Where the Psalms Meet Heavy Metal

I've come to believe that even heavy metal is kind of like praying the Psalms, where you are crying out in a loud voice and moving through moments of great passion.

Those are the surprising words of renowned Chicago violinist and one-time prodigy Rachel Barton Pine. Besides being a Bach fan, Pine is a speed metal devotee. She had her dressmaker sew the logos of Led Zeppelin, Rush, ACDC, Anthrax, Metallica, Megadeath, and Slayer on her violin case. (Check out her album Stringendo: Storming the Citadel for a taste of her string interpretations of headbanging rock.)

On second thought, Pine’s comparison between the Psalmist’s cries of anger and anguish to metal music shouldn’t surprise us. Chicagoans will remember that when Pine was 20, the rising star’s violin case got caught in the doors of a Metra train. She was dragged some distance and one leg was severed by the train’s wheels.

I’m sure that both those metal bands and the Psalms connected to the emotional hell of her period of accident and recovery. I met Pine earlier this year at the University of Chicago’s Rockefeller Chapel where we were both participating in a performance of Franz Joseph Haydn’s The Seven Last Words of Christ. I offered the spoken meditation on “Into thy hands I commit my spirit,” and Pine played in the string quartet. Haydn’s music also touches the deepest moments of anguish and suffering. Violist Richard Young, who has been playing the piece for decades, told me after the performance that Pine had captured the work’s spirit perfectly.

Pine talks about her faith in God and its place in her music in a wonderful human-interest piece by Chicago religion journalist Judy Valente. The piece ran on this morning’s "Religion & Ethics Newsweekly." If you missed it, you can watch the video on their website.

The closing words belong Rachel Barton Pine:

The one thing I've learned is that the way to get through challenges is just to ask God not to change what's happening, not to make it OK, but just simply to be with me, be with me in the worst of times and to be with me in the best of times.

Related links:
Rachel Baron Pine
Religion & Ethics Newsweekly
The Vermeer Quartet
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Jesus Creed vs. Out of Ur: Emerging Church Lives

A few days ago, a staff-written post for the Out of Ur blog operated by Christianity Today’s sister publication Leadership declared the emerging church “dead in nomenclature—if not in spirit.” (See “R.I.P. Emerging Church: An overused and corrupted term now sleeps with the fishes.”) The anonymous blogger began by talking about the death of the term “emerging church,” but before long seemed to suggest that the movement itself was over. “As the emerging church rides off into the sunset,” the writer said, new networks were taking its place.

The blog post irritated a lot of folk, not the least North Park University professor Scot McKnight.

Early, very early, yesterday morning (12:30 AM, to be exact), McKnight posted a response to Out of Ur’s insinuations on his Jesus Creed blog. Ur seemed to say that not only “the word ‘emerging’ was dead but also the emerging church … Tommyrot!," Scot said.

You can feel the heat of Scot’s vehemence.

Scot took a deep breath, counted to ten, and then explained. Terms don’t make a movement. And terms don’t end a movement. And Scot is really, really tired of explaining all the terminological nuances within the phenomenon called “the emerging church." He has certainly been one of the most articulate observers of the movement.

As he explained in his 2007 Christianity Today article, there are five major streams that flow into Lake Emerging. People swim in different streams, some (like Scot) in more than one. If the term is dying, the currents are still there. If it isn’t Lake Emergent, Scot and friends will still swim in Lake Whatever. People are forever doubting the usefulness of labels like "conservative," "fundamentalist," "evangelical," and "feminist." After a while, all movement labels carry excess baggage. They create general impressions that often do not fit the people who are conservative, fundamentalist, evangelical, feminist, or even "emerging."

Nevertheless, Scot says, a lot of young church leaders are rightly concerned about the evangelical turn to neo-fundamentalism, and they are looking for ways to present a perishing world with a holistic gospel.

Scot admits (as Out of Ur suggested) that a new network is being born, but it is “not a sister/brother alliance” of Emergent Village. It's not there to take the place of the emerging streams. Instead, the new network will focus on evangelism, a dimension that has been weak in some emerging churches. Scot and friends are building the new evangelistic alliance on the foundations of the classically evangelical and seriously holistic 1974 Lausanne Covenant. That's a good place to start, because doctrinal questions and rumors that circulated around Emergent and emerging have weighed down some noble efforts. The Lausanne Covenant is as sound as doctrinal statements come. The new network shouldn't have to rebut rumors about flawed doctrine.

Scot promises to reveal more details of the new network soon. Read his entire reply to Out of Ur here.

Forget labels, do ministry.
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Early-Bird Conference Savings Extended Just a Few More Days

Here’s an opportunity to save some money and advance God's kingdom at the same time.

Earlier this week, Northern Seminary president Alistair Brown announced an extended deadline for the early-bird registration for the Ancient Evangelical Future Conference.

That reduced price of $94 saves you nearly $50 off the full price of $140. But that reduced price is only good until Friday. Take advantage of it here. (If you're a student, you can save even more.)

I expect the conference to be a challenging, stretching, inspiring, enabling time for those who care about what God is doing through the church. Here’s the description of speakers and topics I posted earlier:

Discovering Your Church’s Missional DNA
Rick Richardson, director, masters in evangelism & leadership, Wheaton College
§ Missional is the new code word in the theology and praxis of ecclesiology. But how do we become genuinely missional and not just rhetorically missional?
§ Rick Richardson will help you understand what God is doing in restoring the missional identity of the church, and where your church—with its unique missional DNA—might fit.

The Good, the Bad, and the Ridiculous: The Church Visible
Jenell Paris, professor of sociology and anthropology, Messiah College
§ We need an authentic common sense approach to connect the AEF Call to “take seriously the visible character of the church” with what can be observed in the everyday life of our congregations.
§ Jenell Paris will help you think about how your congregation incorporates the good, the bad, and the ridiculous. She will help you consider the unique stories of your congregation, and how those stories fit with the larger story of the church.

Can the Church and Capitalism Get Along?
David Fitch, founding pastor, Life on the Vine Christian Community and prof. of evangelical theology, Northern Seminary
§ Despite the benefits they bring us, capitalism and consumerism distort the church, its fellowship, its spiritual formation, and its mission. How do we shape a community of Christ that is in capitalism, but not of it?
§ David Fitch will offer some basic practices we can adopt to protect our churches from being squeezed into capitalism’s mold.

Tracing the Church’s Journey
Howard Snyder, prof. of Wesley studies, Tyndale Seminary; former prof. of history & theology of mission, Asbury Seminary.
§ The twists and turns, the highways and detours, of the church’s journey through 2000 years of history and a slew of cultures clarifies our present challenge.
§ Howard Snyder will help you think about how that journey will help your congregation effectively come to grips with its own story and mission in light of “God’s narrative” and the biblical story.

Preserving the Church’s Story
D. H. Williams, prof. of patristics & historical theology, Baylor University
§ If the church forgets its story, it will be shaped by the world’s stories. We can easily lose our identity and our mission.
§ To prevent such loss, the ancient church developed a systematic approach to Christian education. It aimed to preserve its message by teaching its story. Because many of its members were illiterate, the church’s message had to be preserved in the minds and hearts of its members. Read more!

Conference Preview: The Church, the Continuation of God's Narrative

I am getting increasingly excited about the third annual conference on the Call to an Ancient Evangelical Future, coming up October 9-11.

In the past few days, our speakers have given us glimpses into what they’ll be sharing with us. I think you’ll find this material thought-provoking and equipping for ministry.

Check out these previews:

Discovering Your Church’s Missional DNA
Rick Richardson, director, masters in evangelism & leadership, Wheaton College
§ Missional is the new code word in the theology and praxis of ecclesiology. But how do we become genuinely missional and not just rhetorically missional?
§ Rick Richardson will help you understand what God is doing in restoring the missional identity of the church, and where your church—with its unique missional DNA—might fit.

The Good, the Bad, and the Ridiculous: The Church Visible
Jenell Paris, professor of sociology and anthropology, Messiah College
§ We need an authentic common sense approach to connect the AEF Call to “take seriously the visible character of the church” with what can be observed in the everyday life of our congregations.
§ Jenell Paris will help you think about how your congregation incorporates the good, the bad, and the ridiculous. She will help you consider the unique stories of your congregation, and how those stories fit with the larger story of the church.

Can the Church and Capitalism Get Along?
David Fitch, founding pastor, Life on the Vine Christian Community and prof. of evangelical theology, Northern Seminary
§ Despite the benefits they bring us, capitalism and consumerism distort the church, its fellowship, its spiritual formation, and its mission. How do we shape a community of Christ that is in capitalism, but not of it?
§ David Fitch will offer some basic practices we can adopt to protect our churches from being squeezed into capitalism’s mold.

Tracing the Church’s Journey
Howard Snyder, prof. of Wesley studies, Tyndale Seminary; former prof. of history & theology of mission, Asbury Seminary.
§ The twists and turns, the highways and detours, of the church’s journey through 2000 years of history and a slew of cultures clarifies our present challenge.
§ Howard Snyder will help you think about how that journey will help your congregation effectively come to grips with its own story and mission in light of “God’s narrative” and the biblical story.

Preserving the Church’s Story
D. H. Williams, prof. of patristics & historical theology, Baylor University
§ If the church forgets its story, it will be shaped by the world’s stories. We can easily lose our identity and our mission.
§ To prevent such loss, the ancient church developed a systematic approach to Christian education. It aimed to preserve its message by teaching its story. Because many of its members were illiterate, the church’s message had to be preserved in the minds and hearts of its members.

* * *

The conference is fast approaching, so register right away.
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The Three Little Pigs and the Life of Faith

Public radio raconteur Garrison Keillor grew up fundamentalist. So it was not surprising to hear him say in a recent News from Lake Wobegon segment (the quote is about 13 minutes in):

I used to think that faith was sort of like a building block, and you’d put all these blocks together, and you’d build a house sort of like the little pig built that the wolf could not blow down.

When I heard these words in Keillor’s comfortably weary voice, I thought of several friends who had grown up fundamentalist—including Bob Webber. Keillor’s metaphor (the brick house of the three little pigs) is defensive. It was a fortification, a bulwark against big bad wolves.

Webber also used defensive language when he described the theological system he picked up in his education and carried with him into his early years of teaching. Here are sentences and fragments from the opening chapter of Evangelicals on the Canterbury Trail (1985).

… I was being swept away into evangelical rationalism…. Christianity was no longer a power to be experienced but a system to be defended. … My study of the Bible now turned into a defense of its inspired authorship.

… I was asked to teach a class called Christian Doctrine. Here’s my chance, I thought, to give them the goods, to show them how rationally defensible the Christian faith is and how reasonable it is to believe in the Christian system of things. …

I also thought I could rationally defend the Scripture as God’s mind written ….

I derived a great deal of security from my system. …

Keillor and Webber shared a defensive notion of faith as their starting point. The next step for Keillor was surrender.

I used to think that faith was sort of like a building block, and you’d put all these blocks together, and you’d build a house sort of like the little pig built that the wolf could not blow down. And now I get older, and I feel that faith is a matter of surrender. (Italics supplied)

Webber recalled his frustration in trying to prepare a chapel sermon for Wheaton College students, one that would deliver the answers Christianity had to offer to the questions of a world in despair. But Webber found the answers he knew so well to be “so cold, so calculated, to rational, so dead.” He crumpled up those pages of his sermon manuscript and threw them into the wastebasket.

I dropped back into my chair and sobbed for several hours. I had thrown away my answers. I had rid myself of a system in which God was comfortably contained. I had lost my security …

Both Keillor and Webber believed in a defensive faith that gave them a sense of security. Both Keillor and Webber abandoned a defensive posture and left the security of a system. But then their stories diverge.

Keillor again:

And now I get older, and I feel that faith is a matter of surrender. It’s a matter of just giving up and just leaving that house, of just walking out and experiencing the cold and the rain and doubt and confusion and trying to keep up your hope and some sense of gratitude. If you just keep up hope and gratitude, maybe that’s all you need.

Keillor replaces brick-wall security with stepping out into a cold, rainy, doubt-filled, confusing world, while (presumably by sheer will) “trying to keep up your hope and some sense of gratitude.”

That, of course, raises questions like these: Hope for what? Hope in what? Hope in whom? Gratitude for what? Gratitude to whom?

Webber also left the secure system. But his leaving was about seeking God. And that did not mean aimless wandering while willing yourself into hope and gratitude. Instead, Webber began a purposeful search and immersed himself in the study and experience of worship.

While the world may be cold and rainy and confusing, Webber discovered that abandoning the security of his defensive theology brought him into a greater community. His house, he discovered, wasn’t the only one. There are many mansions. There were people he hadn’t seen while living defensively. By leaving his secure box, not only did he experience God, he met others who experienced God: especially the venerable fathers and mothers of the early church and many contemporary believers whose traditions differed from his but which complemented his.

That is my experience as well. Leaving my little brick house did not mean being attacked by the big bad wolf. It meant discovering other houses, other people, other communities that (to shift the metaphor) presented a rich tapestry of faith.

But that tapestry, both Webber and I discovered, is not entirely woven of rationalist threads. Some of its fibers are images. Some are songs or poems. Some are inexplicable experiences. Some are miracles. Some are mysteries. Woven together they present us with a picture, an icon, of God. They do not contain God, but reveal him in glimpses. And that is something that brick walls can never do.

* * *
Be sure to register for the third annual Ancient Evangelical Future conference, October 9-11, featuring Dan Williams, Howard Snyder, Janell Paris, Rick Richardson, and David Fitch.

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Rescuing the Lord’s Prayer from Sentimentality

First, a word of explanation: I use DVD movies in 30-minute segments to distract me while I daily exercise my creaky body on my creakier classic Nordic Track ski machine.

On a recent Saturday morning, I finished watching a vampire movie (or what seemed like a parody of one) and began watching Ken Curtis’s Reflections on the Lord’s Prayer for People with Cancer.

The contrasts between the two movies are many, but I want to focus on a few important things. In the vampire movie (as in all vampire movies) Christian symbols like the cross and holy water are treated as magical talismans against the evil power of the vampires. In some vampire lore, you can destroy one of those undead bloodsuckers by holding up a crucifix and reciting the Lord’s Prayer. These are regarded as potent weapons, but not for any particular reason. They are on the same level as garlic and sunlight as tools for defeating vampires.

Curtis, the founder of Christian History magazine, doesn’t want us to think of the Lord’s Prayer as a talisman—as something that, if we keep repeating it, would magically keep the cancer at bay. Instead, he treats the Lord’s Prayer as one of God’s ways of helping us see the world differently, see it through God’s eyes. When we understand in our depths that we are commanded to address God as “our Father,” understand deeply that God is our Father, we see the world differently precisely because we know we are not alone.

The classic vampire movie will include at least one scene in which the potential victim is isolated, caught alone in a dark alley or dank cavern or some other place where her screams will not be heard as she comes face to face with the thing that threatens to drain her life from her. Cancer is a vampire that catches us vulnerable and alone. It drains away our life and eats away at us.

In the classic vampire tale, there is also a rescue. At the crucial moment when the vampire is about to feed on his victim, the hero arrives, armed with knowledge and a crucifix and holy water. The message is this: If you’re alone, the vampire will get you. But if you’re with the hero, you’ll be safe.

Curtis wants us to know we’re not alone, that we’re not waiting for the hero to arrive, but that the rescuer is always with us. And we see that by seeing the world through the words of the Lord’s Prayer.

Near the end of his life, when cancer was eating at his pancreas, Bob Webber once again wrote about the importance of seeing the world in the framework of God’s story, not our own. The point is explicit in the title of Who Gets to Narrate the World? (IVP, 2008). But the same point runs through all his writings. Whether he is writing about worship or spirituality or evangelism or theology, Bob stressed that in a properly conceived Christian life, we don’t read God’s story through the lens of our own, but vice versa.

Here for example, is how he put it in The Divine Embrace (Baker, 2006). The fundamental error in medieval mysticism occurred when the focus shifted from God to self.

Spirituality, which was once a contemplation of God’s saving acts, now contemplated the self and the interior life. What was once a journey into God became a journey into self. … [S]pirituality now focused on the experience that occurs inside ‘my story.’ … God’s cosmic story of redemption was exchanged for the drama of redemption that takes place within me, which is different from witnessing to God’s saving acts, which embrace me and I in turn embrace. [51]

Curtis makes the same point about the relationship between our story and God’s. He shows his viewers a Tom Clancy novel. Here’s a 1200-page novel, he says. He rips out a page and holds it up to the camera. This is your life, your story. You can tell some things about the larger story from it, but you can’t really make sense of them unless you have read the whole novel.

Your story only makes sense when you understand it as part of God’s story, as part of his plan to extend his rule over on everything in the cosmos.

While standing on the Via Dolorosa in Jerusalem, Curtis highlights the radical nature of praying for God’s kingdom to come. In the section of the video titled “The Prayer That Could Get You Killed,” he says:

This prayer for God’s kingdom to come and his will to be done is nothing less than subversive. … Think of the implications in Jesus’ time. And incidentally, they’re just as incendiary today. The Roman Empire … ruled with an iron fist. For a peasant carpenter from up in Galilee to come here and teach his followers to look and pray for another kingdom, that could easily be seen as seditious and treasonous.

Well, not just “seen” as seditious. It was and continues to be seditious and treasonous, as the early Christian martyrs found out.

A few other things I appreciated about Ken’s video:

* He stressed the communal nature of the Lord’s Prayer—both its history as a communal prayer and the implications of the first person plurals in the prayer itself: "Give us ... Forgive us ... Deliver us ..." We’re not in this (the cancer) alone, but can have others interceding with us.

* He chose to shoot the “forgive us our sins as we forgive those who sin against us” segment of the video in front of the infamous security barrier that walls out Palestinian terrorists along with all the productive Palestinian workers and former Jerusalem residents who need to commute regularly from Palestinian territory into Israel. The wall is a potent symbol of the enmity that can only be healed by the mutual forgiveness the prayer teaches us.

Kudos to Ken Curtis for producing a video meditation on the Lord’s Prayer that taps into its revolutionary nature. Cancer sufferers (for whom he produced the video) and all the rest of us do not need to sentimentalize these familiar words. We need to feel the radical intimacy with which Jesus framed the “Our Father.” We need to see the grand subversive vision embodied in praying for God’s rulership. We need to experience the humility that can lead to restored relationships. It’s a grand prayer, and Ken has helped to rescue it from sentimentality and familiarity.

* * *

Don’t forget to register for the Ancient Evangelical Future Conference, October 9-11, 2008.
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