Category: Spirituality

Sharon and I were invited to a leadership training event at our church over the weekend. The theme was emotionally healthy spirituality. When I read the topic I immediately thought of heart work, but then in the instructions there was a note to bring a pen and paper, which left me concerned that it was going to be head work. I do find that evangelicals conflate the two. Both are important but they rarely share the same pedagogical space. I was happy that the event was more heart work, even though this set the tone for a difficult weekend.

Both heart work and head work involve a confrontation or challenge. In heart work the challenge is on an existential level – who are you? who do you imagine yourself to be? what ways do you sabotage your identity? why do you feel the way you do? or even why do you choose not to feel anything? On the other hand, head work challenges or confronts ideas that we hold to be true. These kinds of work can actually have a lot of overlap, such as teaching on what Scripture reveals about your identity. Despite this overlap, the head work emphasis is on gaining a better understanding from the tradition. Whereas, in heart work the emphasis is on what prevents head knowledge (understanding) from getting deep into our hearts. I use getting deep into our hearts as a metaphor for incorporating the understanding into our very sense of self. (I have a dear Baptist friend who calls one you thinker and the other your knower.)

In heart work you are deliberately giving space for deep emotional formation. This can be quite painful if not handled well. I tend to do a fair bit of heart work and still I found Saturday’s sessions emotionally taxing. The session brought up lots of emotions that I need to ponder. A friend asked me if I liked the session, which is absolutely the wrong question: one rarely likes heart work. But if it bears fruit in the long run then heart work is worthwhile. As a result I felt raw all day Sunday and still feel much tenderness today.

The other thing about heart work is that it builds on head work. If you do not have a different understanding of how you could see yourself, participating in the vulnerability of heart work can be irresponsible. I believe this is why they gathered leaders and former leaders for this day of heart work. Most of those gathered had at least a good understanding in their heads of who they are as Christians. The speaker, Doug Sprunt, shared stories of his own heart work journey which included the ways that his own self-understanding has been challenged over the years, usually through the trials he has endured. It was good to hear his story, I’ve known Doug just well enough to say hello and his vulnerability with us was helpful in shepherding this kind of process. I didn’t always agree with the insights he was bringing from his own heart work, but I really find that heart work is unique to everyone who bravely undertakes it, so consensus is never the goal of heart work, personal maturity is the goal.

Head work is what academics are most often concerned with. It is not that we do not appreciate the application of understanding, but the engagement with knowledge at a head level does not require heart application. I think this is why I tend to appreciate pastor-theologians, they tend to find ways to apply their head work to their own hearts. But head work does not require that extra step. One of my pet peeves about the Protestant influence on liturgy is that we have made teaching primary and left little room for the heart work that teaching is meant to support. As an academic I great value head work, but I do not want to confuse it as heart work. As an academic I regularly give my students tools to sharpen their critical thinking skills. As a pastor-theologian I also find space to encourage heart reflection on the head work we do in class. I am encouraged by how often students take up that challenge and share how they have grown spiritually from courses that can be highly theoretical and philosophical.

So while I didn’t feel very triumphal this Palm Sunday, I did feel that the heart work from Saturday was still doing its work in me. It is still working.

The picture is from a baptismal service we held at Freedom Vineyard way, way back. I have fond memories of the day when I baptized two people who came to faith in our community. What I loved about Freedom was our passion for balancing head and heart.

[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cffpRjIUePA&w=560&h=315]

The more I record and edit video the more I realize I need to be more careful in how I speak for video. Specifically, I need to cultivate two new skills. First I need to better break up my sentencing. I notice this whenever I want to cut something out of the video. It takes a lot of effort to find just the right break point between words or sounds. It might help me to do multiple takes of each segment, but I also do not want to lose that natural sense to my speech patterns.

What is more important for me to address is some of the imprecision that shows up in my casual speaking style. For example, in this video I start to talk about two types of sermons. There are actually quite a few different types of sermons. What I should have said is that I tend to do two different types of sermons: topical and textual. I also should have defined textual clearly, it is the style I’m preparing for my message to EcclesiaX. My friend Robert commented that in my maker videos I play loose with the technical terms of carpentry. Perfectly understandable for a hobby carpenter, and I try to correct these mistakes with text in the video. What is less understandable is the imprecision in my talk about subjects for which I am highly trained.

In the classroom a large part of what makes lecturing so exhausting (much as I love it) is that you need to be very careful how you phrase everything you say, you cannot play loose with technical details. I call this being ‘on’ all the time. Often at the end of a lecture I just need to sit and rest, which is fine, it lets me know I’ve done good work giving my best to the students. In terms of my videos I want to have a similar level of ‘on’ness. I think the answer is to record shorter bursts of video, because it is when I go off on a rabbit trail that I get the most in trouble. I expect that video work is a craft like any other and that I’ll improve with each one I post.

I would love to hear your comments about my first maker video for preaching.

Last night I was honoured to participate in a pre-show panel for the 9th Hour Theatre Company‘s production of GodSpell. 9th Hour uses theatrical presentations to “explore, examine, and express questions, ideas, and stories relating to faith.” (from their website) They steward this exploration through panels and discussions of the themes that emerge within the play which is how I became involved. Alexandra Bender reached out to see if I was interested in helping out as a local theologian. When I looked that the topics they were exploring through these panels (Poverty, Good News, and Loving your Enemies) I was excited about each of them, however my schedule fit best with the two panels on poverty: “Give to the poor! But will the poor always be among us?” I am back again this coming Friday evening to talk about this once again if you would like to join us.

First a word about the play. I found the play really moving. It opens up contemporary questions about who is the other and what kind of person the gospel (godspell)  encourages us to be. The base text is the Gospel of Matthew but it is punctuated with “headlines” that bring the gospel account right into the present. There is also a real interaction with the gospel text that is refreshing, we witness this as an ongoing wrestling and dialogue (back and forth between Matthew’s readings and the characters responses). This is a great contrast to the usual passive reception of text that we find in liturgy. I do not want to spoil the story, it is not your typical passion narrative, but right from the beginning the play unsettles you and provokes you. A couple of things that might not have been intentional but moved me greatly were the diversity of actors and the gradual and subtle emergence of a cross through the props, on Friday I’ll have to ask George Dutch if this was deliberate. I loved that the cross didn’t dominate the narrative because it is rightfully part of a much larger narrative, and I think us evangelicals sometimes forget that. I highly recommend the play even if you are not a Christian. If you are a Christian take the opportunity to let the story make  you uncomfortable – a good telling of the gospel should always make us a bit uncomfortable.

The panelists were moderated by Alexandra Bender and included George Dutch (9th Hour Theatre Company), Moira Davis (Ottawa Innercity Ministries), and myself. It was interesting to see the themes emerge as we explored the subject through Alexanrda’s guiding questions. George served as the dramaturge for this play which meant he worked with the director on how the themes were consistently expressed through the whole of the play. It was apparent from the conversation that he saw the gospel as having implications for the whole of life by orienting us towards being good news for the whole world. He also challenged some of the ways that we see success in our current social context, and how those views serve to twist our understanding of who we see as the poor. Moira used her own wealth of experience working with marginalized and homeless youth to draw us into questions of who are the excluded in society and how we might see a wisdom of inclusion emerging in the lives of those who have experienced marginalization first hand.

I tried to build on the conversation my colleagues started by highlighting how we get caught up in narratives that often reinforce the status quo. I looked briefly at the times in the gospels where Jesus says “the poor will always be among you” highlighting that in each case something very uncomfortable was happening and the statement was akin to calling out our tendency to deflect. We should have sold that perfume, for example, and used the money to feed the poor. John’s gospel is the most obvious about what Jesus is doing because the narrator tells us that Judas really had no intention of using the money for the poor. When Jesus responds with “the poor you will always have with you” he is being very provocative, that phrase comes from a passage in Deuteronomy that is all about actively lending to the poor and forgiving debt every seven years. My point is that we read those stories of Jesus in ways that do not always challenge our personal comfort – but if we dare to scratch the surface of the gospel texts we often find something that challenges us to our cores. My invitation to the people was to let the Godspell unsettle us, to challenge us. My hope is that this will help us be good news to the whole world.

The picture of the panel discussion was captured by my lovely wife Sharon. I was grateful that we could turn this event into a date night. 

I will be at Augustine College this afternoon to guest lecture on the topic of Pentecostal and Charismatic Theologies. This is an introduction of sorts which is part of a much larger History of Christian Thought course that is taught by Dr. Brian Butcher. I was quite happy to be invited as a few years back I developed a full course on the topic of Pentecostal/Charismatic Movements which I ended up shelving. I regularly use the Pentecostals as an example of the immanence of the transcendent God in my Trends in Western Thought course at Saint Paul University (HTP1101). In that course each lecture looks at two different ways that movements or theologians take up the tension between immanence and transcendence. But that is about the only place in my current teaching load that I get to speak so directly on Pentecostal and Charismatic theologies.

One of the reasons I think it is important to talk about Pentecostal and Charismatic theologies is that they are a growing influence on global Christian theologies and one that is so often misrepresented and misunderstood. When I started out studies at Saint Paul University I stumbled upon Stephen Land’s Pentecostal Spirituality: A Passion for the Kingdom in our library. It was a beautiful moment for this neo-pentecostal trying to find resources that did academic theological work from the Pentecostal context that formed my own spirituality. Land gave me hope that there was a real alternative to the anti-intellectualism that was so much a part of my early Pentecostal experience. (I highly recommend Rick Nañez’ Full Gospel, Fractured Minds?: A Call to Use God’s Gift of Intellect if you are interested in the shifting that is happening today as Pentecostal and Charismatic movements mature into their insights.) It is with great joy that I found other academic Pentecostal, neo-pentecostal, and charismatic dialogue partners along the way: Wolfgang Vondey, Jamie Smith, Doug Erickson, Derek Morphew, Shane Clifton, and others. The list continues to grow as does my library!

I’ll let you all know how it went.

EDIT: What a keen group of students, the lecture seemed to go very well. Thank you Dr. Butcher for the invite!

Sometimes I hear God in the conversations I have with friends and family. It is like there is an overarching message, something God is trying to speak that challenges me. Because of this I tend to pay attention to the kinds of conversations I am part of and what might be the message that I need to hear. The last couple of days have been filled with conversations about what we can and cannot say to each other. In some ways it is Taylor’s soft-relativism that stilts our conversations, but I think there is more to it than just getting caught up in political correctness gone too far. (Political correctness is really about respecting each other and making space for the other, but when it goes too far it is about being afraid of offending each other – offence will come, but that is not an excuse for being a jerk.)

I was watching the very first episode of Kim’s Convenience with my nephew, I thought it was a great story where  fun is poked at the misconceptions we straight people have about queer and gender-queer people. My favourite scene was the dad’s interaction with the drag queen named Therese which starts out super awkward but Therese hangs in there long enough to recognize that the question was an honest one. This led to a conversation about what kinds of questions are acceptable. I love it when a sit-com can spark a serious conversation.

We mainly talked about relationality as being an important approach to understanding each other. But the issue that I felt God was highlighting for me (and had come up in a few other contexts) was the effect of narratives in creating the norms we are subjected to. When we interact with others, we tell stories about them. I’m not talking about gossip, but the internal narratives that help us to reconcile their place in our lives and our worlds. Those stories are not always healthy. For example, racism internally makes sense to a person because it fits their story about what they feel is normal. So a racist person is more prone to confirmation bias regarding the stories they internally tell about the other. I think this is part of what happened with John Stackhouse’s recent uncareful words about settler-indigenous relations. I’m not saying John is racist, he’s definitely an important voice in evangelicalism today, but his comments on this particular issue required a lot more care than he gave them. (EDIT: Since I crafted this post a moderated conversation between Terry Leblanc and John Stackhouse has occurred, it is very helfpul.)

Unfortunately the worst offenders are those of us with privilege. This is a product of our narrative frameworks. We are taught as North Americans that the end justifies the means and that being successful is the most important thing. We are also told that we alone are responsible for our success. All of this is toxic to our social nature as humans. When we believe these things we become blind to the way our privilege underwrites our success. We miss the ways that our narratives are constructed to exclude the other, especially the other that dares to take pride in their exception to our norms. We want to guard our success so much that we have to de-normalize the other. And eventually we close off the spaces where we might have real conversations that could lead to real understanding.

So my answer, and I feel this is evolving, is that we need to strive to challenge our own narratives by becoming self-aware and by giving normative space to the other. Let me unpack these ideas.

Self-awareness is not easy. Our narratives are what holds our sense of self together. We tell these internal stories not for the other, but for ourselves. These stories are how we understand ourselves and how we navigate our experiences in life. So to deconstruct or even critically examine these narratives feels terribly risky. I once likened this self-deconstruction to pulling the core of my self out to dissect on a table. I’ve taken a few university courses that actually invited me to do such a thing. When our selves are laid bare like that, we can feel like we no longer know who we are in the world. That is a terrifying feeling. But when you’ve deconstructed and then reconstructed, something gets better within us. We somehow find an ability to hold those narratives a little less firmly and we allow our horizons to expand.

I’ve also watch many a friend refuse to deconstruct until life forces them to deconstruct painfully. I have a dear friend who has been in the throes of this kind of deconstruction for years now and it is painful to watch. He’s got bigger horizons in some ways, but he is far from the man I once knew. I think many of us are good at holding back that kind of turmoil, but I am not convinced it is any healthier than having the rock of reality fall on us, crushing us completely.

The second aspect is only really available if we are willing to continue the work of self-awareness. This work is creating normative space for the other. By this I mean that we become deferential to the other by allowing for their sense of what is normal. Notice I’m not saying accepting. My wife and I have taken this approach with many friends who suffer from depression, accepting their view of normal isn’t often helpful, but giving our friends space where they do not have to justify their experience is priceless. It is about being willing to lay down the defense of our own norms so that the other can have the breathing room to find their feet and take their own journey to self-awareness. But that journey isn’t something we can make another, it is simply something we can help them make space for. This is also really hard work and things like depression are not easy to overcome. But not having safe spaces makes that even harder.

What I’ve discovered is that I do not always agree with what others find to be normal, and I might have good reasons for that. But mostly my reasons have to do with me and not with the other. So trying fix the other is simply an exercise in alienation. What is a better course is to allow the other, and their stories, to challenge my own narratives and let me grow as a person. This changes the narrative from isolationist success at any cost to a humanizing creation of community where difference is not a barrier, but something that we see as an opportunity for all of us to grow as people.

The image is another Richard Dufault photo, I love the quizzical look on my face as I’m reading a boardgame manual. I think questions are good. 

Over at the Jürgen Moltmann Discussion Group on Facebook James Blackhall shared about his practice of reading through The Crucified God as a Lenten devotion. His post came as I have been trying to discern a healthy Lenten practice for myself for this season. I usually find giving up a food item might help my waistline, but it usually doesn’t translate into a devotional practice which is more fitting for the season. The years that I’ve found Lent most meaningful have been those when I’ve added a practice to my daily life. Last year I took on the daily office, which I do, albeit quite a bit more sporadically, otherwise. This year I wanted something different so I was inspired when James mentioned his use of The Crucified God.

The Crucified God was one of the first books by Moltmann that I read. My first read of the text was likely in the third year of my undergrad. I remember a conversation in the hall about it with Ken Melchin, he thought I should go back to the beginning and read Theology of Hope. I followed Ken’s advice after I finished The Crucified God and have read Theology of Hope many more times since. I had forgotten just how good The Crucified God is because even though I used much of it in my doctoral research, I hadn’t read the whole of The Crucified God since those early years of study.

Right from the get go, Moltmann confronts us with the arresting claim that “[t]he cross is not and cannot be loved.” (p.1) Then he draws us into the notion that any Christian theology of hope is in fact built upon “the resurrection of the crucified Christ.” (p.5) I am hooked. I’ve decided that I will post one or two quotes on Facebook every day, both as a way of keeping myself accountable to the practice and as a way of letting the text live in my real world context. I’m sure there will be commentary here as well.

May your Lenten reflections be rewarding.

Recently a friend of mine, a guy named Bob who likes to stir up trouble, posted this little conversation starter:

“The power of His church is in the pew, not necessarily in the Pulpit.”

My initial response was to think that this statement (which is a very Bob statement) has the power dynamic backwards. I get that he’s concerned about a Christianity that is all formalism and no action. When I read though I immediately thought that the real power is the Holy Spirit and I responded in such a manner. And while I think that is true, Bob’s statement has been running around in my head during conversations I’ve had since.  I want to reflect a bit in what I think Bob was pointing to.

If you claim to be a Christian and that makes no difference in how you live your life in this world then something is definitely wrong. 

Watching the debates around evangelicalism unfold in the US this past week leave me struggling to find Christ in what is going on. Compound this with a conversation I had this morning with an old friend whose interactions with a very dogmatic Christian leave him wondering where the relationship with God is for the guy peddling a strict form of neo-Calvinism. My own observation is that the people who are the most uptight about their faith, the most dogmatic and hardnosed, also tend to be assholes in real life. I know there are exceptions, at least I hope there are exceptions, but this is sadly the case I’ve run into over and over again. Please prove me wrong.

I feel like I’ve been there too. I remember an incident years and years ago when I found myself reaming out a parishioner for not wanting to be part of our evangelistic outreach. I was a real asshole to him. And he wasn’t the only one. When my faith was built on a tenuous structure of hardnosed beliefs I found myself defending that faith by belittling others. I’m sure I can still get that way although I try my best not to. Even Jesus’ disciples got that way from time to time – which is why I think Jesus took them to have the encounter with the syrophoenician woman. (Take a look at what happens to the miracles before and after that encounter, then look at how the disciples behaved.) The point though is that Jesus did things to show his disciples how they were acting, I worry that we are not always listening to what Jesus might be showing us about our actions.

What I really find troubling is when through our self-righteous attitudes we treat others like crap. Especially those who we do not think know that we are claiming to be Christ followers. Being a Christ follower doesn’t mean you are perfect, but it does mean you probably should stop being an asshole. My friend was telling me stories of his crew (not Christians) who go into the homes of Christians to do work and find that they are some of the worst of the people out there. Why is this the case? What makes us think that being a Christian makes no difference in how we treat others, especially when we think they might not realize we are Christians? Why does it not disturb us more that as soon as they see our Jesus bumper sticker they have that aha moment as to why we’ve been an asshole to them?

I get that not everyone will care to hear this. I hope some will. I myself am trying to be a good witness in all I do, and yes part of that is carefully choosing my words in this post. The bottom line is that claiming to have had a life changing encounter with someone like Jesus must mean more than just walking around feeling like you have one up on everyone else. Following Christ is costly, it will cost you your right to be an asshole.

Thanks Bob for the food for thought.