We wish you "A Dave Brubeck Christmas"

I'm not ready to call an end to all hopes for a stunning new Christmas album coming out of left field, but, as is too often the case, 2015 is definitely a washout. Since I've been spending much of the past year exploring Dave Brubeck's catalogue, both with his legendary quartet and as a headliner, I decided to buy a copy of A Dave Brubeck Christmas. Brubeck plays solo piano on mostly traditional Christmas songs, plus a couple originals. Some interesting arrangements highlight his strengths in composition, but overall it's a marvelous showcase for his depth and sensitivity as a player. His rendering of "The Christmas Song" deserves to become that chestnut's jazz instrumental standard.

It's Christmas time. Enjoy the great Christmas tunes as offered up by one of the true greats.

Vindication

Medicine has authoritatively proven that a curmudgeonly attitude is healthy, because happiness won't make you live longer.

Thanks, science!

Voter identification & American identity

My media consumption habits led my meandering thoughts into some surprising confluences yesterday. Whilst working out, I listened to a Center for Global Development podcast in which two researchers pointed out that progress toward the U.N.'s Sustainable Development Goals cannot be measured unless all persons in the developing world have a legal form of identification, beginning with registration at birth. The contrarian I am, I immediately began wondering about the people who might not want to be registered at birth. (Let the record show Pa Curmudgeon was careful to register me as a natural-born U.S. citizen under color of law, and I have the State Department-issued piece of paper to prove it.) 

I remembered Robert Heinlein, the Ayn Rand of science fiction, whose work I read avidly in high school until it dawned on me that his exaltation of the heroic individual was profoundly anti-humanist. But while I was still an adolescent, I read, in any number of forms, Heinlein's argument that the truly free individual will abandon any society which makes legal identification mandatory. Objectivism aside, this always seemed to me a very American concept: the individual should not be hindered by the regulatory government, even when the individual runs the very serious risk of endangering himself.

Then I opened up the December 8 Denver Post to an article on the living situation of Robert Dear, now infamous for shooting up a Planned Parenthood clinic in Colorado Springs a couple weeks ago. Reporter Kirk Mitchell visited the plains of Hartsel, Colorado, a desolate, utilities-free place where newcomers squat in trailers and makeshift fortresses of dubious structural integrity on plots of land bought in order to strike it rich in marijuana cultivation. (No one has yet struck it rich, by the way.) I'm a big fan of the electrical grid and indoor plumbing, so the lifestyle doesn't appeal to me, but there's something very American, and definitely western, about people willing to suffer any adversity in their attempt to live their lives as they choose.

Out here in the Great American Desert, we tend to associate that instinct with conservatism, and conservatism tends to be associated primarily with the Republican party. As I was eating my raisin bran (I'm at an age at which fiber intake becomes a controlling priority), I thought it ironic conservative Republicans are insisting that people must have a government-issued identification card in order to vote. Call me naïve, but it doesn't seem very conservative, or even very American, to ask the government permission to exercise a personal, unalienable right.

A humanist, in the best sense of the term

Amazon made some kind of deal with the late Kurt Vonnegut (Jr.)'s estate, and has been releasing some of his previously uncollected short fiction in Kindle editions. It was uncollected for a good reason: it's mostly rather slight fare, with little of the intellectual heft or daring of his breakout Slaughterhouse Five or the underappreciated Galapagos. Nonetheless, reading it has been a helpful refresher for me.

I discovered Vonnegut during my senior year of high school, and had worked through all his published works by the time I graduated college. Having been confronted by the bleak nihilism of Cat's Cradle and Breakfast of Champions, I wasn't surprised to learn that John Irving, in whose world according to Garp we are all terminal cases, studied under Vonnegut at the Iowa Writer's Workshop. In spite of my youth, however, the nihilism wasn't why I compulsively read Vonnegut.

Instead, it was his humanism, in the best sense of the term. Vonnegut, for all his despair over humanity's fatal flaws, loved human beings and insisted on treating all people as such. That humanism informs even the early writings now being released, the stuff he wrote for popular magazines back when popular magazines published short fiction rather than cooking tips from vapid celebrities. (I can't find the quote, but I remember Vonnegut writing about selling short stories to Cosmopolitan long before it became "a harrowingly explicit sex manual.") Every page drips with compassion for his characters, even when he's making fun of them.

Cynicism is filled with contempt, and Kurt Vonnegut was no cynic. He was a humanist, in the best sense of the term, and that's why I still find his writing refreshing.

The new pilgrims & the rule of law

The Sept. 20 edition (I'm only a month behind in podcast listening!) of Research on Religion was a discussion with Joseph Castleberry on his recent book, The New Pilgrims. The discussion focused primarily on the religious and entrepreneurial vitality of both legal and illegal immigrants to these United States, and to that extent was interesting, but not particularly revelatory.

Things got interesting toward the end of the podcast. Many political and social conservatives oppose illegal immigrants on the simple ground that they have violated the law. Castleberry offers an intriguing counterproposal: the rule of law is a two-sided arrangement wherein the citizen (or individual) ought to obey the laws, and the government is obligated to provide just laws. Castleberry noted the widespread consensus that immigration law in these United States is "broken" and offered a skeptical read on both Democrat and Republican Party failures to reform it. In sum, Castleberry suggests that when a law is unjust, individuals ought not be faulted for breaking it.

It's a provocative observation which echoes the arguments posited in our nation's Declaration of Independence. Political and social conservatives, including Christians, who revere that Declaration would do well to consider it.

Goliath

Tom Gauld isn’t challenging the 1 Samuel 17 account of the events at the Valley of Elah, but he is asking us to consider our assumptions about Goliath of Gath. The truth of the matter is that he’s not even really interested in the historical person Goliath; instead, he’s interested in the reality and prosecution of war.

Neither Goliath nor the rest of the Philistine army seem to have much idea as to why they’re at war with the Israelites; instead, they, like armies throughout history, wait for the fighting to erupt under a vague sense of foreboding. Goliath himself ends up at a post he didn’t choose, under orders devised by an ambitious young captain. Back in the camp, some other soldiers have tied up a bear which they force to fight various other animals for sport and gambling; that literal bear becomes a metaphor when it runs away.

I always read comic books at least twice (mostly because I can’t keep myself from quickly turning pages to read dialogue, without paying sufficient heed to the art). On my second read, I made sure to go through the whole book in a single sitting so as to track Gauld’s development of the atmosphere without interruption. A plot summary cannot convey the melancholy tones conveyed by Tom Gauld’s monochromatic, cartoonish line drawings. Why doesn’t Goliath also run away? Why does any soldier in any war remain at his post, when he is at best a mere cog in a machine and a disposable weapon for a cause which means precious little to him personally? When Goliath must finally enter battle, the war is settled, but his death resolves nothing for him as an individual.

In Goliath, Tom Gauld asks us to join him in reflecting on what it means to ask men to go to war. In our time as much as any, it’s an invitation we all should accept.

The case for reparations

Quite some time ago, I concluded, with Abraham Lincoln in his Second Inaugural Address, that the Lord has already determined, and wrought, the reparations owed for the years of American chattel slavery. Credit is owed to Ta-Nehisi Coates for accomplishing the near-impossible feat of making me reconsider an opinion with his Polk-prize-winning 2014 essay, "The Case for Reparations." He powerfully demonstrates that systematic oppression of African-Americans continued long past the formal end of chattel slavery, effectively countering my assumptions regarding that for which African-Americans might be owed reparation. It's a long read, but Coates' arguments are thoughtful and deserve thoughtful engagement.

What reparations, then? How might they be gathered, administered, and distributed? Is money even the issue? At the end of section IX, Coates writes,

What I’m talking about is more than recompense for past injustices—more than a handout, a payoff, hush money, or a reluctant bribe. What I’m talking about is a national reckoning that would lead to spiritual renewal. Reparations would mean the end of scarfing hot dogs on the Fourth of July while denying the facts of our heritage. Reparations would mean the end of yelling “patriotism” while waving a Confederate flag. Reparations would mean a revolution of the American consciousness, a reconciling of our self-image as the great democratizer with the facts of our history.

Amen.

But how to effect such a spiritual renewal? Nate DiMeo, creator and producer of the elegant and wonderful The Memory Palace, has a suggestion in "Notes on an Imagined Plaque to be Added to the Statue of General Nathan Bedford Forrest, Upon Hearing that the Memphis City Counci has Voted to Move it and the Exhumed Remains of General Forrest and his Wife, Mary Ann Montgomery Forrest, from their Current Location in a Park Downtown, to the Nearby Elmwood Cemetery." DiMeo and Coates agree that in order for our nation to truly change, we must first become historically aware.

But that, in turn, must be a spiritual renewal. Our nation must want to become historically aware, to know its sins in order to make amends for them. Those who want to know their sins are those who want to repent of them because they long to lay them at the foot of the Cross of Christ.

Both Ta-Nehisi Coates and Nate DiMeo speak eloquently of the persistent and evil problem of race relations in these United States. Perhaps unwittingly, the case they make is, ultimately, a case for the preaching of the Gospel.

10. Conflict is an opportunity

I am many things, but naïve is not among them. The course I recommend is fraught with peril, and conflict is certain. But as Ken Sande points out in The Peacemaker, conflict is an opportunity to glorify God.

Conflict will emerge, first, when congregations merge and countless decisions must be made. Who will be on the new session? What will the service times be? What members will be stuck with the longer commute? Which members are used to always getting their way, and might lose that privilege should a new group of elders come in?

These are the petty conflicts, common to every Church, and while they will consume Churches for a year or several, they will surely get settled and be (more or less) forgotten. In the short run, they will suck all the oxygen out of the room, but in the long run won’t matter much.

Conflict will emerge, second, when pastors must learn to cooperate with one another, especially in pulpit ministry. Who will get the main show (I mean the morning service)? Who will be stuck with the less well-attended matinee (I mean the evening service)? Will the two men speak frankly and respectfully about each other’s preaching, with a desire to build up each other and the congregation, or launch a war over the members’ affections?

Pastoral ministry is one long, enormous temptation to self-aggrandizement, and we have innumerable traditions which only facilitate it. (Can anyone tell me why Church vans have the pastor’s name written on the side?) Maybe the oft-invoked proverb about iron sharpening iron might actually see some use. Put two egomaniacs in a room and a fight is inevitable. Put two egomaniacs who have the Holy Spirit into a room, and maybe, just maybe, they will both grow in grace. (The odds of that will double if their elders actually care about their Spiritual growth, by the way.)

I am many things, but naïve is not among them. The current state of the OPC has its strengths and problems, and my recommended path will address those problems only to create new problems. But those new problems are not, by God’s grace and the power of the Spirit, insurmountable.

Conflict is an opportunity to glorify God. It’s time for the OPC to take advantage of it.

9. The future OPC (if the OPC is to have a future)

When a piece of furniture has occupied the same place in the living room for decades, it’s hard to remember you put it up against the opposite wall when you first moved in. Some eighty years on, it’s hard for us to remember that the present shape of the OPC was dictated neither by holy writ nor by careful planning: the way we do Church is contingent on countless choices which were all conditioned by historic circumstance. Yes, we’ve always done it this way. But the careful observer notes our is not the only faithful tradition, and others do things differently.

So imagine another OPC, in which the average urban or suburban congregation numbers well over a hundred members, with a pulpit from which several men preach on a regular basis.  (In rural areas, imagine congregations yoked into a circuit with a shared session and pastoral staff.) Instead of resources spread thin and ministry opportunities missed, imagine resources so concentrated that a surplus builds and ministry opportunities can even be sought out. Imagine not wondering whether your congregation will be around in another ten years, but instead knowing where your children will be baptized and your funeral service held.

It’s not the OPC’s past, nor is it our present. But it wouldn’t be a bad future.

This is why we bake

Monday mornings Grandma rose an hour early to make rye,

onion & challah, but it was pumpernickel she broke her hands for,
pumpernickel that demanded cornmeal, ripe caraway, mashed potatoes
& several Old Testament stories about patience & fortitude & for
which she cursed in five languages if it didn’t pop out fat
as an apple-cheeked peasant bride. But bread, after all,
is only bread & who has time to fuss all day & end up
with a dead heart if it flops? Why bother? I’ll tell you why.
For the moment when the steam curls off the black crust like a strip
of pure sunlight & the hard oily flesh breaks open like a poem
pulling out of its own stubborn complexity a single glistening truth
& who can help but wonder at the mystery of the human heart when you
hold a slice up to the light in all its absurd splendor & I tell you
we must risk everything for the raw recipe of our passion.


 -"Pumpernickel," by Philip Schultz

Farewell, Wiretap

Wiretap may have been the first, albeit unofficial, spinoff from This American Life, when frequent contributor Jonathan Goldstein returned north and began a CBC radio show comprised (mostly) of recorded telephone calls. Regular listeners soon learned that the more absurd a call seemed, the more likely it was to be a completely true story.

When the latest episode didn't turn up in my podcast feed this week, I went to its home page and learned Wiretap's run has concluded. Even if you're not a fan of Canadian whimsy and profundity, go there to be moved by a video presentation you'll find of one of the show's most memorable pieces.

And now I have to find another CBC podcast to meet my minimum weekly required dosage of Canadia.

A debate over abortion & adoption

I just stumbled on a fascinating debate over abortion and adoption at the First Things website. In "Adoption, Abortion, and a Message of Hope," J.D. Flynn argues that pro-lifers overemphasize adoption as an alternative to women considering an abortion. These two paragraphs toward the close struck me:

Unfortunately, our views on adoption can be colored by our consumerist culture. Out of real generosity, families are often willing to expend huge sums of money to adopt a child. But in justice, we ought to ask what the same amount of money might do to preserve a child’s natural family, and whether we’re willing to provide it.

Of course, adoption sometimes really is the best choice. When parents decide that, we should support it. But we should begin our charitable support by working to preserve the natural family through the solidarity, and charity, that combats the fractioning and isolation of the culture of death.

Well said, although I feel compelled to point out that those huge sums of money (also often spent on infertility treatments) can be saved by those willing to consider the non-white children in the American foster systems who desperately need a real home. My compulsion is echoed by the less eloquent, but no less forceful, "We Need to Talk About Adoption" by Elizabeth Kirk. Her point is simple: given that over a million babies are aborted in this country each year, and that less than 20,000 newborns are placed for adoption, we need to talk much, much more about adoption.

8. A modest proposal

I love the Orthodox Presbyterian Church. Although not a native, I have found an ecclesiastical home here. Love and loyalty, however, should be neither blind nor naïve. For the reasons I have outlined above (and I can think of more), the OPC model of a small Church ministered to by a solo pastor is not indefinitely sustainable.

I have a very modest proposal to enable the OPC to endure and maintain her witness to Christ for many more years: wherever feasible, merge congregations until the average OP Church has the size and financial resources to weather economic storms and pay two or three pastoral salaries. In many urban areas, this could be done (almost) overnight: join a congregation with a building to one without; continue to pay both pastors; bank the money saved on rent for a rainy day, or even to fund a new Church plant.

As an urban pastor, I am not well-positioned to offer recommendations to rural congregations. However, it occurs to me that one strategy would be to invert the recommended urban program. Rather than consolidating worship facilities and multiplying pastoral staff, consider holding on to the buildings and consolidating pastoral staff. Rather than three or four Churches with three or four pastors, create a circuit of four or five congregations which could be shared by two or more pastors. In Regional Churches with both rural and urban constituencies, urban Churches might be able to assist rural ones with the extra funds they will now have lying around.

The challenges are great, but we already have the resources to meet them. All we have to do is decide to do so. In that sense, it really is a modest proposal.

(And God bless Jonathan Swift.)

What we talk about when we talk about The Terminator

I've been trying to figure out why I care so much about The Terminator and its first sequel, and have been mildly disappointed with all its subsequent iterations. Age has a great deal to do with it, I'm sure: the two films bridge my high school and college years, and like music, films often make the greatest impact in one's youth. Still, in my typical self-congratulatory manner, I like to think there's a bit more to it than that.

(I suppose I should insert a spoiler alert here, as I will be discussing points in a metanarrative kind of way. But why would you still be reading if you didn't already know these movies intimately?)

All the Terminator movies take place in a timeline in which, at some future date (called "Judgment Day"), a computer program takes over the world and very nearly wipes out humanity. Of the five films, in the last three the protagonists are attempting to either prevent Judgment Day or reverse its consequences. That's a plot point in Terminator 2: Judgment Day, but as in its predecessor, is not the main conflict.

The Terminator (1984) is remarkably simple: a cyborg from the future tries to kill a young woman, who is protected by a human soldier sent back from the same future. It's one long chase sequence, one narrow escape after another, ending only when, against wildly improbably odds, said cyborg is destroyed with great difficulty, mayhem, and collateral death.

For those of us of a certain age, Terminator 2: Judgment Day (1991) was a revelation because it told THE EXACT SAME STORY, except that this time the protector is another cyborg who looks exactly like the terrifying cyborg from the first film. It was thus able to tap into all the emotional resonance of the first installment while simultaneously disorienting the audience and upending all expectations.

That disorientation was important because the first two Terminators retold one of our most primordial and universal nightmares: you are being chased by something terrifying, and wake up screaming just as it catches you. Those movies are about running away, and their conclusions provide such satisfying relief because, after all those sweaty nights, we finally, even if only vicariously through the magnificent Linda Hamilton, escape.

The next three installments are about achieving a goal, but achievement can never be as certain or absolute as escape. Moreover, the protagonists must decide to move toward their objectives, whereas one never has to decide to escape danger: it's a simple, thoughtless, and absolutely necessary instinct.

The first two Terminator films succeed so marvelously because they retell a universally shared nightmare and promise an escape from it. Until the franchise can figure out how to tell us that story again, all its installments will leave us a little bit disappointed.

7. We are not financially prepared for the coming persecution

I’m not the first to note that the recent Supreme Court ruling in Obergefell vs. Hodges may presage hard times ahead for Churches. Harsh persecution in these United States, such as imprisonment or martyrdom, is wildly unlikely. However, it seems reasonable to expect extant civil rights laws and court precedents to be applied to the prosecution of the “right” to recognition of same-sex marriages. For example, other jurisdictions may follow the New York City decision to refuse to rent public school space to Churches. Similarly, the tax-exempt status of organizations which oppose this new “civil right” may also be threatened at the federal or state level. Such actions would create heavier financial obligations for religious organizations and Churches, as might lawsuits. (Legal bills can run up very quickly.) I should also point out that currently pastor’s salaries are discounted because what they get paid for housing expenses is tax-free: should that exemption disappear, salaries would have to increase to compensate for the additional tax burden.

We may be prepared to surrender our bodies to the flames, but are we prepared with enough money to pay higher rents, tax bills, and pastor’s salaries?

A colleague from my presbytery recently remarked to me that the way we have been “doing Church” in our ecclesiastical circles for the last several decades may soon turn out to be a luxury we can no longer afford.

6. The solo pastorate is a young man's game

Presbyterians believe in a highly educated clergy, but not because we believe in higher education; at least, not as an end unto itself. (I personally do, but that’s a subject for another day.) The basic work of a teaching elder is to study, interpret, and teach the Bible, which can be done competently only by one well-trained in the humanities: we believe in a highly educated clergy because we value preaching. Writing a sermon is not unlike writing a term paper: it requires hours of research and preparation before one can begin writing, not to mention the time spent on actual writing. Learning Greek and Hebrew is a necessary prerequisite to preaching; one has to slog through a text’s grammar and vocabulary before one can interpret it.

It’s not the hardest job around, but it is a lot of work: imagine writing two term papers a week. As with any labor, it gets more difficult with age. I have never had much time left over at the end of the week after producing my two sermons, but it became extraordinarily difficult to keep up after I turned 40. I have wondered whether this is my own problem (I have had a series of health problems which caused some cognitive impairment), but I’ve learned it’s fairly common, at least amongst my middle-aged colleagues. 

In fact, frank conversations over the past few years have revealed a dirty little secret: very few  not-so-young-anymore pastors write two sermons a week, at least according to the sermon-writing standards to which I was trained. Instead of translating the sermon text, they will “look at” their Greek or Hebrew Bible. Instead of doing their own study of the text first, they read a few commentaries to learn the basic theme. The morning sermon may reflect the preacher’s best work, but often the evening is more of a make-do “study.” (I’ve come to realize that “study” is a euphemism for “kind of shallow.”) 

(Full disclosure: for the last several years, on the typical Sunday at least one of my sermons has been “recycled” from previous efforts. This allows me to maintain quality and a manageable workload.)

Frankly, it shows. We can all tell when a sermon just skates the surface of a text, and usually it’s because the preacher has failed to truly grasp that text for himself. If you’ve been wondering, go ahead and ask your middle-aged (or older) pastor whether he built that sermon from the ground up all by himself.

That’s not to say that the middle-aged man can’t preach. Far from it: while I think my early work was solid, I am sure my current pulpit ministry is much better. It’s not simply that I’ve learned to use my tools better; with age and time, I’ve also learned how to get myself out of the way so the Spirit can minister. I find the work much more difficult, but the outcome more worth hearing. But does the one good sermon excuse its slipshod companion in the other service?

That choice, if you think about it, is the consequence of an earlier choice to have only one pastor in the congregation. Where there are two or more, the preaching load can be shared and high-quality sermons delivered at both the services on any given Sunday. If Presbyterians value preaching, it’s not enough to make sure the pastor has received a quality education. He has to have the time, and the collegial support, to write a good sermon.

When I look back at the volume of work I produced during my first decade in the pastorate, I am mightily impressed with young me. But I’m not so young anymore, nor are many of the gray-haired pastors who congregations find so reassuring when up in their pulpits. The OPC needs to figure out how to free up her older ministers to produce quality work, or just admit that the solo pastorate is a young man’s game.

5. The solo pastorate is spiritually unhealthy

If your pastor hasn’t told you that you need to faithfully attend worship services so you can be blessed by receiving the ordinary means of grace (Word, sacrament, prayer: Shorter Catechism #88), then you don’t go to a confessionally reformed Church. Participating in corporate worship, and especially sitting under faithful preaching, are necessary to grow in grace.

So when does the average OPC pastor sit under faithful preaching? Especially when he has to preach twice a Sunday, is he ever able to listen to a sermon which is not an audio file? Is he ever able to listen to a sermon without a critical ear which seeks out weaknesses or tips for improving his own preaching?

Perhaps I’m obtuse, but I can’t think of a passage of Scripture which tells us only pastors don’t need to regularly participate in (as opposed to lead) worship services. (In fact, Jesus draws a sharp distinction between what worship leaders and worshipers do, identifying the former as “work” in Matthew 12:5.) If Church members suffer when they don’t attend on the ordinary means of grace, then pastors suffer as well. I can’t say what difference this makes in the life of any given pastor, but I’m sure it does. Your pastor may be wonderful; imagine how much more spiritually mature he would be if he didn’t have to work both services on the Christian Sabbath. Imagine, in turn, how much more spiritually mature your entire congregation might then be.

There’s actually a very simple way to help pastors attain greater spiritual health: every congregation could hire two or three ministers so that the preaching burden can be shared between them and each can hear at least one sermon every Sunday. (Also imagine how much more careful a minister would have to be when preaching or during session meetings if another man with the same level of training were in the room.) The objection to this simple proposal is equally simple: small congregations, such as are common in the OPC, can barely afford one pastor, let alone a pastoral staff.

This suggests that the standard OPC congregational model, despite our best intentions, may foster poor spiritual health.

The screen and the book

In his essay "The Screen and the Book" (First Things, May 2015), Marc Barnes argues for the metaphysical superiority of the printed-and-bound-book to the e-book.

This is the phenomenology of the screen: It could be otherwise.

This is the primary reason we feel the book to be solid in comparison to the screen. The screen is saturated with possibilities. The screen is fluid.

I read it on my Kindle.

4. Pastors cost money

My dad had the good sense to be born in the mid-1930s, which meant that when he became an adult, a good government job and sensible investments in stocks and bonds would, in due time, produce a comfortable degree of wealth. That, in turn, allowed him to pay for my college education at respectable state university. I taught in the public schools in Houston, Texas, for a few years after college, and then worked my way through seminary, but still had to take out student loans to cover my tuition at Westminster Theological Seminary in California. From what I can tell (by which I mean, all my evidence is anecdotal), many of my younger colleagues have much heavier student debt than I do, having financed both their undergraduate and graduate years with borrowed funds. That’s a change from years past, when many pastors in our circles were able to get their education on the cheap (through very low state college tuition fees, generous donors to seminaries, lower costs of living, deferring marriage, and so forth).

Today, however, pastors of all ages live in an economy in which housing costs are skyrocketing (especially in urban areas) and health care costs keep going up (especially for the self-insured, which is what all pastors in small denominations are). Thus, even before an equitable salary is considered, the modern pastor’s compensation must keep increasing to merely keep pace with the cost of living and servicing debt on the education he must obtain in order to be qualified to serve in the pastorate.

This means that congregations can no longer count on pastors being cheap. This means that if a congregation wants a pastor, it will have to come up with serious money. This means that  small congregations will have to either get some wealthy, tithing members, or grow in size until they can afford the modern pastor’s salary.

A little, itsy-bitsy, teeny-weeny bit of leaven

Today we call it "sourdough," but for most of mankind's history it was just called "bread." Instead of commercial yeast, sourdough bread uses leaven, which is wild yeast captured from the air and cultivated in a flour and water matrix, called a "starter" (because you use some to start your bread loaf rising). That capturing process can be challenging for those of us surrounded by the thin air one finds at altitude. I began my own starter about ten years ago, following the recipe I found in (I think it was the 7th edition of) The Joy of Cooking. It took another five or so years to grow to the strength that I didn't need to add a yeast booster to get my bread to rise.

Over the years, I've given it to several people who've been able to use it with much success. (Because it's a living, growing thing, starter is the gift that keeps on giving.) One's starter can be a point of pride for the home baker, and it certainly is for me: it represents years of effort and cultivation, and proves a certain level of attainment. So you can imagine my distress (I actually cried out in anguish) when I discovered that Thing 2 had found my starter sitting on the kitchen counter and decided it had to be cleaned along with the supper dishes. The tupperware container in which I kept my starter was in the top rack of the dishwasher, thoroughly rinsed, and my starter had all been flushed down the kitchen drain.

Once I could start thinking again, I looked more closely at the lid. There was a wee little bit of old, gelatinous starter stuck in its rim. Given that I was looking at years before I would be able to cultivate and age a new batch of starter, I decided to take a chance. I was able to scrape out about 1/16th of a teaspoon, which I then mixed with just a teensy bit of flour and water. Frankly, it didn't mix in too well (I could still clearly make out the little lump in the rest of the matrix), so my hopes were low. But the next morning there were a few bubbles in the dough, so I fed it slightly more flour and water. By that evening, I not only had a resurrected starter, it returned from the grave with a richer, even more offensive sour smell so dear to the gluten junkie. 

Ah, the sweet swell of paternal pride.

3. Small Churches are a luxury good

Although I serve an urban congregation in Denver, about half the congregations in our Regional Church of the Dakotas could reasonably be described as “rural,” located in North and South Dakota towns which range from small to very small. Consequently, these congregations tend to be small as well: none is over a hundred in membership, and there are no realistic prospects for  significant growth in towns which have been steadily depopulating over the last few decades. Nearly every time a pastor moves on, the congregation must soberly assess its future. Can they really afford a pastoral salary? Is it time to think of something drastic, such as sharing a pastor or even merging with another Church?

Thankfully, there is a steady supply of older pastors, near or past retirement age, who are glad to serve where they are needed and don’t have the financial needs of men with young families and mouths to feed. These days, there seems an even greater supply of fresh seminary graduates with few or no children who are equally willing to take a call which will get them established in their pastoral careers: they know they may not be able to stick around

for more than a few years, but at least the pulpits stay filled.

That’s not an ideal situation, but it’s the unfortunate demographic reality of rural Church life. What, then, accounts for the presence of a similar model in urban areas such as Denver? Just to point out the obvious, the difference between a small town and a city is people. Lots and lots of people. Hundreds of thousands of people. With all those people, what accounts for multiple OPC and PCA congregations, some a little under a hundred and some a little over a hundred, in the same metropolitan area, especially when their members drive past other congregations of like faith and practice on the way to services? 

Here’s what accounts for it: a few years ago I was talking to a South Dakota pastor, originally from the Denver area, during our two presbyteries’ joint youth Bible camp. He had been solicited to begin a new Church plant in south Denver, just equidistant between a PCA Church and a URC which both happened to be pastored by friends of mine. Yes, they were friends of mine, which necessarily calls their good taste into question, but they also were ministers in good standing of Churches of like faith and practice not more than a 10-minute drive from the geographical area in question. Why had a “core group” begun talking with this pastor when they could easily join a small (around or under 100 members) Church in their area?

I can claim neither prophetic nor telepathic insight, but I’ll tell you why: they wanted a Church which was to their particular preference. Neither that PCA nor that URC was quite what they wanted, but they had learned from experience that there are plenty of pastors who need a job. All they had to do was demonstrate an ability to provide a nominal salary for a year or two, and they could get a pastor who would provide the kind of preaching and/or pastoral care they liked.

In my more cynical moments, I describe the OPC (and sister denominations) not as “small,” but as a “boutique” Church. Cities have plenty of stores which are small in size because they have to fit into cramped quarters. Cities also have plenty of boutiques which are small not out of  necessity, but by design: they provide luxury goods which are of interest and affordable to only a few, and especially the few who are willing to pay the price.

Many (although by no means all) confessionally reformed Churches have well-educated and relatively affluent members; if these members are willing to tithe or even give beyond their tithes, then a relatively small number of members can pay the relatively small salary asked for by a man who wants nothing more than to preach the Gospel. This concentration of wealth gives them the buying power to acquire a preacher who is not merely faithful to God’s Word, but who also provides the style of preaching which they’d like to hear on a regular basis.

Demographic reality dictates that rural areas will have small Churches. In an urban area, small Churches are a luxury good.

All Ecclesiology Is Local

I just noticed that my 2002 essay, "All Ecclesiology Is Local," appears at the top of the "Archives" list at the June/July 2015 issue of Ordained Servant; it was published in no small part due to the gracious and paternal interest G.I. Williamson took in my younger self. Also because, as is to be expected, it was insightful and stylistically impeccable.

And for those who may be wondering, yes, the title is a tribute to the late House of Representatives Speaker Tip O'Neill, who frequently said "all politics is local." I'm not sure I agree with him on any policy positions, but he was a great politician whose era I still miss.

How do we begin the immigration conversation?

I agree with his perspective, but I'll be the first to admit that this lecture from M. Daniel Carroll of Denver Seminary, delivered at Beeson Divinity School, begins on a somewhat pedantic note. Unless it's a sermon, I consider listening to someone tell me something I already know and agree with a waste of time, and I almost gave up during the first five minutes. But then Carroll gives a reading of the Old Testament as a collection of immigrant narratives, and concludes by making the point that if the Scriptures invite us to identify with and find ourselves in its narratives, then they call us, as Christians, to identify with and find ourselves in immigrant narratives.

Read as the primary humanist text, the Bible enables and equips us to find the human even, and perhaps especially, in those we identify as alien.

The Great Interpreter

In a powerful argument for Abraham Lincoln as a strict constructionist whose interpretation of the Constitution has become the standard one in these United States, Michael Stokes Paulsen and Luke Paulsen advance another provocative thesis: Lincoln's de facto repudiation of the Dred Scott decision, through executive action, demonstrates that other branches of the federal government, equally bound to defend the Constitution, cannot be held to illegitimate interpretations offered by the Supreme Court.

Provocative and, in light of recent history, well worth pondering.

Maybe I can go back down South now

I am a Union man. The Kingsburys (at least our branch of the Kingsburys) were for the Union, and I am no different. Nonetheless, depending on how you reckon your geography, I have spent about half my life in the deep South (Houston occupying that liminal space which is both entirely the South and entirely the West), and have the very firm opinions about grits to prove it.

I love the South, and I love the Presbyterian Church in America, in which I was ordained a deacon and had the privilege to be licensed to preach the Gospel. But I am a Union man, and I am not naive about the South or the PCA. Racism, albeit of the soft sort, still exists in the deep South and in the PCA (especially amongst her revered old men), and I have a black daughter. It's hard enough to be black in the American West. It occurred to me a while back that I couldn't in good conscience make it any harder by placing her in a white Church, in the deep South, that merely winked at the racism held to and practiced by her revered fathers. I decided that, come what may, I wouldn't be taking my family back to Virginia, much less any place any further south of the Mason-Dixon line.

Then I read this post on a protest at the 43rd General Assembly of the PCA. God bless Ligon Duncan and Sean Lucas. Finally, Southern Presbyterianism is waking up to the original sin at the heart of the American experiment in representative democracy.

Let's be clear: no one has asked me to go back down south, and I don't expect any ever to do so (other than a brief visit to Virginia in the autumn of this year). But maybe now there is a place for a Union man and his black daughter.

And maybe I can find someone with whom to have a reasonable conversation about grits.

Fall Singles Retreat

I am to speak on "The Cruciform Life" at the OPC Singles Retreat, October 2-4, 2015, at the Machen Retreat and Conference Center, located at the northern end of Virginia's lovely Shenandoah Valley and scheduled during the peak of its spectacular fall colors. The fee is quite reasonable ($60), given the speaker's insight and erudition, and any excuse to visit the Shenandoah Valley and its surrounding mountains is a good excuse.

With apologies to the married folk amongst my vast international readership.

2: Death does not sanctify our works

In the hallway outside my study door hang the original architectural drawings for our Church building, discovered a few years ago by a particularly determined member who decided to go spelunking in a storage closet which turned out to be far larger than anyone currently in our congregation knew. The drawings show a sanctuary with a seating capacity of around 160, in contrast to our actual sanctuary, which can seat maybe half that number. I don't know the reasons behind our smaller building, but I can guess limited finances were the major constraint. Today, our congregation's building and land are owned free and clear, but we have neither the room to grow our membership nor (and largely because of our relatively small membership) the money to expand our building.

In the Orthodox Presbyterian Church, this situation is hardly unusual. In the aftermath of the Great Depresssion and the Second World War, the founding generation of our denomination was rich in spiritual commitment and vigor, but not so much in cash on hand. Heroically, they did the best they could, and their best established an OPC culture of relatively small congregations (on average, under 100 in membership, including children) and buildings. Those who have lived in the OPC for any amount of time know the advantages and blessings of this culture, but we all should recognize that this aspect of our Church culture derives from historical accident, not Biblical principle.

Death does not sanctify our works, nor does it those of our spiritual fathers and mothers in the OPC. If small congregations and buildings hinder the Church's work in our day, we should be prepared to leave them behind.

1: The fathers were heroes

The first generation of the Orthodox Presbyterian Church was genuinely heroic. When they left the old Presbyterian Church in the USA, they embraced a radical change (something always difficult for presbyterians) in order to hold on to the Gospel. Moreover, they embraced radical sacrifice, sacrifice too radical for many sympathetic brethren to endure. Congregations lost buildings and endowments: inheritances left to them by faithful forebears which they had to leave in the hands of faithless and vindictive liberal presbyteries. Pastors lost homes, salaries, pensions, and what little financial security they had. Seminarians lost secure careers. Almost no one in 1936 who joined what would become the OPC suffered no loss.

Left with nothing, they built from the ground up. In a country still wracked by the Great Depression, they sacrificed still more to erect Church buildings and manses. Pastors worked a secular job (or two or three) in order to shepherd small congregations. Those congregations gave and gave in order to fund Christian education curricula and foreign missionaries and new Church plants close to home. The first generation of the OPC built the OPC: without their heroic sacrifices, we would have no Church today.

The fathers were heroes.

A text without a context

For Pentecost this last Lord's Day, I preached from John 15 and 16, in the course of which it occurred to me that many Christians might like to hear their long-winded pastors echo Jesus' words in John 16:12: "I still have many things to say to you, but you cannot bear them now."

As "a former Lutheran pastor transitioning to the Roman Catholic Church," Russell Saltzman doesn't have to worry about how stepping on toes might threaten his livelihood anymore, as is displayed by his "Advice to Inactive Christians." He says what every pastor would like to say to the person who hasn't attended services in years and suggests that he might start again if only the pastor and Church would accomodate some personal preference. I'm tempted to quote the whole thing, but as that would be pointless, let this give you reason to go read it yourself:

There is a singularly arrogant message in these sorts of gesturing declarations. The inactive member is saying he or she sets the terms of his or her return and it all depends on likability. [Raul] Castro framed it well: “If the pope continues this way.” Inactive members expect, as G.K. Chesterton remarked, that “Christians must embrace every creed except their own.”

Cutting the Eucharistic knot (Calvin's Institutes, Battles edition: p. 1416, vol. 2)

Presbyterians occasionally mock the doctrines of transubstantiation and consubstantiation because a physical presence of Christ in the sacrament of the Lord's Supper seems to them inherently ridiculous, if not offensive to reason. It's certainly offensive to my reason, but I have some sympathy with Lutherans and Romanists who struggle to understand how Christ can really and actually be present if he is not physically present. As the literature on the Lord's Supper over the millenia amply demonstrates, determining the precise relationship between the materials of the bread and cup and the physical body of Christ is where many Christians and theological traditions get stuck.

Alexander the Great, so they say, took a non-linear approach to loosing the Gordian Knot, which was impossible to untie: he cut it in half. In a passage explaining why the administration of the Lord's Supper must be accompanied by the preaching of the Word, John Calvin discusses an error which arose because this did not happen.

[T]hey did not observe that those promises by which consecration is accomplished are directed not to the elements themselves but to those who receive them. Certainly Christ does not say to the bread that it shall become his body, but he commands his disciples to eat and promises them participation in his body and blood. Paul's teaching takes the same form, that the promises are offered to believers along with the bread and the cup.

Attentive listening to, and exegesis of, the words of institution found in the Gospels and 1 Corinthians 11 will keep us from focusing on what happens to the elements of the Supper: instead, they direct our attention to its recipients. Since they receive the sacraments by faith, and faith is a gift of the Holy Spirit, we begin to see the Spirit is the agent who unites us to Christ.

Proper exegesis, Calvin suggests, offers the Romanist or Lutheran the freedom to step outside his or her dilemma and approach the sacramental knot in a non-linear and more fruitful manner.

What is marriage?

You may have an answer to that question, but it may not be the correct one. In "What is Marriage to Evangelical Millennials?," Abigail Rine helpfully points out that a revisionist definition of marriage (marriage is a formalized romantic attachment) took root in our culture, and in evangelical circles, several decades ago, and has rather completely usurped the much older understanding of marriage which is rooted in Bibilical, natural, and common law.

It's an extremely helpful explanation of both the origin of today's same-sex marriage debate and why evangelicals seem unable to speak coherently to, much less against, it. It's also a helpful reminder that what the modern mind assumes takes for granted as the natural order of things is, in fact, often only a philosophical fashion of very recent vintage.

And those of us who are dismayed by recent cultural trends may be heartened by the realization that fashions change.

Which got eaten first?

Evangelical vs. Liturgical?

My critical review of Melanie C. Ross' Evangelical vs. Liturgical? Defying a Dichotomy appears in this month's Ordained Servant.

To multiply religious ceremonies

 One of my favorite moments from Marilynne Robinson's Gilead comes when John Ames wonders why the bestowal of blessings isn't dealt with more prominently in pastor's manuals. As human beings and Christians, I think we have an intuitive sense that moments of great import should be commemorated and even consecrated before the God with whom we are in relationship. Weddings are a perfect example of this: the Bible is casually indifferent to marriage ceremonies, yet Christians across time and space have felt the need for a religious ceremony when a new marriage is formed. Prayer is good, yet we crave something a bit more liturgical.

 There's an argument here for multiplying religious ceremonies: not obligatory ceremonies, to be sure, but ones like the OPC's recommended marriage and funeral services. Congregants are free to take or leave as they like, but they do reflect the wisdom of the Church over the ages.

 This comes up because an older couple would like to repeat their wedding vows before our congregation. Taking vows once is enough, but there's some testamentary value, I think, in repeating them on occasion. Along with blessings, perhaps giving testimony deserves more consideration in our presbyterian pastoral manuals.