When ‘Call the Pastor!’ Doesn’t Cut It

by | September 20, 2011

With global weather disasters, regional famines, and local terrorist atrocities, we live in an age during which religious cooperation has become more a necessity than a nicety.

One gets the feeling that our age is more heavily laden with bad news and trouble than previous eras. Certainly, this is untrue. But it is true that we have never been so connected, and in this connectedness – through email, Twitter, Facebook, Google, the ease and speed of travel, etc. – the Japanese are able grieve for terror victims in New York, while New Yorkers lament for tsunami victims in Japan. I’m pretty sure this has not happened before our time. The downside? This proliferation of information has turned our blissful ignorance to horrific awareness. It’s allowed us access to the pain of others, whether we want to or not.

Our horrific awareness begs for some spiritual relief. If we were only speaking of a 19th century American frontier settlement tragedy, spiritual relief would be a no-brainer. “Call the pastor!” someone would shout. The clergyman from the local church – situated in the center of town and some flavor of Christian - would preside where presiding was necessary and intercede when the people could no longer pray for themselves in the name of the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Ghost.

Today it’s a different story. No longer is spiritual disaster response solved with a single call to the local pastor. After all, there might be Hindus trapped in that building. It’s possible there are Muslims with homes underwater and relatives lost just off-shore. The mayhem of airplane hijackers takes the plane down even with Zen-Buddhists in coach.

The pressing question raised by our interconnectedness is: How do address deep spiritual needs when a diversity of faiths are represented in the fray?

Taking a step back, there is actually a question that logically precedes this one. It is the question ‘why?’ Why figure it out? Why do the hard work when even some of the greatest leaders of our time shun the opportunity?

I can think of several reasons why it is healthy, helpful, and spiritually responsible (from the Christian perspective) to figure out how to pray and worship together with those holding different beliefs, especially in times of trial:

God made everyone. As far as I can tell, we are all descended from Adam. Whether one takes this literally, or as myth (in the truest sense of the term), we are taught that all are persons are created by God. This basic fact lays a foundation for all other reasons.

We are similar. Each person is unique. True. Unique personalities. Unique opinions and points of view. Unique cultural biases and religious practices. Also, true: Everyone is the same. Everyone loves. Everyone hates. Each person has to do something with that sense (or lack of sense) of the spiritual they perceive. Though our conclusions vary, as children of the same Parent, our common humanity should outweigh our disparate preferences. This is why early on, the Spirit expanded the bounds of the Church beyond Jewish believers in Jesus. God’s chosen people would have to share God, whether they liked it or not.

We need each other. Our similarities include our needs. At any moment, we may find ourselves in need. At any moment, there is someone that can meet that need. Whether we are thirsty, hungry, lonely, fearful, saddened, perplexed, in shock, desperate, beaten down, abused, abandoned… relief has been pre-programmed into the scheme of the universe. That relief is called “you.” Sure, God parted the Red Sea, but Moses had to stretch out his hand. Someone (likely not a Christian) needs your hand – and the rest of what’s connected to it. And you just may need that non-Christian hand yourself one day.

Worship is witness. It might seem uncouth to raise evangelism when talking about interfaith cooperation. Must be my Baptist roots coming to the surface. Uncouth or not, my faith tradition says “faith unaccompanied by action is dead.” If I’m to bring my faith to the table with those of other religions, I must do more than quote scripture. I must do more than recite doctrine. I must do. Possible actions include more options than feeding the hungry and quenching the thirsty, though these are quite en vogue. I should also be asking God to act on behalf of others – whether Christian, Muslim, Buddhist, Hindu, or atheist for that matter. Does anything speak more of my love (and God’s) for another than the prayer sincerely, humbly, and indiscriminately offered – with and in the presence of others? Especially when that prayer is answered, for real.

Can you come up with some more reasons why we ought to worship and pray with those of other faiths?

Image © iStockphoto

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Categories: Leadership Leave a Comment

Working at Worship, part 2

by | September 10, 2011

This post is part two of a two-part post by John Jensen. Read part one here.

Godly Work
I believe there are a few things that we can do to make our work Godly. First, like the bible says, we work as if our boss is not our boss (scripturally slave owner) but rather we subvert this relationship by working as if God is our boss. This means we would work hard, and diligently, but far from just being a pillar of the protestant work ethic, we would also work with moderation and justice. We would refuse to work to the extent where our person is exploited, or where the ideals of sabbath and rest are not realized. We live a different ethic, one of justice, and grace, and compassion.

Secondly, we do not take part in work that is used to exploit others. Once, when I was out of work for a long time, I was given a lead on a job that would have paid my rent. After bidding the job, I found out that what this business was going to be was a lingerie shop. Only, it was designed as a place where men could come and sit in a private room, and young women would come into these private rooms to “model” the lingerie. In other words, it was just a front for prostitution. In my mind, prostitution is a horrible business that uses and abuses everyone involved for the profit of a pimp. I would not take part in a business like that, I would not take their money, nor provide the ground work for this to happen. This is essentially an issue of worship.

And lastly, Godly work is work that we take pride in the creation of. The first words of our faith narrative tell us that God creates, and not long after that it tells us that we are made in this creator’s image. In some way, we are made as creators. What we do at work is reflect this image.  Whether it is creating a house as I do, or a dress as others do, or a website, or an opportunity for people to own a home, we should take pride in our creation. For you, this might mean creating a work environment of mutual respect.

Aware Work
Probably the most important of these three “works” is aware work. I struggle with this one all the time. I get caught up in the fast paced, get it done world I live in, and forget to be aware. And in this, Brother Lawrence is the most compelling example for us. Brother Lawrence tells us in the practice of the presence of God, “I find that I am as much in the presence of God while doing the dishes, as when taking the holy sacrament.” How can we cultivate this kind of spirituality? By practicing. This is a discipline, not something that will just happen. We must try more and more every day, to realize the truth of our faith… God is with us. God is among us, in us, and sustaining all things. We are truly never alone. As we work, we have a constant companion, and that is the loving Spirit of Christ.

I remember one day I was walking down the dirt street amidst a bustling jobsite. There were rugged manly men of all trades, hurrying back and forth. It was hot, and there was a lot to do. But, as I walked down the street with my tool belt jingling, all of a sudden I had this profound revelation, that God, my Father, was with me. And I was filled with this incredible love. I felt like I got hugged in the middle of my work. It was so overwhelming I began to weep. I hurried to a dark closet until I could compose myself. Don’t want the guys to see me like that, of course. One of the most incredible, personal, and worshipful moments of my entire life, and it happened in the middle of the hustle and sweat of a construction site.

But the truth is, God is always that near, and always loves that deeply, and it is our awareness of this, or our lack of awareness of this that keeps worship from being a daily outpouring of our spirit to God. Work is a place where God resides, and we must be aware of the Spirit’s empowering presence in the midst of all we do.

These are my truths. They are my journey, and struggle. As I type this I am quite ashamed that I do not live this out nearly as well as I want. But I hope that in sharing these thoughts you could perhaps be challenged in your journey as well.

I would also love for you to share your stories, your truths, and your ideas about how worship and work interact.

© John Jensen

Image © iStockphoto

John Jensen is just a normal, average, post-evangelical christianarchist who has been planting organic communities of faith with his wife Raquel and his daughters Ade and Cheyenne for twenty years. You can leer at his lunacy at johnthereverend.com. And, follow him on Twitter @rev3j.

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Categories: Formation 1 Comment

Working at Worship, part 1

by | September 9, 2011

This is part one of a two-part post written by John Jensen. Read part two here.

The word worship means to prostrate oneself. Laying face down on the ground on the construction site… well, that would be difficult. But what I have come to understand worship to be, is not always the physical act of prostrating oneself, but rather the bowing down to, or acknowledging of God’s rule. Many find the singing of songs, with lyrics about God’s Lordship to be helpful in this, but I generally don’t. For me, it is the day in, day out struggling, to give myself over to God’s leadership in my life. This becomes especially difficult in the situations where God’s kingdom rule is in direct opposition to the culture of today. For me, there aren’t many places in our lives where this is more apparent than in our places of employment.

So what does it mean to worship God in our work? There are three key aspects that comprise my answer to this question: Good work, Godly work, and Aware work.

Good Work
Right in the beginning of our creation narrative we slam into an interesting thought about our relationship with work. When Adam and Eve decide to follow their own path, they unbalance all of creation. And God tells Adam that the ground will not yield its fruit easily, that he will with much toil and sweat fight with the ground to bring about his sustenance. Our adversarial relationship with work is a result of our adversarial relationship with God, and God’s good creation. Our toil and hardship is part of what is often called the curse.

But ours is a narrative of liberation. From start to finish, the scriptures are stories of liberation from oppression. And this liberation has its ultimate climax in the person and work of Jesus the Christ. Jesus, through His death and resurrection, begins the work that liberates us from the curse of sin and death. Including the beginning of our adversarial relationship with work. And Christ teaches us about the now, and not yet, rule of God, in which we begin to live in the liberation of all things here and now, as our proper expectation and hope of the future, complete redemption of God.

In simpler terms… we live as if we are in heaven now, practicing our faith in heaven’s ultimate victory.

So what does this have to do with worship? And work?

In my mind, quite a bit. I am sure you have heard many cliches that express our relationship with work. If you enjoyed it, it wouldn’t be called work. Or, Do something you enjoy and you will never work a day in your life. etc. Well, this is not living in worship. Worship says that God is God of all of our lives. And that we submit ourselves to God’s rule in all of our lives, including work. If our God is expressed in fullness in the person and work of Jesus Christ, then we are to walk in the liberation from the curse, not under it. Which means worship should mean “good work.”

Now at the risk of alienating people, I would suggest that trading large chunks of your life, energy, talent and creativity, for money and security only, is not good work. It is, in a sense, wage slavery, and is living under the adversarial relationship with work. This is the curse. What I am suggesting is that we choose work that feeds ours souls, even if it means we are less secure and less financially prosperous. I know, this is much easier said than done.

Our work should be done as worship, which means walking in the redemption of Jesus, not under the burden of sin. Our work should come from our heart, we should have a love for what we do, and it should express who we are. Even if it means quitting our “normal” jobs. During my life I have lived this out by following my heart into a number of trades, most of them around building things. The satisfaction of creating something where there was nothing, of using my hands, of feeling physically tired or even exhausted at the end of the day, is “good work” for me. It is where worship meets work.

Read part two tomorrow, in which John continues with Godly work and Aware work.

© John Jensen

Image © iStockphoto

John Jensen is just a normal, average, post-evangelical christianarchist who has been planting organic communities of faith with his wife Raquel and his daughters Ade and Cheyenne for twenty years. You can leer at his lunacy at johnthereverend.com. And, follow him on Twitter @rev3j.

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Categories: Formation 1 Comment

Holy Meals and Mangled Metal

by | September 6, 2011

This post was written by Kevin Rains.

My worlds collided and united on February 5th, 2011.

I have owned an auto body shop in Cincinnati for the past 8 years and during most of that time I was also the pastor of a network of house churches and an intentional community. No matter how much I’ve learned or even taught that “all work is sacred” and “we’re all ministers” the world of the body shop and the world of ministry have remained apart. I had no embodied experience to bring them together. Until that day in February.

As part of my doctoral studies I’ve been working on a curriculum for spiritual formation for our communities called FORMED. One of the monthly modules of the FORMED curriculum is on work. This module coincided with the body shop buying another building (that used to be a transmission shop) for expansion so we decided to host the FORMED gathering in this new space… this chaotic, greasy, dirty, space.

We went about the business of planning for the 40 or so people who were coming. Setting up chairs, hanging cloth from the rafters to soften the space, converting an old office space into a child care room and just generally getting all the old transmission parts moved out of our way. But right in the middle of all this was a frame rack that we had recently purchased for the expansion. A frame rack is typically the largest tool in a body shop. It took up almost 300 square feet of floor space and weighs in at several tons. And it was right in the middle of the space we were creating for this gathering. It was completely in the way.

And then someone had the idea. “What if we made this our table? What if this became the gathering place for our meal?” One of the presenters that day was a local urban farmer and he had already volunteered to design a meal of locally grown food as part of the gathering. So the frame rack that was “in the way” now became the centerpiece of our gathering. With some beautiful fabric, string lights all around and candles adorning both sides it became the locus of a shared meal, hospitality, gathering, prayer, learning, nourishment and worship. In short it went from a grimy tool that untwists and straightens metal to the Lord’s table, a place of communion and community. And for me it became an icon of the intersection of my work and my worship.

I once heard Tim Keller say that all work is bringing order out of chaos and that is one of the primary ways we reflect the image of God who did just that at creation. (see Genesis 1:1-2) In the body shop I’m daily reminded of the chaos that still surrounds us as cars are towed in with leaking fluids, bent metal, broken plastic and shattered glass. And it’s amazing to watch the transformations that occur! Frames are straightened, new panels are welded on, plastic is repaired, glass is replaced, and cars are painted and buffed to look better than they did before the accident.

This is true of your job as well. From dentists who fill damaged teeth, to plumbers who get leaky pipes in order, to educators who transform the chaos of teenage minds into ordered learning of biology, to administrative assistants who take the chaos of their boss’s email inbox and calendar and wrangle it into something manageable and meaningful. And you do it too wherever you work!

Here are a few ideas to help you curate worship in the workplace:

1. Have your small group members bring an icon of their work to your meeting and let each one explain how that represents what they do and how they bring order from chaos. Pray a blessing over each person as they hold the symbol of their work. This could also be adapted to a larger gathering as well.

2. How might you include blue collar tools and talent in your next experiential worship gathering beyond just setting things up or building something for it?

3. How might sharing a meal with your co-workers foster community and worship?

© Kevin Rains
Images © Amanda McLaughlin

Kevin Rains is the owner of Center City Collision, an auto body shop in Cincinnati. He is also finishing up a doctorate in leadership and spiritual formation at George Fox University. His dissertation is centered on developing a curriculum for spiritual formation that is both communal and missional. This developing project is called FORMED. He also blogs regularly at The Kedge. He lives with his wife, three children, two dogs and seven friends in the Brownhouse.

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Can you share a story about when work and worship overlapped?

by | September 5, 2011

Humans lack integrity. Not only do we fail at being the same person in public as we are in private, we also fail when it comes to interweaving the many things we do.

We work. We rest. We play. We worship. Rarely do these things overlap. If they do, it is accidental. We have our calendars with dates and times for everything under the sun. Unlike the exhortation in Ecclesiastes, this kind of schedule segregation can be a bad thing. Why? Well, because, we are supposed to be whole. Just as we are supposed to be seamlessly the same person in secret and in public, we are also supposed to live – work, rest, play, worship, etc. – from a sense of wholeness, a sense that there is a something greater connecting the different things we do.

This week on Clayfire Curator we want to look a little more closely at two specific aspects of our doing that are often starkly delineated: Work and Worship. There is a time to laud and a time to labor. A time to sing and a time to slog. A time to exalt and a time to exert. Or, so we say with our actions. But, what does God say about this?

How should our careers relate to our religion? How do our jobs coincide with our spirituality? Is “mission” the only thing we ought to bring into our work or can we also bring worship?

An answer begins to formulate when we consider worship beyond ritual acts that are done in a specific place at a specific time. Then, a second question arises: What does this mean for worship curation? Doesn’t the worship curator curate in the context of meeting? Yes. And. Why limit ourselves to this?

Give us some feedback on this in the comments of this post. And, if it’s not too much work, cast your vote in the related poll…

Approximately how much of the worship you curate is intentionally designed for outside your main meeting space?

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