Readers of this blog may remember me talking about how I’ve been surprised at how progressive I find my family to be when I actually talk to them about things religious instead of assuming. So now I don’t get surprised when I find us agreeing on theological or ecclesiological points. But I have recently learned some very unexpected information regarding the way the wind’s blowing in the church I currently attend.

We’ll call it First Church of Surburbia (FCoS), because it is indeed nestled in a a suburban housing development, the kind where planners saw little need for sidewalks and plenty of need for stucco. It’s no mega-church — it’s around the 400-mark in terms of size. My dad used to be pastor there, for many many years, before he left for health reasons (no bad blood, in other words). I’ve also written in this blog about how it was actually a good church in which to grow up — a functional organization filled with many kind, caring people.

The church building itself was built in the late ’80s, and is accordingly utilitarian. Not a massive thing, but since the early/mid-’90s, the attendance numbers have required two services every Sunday morning. There is also a dearth of Sunday school rooms, as one thing that Suburbia has plenty of (besides big-box stores) is children. There’s no youth room. There’s actually a youth stairwell. Seriously, when I was in high school, the niche underneath a stairwell was furnished with the old couches from the nursery and the old mailboxes from the lobby upstairs, splashed with a few coats of decorative sponge painting and christened (ha) the youth corner. Not that I’m saying youth rooms are Very Important or anything, but if you grew up in a church with a foosball table and all that fancy shit, well — I’m just saying. You were one of the priveleged. (YOUTH STAIRWELL.)

I think many of you will know where I’m going with this, and indeed where a church would be going with this. Not enough space? TIME FOR A NEW BUILDING!

As of now, FCoS has purchased a sizable plot of land and indeed selected an architect. I figured this meant that the church’s movement down the path towards a bright, shiny, massive new building was certain and unstoppable. I figured this would be one more reason why I would eventually end up leaving the church for good, because if I’m going to practice Christianity I’m not going to be practicing the kind that builds massive new church buildings so that there are enough Sunday school rooms to teach third-graders the actions to the song “Ten Men Went to Spy on Canaan.”

Turns out I’m hopelessly out of touch with the internal politics of the church. According to my sources, there is a sizable contingent of folks within the church who are jumping off the building bandwagon. Or if not jumping off, passing notes up to the driver making suggestions. And these folks are some of the leader-types (and, it should be noted, the younger, under-40 types. But also some of the over-40s, too).

They’re questioning the financial wisdom of erecting (ha) an edifice that fits with the old models of church organization, examining the real value of having a space where every single member of the church can meet, and maybe even looking at other ways of using space and schedules.

Well slap the dog and spit in the fire. I had no idea.

Apparently quite a few folks have been reading The Present Future: Six Tough Questions for the Church and it’s shaking things up. I don’t know anything about this book, but it seems that it’s got a hard-hitting message about the future of the church that the baby boomers are taking to heart. They may have a little trouble chewing it at first, but they’re trying. The fact that it’s oh-so-shocking to them probably means it would garner a big “Yeah, and?” from me and a good number of you reading this, but everyone has to start somewhere.
So now I’m thinking, woah, wouldn’t it be great if, at FCoS, there were a Sunday afternoon service that were done in a less structured, more creative style?

It’s interesting that I find all this out now. This past weekend I indulged in something of a fit of pique over FCoS and took a sabbatical from my normal religious activities there. I went to a church that meets in a space downtown, right across from the anarchist bookstore and coffeehouse my friends and I frequent. (And in the same neighbourhood as the art galleries, movie theatres, pub, and record store my friends and I frequent. So basically this church has done a bang-on job of reaching me.) They meet at 4:30 on Sunday afternoons, and it was amazing how natural it felt to go to church at that time of day (though I admit that could be because I’m a lazybones who makes her own work schedule and likes to go out at night and as a result has a bad habit of sleeping ’til noon).

I’d launch into a recap of my experience at this decidedly pomo church, but I think this entry has gotten long enough and you all probably are ready to move on to the next blog on your feed reader.

Basically, I just wanted to share my delight with you. Perhaps there’s hope for the churches of Suburbia yet! FCoS is hardly post-congregational (™ CraigBob) but they’re not trapped in the 19th century, either, and that’s pretty heartening.

technorati tags: post-modern church, church, christianity, religion, congregations, suburbia, reggie mcneal

I haven’t felt much like writing this week because I’ve been in an awful mood. It’s been hard on me, but probably harder on the people who live with me. I’ve taken some steps to rectify the situation but I’m a bit slow coming out of it.

So, the question is: is it better to make a whiny blog post or to post not at all? We’ll see. Also, please make sure to turn your sarcasm-decoders on, you’ll need them later.

I’m kinda getting tired of being the only non-evangelical/non-conventional person in my small group. Well, I’m not the only one, as Brother Mark is there to back me up, but he’s been skipping a bit lately and I can’t blame him, because it’s been dreadful. We’re plowing through the rest of Randy Alcorn’s The Treasure Principle, which even the mainline kids haven’t liked, and on which I’m still planning on making an entry explaining why we’ve found it to be so obnoxious.

We’re going through the final four lessons in two weeks so we can move on to — drumroll please — Blue Like Jazz! For those of you not familiar with the latest in Christian non-fiction, Blue Like Jazz (subtitled: “Non-religious thoughts on Christian spirituality.” To which I say: quit trying to squirm out of the “religious” label, dude. No one’s buying it, nor should they) is a book by Donald Miller that Christian parents give to their wayward children in order to draw them back into the fold. OK, not really, but that’s why I ended up reading it. In our group, the only ones who have read it are Brother Mark and I, as well as Heather, the other resident Bad Kid (less religious than me and far less loud-mouthed).

Blue Like Jazz is not a particularly radical book. In fact, it’s pretty much entirely too conservative for me, making it perfect for the group. Miller’s about a more tolerant evangelicalism, which is better than the other kind. I like to think that Blue Like Jazz is a gateway book, i.e. a book that could possibly lead people to reading other books that would really change the way they think.

That said, I haven’t read the book in quite some time and would like to read it again in light of all that I’ve learned since the first reading.

Anyway, I’m starting to kind of feel like the token rabblerouser in the small group — the person who provides a different viewpoint, the presence of which allows the other group members to believe they’re not as insulated and dogmatic as they think. That’s a pretty harsh statement and I probably shouldn’t make it on the internet, but like I said, the bad mood hasn’t completely evaporated so I’m still really bitchy and I’m not really feeling like toning it down right now.

Over the past month I’ve been experiencing a good deal of study-induced euphoria, reading all kinds of great theology and other work by really smart, thoughtful people, and having good conversations with people as well. But recently I’ve been feeling far more pessimistic, especially when it comes to the Bible. It’s not that I’m so stereotypically pomo that I don’t believe in truth (or, Truth), but it’s that it seems to be buried under so many layers of culture, tradition and perception so as to be almost unknowable. The way any given person reads the Bible is so completely dependent on that person’s own paradigm and assumptions about the world and the way it works. Not just the world, either, but the nature of Jesus and his message.

While I tend to be of the belief that God exists independent of our acknowledgement, knowledge, or understanding of God, based on what I’ve seen and experienced, I also believe that we create God. Not necessarily in our own image (though we do that plenty), but in the image we want. I want God to be merciful and kind, so that’s what God is. I want God to intervene in my life, to heal illness, to cure the incurable disease, so God by God’s nature does those things. I want God to mete out justice on the evil (i.e. homosexuals, duh), so that’s also what God does. I want God to be a giver of ponies and maker of sparkles and rainbows. (But not the gay kind, they’re evil.)

Like I said, I’m pretty pessimistic these days about humans ever being able to really understand the truth about anything because we’re so busy creating what we think the truth should be.

technorati tags: donald miller, blue like jazz, god, christianity, religion, bible study

It’s been a good weekend so far. I spent some time with some people I love and had some good conversations, about which I’d like to post, but later. I think good conversations come about when you don’t lie. Like, when you see a friend and you haven’t seen him or her in a long time and they ask you how you are and what you’ve been doing, you tell them, actually things are pretty crappy for me on many levels right now and the thing that keeps me busy most is reading theology and writing in my religion blog.

NB — People are more likely to open up re: religion and spirituality while drinking.

What I want to write about right now is communion, that essential Christian sacrament. Even I, who is willing to toss out many things concerning Christian tradition, will call the sacrament of communion “essential.”

The thing is, I really hate how it’s done at my church. We do it in the ultra-sanitized way, with silver trays of tiny plastic cups filled with Welch’s (the Official Juice of Communion). The bread comes on silver trays as well — carefully cubed morsels of tasteless, nutrient-free white bread. Communion is, and indeed always has been, the only time I eat white bread. (As a child, I was raised on whole wheat, and as a nutrition-obsessed adult I eschew all products of the oven that are not whole-grain and heavy enough to be used as a blunt object weapon in case of burglery). For a while in the ’90s we had little pieces of matzoh bread, but some time during my sojourn away from church they switched back.

The pastor always makes a statement before the cup is served to the effect of, “Don’t take communion unless you have a Personal Relationship with Jesus Christ™,” as though if you do take communion without a PRwJC™ something very bad will happen to you, like the bread will expand in your stomach as it would when it’s fed to the ducks at the park, and you’ll die.

I’m exaggerating. The pastor actually always makes the statement in a very nonchalant, casual style, but it always sticks in my brain. Especially because I never really know if I’m a Christian or not.

I’ve written earlier about how Gail Ramshaw’s book Under the Tree of Life spoke to much of my experience in terms of many aspects of religious life and practice. This passage about communion was no different:

The single-swallow shot glasses prefilled with wine that one encounters at some communion services these days are an American God-for-me invention that shrinks the communal largess into a dose of medicine for me: one tablespoonful once a week, and my devil will vanish. Rather, the point of God-for-us is that my access to God is communal, my reception of God is communal, my participation in the divine life is communal. (71)

I don’t know how my fellow churchgoers feel look at communion on an individual level; actually, I don’t know how the senior pastor really feels about it. Maybe we just do it this way because it’s the way we’ve always done it. I’m certainly not assuming that the people in my church look at communion as a tonic, as Ramshaw, perhaps too cynically, describes. I sincerely doubt it, actually.

I wonder sometimes if I should go back to the way I did things during my unChristian phase, on the rare occasions when I would attend a service. I would pass the dishes long without taking. I can honestly say I don’t care what the people around me think, so that’s no burden to me. (If they’re watching to see who takes from the plate and who doesn’t, that’s their own problem.)

But that wouldn’t solve anything at all. I believe, as Ramshaw does, that communion isn’t something you can do by yourself. It’s group activity. And maybe that’s what I’m frustrated with — that the single-serving juice-and-bread is diluting the aspect and keeping me from experiencing the true reality and meaning of communion in the way I would like to.

I’d consider asking people in my Bible study to take communion with me, but that’s the kind of thing that can get folks in the church really riled up. In my experience, if you do things like communion or baptism outside of the conventional contexts, you get in trouble. A youth pastor I know (who will remain nameless unless he chooses otherwise) got in trouble for serving communion to his youth group with the only available foodstuffs at the time, Doritos and Coca-Cola. On one level I can empathize with the church leaders’ freakout. On the other hand, Doritos and Coca-Cola are to 21st century teenagers what bread and wine were to first century disciples.

For me this isn’t an aesthetic issue. I just want a little more authenticity.

technorati tags: communion, youth, gail ramshaw, christianity, religion, sacraments, jesus

I still haven’t figured out how to pray (within my new paradigm, as it were), so it’s quite confusing when I feel the urge to pray and I don’t know if I should channel that urge in the conventional way.

Like, when it comes to Death Cab for Cutie.

Tickets went on sale today for the Death Cab for Cutie/Franz Ferdinand show that will be happening in town at the end of April. Last night I was getting ready for bed and thinking about how I’d messed up and didn’t manage to get tickets for either of the presales that happened this week.

And all of a sudden, my brain starts to go, “Please, please God let me get tickets for this show!”

I do a mental snap-take and put a halt to that kind of prayer immediately. These days I’m having trouble believing God is in the business of healing physical ailments, let alone arranging that I get concert tickets.

So instead I prayed something I’m more comfortable praying to God, that is, “Please help me to realize that concert tickets, even for bands which have never played my city up until this point and are pretty rad, are just not that freakin’ important and help me to focus on the things that are.”

I’m having some pretty significant health problems these days, and I don’t really know how to pray about it. I guess it’s safe to pray, “Help me to deal with this illness.” I don’t know if I’m ready to ask for some more radical divine intervention. I guess given all the people around the world who die every day of illnesses that are treatable and/or preventable, I do wonder if God is in the business of direct action in people’s lives, in that way. I don’t know.

In the end, I got my Death Cab tickets. And, it turns out, the answer to my prayer.

technorati tags: death cab for cutie, franz ferdinand, prayer, god, religion

Hello, ladies and gentlemen. Before we proceed with today’s blog entry, please sit back and relax for a short presentation from:

Marginally Funny Christian Joke Theatre

Mom: Did Jam start her new job this week?

Brother Mark: I don’t know. She was waiting on a background check.

Jenny: Well, if Heather was starting this week, then Jam should be too. Don’t they have the same job?

Brother Mark: I don’t know.

Jenny: That’s what I was lead to believe at B.S. on Sunday night.

Dad: B.S.? Brother

Mark: Bible study. Mom (to Brother Mark and Jenny): I don’t like those conspiratorial grins on your faces.

And… SCENE.

* * *

I haven’t had much time for blogging this week as this is the annual pledge drive at my campus/community radio station. This is my fifth year volunteering there, and while I no longer do a show, I still help out when I can. During my sojourn away from church, I think the radio station became kind of a church subsitute to me. Like church does for many people, it became the locus of my social life, the place where I spent spare time, the place where I logged my hours of volunteerism. Like churches, campus/community radio stations are traditionally male-dominated, though like churches, that’s changed in recent years. Thankfully the record-collecting culture that shaped C&C radio throughout the past century is being opened up to women more — I guess I’m proof of that. (That said, men outnumber women in music programming. The women who have been getting involved in C&C radio are primarily involved in spoken word [C&C parlance for “talk”] programming. I’m an example of that — when I did a weekly show, it was a feminist spoken word one. SURPRISE SURPRISE.)

Today, most of my close friends who live in this city are radio station people, and while I don’t spend nearly as much time up at the station as I did during my university days, I still feel comfortable and welcome there. Well, the latter part is kind of debatable right now. Like any community organization (eg. church) the station isn’t perfect and has its problems. The station is made up of over 100 human beings who, as human beings do, have a tendency to mess up a lot at various levels of severity. Staff stay on longer than they should, certain volunteers grow weary of doing all the work, and so on. Actually, one thing our C&C radio station would do well with is the church tradition of firing ineffective leadership (perceived so rightly or wrongly). But I’m not naming names.

I guess what I’ve learned from involvement in a community organization other than the church is that the church is subject to the same pitfalls as any other organization, and vice versa. Which maybe makes me want to cut churches a little more slack.

technorati tags: church, community, christianity, religion, community radio

I’m the daughter of a pastor, colloquially known in some Christian circles as a PK. I freakin’ hate that abbreviation. Some people wear it like a badge of honour, some people use it to belittle and box-in. There are plenty of reasons to hate the label and that’s why I’ve never applied it to myself or to anyone else to whom it may apply.

My experience is quite atypical of that of many children of clergy, actually. Growing up in the church is a difficult and precarious thing for any kid, whether her parent is the pastor, the moderator, the women’s ministries coordinator, the pianist, the organist, whatever. When I look back on my childhood, I think the difficult aspects of the church stemmed from that sort of general involvement rather than the fact that my dad was the pastor.

Like I said, my experience is not typical. I lucked out and spent most of my growing-up years in a remarkably functional church, where there was little discord. Whatever there was my parents successfully hid from me. My brother and I were treated well. I’ve heard stories about other clergy kids being told things like, “You’re the pastor’s son/daughter, you have to set an example.” No one ever said that to me. Or if they did, I blocked it out of my memory because it’s complete bullshit.

When I look back on my life, being a pastor’s kid meant mostly one thing: presents.

When I was two, we moved out to a parsonage in the country. The rambling house was right next to the church, in the midst of wheat and barley fields cut into squares by gravel roads. My mom was in the middle of a difficult pregnancy, so on Christmas Eve she didn’t attend the service. But after the service, the doorbell started ringing, various parishoners seeking an audience. Not to chide her for her non-attendance (after all, physician-ordered bedrest is an excuse even the most religious can abide). No, they wanted to drop off the presents, for me. Granted, I was a really adorable (if moody) child, but that Christmas Eve set a precedent for years to come. Basically, being the pastor’s kid meant getting special treatment. More attention, more love. And it really was love — presents are nice, but I always felt that people cared about me, and even as a kid I knew that was more important than trinkets.

I never really had any pastor-kid friends until I went to bible school — there, four of my closest friends were children of clergy, and because the school was a denominational one, two of them had lived in the very same rural parsonage I had. In fact, one still did live there. It was super cool to go there on weekends and eat real food and sleep in the basement where I had watched countless hours of Mr. Dressup and built blanket forts with my brother.

Anyway, I don’t think my experience was much different from that of any kid with very devout parents. Which is good, I guess.

Sometimes I wonder what makes one church-raised kid rebel/resist their religion and others not. What makes one person able to incorporate their history and childhood faith into an adult one? Why is it for some a seamless transition, and others not?

In my case I wonder if it’s just flat-out a personality issue. I’m a cranky bitch, always have been. “Strong-willed” is the term, I believe. Though, I’d like to think my struggle with/against Christianity is about more than some kind of inborn antipathy.

Part of me has always been jealous of the people for whom faith is so easy. For whom religion is easy. The people whose eyes close tight in prayer and you know they really believe, that the structures and the symbols all make sense to them.

As a kid, I was always waiting for, praying for that moment when it would be the same way for me. But now I don’t think that moment will ever come, and I have to be OK with that — I have to accept it. Which is harder than it sounds.

technorati tags: childhood, religion, church, christianity, prayer, faith

I had a free domain registration from my web host (Dreamhost, which rules) so I figured why the hell not register steeplesandpeople.com? Then I spent an embarassing amount of time making this page nice-looking, something which was not easy because my CSS skills are rudimentary at best. But I’ve used WordPress before and I was happy to abandon Blogger in its favour once again.

So here I am! Oh, and new email address, jenny at steeplesandpeople.com. I would be most appreciative if those who link to this blog would update their links. All three of you.

Did you grow up believing that Welch’s grape juice was the official juice of communion?

That’s because it is!

When Dylan told me that Welch’s grape juice was actually originally created to be a non-alcoholic communion beverage, I demanded a source (journalistic training, see. Plus it seemed quite urban-legendy).

From the offical Welch’s site:

1869 - Dr. Thomas Bramwell Welch, a physician and dentist by profession, successfully pasteurizes Concord grape juice to produce an “unfermented sacramental wine” for fellow parishioners at his church in Vineland, N.J., where he is communion steward. His achievement marks the beginning of the processed fruit juice industry.

So if your church is using the store brand, you better learn ‘em.

technorati tags: grape juice, church, communion

The above graphic is taken from the Church of Craft website.

Something I haven’t talked about on this blog as of yet is the fact that I’m a knitter. This is one of the things as which I identify, right along with “woman,” “feminist,” and — well, let’s leave the parade there for now.

I always have at least one knitting project on the go (”on the needles” in the technical parlance) and I find it endlessly comforting and relaxing and indeed quite necessary for my mental health.

Right now I’m pondering this: could I possibly get away with knitting in church?

I knit in pretty much all other public environments; waiting rooms, public transportation, coffee shops. In university I would knit in classes where note-taking was not imperative, and where I didn’t care whether the prof would be giving me the stink-eye.

I already knit during one religious gathering, the weekly small group/bible study. Usually I sit beside a group member who forgot her bible, and have her hold mine for both of us while I add a few inches to the sleeve of a sweater.

I knit during the sermony-portions of the annual winter camp retreat, where the associate pastor (the one assigned to the hinterland sojourn, the senior pastor doesn’t make it out these days) gives his missive. But that was at the retreat, a relaxed environment, where we’re all sleep deprived, groggier still from eating too many pancakes. The casualness of the situation is emphasized sartorially, in our denim, sweatshirts, and slippers.

In both of those situations I feel perfectly justified in knitting. I’m the type of person who listens better when her hands are busy, when she’s doodling or otherwise digitally engaged. Having something to do with my hands frees my mind to focus on aural stimuli, in the form of sermons. Not that I’m much of an aural listener to begin with, but it helps. Now, it’s not that I always feel beholden to actually listen to sermons — I don’t beat myself up if my attention lapses or my mind wanders. I’ve long since given up on feeling guilty for those sorts of offenses.

But I can’t help but stop short pulling out the needles during the sermon. I feel like that might be crossing some line. Sure, knitting would be more constructive than, say, playing solitaire on my PDA. Still, I worry about distracting my pewmates. There’s probably more than one of them who would be thinking, “What the heck is she doing? Knitting in church? That’s so… wrong! She shouldn’t be allowed to do that! Why isn’t she paying attention to the sermon!” and so forth. And believe me, I’m loathe to cause anyone to stumble, or force attention away from the adorable animated graphics on the PowerPoint.

Most people would probably take it as a disrespectful action. I wonder if it might actually be. After all, if I went to a more interesting church, I probably wouldn’t feel the desire to knit. For some reason I still want to behave respecfully in a church. I may have rejected a lot of the stuff I grew up with in terms of religion, but I still think strapless dresses for church weddings are tacky. The clickety-clack of the needles probably would be, too.

So like I said, maybe I’m at the wrong church. Actually, I’m pretty sure I’m at the “wrong” church, but I don’t have the energy to go find another one, especially since it’s pretty unlikely I’d find one where knitting during the sermon was de rigeur.

The Church of Craft is vaguely/blatantly sacreligious/offensive to evangelical sensibilities; I know it was to mine, once upon a time. But these days, I feel like craft is my true religion. I keep trying to get Christianity to fit, but craft always has fit, with no effort, no aggravating seam allowances and pinpricks.

I’m downright evangelical about craft in a way I never have been about Christianity. Knitting is such a transformative, challenging, engaging experience that I try to pull everyone I can into the fold. At the winter retreat last weekend, I was filled with joy when I looked around the group sitting in front of the fireplace and saw three people — two women, one man — intent on their knitting, all three taught in the ways of yarn by me. I felt a measure of pride, of course, but it was mostly just happiness that they’d discovered an activity which is so beneficial. Beneficial for the mind and beneficial for personal well-being, in that one can create useful thermal items for winter wear. The quintessential beginner’s knitting project is a simple garter-stitch scarf, an item which, even when knit of the most pedestrian and inexpensive acrylic yarn is quite useful in a climate such as ours.

My own church of craft (well, we call it Stitch & Bitch, actually) meets irregularly on weeknights in living rooms or a deserted coffee shop. I spend time with women who are infinitely caring, accepting, and encouraging. Not all of them knit, but craft in all its expressions is related, so it doesn’t really matter.

Knitting is easy at first. Garter-stitch scarves are a snap, as are hats and mittens, once you learn the purl stitch and get the knack of double-pointed needles. Then you try to set a sleeve on your first sweater or knit a swatch of lace and things get ugly. But you keep going. Well, I do.