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Cafes, Cathedrals and Communities

Apr4

Cafes and cathedrals are both very good things and have their places within communities. But somehow I think that “cathedral thinking” in this century requires us to consider a vision that is both bigger than a simple cafe and smaller than a city-of-God-type cathedral. We need to be building communities. My problem is that I don’t really know how to go about doing such a thing. I do have several models and threads of ideas from various sources:

1. The mega-churches aren’t all bad, after all. Build a place that becomes a community center, a place for people to come and exercise, study, have lunch, do crafts, and worship. The problem with these mega-church buildings is that the (relatively) rich people who build them sometimes feel such a sense of ownership that the “riff-raff” are discouraged from attending the church or using the building or becoming part of the community. So we need a central space/building that is dedicated to God by the entire community.

2. The Highlands Study Center isn’t a mega-church with a huge multi-purpose building, but they are a group of Presbyterians who are building a community similar to what I have in mind.

The Highlands Study Center exists to help Christians live more simple, separate, and deliberate lives to the glory of God and for the building of His kingdom. And that’s a big job, one done not simply, but deliberately. As a ministry of Saint Peter Presbyterian Church, we stand with the Westminster Standards. Our hope is to help Reformed believers apply those principles to the way we live our lives. To that end we have a number of different ministries.

I doubt if I’m reformed enough or theologically erudite enough for them, but the idea of a community of mostly homeschooling families gathered around a church and study center is appealing. Somehow I still want to add in the outreach and evangelism component of Catez’s Open Late Cafe.

3. In her book The Severed Wasp, Madeleine L’Engle creates a Christian community that revolves around life at a fictional New York Episcopal Cathedral. The setting is based on Ms. L’Engle’s real-life experiences as volunteer librarian and writer-in-residence at the Epsicopal Cathedral of St. John Divine in New York City. Norma at Collecting My Thoughts wrote last year about her Lutheran church and its many ministries, including a Visual Arts Ministry which showcases various artists including, but not limited to, church members. Our churches and cathedrals and communities should be places for artists and poets and writers-in-residence and architects and musicians to work and worship and follow God’s calling in their lives.

4. L’abri Fellowship in its various forms and locations is another model for what I’m trying to articulate.

L’Abri is a French word that means shelter. The first L’Abri community was founded in Switzerland in 1955 by Dr. Francis Schaeffer and his wife, Edith. Dr. Schaeffer was a Christian theologian and philosopher who also authored a number of books on theology, philosophy, general culture and the arts.
The L’Abri communities are study centers in Europe, Asia and America where individuals have the opportunity to seek answers to honest questions about God and the significance of human life. L’Abri believes that Christianity speaks to all aspects of life.

5. Another model is the Celtic monastery that I wrote about here.

6. Our homeschool co-op, called REACH, is yet another example of intentional Christian community that reaches across denominational lines. We have about 100 families participating in a co-op in which mostly moms teach children from babies to high schoolers on Firday mornings. All the moms teach or help in some way; we use the facilities at a large Baptist church. We are not a church, but we have learned to care for one another in a way similar to the way a church cares for its members. And we call on the gifts of each co-op member in a way that parallels the way the great cathedrals were built. To teach our children we need mathematicians and scientists and crafters and artists and nurturers and organizers and bloggers and readers. We all work together to build and maintain an organization that we hope will help educate the children and bring glory to God.

Study and evangelism and the arts and worship and families and churches and libraries and other institutions with actual buildings—I think we should be building all of these things to the glory of God. I would like to see these things built together as a Living Cathedral that forms a vibrant Christian community. I don’t know how you organize such a vision and bring it to fruition without the huge institutional support from the Catholic Church that was in place already during the Middle Ages. I guess what I’m seeing are many scattered communities-in-the-making and ministries and churches with a bit of vision for this or that piece of the Living Cathedral I’m envisioning, but nothing to bring it all together in any one place and make something that would glorify God and draw men to Him for generations to come.
Maybe you start small and trust the Holy Spirit to bring things together into a unified whole in His own time.

To Grow or Not To Grow (Up, That Is)

Mar7

I found a link to this interesting (2002) NRO article, Let’s Have More Teen Pregnancy, by Frederica Mathewes-Green at Boar’s Head Tavern, where they’re discussing singleness and marriage and saying that the evangelical church is way too hipped on marriage.
From Mathewes-Green’s article:

Until a century or so ago, it was presumed that children were in training to be adults. From early years children helped keep the house or tend the family business or farm, assuming more responsibility each day. By late teens, children were ready to graduate to full adulthood, a status they received as an honor. How early this transition might begin is indicated by the number of traditional religious and social coming-of-age ceremonies that are administered at ages as young as 12 or 13.

But we no longer think of children as adults-in-progress. Childhood is no longer a training ground but a playground, and because we love our children and feel nostalgia for our own childhoods, we want them to be able to linger there as long as possible. We cultivate the idea of idyllic, carefree childhood, and as the years for education have stretched so have the bounds of that playground, so that we expect even “kids” in their mid-to-late twenties to avoid settling down.

I was discussing this problem with a friend just last Friday. We know a whole group of young men, homeschooled, from Christian homes, professing Christian themselves, who have dropped out of college, are working at minimum wage-type jobs, and playing around with dating, planning to get married “someday.” They don’t seem to be preparing themselves financially for marriage; they don’t have any discernable long term goals. They aren’t preparing for or taking leadership positions in the church either. If this behaviour isn’t a refusal to grow up, I don’t know what to call it.
Then, there are the dozen or more young Christian women that I can name off the top of my head who have graduated from high school, finished college, learned to manage a household in addition to preparing educationally for a career, and who still aren’t married at age 20+ or 30+. I don’t think that for most of these young ladies their standards are too high; there just aren’t as many committed Christian men as there are women. So, any suggestions? What is the key to encouraging the Christian young men that are in our families and churches to grow up and commit themselves–to marriage, to career, to education, whatever the Lord is calling them to do?

By the way, all the discussion at BHT started with this address by Dr. Albert Mohler, Part 1 and Part 2
Then, iMonk wrote this essay asking, Have We Said Too Much (about marriage, that is)?
From there, you can go on to read all sorts of responses, both pro and con.
Put me in the same camp with Dr. Mohler. I see too much anecdotal evidence that young men, especially, are delaying adulthood in many areas, not just delaying marriage. I am praying that the Holy Spirit will bring revival, not so that everybody will get married, but rather so that that the church will have the strong male leadership that it needs to follow Christ in this century.

Can Anything Good Come Out of San Angelo?

Jan28

I found this meme on Amanda’s blog The Living Room. She asks us, for her Thursday Thirteen (yes, I’m a day late and a dollar short, as usual) to “name thirteen places in our hometown that you would take the rest of us to if we visited, and why.” I live in Houston, but my hometown, where I grew up, is in West Texas. San Angelo, Texas, The Wool Capital of the World. Many people think that there is nothing in San Angelo worth visiting or seeing. I’m about to prove them wrong.
1. Central High School. This is the high school I graduated from. It is also one of the first high schools in Texas to be built in a campus style, multiple buildings spread out over an acre or so of land, back in the 1950’s. It even has trees.
2. Fort Concho.

“Established in 1867, along the banks of the Concho River, Fort Concho was built to protect frontier settlements, patrol and map the vast West Texas region, and quell hostile threats in the area.
In June 1889, the last soldiers marched away from Fort Concho and the fort was deactivated. After 22 years Fort Concho’s role in settling the Texas frontier was over.
Today, Fort Concho National Historic Landmark encompasses most of the former Army post and includes twenty-three original and restored structures. Fort Concho is a historic preservation project and museum which is owned and operated by the City of San Angelo, Texas.”

3. Zentner’s Daughter Steak House or Zentner’s or DunBar Cafe or . . . Why is it that there are so many restaurants in San Angelo where you can buy an excellent chicken fried steak with cream gravy and so few elsewhere? Those frozen things that are mostly crust with some kind of ground up meat inside are NOT real chicken fried steak.
4. Cactus Hotel. This 14 story hotel was Conrad Hilton’s fourth Texas hotel built in 1929, and it was disentegrating as I was growing up. However, it’s been restored and is used as a cultural center and has a children’s art museum on the first floor.
5. Concho Riverwalk. We go here to prove that San Angelo does have water and beauty.
6. Santa Fe Crossing. A railroad museum, shops, and a senior citizens center.
7. Sunken Garden. In West Texas, you have to cultivate flowers and water them—frequently. Another beauty spot.
8. M.L. Leddy Boot and Saddlery. I don’t know what the in-crowd carried at your junior high school, but when I was in junior high everybody who was anybody had a leather notebook with their name hand tooled on the front. And the notebooks came from Leddy’s. I want to see if they still have them. You might enjoy the handmade boots and saddles.
9. Lake Nasworthy. Again, we are showing you that water is available in West Texas. Plus, there’s a park where we used to drive really fast over this dirt road, and if you did it just right your car would fly over the low places in the road. No, we were not any more hard up for entertainment than teenagers in any other place!
10. Tom Green County Library. I used to work there, and I like libraries.
11. Hudman Drug Store. It had a real old-fashioned soda fountain, like you see in the movies.
12. San Angelo Fat Stock Show and Rodeo. The San Angelo version is not all glitzy with big name singing stars like the Houston one. But if you want to see a rodeo and a lot of animals, San Angelo is the place to go around the beginning of March.
13. Harris Avenue Baptist Church. The last time I visited, my home church was still a Southern Baptist church with hymnals and sermons and a choir and a piano and an organ. Even if you don’t care for that sort of worship, everyone should participate in at least one 1960’s style Southern Baptist worship service soon because they’re an endangered species. Oh, and as far as I can tell, Harris Avenue Baptist Church doesn’t have a website. No surprise there.

Holy Days and Holidays

Jan9

We are not Catholic. We are Southern Baptists who recently joined an Evangelical Free Church. I was raised in a church that did not celebrate any holidays except for Christmas and Easter. However, a long time ago I read two books by Martha Zimmerman, Celebrate the Feasts and Celebrating the Christian Year. These books changed my whole perspective on holidays and celebrations. Jewish holy days were meant to be teaching times, reminders of what God did for the nation Israel and of his continuing mercy, and the Christian liturgical year and the holy days celebrated in connection with that calendar were instituted for the same purpose. I love celebrating and remembering amd learning, and I don’t mind borrowing from the Jewish calendar or from the Catholic or mainline Protestant liturgical calendar to do so. I believe God can use these special days to remind me of his everlasting goodness. So this year I added both Jewish holy days and Christian liturgical feasts and holy days to my iCal calendar And I’ll be sharing some of those with my blog readers–in addition to authors’ birthdays which I see as more occasions for celebration and remembrance. We can celebrate The Great Story, as C.S. Lewis called it, and the many stories that are pale reflections, but nevertheless reflections, of the creative power of the Living God. And it behooves us to learn to celebrate and remember for that is what we are called to do for all eternity as Christians at the Great Banquet of our Lord.

My Favorite Luddite

Dec18

Eldest Daughter is fast becoming a (nonviolent) Luddite. She says I make fun of her, but I actually think she has some good ideas. However, she might want to keep in mind who the original Luddites were:

The original Luddites claimed to be led by one Ned Ludd, also known as “King Ludd” or “General Ludd”, who is believed to have destroyed two large stocking-frames that produced inexpensive stockings undercutting those produced by skilled knitters of the time. The movement spread rapidly throughout England in 1811 with many wool and cotton mills being destroyed, until the British government harshly suppressed them. The Luddites met at night on the moors surrounding the industrial towns, often practising drilling and manoeuvres. The main areas of the disturbances were Nottinghamshire in November 1811, followed by West Riding of Yorkshire in early 1812 and Lancashire in March 1812. Pitched battles between Luddites and the military occurred at Burtons’ Mill in Middleton, and at Westhoughton Mill, both in Lancashire. It was rumoured at the time that spies employed by the magistrates were involved in stirring up the attacks. Magistrates and food merchants were also objects of death threats and attacks by the anonymous General Ludd and his supporters. “Machine breaking” was made a capital crime, and seventeen men were executed in 1813. Many others were transported to Australia. From The Free Dictionary

Tolkien, Caedfael, and Lewis make much better role models. And Middle Earth is a place worth being homesick for.

Homespun Symposium V

Dec16

*What do you believe is necessary for true racial reconciliation to take place in American society?
*Does your solution involve coercive governmental remedies?
*Do you believe that Churches have an important role to play in this process?

This is the Homespun Bloggers’ question posed by Marc at Hubs and Spokes this week.

My answer is fairly simple. I don’t think we’ll ever have “true racial reconciliation” until we lose the useless concept of “race” altogether. The word is essentially meaningless. I looked it up in the dictionary and got this definition:

1. A local geographic or global human population distinguished as a more or less distinct group by genetically transmitted physical characteristics. 2. A group of people united or classified together on the basis of common history, nationality, or geographic distribution: the German race. 3. A genealogical line; a lineage. 4. Humans considered as a group.

A more or less distinct group? A group of people classified together? Humans considered as a group? Well, that’s as clear as mud. My race is Baptist, I guess. Or if we’re talking about physical characteristics, then I’m a member of the short race.
The government and churches can both help in this process by refusing to classify people by physical characteristics, except for the obvious male/female classification. That’s the only meaningful or useful physical distinction that I can see between different kinds of people. When asked for my ‘race” on forms, I write “human.” And I teach my children to treat all people as humans.

This is not just a semantic discussion. As long as we continue to classify people by skin color, even with the best of intentions, we say that there is some essential meaning to “being Asian” or “African” or “Hispanic” other than country of origin or ancestral origin. And we tacitly continue to perpetuate the myth that dark-skinned people are somehow different from light skinned people. Middle Earth (a fictional place) had races: dwarves, humans, elves, and hobbits, among others. These groups were different kinds of beings with essential diffenences that went way beyond skin color. In our world, there are only humans. The sooner we all learn that fact the better. After that, we can begin to discuss cultural differences between people of different backgrounds and how those can be bridged, understood, or tolerated.

Natalists?

Dec7

David Brooks calls us “natalists,” people who are having three, four and even more children.

All across the industrialized world, birthrates are falling – in Western Europe, in Canada and in many regions of the United States. People are marrying later and having fewer kids. But spread around this country, and concentrated in certain areas, the natalists defy these trends.

They are having three, four or more kids. Their personal identity is defined by parenthood. They are more spiritually, emotionally and physically invested in their homes than in any other sphere of life, having concluded that parenthood is the most enriching and elevating thing they can do. Very often they have sacrificed pleasures like sophisticated movies, restaurant dining and foreign travel, let alone competitive careers and disposable income, for the sake of their parental calling

And he says, “People who have enough kids for a basketball team are too busy to fight a culture war.” Not quite. I believe I am fighting a culture war every day as I raise my children. I am doing my dead level best to teach them to be “spiritually, emotionally and physically invested in their homes” and to “sacrifice pleasures” for the greater good of the kingdom of God. I pray for them, nurture them, teach them, and love them every single day, and this is how I “fight a culture war.” Culture is made up of people, and a Godly, Christlike culture is made up of people who are committed to living out the life of Christ in all areas of culture. Together we “natalists” can change the culture–peacefully, non-violently–but it’s a struggle nevertheless.

RSECVV: Exhibit 2

Nov15

From an opinion piece by Aly Colon of The Poynter Institute:

The “moral values” voter has become a popular way of identifying a segment of the population that played a key role in the re-election of President Bush. But who are these people? What “moral values” do they hold? How do their values play out in their lives? The term usually gets pinned on people who oppose same-sex marriage, abortion, and stem cell research. Reporters use such terms as evangelical, religious, Christian, and conservative to describe them. And often, journalists use these terms interchangeably. But what do they know about the topic? And what do they need to know?

Mike and Cindy live down the street. They have two daughters, and they also homeschool. (Hey, I know a lot of homeschoolers.) Mike is a quiet guy who likes to cook and work in his yard in his spare time. Cindy likes to shop and play and drink tea with friends when she’s not homeschooling. Mike and Cindy both are “values voters,” but one or both of them may have slipped a couple of Libertarian votes in with the Republican votes because they’re concerned about the war in Iraq. They’re pro-life, pro-marriage, and generally supportive of GWB. However, they’re not sure we need to be in Iraq at all, and they want us out as soon as possible. They felt “safe” voting Libertarian to send a message since this is Bush country, Texas. Mike and Cindy are active in their Southern Baptist church; Cindy teaches first graders in Sunday School. They don’t own any guns, but they believe you have a right to do so if you want. Cindy likes to watch Oprah..

Are these scary people?

Rugby

Oct20

Thomas Hughes, author of Tom Brown’s Schooldays, was born on this date in 1822. In addition to writing the definitive fictional treatment of the boys’ public school experience in Victorian England, he also started a Utopian community in the mountains of Tennessee called Rugby, named after Dr. Thomas Arnold’s school for boys that is the subject of Tom Brown’s Schooldays.

It was to be a cooperative, class-free, agricultural community for younger sons of English gentry and others wishing to start life anew in America. At its peak, some 350 people lived in the colony. More than 70 buildings of Victorian design graced the East Tennessee townscape.

I am quite interested in intentional comunities, even those of the nineteenth century which rarely seemed to last as established communities. In fact, we were discussing these types of communities and the religious groups that started them in our American Literature discussion group today as we discussed Emerson, Thoreau, and the Transcendentalists. I would like to do a study of Utopian and planned communities and what causes them to fail or succeed or perhaps become manipulative cults.

Response?

Sep20

Other than praying for her (which I’m doing), how would you respond to a young friend (college student) who said this:

There was a time in my life when I looked upon the world with optimism, when I believed in the intrinsic goodness of man and the infallibility of Christian faith, when I trusted the superior wisdom of my parents and the loyalty of friendship, when I was blissfully ignorant of the pain of emptiness and loneliness . . .

The implication in the rest of the post is that this student has “lost her faith” and is feeling pessimistic and hopeless about herself and her place in the world generally. I don’t believe she is suicidal–just cynical. Without knowing what’s led her to this place, what can I or anyone else say to encourage her and give her hope?