talking about faith: casper visit re-cap

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via stevebrownetc.com

As I wrote last week, my friend Matt Casper came by First Pres' on Sunday to speak with my class. It was great having him. In our brief time, we talked about several things regarding outreach. I'll outline those briefly here...

Listening
When we talk with people of other faiths-or no faith-about our own, we have to first acknowledge that it isn't a one way conversation. We don't earn respect and the right to be heard without first listening to them. Which leads me to my next point...

Respect
People are people. Treat people with respect. Just because they have made different conclusions than you doesn't mean they haven't thought it through. Which leads me to my next...

Humility
You don't have to have all the answers. Be willing say, "I don't know." As Matt often says, "It's about dialog not debate.

At the same time, I added another aspect:

Confidence
As I written before, "evangelism" has become for many a creepy or embarrassing term. But we need to rediscover how to speak about these things with confidence (while with humility) in ways that are "normal" to each of us. And I am also assuming a couple of other things:

- That we are in relationship with people that are not of our faith
- That we have conversations with others about our faith

I hope that in my class, people got a chance to see that this doesn't have to be weird and contrived. That this can be quite natural... even with an atheist. We'll talk about this more next Sunday at 9:45am. Author and pastor, Henk Vigeveno will be back to talk about this with me. Henk has been advocating this kind of approach for half a century. I'm glad to have him.

come to my class tomorrow...

via youtube.com

I've invited a dear friend of mine to join me in my class at First Pres' tomorrow morning at 9:45am. Matt Casper is an author, a great musician and an atheist. Check out the video above to hear a little about the background of his book with co-author, Jim Casper and what it feels like to visit churches as an outsider. In my class, we've been talking about what outreach and mission looks like here in our city. Tomorrow morning, we will get the chance to talk with Matt and hear what outreach looks and feels like from an outsider's perspective. Hope you can join us.

rev magazine podcast

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Matt Casper and I just finished an interview with Alan Nelson, author and Executive Director of Rev Magazine and his co-host, Brian Mavis. Brian is the former director of SermonCentral.com and has been a good friend for years and is now on staff at a church in Colorado.

The podcast will not be online right away. I'll let you know when it is online.

A couple things that stood out to me in the interview were that we all seemed to agree that we have to find ways to de-commodify the church and counter the hyper-individualism that our culture seems to breed. That seems quite telling that a guy like me, a guy on staff at a megachurch, a guy who publishes Christian books and magazines (notice the cover of Rev's latest issue?) and an athiest would all agree on these things.

Does your understanding of the Gospel of the Kingdom address these subjects? How?

salon interviews chris hedges...

Casper turned me onto this. Salon interviews Hedges about his new book, I Don't Believe in Atheists:

I write in the book that not believing in God is not dangerous. Not believing in sin is very dangerous. I think both the Christian right and the New Atheists in essence don't believe in their own sin, because they externalize evil. Evil is always something out there that can be eradicated. For the New Atheists, it's the irrational religious hordes. I mean, Sam Harris, at the end of his first book, asks us to consider a nuclear first strike on the Arab world. Both Hitchens and Harris defend the use of torture. Of course, they're great supporters of preemptive war, and I don't think this is accidental that their political agendas coalesce completely with the Christian right. (emphasis mine)
>>more

organic church movements conference update

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Kevin, Josh and I are sitting in the afternoon session, listening to Neil Cole talk about the "5-fold Gifts" or "APETS". It's been fun so far. Matt and I talked this morning with mostly good responses. Only a few people walked out on us! (seriously)

There hasn't been a lot of talk yet about economics. Either from the perspective of battling consumerism or fundraising (Wolfgang Simson led a great workshop on this last time). But this seems to come up in a lot of the hallway conversations. Why don't we like to talk about this from the front? Probably 'cause no one has answers yet. What do you think?

organic church movements

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Kind of last minute information, but I will be at the Organic Church Movements conference in Ontario, CA next week. I'm looking forward to hanging out with K. Rains and the other great people that will be there. Matt Casper and I will be doing a main session together on Saturday. I will also be a part of a city transformation panel workshop on Sunday morning as well. If you can make it please come!

Oh, and the family and I will be in LA this Friday for the SUM graduation.

From Geoff:

I ran across this article from Allelon which highlighted tension points as the church attempts to engage and relate to Western culture today. The article was prompted by recent work/statistics from the Barna Group as well as observations from a book entitled, “Jim and Casper Go to Church.” (the observations of and conversations with Matt Casper the friendly atheist as they visit churches across the U.S.)

What are the challenges facing the church in our culture? The article lists:

  1. The relative indifference of most churched Christians to unchurched people.
  2. An emphasis on the personal rather than communal faith journey.
  3. A tendency to perform rituals and exercise talents rather than an invitation to and experience of the presence of God.
  4. The absence of a compelling enough call to action.
  5. The failure to listen to dissident voices.