Category / Scrawled

Things written for the quiet, instead of for the crowd.

by geoffparker

Vitality or Threat?

An interesting interview between Reinhold Niebuhr and Mike Wallace from back in the day… I’m struck by the sense of existential threat that permeates their discussion. At one point, they discuss America’s current fear of either communist conquest or nuclear destruction.

Given the recent memories of the violence and evil of WWII, and the presence of this sense of continuing conflict, is it any wonder that churches were full at this time, and that participation in church was at its height? Such a great threat on the minds of so many would seem to be a pretty compelling reason to be in church. When we locate the “golden days” of American church in the 1950’s, are we white-washing the outside cultural influences that led to that period? It would be as if someone tried to attribute the increase of church-going in the months after September 11th to an inexplicable improvement in Sunday-schools during that period of time. Existential threat always leads to existential engagement, church programs rarely have anything to say to that.

My point isn’t to “debunk” these periods as important for the church, but rather to suggest that membership has always been a suspect way to measure vitality and success for church communities, and that to achieve vitality we should avoid dreaming up “golden days” that didn’t exist, and yet we long to “return” to, either in our culture or our churches. Churches (and other houses of faith) are indeed a great place to ask questions as a community and a people when we face existential threats… but I think true vitality comes when we help each other face the myriad tiny threats and rewards of life, as well, and its here that I think we have to engage our future, our imagination, and our energy.

by geoffparker

The New Membership – Aggregation for Media and Church

I’ve been thinking a lot about the implications of the NY Times fight over the Pulse news aggregator for iPad. If you’re not familiar, the rough idea here is that the Times has made an attempt to have Apple remove a new RSS news application for violating the Times’s online terms of service. The problem, of course, is that the reader is one of several that simply collect the information that the Times publishes on its public RSS feeds, and allows readers to view it (as it is on the web) in a small browser. It’s not clear exactly what the Times Company’s objections truly are here, but they seem to be around the facts that users might not experience the Times as they mean to present it (presumably because of the fear of ad revenue losses, though the ads are actually rendered in Pulse’s browser), and the fact that Pulse is making money by selling an app that presents NY Times content.

There are parallels between the struggles of new media and new church. Both are diverse institutions that have previously thrived on “membership” as their primary driver of their work. To start with, I want to talk about the communications problem: the fear that modern aggregation of information is destroying the intended identity (and hence revenue stream) of our institutions.

Newspapers such as the Times depended on subscription models that they haven’t been able to translate to the web. The Times seems insistent that there is an animal called “A New York Times Reader.” This was previously true… and easily defined: a NYT reader was someone who found such value in the content (and in a subtextual way, the curation of content) that the paper provided, that they paid to have the paper delivered to them. At most, these readers likely only subscribed to a local paper besides the Times.

In objecting to the use of the Times’s content in other applications, the company suggests that they are sure that this class of people (“NYT Readers”) exists, and still wants to experience the whole of the paper as the company and nytimes.com curate and compile it. They have good reason to, in fact: that’s how they sell advertisements to people. They claim that they reach a special category of consumers who can only be reached through the New York Times. This is at the center of their complaint about anyone “repackaging” their content: you lose the curation that has defined the Times in the past.

The problem lies in the fact that users of the nytimes.com are now comfortable curating for themselves. No self-respecting person in our world today would be able to claim to be well-informed after only receiving their information from one website. Instead, they piece together a stream of information from multiple sources, of which, hopefully, the Times is one. The shift in thinking for the industry is realizing that there is no one category of “NYTimes Reader” anymore. There are instead: “The Technology/Bits blog subscribers”, “Maureen Dowd readers” , “Sports Section readers”, etc. Rather than one big ship, the majority of readers more accurately view the Times as a flotilla of tiny boats that are always — roughly — moving in the same direction. Interacting with these readers happens on a very granular level.

The same is true of churches in the modern-day. Millennials are curating their church lives by aggregating their experiences. They may do mission work with the local UU church. They may relish in the quiet of a high-church compline service. They may identify with the social justice stances of one denomination, but thrill at the liturgy of another. They may worship one place on a Sunday morning, and some place vastly different on a Wednesday evening. This often causes frustration on behalf of churches, because all of these sidestep the basic unit that has defined church life for the past several centuries: membership. Churches, much like media, have been certain that their role is to provide holistic spiritual homes for people… that there is a “1st Church of the Assumption, Plano – member” class of people. In this view smaller numbers of members means that either people are no longer interested in being part of that class (which they may call “secularism” or blame on stances the church has taken), or that the message just isn’t getting out.

All of this means that we have to start providing our content – both church and media – with the assumption that aggregation is the new membership. We cannot continue to operate as giant tanker ships, but rather, must work as well-coordinated fleets of tiny vessels. Churches in particular must fight our urges to drive membership by assuming that all people who participate in one program want to participate in them all. How can we be more comfortable with — and be a welcoming community to — the couple that wants to participate in missions to the homeless, but has no desire to join the crowd at Sunday worship? How can we share our “members” with multiple congregations: between different worship traditions, services, and activities in our daily lives? (Ecumenical work is no longer a “nice thing to do,” it is a requirement for those churches that wish to survive… but more on that later.) Perhaps the hardest question remains: how do we deal with the risk and flexibility required to support ourselves financially when we have a decentralized notion of what a “dues paying member is?”

by geoffparker

Home and Food.

I have officially graduated from Yale Divinity School. I have driven over 1800 miles in three days. I have finally moved into the apartment that my wife and I have kept in Austin for the last year. It has, all in all, been a fabulous, joyful, and exhausting time. I have to say, I’m struggling with learning to be at rest now. I still wake up early, filled with a bit of anxiety about what comes next. (What we actually hope will come next: at least two months of real “down time.”) Added to this has been a deep desire to claim this home of ours as a real home for me. Austin, though admittedly hotter than any place should ever be, feels like home. (Though this may be only because it also is home to the lovely lady that I so rarely have gotten to live with, regardless of its very limited ministry opportunities for me.) I woke up this morning and pondered for the first time what life would be like if I never found a settled pastorate, which is indicative only of how easily I can be sidetracked by self-doubt.

Regardless, we are indeed finding a pattern to life here in the Parker household. We’ve set up my workspace, gotten settled enough to run in the mornings from time to time, and enjoyed the simple act of cooking and eating together. Part of that joy has been falling in love with Antonelli’s, our local cheese monger. It’s a husband and wife operation (our age), and so we enjoy going to visit them to try new things, and laugh, and “hm” appreciatively as we listen to the stories of the foods they collect for us.

One of the things I think I will miss the most from my divinity school experience is the large group of seminarians there who have fallen in love with doing deep theology around food and feeding, so I am glad to have this little place where I can be with people who are clearly enriched spiritually by feeding others, even if they don’t use theological language about it. As far as our house goes, we are glad to finally be able to open up our house to people on a regular basis for food and conversation. Some of the grad student population here at UT quite simply does not eat as much as they should, and some simply need a place that can be a hearth-place, a comfortable place for fellowship and time together apart from the demands of the outside world. Anyway, it feels good to do some of that work, whether it remains a ministry simply of food, or something akin to the house/dinner-church traditions that I’ve experienced up north.

by geoffparker

Rainer Maria – Make You Mine (Live)

The band that I miss the most on any given day. The video is authentic to the experience of seeing them: cramped quarters, bad sound, lots of teenagers (and Geoff) screaming along.
Something that I often ponder as listen to the sounds of a crowd almost overwhelming the band: in what ways is this “worship-like” if not worship? Now, it lacks intentionality of doctrine, or purpose, or what have you according to my “Christian Professional” categories, and I think it’s important to say that while Caithlin is wonderful, they’re not worshipping her… but to the lived experience of emotion, community, and connection of those kids in the crowd? It seems like they’re singing their guts out in the joy of song and singing, and not just because it sounds pretty. We do a lot of calling people “unchurched” in my business. We may have to start realizing that plenty of people do some form of “worship” quite often. The role of clergy folks is to learn to translate between our words and songs and rituals and those of the people around us. As a liturgy nerd, its important to occasionally put aside my own judgments about what liturgy is and isn’t, so I can look at what makes various communal actions compelling and engaging.

by geoffparker

The Trouble-making Part.

In terms of my ordination process, I have cleared another big hurdle. The New Haven Committee on Ministry voted to recommend me for Ecclesiastical Council (the last big step short of finding a church). It was a pretty serious discussion that we had, one that made me think about a lot of things. I realize that I’ve been wrestling with a lot of theological ideas in my head that may not be the most relevant issues to others. So, it was a very good thing for me to re-center myself and prepare to present myself and speak about my call to the New Haven Association in full.

One question that leapt out at me, and has been occupying my mind ever since. My central image of the church: “God’s Good Trouble-Makers Living in The World,” led to the question: “Do you really think that people are coming to church for that? To hear how they might cause trouble?” A fair and a good question.

My joke reflex kicked in at the time. I said, “Well, one can hope.” Then I continued on with a complex answer that softened things a great deal, and went to how we should be self analytical about our lives and how we are living in connection with the gospel. I talked about affluence and comfort and how those things fit into my conceptions of Jesus’ ministry. At the end, though, I feel like I wasn’t truly myself at that moment.

I went home, and I picked up my bible. I read the stories that move me… there is Jesus, talking about knocking down the temple, telling stories and parables that make people tear at their hair, upsetting all sorts of social boundaries… Why are we afraid to say it? Why are we afraid to say that this was a ministry which found its center in creating deeply unsettling re-imaginings of the world? How did our comfort–not in a deep, existential way, but in a shallow, rote way–become a necessity of our religious expression? The former I feel should always be an expression of church: REAL comfort is so absent from our existences that offering it is trouble-making all its own. The latter: well, that’s just so much furniture for our faith, isn’t it?

Someone asked me to talk about a time I experienced failure in my ministry. I said, just the days that end in “y.” Because of this. Because in the battle between our need for justice and our desire for comfort… well, too often we know who will win, long before we even reach that particular fork in the road. I want to lead amongst a church of people who want a fair fight, at least. I’m still working on how to say that, though.

by geoffparker

Hauerwas and Aloneness

Aloneness from The Work Of The People on Vimeo.

Stanley Hauerwas gets it oh so right. It’s a classic ordination interview question: “Why did Jesus have to die?” For me, it’s because God, responding to our own suffering and death, endured the same so that it might be said: “You are not alone, even in death. Even in the worst of it, there am I with you.” Writers that I respect deeply have written about death from an atheistic viewpoint (Roger Ebert most recently). Some of them have said that they are quite content to die and know that there will be nothing after, no eternal time with loved ones or friends. I certainly don’t believe in a duplicate copy of being (just with wings! like RedBull!) as the shape of heaven… that seems sad to me, certainly, but also besides the point. The real salvation moment for me—the real hope—is not the moment after death, but rather the moment of death, the instant (or forever time) between living and dying. In that time, it will be profoundly important for me to be informed by a faith and assurance that I am not alone. In that time we find out a lot of who we are and who we have been, and still we find we are not alone.

by geoffparker

Oh yeah. School.

Classes are settled:

Biblical Theology of Walter Brueggemann (Dr. C. Sharp – Bible)
Intro to Christian Ethics II (Dr. F. Simmons)
Pastoral Care for Young Adults (Rev. Dr. K. Leslie and Rev. C. Isabell)
Death and the Dead (Dr. F. Gordon – History)

I’m psyched, though the schedule seems to keep slipping around on me.

by geoffparker

Starting up again, gender, guidance, and voice.

The semester is off at a great clip. I, of course, celebrated by going to New York for the weekend. And by having a lock-up over how behind I am, you know, in my life. I’ll get over it. Next action, check. Next action, check… and before I know it, I’ll have yet another degree and an imposing job hunt.

Merlin went off on a Pixies and Breeders kick today on his personal site… music that is just inside me, and has been since I was a kid. I think about this a lot: that for a male musician, all the music that I have written or just “heard in my head” had the voice of this under appreciated generation of women in rock and roll from the 80’s and 90’s. The Deals, Kim from Jawbox, Aimee Mann, etc.

While reading through a book about young adults and identity, I came across a whole bunch about the distinctive male-ness and female-ness of various identity development narratives. (Men: Journey/Independence, Women:Integration/Connectedness). It just didn’t ring true for me. Listening to “Gigantic” again, I remembered a teenage feeling that Kim Deal wasn’t a bad role-model at all, and that I wanted to make music like she did, much more than Frank Black.

I remember a professor in college saying something about how she loved a group of poems I had finished because it was like hearing someone figure out how to be a man using poetry. Maybe in my head alone the tone suggested: “it’s like hearing a squirrel invent jam using a graphing calculator.” Nonetheless, I found an authentic voice for myself, one that may please or not on any particular day… but one that was mine for the writing.

As I get to the end of school, I’m asked to again figure out a voice for myself, this time in ministry. Again, the role models are all these tough women who have found their way in the church, sometimes with resistance… just like the women of rock and roll I pay attention to. Again, my integrative task is find my voice in ministry that honors the guidance that they have given me, and that isn’t a clichéd version of what people expect of a “male minister,” (whatever that means.) I don’t know if this has been a process I’ve been highly attentive to, but today I just pondered on it as I smiled and was thankful for women that rock.