Convictions: Church

 The first in a new blog series that explores my faith convictions. In a sense these are letters to my sons--to explain to them what I believe and why.  I know they'll chart their own course, but I want them to at least know what my spiritual convictions are in the hope that perhaps they'll find the same Joy in the journey that I have.

I actually completed-or thought I'd completed this post--almost 9 months ago.  But for some reason I sat on it. I think I wanted it to marinate a bit--make sure that I'd really gotten my convictions articulated correctly. Then I got busy and never got around to posting it.  Since then I've had some new insights which I've added in near the end of this post.  I think originally this post was primarily about church attendance and less about the concept of church itself.  I want to think more about the church beyond a place we do or do not visit each week,

This post and the next two could be subtitled Foundations.  For me these three--the Church, the Bible, and Jesus are the foundational elements of Christian faith.

Church

Up until March 2020, I had a strong conviction about the importance of church. attendance  I felt it was a non-negotiable in the life of the believer.  But (and this should serve as an important caveat to this blog series--even the strongest of convictions can and should be amenable to change) I found that my beliefs on church shifted with the arrival of the pandemic.  I found the absence of church to be rejuvenating.  I hadn't realized how tired I'd been.  How Sabbath had become a gauntlet of church-related must-dos.  The weekly struggle to get the family dressed in their Sabbath best and out the door before the sermon started, the services running into the early afternoon, not eating until 3 or 4 PM.  In the winter, I'd often find the Sabbath essentially over before I was finally able to rest.  And then there were the extra-Sabbath church commitments.  I'd always been a prayer meeting-skipper but there was still Adventurers for the boys and various church adjacent commitments like my drama ministry.  All of that evaporated with the arrival of Covid, and I found I didn't miss any of it.

Now to be fair, I did still have a weekly habit of meeting with other believers.  The second weekend into the early-pandemic lockdown my family started meeting for worship every Sabbath over Zoom.  What began as a one-off virtual family reunion of disparate and distant relatives on my mom's side of the family turned into a regular family gathering that is still a spiritual highlight.  We met weekly for more than a year before shifting to every other week as some members of the "First Family SDA Church" started going back to in-person services or other weekend commitments.  More recently we moved our worship time from 11:30 AM EST to 1:30 PM to make further allowance for those who wanted or needed to attend in person church and but still wanted to attend Family Church (and to allow our West Coast participants the luxury of sleeping in on Sabbath morning).  While most in our little congregation are satisfied with making our Zoom services their only church for the foreseeable future, others still desire to have some sort of regular in-person attendance as part of their spiritual practice.  To my amazement, I am one of those others.

No one was more surprised than I was when last year I accepted the position of church elder at Ephesus SDA Church here in Columbus.  I was very hesitant about taking on the role, even though I was ordained as an elder more than 15 years ago and served for many years in Saipan.  My initial gut response was a hard no.  But after much prayer, God turned my heart around and I decided to give it a shot.  On top of that , I soon accepted a role of teaching adult Sabbath School as well--another redux of a church position I'd held in Saipan and found thoroughly rewarding.

But my return to church is not a return to the old way of doing church.  I refuse to adopt the autopilot approach I had in the Before Times, where I just went and did and served simply because I was "supposed" to.  I had always been a prayer meeting rebel--absolutely deaf to years and years of guilt trips and wheedling from the pulpit to get me and other prayer meeting truants to Wednesday night services (same with Sabbath School service which I resolutely skipped--though not the lesson study.  That was always a highlight).  Now that I'm returning to church, I am back with that same flat refusal to be guilted, harangued, or coaxed into any more church than feels right to me.

I'm unapologetic in my insistence that I will not attend church every single week.  I simply will not.  Every week without fail is too much church for me.  Every other week, as we do with Family Church, is about ideal, though I understand in my role as elder that may not always be possible and there will be times when I show up Sabbath morning for a string of weeks in a row. (And I enjoy Sabbath School lesson study so much there may be weeks--especially when I have Family Church in the afternoon--when I zip over Ephesus for that and then go home, skipping the main service-an inversion of what a lot of people do).  I am also unwilling to overload myself in church and church-related commitments. I've always tended towards a "That should be fine" attitude towards service commitments--where as long as I can, I do.  Now I understand that just because I "can", doesn't mean I should.  Not least because a lot of times what seemed manageable in my mind proves to be far less so in reality.  A good example would have been when I first took on the role of elder. I agreed to do both the offertory and an Easter-themed monologue in the same service (and was also supposed to be on duty with the sound team that morning).  It was highly stressful and too much!

I'm not saying that everyone has to feel the same way about church as I do.  I understand that there are many who find solace in the weekly (or more) routine and ritual of worship.  There are those who desperately need those traditional church structures and appointments.  I don't think that church as a whole should conform to my needs.  But I do think each of us as believers should consider what our actual spiritual needs are and seek to meet those rather than just checking the attendance box.  And likewise I think that church should normalize multiple ways of fellowship as equally valid.  As long as members are connected in some form, that should be acceptable even if it doesn't necessarily translate to showing up at 11 o' clock every single Sabbath morning.

I do believe in the necessity of Christian fellowship and the value of corporate worship.  At it's heart, Christianity is a faith that can only be truly realized in community.  It's not to say that Christianity is a faith for extroverts. But ours a belief system that is rooted in love--God's love for us and our love for another.  We can't really live that out if our entire spiritual practice is conducted in isolation.  While there's nothing wrong with communing with the Creator alone in the woods, that alone can't be the sum of our spirituality.  Though the Christian faith has had a long tradition of various types of monastic practice, I'm not sure how well that fits with  a faith where love for other people is an integral part. After all how can all men know that we are His disciples, if we have "love for one another," if we are never actually around anyone else?  But that community should not have to be defined by attending a worship service at an appointed "divine hour" every week--or any week at all.  It can be found in community service on a Sabbath afternoon, a weeknight small group, an early morning prayer-line, a drama or music ministry, a Zoom meet up, and a thousand other iterations. 

In the months since I first put this post together I've been further convicted by the power of the church as a source of community.  I honestly can't think of anything that provides quite what the church does.  This is a community that, ideally, is open to everyone (though that's not always the case; I'll get to that in a minute)--you are never too young or too old for church.  It is a lifetime community.  You're not required to have special talents or skills to participate. You can go almost anywhere in the world and find a similar community that has essential ties to the community you left behind. It's really quite remarkable, and it's never more noticeable or more important than in moments of crisis.  In the time since I first wrote this post, I've seen church communities rally around those who have experienced profound and sudden loss.  Dozens of people drove seven hours or more to be there for their former pastors, a married couple Jeremy & Brooke Wong, who had just lost their little daughter, JJ, to cancer.  Around that same time dozens of people rallied to support the spouse of Pastor Sam Ulett.  He had died suddenly after receiving a kidney transplant, and in addition to her family and friends, it was Sharla's church families that helped to support her in that time.

All of this served to remind me of the incredible power of church community.  And in a cruel irony, I'm also reminded that it's the very power of this community that makes hurt within that the community and/or exclusion from that community so deeply devastating.  Imagine the pain of being harmed or abused within the space of the community that it is supposed to be there for you at your most vulnerable.  Imagine observing the close-knit community and knowing deep down that the community is open to almost everyone.  But not everyone. Not you.  We as a church should probably give more thought to whom we might be intentionally or unintentionally excluding and at what the cost to those marginalized people.  We are perhaps too quick to close the doors to those who need acceptance, a home, a safe place, because we feel they will threaten our safe sense of righteousness.

One of the Church's biggest pitfalls in the millennia since Jesus called His motley band of 12 together is the power it holds over it's adherents.  Far too often it has become an institution that exists to perpetuate itself. It becomes a refuge not for the hurting, but for those who would like to set up their own little kingdoms within the earth-bound structure of the Heavenly Kingdom.  The Church has long been instrument of social control, of people management, utilizing people's deepest fears to preserve it's power.  The fact that the church is made up of broken people should be a comfort--but that very brokenness can become weaponized when it is wedded to an institutional power structure. Church hurt invariably comes about when some within the church claim and wield moral and spiritual power over others. 

Ironically, while I'm very skeptical of the church institution, I am actually a big fan of many of our church institutions such as our educational and medical systems.  There is certainly something to be said for the reach of organized, and yes even bureaucratic, church work.  But those benefits should not be come a substitute for genuine spirituality nor should they be a justification for social control.

I'm convicted that one of the ways that the Church returns to it's proper definition as the community of believers instead of an institutional power structure is when we who are the church refuse to allow the institution to dictate how we interact with it. As long as we make a personal commitment to community and fellowship, that should be enough.  And the best churches will work to facilitate those commitments and provide accountability, understanding that attendance is not the same as commitment, and doing church work is not the same as faithfulness. 

Church

"And let us not neglect our meeting together, as some people do, but encourage one another, especially now that the day of His return is drawing near."

                                                     -Hebrews 10:25

And the Leonard Goes To. . .

These days I mostly watch TV (when I watch anything. Life is so busy that watching TV and movies is generally reserved for once a week while I'm folding laundry.  Well, except for Survivor.  My favorite show of all time is still old-school appointment viewing every Wednesday night at 8!).  There are so many great TV shows out there and the 30 minute to one hour chunks you can view them in, with many episodes over multiple seasons works well with my life style.  But I still enjoy the occasional feature length film and over the past years, I've made it a hobby to view all of the movies that are nominated for best picture of the year and then rate them. My number one choice is the movie that I think was the best of the bunch.  That film receives my version of the Oscar, "the Leonard"--think of the gold statuette but skinnier and with glasses!  Where did the name Leonard come from?  Well, I needed a name and let's just say that Leonard is an inside joke that only a tiny handful of people will get.

This is usually just a Facebook post, but I wanted to keep the FB post short, so I figured people could click through to the blog if they wanted more detail on the films. 

Without further ado, the Leonard goes to. . .

1. Past Lives-My favorite film of the batch.  Two school friends fall in love South Korea. The girl has to move to the United States and the friends are separated.  They reconnect over Skype when they are both in college, and again years later, they finally see other again, when they are both adults.  It's a story of love that never quite realizes itself, at least romantically, and a friendship that runs deeper than romance.  I found the characters so engaging, and the story really authentic and relatable.

2. The Holdovers-This is an empathetic and moving portrait of three people who are alone and lonely for different reasons: A history teacher at an exclusive boarding school, his student, and the cafeteria supervisor. All three are, holdovers, stuck on campus with nowhere to go while everyone else has left for the holidays For at least two of them, they are people that we might easily write off as unpleasant, mean, bitter people. Honestly, they are unpleasant, mean, and bitter.  But they are also more than that, and they have the capacity to be better.  They come to see it in each other and we come to see it in them. A moving, humane film and enjoyable to watch.

3.  Killers of the Flower Moon-A story of unbelievable evil and greed. If we must choose a big "important" best picture, I'd actually choose this one over Oppenheimer. Killers tells the true story of the systematic murder of members of the Osage tribe in Oklahoma during the 1920's. The Osage were, for a time, the richest people in the world per capita after oil was discovered on their tribal lands.  Their wealth drew opportunistic people eager to get their hands on the mineral rights.  The worst part is how they did it--befriending and marrying into the tribe and then killing off their supposed "loved ones" and their families in order to inherit their land.  Of course the murders were poisonings that looked like mysterious illnesses and unsolved shootings and house bombings. 

4. Barbie-Barbie has a lot to say and says it well. It’s fun, energetic, funny, fast-paced but also makes a strong social commentary. It will make you think and will make you uncomfortable (especially if you are a man). Director Greta Gerwig threaded a remarkable needle in both critiquing the influence of Barbie in our culture, while suggesting a narrative of empowerment that Mattel could live with (even as their company is mercilessly mocked throughout the film). It’s quite a balancing act and she pulled it off. A lot of food for thought and discussion in this film, though I think it might be good for men to listen more than talk when it comes to responding. In the end I think Barbie is less about stoking the “gender wars” and more about realizing the full humanity of all human beings. Don’t let all the pink fool you, this movie is deep!

5. Poor Things- This movie tells the story of a drowned woman who is "resurrected" when a mad scientists implants in her the brain of the child she was pregnant with. Emma Stone is amazing in this film. Watching her stylized progression from infant to child to teen to adult is remarkable. It's quirky, set in some sort of steampunk past.  A Frankenstein/Pinocchio story of her journey to becoming a "real person."  A big part of her journey is her discovery of and eventually owning of her sexuality so expect some pretty graphic scenes. 

6. The Zone of Interest-No graphic violence, no horrific scenes of abuse. In fact no atrocities pictured at all.  The most you get is sounds--background noise, but even that is mostly distant, not loud and in your face. The rumble of the factories and the crematorium, barking dogs, the occasional gunshot and vague cries of agony. But the effect is chilling. The Nazi camp commander and his family living their ordinary lives, filled with ordinary concerns.  See him reading to his daughter, laughing with his wife. It's all hints. Deeply disturbing and thought provoking. It is a picture of complicity and the most effective illustration of the banality of evil that I've ever seen. It makes you realize that "the bad guys" are not so different from us.

7. Oppenheimer- Most likely to win--and sure enough it did. Long--longer than it needed to be., spectacular vision with compelling human performances.  Oppenheimer was long, and utilized a lot of jumping back and forth in time. I spent a lot of time early in the film wondering “who are these people again?” and “What’s going on?” The film could have ended with the successful test of the first A-Bomb at Los Alamos, but I think Nolan didn’t really want his film to be strictly about the race to build the bomb, and more about the price Oppenheimer paid for being associated with communists/communism. I have to admit by the end of the film, everything comes together and makes sense and there is a twist at the end.

8. Anatomy of a Fall--The last film I watched of the nominees. I finished it a couple hours before the awards began.  I found myself thinking a lot about this movie after I watched it.  It's the story of a woman who is accused of pushing her husband to his death.  The question is--did she do it, or was his death the result of suicide or perhaps even an accident. I felt pretty certain I knew what happened, but I found myself questioning those assumptions afterwards, almost as if it were a real event and not just a movie.  The more I thought about it, the more I came to agree with the way the film ended. My favorite part of Anatomy of a Fall though, was the argument scene between Sandra Huller's character and her doomed husband.  That scene really captured what even the best of marriages go through at times.

9. American Fiction--While I enjoyed this film well enough, it was slower-paced than I expected. It's lower ranking is primarily due to failing to live up to expectations. It's the story of a black writer of erudite, literary novels that can't seem to get the commercial success that his colleagues do by writing streetwise stories of black trauma that play into negative stereotypes about black people.  In frustration, he dashes off his own absurd blaxploitation novel, intending it as a satirical critique of the genre and not expecting it to be taken seriously.  Instead the publishers love it and--surprise!--it's a smashing success!

10. Maestro-I found this film dull.  Just not compelling. It's a biopic of famed composer and conductor Leonard Cohen. It chronicles the stormy relationship he had with his wife and various men that were his lovers throughout his life.  It was well-acted, and well-made, but honestly, this was a movie that was a duty to get through, rather than a pleasure.