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Max Lucado’s Fearless

I have moved my blog.  Read the latest blog post at http://www.mrshields.com/?p=95

Moving my blog

Due to my mediocre web skills I loaded WordPress incorrectly.  So I have re-installed wordpress and moved it from http://blog.mrshields.com to http://mrshields.com.

Please change your RSS feed or just go visit my blog at its new location.

Free by Chris Anderson: a post about the church

I am a fan of Chris Anderson’s writing. I really like his first book “The Long Tail“. This second book is good as well. The central idea is that fundamentally the price point of Free is changing the way that we interact. He believes that free is the common price on digital good, not because all digital good are free or should be free but that most digital goods will be free and the paid versions will support the free in inverse relationship to goods that have atoms. In other words, free goods in the physical world are supported by paid good in a relationship of around 5% or less free to 95% or more paid. In a digital world the percentages are reversed. He is not suggesting that businesses should no longer make money, like some have charged, but that businesses should find new ways to make money because we need to “waste bits” in order to find new models of business.

I am interested in the church application of this book. Many churches are supported by a small group of people giving the majority of the money. Many, if not most people, that attend church receive whatever they get for free. It is not that those that are not contributing do not value what they receive (Anderson talks about this in relation to pirated music), but that the way that they understand value does not have a monetary value.

I am probably an example of this. I value my church, I spent several years volunteering in the nursery. I attend virtually every Sunday. I have started listening to the service twice a day (once in person and once online on Sunday evening). I speak very favorably about the church to many people. I follow every staff member that I am aware of on Twitter and regularly pray for those that I know of. But I almost never give money to our church. It is not that I don’t give, but I give to friends that are missionaries, to the children I sponsor overseas, to the revolving loan funds that generate income and jobs for women that are trying to provide for their family. About 1/3 to 1/2 of my gifts are physical goods that I give to people that need them. Those goods don’t provide tax deductions, but are no less gifts that I give in honor of the God that we serve.

The lesson that I think we need to understand in the church is that the church’s role is to equip people for the life that they live seven days a week. It is not the role of the church to equip people to be better volunteers in the programs of the church. I have no issue with equipping people to volunteer or even the programs themselves. Those programs serve a need, and they need volunteers to run them. However, the role of the church should be to abundantly and freely give into people’s lives. We should be “wasting” time with people (to loosely paraphrase a ongoing theme in the book). When we waste time with people there will be results that we can’t predict. When you waste computer bits and processing power you come up with amazing uses of computers that no one would have predicted. When you waste time and energy on people the same thing happens.

Sacred Marriage

This is one of the books that my wife and I have used for an read together before we go to bed book. This is not a standard Christian marriage book. In fact, this is as unique a Christian marriage book as I have read. There are some parts I have issues with, but the over-riding theme is right on base. Marriage is important, not only to the marriage, but to our own spiritual development. So it talks about how we are intentional about including our spiritual development as part of our marriage. I think we need to think about deeper things like this in our churches. I am all for “Five Love Languages” and other standard Christian marriage books. They are good and helpful.  But this one should be read by most everyone.

200 Pomegranates and an Audience of One: Creating a Life of Meaning and Influence

The author (Shawn Wood) is funny, thoughtful and has a point. The basic point of this book is that we need to work to the best of our ability and for God. The central biblical story is the building of the temple and the 200 pomegranates that were put on the top of the columns where no one could see them but God. The builder could have just not done anything up there but instead choose to put some of the best work there, for his audience of one (God).

Strangely I think it is a good complement to NT Wright’s book on heaven (Surprised By Hope). Wood is talking about what we do we should do for God, whether others know we do it or not. And Wright was talking about how being too focused on heaven prevents us from living in the now. We should view the current life as preparatory for the work that we will have in the next life.

I can’t say this was a perfect book.  I read it on my Amazon Kindle.  (Amazon gave it away last week and it is free until Aug 21.)   The formating on kindle is not the greatest. It is a topaz formated book (which as I understand it is at base and Optical Character Recognition instead of formated directly from the text). There are also a couple places where there are some discussion questions at the end of chapters and those are not at all readable. They are images and just too small. A bit more work formating and this would have been a much better read.”

Flickering Pixels Group Blog Chapter 11 – an extra post

I have been participating in a group blog discussion around Shane Hipps book, “Flickering Pixels”.  I had too much to talk about in the official blog post, so I split the ideas and made it into two posts.  One idea, about the inadequacy of virtual communities among Christians is the official post for the Church Crunch blog.  The second idea about reaching out to non-Christians through media, especially virtual communities is posted here.  I would recommend going to go read the church crunch post first.  Then read this one.

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Throughout this book, I have had a criticism that Hipps is either idealizing the world of the past or rejecting the reality of current culture.  I think that is again part of the problem with this chapter.  I agree with many of his limitations of virtual community.  But in the context of evangelism and interaction with a non-Christian world, rejection of virtual communities eliminates a major avenue of outreach.

There are many experiments with virtual church, from Lifechurch to Northpoint’s new project.  These projects have been started, not with the assumption that they are going to deconstruct the church into a new disembodied reality, but that they are going to reach people that were not being reached with physical buildings.  A recent study by Hartford Seminary  about mega-churches said that approximately 25 percent of all mega-church attenders were people that had not recently attended church if they had ever attended church.  An additional 40 percent of church attenders had started attending after a physical move that prevented them from attending their previous church.  So the majority of people attending mega-churches are not being “stolen” from other churches but are actually people that might not have gone to another church.  It is not clear that those numbers will also be true of virtual church communities, but it is too early to really tell what the long term impact will be.  My guess is that for many people the virtual church will be a supliment to their current physical church, not a replacement.

Historically every major change of theology around ecclesiogly has had a strong reaction against it.  But most of those changes, in hindsight had the hand of God on them.  There was real reformation, revival, outreach, or renewal that came about as the change.  I think we should pay attention to Hipps warnings, especially his warning that a small amount of virtual community may be just enough to prevent people from reaching out for a deeper and better biblical community. But if we trust that other Christians are working to strengthen the church and not destroy the church, if we pray for the efforts of people that are attempting to follow God, even if it is through methods that we are not sure we agree with, and we trust that Christ will protect and defend his church against any serious problems then why should we not experiment.  After all, if God is not building the church then those that labor, labor in vain.

Good books mixed up in a bad book

Again it has been a while since I have posted.  I have participated in two group blog discussions, one about the book Flickering Pixels by Shane Hipps and one about Mad Church Disease by Anne Jackson.  I recently bought four books on prayer.  I have been reading a bunch of books on prayer and intercession, both because I am interested and because I feel like if we are going to take God seriously, then we have to take him seriously throughout.  So if he is powerful and we are not, and we are asking him for help then we should expect that he can actually help us.  So I am continuing to explore prayer and intercession.  The four books I bought were all on clearance at the Prayer Shop (and I had a $10 coupon off $30, so they are paper books, not for my kindle.)

The current book I am reading (along with about 8 others) is Seasons of Intercession by Frank Damazio.  The first red flag is that it has an introduction by Ted Haggard.  Now it was written in 1998, but I still will have a hard time passing it on because it will be tainted by Haggard’s sins.

I am only a couple chapters into it, but I already have a lot of questions.  First, the book starts off with the assumption that modernity is good and post-modernity is bad.  So I am immediately on the defensive.  (I never understand how people can start talking about truth and the bible and the need to go back to absolute truth and with a straight face reference authors from the middle ages and before in support of their views of absolute truth.)  Sure I believe in truth, I just think we need to be much more humble about what is absolute.  And when you start a book on prayer with a two chapter discussion of absolute truth I am concerned.

The third chapter is concerned with the twin evils of music and television.  The quote on music is that, “Rock music has one appeal: young people know that rock has the beat of sexual intercourse.”  And on TV, the main quote is, “Unless the program is made for the Simpsons or Adams family, how can anyone receive anything from television.”  So music and TV are evil, this just keeps getting better and better.

Chapter four is about “the so called Generation X”, the “generation that is…lazy, dysfunctional and anti-intellectual.”

I have read through chapter 8 as of right now and it does get better.  So if you happen to read it (or want my copy once I am done) skip to chapter six.

Mad Church Disease Chapter 6

This post is based on the sixth chapter of Mad Church Disease. There are both previous

and later blog posts for this blog group book discussion.

This is a hard chapter to blog about. The previous chapters are primarily describing the issues with us as people and the church as an institution that lead to burnout and stress. We can blog about whether Anne has correctly identified the issues or whether she missed something that is relevant to our case. Or why we are different and our burnout is not the same as everyone else’s burnout.

But this chapter is different. Now she is moving toward solutions. I am tempted to not say much more and just ask people to start listing changes that they are going to make, but that is a bit of a copout and I think many people are not ready. (I have read this book twice now and I am just starting to move in that direction.)

I also don’t want to just summarize the chapter, although there are some really good things in there. Instead I am going to focus on one point right at the end.

The basic points are:

1) Admit that we have responsibility for our situation. Even if we have been mistreated or abused our reactions are our own.

2) Change your purpose to the greatest commandment – Love the Lord your God with all your heart, all your soul, all your mind and all your strength.

3) Make a plan to change. Intentions will not change us, it requires a plan.

4) Create boundaries (this means learning to say no, or at least not now.)

Point five is often the hardest. But without it the rest will not happen.

5) Find accountability. Without five will not make changes when things get hard. We will end up back in the same boat, maybe a little better, maybe a little worse, but not changed.

Too often we think that with God’s help we can do it alone. This may be the greatest sin of the American church. God did not create us to be alone. Genesis 1 was not just about marriage, God created us to be social people. Even the biggest introvert wants to be known and loved. So we seek out friends, but hide from them at the same time. However, we are not going to change, to make our lives better, to serve the Lord more effectively, to be a better spouse or parent, unless we admit that we cannot do it on our own and seek out someone that we can be honest with and that we give the authority to hold us accountable.

Personally, I am still seeking. My excuses in the past have been lame (I just moved, I am stuck at home all the time, I need to put on a good show for my unsaved friends, etc.). I am going to make real effort both in prayer and relationally to seek out some accountability. It is the only way.

President Obama’s Speech to Notre Dame

I am a fan of Obama. I will get that out right up front. He was my state Rep and my state Senator and then my US Senator before I moved to Georgia. He was a professor at the University of Chicago while I was attending there. I never had him for a class (he was law and I was Social Work and Divinity) but he did come speak to a class that I was in the fall of 1997. I told my wife when I came home that day that some day he would be president. I have been impressed with him for a long time.

What often impresses me is that he really seems to try and understand those that disagree with him and seek common ground. This speech is on of the best that I have ever read on that subject. He directly confronts the area of abortion where the majority of the protests of his speech were concerned. Please read it, the whole thing. I was moved, maybe you will be as well.
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The full text of Obama’s prepared remarks continue after the jump.
Thank you, Father Jenkins for that generous introduction. You are doing an outstanding job as president of this fine institution, and your continued and courageous commitment to honest, thoughtful dialogue is an inspiration to us all.
Good afternoon Father Hesburgh, Notre Dame trustees, faculty, family, friends, and the class of 2009. I am honored to be here today, and grateful to all of you for allowing me to be part of your graduation.
I want to thank you for this honorary degree. I know it has not been without controversy. I don’t know if you’re aware of this, but these honorary degrees are apparently pretty hard to come by. So far I’m only 1 for 2 as President. Father Hesburgh is 150 for 150. I guess that’s better. Father Ted, after the ceremony, maybe you can give me some pointers on how to boost my average.
I also want to congratulate the class of 2009 for all your accomplishments. And since this is Notre Dame, I mean both in the classroom and in the competitive arena. We all know about this university’s proud and storied football team, but I also hear that Notre Dame holds the largest outdoor 5-on-5 basketball tournament in the world – Bookstore Basketball.
Now this excites me. I want to congratulate the winners of this year’s tournament, a team by the name of “Hallelujah Holla Back.” Well done. Though I have to say, I am personally disappointed that the “Barack O’Ballers” didn’t pull it out. Next year, if you need a 6’2” forward with a decent jumper, you know where I live.
Every one of you should be proud of what you have achieved at this institution. One hundred and sixty three classes of Notre Dame graduates have sat where you are today. Some were here during years that simply rolled into the next without much notice or fanfare – periods of relative peace and prosperity that required little by way of sacrifice or struggle.
You, however, are not getting off that easy. Your class has come of age at a moment of great consequence for our nation and the world – a rare inflection point in history where the size and scope of the challenges before us require that we remake our world to renew its promise; that we align our deepest values and commitments to the demands of a new age. It is a privilege and a responsibility afforded to few generations – and a task that you are now called to fulfill.
This is the generation that must find a path back to prosperity and decide how we respond to a global economy that left millions behind even before this crisis hit – an economy where greed and short-term thinking were too often rewarded at the expense of fairness, and diligence, and an honest day’s work.
We must decide how to save God’s creation from a changing climate that threatens to destroy it. We must seek peace at a time when there are those who will stop at nothing to do us harm, and when weapons in the hands of a few can destroy the many. And we must find a way to reconcile our ever-shrinking world with its ever-growing diversity – diversity of thought, of culture, and of belief.
In short, we must find a way to live together as one human family.
It is this last challenge that I’d like to talk about today. For the major threats we face in the 21st century – whether it’s global recession or violent extremism; the spread of nuclear weapons or pandemic disease – do not discriminate. They do not recognize borders. They do not see color. They do not target specific ethnic groups.
Moreover, no one person, or religion, or nation can meet these challenges alone. Our very survival has never required greater cooperation and understanding among all people from all places than at this moment in history.
Unfortunately, finding that common ground – recognizing that our fates are tied up, as Dr. King said, in a “single garment of destiny” – is not easy. Part of the problem, of course, lies in the imperfections of man – our selfishness, our pride, our stubbornness, our acquisitiveness, our insecurities, our egos; all the cruelties large and small that those of us in the Christian tradition understand to be rooted in original sin. We too often seek advantage over others. We cling to outworn prejudice and fear those who are unfamiliar. Too many of us view life only through the lens of immediate self-interest and crass materialism; in which the world is necessarily a zero-sum game. The strong too often dominate the weak, and too many of those with wealth and with power find all manner of justification for their own privilege in the face of poverty and injustice. And so, for all our technology and scientific advances, we see around the globe violence and want and strife that would seem sadly familiar to those in ancient times.
We know these things; and hopefully one of the benefits of the wonderful education you have received is that you have had time to consider these wrongs in the world, and grown determined, each in your own way, to right them. And yet, one of the vexing things for those of us interested in promoting greater understanding and cooperation among people is the discovery that even bringing together persons of good will, men and women of principle and purpose, can be difficult.
The soldier and the lawyer may both love this country with equal passion, and yet reach very different conclusions on the specific steps needed to protect us from harm. The gay activist and the evangelical pastor may both deplore the ravages of HIV/AIDS, but find themselves unable to bridge the cultural divide that might unite their efforts. Those who speak out against stem cell research may be rooted in admirable conviction about the sacredness of life, but so are the parents of a child with juvenile diabetes who are convinced that their son’s or daughter’s hardships can be relieved.
The question, then, is how do we work through these conflicts? Is it possible for us to join hands in common effort? As citizens of a vibrant and varied democracy, how do we engage in vigorous debate? How does each of us remain firm in our principles, and fight for what we consider right, without demonizing those with just as strongly held convictions on the other side?
Nowhere do these questions come up more powerfully than on the issue of abortion.
As I considered the controversy surrounding my visit here, I was reminded of an encounter I had during my Senate campaign, one that I describe in a book I wrote called The Audacity of Hope. A few days after I won the Democratic nomination, I received an email from a doctor who told me that while he voted for me in the primary, he had a serious concern that might prevent him from voting for me in the general election. He described himself as a Christian who was strongly pro-life, but that’s not what was preventing him from voting for me.
What bothered the doctor was an entry that my campaign staff had posted on my website – an entry that said I would fight “right-wing ideologues who want to take away a woman’s right to choose.” The doctor said that he had assumed I was a reasonable person, but that if I truly believed that every pro-life individual was simply an ideologue who wanted to inflict suffering on women, then I was not very reasonable. He wrote, “I do not ask at this point that you oppose abortion, only that you speak about this issue in fair-minded words.”
Fair-minded words.
After I read the doctor’s letter, I wrote back to him and thanked him. I didn’t change my position, but I did tell my staff to change the words on my website. And I said a prayer that night that I might extend the same presumption of good faith to others that the doctor had extended to me. Because when we do that – when we open our hearts and our minds to those who may not think like we do or believe what we do – that’s when we discover at least the possibility of common ground.
That’s when we begin to say, “Maybe we won’t agree on abortion, but we can still agree that this is a heart-wrenching decision for any woman to make, with both moral and spiritual dimensions.
So let’s work together to reduce the number of women seeking abortions by reducing unintended pregnancies, and making adoption more available, and providing care and support for women who do carry their child to term. Let’s honor the conscience of those who disagree with abortion, and draft a sensible conscience clause, and make sure that all of our health care policies are grounded in clear ethics and sound science, as well as respect for the equality of women.”
Understand – I do not suggest that the debate surrounding abortion can or should go away. No matter how much we may want to fudge it – indeed, while we know that the views of most Americans on the subject are complex and even contradictory – the fact is that at some level, the views of the two camps are irreconcilable. Each side will continue to make its case to the public with passion and conviction. But surely we can do so without reducing those with differing views to caricature.
Open hearts. Open minds. Fair-minded words.
It’s a way of life that has always been the Notre Dame tradition. Father Hesburgh has long spoken of this institution as both a lighthouse and a crossroads. The lighthouse that stands apart, shining with the wisdom of the Catholic tradition, while the crossroads is where “…differences of culture and religion and conviction can co-exist with friendship, civility, hospitality, and especially love.” And I want to join him and Father Jenkins in saying how inspired I am by the maturity and responsibility with which this class has approached the debate surrounding today’s ceremony.
This tradition of cooperation and understanding is one that I learned in my own life many years ago – also with the help of the Catholic Church.
I was not raised in a particularly religious household, but my mother instilled in me a sense of service and empathy that eventually led me to become a community organizer after I graduated college. A group of Catholic churches in Chicago helped fund an organization known as the Developing Communities Project, and we worked to lift up South Side neighborhoods that had been devastated when the local steel plant closed.
It was quite an eclectic crew. Catholic and Protestant churches. Jewish and African-American organizers. Working-class black and white and Hispanic residents. All of us with different experiences. All of us with different beliefs. But all of us learned to work side by side because all of us saw in these neighborhoods other human beings who needed our help – to find jobs and improve schools. We were bound together in the service of others.
And something else happened during the time I spent in those neighborhoods. Perhaps because the church folks I worked with were so welcoming and understanding; perhaps because they invited me to their services and sang with me from their hymnals; perhaps because I witnessed all of the good works their faith inspired them to perform, I found myself drawn – not just to work with the church, but to be in the church. It was through this service that I was brought to Christ.
At the time, Cardinal Joseph Bernardin was the Archbishop of Chicago. For those of you too young to have known him, he was a kind and good and wise man. A saintly man. I can still remember him speaking at one of the first organizing meetings I attended on the South Side. He stood as both a lighthouse and a crossroads – unafraid to speak his mind on moral issues ranging from poverty, AIDS, and abortion to the death penalty and nuclear war. And yet, he was congenial and gentle in his persuasion, always trying to bring people together; always trying to find common ground. Just before he died, a reporter asked Cardinal Bernardin about this approach to his ministry. And he said, “You can’t really get on with preaching the Gospel until you’ve touched minds and hearts.”
My heart and mind were touched by the words and deeds of the men and women I worked alongside with in Chicago. And I’d like to think that we touched the hearts and minds of the neighborhood families whose lives we helped change. For this, I believe, is our highest calling.
You are about to enter the next phase of your life at a time of great uncertainty. You will be called upon to help restore a free market that is also fair to all who are willing to work; to seek new sources of energy that can save our planet; to give future generations the same chance that you had to receive an extraordinary education. And whether as a person drawn to public service, or someone who simply insists on being an active citizen, you will be exposed to more opinions and ideas broadcast through more means of communications than have ever existed before. You will hear talking heads scream on cable, read blogs that claim definitive knowledge, and watch politicians pretend to know what they’re talking about. Occasionally, you may also have the great fortune of seeing important issues debated by well-intentioned, brilliant minds. In fact, I suspect that many of you will be among those bright stars.
In this world of competing claims about what is right and what is true, have confidence in the values with which you’ve been raised and educated. Be unafraid to speak your mind when those values are at stake. Hold firm to your faith and allow it to guide you on your journey. Stand as a lighthouse.
But remember too that the ultimate irony of faith is that it necessarily admits doubt. It is the belief in things not seen. It is beyond our capacity as human beings to know with certainty what God has planned for us or what He asks of us, and those of us who believe must trust that His wisdom is greater than our own.
This doubt should not push us away from our faith. But it should humble us. It should temper our passions, and cause us to be wary of self-righteousness. It should compel us to remain open, and curious, and eager to continue the moral and spiritual debate that began for so many of you within the walls of Notre Dame. And within our vast democracy, this doubt should remind us to persuade through reason, through an appeal whenever we can to universal rather than parochial principles, and most of all through an abiding example of good works, charity, kindness, and service that moves hearts and minds.
For if there is one law that we can be most certain of, it is the law that binds people of all faiths and no faith together. It is no coincidence that it exists in Christianity and Judaism; in Islam and Hinduism; in Buddhism and humanism. It is, of course, the Golden Rule – the call to treat one another as we wish to be treated. The call to love. To serve. To do what we can to make a difference in the lives of those with whom we share the same brief moment on this Earth.
So many of you at Notre Dame – by the last count, upwards of 80% — have lived this law of love through the service you’ve performed at schools and hospitals; international relief agencies and local charities. That is incredibly impressive, and a powerful testament to this institution. Now you must carry the tradition forward. Make it a way of life. Because when you serve, it doesn’t just improve your community, it makes you a part of your community. It breaks down walls. It fosters cooperation. And when that happens – when people set aside their differences to work in common effort toward a common good; when they struggle together, and sacrifice together, and learn from one another – all things are possible.
After all, I stand here today, as President and as an African-American, on the 55th anniversary of the day that the Supreme Court handed down the decision in Brown v. the Board of Education. Brown was of course the first major step in dismantling the “separate but equal” doctrine, but it would take a number of years and a nationwide movement to fully realize the dream of civil rights for all of God’s children. There were freedom rides and lunch counters and Billy clubs, and there was also a Civil Rights Commission appointed by President Eisenhower. It was the twelve resolutions recommended by this commission that would ultimately become law in the Civil Rights Act of 1964.
There were six members of the commission. It included five whites and one African-American; Democrats and Republicans; two Southern governors, the dean of a Southern law school, a Midwestern university president, and your own Father Ted Hesburgh, President of Notre Dame. They worked for two years, and at times, President Eisenhower had to intervene personally since no hotel or restaurant in the South would serve the black and white members of the commission together. Finally, when they reached an impasse in Louisiana, Father Ted flew them all to Notre Dame’s retreat in Land O’Lakes, Wisconsin, where they eventually overcame their differences and hammered out a final deal.
Years later, President Eisenhower asked Father Ted how on Earth he was able to broker an agreement between men of such different backgrounds and beliefs. And Father Ted simply said that during their first dinner in Wisconsin, they discovered that they were all fishermen. And so he quickly readied a boat for a twilight trip out on the lake. They fished, and they talked, and they changed the course of history.
I will not pretend that the challenges we face will be easy, or that the answers will come quickly, or that all our differences and divisions will fade happily away. Life is not that simple. It never has been.
But as you leave here today, remember the lessons of Cardinal Bernardin, of Father Hesburgh, of movements for change both large and small. Remember that each of us, endowed with the dignity possessed by all children of God, has the grace to recognize ourselves in one another; to understand that we all seek the same love of family and the same fulfillment of a life well-lived. Remember that in the end, we are all fishermen.

If nothing else, that knowledge should give us faith that through our collective labor, and God’s providence, and our willingness to shoulder each other’s burdens, America will continue on its precious journey towards that more perfect union. Congratulations on your graduation, may God Bless you, and may God Bless the United States of America