Doug’s well known for his role in Solomon’s Porch, a ‘holistic missional Christian community’ in Minneapolis, Minnesota. He’s one of the founders of Emergent Village, a social network of Christian leaders based in the United States.
A Christianity Worth Believing is a solid introduction to theology in development, carefully crafted with story, personal reflection and quotes from the Bible, the creeds and Protestant confessions. Pagitt begins the whole book with the story of his family background (explaining his need to stir) and his conversion. It’s the conversion story that sets up the tension that runs through the book. Deeply moved by his experience of a gospel play, a sixteen year old Doug responds with a life changing faith. But within two weeks the guy’s been introduced to the narrow version of Christianity contained in brochures, diagrams and statements of faith focused on Jesus dying to deal with sin so that God can connect with Doug.
Doug takes us on a journey with him as he reimagines what Christianity might be about. He introduces us to contextualisation through the Celtic adoption of the wild goose when talking about the Holy Spirit (rather than the traditional dove). He traces the modern obsession with uniformity back to the Greco-Roman adoption of Christianity in the time of Constantine. Today, he says, we’re still interpreting the story of Jesus through the lenses developed for a world dominated by Greek dualism and gods that needed to be appeased.
I like the way Doug writes about the Scriptures. “It’s in the way that you use it”, he says. Why is it, he asks, that the inerrancy concept is hauled out when we talk about certain emotive issues such as homosexuality but is abandoned when discussing other critical matters? When Paul talked about the Word of God being a sword did he really mean for us to use it as a weapon in our efforts to show that we are right and others are wrong? Doug is inviting his readers to think, really think, about the way they read the Bible, not as a one-dimensional instruction book, but as a resource that brings meaning and inspiration to us at different times and places.
Doug challenges us to take another look at what our focus is about. Is it about getting up and out of here, off to heaven, or out of the world into a safe place? Is that what God is about? Or is it about being down and in, thoroughly integrating faith with every part of our lives in a way that leads to being embedded in our communities? Do we take the incarnation (in the flesh) of Jesus seriously enough that we put it into practice ourselves?
Doug takes a crack at the atonement debate by beginning with the concept of original sin brought into mainstream theology by Augustine of Hippo in the fourth century. He suggests that the new Christendom model needed a compelling reason for citizens to turn up at the church. What better than to say that everyone was totally depraved and heading for hell without the intervention of Jesus, and of course the church as agents of Jesus? As Doug points out, even those who talk about original sin find it difficult to reconcile that approach when visiting maternity wards.
So is Doug a wishy washy theologian who now believes that Jesus was just a nice guy who had some useful things to say about life? Doug doesn’t think so. He admits that he’s had to do some hard thinking about alternatives to the penal substitution (Jesus died to take the punishment meant for us) explanation of Jesus’ life and death. He does this in the book by going back to the Jewish roots of Jesus, exploring the Hebrew concept of Messiah in contrast to the Greek understanding of Christ. Jesus is the fulfilment of what people are meant to do and be (The Human One or Son of Man). But more.
The final chapters deal with our historical obsession with heaven. Once again Doug grounds Jesus’ teaching on the kingdom of God in the Jewish concept of integration of all life together, here and now. He suggests that the Jewish scriptures don’t point too much to the future. In some ways I disagree. The Apocalyptic writings, and some of Jesus’ teaching, do indicate an interest in the long term future of the world. However we’d be hard pressed to find much in the Bible that focuses on what happens to us as individuals after we die.
Doug’s final chapter on future hope and heaven in some ways was a disappointing end to the book. It was like a chapter in progress, not as fine tuned as the earlier work. But maybe that’s a useful framework in itself. Doug’s presenting us with where he’s at now, recognising that he’s still exploring. As the father of a little girl who died at 18 months, I resonate with the story Doug tells in this section. I have a confidence that as we finish in this dimension we are held by God. But I’m not preparing for an ethereal bodiless stint in the heavenly choir.
Doug often refers to the Greeks as the ones who have given us the narrow faith perspectives we have today. I wonder what his Greek friends think of that! The reality is that society has moved along a little since the time of Augustine (as have the Greeks) but still is informed by some of the frameworks established then. The whole modernism/postmodernism phenomenon is in some ways an expression of a society that is critiquing the assumptions provided by those frameworks.
I imagine that A Christianity Worth Believing will be a useful tool for people wanting an alternative to the pre-packaged fundamentalism they’ve encountered in the church, not only in books but in the preaching, songs and explanations of what it means to become a Christian. I’d be interested in seeing or even developing a discussion guide for people talking through the book as they read it. Doug has a Facebook group set up for this purpose.
However I am sure that A Christianity Worth Believing will also become one more weapon in the ongoing culture wars of the church. The book will be quoted as evidence that Emergent and anyone associated with the emerging church really have gone off the rails and become liberals (read apostate). Those who take all their cues from the Westminster Confession will be thoroughly cheesed off by the number of times Pagitt points to the distortions found within. However many Presbyterians will be in total agreement with Doug! It was for this very reason that the Free Church of Scotland in 1892 passed the Declaratory Act.
Final thought. As much as Doug’s book is about belief, I get the sense that he’s presenting us with a Christianity worth living and worth sharing.
Film director and photographer Peter Rodger is working with composer Alexander van Bubenheim to shoot Oh My God, a film set in over 22 countries, exploring the different ideas and thoughts people from around the world have on God. Rodger is treating the film as a work in progress and has released a four minute trailer based on filming already done in India, Kenya, Israel, Palestinian territories, Morocco and the United States of America.
Peter explains some of the background to the Oh My God project.
“We are experiencing days of religious turmoil, of fundamentalism, fanaticism and the breakdown of spirituality through technology and reason. After the collapse of the piety that was rooted in myth, cult, occult, ancient myths and religions, I ask the question, “What is God?” It’s not so much “Who is God”, but “What” is God?”
“I want this question to be answered from the mouths of many different people - from religious leaders to a peasant child; from an industrialist to a fisherman off the coast of India; from a Hollywood celebrity to a Maasai Warrior.”
Peter says that many of his subjects were stimulated by the question, “What is God?” to start thinking, in some cases coming back to ask for a second interview to express new insights.
The trailer is available to download in HD Quicktime,
Here’s a cutting critique of the attempted capture of Jesus by neo-conservative economists who believe that the answers to the world’s problems can be solved by encouraging production and decreasing taxes.
Wes Ball took parts of a comic strip (art by Don Simpson) from Al Franken’s book, Lies and the Lying Liars Who Tell Them, and animated the panels set to the author’s narration. Working with Wes was Adrian Loudermilk who died in tragic car accident not long after.
David Mitchell, Robert Webb and Olivia Colman star in the “Bad Vicar” sketch from the BBC show, That Mitchell and Webb Look. The skit is part of an ongoing series in which Mitchell plays the dark and cynical man who has replaced the friendly woman in the restaurant, the church…
See more of their skits online at BBC and on YouTube.
Ben Elton provides a cutting critique of cultural trends at the beginning of the 21st century in this novel set after the flood. Global warming has led to much of Britain being submerged. FaceSpace culture has led to the disappearance of privacy. The Temple (combine massive manipulative Evangelical rallies with Mormon and Anglican structures) are in control of law and order. Trafford, the protagonist, discovers privacy, vaccination, books, humanism and evolution. Somewhat reminiscent of 1984 and Brazil the novel presents darkness and hope together.
This post-apocalyptic world combines elements of technology from today with a loss of standards of living. It’s hot in the UK - so hot that people have virtually given up wearing clothes. Modesty is a thing of the past. Turning up at a physical work space is a novelty. Trafford works for the government, in NatDat, finding new kinds of ‘degrees of separation’ between members of the population.
Vaccination, regarded as a dangerous meddling with nature, has been abandoned. And so the infant mortality rate has skyrocketed in the face of measles, mumps, tetanus, cholera, smallpox, bubonic plague and so on.
Every moment of life, including every sexual encounter, is captured on the WorldTube in a combination of exhibitionism and voyeurism. All foods are sweetened. Women are pressured into breast enlargements. Marriage is not as important as ‘getting married’.
Elton provides a tongue-in-cheek critique of the “Save the World” rock concerts and Evangelical faith gatherings. Faith Festivals in Blind faith are held in Wembley Stadium, with global satellite coverage.
“It was most inspiring to live in a world where ‘people power’ could mean so much, where a single concert could change the world irrevocably for the better, where things could be improved just because the people wanted them to improve. Simply by massing, cheering, listening to music and eating enormous amounts of takeaway food, everyone knew they could make a real difference”.
Time and time again Trafford and his newly found friends reflect on the contrast between reasoned humanism and irrational blind faith. The God of the Temple, Everlasting Love, is portrayed as one who is responsible for both wonderful miracles and the terrible suffering experienced by grieving parents. This is the God who created everything in six days. “Any God who kills a child to punish its parents is not worth worshiping!” Trafford argues.
Elton provides important warnings for us today. It is too easy to sacrifice a capacity for privacy in the quest to develop an online identity. Is it possible to retain the ability to write material that only we will ever read? With the move towards utilitarianism on the internet will we know when we’ve lost the capacity to reflect deeply, to think, to celebrate life, to form our own fantasies? Or will our superheroes of the future be the people who tell us to make money, become famous and look young and sexy?
The dark controlling nature of the religious institution in Blind Faith is only too possible when power and faith are combined in an environment of fear and ignorance. We have the Spanish Inquisition, John Calvin’s merciless rule in Geneva, and the complicity of Martin Luther in the quelling of the Peasants Revolt to keep us humble and alert.
In reading Blind Faith it’s important to remember that satire, by nature, exaggerates and amplifies the follies of a society’s existing weaknesses. There are individuals and groups who even now exhibit the disturbing behaviours and beliefs described in the book. It’s our responsibility to live, think and act in a way that ensures that these distortions of faith and reason do not become the norm.
I’m leading a workshop with the title, “When Church Sucks”, on Sunday with a group of young people from Uniting Church backgrounds. Church is not easy for many adults. It’s even harder for most teenagers.
Here’s a list of reasons why church sucks for different people
1. The sermons are boring.
2. The sermons are too long (usually a problem if they’re boring)
3. The people are cliquey
4. The people are unfriendly
5. The people criticize or judge me for my style in clothing and hairstyle
6. The music is bad (too old, poorly performed, poorly sung, too loud, not loud enough)
7. I don’t know the music
8. Too much revolves around singing
9. Not much evidence of faith in God
10. People are fanatical to the point of being anti intellectual
11. No sense of vision beyond running Sunday services
12. Direction of church is dominated by one person
13. Everything revolves around the pastor
14. Lack of imagination - nothing much changes
15. Lack of flexibility
16. Little sense of practical connection with real needs
17. Not connected to important issues in the world
18. Focused on narrow set of moral issues
19. Inward focused - no sense of connecting with outsiders
20. Lack of decent food and drink
In some ways these are the corollaries of a list put out by the National Church Life Survey people in Sydney - indicators of healthy congregational life.
1. Alive and growing faith
2. Vital and nurturing worship
3. Strong and growing belonging
4. Clear and owned vision
5. Inspiring and empowering leadership
6. Imaginative and flexible innovation
7. Practical and diverse service
8. Willing and effective faith sharing
9. Intentional and welcoming inclusion
The focus of the workshop will be on what young people can do about their list of complaints, ranging from 101 things to do during a dull sermon, to developing new environments in which people are welcome, to getting out more. The reality is that we can invest so many expectations in a 60 - 120 minute gathering that will always be hard to meet. Engaging in world poverty, building strong friendships, developing a sense of shared vision, are all 7 days a week activities that happen outside church buildings.
So what would you add to the list? What advice would you give a young person grappling with anything from dull to abusive church environments?
In September 1992 the youngest of our three children, eighteen month old daughter Kristen, died on the road outside our manse, hit by a car. I was in my first year as a minister, serving in the Presbyterian Church of New Zealand in Tokoroa, a town of 16000 people connected with dairy, logging, pulp and paper industries. A month later, the twenty one year old daughter of the church secretary was killed in a horrific car accident.
As you can imagine we were struggling to deal with multiple layers of grief, as a family, as a congregation, as a community. Coming into Christmas I remember the struggle of being responsible for communicating the love, joy and hope of the season. As I preached through the nativity stories I was attuned to the down-to-earth struggle of a young couple as they grappled with an unplanned pregnancy and an arduous journey away from home. I took comfort in God’s engagement in our suffering through becoming one of us, in the flesh.
Lloma, the church secretary who shared our journey of grief, was inspired to reach out to others who were feeling lost and alone over Christmas. Together our families gathered a team to host a Christmas Day dinner for people who were away from their families. The community responded magnificently. Farmers, butchers, and bakers donated food for the meal. The local newspaper featured our plans on the front page and challenged readers to invite their neighbours to their Christmas meals.
Celebrating Christmas without Kristen was painful. It wasn’t the memories of past Christmas that we grieved for – it was the lost opportunities of the future. But as we connected with our community we discovered others with similar experiences. Together we made God’s connection of fragility and joy.
An article I wrote for the back page of Journey, December 2007
Sally Morgenthaler, well known for her book Worship Evangelism and her web site, Sacaramentis, has published an article in the latest edition of Next Wave E-Zine, originally published with Rev! Magazine in June.
Sally’s books, articles and seminars have helped thousands of churches to develop seeker-friendly approaches to worship. But she is now distancing herself from the worship-focused culture that has developed as a result.
“In the mid-90s, the community church section in the yellow pages was awash with self-conscious logos and catchy taglines, all competing with each other for that upwardly mobile, savvy church shopper. Strip malls and school gyms were bursting with “churches-on-wheels”: shiny-faced set-up crews towing two-wheeled storage trailers, each chock full of sound equipment, Plexiglas podiums, informational handouts, plastic plants, name tags, and nursery toys.
But by 1998 something had shifted. The set-up crews weren’t looking quite as fresh as they once were. Why would they, playing “portable church” 52 weeks a year, year after hopeful year? Of course, they were waiting for the “promised land” — the gleaming megaplex their pastor had envisioned on those 20 farm acres south of town. The savviest start-ups reached that promised land. Most did not. By 2000 there were only a few trailers backing up to warehouse doors. The start-ups had thinned out. It was as if the “if we build it, they will come” game had suddenly grown stale. Like last year’s action toy, the bright outfits, plastic plants, oozy choruses, and pink-shirts-with-Dockers-slacks went into culture’s garage sale bin. Contemporary church plants that hadn’t reached critical mass (300 to 400) by the end of the ’90s were in deep trouble.”
Sally is concerned that most worship settings engaging in the seeker-friendly approach avoid any hint of sadness, anger or despair. Even more worrying is the tendency to pour so much energy into developing dynamic worship that members are too exhausted to spend time with people in their community. When all’s said and done, the reality is that most celebratory worship is focused on the inner world of believers rather than engaging with the everyday reality of living in the world in which God has placed us.
I heard Brett Swann from Springfield Community Oasis (Church of Christ) speaking on Friday night, talking about a new church plant in which worship services went low-tech, using canned music and dialogue rather than up-front band and speaker. It was counter-cultural for Brett and his team. But two years later the church has runs on the board for community engagement with the Christian gospel.
Years ago I dabbled with a similar approach, occasionally moving an evening worship service away from an up-front focus. The feedback was interesting. A significant portion of attenders were disturbed - ostensibly because they didn’t believe they were worshiping any longer. One visitor was honest with me. “We come to this church because there’s a good band. And when there isn’t we feel as though we’ve been deprived of the good experience we were expecting”.
Stepping away from ‘worship evangelism’ is not necessarily a step into mediocrity or irrelevance. If anything, it’s an opportunity to rethink the level of energy required to create an gathering that will be sustainable, effective (in strengthening worshiping witnessing and serving disciples of Jesus) and good news for the community.
Doctor Who is being featured in a worship service held in Cardiff on Sunday September 23, near the site of the fictional rift in time. Worshippers are being invited to compare a Time Lord with the Lord of Time during a eucharistic service.
Taste is a new cafe style worship experience for young people in Cardiff, part of the Anglican-sponsored Enter the Mystery experience. Teenagers and young people in their early 20s are being targeted for the “cafe-style” Communion service, with music and video clips from the hit series, at St Paul’s Church in Grangetown, Cardiff.
The Anglican church was used as a location two years ago for the Father’s Day episode of the first series, in which a giant reaper creature attacked wedding guests at the church.
Fr Dean Atkins, youth officer with the Diocese of Llandaff and one of the organisers of the service, said: “The figure of Doctor Who is somebody who comes to save the world, almost a Messiah figure. In the series there are lots of references to salvation and the doctor being almost immortal. We are using the figure of Doctor Who as a parable of Christ. The language used in the series lends itself to exploring the Christian faith.”
He added: “Christ is a kind of cosmic figure as well if you like, somebody who does not travel through time but all eternity is found in him. He is a kind of encapsulation of the beginning and the end, in fact he existed before time began and he will exist when time ends.”
Parish priest Fr Ben Andrews said: “I love the series, and it has such a great following that we couldn’t resist doing something for young people on a Doctor Who theme. Lots of people think that young people are the future of the Church. This kind of event will show they are part of the church of the present and have an important part to play in its future. We are building on the past but always looking forward.”
See the story on the BBC site, including a streamed interview with Dean Atkins.
Tapu Misa, columnist with the New Zealand Herald, recently mentioned her conversion to Christianity in passing. In her post, Discovering mum’s right about religion? Priceless, she unpacks the costly nature of that conversion.
…Having become a Christian, I can see why I resisted it for so long. People who dismiss it as a crutch for emotional cripples are wrong. Although I find the world a better, richer, more compassionate place with God in it, there’s no getting away from the fact that Christianity is a demanding religion. I’ve no problem loving my neighbours as myself but loving and praying for my enemies has so far proved more of a struggle (though I have ceased to wish them ill).
And not only am I supposed to face up to my awful imperfections, but I’m supposed to do something about them….
Tapu is helpfully deconstructing the illusion that conversion is merely some temporary fix to an emotional problem or an indication of an intellectual weakness. Following in the footsteps of Jesus is not an easy option - in fact it flies in the face of the natural outcomes of a busy, consumer-driven comfortable lifestyle. Thanks for the reminder Tapu.
Duncan Macleod posts on life, faith and culture in Australia, drawing from his involvement in the creative industry, the Uniting Church, the blogosphere, generational research, the emerging church and life on the Gold Coast.
A Christianity Worth Believing is a solid introduction to theology in development, carefully crafted with story, personal reflection and quotes from the Bible, the creeds and Protestant confessions. Pagitt begins the whole book with the story of his family background (explaining his need to stir) and his conversion. It’s the conversion story that sets up the tension that runs through the book. Deeply moved by his experience of a gospel play, a sixteen year old Doug responds with a life changing faith. But within two weeks the guy’s been introduced to the narrow version of Christianity contained in brochures, diagrams and statements of faith focused on Jesus dying to deal with sin so that God can connect with Doug.
This post-apocalyptic world combines elements of technology from today with a loss of standards of living. It’s hot in the UK - so hot that people have virtually given up wearing clothes. Modesty is a thing of the past. Turning up at a physical work space is a novelty. Trafford works for the government, in NatDat, finding new kinds of ‘degrees of separation’ between members of the population.
In September 1992 the youngest of our three children, eighteen month old daughter Kristen, died on the road outside our manse, hit by a car. I was in my first year as a minister, serving in the Presbyterian Church of New Zealand in Tokoroa, a town of 16000 people connected with dairy, logging, pulp and paper industries. A month later, the twenty one year old daughter of the church secretary was killed in a horrific car accident.
Sally Morgenthaler, well known for her book Worship Evangelism and her web site, Sacaramentis, has published an article in the latest edition of 
Tapu Misa, columnist with the New Zealand Herald, recently mentioned her conversion to Christianity in passing. In her post, 
