Serving Seattle

I have been watching the events surrounding Scott Rennie’s induction at Queen’s Cross, Aberdeen over the past couple of months with sadness. Scott is living in a homosexual relationship with his partner David and the installation has caused much concern around the CoS. A complaint was filed by several members of the Presbytery and it (with the response from Aberdeen Presbytery) can be found here:

Click for PDF from CoS Website

The General Assembly voted to sustain the induction and will be discussing the moral/ethical issues in a separate overture on Monday.

Here are a few brief comments:

1) I believe that the GA made the correct decision *technically* regarding the polity issues that were at hand in the complaint. In fact, after reading it initially, there was no way that I could have seen it going any other way. That the margins were slim almost surprises, given that we Presbies love decency and order - especially order.

2) I am hopeful that GA will reiterate something approximating the Biblical view on sexuality, but even if that were to happen it would probably be treated much like Lambeth ‘98 has been treated in the Anglican Communion. The Kirk has been loathe to discipline ministers for anything and I don’t believe they will start now on a politically hot-button issue.

3) I believe it will be possible that GA upholds traditional sexual morality because I think there are enough religious conservatives and evangelicals (two distinct categories in my mind here) to turn the issue around on the actual … read moral issue.

4) Pessimistically(?) I believe it will still only be a stop-gap. I think the revisionists have shown a great deal of patience as they *know* that public opinion and the cultural shifting sands are on their side. The Evangelicals and religious conservatives have been saying (much like in The Episcopal Church here in the States) for 30 years that it would be the *next* issue which would bring things to a breaking point - they sat through Women’s Ordination, continued unbelief in ordinands and pastors, CH4 (a true travesty! ), and I just don’t think this will be any different.

5) Who can lead the Evangelicals or at least piss them off a bit in a good godly way - whilst at the same time not giving in to hateful diatribes? Given, I am an American clergyman who wouldn’t be afraid to call out “Absolute bollocks!” on the floor of GA. But my brothers over in the CoS are often just too damned nice/complacent for their own good. I’m not suggesting smashing pint glasses in revisionist faces, mind you. It’s just, in my years in Scotland as a Divinity student I didn’t see anyone who I thought would really make the kind of leader that, say, Bob Duncan is in TEC or Packer, Lucas or today’s Wright, or some of the great folks @ Oak Hill are for the CoE.

Maybe Dominic Smart, Willie Philip, or someone else will come along - but I don’t know who that will be or what it looks like. Prayer is the answer to that one.

Ladies & Gentlemen,

I am back from vacation.  Actually, I have been back for two weeks - but am just now getting back to the blog.  My two faithful readers are overjoyed.

In the past two weeks, Seattle’s new Major League Soccer team - Sounders FC - have taken the soccer world by storm.  And when I say “world”, I mean it - with young Fredy Montero’s perfomance being noticed worldwide - being put in a list of “10 to watch” 2 weeks ago.  The Sounders have shut out both of its first matches, look to be a true contender for the season, and have the most exciting game (language warning, I think - can’t quite tell) in all of North American Soccer.

When we moved to Seattle we decided to purchase season tickets for this new team.  My attitude towards soccer had changed during my years in Scotland and I knew that this Sounders thing was going to be good.  Growing up, when I spent time with my mother in Pittsburgh we would always go to Steelers games and I can to this day count on my Christmas presents being Steelers-themed.  There is something beautiful about your family standing and cheering on “your team”.  I wanted my wife and daughters to experience this as well.  We locked up 4 season tickets (we sold two of them on to friends this year), and plan on the Sounders being a part of our life from here on out.

The opening game was amazing - one of the largest attendances for a Major League Soccer team at 32K and change - energy, energy everywhere.  I lost my voice and it just started to get normal again this Monday morning (10 days later!).  We sang, we danced, we picked people up and threw them around.  We chanted, we screamed, we jumped all around.  In short, it was beautiful.

Why does fandom feel so right?  Why do we love supporting a team?  Why do we usher our children into loving and loathing?  Why?  Because - unless you are a Cleveland Browns fan - it is a deeply “right” impulse.  We are “groaning” for redemption, along with the rest of creation.  We play out that battle - and we know it is a battle - in many different ways…through the violence of young men, the striving in a marriage, the cheering in the crowd, the hike to the top of the mountain.

We want to see our side triumph.  We want to see victory, heroism, mighty deeds.  We want to see things set right.  And the fact is that our Lombardi Trophies, Stanley Cups, World Cups and Gold Cups do not and cannot truly fulfill that desire.  Our team wins it all and the next day life is still life.  Even the players experience this.  There is no victory that truly lasts.

Except one…

The Bible tells us the story of a King who conquers and subdues all, who brings peace and justice to the world and who is ushering in a time of limitless celebration and joyful work.  So the question is - why do I lose my voice at soccer games, but read the Word of God so stoically?

I’m pretty sure it’s one of two things - that my King came as a Lamb and was led to slaughter.  That he isn’t the kind of King I want.  I don’t think he is doing enough, I don’t think he’s doing it right.  Or I just don’t believe it.

It probably vacilates between the two.  I’m gonna pray that God gives me (and you) the grace to believe that he is King and he is the right kind of King.

Some may wonder why my blogging has dropped off the cliff. I have not gone into stealth mode, nor am I just being lazy. I am on vacation! And I am not yet halfway through.

It is an amazing thing, the nearly three week vacation. We’re on our way to San Diego now after a weekend at Disneyland.

Only one major thing to update - yesterday a poll was taken at Lynnwood regarding my move. It was answered over 95% yes, with a couple folks abstaining making up the rest. It was a fantastic vote and we are so excited to continue our ministry at CrossPoint as I move to be the Pastor of the Lynnwood congregation. There will be plenty more blogs when I return.

Til then, Peace!

The PCA claims that churches planted by men who have passed through our denomination’s Assesment Center have a 92% success rate.  If memory serves correctly, “success” is defined by the plant still being there and being self-sustained in 5 years.  That success rate is phenomenal.  Nationally, depending on your statistician - 50-80% of church plants actually fail in the first five years.

I seem to keep having this conversation with men who are church planters in the PCA…are we actually all that great at planting churches?

So we have a success rate of 92%.  Awesome.  Yaddy yaddy.  We are always talking about how successful we are.  But does that mean that we are actually effective at planting churches?  I’m gonna throw it out there that although the PCA I think was at the head of the pack in the 90s on church planting, we have rested on our laurels and are far behind the awesome stuff that the SBC, AoG, Foursquare and others are doing now with less.

I’m happy to fill this out - either in comments or in another post, but - if you are PCA, do you think we do church planting as well as we could?  If you aren’t - who do you really see effectively planting churches?  Stories, thoughts, controversy - bring it on.

Discuss.

A little chant for a Wednesday afternoon.

Growing up I thought I was the weird one.  My religion taught me that people were born innocent and couldn’t sin until 8 years old.  Yet I knew that I was screwed up.  I was taught that the world slowly corrupted us, but that the strong could through repentance be perfect.  So I thought I was the only one who was as bad as I was.  Oh the guilt.  In trying to do away with guilt I was heaped with more guilt than one could imagine.

I find the reality of Sin and sinful human nature so helpful, then.  Even though I am the worst sinner I know, everyone is a sinner.  Everyone screws up, and it is in their nature to do so.  Everyone wants to be their own little god.  I always knew I was a sinner, but I thought I was the only one.  So when I couldn’t pull myself up by the bootstraps - well, I must weird huh?

Praise Jesus that the Bible explains why I am so jacked up.  And praise Jesus that he offers forgiveness for my sin, restoration from my sin-culture, and peace when I am beset by my sin.

If there is anything that I absolutely 100% believe all the time it is the reality of sin, in myself and in the world.  It is surprising then to me that there are many both within the church and outside it who want to believe that people are fundamentally good.  Is that their real experience?  Am I the weird one again when I say - that ain’t my experience.  Certainly we aren’t as bad as we could be, and people do do good things all the time - but does that mean we are “good”?

Anyway, take a minute to think about how you view sin - your own, your cultures, the world’s sin.  Is it serious enough to warrant a big gospel to deal with it?

The congregation I am currently pursuing within our multi-site church is a church that has experienced a lot of hurt over the past year or two. There have been some major staff changes (our Associate & Chief Musician both left within months of launching multi-site). There were two elders who chose to leave the congregation this past year, which is always highly disruptive. It is a church with baggage.

But I want to say that every church has baggage. I’ve told them and I want to tell you. Every church can either look like crap or look glorious, depending at how you look at it.

The question is - how are you looking at your church? Are you focusing on the baggage, holding on to it, making it your identity? Or are you willing to the more dangerous - look at your church through the gospel, see it as something which is as tainted with sin as your own heart - but something that Jesus sees as his beautiful bride.

Are you willing to love your church like Jesus loves it? Will you know all of its faults and crap and still choose to love it and build it up? Will you support the pastors and elders God has given you to lead you? Will you build up the ministries of the church by being the ministers of God?

Jesus loves you very much - and he loves his church to death. Are you willing to love what Jesus loves? No matter how much it hurts? Even with all of its baggage?

With such a limited audience and low profit margins, Presbyshirts exists solely for beer money:

Well, we need to start getting ready for our Spring Presbyteries and many of us are looking forward to General Assembly.  Do you want to make a statement?  Well, here’s your chance:

A number of bloggers are blogging their reading of Ed Clowney’s “Called to the Ministry” - Including Justin Buzzard and Unashamed Workman.  Clowney has been formative in a lot of my thinking about the church and ministry - but these snippits still smack me (in a good Jesus-y way).  My quote of the day - going into the sermon on Sunday:

To miss your calling, follow this three-point program: assume that it begins in the future, decide that you don’t know what it is, and sit down to wait for the Lord’s call.

Bam!

There will be have to be some necessary differences in mindset between urban and suburban churches because context always affects us deeply. Our own daughter churches in the NYC suburbs have the same theological vision and love of the city, but they simply aren’t a) as multi-ethnic and b) as close to the poor–because the zoning laws of the suburbs tend to homogenize things economically and therefore, to some degree, racially. So it is just harder to show how the gospel brings down racial and class barriers in the suburbs. (According to Ephesians 2, that is a major sign of the truth of the gospel.) It doesn’t mean that suburban churches are ‘inferior’ or that it is easier to be a pastor in the suburbs–I actually think it will take more ingenuity and creativity to demonstrate the power of the gospel in the suburbs than it will in the city.

– Tim Keller

I love Tim Keller.  He used to read my blog.  Now he doesn’t.  But that’s OK.

So, I dig what Tim is saying here - but I’m trying to understand how does one reach out to suburbs which are far more racially, economically, politically heterogenous than the city (especially the northern urban neighborhoods our city site serves)?

It seems to me that much thinking about suburban church is based on the “privileged monoculture” theory of the ‘burbs.  Patio man and all that jazz.  I’m not saying that somewhere like Lynnwood is a crazy “third thing”…but I find that many suburban stereotypes are less than true for it.  People don’t move to Lynnwood to “get away” from the city, as if it is some big scary thing.  Many would happily live in Eastlake or on Queen Anne - but when you are paying $469,000 for a 1 bedroom, 3/4 bath home on Eastlake - it just begins to make sense to take your wife and kids 20 minutes north to a house you can afford where the kids don’t have to sleep in the hall closet.

And maybe you are an immigrant (25% of Lynnwood residents are foreign-born), are you going to pay $1500 a month for an apartment near downtown or $900 in Lynnwood?

Lynnwood is diverse, but has some of the real outreach problems of monoculture suburbia anyway - your “community” is your cul-de-sac…so you aren’t necessarily rubbing shoulders with different economic strata as easily (although your neighbors are very likely to include asain families and possibly a hispanic one as well).  You tend to work either in Seattle or Bellevue, so your work community is highly dispersed and you don’t go back to so-and-so’s loft with all the other beautiful 33 year old single ad execs, you need to go home and make dinner.  And in traffic, you might have a 40 minute drive in front of you.

This isn’t a dig on Keller, but I am looking for better descriptions of “these kind” of suburbs - as well as stories of churches and missional communities which are effectively reaching these places.

Thoughts?