Hacking Christianity

A mission.hack is defined here. We look at mission statements or at mission initiatives and examine different ways of expressing them. Hacking them...if you will.

Wordle is a fascinating generator that allows you to paste chunks of text, and it will make a word-cloud out of it, giving words that are repeated more often bigger letters (like the tag cloud to the right).  I think it will become a regular part of our repertoire when evaluating mission.hacks, to expose what terms show up the most.  If nothing else, it will be fun to use.

To try it out, I inserted the United Methodist Social Principles (the preamble and main paragraphs [160-166]) into the generator, and clicked random grouping, grabbed a mountain dew, and almost spewed it when I saw what came out!

I hesitate to claim any lesson to be found in random groupings of words.  But I was struck by the way how it randomly placed the two most repeated words (God and persons) together:

While you can read the biblical, theological, and historical basis of the Creed, I think here is the basis of the social principles:

• We are called to be Godpersons who bring Life to the World.

That's it.  Pretty simple, eh?

Read full post >>

A mission.hack is defined here. We look at mission statements or at mission initiatives and examine different ways of expressing them. Hacking them...if you will.

Prodigal Jon over at Stuff Christians Like has a point that I want to make as well.  He writes about the numbers game that churches play with events...you know, like "25 souls saved at this worship service" or "120 new followers of Christ from this mission trip" and such.

A great way to confirm a parent's belief that your church only cares about numbers is to over celebrate the number of kids that came to VBS and the number of kids that were saved. Please don't read this as "Jon hates when kids give their lives to God." Not at all. I just think that it needs to be about relationship, not only a number.

"Well, no one thinks that" you might say.  But since this is a mission.hack, what about your signage or reports that sound something like what Prodigal Jon saw:

A church near me had a sign that said "VBS – 1,200 kids, 432 saved!" Again, the heart of that is great, but the sign felt like it should say "That's a 33% success rate in Fiscal Quarter 2."  

I wonder how many churches honestly do this.  If a worship event cost $5000, and 50 people converted to Christianity, that's $100 per convert.  Would that get more credence at the church budget table than a bible study that costs $1000 for the year but merited only 5 converts (thus, $200 per convert)?  I guess if your church is in the evangelical numbers realm, this would have to be a consideration.

Prodigal Jon concludes with this astute observation:

Be careful, parents might not dig thinking "yay, my kid was #234 at your Christian factory."

I think the kernel of this conflict is that Christians emphasize different parts of the Great Commission.  What is that?  Last chapter of Matthew, Jesus says "Go forth and make disciples of all the nations"

• If you emphasize "make disciples" then you are encouraging growth and discipleship...in other words, forming relationships.
• If you emphasize "of all the nations" then your evangelistic goal is to make more Christians, either to assure the coming of the Lord or to save more souls to Christ.

Both are valid forms of Christianity.  But when we emphasize the numerical growth over the discipleship (which in some ways is unquantifiable), then we fall down a slippery slope to "the ends justify the means."  Bryan Stone, a professor at Boston University School of Theology, expands on this in his book Evangelism after Christendom: The Theology and Practice of Christian Witness.

When the mission of the church becomes a mission of numerical growth, quantitative influence, and geographical spread, evangelism is easily reduced to whatever means, method, or gimmick will facilitate that mission.  Conversion then becomes a lowest common denominator decision or experience that will allow a church, without too much embarrassment, to claim an individual as its own. (page 272)

The problem for church leaders, of course, is how to gauge "success" without playing the numbers game.  Stone continues with something of value to us at Hacking Christianity:

Evangelism can be measured by how fully inclusive is our "reach" and how thoroughly we refuse to allow that "reach" to be domesticated by the political boundaries and economic disciplines of the [world]...the measure of Christian evangelistic reach is its openness and hospitality to the poor, the stranger, and the socially ostracized. (pp. 273-274)

Remember: this is a mission.hack where we examine the words we are using.  Perhaps then instead of a sign saying "VBS – 1,200 kids, 432 saved!" a better sign may be:

• VBS: 1200 kids, 400 given scholarships and came for free.
• VBS: 1200 kids, 233 first-timers came!
• VBS: 1200 kids, one Lord who welcomes them all!
• VBS: 1200 kids, and at least 12 of  them were black!
• VBS: 1200 kids, and two were probably gay!
• and my favorite - VBS: 1200 kids, and we didn't resort to BibleMan Action Figures or candy to welcome 432 kids into a relationship with Christ.
  

By focusing on the reach of our evangelism to the poor and ostracized, not just the breadth of its spread, then perhaps we are one step better to doing evangelism better.

Thoughts? 

• Examples of churches in your town that prefer numbers over discipleship?  
• Ideas for how to quantify discipleship in ways that aren't about the numbers?
  

Welcome to our visitors and every comment is cherished at HackingChristianity!

Read full post >>

A mission.hack is defined here. We look at mission statements or at mission initiatives and examine different ways of expressing them. Hacking them...if you will.

I'm a longtime reader of Pharyngula. Yesterday, PZ Myers posted this billboard by a UM Church.

"If you can wish, you can believe" has been ridiculed by PZ's readers (including lots of knocking of the "Open hearts" campaign) and PZ titles the page "All of Theology in Seven Words." Ouch!

But is it really all that vapid?

Let's consider this a mission.hack....the way how we use words or phrases to open up the Christian system.

To me, anyone can wish for something. It is easy to wish for a new car, for a better job, for whirled peas. We wish for rather subjective things, things relative to a time and place. And often we don't wish for things for other people, do we?

Believing, however, is not the same as wishing. To me, the biggest difference between wishing and believing is sociological: Believing is about relationships. It is out of the norm for people to come to believe in Christ through solely biblical study. People come to church because of the relationships they gain, not because they think they can obtain what they wish for. To me, believing happens when you are in a relationship with another Christian or focusing on your relationship with God.

As I see it, believing is not about wishing, it is about relationships. So, while I disagree strongly with the theology expressed in the bulletin board, a good preacher can make the connections between the two for the edification of the receiver of the Word.

Because wishing and believing have something in common: they both betray what you want. When you wish for a car you really do want that car! When you believe in God, however, your wants are exposed by what kind of God do you want. If you want a God who will protect you and punish your enemies, then you want vengeance. If you want a God who is close and listens, then you want friendship and comfort. If you want a God to smite them homersexuals, then you want a god made in your own image. So a good preacher can connect our hidden wants with what kind of God speaks best to us.

I'm not blind to the negatives. This becomes much closer to wishing in that it leaves us with a subjective understanding of God, not a God that universalizes well. It also reeks of the self-help Christianity that focuses on a God who blesses what you name to God, ala Joel Osteen. But as a whole, it connects with people's wants, and if those wants can be connected to a life of discipleship, then I can see the billboard being effective, if a bit too materialistic and individualistic for my tastes.

Anywho, I can't really offer any alternatives to this mission.hack...just writing what that statement evoked in me in contrast to the negative statements. Maybe emphasizing relationships over wishing? "If you can bowl alone, you can bowl with Jesus" (hahahaha!)

Any thoughts on what the statement evoked in you, or better ways to hack this statement?

Read full post >>

A mission.hack is defined here. We look at mission statements or at mission initiatives and examine different ways of expressing them. Hacking them...if you will.

The United Methodist Church at General Conference 2008 just voted to no longer make disciples of Jesus Christ.

In other words, the mission statement of the UMC was previously "to make disciples of Jesus Christ."

Now the UMC's mission statement is "To make disciples of Jesus Christ for the Transformation of the World."

This is a good mission.hack. Why? Because it is utterly Wesleyan in that our discipleship leads us to act. We are not a passive people, we are a people with a blessing that requires that we pass it on. Like a cup overflowing with God's love, now our mission statement reflects that discipleship must bubble up out of us in acts of mercy and justice.

May all congregations adopt this mentality of connecting faith with action. Bravo for the GC2008!

Read full post >>

A mission.hack is defined here. We look at mission statements or at mission initiatives and examine different ways of expressing them. Hacking them...if you will.

An important and refreshing change happened in the first minutes of the UMC's General Conference with radical implications for our local church committees and ecumenical business gatherings. It is that important.

From lay delegate Will Green on the ground at GC:

[A] member of the New England delegation, my friend We Chang, asked the Bishop to change her language around a motion being "defeated" so that we don't use war and violence language. The Bishop loved the suggestion and it got applause from the gallery!

Thus, for the whole of GC2008, measures are not "defeated" they are "rejected."


It started me thinking:

• How often do your church committees "defeat" measures? Reading through a church's committee minutes can sound at times like armies swathing across Europe.
  
• How often do you vote with "ayes" and "nays?" Hearing it like two opposing sides can seem like there are only two areas, black and white, no shades of gray, reinforcing the opposing sides mentality.
  

Perhaps a change in language will assist us as we grow in mutuality towards each other? Maybe examine your own committees and see if the very language we use promotes combative relationships and "winners" and "losers."

Thoughts on this?

Read full post >>

A mission.hack is defined here. We look at mission statements or at mission initiatives and examine different ways of expressing them. Hacking them...if you will.

Yesterday, I attended a presentation by Doug Ruffle, PhD, of the New Jersey area of the UMC who came and did a presentation on church growth and tools for evangelism. He said (at least) one thing that really stuck with me and reminded me of many UMC Mission statements. He said this:

Stop being a friendly church.

Seriously...stop it.

• A friendly church is not what God calls us to be.
• We are called to be a church where people can make friends.

Dr. Ruffle writes...

My mother had to move over 10 times during her first 12 years of marriage. My father worked as a salesman and the companies he worked for were constantly assigning him to new places. We asked my Mom how she had managed to pick up everything and move with a family of five to a new town or city where she didn’t know a soul.

“I would find a Methodist Church,” she replied, “because there I knew I could make a friend.”

I thought it interesting how she worded her response. She didn’t look for a “friendly church,” but rather a church where she could make a friend. There is a big difference.

The difference was underscored for me recently upon hearing of a colleague who moved to a new town and sought out the closest United Methodist Church. He found a “friendly church.” People were kind. They smiled at him. Some greeted him during the after-worship fellowship hour. But, he wasn’t making any friends. He even went so far as to invite some of the church members he met to his home — to try to build a relationship — but they couldn’t find the time to come over. My colleague had found a friendly church, but not one where he could make a friend. He has given up trying and now is attending a church of another denomination where within two weeks of his first visit he was invited over to a member’s house for dinner.

To me, this is not mere hospitality, but a discrimination issue too. Too often we are only "friends" with people similar to us, and "friendly" to people who are not similar to us.

• You know...those people.
  
• The ones who you will talk to in coffee hour, maybe even wave back on the street, but otherwise outside the church walls you aren't connected to their lives.
  
• The ones of a different race or, perhaps more likely, economic level than you.
  

We are called to be friends and accountability partners, not just "friendly" people who greet you with a smile, but keep you at arms length.

The statement on a plaque on the front steps of my church says this: "A friendly Church in a friendly town." I'd rather it say "A Church where you can make a friend."

But maybe friendship isn't what you are looking for. Perhaps you are one of those wounded ones who just wants Sanctuary, a time alone with God. Emphasis on alone. That's fine too, and churches that take "to make a friend" to borderline-stalking are out of the loop too.

So, where is the sweet spot between being "friendly" and "making friends" that churches welcoming and hospitality committees can address? And how can pastors and laity alike help move their church from being friendly to actually treating one another like the brother and sister in Christ that they are?

Ruffle concludes his talk with this nugget:

My mother taught me a valuable lesson about the difference between a friendly church and a church where you can make a friend. It's a lesson of which our churches need to be reminded.

When I see the words "a friendly church" that just reminds me to be friendly. If I instead saw "where you can make a friend" I might remember, hey, that's ME. I might be the one making a friend today.

Mission.hacks examine what effect mission statements have on people, and what our mission statements betray about us. Perhaps the "country-club" stigma of the UMC could be a bit more eradicated if we stopped being "friendly" and started trying to offer to be "friends."

Thoughts? Other "friendly" manifestations that you want to note of?

Discuss.

Read full post >>