The blog of J.L. Wasson

"Social fabric and successful communities elsewhere cannot be imported. What works somewhere else..."

Wed, 23 May 2012 12:09:31 -0400

“Social fabric and successful communities elsewhere cannot be imported. What works somewhere else ends up as simply another program here, which might be useful but does not shift the fundamentals we are after.”

- Peter Block, Community: The Structure of Belonging

On Baptism, Eucharist, and Ecumenicism

Tue, 22 May 2012 17:30:10 -0400

Not anyone of us has a monopoly on the good gifts of the gospel..but when you think you have a monopoly you’re always busy excommunicating everyone else.

Walter Brueggemann

In the past few years I have experienced, in different times and places, close friends of mine excluded from membership within their congregations. Congregations that have been both meaningful and encouraging to their faith in Christ. The reason for exclusion?

Baptism.

Not the lack of baptism but the form of baptism.

Individuals who grew up in mainline protestant traditions are being excluded from membership in their adult congregation on account of their paedobaptism.

There are solid biblical and historical reasons for paedobaptism. To believe otherwise is naïve. Additionally, the attempt to trump the argument with the statement that credobaptism is more biblical because there are more instances of credobaptism in the NT is really annoying. Why? Simply because many of the conversions spoken about in the New Testament happened to adults, of course they hadn’t been baptized as infants! But in cases where entire households were converted, the children were baptized as well. Furthermore, to ask someone to be re-baptized misunderstands who is at work during baptism. When anxious about the validity of their baptism under corrupt priests, John Calvin assured congregants it was God who worked in baptism regardless of human agency or method. Baptism is something God does.

But this is less a treatment on paedobaptism and more a call for unity, openness, and understanding. It saddens me that the two most ancient practices of the church have become sources of petty rivalry. The eucharist is equally a source of contention. I recently came across an Eastern Orthodox theologian who observed that the Eucharist is not about what happens to the bread and wine but what happens to us when we partake together. Unfortunately, we often fail to live eucharistic lives because we’re distracted by our attempts to explain the mystery of the elements.

As Brueggemann suggests, it is not up to us to monopolize the gifts of God. When we do we ultimately get caught up in controlling who gets in and who is left out. Our task instead is to tell God’s story and invite people to be part of it. I think we tell the story through baptism and eucharist. It’s all there. In baptism and eucharist we discover that God has chosen and set apart the church to be a blessing for the world by being broken and poured out for it. In baptism and eucharist we are invited to both belong and go forth into the world.

These are shared symbols and gifts given to all of the church to unite us. They exist for the purposes of recognition and community. I think it’s time we recover them for the purposes they were intended.

Baptism is far too meaningful and mysterious to be reduced to excluding fellow believers based on form. If one is faithful to following Christ and serving the world - and by conscience believes his or her baptism is the work of God - it is egregious to exclude him or her from membership.

Please stop asking people to be re-baptized. It’s controlling, naïve, and really damn painful.

Patagonia & Ecclesiology

Thu, 17 May 2012 17:10:00 -0400

I read Yvon Chouinard’s Let My People Go Surfing last year and was captivated by his vision for Patagonia. I highly recommend it. His ambition to make the best product and do the least amount of harm regardless of profits is compelling. Without the pressure of the bottom line, Chouinard was able to create the company he was proud of running. The WSJ recently commented,

His approach to leading a company is perhaps best understood as a sort of performance art—less about the bottom line than about providing a road map for future entrepreneurs.

I realize there are many within economic circles that think he is too much of an idealist. However, it’s hard to argue with the success Patagonia has experienced. I wonder how many companies would eventually still profit without taking the initial short cuts that negatively affect product development and ecological sustainability. As Chouinard himself points out, it is possible for “corporations to lead examined lives.” Patagonia truly represents a corporation with a conscience. Not because they have polished their image for the public or to boost sales, but because they can’t imagine being any other kind of company.

I think Chouinard’s understanding of what makes a healthy company offers thoughtful insights into what makes healthy ministries and churches as well. Patagonia, for the most part, is not a reactionary company, but a visionary one. What I mean is that they produce the type of product they want to produce, not one predicated by the market. I believe it is their vision, rather than the consumer, that drives their company.

Is this not how the church should operate in the world?

I begin with the understanding that the church has to primarily be interested in being faithful and healthy rather than effective and productive. I know I will be accused of creating false dichotomies here and I am not suggesting that both can’t be eventually true at some point. But that is why I said “I begin” with this understanding. I don’t think the church can begin by asking what is faithful and what is effective at the same time. In this sense, I believe the questions are mutually exclusive.

Throughout the Old Testament those prophets and kings who, in a sense, gave the people what they wanted, were those who were largely unfaithful to the promise and covenant of God. By contrast, those prophets and kings who were faithful to God’s promises and covenant were persecuted and unwelcome. Similarly, an argument could be made that prior to the Edict of Milan the church had a strong sense of her identity and calling. The church that emerged post -Constantine was one who severely struggled to be both apart of and apart from the world she was called to serve. Whenever the people of God acquiesce to popular opinion or culture they lose their ability to simultaneously subvert the world and speak prophetically into it. Something I think Walter Brueggeman would refer to as both criticizing and energizing. I think that when the church is involved in this kind of activity she is a blessing to the world and in this sense being the church she is called to be.

Yvon Chouinard had a vision for a company that would affect the world and was determined to invite as many who would participate in that vision to belong to it. In ignoring the market he was free to embody that vision. In the same vein, the church ought to embody God’s vision for the world and invite others to participate and belong. In ignoring the consumer the church is free to subvert a materialistic empire and embody that vision.

"We pray for young people Who put chocolate fingers everywhere, Who like to be tickled, Who stomp in..."

Thu, 17 May 2012 13:35:00 -0400

“We pray for young people
Who put chocolate fingers everywhere,
Who like to be tickled,
Who stomp in puddles and ruin their new pants,
Who ask for $20 before they leave with their friends,
Who erase holes in math workbooks,
Who never put away their shoes.

And we pray for those
Who stare at photographers from behind barbed wire,
Who can’t bound down the street in new sneakers,
Who never “counted potatoes,”
Who aren’t anybody’s Facebook friend,
Who are born in places we wouldn’t be caught dead in,
Who never go to the circus or to a concert,
Who live in an X-rated world.

We pray for young people
Who bring us sticky kisses and fistfuls of dandelions,
Who sleep with the cat and bury goldfish,
Who hug us in a hurry and forget their lunch money,
Who leave make-up all over the sink,
Who slurp their soup.

And we pray for those
Who never get dessert,
Who never had a safe blanket to drag behind them,
Who can’t find any bread to steal,
Who don’t have any rooms or lockers to clean up,
Whose pictures aren’t on anybody’s iphones,
Whose monsters are real.

We pray for young people
Who spend all their paychecks before Tuesday,
Who throw tantrums in the grocery store and pick at their food,
Who like ghost stories,
Who stay out past curfew while their parents wait for them,
Who get visits from the tooth fairy,
Who think they’re far too old to be hugged good-bye,
Who squirm in church and scream on the phone,
Whose tears we sometimes laugh at and whose smiles can make us cry.

And we pray for those
Whose nightmares come in the daytime,
Who will eat anything,
Who have never seen a dentist,
Who are never spoiled by anyone,
Who don’t have a loved one to come out to,
Who go to bed hungry and cry themselves to sleep,
Who live and move, but have no being.

We pray for young people
Who want to be carried
And for those who must,
For those we never give up on
And for those who never get a second chance,
For those we smother,
And for those who will grab the hand of anybody kind
enough to offer it.

We pray for children.

”

- From Brian McLaren
Read by Amy Butler at Children, Youth & A New Kind of Christianity
Written by Ina Hughes (via thelauralarsen)

"God has not promised us safety, but participation in an adventure called the Kingdom. That seems to..."

Thu, 10 May 2012 09:18:32 -0400

“God has not promised us safety, but participation in an adventure called the Kingdom. That seems to me to be great good news in a world that is literally dying of boredom. God has entrusted us, His Church, with the best story in the world. With great ingenuity we have managed, with the aid of much theory, to make that story boring as hell. Theories about meaning are what you get when you forget that the Church and Christians are embattled by subtle enemies who win easily by denying that any war exists. God knows what He is doing in this strange time between “worlds,” but hopefully He is inviting us again to engage the enemy through the godly weapons of preaching and sacrament. I pray that we will have the courage and humility to fight the enemy in Walter Rauschenbusch’s wonderful words, with “no sword but the truth.” According to Rauschenbusch, “such truth reveals lies and their true nature, as when Satan was touched by the spear of Ithuriel. It makes injustice quail on its throne, chafe, sneer, abuse, hurl its spear, tender its goal, and finally offer to serve as truth’s vassal. But the truth that can do such things is not an old woman wrapped in the spangled robes of earthly authority, bedizened with golden ornaments, the marks of honor given by injustice in turn for services rendered, and muttering dead formulas of the past. The truth that can serve God as the mightiest of his archangels is robed only in love, her weighty limbs unfettered by needless weight, calm-browed, her eyes terrible with beholding God.” May our eyes and our preaching be just as terrible. Indeed, may we preach so truthfully that people will call us terrorists. If you preach that way you will never again have to worry about whether a sermon is “meaningful.””

- Stanely Hauerwas, Preaching As Though We Had Enemies

Jon Stewart Faith/Off - Passover vs Easter The Daily Show...

Tue, 10 Apr 2012 11:35:00 -0400

Jon Stewart Faith/Off - Passover vs Easter

The Daily Show with Jon Stewart

What can we learn from the Jewish community in this country? Why is Christianity the faith tradition that is so vastly marketed, watered down, and consumeristic? When the Power Rangers and Captain Planet start showing up for Easter egg hunts (the same practice that hundreds if not thousands of churches have adopted) it seems we have acquiesced too much. Things don’t have to be flashy, cool, or attractive to be meaningful. We have allowed the event in history upon which our entire faith is held together by, an event that involves death and resurrection, to be celebrated by bright colors, candy, and a magical bunny. Does anyone else think this is absurd? Am I being overly cynical here?

Watch both videos.

The Daily Show with Jon Stewart

"Those who are sensitive to the verbally built-in biases of their “natural” environment..."

Wed, 21 Mar 2012 16:41:18 -0400

“Those who are sensitive to the verbally built-in biases of their “natural” environment seem “subversive” to those who are not. There is probably nothing more dangerous to the prejudices of the latter than a man in the process of discovering that the language of his group is limited, misleading, or one-sided. Such a man is dangerous because he is not easily enlisted on the side of one ideology or another, because he sees beyond the words to the processes which give an ideology its reality.”

- Neil Postman & Charles Weingartner, Teaching As a Subversive Activity

"You are at your pastoral best when you are not noticed. To keep this vocation healthy requires..."

Sun, 11 Mar 2012 15:52:49 -0400

“You are at your pastoral best when you are not noticed. To keep this vocation healthy requires constant self-negation, getting out of the way. A certain blessed anonymity is inherent in pastoral work. For pastors, being noticed easily develops into wanting to be noticed. Many years earlier a pastor friend told me that the pastoral ego ‘has the reek of disease about it, the relentless smell of the self.’ I’ve never forgotten that.”

- Eugene Peterson, The Pastor

"North American culture does not offer congenial conditions in which to live vocationally as a..."

Mon, 05 Mar 2012 17:04:22 -0500

“North American culture does not offer congenial conditions in which to live vocationally as a pastor. Men and women who are pastors in America today find that they have entered into a way of life that is in ruins. The vocation of pastor has been replaced by the strategies of religious entrepreneurs and business plans.”

- Eugene Peterson, The Pastor

home.

Fri, 02 Mar 2012 12:44:40 -0500

home.

"The pattern of grace, in other words, leaves every reason to hope that no one will be excluded,..."

Sat, 28 Jan 2012 14:15:10 -0500

“The pattern of grace, in other words, leaves every reason to hope that no one will be excluded, because the truth of salvation in Jesus Christ is such that there is always more grace in God than there is sin in us.”

- George Hunsinger

Yosemite time lapse. Amazing. watch in HD.

Thu, 26 Jan 2012 11:08:27 -0500

Yosemite time lapse. Amazing.

watch in HD.

Never trust anyone with 9 keys to anything.

Wed, 25 Jan 2012 18:12:00 -0500

I saw this post last week floating around the internet on various social media sites. Because of how it relates to my role of working with young people in the church I was intrigued. I think it’s fair to say the scope of this piece is wildly pejorative.

One of the main issues people in my field cannot stop talking about is why young adults are leaving the church. I am not really interested in answering that question formally here. In fact, I wish more people would stop as well - but that’s another thought. But, if I were a college student and I heard someone speaking about me like this, I would probably never come back either. We need to do better. My suggestion is that we start by avoiding reducing such complex ministry with simplistic steps or keys.

Below I briefly responded to the first 5 of the 9 keys. I know I come across cynical in places and hope my hyperbolic statements are taken into consideration. I have close friends in colleges across the US and believe God is using and will continue to use them. My prayer is that God will open up the space within the church for them to translate the gospel for their generation.

9 Keys to College Reaching Students

1. Whatever you do, don’t shy away from depth.

So take them deep, and do it often. In almost every sermon we try to have an “apologetic moment,” where the preacher explains how this or that biblical truth counters the cultural norms they absorb in their college. The most popular series we have done have related to straight, deep answers to challenging questions.

I’ve always found the argument that the church and the university are antithetical to one another extremely boring. The deep suspicion embedded into American Evangelicalism concerning the life of the mind desperately needs to evaporate. Combating science or “cultural norms” through attempting to prove them false will most likely result with more straw men than presently exist. Along with this, the idea that college students are simply “absorbing” the things taught them in their colleges automatically assumes they are not doing any critical thinking. I think this is simply not true. I had conversations with half a dozen college freshmen when they were home on Christmas break and every single student was thinking critically about the character of God and the nature of the Christian life. Instead of seeking to undermine their deep existential questions with our answers what if we dwelled with them in their doubt? Instead of wielding an epistemological gavel and condemning their education what if we preached the gospel of Jesus Christ in compelling and imaginative ways so that they would find the church interesting and meaningful?

2. Preach the gospel.

The beauty of the gospel, as well as its outrageous claims, intrigues most students. It engages both believer and unbeliever. It exposes the root idolatry that drives our behavior and reveals God’s radical agenda for the world that calls for a dramatic response. The gospel “secret” is that everything we want to see in students, things like “radical generosity” and “audacious faith,” are produced not by telling them what they must do for God, but by exalting in what God has done for us.

I think this is well put. The gospel uproots our idols and empowers us to live in shalom without the stress of behavior modification. I do fear, and I have written about this elsewhere, that some of the language here is somewhat expressive. What if we taught college students that the gospel is really slow sometimes - that God moves really slow sometimes? What if college students didn’t feel the need to change the entire world in four years?

3. Love on display is often the most effective apologetic.

We often think we can convince unbelievers by showing that our smart guys are smarter than their smart guys. True cynics are more often convinced, however, by the beauty of Christ’s character in us than by meticulous logic.

This is true. However, above the authors made the case that to have an apologetic meant doing precisely this. Which is it? Outsmarting the other guys, or realizing the Christian life is something to be embodied rather than argued?

4.Remember that we live in the Bono generation.

Serving the community and the poor around the world is now, for lack of a better term, “cool.” And while TOMS Shoes certainly has a different agenda than does the church, this generation’s awareness of global suffering ensures that any message that fails to address global and societal needs will fall on deaf ears. The awareness of global suffering actually provides a wonderful opportunity for the gospel. We can show the gospel provides a better, more holistic answer to the problems of the world.

Did Newt Gingrich write this? This subtle compliment contains a very overt insult, namely, that the younger generation only cares for serving the poor and disadvantaged because a rock star says it is cool. Of course young people couldn’t actually have a sincere desire to love the world around them. The very idea that amping up church awareness to global suffering so that college students will be more interested is the very idea that keeps college students from the church! Also, unless the author’s idea of a gospel that provides a better, more holistic answer includes at the very least the type of things TOMS shoes is doing then it still incomplete. Perhaps we could begin not by insulting them but by inspiring and releasing them to live missionally in the world.

5. Lift their eyes to the nations

God’s agenda for the world is nothing short of people from every people group worshiping Jesus (Rev. 5:9-11). We should teach students to choose their life’s path based on this ultimate goal. Even those students who do not go into full-time paid ministry can choose their career path in light of the Great Commission. They have to get a job upon graduation somewhere, so why not do it in a place where they can be a part of church planting? We teach our students that unless God has put a better plan before them, they should spend two years in one of the places we have a church plant (both domestic and abroad).

The younger generation has the most globalized perspective of any generation before them. With respect, their eyes are already on the nations. I’m not sure what the authors mean by encouraging students to get jobs in places where they can be a part of church planting. It seems like they could do that virtually anywhere. My guess is that they want to see students involved in missional living in whatever vocation they find themselves in - and I agree.

You can read the rest of the article with its final points here. My contention with this piece lies primarily with how we talk about young people in our churches. The tone of this article comes across condescending, smug, and overly certain. College students, in my estimation, desire to be taken seriously as thinking people capable of participating in the mission of the gospel in profound ways. My suggestion is that we take them seriously and pay attention to the ways God is shaping them to use for God’s purposes in the world.

"It is essential, in my view, to abandon altogether talk of “redeeming the culture,”..."

Thu, 19 Jan 2012 18:58:33 -0500

“It is essential, in my view, to abandon altogether talk of “redeeming the culture,” “advancing the kingdom,” “building the kingdom,” “transforming the world,” “reclaiming the culture,” “reforming the culture,” and “changing the world.” Christians need to leave such language behind them because it carries too much weight. It implies conquest, take-over, or dominion, which in my view is precisely what God does not call us to pursue - at least not in any conventional, twentieth- or twenty-first-century way of understanding these terms.”

- James Davidson Hunter, To Change The World

twenty-eleven.

Thu, 12 Jan 2012 13:42:00 -0500

music:

10. explosions in the sky take care, take care, take care

9. manchester orchestra simple math

8. portugal. the man in the mountain in the cloud

7. the pains of being pure at heart belong

6. ryan adams ashes and fire

5. the weeknd echoes of silence

4. jay z || kanye west watch the throne

3. florence + the machine ceremonials

2. bon iver bon iver

1. m83 hurry up we’re dreaming

live music:

5. explosions in the sky

4. civil wars

3. manchester orchestra

2. arcade fire

1. bon iver (shout out to erik leafblad for getting us on the list)

books:

*notice these books are not necessarily published this year. this list reflects my favorite books I had the chance to read this year.

15. Generous Justice Tim Keller

14. Free of Charge Miroslov Volf

13. Bonhoeffer: Pastor, Martyr, Prophet, Spy Eric Metaxes

12. The Orthodox Heretic Peter Rollins

11. Hunger Games book one (my feeble attempt at fiction) Suzanne Collins

10. Jesus, my Father, the CIA and Me Ian Morgan Cron

9. Praying the Psalms Walter Brueggemann

8. Prayers for Privileged People Walter Brueggemann

7. Love Wins Rob Bell

6. Orthodox and Modern: Studies in the Theology of Karl Barth Bruce McCormack

5. Scripture and the Authority of God NT Wright

4. Theological Turn in Youth Ministry Andrew Root & Kenda Dean

3. The Prophetic Imagination Walter Brueggemann

2. The Resurrection of the Son of God NT Wright

1. To Change the World James Davidson Hunter

Of course, the best part of 2011 was my marriage to Abby Lynn Wasson. I am continually humbled by the gift of her affection, friendship, and companionship. To paraphrase Emerson, her existence truly makes the world rich.

photo credit: Shaun Menary

In truth, however, without the practice of the faith in Jesus Christ by the church, the work of the theologian is unintelligible. Our job is not to know more than those who gather Sunday after Sunday to worship God, but rather our job is to help us better to know what we do when we are so gathered.

Wed, 04 Jan 2012 19:42:21 -0500

In truth, however, without the practice of the faith in Jesus Christ by the church, the work of the theologian is unintelligible. Our job is not to know more than those who gather Sunday after Sunday to worship God, but rather our job is to help us better to know what we do when we are so gathered.:

Stanley Hauerwas (follow the link to the entire article)

We Bid Your Presence: On Reading Psalm 22

Thu, 08 Dec 2011 12:12:11 -0500

We know about your presence

that fills the world,

that occupies our life,

that makes our life in the world true and good.

We notice your powerful transformative presence

in word and

in sacrament,

in food and in water,

in gestures of mercy

and practices of justice,

in gentle neighbors

and daring gratitude.

We count so on your presence

and then plunge - without intending - into your absence.

We find ourselves alone, abandoned, without resources

remembering your goodness,

hoping your future.

but mired in anxiety and threat and risk beyond our coping.

In your absence we bid your presence,

come again,

come soon,

come here:

Come to every garden become a jungle

Come to every community become joyless

sad and numb.

We acknowledge your dreadful absence and insist on your presence.

Come again, come soon. Come here.

Walter Brueggeman, Prayers for Privileged People

:: 11.11.11 :: War, death and coming home

Thu, 10 Nov 2011 16:08:25 -0500

Taken from The Classical:

I’ll be taking the day off. I don’t want thanks. I don’t want a parade. I don’t want my experience boiled down to 30 seconds so it can be easily digestible to a national audience. I will want to talk to the handful of people I know who can understand what it’s like to run over a vehicle with an M1A1 tank like the world is a sunbeaten, bullet-riddled monster truck rally.

I don’t begrudge sporting events their brief nods to veterans; a brief, pro forma remembrance is better than no remembrance at all. But that sanitized teaspoon of patriotism shouldn’t obscure the grim reality of theveteran suicide epidemic or increased domestic violence or rampant alcohol abuse or skyrocketing divorce rates for veterans returning to their families. Not everyone comes back broken, but nobody comes back whole.

The echoes of war last a lifetime.

Read the full article here.

Stanley Hauerwas: War as the Sacrifice of the Refusal to Kill

I think it is a well attested fact that war veterans seldom want to talk about the experience of battle. No doubt the complex emotions of fear, the exhilaration danger produces, and the bonding between comrades, make speaking of battle difficult. But how do you explain to another human being that you have killed?

No doubt there are mechanisms that allow some to create an emotional distance between themselves and what they have done. But, at least if Grossman is right, men often remain haunted by their experience of having killed in a manner that can have - sometimes years later - destructive results.

To kill, in war or in any circumstance, creates a silence. It is right that silence should surround the taking of life. After all, the life taken is not ours to take. Those who kill, even when such killing is assumed to be legitimate, bear the burden that what they have done makes them “different.”

How do you tell the story of having killed? Killing shatters speech, ends communication, isolating us into different worlds whose difference we cannot even acknowledge. No sacrifice is more dramatic than the sacrifice asked of those sent to war, that is, the sacrifice of their unwillingness to kill. Even more cruelly, we expect those who have killed to return to “normality.”

Read the full article here.

"there is hell now, and there is hell later, and jesus teaches us to take both seriously."

Thu, 25 Aug 2011 17:53:05 -0400

“there is hell now,
and there is hell later,
and jesus teaches us to take both seriously.”

- robBELL, love wins

ute trail. colorado.

Tue, 23 Aug 2011 12:23:34 -0400

ute trail. colorado.