book

As a disclaimer, anything that is to come is not intended to bash men or women, rather, it's to point up how jacked up things are in this life and in our natural patterns of behavior.

A few years ago I first came across the book, Love and Respect. It's a marriage book based on a mix of Ephesians and sociological research and, it proposed, the couples act in a love and respect cycle.

Basically, there's some solid research out there that reveals that men, on the whole, really want to be respected (you could say that for me, respect = love), while women, on the whole, really want to be loved. So, the love a respect cycles basically says that when a man acts lovingly, then a woman will act respectfully, and when a man acts unlovingly, then a woman will act disrespectfully. Obviously both of these actions then feed into the other so you either end up with something stable or something that's completely jacked.

When I first heard this idea I really liked it, but, as I'm watching more and more relational dynamics unfold, I don't think it's accurate. Rather, I think, when a man acts lovingly, there is something inside a woman that asks, "Is he being loving because he loves me, or because I did something respectful?" In other words, she wants to know that she's truly and unconditionally loved (a desire that isn't a bad thing).

Now, I don't think the next step is necessarily malicious or intentional, but the only way to find out if the love given is based on her actions or because she is unconditionally loved, is to act disrespectfully and discover what the man does ... does he prove himself loving or does he grow cold?

At this point there's two options. The man can do what's right and continue to act lovingly (which I've seen result in more disrespect and, essentially, a lifetime of having to prove himself ... a move which eventually emasculates him), or he can act unlovingly, an action that, based on my observation, often prompts a woman to act respectfully in an attempt to regain a sense of being loved (only to have the cycle restart once things are stable again). Of course, in time, a guy figures out that if he wants her to act respectfully, that he needs to keep her constantly on edge so she's always trying to doing something that will give her a sense of being loved (of course, this will ultimately wear her out as well).

Thoughts? Is the revamped model accurate? What needs to happen so couples can break this dysfunctional model and return to a healthy love and respect cycle?

Last week I ran across this article, an interview with Tim Keller, in Christianity Today. This week in my blog I decided to look at the questions he was asked, pull a quote from his answers, and share some thoughts.

Q: What are the changes that you see for your ministry?

A: The question is, How do you make sure that not only the particular theological and ministry DNA of the church is such that other people can get ahold of it?

Of all the things Keller said in the interview, this is the one I have the most issue with. While I'm confident that it's not his goal to package Redeemer and ship it out to all kinds of other urban churches (although him referring to sharing the DNA makes me worry a bit), that's what always happens when you do this. Rick Warren told people not to do what he did, but the result was guys in Minnesota wearing Hawaiian shirts. St. Toms in Sheffield, England makes the same argument when you go over there, and yet there are now churches all over the place using the Lifeshapes, holding cluster meetings, and doing all that stuff.

The problem with all this is that no other urban church is in NYC and has the exact same history and cultural conditions of Redeemer. The same goes for Saddleback and St. Toms. Those are unique situations ... just like the church that's buying up everyone else's resources. Certainly there's something to learn from the process and philosophy of ministry, but trying to replicate the DNA just isn't it.

That's why I'm loving the whole Church Unique book.

I recently started reading the book, "Telling God's Story: Narrative Preaching for Christian Formation" and, after a little more than a chapter, it's rocking my world.

The basic premise of the book is that too much of preaching tries to conform Christianity to people's existing worldview. To address this issue, the majority of the book offers a new rhetorical approach for homiletics (aka preaching strategy) that seeks to challenge existing worldviews and replace them with one shaped by the biblical narrative. Here's a great quote:

"American Christianity" ... arose at a time when a fundamental shift occurred within the underlying narrative horizon of the church's life and practice. Whereas the church had historically lived out of the biblical story of God's promise to Abraham and Sarah fulfilled in Jesus and made manifest in the life of the Church, this new narrative placed the individual's movement from sin to salvation to service at its center. As the traditional Christian typology between Israel and the church collapsed, a new type of Israel arose - the modern American nation-state. These two distinct narratives ... have become deeply embedded within the cultural horizons of North America.

So, what does this mean? As an analogy I offer the Firefox web browser and it's collection of plug-ins. In this analogy, the browser functions as the foundational worldview. In the case of America, this includes our love of the autonomous individual, concepts like manifest destiny that drove our early history, and of course consumerism and capitalism.

Now, with Firefox, you customize your web browsing experience by downloading a variety of plug-ins, each of which adds something to the browser, but, in the end, has to work within the browsers limitations. This is essentially what has happened to Christianity in America. Rather than being the browser and having a biblical worldview, we've plugged Christianity into the American experience and forced it to live within that worldviews limitations. To put it crassly, most American Christians are Americans who have Jesus serve as an added perk in their life and, when the Biblical narrative doesn't seem to work within our American worldview, it's Scripture that's expected to give.

To continue the analogy, there are various Christianity plug-ins you can add in. You have the democratic form of governance where every member has an equal say in the workings of the congregation so you have to have boards and voters meetings if you're going to do anything. You also have the Christian nation plug-in that always seems to be downloaded with a fanatic devotion to Israel. If you're more into politics you can grab the Republican plug-in where, until '08, it's all about the issue of abortion, or maybe you're more progressive and want the new Democrat plug-in where you talk about loving poor people.

The fundamental problem with all of these is that Christians are still Americans first and Christians later. The American worldview remains the browser and Jesus a plug-in. The emerging church formed out of a longing to let Christianity be the browser, but it too seems to be going the way of the plug-in. Maybe this book will help me in my longing to form faith communities where Christianity is the browser and America can become the plug-in.