Just for You (and all our NIC friends)

I have been trying to put together a list of resources for all things emerging (at least what we have found useful at EG) for the Northern Illinois Conference Order of Elders event tomorrow and thought "It is really silly to print all these hyperlinks and make people retype them. Plus, we want to show how we use out virtual community here on the ol' Blogger, soooo ..." Now there are all kinds of goodies in the sidebar for you. All the non-traditional music we have used since February 2008 is there, as well as a bunch of new blogs, books and worship resources.

Let the merriment ensue.

Being a Credible Witness

Lately, I've been on a TV crime drama kick. I have been streaming episodes of Monk, Psych and Miami Vice from Hulu.com and my Netflix queue has been filled with seasons of The X-Files and Magnum P.I. And amidst all the OCD, oddness, machismo and mustaches runs a pretty consistent theme: witnesses — the foundation for the beginning of an investigation — are often unreliable. Their stories are often incomplete, the event is often misinterpreted by their senses, and the people they witness are often subject to their bias and prejudice. Oddly enough, these characteristics do not fully discredit their stories. The one thing that does harm the credibility of a witness is sharing a (duplicate) story with another witness. I'm no detective, but nothing draws the ire of my TV friends faster than two people who give an identical story: detail for detail; word for word; phrase for phrase; and pause for pause.

I began to wonder if this is the reason the church has fallen under suspicion when we share our individual faith with the world. It seems that often we share an understanding of God that sounds canned and contrived; our faith stories often have the life squeezed out of them in order to remove all of our personal additives. But I believe our personal additives are what give our unique understanding of God, Jesus and the Holy Spirit life. When you show that you are a participant in the story, you show the openness of Christian fellowship and the openness of God.

I bring this up because, this year, General Conference added “witness” to the membership vows and baptismal covenant of the UMC. Along with your prayers, presence, gifts and service, all United Methodists herein promise to be witnesses. So, when you witness to your faith, give your story the way you have come to know it. An honest story — full of imperfections, incomplete and with the occasional “I don't know” — goes a long way toward your credibility with those who have heard the same old tired story which sounds like it came from a church creed. By sharing your knowingly imperfect witness, you tell those searching that you are honest. And with that kind of credibility, you can lead them to the hard evidence and the scene of your faith community. There, they can encounter, experience and participate in the story of salvation themselves.

How My Postmodern Peeps Perceive the Church (Number 1)

Still think the status quo is doing service to God?

After all that talk about prayer ...

Sunday was the first in our series on the membership covenant. Combine prayer and being, as Bill said, "a sponge in the ocean of grace," I cannot get this image out of my mind. Somewhere, Andrew Bordoni is rocking out.

Praying without Ceasing

I remember one evening when I was in high school youth group at which we were being quite obnoxious. In the middle of the a rousing rendition of some NKOTB song (a regular Wednesday night feature to poke fun at the girls of the group), Our leaders decided to introduce us to the "Jesus Prayer."

The lights strobed in the room to get our attention, we all found seats on the garbage sofas people had given to the church, and then the room went dark. At the time, I assumed this has been an emergency plan the leaders had trained to enact, but the conditions never warranted it. I also assumed they were making it all up.

"Quiet," one of the leaders said. "This is an exercise in prayer. It is very simple. Close your eyes and breathe. As you are breathing in, think the words 'Jesus Christ, Lord of all' and then exhale to the words 'have mercy on me, a sinner.'" Frankly, I was OK with the silence. I remember the new freshmen were annoying us all to no end, so they were all forces to shut their pie holes for a moment.

I began breathing, but was distracted by the HVAC clicking on and off. I could hear the clock on the wall ticking and the hum of the lighting transformers in the gym on the other side of the wall. I heard the freshmen giggling and expelling gas. It didn't seem like this method of prayer was doing anything. We were told this was a way to enter into the "presence of God," but all it did for me was make me more aware of all the things that lurk in the shadows of our senses.

Twenty minutes into the exercise, however, I had a moment of comfort. I don't know how to describe it ... kind of like spinning, but mostly just joy. It didn't last, but it was a moment I sought to recreate for many years after that ... even during my anti-church college/post-college days. I carried that simple prayer with me for years and would find myself breathing it unintentionally. "Jesus Christ, Lord of all; have mercy on me, a sinner."

Fast-forward 12 years. When I got to seminary, we were given a text to read called The Pilgrim's Tale. In this story, a Russian Orthodox man was seeking what it meant to pray without ceasing. The church wouldn't tell him, but he was undaunted in his search. Eventually, he met a starets (Russian Orthodox monastic elder) who told him, to pray without ceasing, he should do this:

Sit down in silence. Lower your head, shut your eyes, breathe out gently, and imagine yourself looking into your own heart. Carry your mind, that is, your thoughts, from your head to your heart. As you breathe out, say, "Lord Jesus Christ, have mercy on me." Say it moving your lips gently, or simply say it in your mind. Try to put all other thoughts aside. Be calm, be patient, and repeat the process very frequently.

"Crap. I've heard this before," I thought as I read it aloud. "They weren't making it up after all." It seems that maybe those youth leaders did bring me into the presence of God; or maybe God became present in their prayer exercise. But I was wrong about recreating the moment. As that prayer hung with me, so did God's presence on my heart. I think I was living in prayer without even knowing it.

I still pray that prayer often. So much so that I don't even think about the words anymore. I simply breathe. Inhale grace, exhale my sin. I need to thank those freshmen, I think.