Macchiatos” because they had already twisted the original recipe so much and they didn’t have any other versions. But St. Arbucks knew: and they almost made me look like a fool . . . almost. After my wandering thoughts, I spent time trying to remember how to spell Macchiato - ah, mama of wee brain.

** Do you remember when it was Zuka Juice? My dad has cups with that logo on them - vintage, I tell you.

I have a friend who’s having a hard time. My friend is struggling through some pretty heavy stuff. Folks keep telling me that struggles make you stronger when you come out the other side; while it’s easy to say that in hindsight, it’s not comforting in the midst of the immediate moment.

One place I do find comfort is in being accepted in God’s beloved - and fortunately I, and my friend, don’t have to come out through the other side of that.

Every thought God has about you is a good one. The Father is happy with you right now! Whyóbecause you are in Christ. You are accepted in the beloved. The sacrifice has been made, the price has been paid, and God is happy. If you get better He won’t be any happier. What will change is your ability to receive that love. You are in Christ, you are the beloved of God. The Father will only look at us through the lens of Jesus. And He is happy with us because He is happy with the sacrifice of Christ. We are His beloved children and we are accepted. - Graham Cooke