Start Asking Questions—NOW!

The news of Nelson Mandela’s death was still fresh when I shared lunch with a fellow Lutheran.

She told me that she remembered going to church the Sunday after the news of his release from prison in 1990.

Nelson Mandela went to prison when I was in the fourth grade. Those were turbulent years ruled by fear. There was talk of the evils of Communism. The Civil Rights protests were in full swing in this country. There were mixed philosophies on how to protest decades of wrong policy in our own country. Nelson Mandela epitomized from afar everything we feared at home. He had Communist sympathies and had practiced both nonviolent and militant protests. He was living with a very tough situation. People in tough situations are likely to try many paths.

Pressure from around the world influenced Mandela’s release from prison after 27 years.

His release was not met with universal approval.

My friend told me that her visit to one of the churches closest to Redeemer that morning was led by an angry Lutheran minister. His sermon was about the huge mistake that South Africa was making. Nelson Mandela deserved to rot in prison.

Read the description of traits of a doctor. We should trust them. Why? They work hard! Do we give our church leaders the same unquestioning allegiance?

Imagine that sermon being preached today. The world is just coming off three weeks of mourning Mandela’s death and celebrating his life.

Nelson Mandela did not have an easy life but he was given time to prove himself.  He became the one-term president of a divided country and proved that the surest way for all of South Africa to move forward was to put the past behind them and move ahead together.

His 27 years of brutal and humiliating punishment were erased by his final 23 years of peacemaking.

It didn’t have to be that way. He could have written an autobiographical manifesto fueled by bitterness and anger. Instead, he was typically seen with a smile on his face and the words he spoke were as gentle to the young and innocent as they were to the older generations who had witnessed and perhaps advocated for his downfall.

The world is always challenged to think independently, to make difficult judgments. This is pivotal to a democratic society. It is also pivotal to Christianity.

The people who make up the Church, lay and clergy alike, are tempted to follow. Following Christ is part of our heritage. We tend to take the same trait and misuse it. We act as if mortal church leaders are due the same unquestioning devotion.

Followers are not expected to be mindless! If we behaved as unthinking drones, no new leadership would emerge.

Perhaps that is the problem we face in today’s church—a problem of leadership.

In our society, church leaders are given special protection by courts reluctant to get involved in church matters. This creates a very dangerous environment, especially for lay people. Church laws may not give special protection to clergy but custom does. Because courts will defer to church leaders, lay people are at risk. Ask the people of Redeemer! The court ruling in our case stated that if the law were applied, Redeemer’s arguments held merit. But the law was not applied. The courts deferred to the Church. Church leaders reveled in their ability to flaunt their own rules without legal consequence. Church rank and file followed — mindlessly.

The Church deals, usually in private, with thieves, adulterers, liars and schemers. We don’t question when we should. We are beginning to regret it in the sexual abuse cases. But abuse comes in many flavors.

If we could get in the habit of asking questions, there’d be no need for the dramatic sacrifices of Martin Luther King, Jr. and Nelson Mandela — contemporaries fighting similar problems.

Christians need to question leaders. Leaders can be wrong. When there is self-interest in the decisions in question (either monetary or prestige), it is almost guaranteed.

When we don’t question early and often, we end up with defensive stalemates. That’s where the Church is today. Stalled by leadership that is vested in protecting the past and their own positions within the past. We wait for someone else to take the first dangerous steps. It usually takes a very long time. It is not without cost.

Enter the Martin Luther Kings and Nelson Mandelas. Neither lived an easy life, but we are all the better for their struggles.

Christmas and the Power of Small

It’s a very good thing that Christmas comes every year.

Every year we need a reminder of the power of small.

God started out with a bang. The epic stories of the Bible come from the Old Testament. Floods and famines. Wars and destruction.

But at some point, God shifted gears.

You can hear his exasperation in the prophetic words of Isaiah.

Is it too little for you to weary mortals, that you weary my God also?
Therefore, the Lord God will give you a sign. Look, the young woman is with child and shall bear a son, and shall name him Immanuel.

God turned away from the epic solutions with casts of mostly unnamed thousands.

“Thunderbolts and lightening. Very, very frightening.” wasn’t working.

God, holding all the power in the universe, went small.

It was dramatic—earth-changing.

Suddenly, the cast of thousands become known to us by name. There are 12 male apostles with names and a bunch of women with names, too. Suddenly, our scriptures have us looking into the crowd. We see the boy with the fish and loaves of bread, the woman who is bleeding, the crippled man, the dying girl, the fisherman, the merchant, the rich young man, the priest, the widow, the soldier, and the tax collector. Many of them are named. Suddenly, they are all equal in importance.

Our all-powerful God went small. He bundled all his power into a tiny baby and let it loose in the world. He came to earth and joined us. Immanuel. God with us. Large and small.  Rich and poor.

Wow!

The Church is always tempted by big. We feel secure when there are big congregations making big contributions to support — who knows what? We can look across our large congregations as they pass the offering plates at three or four Christmas Eve services and feel a sense of accomplishment. We’ll know some of the names in the crowd. Many will be strangers and will stay strangers.

We look down at the little neighborhood and country churches who struggle to find a supply pastor on Christmas Eve. They are seen as a drain on the hierarchy without clear evidence that they are costing hierarchies anything. The Church will set unrealistic expectations, making the mission of every congregation to equal the financial capabilities of the very few large churches.

The Church, in its own interests, has a hard time valuing small.

But once a year, we are reminded.

Every Christmas we remember the power of small—the power of knowing the person sitting in front of us in church and the ones behind us as well — the power of every person being able to contribute in worship and mission with the gifts God gave them, not the gifts the church perceives it needs for its own survival.

The power of the Church is in strengthening small churches—not focusing on growing numbers but in empowering influence.

We can do that best when we look across the congregation and know the names.

Once a year, at Christmas time, Christians return to our roots.

It all started with a baby and love.

His name is Jesus.

Schools Flipping the Model of Learning
Will Fuel Discontent Among Future Worshipers

Enlightened educators realize that the world has changed. In response they are flipping their classrooms.

A flipped classroom realizes that the educational world does not have to subsidize one expert lecturer teaching the same material in every classroom across the United States and beyond.

The old model had 30 or more disengaged pupils listening to lectures in school and going home to work in solitude on solving sets of problems. Working together was considered cheating. Students who encountered difficulty didn’t get help when they needed it and often lagged hopelessly behind.

The new model has students listening to online presentations of material. They come to school to work together on solving problems. Students can view the best deliverers of facts and theory online. Students and teachers can choose the ones that fit their learning styles and curricula! When teachers work more closely with students, problems are identified and addressed at the best time for learning to take place.

Local teachers are free to facilitate learning in more hands-on ways. Classrooms are used less frequently as lecture halls and more frequently as workshops and labs with the added benefit of collaborative learning. Working together is no longer cheating but expected.

Teachers are loving it. Students are getting used to it. It’s a bit harder to dodge the homework.

This is providing a future work force that is accustomed to collaboration and innovation and using resources from many sources to solve problems. Eventually the flipped classroom will be a flipped work environment. It already is in many cases.

But how does this major societal change affect church? Will worshipers who have never experienced lecture-style teaching sit still for sermons? Probably not.

Can we flip the church experience? Can worshipers follow the scriptures and teaching aspects of worship at home and come to together in church to collaborate in worship and mission or will mission continue to be the optional “homework”?

Does every little church have to pay a professional theologian in order to work together in mission?

The answer, hard as it may be to accept, is no. This is nothing new. The small churches which are now struggling to meet unrealistic budget expectations of the modern world started out with itinerant pastors in many cases. They were built on the passion and work of lay leaders who maintained the mission between pastoral visits.

The model of the flipped church has yet to be developed. It must happen. 2×2’s experience is a start. We’ve flipped by necessity!

As the numbers of children reared in flipped classrooms grow to maturity, the experience of spectator worship will become anachronistic. It will seem demeaning and purposeless. Small churches with minimal professional leadership are learning that their members have leadership skills that larger churches purchase.

Talk to the majority of Christians. Most are already less involved in church. When they come to worship, they are going to want to know their involvement will make a difference.

Churches need to find ways to engage, beginning with worship. That will change the way everyone thinks about their relationship with Christian community.

If you want to transform, start flipping!

Here’s what we are doing: 2×2 offers a weekly object lesson for use with adults. We’ve called these “Adult Object Lessons.” We will keep using this term. It helps drive search engine traffic. We will start using the term “experiential worship or experiential sermons.” That will help flip the concept of worship from spectator to participatory. That’s where worship needs to go if it is to remain the communal experience we expect it to be.

photo credit: Dabe Murphy via photopin cc