In Defense of the Gymnatorium...

Thanks to all of your positive responses to my last post. These things come out weird sometimes, don't they? Sometimes I spend an entire day trying to construct something that would be meaningful to people, then post it and it kind of falls flat. Other times I sit down for thirty minutes to write about playing MarioKart and get a dozen positive replies in just a couple of hours. You never know.

(That was me trying to lower the bar a bit so you won't expect too much in the future, but still keep coming back on the chance there might be something good.)

I also appreciated John's question and wanted to give it a more thoughtful response than I initially gave.

John said:

So are you saying that you *need* the building? And are you suggesting that a space isn't as holy if it was just previously used as a gym floor?

I'm not trying to be argumentative. I'm just curious where you draw the line on "sacred space" and how far you're willing to take it. I personally struggle to know where that balance is.

One of the great things about getting a bit older is that I have slowly lost the desire to critique and diminish other churches that don't value the same things I value and practice their faith like me. That is, providing that church doesn't spread the poison of spiritual elitism throughout a particular community. (Read: Well, read whichever church you feel fits that description in your community. :) ) It's good to be in a place where you can look at differences and say they are just that-- differences. Not better or worse, just different.

With that said, I think that anyone in a place like Waco with a million churches who visits a few and chooses one, is in a way critiquing all the others. In choosing UBC I was, in effect, saying that the small amount of churches I had experienced here (3), while good in some ways, for me was lacking in some areas. (That's not to say UBC doesn't lack in some areas, as well. I just decided those were not as important.)

I can honestly say, however, that I don't look down on churches who choose functionality over beauty. I also don't believe the two have to be mutually exclusive. There can be something truly beautiful about a congregation who decides to create a space that serves multiple purposes, assuming that decision was well thought out. I know of churches that build cheap and ugly edifices because they feel their money can be better used for mission endeavors. That is beauty. I know of churches that meet in a gymnasium, that is used during the week to reach out to those in the community. That is beauty.

I can read my last post and say "Amen," and I can listen to Tillie Burgin, Director of Mission Arlington and one of my spiritual heroes, preach about how as long as there are people who are trying to Love Jesus and their neighbor and trying to do both together, then it doesn't matter where you have church or what it looks like and also give a hearty "Amen."

I think functionality can be a good thing, provided there is a reason for it. In fact, I may have even given the impression that our building on Dutton isn't functional at all, which would be incorrect. A few years ago we got rid of our old ugly orange pews and replaced them with individual chairs that could be moved around. I was actually against this at the time. I think there's something VERY special about pews. When you sit in pews there is not a barrier between you and your neighbor. There's something beautiful about the messes pews create. It's hard to get in and out. If you drop something it's hard to pick it up. You can't really do anything in a pew without the approval of someone else. Pews make you think of an organic whole while chairs just scream WE'RE A BUNCH OF INDIVIDUALS. Yet, despite my objections the pews went bye-bye and the blue chairs came in, making our room much more functional.

A few months later, the functionality of our worship space made it possible for my close friends Jason and Christy to have their wedding reception in our sanctuary and it was one of the most beautiful, holy, life-giving and affirming experiences I've ever had. Were the old ugly orange pews in the way, I could not have had that experience in that place.

All that to say, "Amen" to functionality and "Amen" to inefficiency. Both speak volumes about who we are and can be beautiful and holy in their own way.

This is Our Story...

"Actually, I think Heaven is probably somewhere here in Waco."
-- Avery Lake, Age 5.

I'm preaching on Sunday, as I do on most First Sundays of Spring Break. Ben said he wanted to talk through sermon stuff with me at the church today. So I went and if you want my honest opinion I'll tell you: I think he was tricking me into finally stepping foot in the building I have not visited since the end of October.

One downside of many of the offshoots of the Protestant Reformation is the belief that what can't be seen-- soul, spirit, mind, heart-- is the REALLY important stuff, and the stuff you CAN touch and feel have value only insofar as they act as a vessel for the invisible things. This manifests itself in church buildings with little to no symbols adorning plain white walls and a lot of talk of "functionality." Your worship space can become your basketball court before it becomes your fellowship hall.

You hear the word "only" a lot when these church buildings are mentioned. The building is not the church, it's ONLY bricks and mortar. (Except when it's ONLY aluminum and screws.) God doesn't care about the place, he's ONLY concerned with whether or not he is getting the glory through the saving of souls. It's ONLY a building. It's ONLY a place.

Yet the rejection of this mindset is one of the first things that attracted me to UBC. The first group of any kind that I belonged to at our church was what was known as Clean Team. Our bare-bones budget allows only for the absolute essentials. So the responsibilities of cleaning and maintaining the building that falls to a paid janitor in most churches are the work of whoever decides to get it done at UBC. This can be terribly inefficient at times, kind of like the gospel, but it prevents anyone from seeing something that needs to be done and saying "Whose responsibility is this?" UBC'ers know never to ask that question because the answer is always "Yours."

Yet a sense of shared responsibility isn't the only thing that makes this "model," stand apart. I knew very early on that the people who called themselves "UBC" took that building that was formerly an old grocery store on Dutton Avenue EXTREMELY seriously. It wasn't ONLY a place and it wasn't ONLY bricks and mortar and aluminum and screws, although it was all of those.

In many ways the church building is as much a part of our story as the songs we sing and the sermons we hear.

If you want to know what our story is I'll tell you about Jesus and his death, resurrection, ascension, and imminent return. I can tell you about Paul and Moses and Lydia and John, the one Jesus loved. I'll teach you the lyrics to "All Creatures of Our God and King" and "Make a Joyful Noise," and in the telling of it all you will know a huge part of our story.

But I'll also take you back to the place I made my first turkey four years ago and began to realize how quickly you can fall in love with a group of people. If you want you can see the sidewalk where Tracey and I first met and I'll tell you about how our friendship opened up a world of new friendships for me and how sometimes living in community can suck ass big time and how sometimes it is the greatest thing in the world, but how it always seems to us to be God's way. I'll show you exactly where my parents were sitting when their theological doors were blown wide open upon seeing what they had previously had no categories for: A female preacher. (Thanks, Ann!)

If you'd like you can see the room where I embarrassed myself by referring to a female as "loose," which also happens to be the room where Josh Carney taught his first Sunday School class at UBC, thereby developing a following second to none. (Gotcha!)

Laughter, prayer, tears, forgiveness, first loves, ecstatic as well as sedate worship are all layers in the great story that building tells.

So is death.

If it is ONLY a building, then my fear of returning to it would be silly. When we all return and feel the simultaneous pangs of joy and grief, it will not be for a holiness that is missing. It will be because for many of us that place is TOO Holy. The Sistine Chapel replica and the Last Supper in black and white with the red apple and the Madonna in the back that exposes so much of our fears and bias and the aluminum siding in the hallways and the checkered room and the nursery where I was when I heard rumblings of an accident, even the new edifices that are just now being constructed-- all these things are part of the Grand Narrative of a little chunk of God's People and spill out Holiness from every crack and crevice.

We didn't talk sermon stuff very much but we did play MarioKaart. Ben, you are a genius. Offering to play a game was a ballsey move on your behalf, and it payed off. I shed a tear while you weren't looking because Kyle's presence and laughter was so thick. It makes no sense that he was not there. No sense at all. But his absence has become as much a part of our story as his presence and what better place to celebrate one and grieve the other than that building on Dutton Avenue, beating each others brains out with Red Turtle Shells and Stars that make you immortal, if only for a moment.

Thanks...

I just wanted to say thanks to everyone who has congratulated me for finishing the Bearathon, and especially my cheering section who seemed to follow me everywhere. It was a great experience.

And just in case you are wondering, yes, I did win with a time of 1:20:45. But apparently none of the pictures taken with me at the finish line reflect that. The clock was messed up and read 2:09:39, so I don't have much evidential ground to stand on when asking for my first place trophy.
_________________________

A Note on My Links

Since I added a lot of new links last week I wanted to spend some time introducing everyone to everyone. Unfortunately, I don't seem to have that much time. But, in case you are wondering, my links divide up into the following categories...

Friends by way of ETBU (and their spouses): Blake, Jason, Christy, Cory, Shane, Aaron, Jeanne (by virtue of her being married to a former ETBU prof,) Mark, Robert B, Nathan, and The Stumbling Runner.

UBC'ers: Harris, Ben, Singleton, Josh, Robert D, Jordan, Crowder, Meg, Adam, Amanda, Janalee, JenA, Katy, Erin, El Mol (Not really UBC'er, but might as well be,) The Ponds, Tori, Ann, Tom, and Mike.

Friends Picked Up Along the Way: Tracey, Myles, Kathy, Mark, Luke, Chad.

So now that you know each other, converse. I do have one pairing I would like to see be blog comment partners: Josh Carney, meet Aaron O'Kelly. I'm going to need to see some good theological sparring from you two.

(By the way, Josh, when I went to your site to copy/paste the link for the previous paragraph, I noticed you had me linked under "UBC's Godfather." Hilarious.)

Just remember, never go against the family.

13.1, Well...

Sometimes hope seems like a song whose lyrics you've forgotten. You know it exists and it is good, but your memory cannot do it justice. Then a friend comes along and helps you remember a line. Together you start to remember it more and more, and pretty soon you are singing and giggling.-- Janalee Shadburn

Ben hit the nail on the head in yesterday's Trib Article when he spoke of how crucial the final words of Kyle's final sermon have become to us. I can't help but wonder how this post October 30 life of mine, and of UBC, would have been different without those words. Would we have felt ok laughing? Would the moments I've spent alone being paralyzed with tears and fears have brought me a sense of guilt and shame, had I not been given permission to grieve by the person whose death I am grieving?

I spent that Sunday night with the kids, away from Waco. The next morning, after no sleep, I drove back into town to help with funeral preparations and to buy a suit. (The joke floating around that day was how, based on what we normally wear at UBC, the Waco suit industry was bound to see it's biggest boom in years.) On my way into town I got a call from Jamie telling me Kyle's Bible and the text of his sermon were still on his desk and that I might want to pick it up. So I went to the church, picked it up, then tried to eat for the first time since Saturday night. I didn't get to, but that's a whole other funny story just waiting to be told. (Or, have I already told it? I can't remember.)

I came home and sat down and started to read the sermon. I had no clue what was in store for me. A lot of times I knew bits and pieces of Kyle's sermons because we'd talk about them. But because I had preached on the previous Wednesday night, most of our conversations were about that. All I knew was he was doing God in the Movies on Garden State. I began reading and recognized the text because he had used it in the God's Will book and much of the conversation about the movie clips were familiar because we had watched the movie together about this time last year and talked about it for several days.

But then, "Live, and live well..."

And it was over. Any composure I had remaining was washed away in a sea of little boy tears, right there in my living room. Here was my best friend writing about the life we should all be living by describing the life he lived on a daily basis, and now he was no longer alive. Those words he wrote destroyed me. They destroyed all of us.

But with the same quickness and fury with which those words destroyed us, they began to put us back together again. What caused so much pain by reminding us what was lost gave so much pleasure at reminding us what we've always been given by our Creator-- Life. Here and Now Life.

We say his words a lot. Our blogs are peppered with the words "Live, and live well," and "Love God, Embrace Beauty, and Live Life to the fullest."

I actually have two big fears about those words. One, that those on the outside of ourcommunityy would see the frequency with which we use them and come to the conclusion that we have turned them into a pseudo-canon, approaching the importance of Scripture in our lives. Or, worse, that our love for and remembrance of Kyle would start to look an awful lot like worship.

If this is your concern, do not fear. Kyle is our Saint. He is not our God. He may have been unorthodox in many ways, but he preached true orthodoxy, and as I have said before, we are Jesus People.

My second, and bigger fear, is that we would talk about Living and Living Well so much that it becomes trite. Cliche'. If Kyle hated anything it was cliches. (And theWashingtono Redskins.) Sometimes overuse can empty words of their meaning and I'm afraid Kyle's words are no different. In fact, I think this principle as at the heart of the commandment not to use God's name in vain. I don't think God cares about us saying "God Damn It!" when we burn ourselves as much as he hates us saying his name over and over so much to where it means absolutely nothing.

But we guard his words not by refraining from their use, but by using them over and over and then actually LIVING THEM! You've read a lot of "Live and Live Well," and "Grieve, and Grieve Well" talk, and you may be getting tired of it. But all over our world people who knew and loved Kyle are OBEYING! So if you are getting tired of hearing these words, drive down I-35 and see for yourself.

We are driving around Waco, TX with our windows down and hand out.
We are wiping the snot off of three years olds, and not getting disgusted.
We are grieving, alone and together, and you'd better damn well believe we are grieving well.
We are sitting together over meals and laughing so hard the food is going up our noses.
We are tasting every ounce of friendship.
We are tasting every ounce of life.
We are recognizing it is all a gift, and we are recognizing the Giver is God.
I.
Shit.
You.
Not.
We are living.

Tomorrow I plan on running 13.1 miles. I started running about a year ago and I started running more after Kyle died. I don't run because I think it's fun, although at times it is. Sometimes I have a big smile on my face but most of the time I'm huffing and puffing like the fat kid I still believe I am. I feel many different things when I run, but mostly I feel Kyle running with me. I remember the time at Texas Stadium when we had to run in order to make it to the game by kickoff and how Kyle, who could smoke me in a race, stayed a step behind me. Moving forward, together.

He's several steps ahead of me now but every step I take tomorrow will be for him, and with him. I won't run fast or finish strong. But I'll do everything I can to run well.

An Open Letter to the Philosophy Section...

Dear Philosophy Section at Barnes & Noble, Waco, TX,

I spent my day moving you. But I guess you already knew that since you spent your day being moved. The inventory reallocation of last summer left far too much space in that little island of Computer Books in the back corner of the store where people study. So I consolidated Computers, creating three entire empty bays, all next to each other and two of which are your new home.

I don't suppose you mind being removed from the Religion Section, since most of the authors of your volumes have the reputation (deserved or not) of looking down on and/or objectifying Religion. I also thought you might be happy that you are no longer fragmented as before, when Anselm through James were located next to the Bibles and Kierkegaard through Xavier were around the corner sharing a side with Astrology and New Age. You are now one big happy family. You can ponder the meaning of the universe together, uninhibited by the false demarcations created by some dimwitted cubicle dweller living in upstate New York. (And just so you know, I moved you without their permission. I'm a sneaky son of a bitch, aint I?)

You may be concerned that your titles will not be purchased because of your new obscure location. But seriously, you know as well as I that the only people who look at you anyway are the fringe Baylor undergrads trying to create intellectual distance between themselves and their less-than-cool, non-alternative evangelical counterparts. These are the same people who think they are better than me because they don't watch television or listen to Clear Channel. They are also the ones who browse the section with their equally-cool friends then come up to me and ask, "Why doesn't your Philosophy section have anything written by Socrates in it?" I feign stupidity and say something about how I guess it's because we are in a smaller town.

I feel a certain amount of permission to talk about these people because I was once one of them. I took Introduction to Philosophy in college and thought I was Hot Shit. The Stumbling Runner was in the class with me. He was much smarter than me. I don't remember much about the class except for thinking "I could never understand this stuff, but I think it might be a good idea for me to try and pretend like I do. You know, so I can drop the name 'Sartre' at a dinner party, assuming I'm ever at a dinner party." I also remember when people said they didn't care too much for philosophy that I would develop a way of saying something about how EVERYONE cares about philosophy, they just don't know it. Kind of like people say EVERYONE has a theology, whether they know it or not. It might be true, but most people don't want some smart-ass college student forcing that acknowledgement on them.

Speaking of individual philosophers, (I mentioned Sartre, remember?) don't you think it's kind of humorous that Foucalt, that postmodern guy, is located right next to Frankfurt, the author of "On Bullshit?" I just find it a little funny.

I hope you enjoy your new home. I had fun creating it for you. I'll forget about you and you'll get dusty soon, but as I was moving you today I kind of got the impression that you like it that way. Your titles are for the few. You are such that I'm glad people are reading you, and I'm glad it's not me.

New Template...

Well, here you go. I was expecting to have some thoughtful post about change to usher in the new look of my blog, but I'm just too tired from fooling with everything.

You'll see there are new links. As I was posting them all I was reminded what a people pleaser I am. I didn't want anyone to feel left out, and yet I know I probably left someone out. You'll also notice I have created a blog bench of people who have retired early or simply disappeared. I'd love to move you back up, but I'm going to have to see some stuff.

Most importantly, and what several people have asked about, are the archives going back to the day I lost my blog virginity, May 2, 2002. It's really kind of weird going through and reading stuff from back then. If you choose to look, remember we've all changed in many ways.

Well, it's off to bed for me. Have a wonderful evening and look for new stuff soon, now that the Bearathon training is practically over. (I'll run a little tomorrow, then be finished.)

Take Care.

Since I've started this blog I've wanted to keep the format the same. But my ever growing number of links, coupled with my inability to find a way to link my archives, has made me decide to go with one of the blogger-created templates. I'll also probably lose the Haloscan comments and go with the way most of you have your comments. Because of that, get all the commenting done on the previous post before tonight, when I switch over, because they'll probably be lost.

In the meantime, if you are in Central Texas today and have read or heard any part of the ending of Kyle's final sermon, you have absolutely no excuse to be driving around today without you windows rolled down and your hands out the window. It's a beautiful day!