ken wilson online

How do we know what we know? That’s the concern of epistemology. Now, forget the word, epistemology, as I only used it because it starts with an “e” and so fits “it’s the economy, stupid.” But it’s one of those underlying currents behind all the flailing about in the religious and secular and evangelical world these days: how do we know what we know? I got to thinking about it after reading today’s entry in David Crumm’s Read the Spirit. I confess I was tuning in to Read the Spirit this morning because they did an interview with me yesterday as Jesus Brand Spirituality: He Wants His Religion Back is finding its way into the bookstores. David Crumm interviewed Christine Wicker who noted that Southern Baptists are seeing a decline in baptisms, and that the president of the Southern Baptists think it’s due in part to Christians being viewed as “mean spirited.” Wicker also mentioned a Southern Baptist preacher who is now preaching universalism, the view that nobody goes to hell–all, in the end, are saved. It does get your head spinning, these currents.
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I came home from London to see a feature article in the Ann Arbor Observer on the Vineyard Church of Ann Arbor.  The writer, Jim Leonard, is a well known and highly regarded writer here in Ann Arbor and I found him thoughtful, curious, and conscientious.  His article captured so much of what we’re trying to do here in Ann Arbor.  Plus which, he mentioned the fact that I wear socks with my sandals, so this may be the tipping point when my fashion innovation really takes off.  There was one incorrect quote that I’ll be able to correct in the next issue of the Observer and it was on a sensitive topic.
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Community has been a concern of mine for decades. My wife and I have lived communally with others, having had over 60 single people living in our home over the course of twenty years….our third child born when we had eight single people living with our family, just to give you an idea. But what is it that holds a community together? That’s an important question not easily answered. For many years, I thought community was formed around common conceptions, common perspectives. That answer was inadequate and misleading and unhelpful.
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Still on this theme.  Isaiah being a prophet is the master of the obvious when he says in God’s name, “My thoughts are not your thoughts.”  Which means that the task of a disciple is to be willing to think thoughts that are outside the realm of one’s ordinary thoughts.  Which is not an easy thing to do, neurologically. I read recently that 95% of our neurological activity is “automatic,” that is, while it involves our brain, it doesn’t require our active intention (so reading is automatic, but deciding to read involves active intention.)  And that the 5% of non-automatic activity is very tiring.  Like intending to think a thought that doesn’t come from within one’s normal realm of thinking.  So people of faith have adopted, or many of them (us) have, to view thoughts labeled “liberal” as either faithful or unfaithful to God, and thought labeled “conservative” the same.   In my neck of the religious landscape, liberal thoughts are “unfaithful to God” thoughts.  So let’s do a little thought experiment regarding the hot topic issue of abortion (ha! I’ve got your attention!)
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I’ve known it for a long time, but it’s another thing to face it. A massive shift is underway that is profoundly reshaping the spiritual/cultural/religious landscape of American Christianity. Everything that can be shaken is being shaken it seems in the life and perspective of the church. Missionaries are grappling with deep theological issues raised by the efforts to bring the gospel into an Islamic context (how to understand Islam? who is Allah in relation to the God of Abraham, Issac, Jacob and our Lord Jesus Christ?). Worship is shifting–and I mean contemporary worship. When Vineyard was forging a new way forward in contemporary worship there was a cultural consensus regarding contemporary music–pop/rock was king and had a vast following. But that’s changed with the internet and itunes and the millenial generation whose musical tastes are nothing if not eclectic.
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Something’s come over me. Or came over me. Last Sunday, second service, and I stepped into a little wormhole or inspiration breeze, you don’t always know for sure. Touching the issue of warning against the adoption of the “liberal-conservative” category as a short-hand for “unfaithful-faithful” in matters of faith. I mean there in the sermon–what was a side-bar in the notes became a full stop, talk straight kind of thing. A little flushing or warmth around the ears kind of thing. Sounding like my brother in law Bill, here, I know. It was almost like feeling the thing itself–the category, I mean–bristling back, annoyed. I know this sounds charismatic or egomaniacal. I told you, something came over me.
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Why has it taken me so long to see it this clearly? I believe the Spirit is calling the church to ditch, leave behind, renounce as centrally valid, the imbedded assumption that liberal/conservative is a valid category for discerning matters of faith. Better said, individual believers are being called, I believe, to examine, discern, consider thoughtfully and prayerfully the validity of this category as something that guides their response to matters related to their belief, their understanding of what constitutes faithfulness to Jesus and what doesn’t, what’s good for the church and what isn’t, what’s of the Spirit and what’s not of the Spirit. This is going to take time and thought and attention and prayer, but I think it’s actually a kind of spiritual warfare, to use that language, meaning that’s it’s part of the struggle between spiritual powers contending for our hearts.
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A thick skin and a tender heart, that’s what you need if you’re serious about the pastor business. The thick skin will come with time and criticism. Either that, or you’ll find a different line of work. But the tender heart, oh my, that’s the one to pay attention to. I’m afraid that my deepest regrets in pastoring have to do with that. Especially in this environment where faithfulness to God is viewed through the false lens of “liberal vs. conservative.” Under this rubric the liberals are the moral softies, which means the conservatives are the hard-nosed (or posteriored) ones. But take a lesson from Billy Graham.

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Spent this past weekend with Charles Park, who is in the process of planting a church in Manhattan, near Wall Street. Charles has a Ph.D. in Economics from M.I.T. He talks about the need for churches to move into what the economists call “blue ocean,” the places where churches don’t thrive because the current approaches to Christianity aren’t working. Like Manhattan, where .05% of residents below, say, 95th Street (below Harlem) attend church. And 99.5% of residents don’t.

Blue ocean, in the world of economics, is where there aren’t any current viable business models. It’s contrasted with “red ocean” where a business model is working, where the sharks are feeding, so to speak, and typically, once a business model begins to work, other businesses flock to the same area to feed.
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Been reading up on the brain and one of the things the human brain seems to be wired for is doing quick and dirty sorts on the overwhelming flood of data coming it’s way. To make our way through the world our brains simplify, simplify, simplify. Binary thinking is one such way: up-down, left-right, forward-backward, friend-foe, people who divide the world in two and those who don’t….. We do this for good reason: it’s necessary for survival–quick judgments required on new situations: safe or dangerous? The brain that can do this well–meaning quickly and with some degree of accuracy–lives to think another day. Because it’s such a powerful brain tendency, this binary thinking business, it’s important that we be careful about which binary categories we adopt as valid ones. Liberal-conservative is one that has outlived it’s usefulness for categorizing God truth, God experience, Jesus, the church, faith, Christianity, spirituality.
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