Today’s Christian Standard enewsletter includes a blurb about Southland Christian Church; SCC recently asked members to write notes of encouragement to Britney Spears. Senior Minister Jon Weece issued the invitation, writing on the church blog, “[Britney's] life is in shambles and filled with bad relationships and devastating life choices. If she were your next-door neighbor in the same situation, without the money and success, wouldn’t you care about her problems? Wouldn’t you pray for her and offer her support and encouragement? Take a few minutes and write a note to Britney Spears, and bring it to the front of the stage between worship services this weekend. No preaching. No criticizing. Just love. As a church, let’s love Britney the way Jesus loves her.”
Southland consistently finds creative, tangible ways to demonstrate love for others (remember the thousands of dollars in restaurant and grocery store gift cards for the families of last year’s plane crash at the Blue Grass Airport?) but this is my favorite by far.
Like millions of others, I’ve watched video clips of Spears’ lackluster performance at the VMAs, clucked my tongue in disapproval at her over-partying and under-parenting, and stared in amazement as she shaved her own head. What I never did was pray for her.
I didn’t get to leave a note at Southland last weekend, but here’s what I would have written.
Dear Britney,
We’re all writing these letters with good intentions—we want to be kind and loving in ways the paparazzi, the media, and even some of your friends and family have not been. But although we mean well, the fact remains that none of us has the slightest idea what your life must be like. We have not earned millions of dollars as teenagers, or been blinded by cameras every time we leave the house, or had our every action dissected by a news media that should be much more concerned with Katrina recovery efforts. So no matter how noble our intentions to sympathize, we can’t really empathize. We get that, and know some of our words may fall short because of it.
We’ve also been judgmental of you. I’ve been judgmental, and I don’t even know you.
However, I know someone like you. She acts impulsively and sometimes stays in bad relationships too long. She’s been let down by people she thought were good friends. She’s hurt men and been hurt by men. She occasionally struggles with handling her money well, and she has to work out a lot and eat right or else the pounds creep up on her too. (And she hasn’t had two kids like you have—for the record, you look great). She wants peace, and sometimes would like to just be left alone already.
She’s me.
I don’t know what your particular life is like, the immense pressures you face, the temptations you battle or the regrets you carry around. But I know what it’s like to feel pressured, tempted, and regretful. So I’ll stop judging you and start praying for you, starting today. And if you ever find yourself in Lexington, I know a truly great church that would love you just the way you are.
Continuing the trend started with “GodTube” (which took the YouTube trend and made it more wholesome by allowing only videos which “encourage and advance the Gospel worldwide”), now the folks at MyChurch have created a social networking site (a la MySpace or Facebook) for churches.
Why can’t believers just be salt and light within the original, much more popular, networks—why must we create our own little Christiany enclaves? And why aren’t we—the followers of the Creative Genius and the ones who are supposed to truly understand community—coming up with these things in the first place? I’m tired of imitating the culture. Let’s either create it or revolutionize it, but enough with watering it down and making it safe.
leading ladies
Today the Christian Standard enewsletter includes a mention of Harvester Christian Church’s “Daybreak” women’s retreat, an all-Saturday event that includes workshops on a variety of topics. Some of the most popular workshops this year are floral design, jewelry-making, and cooking like Paula Deen—at least, these sessions are already at capacity and closed to registrations.
I understand women’s (and men’s) ministry in theory, but I find most churches fall into some stereotyped patterns with their programming–for the women, some variation on the brunch/tea/book club/MOPS stuff; for the men, a variety of Wild at Heart/outdoor sports/high-cholesterol breakfast events. (Woe to the woman who enjoys fishing and bacon or the man who likes sipping herbal tea.)
But even more than the activities, I wrestle with the philosophy. I’m all for anything that promotes genuine relationships among women and encourages them to Christlikeness, but for me that means doing ministry out of my giftedness (while being a woman) more than it means attending events targeted for women.
Of course, it doesn’t have to be an either/or proposition. I occasionally attend an all-ladies event (in fact, I’m going to a brunch this Saturday) but I’m more energized by a Habitat for Humanity build, elementary school tutoring session, or in-depth study of a gender-neutral topic. And even among the women-only events I’ve experienced, the best—like a cross-generational Bible reading group—were meaningful because of spiritual depth and purpose, not because of chromosomes.
Ladies, what’s your take–does the women’s ministry at your church encourage you, help you to grow, and provide outreach opportunities? Is it an important part of your spiritual or social life?
Outreach Magazine recently asked a friend of mine to serve on the panel to choose the “top 25 innovative churches in America” for an upcoming issue. (Separate blog post: Would Outreach stay in business without its interminable lists?)
The criteria was “churches you think are innovative, the diverse churches, perhaps under our radar, that are doing ministry out of the box.” He asked for my suggestions—here are the churches I recommended.
Englewood Christian Church
Real Life Ministries
National Community Church (Washington, D.C.)
origins church (NYC)
The Dream Center (CA)
Times Square Church (NYC)
Revolution (NYC, Atlanta, and Charlotte)
What churches would make your list? You can nominate them here, and see the ones already under consideration.
I think lists like these often measure and reward the wrong things, so I took the time to write a glowing recommendation for Englewood Christian Church, a small church in urban Indianapolis that really grapples with what it means to live in Biblical community, function as citizens of a city and members of a church body, and minister alongside the poor. Check out their story on their website or my Buzz write-up from 2006 to learn more.
Question of the Day
Why do churches think it makes a service seem cool or hip to start it at 6:07 instead of 6:00?
My friend Joy, a therapist and ordained minister in the Disciples of Christ churches, loves labyrinths—walking them, recommending them to clients, and even tracing her finger along the grooves in “lap labyrinths.”
She recently loaned me the one pictured above (you can buy one at the Grace Cathedral online shop). I tend to move quickly and think quickly; my mind is constantly clicking through to-do lists, reviewing past conversations, planning future ones, analyzing the meaning behind things, and generally driving me crazy. Joy recommended the labyrinth as a way to center my thoughts and be more present in the moment.
As she handed me the beautiful piece of wood, she leaned over and gently moved her finger from the starting point up the path to its first circle around the center. She stopped for a moment, her index finger resting still.
“I tend to spend much of my life in this place,” she said. “I can see the center, the goal of who I want to be and how I want to live, but I tire at the thought of doing all this work”—her finger started moving again, tracing the next twists and turns—”to finally get to that promised land. So instead I content myself with living by proxy. I choose to live ‘close enough.’ With some things that’s okay—with others, it’s not.”
My “center” is a balanced life. I want to be a person of peace and a person who, like Jesus, completes the day’s work but never rushes ahead or feels too busy and overwhelmed. The question is whether I’m willing be shaped by the twists and turns of my life journey and do the work to reach the center—or if I’ll settle for living by proxy.
In your Face
I recently joined Facebook accidentally. I checked out the site to search for an old friend, realized I could only view her profile by registering, and in the course of registering inadvertently created my own profile and flung online friend “invites” to my email address book.
Facebook is one of the newer online phenomenons; it rocketed founder Mark Zuckerberg from a 19 year-old college student to a 23 year-old uber-wealthy Harvard dropout. 35 million people use the site to remain connected with high school and college buddies, work associates, family, and even strangers with shared interests. (One of my friends, along with 52 other like-minded folks, belongs to the “Holy Crap! American Gladiators is coming back on the air!!” group.)
Status updates (“Jennifer Taylor is not returning your calls because she has too much work”) and uploadable applications that let you share your personality style, load your favorite music, or adopt virtual pets provide countless opportunities for customization, and its emphasis on connecting with people you already know—rather than the massive tagging of “friends” on MySpace—helps Facebook brand itself as a cooler, more exclusive community.
A recent Newsweek article explains Zuckerberg’s vision of the site, which “revolves around a concept he calls the ’social graph.’ As he describes it, this is a mathematical construct that maps the real-life connections between every human on the planet. Each of us is a node radiating links to the people we know.”
While it may take more than six degrees of separation to link to someone else, it is possible to see your friends’ friends on their page, then invite them to be your friends, thus giving you access to friends twice removed and adding literal and figurative links to a bigger and bigger network.
I don’t have time to do all this (my status update could just as easily, if more ironically, read “Jennifer Taylor is not on Facebook because she has too much work”) but it’s an interesting concept. One of the company’s co-founders recently asserted that in five years’ time, “everyone on the planet” will be on Facebook.
What kind of potential does this have for your local church, for the churches in your city, and for all of us together? Do you have a Facebook page? Are you doing anything interesting with it?
Jennifer Taylor
My Other Sites
