Unity Doesn't Mean "Unity"

There's been a lot of talk about unity lately.

After a brutal presidential campaign full of rancor and discord, President Biden in his inaugural address called for unity. He spoke it an as an answer to our woes:

A cry for survival comes from the planet itself. A cry that can’t be any more desperate or any more clear. And now, a rise in political extremism, white supremacy, domestic terrorism that we must confront and we will defeat. To overcome these challenges – to restore the soul and to secure the future of America – requires more than words. It requires that most elusive of things in a democracy: Unity.

After the House of Representatives voted to impeach former President trump for his part in inciting the insurrection at the United States Capitol, some GOP leaders opposed the impeachment saying it would deny the need for unity.

The truth is, I'm inclined to believe one party over the other when I look at their track records on unity and caring for the common good.

But I wonder what both parties mean when they say, "Unity."

There are 7 Billion people on the planet, 330 people in the United States. We live on one planet in one galaxy amid trillions of galaxies. People are diverse. The universe is complex and diverse.

If "unity" means agreement or likeness, it's impossible. And if unity means subsuming minority views or values to the will or ways of majorities, then it is wrong.

If, on the other hand, unity means recognizing that we are all--gay, straight, bi, Black, white, brown, old, young, left, right, poor, rich--a part of one giant whole of life, then I say, Yes.

Unity does not mean sameness. Physicists in search of a unified theory of the universe are instead seeing complexity and diversity. We live in a cosmos full of both light and dark--both are beautiful and needed. Life as part of the whole means that we recognize, protect, honor, and celebrate the singularities that make up the whole.

This view of unity has practical and vital applications. For instance, white Americans must recognize, protect, honor, and celebrate the experiences, realities and gifts of Black Americans. White supremacy (which at its worst means destroying Black lives and at its "best" means wanting Black Americans to become like white Americans) is antithetical to unity, is antithetical even to full life in the universe.

Unity is not sameness or simplicity. It is certainly not supremacy of any one person, nation, people group, or culture. Unity is a celebration that all of life part of one cosmic reality. 

Don’t get married. Just live together. (Part 5 of Five Modest Proposals for Post-Covid Churches)

This is the last of a five-part series of suggestions for churches after the Coronavirus pandemic.

  

Modest Proposal #5. Don’t get married. Just live together.

Pipe down, No-Sex-Before-Marriage and Family-Values crowd, this isn’t what you think. And besides, evangelicals crawling into bed (metaphorically!) with Donald Trump have pulled the rug out from under your bully pulpit. But that’s a different story.

This proposal is for churches, not couples or throuples or any other human configurations.

Proposal Number #5 is that churches should give up their individual buildings and share spaces.*

The church I serve has a fantastic building, situated on a lovely plot of ground. We could use more parking, but the building is pretty, spacious, and well-located. We are fortunate. It’s also expensive and time-consuming. We spend more on our church building, lawn, maintenance, repair, and cleaning than we do on any other thing. And honestly, we only use a very tiny portion of the space when you map out the time and rooms that we use each week.

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Less than a half mile down the street from us are two similar congregations—an Episcopal church that has ample parking and spacious building and a Lutheran church with an intriguing, welcoming mid-century modern building. All three buildings were built in the mid-1900s. None of our congregations fill the buildings to capacity. All three churches spend a lot of time working with tenants and outside groups to fill the building and to pay for upkeep.

What if we shared space? We don’t have to merge into one congregation. We could just co-exist in one building. Why do we have three large, lovely rooms (our sanctuaries) that are used by our congregations for a combined total of about three hours per week, not to mention all the other rooms?

And beyond shared worship space, what if we shared copiers, wireless providers, electric bills, trash removal services? Do three churches need three dish washers, three HVAC units, three pipe organs?

“But what about…?” “And when would we…?” “And do you mean sell…?”

Yep, change. That’s what I’m proposing. It’s not easy.

This pandemic is inviting us to see the world in new ways, to seriously question our old ways, to eagerly explore new ways.

How will change when this pandemic is over? I don't know. But if we go back to normal, we’ve failed.

*An excellent example of shared religious space is the Tri-Faith Initiative in Omaha, Nebraska, where Jewish, Christian, and Muslim communities are co-habitating on a plot of land.

Stop begging for Sunday School teachers. Start training farmers. (Part 4 of Five Modest Proposals for Post-Covid Churches)

This is part four of a five-part series of suggestions for churches after the Coronavirus pandemic.

Modest Proposal #4. Stop begging for Sunday School teachers. Start training farmers.

The pandemic has exposed huge food insecurities in this country. People are afraid to go to the grocery store. Supply chains are cracking. Piles of eggs and vegetables are going to waste and not getting to tables. As the economy wobbles, some people can’t afford groceries. The meat industry is blubbering.

Churches have land, green space, yards.

What if every church in America turned their available green space into a farm?* (And this proposal is a great place for mosques, temples, and synagogues to join in.) Green space doesn’t need to be an expansive yard. It can be a courtyard, window sill, or a container garden.

The church I serve pays thousands of dollars a year for a landscaping company to tend and mow our yard. It’s nice. Green grass, azaleas, boxwood hedges, some indigenous plants. It feels pretty English garden-y.  

What if we plowed under the grass and grew corn, beans, potatoes, strawberries? Beets and kale and spinach and watermelons? Arugala, lettuce, okra and peas?

What if we grew food all over our church property and gave the produce away to local food pantries?

What if we quit teaching Sunday School to children and had adults farm with kids instead every week? Sure they could sing songs while they dug in the dirt. “For the Beauty of the Earth” would be great. And they could talk about Bible stories—how the scriptures say God created a beautiful garden where everything was good, what a Promised Land feels like between your fingers, how wheat and grapes come from the ground and make their way to Jesus’ table.

Sure, it would be a mess. Sure, it would be dirty. Sure, some kids would be terrible at it. Sure, some adults would be awful farmers. Sure, it would take more than an hour on Sundays. (Church time is not limited to that, btw.) Sure, some Sundays it would rain or snow. (And those are still good days to go outside. Or to sit inside and mend tools or plan for the next season. That’s all part of farming.)

So that’s Modest Proposal #4 for post-Covid churches. Stop begging for Sunday School teachers and start training farmers.

*If you’re interested in a community of faith that’s doing this take a look at Farm Church in Durham, North Carolina. 

Burn the Pews for Firewood. (Part 3 of Five Modest Proposals for Post-Covid Churches)

This is part three of a five-part series of suggestions for churches after the Coronavirus pandemic.

Modest Proposal #3. Burn the pews for firewood.

I don’t really mean this. You don’t really have to burn the pews. You could sell them at a rummage sale. Or give them away. Or, maybe you could just turn them to face each other. (But if  you want to burn them, okay, I guess.)

Here's what I mean by proposal number three...

For the past several weeks our congregation has been meeting via Zoom. A large part of our communal time is people sharing joys and concerns. People are talking. And we can see each other. Face to face. We can hear each other. It’s intimate, it’s personal. It’s up close. Sure, we’re spread out, but we connect better this way.

The church I serve meets in a lovely edifice. Beautiful. Georgian architecture, built in 1948, copied after a quaint New England building of the 1700s. The sanctuary is grand and firm and dignified, with crisp lines and wide windows and sturdy wooden pews. The acoustics are great for a choir, so-so for preaching, and not-go-good for other things.

We sit on the hard slabs of wood and stare at the back of each other’s heads. When church attendees share joys and concerns, probably one-third of what people say is lost. It can be awkward. Honestly, it’s been fine. Until Zoom.

Now we know what it’s like to see each other’s faces, hear each other’s voices, connect in closer and new ways.

Going back to pews in lines, with muffled sound and blocked vision, may not seem so intimate, so communal.

So, that’s Proposal #3. Burn the pews. Or take them out and replace them with chairs. Or turn the pews so that they face each other across the center aisle. While we’re at it, what if we invited the choir down from the loft so they could be closer to the rest of the congregation, moved the organ to a place where the organist feels connected? What if the preacher climbed down out of a pulpit that’s six feet above contradiction and simply talked with people on a human level?

Believe me, I know the push back that will come from this suggestion. The church I previously served voted unanimously to be open to and affirming of LGBTQ persons. That was a fairly hot button social/theological issue. And we hung together. That same church group had a tie vote—a legit 50/50 split—on whether or not to replace the pews with chairs. Getting rids of pews was divisive. 

Change is hard right?

* Here's a time lapse video of National Cathedral removing the chairs. It gives you an idea of how space may be used differently.

Quit preaching crap. Start preaching real shit. (Part 2 of Five Modest Proposals for Post-Covid Churches)

This is proposal number 2 for how churches may change after the Coronavirus pandemic.

Quit preaching crap. Start preaching real shit.

In Modest Proposal #1, I suggested, “Quit preaching. Start praying.” I don’t really expect that to happen. Preachers will keep preaching. If that’s the case, here’s the second proposal: Quit preaching crap and start preaching real shit.

Yeah, yeah, “language.” I know I said shit.

Here’s what I mean by crap and shit. During this pandemic stay-home time, I’ve listened to a few other preachers around the country. I’ve heard some very fine sermons. And I’ve heard some crappy sermons.

The crappy one seems to fall into two camps. The first are the unimaginative, “Things are bad. The virus is awful. I know you’re sad. I’m sad too.” Those points are legit. Just unimaginative. We all know that. And adding, “But I have hope and we will make it through,” to the end doesn’t redeem the crap.  Sermons stuck in the present sadness are boring crap.

A second camp of crappy sermons are the ones that plunge ahead as if the Coronavirus wasn’t happening. Trips down the Emaus Road, walking through doors with doubting Thomas, and other biblical and theological ponderings with no nod toward real life. Sermons that avoid life are nonsensical crap.

Both kinds of crappy sermons fall short.

What the world needs are sermons that deal with real shit—insecurities, pain, loss, ideas for re-imagining the world, grace for how we’ve fallen short, vulnerability, and vision.

According the prophet Malachi, God had a harsh word for some of the priests: “I will reject your children and spread shit on your face, the shot you bring to worship. I will send you away from me.”*

That's what Malachi says God said, “I will wipe shit on your face.”

The Hebrew word for shit is peresh. It’s only used six times in the Bible. We mostly translate it dung in English, and that’s fine. But it really means shit.

God is pissed at the Hebrew priests because they’re being silly in the face of catastrophe, so She says She’s gonna wipe shit on their faces.

Here’s why I’m using the word shit. First, to get your attention. Second because that’s what the Hebrew word peresh meant. Third, because that’s how the Hebrew words peresh was used—the Hebrews were in a mess fighting over their future. It was no time for niceties. Shit was getting real.

That’s how life is now. Churches don’t need to spend time dilly-dallying over what kind of bread to use for communion and who can hold whatever bread we decide on. We need to worry about how to feed starving people. Preachers don’t need to diddle with how Jesus walked through a door to say hey to Thomas. We need to help folks be brave enough to reach out in love to their own neighbors who are trapped in fear.

So, preachers, quit preaching crap. Start preaching real shit.

*If you want to read a bit more about shit in the Bible, about the prophet Malachi, or about a theology of swearing, go to this website, A Game for Good Christians, which include this stellar passage:

"In the midst of this we find Malachi's words, wherein God says that He is sick of the two-faced worship and hypocrisy from the spiritual leaders. That He will reach into the sacrificial animal, remove its lower intestine, sigmoid colon, rectum, and anus, to drain them of feculence. Upon which The Almighty Himself will take said excreta into His divine hands— not trusting this ordure duty to an angel— (heh heh, duty), and then smear the egesta, the guano, the discharge, the excrement, the flux onto the astonished priestly faces."

Quit Preaching. Start Praying. (Part 1 of Five Modest Proposals for Post-Covid Churches)

This is part 1 of a five-part set of proposals for how churches could change after the Coronavirus pandemic.

Quit Preaching. Start Praying.

I’m a preacher. And a dang good one. (Or at least I think so, as do most preachers.)*

Preaching is not what the world needs—at least not now, and at least not from in-person church gatherings.

We have enough preaching—right-wing televangelists, left-leaning TED talks, college lectures, archives of recorded sermons (my own included), oodles of books with sermons from the past. We can watch and listen to and read those sermons forever I suppose. If you want preaching, have at it.

What people crave from church is connection, is sharing life.

During this “safer-at-home” time of the Covid-19 pandemic, our church is gathering via Zoom.

We listen to good some music, either live or recorded. We read scripture and maybe some poetry. My colleague or I preach (because old habits die hard). And then people are invited to share their joys and concerns. And they share and they talk and they chat and they nod and they smile. And they write sad news and share happy thoughts in the chat box. And sometimes they go on too long. And sometimes they mix announcements or politics in with their joys and concerns. And it’s beautiful and vibrant and human. And vital.

People need connection, not lectures. Not even well-crafted, theologically-adept, rhetorically-soaring lectures called sermons. (And certainly not crappy lectures called sermons. More on that in Modest Proposal #2.)

People need connection. I entitled this proposal, Stop preaching. Start praying. And I’ve talked about the intimate act of sharing joys and concerns, highs and lows, roses and thorns—whatever you want to call it. To me, that is prayer.

By prayer, I don’t mean words tossed out to beg God for something. I don’t mean supposedly holy words designed to please some Other-Worldly Being.

To me, when people talk about their pains, their fears, or their worries, they are opening themselves to—and identifying with—the swirling chaos of the universe. That is prayer. And when they share birthday wishes, good news, or a small thrill, they are adding to the beauty and wonder of creation. And that is prayer.

That’s what the world needs—more vulnerability and more beauty.

So that’s my fist modest proposal: When we’re able to go to church in person—less preaching, more praying.

*I’m joking about being a dang good preacher. Or am I? Most preachers are weird about their preaching, blending arrogance and humility. Forgive us.

Five Modest Proposals for Post-Covid Churches - Introduction

This is the introduction to a five-part blog series.

Five Modest Proposals for Post-Covid Churches

Some day this pandemic will end. Some day we will go back to "normal." And if we do go back to "normal," then we’ve failed. We don’t need "normal." We need new. New social safety nets, new healthcare systems, new political structures, new communal leaders, new respect for science, new relationships with each other, new economic realities, and more.

I think schools will change. I think office cultures will change. I think fashion will change. I think how we use our time will change. I think a lot will change after this virus. Again, if we don’t change, we’ve failed.

I’m the pastor of a church. A good liberal, caring, smart church. And sometimes we get stuck in our ways. So I’ve been thinking about how church should change. (Again, if we don’t change we’ve failed.) I’ve got lots of ideas on how churches may change. Big ideas, small ideas. Ideas for my local congregation, Ideas for communities of faith that are like mine—regular, white-columned, red-bricked, solid, choir-in-the-loft, flowers-on-Easter, do-good-in-the-world kind of churches. I'm sharing five ideas.

These ideas may also work for evangelical mega-churches or for tiny rural churches. These changes may work for synagogues, temples, and mosques as well. You can probably stretch out these changes for PTAs, neighborhood groups, and some businesses. I’m saying these are proposals for churches, but if these changes make sense for your group, then have at it.

Each proposal is about one-page (or 450 words) long. You can click on the links below to read the five proposals. Or if your attention span is really short (like mine is) these days, here’s a one-sentence summary for each modest proposal.

ModestProposal #1. Quit preaching. Start praying. 

• Sermons as one-way lectures need to die (or shrink), and people need to have more time for really sharing life together. 

ModestProposal #2. Quit preaching crap. Start preaching real shit.

• Whiny sermons and over-smart sermons need to die and churches need to wrestle--in real language--with real problems.

ModestProposal #3. Burn the pews for firewood.

• People need to see each other's faces faces and be able to hear each other's voices, not sit on lines where they only see the backs of other people's heads.

ModestProposal #4. Stop begging for Sunday School teachers. Start training farmers.

• Churches should start using lawns, window sills, and container garden to grow vegetables. 

ModestProposal #5. Don’t get married. Just live together.

• Churches should give up their individual buildings and share space with other congregations.