Not Compatible with Life?

The past six days are to me a blur, and the ordinary way of remembering days past seems not to apply.  Anyone reading this who has passed through the days of death and parting from a loved one knows what I mean.  A week ago today my father-in-law, Rev. Isaac Apol, fell suddenly ill late in the evening.  Some hours later the doctors spied a blood clot in the main artery that supplies the gut region of the body and some hours after that the skilled vascular surgeon removed that clot and restored normal blood flow.   But it was too late--last Thursday the general surgeon checked on things one last time to confirm what he frankly suspected the evening before--the intestines had died from lack of blood for too long, and life for my dear father-in-law could not continue.  "It's just not compatible with life," the surgeon said.

My dad-in-law was 88--an age of sufficient decades and years that it tempts those who hear of his death to do what we all tend to do: we say or think, "Ohhh, wow, 88, hmmm" and what we mean by that is "Well, what did you expect?   That's an age at which people die so maybe we can blunt our sadness a bit."  I know I've thought that and so have resisted for some years asking too quickly "How old was your mom?" because I don't want to cash out even a little of people's deep grief.   In the case of Dad Apol, he was indeed 88 but was independent, active, vibrant, and profoundly happy to be alive (as he had been basically every one of his 32,300-some days).  Spiritually Dad was as ready to meet his Savior as any believer could be.  Physically . . . well, as he said to me after a brief illness a couple of years ago, "If the Lord were to ask me, I'd say I'd like to order up ten more years if it would be all right!"

Somehow given who Dad Apol was, the surgeon's words about his condition being "not compatible with life" struck me because for all of the nearly 27 years I have known him as first his daughter's suitor and then her husband, Dad Apol has been profoundly compatible with life.  You'd seldom meet someone who took joy in every oak leaf, thrilled to even the most common of birds at his feeders, and enjoyed his every meal with great good gusto and gratitude (and when it was my privilege to indulge my hobby of gourmet cooking and really whip up some good victuals for Dad, his reaction was identical to any kid in the ice cream shop being handed a cone: his eyes shined with delight and anticipation).

How can anyone like this end up in any way, shape, or form being "not compatible with life"?  Well and of course, it happens to all of us physically eventually, even as through the cruelty of others it happened to our Savior on the cross.   But if there is anything to those intuitions that so many people have had--the intuition that the uniqueness of human life itself argues for there being more than just the few fleeting years we spend on this earth--then that intuition was surely validated by someone like Ike Apol.  He was exceedingly "compatible with life" every moment of his 88-and-a-half years and if his lower extremeties caused a surgeon to declare otherwise last Thursday morning, that says nothing about the soul or spirit of the man.

That soul or spirit is what, after all, had all along been so very, very compatible with life.  God knows this.  That's why he had this plan called the Gospel.   Through our grace-given compatibility with the Savior, we each of us remain deeply compatible with life even though we die, which is pretty much what Jesus said to Martha in John 11 at her brother's tomb.   "Those who believe in me will live, even if they die."

That is the Word of the Lord, thanks be to God.   And on this rainy and stormy April morning in Michigan the day after Dad's funeral, it is the Word to which we cling in the sure and certain hope that our God-given compatibility with life goes on and on in our Father's bright kingdom.

What's a Preacher To Do?

It's difficult for me to believe that it's been now close to 8 years since I left my last congregation as pastor and weekly preacher.   I like to think that my ability to draw on nearly 16 years' worth of preaching experience helps me in my job now as someone who encourages preachers in their task and insofar as I have a small hand in training up a new generation of preachers via our students here at Calvin Seminary.   And I think my experience does help.   But every once in a while I realize that maybe I've been out of the "game" just long enough that I have lost touch a little with the struggles of preachers today.

Take last week: I met with a peer learning group of pastors for a day of conversation about preaching.   They had given me ahead of time a list of questions, most of which dealt with preaching to contemporary culture and what forms of the sermon worked best today (as opposed to preaching styles that may seem outmoded to folks in the pews now).   So I talked to these preachers about things we teach at the Seminary and some aspects of preaching that I believe to be vital.  Among the things I often emphasize is that too much preaching in the last quarter century has morphed from a proclaiming of Good News to a Dr. Phil-like dispensing of Good Advice (how else to account for sermon series about "Six Ways to Raise Successful Kids" and "Five Ways to Grow Your Business" and "Seven Ways to Realize Your Dreams"?).   I also talked about why avoiding moralism is so important and thus the need to avoid sermons that forever and again end with "To Do" lists of things people need to do in the week ahead to stay in good with God.    Moralism is not only not the Gospel of Grace it rather routinely props up the closet legalism that far too many people schlep with them into church every Sunday as it is.

The pastors in this peer group listened attentively, asked good questions, and helped create a lively conversation.   But then a couple of hours in, one pastor had the courage to ask the question that burned on all of their hearts when he said, "I agree with everything you have said but what are we supposed to do given that the very preaching you and the rest of us would deem to be bad is exactly what people seem most to want today?   We're all seeing people leave our congregations--sometimes in significant numbers--to join the popular mega-churches in our area where the preacher does nothing but trendy 'good advice' sermons that always end with checklists of ways to be more virtuous.   So what are we supposed to do to keep our people in our own congregations?"

The pastoral pain of these people was obvious.   Their question was not only a hard one to answer, it was fraught with disappointment and disorientation.   I wish I had an answer.   The one thing to say is that as a preacher you cannot, of course, compromise yourself or give in to people's "itching ears" without losing integrity and self-respect.  And, of course, we talked about ways to liven up preaching and pondered practices that all preachers could nurture in their sermons that would keep those messages inside the bounds of respectability but that might succeed in maintaining listener interest via what I wrote about on The Twelve two weeks ago in terms of letting narratives be vivid and engaging.   Will such advice staunch any outflows of members?   Maybe and then again, maybe not.

Probably it counts as something of a tired cliche to point out that the more Jesus preached the message of sacrifice and the cross, the smaller his crowds got, too.   And, of course, the sum total of Jesus' preaching--including all those parables we now love so much--succeeded in getting him crucified.   It's true.   Jesus never promised his under-shepherds a life filled with success as the world defines it (and this, too, loops back to recent blog posts here by Steve Mathonet-Vanderwell and yesterday from Jeff Munroe).   It's just that in a good bit of North America we've been raised to believe that hard work and faithfulness do always pay off in visible ways, and in the church, that usually means in growing congregations.

Thankfully, of course, many times that happens, too.   Many growing churches are doing so under the preaching of very faithful proclaimers of the Gospel.   It's also a point to grant that not everybody today yearns for the kind of trendy and moralistic preaching of which I've written here--there are still plenty of people who know true biblical and theological and pastoral substance in preaching when they hear it and they prefer it, too.

Still . . . being a faithful preacher is no guarantee that church members won't leave for what they perceive to be greener pastures.   Every pastor winces to see people leave.  Preachers today compete with so much else in the culture and from the entertainment industry and from the better-known rock star preachers as well.    Those on the front lines of ministry need a lot of prayer from the rest of us.   It's not an easy job but when it is done well, it remains God's favorite way of nurturing and sustaining (and generating) the faith of his people.

Inevitable Surprises

On Easter Monday I caught the first 20 minutes of The Diane Rhem Show on NPR in which Diane was interviewing the Pulitizer Prize-winning novelist Elizabeth Strout.  This reminded me of the 2008 "Festival of Faith & Writing" at Calvin College at which I was privileged to introduce Ms. Strout a couple of times and be the staff person assigned to help her find her way around campus those days.  She is a delightful and down-to-earth person.  About a year later when she won the Pulitzer, she also got added to my very short list of Pulitizer winners I've met in person (Marilynne Robinson and John Updike round out that wee list).   But hearing her on the radio reminded me of others I've met at that same Calvin College festival, including years ago one of my all-time favorite authors, Jon Hassler.

Hassler wrote many delightful novels including Staggerford, The Love Hunter, Dear James, and others.   My own favorite is North of Hope and so when I stood in line to have Mr. Hassler autograph a book, this was the novel I had with me at the time.  As he signed it for me, I said to him, "I loved this novel.   I hated to see it end.  In fact, for days after I found myself missing Frank and Libby" (who were the main characters in the novel, of course).    At this Mr. Hassler looked up and without guile and with no small amount of wistfulness he said, "Yes, Frank and Libby.  I think of them from time to time and I wonder how they're getting along . . ."   He then gave a barely perceptible shrug of his shoulders, finished the autograph, and handed the novel back to me.

He clearly had not been kidding.   Frank and Libby were in some fashion real to him.  True, he made them up out of the whole cloth of his narrative imagination.   And also true: Mr. Hassler did not have a mental disturbance and would acknolwege fully and freely if pressed that of course he was aware that these two people did not now exist (and had never existed) in the real world.   Still . . . he wished them the best.

Talk to writers long enough and you'll hear them talking about their characters as real people, sometimes expressing absolute surprise at what a certain character said or did.   "I had no idea he was capable of that" a novelist of my acquaintance once said of one of his own creations.   "Her reply to that insult really took me aback" I once heard yet another writer say.   What I want to say back to these people is, "But you wrote those 'surprising' things yourself because you invented the whole scenario.  How can you be surprised by something you yourself thought up?!"   Actually, I have said that to writers in the past but in response these writers have not said "Well, you know what I mean--I was just kidding you.  I was just using a figure of speech."  Nope.  They testify that their own characters quite literally take on a narrative life of their own and if it's true that the whole shebang of the story singularly belongs to the writer, that somehow does not prevent the story and the people who populate it from taking some unexpected turns.

Personally I find this both wonderful and weird.  It requires a certain suspension of belief on the part of writers to claim this about their characters--much less to wonder years later how they are getting along as Mr. Hassler did--but in many ways that suspension of belief is no different than what we all do whenever we read a great novel, watch a movie, or see a play.   We both know it's all staged and fictional and orchestrated and that it's somehow very, very real in ways we want to get caught up in.  When a story is told well--even a true story that we've all heard a thousand times before--we are able to enter into that story and let it surprise us, stimulate us, instruct us all over again as though for the first time.

That's one of the great powers of story and of narrative.   And we need a lot more of it in the Church and especially in preaching.   In his new book Imagining the Kingdom Jamie Smith does a great job making the case that we are all storied beings, "narrative animals" to borrow a phrase Smith quotes from David Foster Wallace.  Smith applies this to worship and liturgy generally but in a book of my own I am working on for preachers, I turn it directly to sermons.   Preachers have at their disposal a Bible that is rich with stories that are chock-full of intrigue, deceit, surprises, grace, and all kinds of other narrative wonders.    The key is to let those things shine.   Instead of drearily working through a story or dissecting the narrative to the point that what started as a story ends up being reduced to a bullet-point list of propositions, preachers need to draw in listeners by making them interested in and invested in the characters.   We should want to know what comes next (even though we already do) and have enough tension and drama built into the re-presentation of the story in the worship service and in the sermon that we eagerly tune in for the same reasons we re-watch movies or re-read stories or re-tell the great stories from our own families over and over.   That we know how it all turns out doesn't matter.

Someone once said that the best stories are both surprising and inevitable.   But when it comes to stories and characters we know well, we can reverse that: the story is both inevitable (because we know exactly where it's going in that we've heard it all before) and yet is surprising because if it's an engaging story told well, it takes on a life of its own in our imaginations and we are then caught up in it all over again.

Those are the stories that quicken our pulses.  Those are the stories that bring us joy all over again.  Jon Hassler didn't let their non-existence lessen the reality of Frank and Libby for him.  Good stories create a kind of reality in which one can immerse oneself.   But if that is possible in the fictional realm, how much more so with true stories of the faith?   Our knowing how they all turn out is no excuse to not let those stories live in our imaginations--and in our worship--in ways that properly startle and delight us every single time.

Churchward Turns

Understandably enough, the world's attention last week centered on Rome and the elevation of a new pope.  Shoot, I'm not even Catholic and I had CNN's "Vatican Chimney Cam" on my computer last week Wednesday afternoon and then, sure enough, out came the white smoke.

It was intriguing stuff and so perhaps we can all be forgiven for not spending as much time last week on another elevation of sorts when Fuller Theological Seminary announced its new president, Mark Labberton.  I suppose Mark can henceforth refer to his presidential announcement as having come in a highly historic week!   I've had the chance and privilege to know Mark a bit these past few years and congratulate him on his new post and the honor that rightly accrues to him by achieving this.

But I note Mark's appointment on this blog because I see this as a curious trend of the last few years.  It began when Western Theological Seminary named Tim Brown as its president some years back and this was followed in 2010 by my own Calvin Theological Seminary naming Jul Medenblik as its next president.  Since that time Princeton Theological Seminary hired Craig Barnes after Iain Torrance retired and now Fuller has named Mark Labberton to succeed Rich Mouw.

The trend of which I take curious note here is that each of these four would likely self-identify as much as anything as a preacher, a pastor.   True, Brown, Barnes, and Labberton have all taught at the seminary level and Medenblik was an active member of, and then president of, the Calvin Seminary Board of Trustees for many years.   But if you look at the careers of all four, they made their biggest marks not in academia per se but in the church where the four have collectively many decades' worth of preaching experience.   Medenblik came to his presidential post directly from 16 years of being a church planting pastor of what is now a large congregation in Illinois.   Brown initially went to Western to teach preaching following also his long tenure as preacher at a very large Michigan congregation.   Barnes pastored several congregations over the years and was still serving as preaching pastor at a congregation in Pennsylvania when Princeton hired him.  And Labberton--although he has been teaching preaching the last nearly four years--spent the sixteen years prior to that as the preacher/pastor of a Presbyterian congregation in Berkley, California.

Four such appointments may not constitute a statistically significant trend, and both Western and Calvin are modest-sized seminaries in the grander scheme of schools in North America.  Still, might the appointment of longtime and highly experienced pastors/preachers signal an overt desire to convey to students a desire to focus on the practicalities of ministry?   Again, each of the four men I have highlighted here have academic credentials beyond an M.Div.: Brown has a D.Min., Medenblik a J.D., Barnes and Labberton both have Ph.D. degrees.   But they are people of the pulpit more than of the classroom, pastors who walked with people through life's varied valleys more than scholars who have devoted themselves to colloquies and meetings of this or that academic guild.  (But please note: I have nothing against career classroom teachers or academic guilds of various stripes--we need those people and those entities too.   Nor in noting this trend do I in any way wish to convey the idea that past presidents who were not longtime pastors did not also have a concern for ministry preparation for their students.   I am casting no stones here, just pondering these developments!)

As my own seminary has been going through a re-branding process, it is clear that seminary students today really do still want a top-flight theological education, and a student would indeed receive such formal training very well at all of the schools I've mentioned.   But when talking to students and prospective students, it becomes clear almost immediately that they hope to meet up with teachers of many different backgrounds but including those who have walked the talk by having been pastors themselves and who know what it takes beyond the formation of the mind to form the heart for active ministry in this hurting, broken world.   Especially in Homiletics, students gravitate toward those who understand from the inside the grinding hard work involved in making new sermons every single week, including in the same congregation over a long haul of ministry in which most preachers eventually worry "I think they've heard everything I have to say by now!"

Time will tell whether this trend continues as well as, I suppose, how the appointments of pastors/preachers as presidents shape these various institutions.   As someone who cares deeply and passionately about the preaching that takes place in the church today--and as one of great throngs of people who know keenly how much this world needs sensitive pastors to minister to people's hurting hearts these days--I am hopeful and optimistic about this "trend" such as it is.   And I hope the Lord will richly bless and keep blessing the presidential ministries of Tim, Jul, Craig, and Mark and many others beside as we and they all together keep on letting the Spirit use us to equip women and men for ministry in Christ's Church.

Wolf Calls

Ever since Star Wars was in the running back in 1978 when I was 14 years old I have watched the annual broadcast of the Academy Awards.  In recent years I confess that it's rare if I've managed to see even some of the top-nominated films but still I settle in each year for the marathon show.   Johnny Carson was classy and funny as a host and Billy Crystal usually put me away with laughs.   I liked Whoopi Goldberg and thought Steve Martin had his moments.   James Franco, Anne Hathaway, and David Letterman were duds (the latter being the only real surprise).   All of which brings us to last week's show and host Seth MacFarlane.  Some of his schtick with William Shatner was amusing and I chuckled when he said the next presenter (Meryl Streep) needed no introduction and so did immediately just walk off the stage without mentioning her name.

Aside from that . . . well, aside from that Mr. MacFarlane was crude.  Some loved it, especially the legions of MacFarlane fans who somehow find equal delight in his other work where women are routinely insulted for their size or height or where various female body parts are referred to the way middle school boys would talk.   As the evening wore on, Mr. MacFarlane's stock-in-trade humor and way of speaking about women clearly took hold as late in the show a staff member for the satirical newspaper "The Onion" let fly with a Tweet that referred to the 9-year-old Oscar nominee Quvenzhane Wallis with a sex-related word so awful I won't even obliquely refer to it here.   (It should probably be illegal to refer to a minor that way.)

Call it bad comedy momentum.   Or call it what it really is--and which is the only reason I am writing this particular blog--bad cultural momentum.  The next day "The Onion's" CEO released a letter of apology and, like many people, when I read it, I wondered "Is this a joke, too?"   When you spend your life crying wolf (or in this case making crude wolf calls at women), then when some day you want seriously to address a problem, well, it's hard for others to take you seriously.

Mr. MacFarlane's brand of humor--and the Academy Awards knew full well what they'd be getting when they signed this person--is so relentless in a certain direction that after a while it's no longer a joke.  It becomes the way people--especially young men--think.  Sure, they can still get their buddies at the bar to crack up when they use MacFarlane-esque language to refer to women but just below the giggles is a sadder truth: they no longer know any other way to talk.

Humor is a great gift--I would argue it is a great gift of God.  The Bible has more humor in it than we typically notice.   Used well, the human mind can make puns, spy irony, or give some situation a quarter turn that will bring legitimate mirth to other people (and laughter really is the best medicine a lot of the time).    But always there is that warning from Paul in Ephesians 5:4 about how in the Christian community there should be no "obscenity, foolish talk, or coarse joking" because, Paul says, these things are simply "out of place."   They have no proper place among God's people recreated in the image of Christ.

These days it becomes harder and harder to say to someone "You're out of line."   There is a sense of entitlement in our society that can be seen on most every Comment stream following articles in the NY Times or on CNN's website.  People let fly with any old thing they want to say on Facebook postings and the comments on such postings and to tell these people that their comments are "out of place" or that they themselves are "out of line" would likely incur just a blank stare.

I wonder if in the Christian community we can take Paul's injunction on coarseness in our humor seriously enough so as to do a thorough assessment of whether it's right to let children--or to let ourselves as adults--watch MacFarlane fare like Family Guy or his crude movie Ted.   I wonder if we have the courage to say that many things are not only not funny they are so far out of place among us that if we don't draw some boundary lines, our own young people (and our own young men in this particular case) will arrive at the day when they find they can speak about some people or about women in no way other than out-of-place ways.

And maybe, despite my 35 year run in watching the Oscars, if they keep getting hosts like MacFarlane, I will need to turn that off, too.