Blogging Ottinger (tim)

I am tired of the church as an institution and religion as a nice add-on to a fulfilling life.

I’m in the early part of Oayk Kiyus Netzger’s Consuming Jesus (which has its own web page; a fact that somehow bothers me), subtitled Beyond Race and Class Division in a Consumer Church.

I have also been listening to more of the RZIM podcasts that have been stacking up. In one Ravi Zacharias sermon, he said something to the effect that Christ didn’t come to make good people of bad ones, but living people of dead ones. He went on to explain “alive to God” and “dead to God.” I don’t do his word justice here.

Today I crack open Metzger’s book, and on page 28 he recalls Boice’s concerns that the evangelical movement somehow lost the plot and has become preoccupied with “success, wonderful marriages, and nice children” in addition to being fixated on “numerical growth and money.” Here again, one wonders what the Christ had in mind. There’s nothing wrong with being a good person, or having a nice marriage, raising good children, or being successful and influential. Better yet if all these are true of you at the same time. But none of these are primary concern of the church, nor of the Christ.

People talk about the church today as an institution, an organization, or a charity. The church is a political force. The church is involved in what adults can and cannot do. The church helps you have a happy family (note that Christ never married and had no children and no home), it helps you be successful at work, it helps you raise your children with good hobbies and habits, it does charity work in the inner cities and outer jungles. Religious belief may help you feel good about yourself and about those around you. It might help you feel more emotionally stable, and maybe make it through the day. But that is all nothing, and less than nothing.

The church properly understood is a mechanism for bringing people into a relationship with the God, through His son Jesus Christ. It rightfully will cause people to be concerned for their behaviors and to change many of them. It rightfully will turn the concerns of people toward helping others near and far. It rightfully will provide better examples and alternative ways for Children to express themselves and grow. Following the wisdom in Proverbs may help one be successful. But those are side-effects only. A church may grow or stagnate, and in either case be within the will of God and its higher calling. Success, influence, power, and popularity are not the fruit of the spirit nor listed among the spiritual gifts. Life is seasonal. Sin (the mindset and emotional tendency) and sins (particular bad choices) may still ravage individuals and families. There may still be rough times and financial setbacks.

I suppose my point is that the Church is not TM or EST or a self-help organization. Religion, including the Christian religion, is not the answer to our problems. A more affluent church with happy, wrinkle-free, conflict-avoiding members won’t transform the world or save itself. Church is not an add-on to make ones life more productive, successful, or happy. It may have the opposite effect at times.

Christian religion is not an add-on. It is a change to the underlying axiom of our lives, a change to the system of thought and activity so that we no longer live for success, productivity, success, or political power but to ever deepen the connection with our God and to reflect His values and compassion to the world. Instead, through this relationship we must learn to do justice, love mercy, and walk humbly with our God. We seek first His kingdom and all else will follow, whether to happy families or lonely service.

I wish that this were better understood inside the church and outside. It would not make us more popular, I think, but would at least let us be more truly understood and help us more truly understand each other.

Got the album today. I decided to do a quick first impression of each song. Note that even if I read the lyrics, I’m never entirely sure what these songs are about.

I am not unhappy with the album by any measure, and I’m happy to have these songs in my collection. The album is easily worth the price and the anticipation. Edison Glass has such a wonderful way with layering rhythm, instruments, and voices and their arrangements and instrumentals are always excellent. I hope that this album does very well, indeed. While I was a little disappointed with the way the second half trailed off to softer and softer songs, there are plenty of high points in the 12-song project. I think that the album will provide me with a lot of enjoyment in “random shuffle” mode as well.

I will likely return to this post with more thoughts as the album has time to settle in, and especially as it merges into the regular rotation. It’s a very good sophomore project. My recommendation is “buy”.

I saw something Kent said in a mailing list, and wanted to put it here for reference (and because my friends would appreciate it).

When secrets are easy to keep, keeping secrets is a power position. When
secrets are hard to keep (as they increasingly are), keeping secrets becomes
a position of weakness–you never know when someone is going to reveal what
you have been hiding. When secrets have a short half-life, transparency
becomes the power position […]

This is something that has a strong resonance with things I have learned. I have nothing to add to this.

A friend pointed me to this bit at wikipedia:

It used to be, everyone was entitled to their own opinion, but not their own facts. But that’s not the case anymore. Facts matter not at all. Perception is everything. It’s certainty. People love the President because he’s certain of his choices as a leader, even if the facts that back him up don’t seem to exist. It’s the fact that he’s certain that is very appealing to a certain section of the country. I really feel a dichotomy in the American populace. What is important? What you want to be true, or what is true?…

Whether you are a fan of the president or not, look at the argument being made: “What is important: what you want to be true or what is true?”

Here well-meaning relativists have been telling me that there is no right and wrong, no true and untrue, and every person should decide for himself (or herself) what is truth and what is not. I’m usually told that after hearing of some ethically gray or dark behaviors, after uttering “that’s not right.”

So imagine my joy at reading such an appeal for a True kind of Truth, not for a personally-determined standard of right and wrong, but an appeal to something bigger and more reliable. Ah, maybe when the comics turn against relativism, the fight is nearly won.

Imagine that you have three visitors come to your door. The first is from the Biography channel, where they’ve suddenly run out of celebrities and want to run stories on normal, workaday people. He’s trying to determine the overall feel and timbre of the story according to three profiles they frequently use. He needs to know whether to interview you as a hero, a tragedy, or a criminal. He’s clearly judging your life, even if there is a chance he will be sympathetic with you story. He asks which of your faults and sins you want to have exposed.

The second visitor is a life coach. He isn’t here to pass judgment but he does want to hear a list of your failings and weaknesses so that he can provide a program and hold you accountable for improvements in various areas. He’s reputable and discrete, but you know that he’s going to make you work to get better. He wants to know which of your faults and sins to start on first.

The third visitor is Jesus Christ, and he only asks what sins you would like to have forgiven.

If you’re involved in a church in the past few decades, you have been touched by Willow Creek Community Church in one way or another. They have been the church growth experts, and churches seeking growth have been following this large and influential thought leader. There is a new development in the Willow Creek story. Apparently, their growth plan worked very well, but with unintended consequences.

I have never been to Willow Creek. I hear it’s quite nice, and certainly a mega-mega-church. They managed to grow not only a very large congregation for the Chicago church, but also a very large reputation as experts in how to “do church” in current times. WCCC has been a mecca for pastors who want to reach out to a population, a generation, a community and do good for their communities. Sadly, there is a foundation problem with the approach.

I don’t want to kick Willow Creek for having succeeded in ways they really didn’t plan to succeed. I want to applaud their leaders for a truly significant and heart-rending act of leadership: they publically stated that their plan was not working for them. Tell me that didn’t take grace and heart. I might suggest the term “heroic.” Given influence and reputation, they could have tried to keep it quiet. Instead, they lay it out where you can see it. That’s guts.

An act of humility and leadership deserves grace and forgiveness and perhaps some hearty applause. In this one public statement WCCC has moved into a realm we call “the dying church” (in a positive way, read the site to get the jist of it).

Good on you, gentlemen and ladies.
God bless.

If I were to re-title this book, it would be “Christians: Are We Playing The Right Game?” Telford Work is tearing down and rebuilding the church right before my very eyes.

I have long had a cognitive dissonance about the church (the little-c church on earth, as opposed to the Church with a capital C), especially how it seems to be continually pulled into the ways and means of the world. It is not that I understood it well enough to cast it in words, but there was something nibbling at the corner of my consciousness in church participation and church business.

In the first half of his book, Work spent time dissecting the creeping Constantinianism in the church, and his words resonated with my experience.

Today, in a chapter titled The Mercy of God I find this interesting bit:

Wherever the Messiah journeys, things around him simply cannot go on as before. […] Hostility inevitably results, from both the “good” who respect our world’s consructed boundaries and the “wicked” who violate them.

It struck me (finally, after all Telford W’s hard work) that they’re both playing the wrong game. They’re both caught up in the rules, on one side or another. Suddenly Romans 8 (which we’re also exploring in morning worship and also adult Sunday school) is visible in sharper resolution.

Again, I’m reminded that perhaps we’re playing the wrong game. We shouldn’t necessarily be growing through marketing and media blitz and measuring ourselves on attendance and building programs and seeker-friendly social clubs. While we need to be seen, and we need to be friendly, and we need to be social, and we need a certain amount of income to maintain the physical manifestation of the church, these are not the things that matter. They aren’t the things that the Christ taught, and they’re not the things he did.

This is a different world, a different game, and a different end-game. Our power plays are from Micah 6:8, not from popular business models. Our is to do justice, love mercy, and walk humbly with our God. Ours is not to counter the culture, nor to own it, nor to invest in it. Our tools are mercy and grace, for “where there is bitter envy and selfish ambition, there is disorder and every evil practice” (James 6:8). We’re not about competition, coercion, or assimilation. We’re not about accrual of income, land, membership, or influence. Ultimately, we need to be about good news for the broken people all around us, and including ourselves.

Not that we’re not to do well. I also remember Wesley’s words to “Make all you can, save all you can, and give all you can.” It’s okay for us to be participants in the world’s systems, but we need to remember that ultimately that is a means to an end, and not an end. We don’t want our church to grow so that it will be bigger and have more money. The little-c church is a means to an end also. It is a means for fellowship, instruction, aid, kindness, and support: primarily to give them, but also to receive. Somehow, I don’t think the question we’ll answer at judgement is “how many square feet in your sanctuary?” but rather we’ll give an account for our faith and character, who we were and what we did for those who needed us in our lifetimes.

I have a lot to think about. Perhaps we need to quit winning (or losing) the wrong game.

My most recent (non tech) reading project is Ain’t Too Proud To Beg, subtitled living through the Lord’s Prayer. The author is theologian Telford Work (an unusual name, to be sure). The book is not even 300 pages long, but I’ve been taking a long time getting through it. It’s rich, and so I must take small bites in small sessions, and sometimes have to mull and reread.

The book is inspirational, but it’s not “Inspirational”. Books and music titled “Inspirational” are typically trite emotionalism sanctified with the occasional scripture reference (sometimes taken in context). Instead Work has a definite edge, and takes an eyes-open approach to the subjects. It is a thinking book, not just a feeling book. From the intro:

Crafting chapters that begin in my own experience and culminate in the Lord’s words might be popular […] but it would make Jesus my public relations representative, not my King. I do not want to give readers the impression that Christianity is just a name for one’s mental attitude or outlook.

I knew I was into something different. I have learned a lot in the first half of the book. Work is well-educated, and has taken me on a tour of things I know only a little about. I’ve had to play catch-up. This is another break from the easy casual “inspirational” style of “Christian Living” books you tend to find in popular bookstores. This book will challenge you instead of stroking your hair.

What it is about, so far, seems to be about the Kingdom of God and Holiness. It refuses to accept God as “a vehicle of the self.” The following anthemic chorus (from P103) is something I’m meditating on now:

We — we peoples of the world, but also we Christians much of the time — have spent the last two thousand years doing what we had been doing before: trying to turn the world God gave us into the world we want, the people we were made to be into the people we would rather be, and God from the the Lord we have into the Lord we prefer. This is the pattern in the chaos of American Christianity. Constantine is not the villian; we are.

The book follows the structure of the Lord’s prayer, and is a sort of series of articles on the otherness that is represented there. There are a few whippings (like the two mentioned above) but it’s not a book of accusations. It deconstructs to reconstruct, and reconstructs brilliantly on a better foundation.

I have found it beneficial.

This came to me in response to a different posting, but I thought I’d put it here.:

So, although I’ve read many of your articles I do have to wonder: what is your stance on Christianity and commercialism?

I believe (though I believe many other interpretations are possible) that the Bible does not - in any way - forbid charging for product. (I know, I know, that the Bible describes our Lord chastising the temple hawkers, but this does NOT mean that capitalism is BAD.)

So I’m genuinely interested in your stance: what’s so bad about paying for Windows?

There is so much to this. Some of it is my Christian stance, some of it is practical or pragmatic, some of it is purely emotional. There is more “me” in this than maybe you will like.

On commercialism:

• There is nothing wrong with a Christian also being a businessperson. He should be a certain kind of business person, but can be successful in a commercial setting. The trick is that he should do business ethically at every turn, and should choose his partners carefully. I would disrespect a “Christian business” that had partners in organized crime, pornography, or other questionable areas. Realize that the success of the business is not an indicator of God’s approval, nor is the failure of the business a sign of wrath. Businesses succeed and fail for lots of silly reasons.
• If you use Windows, you should pay for it. I’m not into “robin hood” advocacy, or the “they deserved it” defense. I am not against paying the price of the things you use, but I do have concerns. Those will follow.
• I have definite feelings about commercialism in the church. Simony is an offense that bothers me a lot, and so is the act of trading on your church membership to make more money. Likewise I despise the whole “revival in a box” thinking that includes the “certified Purpose-Driven” thing. The Church is not a marketplace (hence the moneychangers).
• It bothers me when the church is run as a commercial business, measuring their success not by spiritual but commercial indicators such as attendance, buildings, cash, and pastoral salaries. These are not how Christ did things, and while they are not wrong neither are they the indication of God’s favor. A large church that loves and serves the Kingdom is the same as a small church the loves and serves the Kingdom. Selfishness is the problem, not the answer. We aren’t selling something, aren’t trying to beat out the competition, and aren’t trying to be successful in order to win the world’s praise. We have a different mission.

Now as to the whole windows in the church thing, I have a few problems with it.

• Opportunity cost/Stewardship: is it the best use of tithes and offering to buy windows and windows software (including Office and even software development tools) ? Would OpenOffice and Linux or BSD suffice, saving the money for more important needs? Remember that churches exist on whatever money the congregation deems to give, and they always want to see it put to use in helping others and spreading the good news. Microsoft products require more and more hardware and provide less and less performance. The “upgrade treadmill” makes them very successful, but what makes them successful is not what makes us successful. I’m not sure that the yearly cost for for hardware and software upgrades is our best choice.
• Reputation: Is Microsoft the kind of business you want as a partner? Do they have the ethical background? In my view, they do not have the kind of history that we should support. Bill is getting better all the time, but Microsoft seems to me to be a scofflaw and a poor citizen in many ways. I’d feel better if we used something else. Note that in the list of “fruits of the spirit”, we don’t see “commercial success”. While MS success is awesome, it is not in itself a virtue nor does it make the means of success virtuous.
• High Maintenance Agreements: Microsoft licensing has difficult rules and requirements. If a church is to use Microsoft software, then they should abide by all the terms of the agreement (just as they should abide by all the terms of any other contract they enter into). Have you read the agreement? If you run Windows, you really need to be sure all your uses are carefully policed. Other operating systems have very simple terms requiring very little monitoring and freely granting the right to copy and modify the software. You should look at a comparison of the MS EULA and the GPL. You should also be vigilant and read what various astute detractors have said about the little surprises lurking in the EULA.
• Practical issues: Windows doesn’t work very well. It’s well-known that a typical windows PC will slow down to a crawl in 6-9 months after purchase. There are tricks one can use to keep it running well (mostly involving buying more and more software, increasing the cost-per-cpu), but it just “runs down” over time. Some windows experts even recommend wiping out and re-imaging your system every 1-to-2 years. My best windows boxes worked because I eliminated (as much as possible) all IE and Outlook and used only third party (open source) browser and email apps. I messed with the virtual memory settings to get a fixed-size page file. I added commercial anti-virus, firewall, and adware management. I got a third-party disk defrag. I downloaded memory defraggers, uninstallers, registry defraggers and cleaners, and other performance-managing software. I limited the software that could be loaded. If we only ran the browser, email, and some accounting, and we kept up on all the upgrades, and ran the performance tools often enough, and had constant watch on vulnerabilities, we didn’t see much degradation in performance in the course of two years (after which I converted the box to Debian rather than stay on the upgrade treadmill). If you have to shore it up with so much additional software, is it really a good operating system?
• Ease and freedom of installation: Microsoft doesn’t provide anything like the Debian apt repository, where you can pull in tens of thousands of software titles with a simple gui (or command line) front-end, complete with dependency management and automated upgrades for the whole box.
• Freedom to copy: If I copy Windows onto a second computer (even on my kids’ computers or in the childrens ministry area), I am a criminal. If I copy linux or BSD, then I’m legally and ethically entitled to do so. I don’t have to police the EULA, I don’t have to send money to anyone (though I can if I like).

So my basic premise is that if you can in any way choose not to use microsoft, then it makes sense not to use Microsoft for your church. If you do use windows, you should certainly buy or download all the software it takes to control it and you must be sure that you understand your EULA and live in compliance with it, and you simply must ensure that you are legally entitled to all the use you make of it. Use microsoft products most scrupulously and with my blessing, but don’t get sloppy about it and risk a loss in a BSA audit, and don’t leave yourself open to bot nets and the like. Be very, very careful.

Oh, and beware. Recent licenses include a clause that you will not work around any shortcoming in the product. If it doesn’t work, you will simply deal with it. That seems a little crazy to me, but you can make your own decision.

I played my acoustic guitar for church yesterday. I haven’t played acoustic in a very long time. I played it through a crate CA15 Cimarron acoustic amp looking rather a lot like this one:


I was really impressed by this amplifier. I had another available to me, but I thought this one sounded better with my guitar. It almost sounded like a Taylor instead of an Ibanez. Thanks to Danny for the loan of his amp. Thanks to Crate for making a very fine and very affordable amplifier. We mic-ed the amp, which worked rather well. I can unreservedly recommend this to players looking for small-venue amplification and to other players who can’t afford a Fishman Loudbox or a Roland AC30 (or better)

Our regular acoustic guitar player/lead vocalist/music minister was out of town. I only took over acoustic guitar duties, not singing and leading. In the few years since I sang last, I’ve fallen totally out of practice and am having pitch problems as well as tonality problems. I can’t keep it out of my nose. I need to either learn to sing or quit entirely. Right now, I’m mostly on the “quit” side of the fence. I am sticking to musical fingers for now. Anyway, I was in Texas and unable to practice on Wednesday so I had to pretty much pick up the set with a cold start during our Sunday morning runthrough. There were two new songs, and one of them was a worship song and hymn medley. It was a lot of “new” with the acoustic guitar, new songs, and amp. We also found out that our bass player would not be there. That left drums, piano, and me. Still, we all adjusted and did pretty well. I was feeling confident.

On the other hand, we found that the offeratory was supposed to be an instrumental by the band. We didn’t have one. My wife was on piano, and was playing through “Spirit of the Living God”, a beautiful hymal chorus. It was so beautiful I knew we had to do it. We were trying to figure out what to do when it hit me that Danny (on drums during the worship set) could pick up the other acoustic guitar and we could do the whole thing on acoustic guitars. I would comp/chord, and he would take melody and riff on it a bit. We did a quick partial run-through, and let it go.

Most of the songs were in guitar-friendly keys like A or G or D. I was pretty comfy with them, and wasn’t feeling the bruising of fingertips or the strain in my wrist. Later I was seriously wishing I had a capo with me. One of the songs was in E flat, and I was barring like mad at the 3rd fret to play it as if it were C. It took some finger-picking and a little pinky finesse and by the end of the second chorus I was really feeling the burn.

It became a bit of a nightmare in that E flat song. When you don’t play acoustic guitar for a while, it isn’t just the fingertips and wrists that suffer. The strings can be a little old and experience some pitch dynamics. That’s a nice way to say that the G and B strings both started going flat on me. At first it was fine, but the longer the song went the worse the strings sounded. It was noticeably off by the bridge. I was trying to bring it back in, but my ear is lazy and my hands were too eager, and I went sharp, then flat again, then gave up. I tried to play the song through on the lower 3 and tune up at the break. Of course, Libby had piano, and I doubt anyone missed my upper strings. Maybe the power chords actually added punch. Maybe we got through on strength of vocals. Maybe it was a supernatural miracle of hearing. Maybe people just didn’t notice.

I had to do a very quick by-ear tune job before the last song, which was a very sweet song featuring a bit of light finger-picking. It would have been awful if I’d not got it quite back into tune. I wish I’d brought a clip-on tuner with me. Next time, maybe.

The last ensemble song went quite well, and I was able to return to the moment rather than cringing over my strings or aching wrist. We were able to play and worship together as we should. The set ended quite well, and there was such a sweet spirit in the place.

Our final bit was for the offeratory song. It is common for things to come out better live than in practice, because there is so much more feel when the congregation is present. This time it was a little bit of a challenge. While my guitar was finally in tune again, we hadn’t actually tuned the two guitars together. Danny is so professional about this. He kept pressure on, bending the strings up to pitch as he went. I’m glad he was slightly flat and not slightly sharp. Still it sounded very warm, rich, and full. I like working with Danny because I never worry about him. I know whatever he does will sound great. We got through the verse and chorus, and then we each realized that we didn’t work out the ending. That was pretty sloppy of us. Here we are at the end of a very nice song with such a good acoustic vibe, with a solemn and reverent mood over the whole place, and we’re ever so slightly stuck. He looked to me, I tried to motion that we’d go back to the start of the line for a tag, but who knows what that head motion looked like. So I went back to the start of the line, and he followed beautifully and we ended together. Whew.

It was a good morning. There were compliments, but we knew that we’d made it through on grace, silent panicky prayer, and the skin of our teeth. Some mornings are more miraculous than others. We weren’t without challenge, but we were able to focus and work through the songs and carry a message to the congregation, and they joined us in every way. It was truly a fine morning. You should have heard it.