Liminality

Diana Butler Bass (along with others) is publishing frequently about the sociological shifts occurring in churches. She’s helped us see church growth used to be based on the formula: “Believe. Behave. Belong.” If you believe what we believe and behave the way we behave, then you will eventually come to belong. Unfortunately, for some Protestants, this formula no longer works.  It’s not because the variables are wrong – they’re just out of order for some of us. Instead of “Believing. Behaving. Belonging,” Bass argues it should read “Belonging. Behaving. Believing.” This re-ordering is a way to reach those in “Generation Y” from whom belonging is crucial. As a member of Generation Y, and as someone who works daily with future church leaders, here is my take on this ideological shift.  Too often we’re picked on as being narcissistic, entitled and disengaged. The reality is we carry a deep longing to be held, to be fulfilled and to belong. We’re in searc...

Love is much more of a daily decision than a feeling. I’m not sure I would have said this sentence five years ago. Then I was still looking to gratify my own sensual and sexual needs. I was coupling these needs with an imaginative story of success and happiness and believing that love was somehow a concoction of them all. Love, then, was imaginative, playful, hopeful, and ultimately ridiculous. Today, I choose to define it differently. Love can still be imaginative, playful and hopeful but ultimately it’s a choice. We choose to wake up and love. We choose to look across the dinner table and listen with intensity or passivity. We choose to unload the dishwasher and clean the litter box because our partner hates it, even though we’re exhausted and want to go to bed (this is a little insight into my world). We choose to create imaginative spaces where love can bloom and hope can reside. We choose to reorganize business schedules and plans to maintain date nights and vac...

Jesus on the mountain of Transfiguration meets up with gigantic heroes of old.  God’s voice comes out of the clouds announcing Jesus' authority and blessedness.  We, as the readers, see him as the new Moses as well as the new Elijah.  We see his majesty, the celebration, the hope . . . but Peter, James and John (despite being there) don’t.  Peter manages to say something about building alters but mostly it's chalked up to incoherent rambling.  In reality, all three disciples struggle to comprehend.  It’s so bad that scripture says they descend from the mountain and say nothing to anyone for fear of what they saw.  The best thing that can be said about the disciples here is, “swing and a miss.”  And I can’t help but wonder: why wouldn't they tell the world what they saw? Sometimes people don’t know they’re experiencing the divine because they don’t know to look for it.  God can be staring us in the face and we’d look right past...