This is Why We Can't Have Nice Things

I live in a very small community that is economically dying. A conversation online reminded me of an exchange I had a couple of months ago.

I made a decision in business to stop focusing my efforts in town. Instead, I was going to travel to work, because there was money on the road, and the local community didn't provide a reliable enough income stream. In fact, during a stretch of nearly a month, AFTER all of our savings had been depleted, I made the princely sum of $50 for the stretch. And selling off our belongings wasn't netting us enough to ride the storm out.

And so I stated that I was shutting down the local side of the business almost in its entirely. The time and money I was spending to advertise, promote, and pay insurance premiums was not justified by the almost nonexistent business it was netting me.

The result of my statement was blowback from some of the community. One person went so far as to tell me that I did not belong in this town, and that I should move out for the betterment of the town.

It took a bit, but I slowly began to realize that is the exact same problem I've had in the church through the years. As people beat their brains out to figure out why folks are leaving their congregations, I have actually taken the time to talk with some of the families who have left. And I've found that their concerns are very similar to mine. Yet instead of listening to the people who have left, pastors tend to only hear the voices of the church growth professionals, who tend to write off the exiting congregants as collateral damage.

In the meantime, they've allowed people to come in who look the way they want, talk the way they want, say "amen" in the right places, and most of all, never EVER criticize the leaders. Because divine inspiration, it seems, can only come from those who are ordained by men.

The net result is that, not only are there wolves in the flock, they are in many cases LEADING the flock. The allure of building more building than you need and judging your success by how many people you can pack into that building is far too strong. Bring programs, they say. Entice the kids and the parents follow. All of these are gimmicks that never ever focus on the heart of the community.

But they are also indicators of poor leadership. Ask most of the pastors (or, getting back to the community issues, community leaders) to produce a strategic plan and you will seldom find one. Ask them to perform a SWOT analysis, and you're likely to find blank stares meeting you in the boardroom. Because a SWOT analysis requires talking to those people who left. And listening.

Instead, like the fine person who offered to run me out of town, the church is doing the same thing. The people who leave are written off, discarded, and no real change is ever made because the only people left in the seats are yes men and women, who grossly misinterpret what it means for a pastor to be "above reproach".

I've given up hope that any of my articles will ever be read in their entirety. Yet I keep them, and I keep writing them, in the hopes that one day someone will actually read them and GET them. Until that time, expect nothing to change.

John Hagee: A Liar for God

John Hagee is an icon of the evangelist. He is a hero. He is also a liar and an apologist for the wealthy. And I believe it is time for Christians to stand up against religious "leaders" like Hagee.

He continues to compare the poor to parasites, failing to call out the employers who continue to underpay their employees. He calls for "justice" by starving the poor, in direct contradiction to the Biblical mandate to CARE for the poor!

Where will you stand, Hagee, when God separates out the sheep and the goats? Where will you stand?

If the rich insist on perpetuating class warfare, I'm more than up for the fight!

Why Simplicity?

I admit to being an extremist in one respect: I don't like waste. I don't like when I see it in the church; I don't like when I see it in my own life.

And I believe that a consistent part of being a Christian is to live simply. While it's true that God makes both rich and poor, it is a mistake to believe that money is your own. You are at best a steward, and you WILL be held accountable for how you handle God's investments.

The evangelical church is moving closer and closer to being like the pre-Reformation Catholic church in reality, if not in name. People of power and position are given preference in the church, and, rather than raise up ministers to meet the needs of the flock, we exalt ministers with a charismatic bent to a lofty position and build up their churches. And we turn away from ministry anyone who has the ability but doesn't have the salesmanship. Church has become a business, and it costs a good deal of money to support those ministries.

The truth is, this is NOT what was intended. Yes, we can look at Jewish tradition as far as buildings are concerned, but if you are comparing ANY modern church building to the temple, you are not well versed in theology. The truth is, the very simple yet profound act of the curtain being torn in two upon the death of Christ illustrates why that analogy is inaccurate: because the Temple simply is NOT part of the New Covenant. This is because the Temple was a type of Christ.

When Jesus sent out His disciples, He sent them out with nothing (Luke 9:3). There was no fancy dress, and if we're acting in accordance with Jesus' teachings, there wouldn't be an emphasis on sound, lights, and essentially trying to replicate a rock concert on a Sunday morning service. Now, I've had the debate on projectors, and I can reluctantly agree that IF the purchase of a computer and a projector does not impede the ministry, it's not an outrageous choice, because, as a pastor friend of mine has pointed out, it does urge the congregation to look up, and actually SING. It would be better if they knew all the words in the hymnal, as used to be the norm, but we can't lament the cultural relics of the past.

Today's church often consists of simulcasts and video teaching. Contrast this with Jesus' teaching methods, which encouraged questions, encouraged interaction. Any teacher will tell you that you can only accomplish so much. Simplicity allows the ministers to interact with their congregation, and through the questions that the congregants ask, it can be much easier to identify the needs.

But the main reason simplicity is important is because many churches have made the gospel secondary. Positions in the church are often given to the wealthiest, using the rationale that they are better stewards of their money (that's often not the case, but it is the perception in our culture). The truth is, if a major contributor to the church's finances was caught in a major scandal, it would be difficult for the church to confront them, because a good number of pastors would be unwilling to risk the financial stability of their church by offending the contributor.

To be fair, most pastors that I know personally would not hesitate to speak out, but I have also known a few personally who HAVE failed to speak out -- and watched as the actions of those individuals ultimately affected and destroyed their congregations. It's not pretty.

The truth is, for a Christian, the GOSPEL is what is important. Not programs, not multimedia, not a worship team. If those are an impedance to proper worship, they should be removed. And if the cost to maintain them causes the church to neglect serious needs in the community, they should be done away with. Our call is primarily to those outside the church, after all, NOT those inside of it.

I know there are those who will argue my point, and they will do so with elegance. But as Christians, we must face the fact that our slavish devotion to the things of this world is a compromise that is seriously destroying the church. The majority of Christians I know (and I've been guilty of this myself from time to time) can quote more lines from their favorite movie than they can from Scripture. That is a tragedy.

Let's try to stop serving mammon so much, and focus on what's important. That's where true religion begins!

It's Not About Guilt; It's About Humanity

4,743 faces. 4,743 names.

Between 1888 and 1968, 4,743 people faced the hangman's noose in a massive bloodbath orchestrated by people who claimed to be Christian. Although not all were black, 73% were, and most were in the South. Two were hanged in the very town where I was born.

150 were women, and at least three of those (Mary Turner, Josefa Segovia and Laura Nelson) were either pregnant or had given birth. And the faces of those who hanged them would sit proudly in the churches not long after.

As I am doing the research for a specific project, I am discovering a lot of ugly truths about the history of lynching in America. It is a history on which the church has been remarkably silent, preferring to leave in our past, believing that we've become more civilized (the blood of Trayvon Martin would, I am sure, argue against our being more civilized, but that's another matter).

I cannot reconcile with THIS church, cannot consider myself a part of THIS body. I know it doesn't recognize the face of the church today, but I cannot help but think that even though we did not perform these vile actions, we can be among those to help heal in the descendants of these victims who sit among us.

It's time for us to own the actions of our forbearers. And atone.

I Cannot Pass Them By

...and this is where I get the heat for being judgmental. Before you read, before you comment, please understand that I am not at all being judgmental, and if you feel that I am pointing the finger in your direction, maybe you should check yourself, because maybe, just maybe, it's the Holy Spirit.

Now that I've gotten that disclaimer out of the way and the pitchfork sharpening has commenced, allow me to continue.

As I drove over into the WalMart parking lot, the lady who I had shared campground space yesterday was flying a sign, asking for help with gas for her RV.

I wasn't in a giving mood. I rationalized everything I could; her RV was in idle, the TV and AC were on where her kids sat inside. To rationalize away would be easy, and maybe, just possibly, I would be right.

But what of the possibility that I could be wrong? What of the command not to judge? What of the command that if someone asks for your coat, give them your cloak also? What about the call to the sojourner? All of these things went through my mind as I gave, admittedly grudgingly. I've been feeling spent and bitter lately, and while I know that's not a good thing, I also know it's only a sign I am human.

I live in a world where the faith I follow calls me a fool. I have long cherished the amazingness of the grace of God who has given me so much, and so abundantly. My kids certainly don't see it, the world certainly doesn't see it, but I do. EVERYTHING I have and am belong to God, and when I see myself with so much while so many have so little, I feel that there is no response but to act.

I look at everything I have and wonder, when have I given enough? The answer comes back, when I have nothing to give. And that is the ONLY answer that lines up with Scripture, in my opinion.

The sad part of it is, the church in general does not agree. I've found one pastor in a thousand who will put the needs of the community over the material needs of the church. Yes, we serve, but when the need is still there, we must ask, have we served enough?

Being on the road has been the biggest blessing that I've ever known, as it has exposed me to the vastness of the need. Every time I put another drop in the bucket, I see how large the bucket is, and I wish my fellow Christians would understand that our ONLY cause is Christ, and everything else is just spinning wheels.

I'm not castigating folks completely; I've seen some amazing things from fellow believers, and I know they are doing as much as they humanly can and stay within their comfort zone. I'm not questioning that. But I am suggesting that, perhaps, we go beyond our comfort zone and surrender absolutely EVERYTHING, understanding that in the end, God will provide.

O America, Where Art Thou?

I am feeling disturbingly alone right now. I know there are people of like mind, but they seem oh so distant at every occurrence. I am watching the undocumented workers of America, and the child refugees from Central America villainized by the right, who demand that these are criminals, not children, and that they should be shipped back to a land of despair and poverty rather than embraced in the land of opportunity.

If this is the path my country chooses, this is no longer my country. I will not swear allegiance to a land that refuses to shelter the sojourner and gives power to multinational corporations while stealing it from the people. I will not ask God to bless a country that does not bless God; and blessing God has NOTHING to do with legislating the actions of nonbelievers, and EVERYTHING to do with thorough self examination to ensure that our own actions are consistent with the teachings of Scripture. And the teachings of Scripture do not mince words when addressing the plight of the sojourner, or of the poor and needy.

In the last twelve hours, two virulently racist articles have been splashed on my wall; one overplaying the gang connection of the immigrants (while gang members DO exist, it bears mentioning they are hardly exclusive to the Latino population), the other claiming that AlQaeda is coming across in droves in the midst of the children.

And I'm tired of it.

If you subscribe to such racism, keep it off my wall. Unfriend me, block me, do what you must, but it is getting more than a little frustrating to find that even my fellow Christians are ready and willing to show up with pitchforks at the border and usher these people out of America. It sickens me to a degree that's beginning to compromise my health.

Deitrich Bonhoeffer made the impossibly hard decision to stand against a growing racist culture, and I will do the same. But I know that in doing so, I may end up very much alone, at least in my real life encounters. But as Joshua boldly declared in his line in the sand moment: "As for me and MY house, we will serve the LORD". And serving the LORD, as Jesus makes poignantly clear in several instances, notably the story of the Prodigal Son and the passage in Matthew 25:31-46, includes serving "the least of these".

Why the Immigration Issues Matter

It was a striking scene: aging vehicles, barely roadworthy and loaded to the point where the axles sagged and with every rotation seemed ready and willing to snap, lined up as far as the eye could see, filled with people and all off their possessions. It was a scene described ably by both John Steinbeck and Woody Guthrie, both heroes of mine, who wanted to expose the inhumanity and injustice that seemed to have become the birthright of so many of America’s poor and hungry.

The immigrants were told to go home, were ushered into camps where they eked out an existence, were denied education and basic services, even as their very presence was caused by their attempt to escape the poverty back home, where the land had become unworkable, and the air had become unbreathable.

It was the Dust Bowl, and Americans were turning away their own, with no thought of the plight of these people. To be sure, there were people of compassion, and those people admirably swam against the tide of public opinion as they were called communists, and worse. In less than two decades’ time, the actions of many of these would bring them under the scrutiny of McCarthy, and they would lose jobs, and even liberty because they had dared speak out against injustice. And this is in America, the “land of the free”.

I am a cultural descendant of these Okies. While my family moved to Oklahoma in 1972 and did not know the Dust Bowl Days, I have lived most of my life within its sphere of influence. Old timers would tell stories of the Depression and the Dust Bowl, and of family that had moved on for a better life. Even in my generation, the constant exodus of those seeking a better life elsewhere was common, and, like many of my peers, I drove, road, and hitchhiked my way as far west as the road would take me virtually as soon as the law deemed me to be adult enough to do so with impunity.

In my current city of Clayton, New Mexico, recovering from the throes of a recent extended drought, the words “Dust Bowl” are ever on the lips of those who remember, and a certain somber feeling seems to permeate the air every dry year when the wind turns the air into a violent mix of wind, dirt, and tumbleweeds, and with every breath we inhale the powdery evidence of drought. I walk daily over sidewalks stamped with the letters “WPA”; letters that hearken back to a time when many Americans simply would not have survived had the government not have intervened. They would have simply been swept away with the dust that sweeps these hard plains.

Even as I appreciate my own heritage of people who struggled to survive in a land that did everything to evict them, I think back to the struggles of other immigrants. To the families whose final, lingering hope lay at the other side of the crowded gates at Ellis Island, to the families who sold everything, including their own liberty, to purchase a berth on a rickety boat crossing a vast ocean to a destination spoken of in hushed, almost reverent terms: America.
These people ARE America, they built America, and the stories they tell became the very fabric of our culture. They drove spike after spike into the timber crossties of the railroads until these iron horses crossed the land from sea to sea, and they dug holes into the hot, unforgiving earth, losing many of their brothers and sisters along the way, to mine the metals that built the communities we walk among and too often take for granted. They came here speaking halting English, and, over time, their language changed, as did their bodies from the toll of struggling in the heat of the blistering summer and the cold of the Midwestern winter.

As the need for workers to build the infrastructure has dwindled and as the population of our cities has increased, though, many Americans have given into the notion that the opportunity that our parents and grandparents sought, the opportunity that endowed us with rights, with dignity, and with things that many nations take for granted, should be denied others, with the exception of the fortunate few with the financial means to buy a place in line.

The others, the ones not so fortunate to be bankrolled, but with the same desire for opportunity, are subject to a darker fate. They have become victims of the modern day slave trade, and they meet dark men with dark hearts in the middle of the night who promise them passage to that place still spoken of in reverent terms, if they will work for the greedy industries who refuse to pay a wage adequate for survival. Their reality becomes one of indentured servitude where they work 80 hours a week at less than minimum wage, never fearing to speak against these injustices because the people who run these industries can, with a simple phone call, have them deported to their impoverished communities of origin.

And this is why I speak. As a Christian, not only can I not turn my back on these people, these people are the very people that I and fellow believers are called to serve. Verse after verse speaks of the sojourner, and Jesus speaks of compassion for the poor; who, then, do we think He has called us to serve if not these. In perhaps one of the most poignant, misunderstood passages of the Bible, he is asked which is the greatest commandment. He cites two: Love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, mind and strength, and love your neighbor as yourself. When asked “who is my neighbor”, He tells the story of a man regarded as filthy and wicked by the Jewish people, who meets another’s need when the very people charged with doing so (a Priest and a Levite) have passed him by.

I look with sadness on the Tea Partiers, the conservatives, those who claim the moral high ground in politics, as they fight against the refugee children in this country, and as they call immigrants criminals and demand their deportation, and I realize with sadness that the ghost of Fred Phelps has not gone away. For it is the inconvenient reality that the sin of those who would denounce these immigrants is every bit as dark and deplorable as those who hold up signs at funerals in protest. And while I desperately want to believe  that the actions are not being driven by racism, it is a reality that is becoming harder to escape.

And yet, it is in many ways, my reality. I understand the plight of the migrants more than most, for it is who I’ve become. Over the last two months, my home is more frequently wherever I am allowed to park my van for the night than it is my own home, and the luxury of resting my head on my own pillow is one that I know only a few days out of every month. I live in the modern day Hoovervilles, as I seek work wherever someone is willing to pay my price. And although I am more fortunate than most in that I have a home to return to, it is only because of my working as a migrant that I am able to do so.

It is an experience  that has been both humbling and enlightening; that has helped me to grasp the reality that the plight of every working person is intertwined with mine, and that the injustices that affect one of us affect all of us. I have come to better understand the concept of privilege, and have an increasing desire for social justice. I am daily reminded that I am disposable, that future is only a hope, and security only an illusion. And in the middle of that it strikes me; if there were a border fence that I could hop to give me access to a life that offered more promise, your guns and your border fences would be ineffective barriers. And if my reality included drug cartels, human trafficking, and corrupt officials, it is no stretch to imagine being in a condition where the hot sting of a bullet and its immediate release from the pressures of this world would be preferable to the lengthy protracted suffering of staying where I was.

I am not speaking for any other person in the faith, nor can I. But even as many fellow Christians denounce me, I will state with firm conviction my belief that we need to open the borders to ALL who seek a better future for their family, and not make entry available only to those with financial means. There was a time when we welcomed those who sought a better future, and one of the most iconic landmarks in the USA celebrates that. As a nation, if we are going to choose to be isolated nationalists, we need to tear down the Statue of Liberty while the price of copper is still high and cash in. As Christians, we need to speak out for these, and any who suffer injustice, even at the risk of being ostracized by leaders of our own faith.

The issue of immigration is one that should be addressed with compassion, not condemnation. For in a sense, todos somos ilegales – we are ALL illegals.