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Everybody knows that churches are located in geographical space to at least some extent. Churches may define their geography differently, but each has “space” that is at least somewhat identifiable.  When I talk about University Lutheran, the church that I serve, I can speak of its “space” in terms of:

Our footprint - This is probably the most common way to think about the local church. It is also probably the least Scriptural.

Our city - This way is still pretty common.  Being in a tradition that names every third church “St. Paul’s Lutheran” or “Trinity Lutheran” keeps this going.  ”St. Paul’s Tallahassee” or “Trinity Tallahassee” both work because they give a little more focus.  But honestly, this is probably too broad.  When St. Paul wrote to the church in Rome, he was writing to the “Church” (big C, community of believers in Christ), not to the “church” (little c, community in a given subset).

Our neighborhood - Being a campus ministry, we’re often called “University Lutheran, you know, the one by the stadium at FSU”.   I would argue that this is probably the best way to think of the local church, to think of it in terms of neighborhood.  Churches in other traditions show that they get this idea when they name their church after the subdivision that they’re in (i.e. Twin Pines Community Church).  Like I said, I’m a Lutheran, so naming a church after a neighborhood feels a little like heresy to me…but I get what is going on here.

And yet, there is a way to speak of church that gets problematic.  That way of speaking of church is the non-locational idea of church, or at least the “meta-locational’ idea of church.  In other words, the idea of church that isn’t connected to place or people, but to idealized conceptions.

I run into this “non-locational” church occasionally at times like:

a.) I’m talking to someone who is trying to sell me a one-size fits all plan for church.  Not always, but normally, one of the things that they try to convince me of is that my church is just like the last church that greatly benefited from their product.  While my church may still benefit from the product, trying to convince me that you have a non-contextualized silver bullet is grade-A manure fresh off the farm.  I will call this the “non-contextualized non-locational church”.

b.) We get to theologizing and someone starts saying “…the Church then goes and ….” Whose church? Where is this church? Did we actually find something that would unite sinful human beings? If so, praise Jesus! But it’s probably not real, and if it is, it’s probably not very new (i.e. forgiveness of sins). Let’s call this one the “compartmentalized non-locational church”.  

Where do you see the “non-locational” church popping up in your experience?  Love to hear your responses on disqus below or on facebook.

Existential crisis is a normal place for a pastor to be most of the time.  We’re often stuck in this weird place that we call “under shepherd” that seems to mess with our heads. We’re an insecure bunch, for the most part, because we know the righteousness of Christ very well, and like all sinners, we are not very good at applying His righteousness to ourselves (because it’s something that should come from outside of ourselves). And I am no different - I’m a pastor, and I have my existential crises…often.

The question that usually either triggers the crisis or the first step of the outworking of the crisis (I can rarely tell which it is) is to ask myself the question, “What kind of pastor…..?”  This comes in many forms. “What kind of pastor should I be?” “What kind of pastor do I want to be?” “What kind of pastor do *they* expect me to be?” etc etc etc.  These are hard questions to answer - partially because they’re not always asking the same persons for their opinions on the questions.

However, in a recent moment of thinking of these questions, I thought to my past.  My past includes going to a small Lutheran college where I ostensibly was a “Pre-Seminary” student, which meant taking language courses and some philosophy.  It also gained you access to the “Pre-Seminary club”.  It was at “Pre-Seminary club” that I began to notice something. I began to notice that there were some people who had much different notions of what it meant to be a pastor than I did. It appeared that this group of people granted access to the “Pre-Seminary club” were like me in some ways, but in other ways, they were very different.  

I don’t think that this Pre-Seminary club group was actually representative of most, nor do I entirely trust that my uncomfortable feelings were entirely righteous.  What I do know, however, is that I walked away from one meeting saying to myself, “Well, if that’s what a pastor is, then I am not a pastor…”

Obviously, eventually, I got over that feeling some four years later. But as I thought through my current existential crisis, I thought to myself that it might behoove me to actually go back to that rebellious son-of-a-gun spirit and declare to myself once again, not the kind of pastor that I want to be, but rather the kind of pastor I never want to be.  What follows are a few of those caricatures in no particular order:

1. The Lazy Pastor - I come from families that were predominantly small business owners and farmers. As a direct result of this, my familial culture has been colored by a manic work ethic. While this at times makes me unhealthy because I’m always searching for achievement, it also confounds me when I find pastors who can’t do simple things like return phone calls.  Honestly however, I don’t think that this “pastor I never want to be” is really that common. Most of us work ourselves to the bone for some reason or another - whether it be our own insecurities or our familial cultures.

2. The “I Graduated” Pastor - Early in my pastoral career, I had a conversation with another pastor who confessed to me that he had not read a book on ministry in over 3 years.  Now, I’m willing to grant that this guy being older than me and having the years of experience under his belt that he did, probably didn’t need the same kinds of learning that my wet-behind-the-ears seminary graduate did.  But I found something disconcerting in the number of pastors who refused any sort of ongoing learning.  It baffled me, and still does. I simply do not understand the sort of pastor who stops learning after their graduation date.

3. The Whiner - I once knew a pastor in my childhood who would often be found sipping on the stash of communion wine for the next Sunday. He had a problem and his imbibing soon led to his dimissal.  However, I have seen plenty of pastors who imbibe something that is seemingly far more addictive than communion wine - they are addicted to their own whining about how difficult being a pastor is, and how “people expect me to entertain them, not to feed them,” and how all of the forces of the universe are aligned against the poor little pastor.  Oh, poor little pastor, you are much more maligned than Luther was and you are certainly in a much more difficult surrounding culture than the Apostles were to bring the Word of God to bear in the lives of people around you. Shut up. As a classmate of mine in the seminary once said, “The LCMS believes that God ordains men in to pastoral ministry, so grow a pair.” (HT: Jeff Hemmer)

4. The Theorist - This is one type of “pastor that I never want to be” that I often get close to becoming. The theorist is the kind of pastor who has developed theories about theology and ministry that sound good to the pastor. They haven’t necessarily been tested, however, and because of that, are often found to be either wrong or lacking.

5. The Know-Nothing Liberal and the Know-Everything Conservative - These twins are often found fighting with one another in the womb like Jacob and Esau.  The Know-Nothing Liberal is the kind of guy who has definite opinions on things that liberal folks like to have opinions on - stuff like gender equality and how we treat the environment. Unfortunately, however, rarely are they able to form a reasonable argument for why those things are important that go anywhere beyond the ridiculously underestimated statement “God is love.” He is, but what you’re meaning by that probably is about as vapid it sounds.  On the other hand stands the Pharisaical (and lemme tell you, they REALLY hate it when you call them that) “Know-Everything Conservative” whose opinions have been formed and battlehardened by countless arguments on blogs, facebook pages, and any other form of media that does not require this pastor to ever leave his office where things are safe and his books are there.

6. …I’m sure there are a few more, but I should stop here.  What’s your “pastor I never want to be” or “pastor I never want to have”?  How does knowing what you don’t want frame who you do want to be as a member of the Body of Christ?  Looking forward to hearing about it on facebook or in the Disqus comments below.

According to a recent survey, some 48% of Generation X members are enrolled in some sort of formal education (this doesn’t include company-required CEU’s).  This is interesting to note because of Gen X’s educational history.  Gen X’s college attendance slumped slightly in terms of 4-year institutions compared to their elder Boomer counterparts, but they had their own Gen X boom of 2-year attendance. Gen X’s community college explosion paved the way for the high rate of Millennials in college. 19.7 million Americans, many of them Millennials and Gen X’ers are currently enrolled in college classes this year - that’s about 14 million more Americans enrolled in classes than 20 years ago according to the National Center for Education Statistics.

What does this mean for our culture? for the church?  Well first of all, it means that more and more people in our pews are going to have at least a bachelor’s degree.  It means that the level of teaching is going to have to correspond with an increasingly educated, and therefore increasingly critically-thinking church.  While it doesn’t mean that sermons necessarily have to change (those are normally pretty well researched anyway), it does mean that pastors may have to start holding more “office hours” for people to ask questions.  It also might mean that churches might benefit from holding study hours and academic mentoring programs.

It also means that the church is going to have to figure out how to minister at community colleges and to those whom are taking night classes.  The “traditional student” is becoming less traditional and more vocational.  College appears to be trending to be not as much the traditional time period of self-and-other discovery, as a necessary ongoing vocation. If this trend and change continues, it will mean drastically different campus ministries in the future.  

Think about your family and friends. How many of them are going back to school and finishing a degree or attaining a new one? How many people in your church are doing the same? What issues do you think might come of this “continuing education” boom?  Use Facebook and the Disqus comments below. Looking forward to hearing from you.

Generationally speaking, a “civic” generation like the currently popular “Millennial” generation is propelled into action by a “crisis”.  A crisis is generally a period of a sustained 10-year problem.  Theorists have bandied about two different crises that might define the current Millennial generation: a.) the downturned economy and b.) the presence of terrorism in the United States, or c.) both.

The legacy of a civic generation is therefore held to how it responds to the crisis at hand.  For example, the last civic generation, the “GI Generation” responded to the crisis of WWII.  The GI response to WWII was so strong in terms of creating infrastructure that would establish it as a world superpower, that even today the United States seems to be the nation that holds the most international influence in terms of “wars and rumors of wars”, just look at the headlines concerning Syria these days.  

An interesting article came out of the Huffington Post the other day comparing the Boston Marathon explosion to 9/11.  Certainly, there are differences - the death toll of 3 persons vs. a death toll of almost 3,000 is certainly not the least of these.  However, what the Boston Marathon bombing does do is solidifies in the mind of this younger civic generation as to how the world is broken.

To this civic generation in the United States of America, the world is broken by sin in a way that their parents would not have necessarily seen on their home turf, it is broken with alienated individuals who kill without necessary regard for a communal ideology.  In other words, our world is being broken by more and more people whose killing seems to make sense to noone but themselves.  The headlines of this year point to a crisis of sociopathy - a movie theater in Colorado, a school in Connecticut, a dorm in Orlando, a marathon in Boston.  All of these are places where we are used to seeing community built, and all of these were targeted by those whom we rightly call “terrorists”, not because they work for some shadowy militant organization, but rather precisely because of the low incidence that they are connected in any way to normal social community.  Even Al Quaeda at least seems less troubling in some ways when compared to these attacks - at least they understand themselves as a unit, and not simply homicidal rogues (although the rest of Islam would call them homicidal rogues).

Could it be that the crisis that this generational grouping of Silents, Boomers, X’ers, and Millennials is called to address is a crisis of a lack of communal identity?  If so, what group better enabled to address this crisis than a religion that proclaims itself to be one Body under one Head who is Jesus Christ?

Looking forward to your thoughts and ideas on Facebook and here in the Disqus comments below.

Bluetooth technology has been steadily taking over Apple’s 30-pin hold over technology dominance. The iPod gave the market the imperative to produce “iEverythings”. From pillowcases to hotel alarm clocks, it seemed like everyone wanted to not only brand, but also design themselves to be Apple specific. However, that could only last so long.

Now the 30-pin tell-tale Apple connector is giving way to Bluetooth accessibility, something that can be native to Apple, Android, and even Windows mobile systems.  The days of Apple-only connections are waning unless Apple figures out another way to do it.

This all brings up questions for your church.  Your church probably had or currently has a position of dominance to some degree.  It could be that everyone in your church had or has their Lutheran or Methodist or Baptist or non-denominational “30-pin” connection - but a connection that only works with the specific things that your denomination or tribe produces is a risky option.  

In my denomination, our publishing house - Concordia Publishing House, started to learn this years ago.  What used to be a monopoly situation for them soon was challenged by other publishers like Lifeway and Group.  They found out that they had to compete in order to sell to Lutheran churches, and not simply rely on the “Lutheran 30-pin” connection.  

By way of a metaphor, the “bluetooth” in terms of your church is something that equalizes the playing field, something that makes you compete instead of assuming - something that actually pushes you towards righteousness instead of laziness.  For traditional-church-body campus ministries like my own, our “bluetooth” is waning denominational loyalty.  It makes us better because it forces us to have discussions around what we’re actually offering instead of simply assuming that people will take whatever we have to offer.

What’s the “bluetooth” for your local church or church body? What equalizes the playing field and forces you to compete or think about how you might distinguish yourself?  Leave a comment on facebook or in the Disqus comments below.

When the New York Times posts an article headlined “Corporations Find a Friend in the Supreme Court” with a subheading saying that the Supreme Court is the most pro-business bunch of justices since WW II, you begin to get a sense of “we’ve been here before.”  That sense of deja vu is an important aspect of what it means to study generations.  The leading generational theory out there right now postulates that there are four generational archetypes that repeat themselves over and over again.  In the Supreme Court example, the G.I. generation was at approximately the same point in its life cycle when their justices began making more pro-business/pro-corporation decisions as Millennials are when they are making some of the same kinds of decisions.

Millennials are a “civic generation” archetype as their G.I. predecessors were.  Gen X is a “reactive generation” archetype as “the Lost” generation of Hemingway, Fitzgerald, and others who came of age in WWI. The Baby Boom is an “idealist” generation par excellance like the Awakening Generation that whipped up religious and intellectual fervor to create the American Revolution; and the generation being born today will likely look like the over-medicated and psychologized Silent generation that solidified what it meant to be “culture” even into today with things like rock n’ roll and modern art.

The theory seems to point to similar events happening in the lives of the generational archetypes.  Today’s pro-business Supreme Court may simply be responding to the same kind of economic urgency that was present and demanding a response from the Supreme Court in the 1940’s, like a massive unemployment rate for younger citizens.  Baby Boomers and the founders of American politics both were responding to a religious and secular explosion within their cultural eras. 

If anything, this pro-business and pro-corporation Supreme Court is probably good for the United States.  Civic generations tend to be “joiners” and tend to work together better than they will ever work alone (see my earlier post on the “Microwave Generation”). A pro-group/corporation judicial branch will be necessary if this generation is going to do the “system building” work that their G.I. great great grandparents did.

What do you think?  Do you see generational deja vu? Do you see it in politics? In the church?  Looking forward to your responses on facebook and here in the Disqus comments below.

In 1990 when the first Millennials were approximately 8 years old, 90% of households in the United States of America owned a microwave oven.  This isn’t an article about food, however, it’s an article using the microwave as a metaphor - a metaphor for what some have called the pre-eminent negative aspect of the Millennial generation, entitlement.  

In a recent article at Salon, “Are millennials delusional?” explored the findings of two psychologists who studied trends in Millennial attitudes toward work and success.  Essentially, the findings were that Millennials had high or moderate expectations of their own success while at the same time holding on to low expectations of the work load demand required to get that success.  In short, they want it microwaved - quick, and reasonably good.

But isn’t this simply indicative of a larger trend in the United States?  Haven’t we always been a “get rich quick” society that celebrates “new money” (i.e. the Great Gatsby, the land owners of colonial America)?  Additionally, haven’t we always assumed that our youngest generations did not share our work ethic?  Weren’t G.I.’s disparaging their Silent and Boomer children for a lack of civic focus in the late 50’s and early 60’s? If you’re an X’er like me, don’t you remember our generational slur, “slacker”?

That is not to say that the presence of this trend in our culture is good. The diminishing of work ethic combined with a demand of material goods is an insane combination.  While I’m willing to credit particular generations with certain particular dysfunctions, I’m not sure that the Millennials deserve all of the blame here.  

Regardless, this is worth addressing for Millennials and their little brother/sister generation - the upcoming unnamed (Homeland? Pluralist?) adaptive-type generation.  Fact is, yes, you do have to work at some of this stuff and all of the technology in the world isn’t going to reduce work (that’s a Genesis 3 issue), it’s just going to change it.  Wikipedia may have made it easier to find the source material for a research paper, but you can’t just cut and paste Wikipedia.

What do you notice about this yourself?  Do you think that your generation has a great work ethic? How does it compare with the generations that you see around you?  I would love to hear your comments in the Disqus comments below or on Facebook.