Canadian Mennonite
Volume 14, No. 12
June 14, 2010
Readers Write
We welcome your comments and publish most letters sent by subscribers intended for publication. Respecting our theology of the priesthood of all believers and of the importance of the faith community discernment process, this section is a largely open forum for the sharing of views. Letters are the opinion of the writer only—publication does not mean endorsement by the magazine or the church. Letters should be brief and address issues rather than individuals.
Please send letters to be considered for publication to letters@canadianmennonite.org or by postal mail or fax, marked “Attn: Readers Write” (our address is on page 3). Letters should include the author’s contact information and mailing address. Letters are edited for length, style and adherence to editorial guidelines.
Preachers need to be brave, not brilliant
“What’s the matter with preaching?” Harry Emerson Fosdick asked that question in a Harpers magazine article 82 years ago. Fosdick packed
churches Sunday after Sunday, with line-ups of people wanting to get in to hear him preach.
Barbara Brown Taylor raised the same question about preaching in a recent lecture at the Vancouver School of Theology. Her audience was predominantly clergy. A former Episcopalian priest, she’s the author of 12 books, including Leaving Church and her most recent, An Altar in the World.
Fosdick focused on relevance, stating that mediocre sermons are uninteresting and pathetic, and pointed out that sermons need to establish a connection with people and the pulse of the text. The idea of the sermon as a solo performance is what’s wrong with preaching, said Taylor. She suggested pastors meet with a group of people and discern how a sermon would fit with people’s needs. Good sermons are absorbed by the people who listen, she said.
“Wrestling with people over questions of life and death takes time and a lot of risk,” she said, noting that preaching should be more focused on life than on religion. “What the congregation needs is not brilliance, but bravery.”
Effective sermons are not produced magically, and skill alone is not enough; preachers need to know how to be human. “Who are your nighttime visitors when you can’t sleep? Can you speak of this with truth?” Taylor asked.
Preachers need to take risks, she said, and preaching from life is much harder than preaching from books. “Start with issues that preoccupy people in front of you.” Quoting others is fine for a sentence or two, but people came to hear you, not someone else. “Preachers must be willing to appear dumb and vulnerable,” she said.
Taylor says it’s important to identify each church’s “culture of listening.” When asked about the mega-churches that draw thousands to their services, she said these churches address the pressing issues of people’s lives and deal with questions of the human condition.
Preaching is often lonely, she said, and dialogue with the congregation is important.
Taylor noted the stress on preachers who preach Sunday after Sunday. “You’ll have some thin sermons,” she said, adding that every poor sermon allows people to work out the gospel on their own. “The proclamation of the gospel does not depend on the golden tongue, but on the Holy Spirit.”
Emeritus prof defends TWU stand on academic freedom and faith
Your “When faith collides with academic freedom” article, May 3, page 15, addresses a question of enormous importance for Christian universities interested in an ongoing relationship with their secular counterparts.
My experience with religion and academia includes attending five Mennonite schools and teaching at Trinity Western University [TWU] for more than 30 years. I was personally involved as we developed policies and practices from 1978 to 2007 after TWU became a degree-granting university.
I responded critically to the unfavourable report of the Canadian Association of University Teachers [CAUT] in October 2009, which attacked TWU’s statement of faith. The CAUT report reflects a naïve reading of the evidence of how TWU professors do research and teach. They took descriptive catalogue phrases at face value and ignored actual experience and results of TWU faculty teaching and research.
From the moment it became a four-year university, TWU’s faculty, working closely with the administration, initiated a determined effort to achieve two goals: excellence in scholarship and teaching, and a commitment to the Christian faith that embraced a wide variety of confessions.
Faculty designed hiring, tenure and promotion criteria that compensate those who attain Ph.D. or equivalent terminal degrees. It rewarded lively and up-to-date teaching which integrated faith and subject. For scholarship, the criteria meant work which was reviewed by external peers from the world’s best journals, critics and publishers. The editors and their selected anonymous readers would not have agreed to publish our work had it been marked by doctrinal blinkers. TWU scholarship is recognized by peers around the world.
Academic freedom and tenure policies were very important to the Association of Universities and Colleges in Canada when we applied for membership. It and CAUT have a legitimate ongoing interest in the status of academic freedom in all universities. It is also in the interest of TWU supporters, that it continues to pursue academic freedom.
Loving and challenging abusive power not mutually exclusive
Re: “Rebutting ‘a pernicious message,?” May 17, page 11.
Aiden Enns’s challenge to “cause those in power to grumble,” will no doubt be taken seriously by the Mennonite Church Canada assembly in Calgary, Alta.
Very few of us—likely not even Enns himself—are free from “structures that grant [us] power and privilege.”
I believe most of us “seek to follow a Jesus who migrated to the margins of society to bring healing and hope . . . .” We do this together as a Christ-centred community of faith striving for peace and justice.
If I were to erect an urban hen house, or protest police brutality, then, according to my sense of Enns’s article, I wouldn’t have to be compassionate, kind, patient or humble.
I support fully Ruth Preston Schilk’s “Live the brand, wear Christ,” message that Enns mentions. We, as the body of Christ, must present a solid, loving alternative even as we confront the injustice and violence of evil’s empire.
Being loving and challenging those who abuse power are not mutually exclusive. Neither is easy. Both are necessary to achieve effective Christ-like subversion.
From Our Leaders
Discerning alone and together
“Discernment” is the latest buzzword among leaders, not only in the church but also in corporate and business circles. Every day, it seems, a new book appears and promotes a new way of discerning direction and vision. In the church we often speak of discerning God’s Spirit.
Several months ago at a conference on leadership, one of the speakers made the statement that, “in a time of constant change and chaos such as ours, leaders need to learn how to lead in ‘permanent whitewater.’?” When I quoted this to a monthly gathering of interim pastors, one of them quipped, “Whitewater canoeing can be a hoot, but you can only do it for so long. Then you need calmer waters.”
With the ever-increasing diversity in the church, sometimes our communal discernment can feel like navigating “permanent whitewater,” where reacting is the predominant way of responding.
God’s Spirit speaks to people in many ways, the gathered community being only one.
But discernment requires getting out of the “whitewater rapids” and into a place where we can once again hear that inner voice of wisdom, of God’s Spirit within. It requires getting into the calm, steady stream of what God has done, is doing and will do, and it requires remembering who we are. It requires relinquishing our tight grip on making things go our way, and offering our hopes and opinions to be woven with others into God’s larger purpose for the world. Our Anabaptist forebears called that gelassenheit.
For that deeper discernment, we need time alone and in community. As Mennonites, we often move to commu-nal discernment and bypass the individual part of the process. We begin talking and reacting without spending time listening deeply to each other and being grounded in our own inner wisdom.
God’s Spirit speaks to people in many ways, the gathered community being only one. In our own understanding of Scripture, in our own consciences, and by using our powers of judgment and observation of our own life experiences and those of our brothers and sisters around the world, and in the broader wisdom of science and creation, God has given us aids to discern what seems best in any given circumstance.
In the gospels, Jesus often withdrew into the wilderness or to the mountain, sometimes alone, other times with a few of his disciples. He withdrew at precisely those times when the next step was not clear or just plain hard: at the start of his ministry; before choosing his disciples; when the crowds were clamouring for him and he had to choose between staying and going on to the next town; at the Mount of Transfiguration when he was about to enter Jerusalem; and in the garden when he was facing almost certain death.
Discernment takes place within the context of a living, loving relationship with God and with God’s people. For those relationships to be nurtured, we need time to listen deeply alone as well as in community.
New Order Voice
A five-year retrospective
This is my 30th New Order Voice column since Aiden Enns and I started writing for Canadian Mennonite five years ago. It’s not a huge milestone, but an occasional look back can be fruitful.
Although I have not always written about contentious topics–for example, tributes to the More-with-Less cookbook and Mennonite Central Committee (MCC) thrift stores—the times when I have broached sensitive matters—like discriminatory treatment of Mexican Mennonites, the war-mongering views of Franklin Graham or a critique of MCC’s us-helping-them narrative—the editors of this publication have never stood in the way. For this I am grateful.
Those times I have entered the waters of controversy—often with more trepidation than you would imagine—the reader backlash for which I braced myself was replaced with positive feedback. This surprised me. I have no illusions that I reflect majority views, but the feedback I receive demonstrates the importance of providing space for a range of views, including the views of those who doubt and question.
In talking to leaders, I have felt that we are too readily adopting the growth model.
The most difficult aspect of writing for Canadian Mennonite has been the interviews with leaders of conferences, schools and service agencies. With a few exceptions, the institutional defensiveness, predictably bureaucratic language, and a lack of spirited Anabaptist vision from leaders I interviewed, has left me uninspired, or worse. Leading Canadian thinker John Ralston Saul has said that “if you listen to people as they rise in power they tend to say less and less intelligent things.”
And so I have found myself lamenting what I see as a move towards fewer leaders and more administrators. However, my disappointment, ultimately, is not with these individuals, but with the church culture from which they take their mandate. What troubles me within our priesthood of believers is the degree to which organized church energies are focused on institution-building. In simplest terms, I see an adherence to the secular dogma that says bigger is better. Forget “more with less”; we want more, more, more. Bigger churches, bigger programs, bigger budgets, bigger barns. Forget simplicity and community; we want institutions with schlitzy foyers.
In talking to leaders, I have felt that we are too readily adopting the growth model. We attach the parable of the talents to it, then add a closing prayer and assume we’re building the kingdom of God, rather than just our own kingdom. Taking millions from a pharmaceutical company of ill repute—as Associated Mennonite Biblical Seminary has done—becomes a no-brainer, and $500-a-plate fundraisers—an annual event at Canadian Mennonite University—is deemed consistent with the story of the widow’s mite.
That said, the discipline of speaking directly with people whose views I find difficult has been formative. When I interview someone with whom I generally disagree, my job is still to understand them as fully as possible and to present their most convincing arguments. Even if I critique them, my duty is to listen and understand. My efforts at this have been imperfect, but what I’ve found is that once I put in the effort, my critique is always less jagged, less simplistic. Church leaders and church institutions—just like you and I—are a mix of the good and not-so-good. We all depend on grace, which God supplies in abundance.
I continue to write this column with enthusiasm because I believe in good questions and open discourse. I write because I believe the Mennonite church can contribute an element of simplicity, community, humility and integrity to our world. I write to create a bit of space for others, however few or many, who share those beliefs.
Out of the Box
No more cheap church
Nearly four score years ago Dietrich Bonhoeffer wrote The Cost of Discipleship. Every Christian should read it because the German martyr was on to something: He exposed the scourge of cheap grace. “Cheap grace,” he wrote, “means grace as a doctrine, a principle, a system. It means forgiveness of sins proclaimed as a general truth, the love of God taught as the Christian ‘conception’ of God.”
He saw the church peddling grace as an idea about God, not proclaiming Jesus Christ, whose lavish sacrifice and invitation to follow demands unconditional surrender. “Cheap grace,” Bonhoeffer continued, “is grace without discipleship, grace without the cross, grace without Jesus Christ.” The drift of religious Christianity is towards this bargain-store spirituality; we like God and his benefits on the cheap and with as little personal cost as necessary.
The contagion of cheap grace is cheap church. If we expect God and his goods on our terms, with our desires untouched, we will want church just as conveniently.
Dare we admit that many adhere to the doctrine of cheap church and fervently believe it to be true. We want church that costs nothing beyond our cash, interests and occasional attendance. We want church that will not require the gruelling tasks of loving, forgiving and offering grace to those we’re sure shouldn’t get it. We want to consume our bargain-store spirituality and happily shop with others who think the same. We want a church of the holy potluck, the holy project, the holy huddle, but we’re not so keen on a church of the Holy Spirit.
I mean, really, have you read what the Holy Spirit did to the church in Acts? Who wants that mess and cost anymore? Now that we’ve got everything pasteurized and organized, we can get on with church on the cheap and defend it almost like we mean it and mean it as if we like it!
We seem to expect church to be unrealistically perfect for our sakes. We want our church to have the spit and polish that convinces us we’re really something. We’ll give to that—particularly if there’s a tax break to be had! We’ll raise our communion shot glasses to that!
We want a church of the holy potluck, the holy project, the holy huddle, but we’re not so keen on a church of the Holy Spirit.
The church is foremost and always God’s cherished possession. Church is not something to horde, but give away! We give away Christ and with him always a costly piece of ourselves. God in Christ spared no expense and yet many who have been absorbed into the body of Christ by grace long for church on the cheap.
The church does not exist to prop up our wants. Rather, it requires us to collapse in the costly joy of dying to self and living alongside others who are not always easy to love, because Christ died for us—and them—and is risen from the dead! The church is to be a window into what can be when people spend themselves in forgiveness, reconciliation and mission together precisely because the grace they received was lavishly expensive.
Jesus still wears scars. How can we who are now his earthly body expect to wear anything less? The church extracts a cost many may have never fully embraced: It will cost us our rights, preferences and comfort.
The church is not easy! Get over it! It is a costly adventure in being a resurrected Holy-Spirit-endowed people, and the cheap church many practise is as much a swindle as cheap grace ever was.