My Denomination
The Who famously sang about “My Generation.” Those lyrics echo to my GenXer’s ears as I think about my journey in society, my journey in faith, and my journey outside and inside of Christian witness. My denomination’s annual family reunion, what we call the “General Assembly,” this summer has me thinking about a great many things related to religion, culture, and denominational identity (something my denomination has been struggling with for almost two decades now). General Assembly is a gathering of individuals that represent congregations as voting delegates, but GA is more than delegates sent to vote, dialogue, argue, or discern. Everyone is welcome to attend. There is an interesting mix of new believers, first time and long time practitioners, scholars, lay leaders, commissioned ministers, ordained ministers, denominational thinkers and leaders – past and present. The exhibit hall is where people roam between our denominational offices displaying their relevancy and booths where people can get information about the next van or bus their congregation could purchase. Mostly, the exhibit hall is where people meet up to catch up even in the technologically rich world that we inhabit. This past GA had its share of resolutions, few of which are binding on our congregations or Regions, but controversial enough for those that don’t understand our polity to cause a stir. I don’t think it is about polity as much as identity. The cultural creep of consumer competition, gated communities, and our inability to learn from the past fuels the division that some want to label a difference of interpretation of scripture, or history, but I think it is much more about identity. One congregation in my Region recently voted to leave the denomination over the General Assembly’s passage of resolution 1327 which resolves:
THEREFORE, BE IT RESOLVED that the General Assembly meeting in Orlando, Florida, July 13-17, 2013, calls upon the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ) to recognize itself as striving to become a people of grace and welcome to all God’s children though differing in race, gender, age, sexual orientation, gender identity, nationality, ethnicity, marital status, physical or mental ability, political stance or theological perspective; and
BE IT FURTHER RESOLVED that the General Assembly calls upon the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ) to affirm the faith, baptism and spiritual gifts of all Christians regardless of their sexual orientation or gender identity, and that neither is grounds for exclusion from fellowship or service within the church, but we celebrate that all are part of God’s good creation;
And this congregation wanted to not be identified with my denomination so much that it duct taped over Christian Church (Disciples of Christ) on their sign. I guess they did so until such a time that they can purchase paint or determine with whom they wish to affiliate or identify with. Sometimes I wonder if the language of “be it resolved” is part of the problem with our resolutions. This “vote” didn’t resolve much and that is the problem with the language. It did “highlight” the growing acceptance of LGBTQ persons in the life of many of the congregations represented at GA. Resolved, well, no not really. A minister I know, who has been serving in ministry a long time, noted to his congregation that the General Assembly was speaking “to” our congregations rather than speaking “for” our congregations on the issue of welcoming LGBTQ persons as images of God who are welcome to journey in faith and serve in faith in our congregations. So, maybe it is better to say that some, many, of our congregations are evolving in their understanding of God, grace, sin, the way of Jesus, and ordained Christian ministry. It was not long ago that women were barred from leadership in our congregations and even today there are a handful of congregations that do not allow women to be elders or will not consider a female minister, but for the most part, the denomination has embraced “women in leadership, ordained and lay,” as a part of our identity. It’s my denomination.
I use the word “evolve” not as a derogatory comment for those that voted “no” this summer, but as a descriptive verb that highlights the historic tension between Christian tradition and Christian practice. It’s the tug of war between orthodoxy and orthopraxy, between Paul’s Christ of faith and the way of Jesus proclaiming the good news of God as told by the gospels. CC(DOC) are pragmatists first more often than theologically consistent before being pragmatic. That is the only thing about this twenty-year “discernment process” that I’ve appreciated namely, that theological conversation and evolution preceded pragmatics though the discernment process was a pragmatic theological process that led a few congregations to bring a resolution to the GA for a vote and further conversation. I’ve been thinking about my denomination’s identity through the lens of some words from Rev. Dr. Peter Gomes and a few recent blog posts from a marketing guy named Seth Godin. My apologies to Seth for borrowing his words in their entirety and reprinting them here. My thanks to Rev. Dr. Gomes for his life and service in ministry. He has gone home to realm and reign of God. It might work best for you, if you want to join the thinking about my denomination, the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ), to do so listening to Rev. Dr. Gomes words to our General Assembly in 2003, bracketed by a couple of Seth’s recent posts.
The easiest way to disagree with someone …is to assume that they are uninformed, and that once they know what you know, they will change their mind. (A marketing problem!)
The second easiest way to disagree is to assume that the other person is a dolt, a loon, a misguided zealot who refuses to see the truth. Their selfish desire to win interferes with their understanding of reality. (A political problem!)
The third easiest way to disagree with someone is to not actually hear what they are saying. (A filtering problem!) The hardest way to disagree with someone is to come to understand that they see the world differently than we do, to acknowledge that they have a different worldview, something baked in long before they ever encountered this situation. (Another marketing problem, the biggest one).
There actually are countless uninformed people. There are certainly craven zealots. And yes, in fact, we usually hear what we want to hear, or hear what the TV tells us, or hear what we expect, instead of hearing what was said, and the intent behind it. Odds are, though, that we will make the change we seek by embracing the hard work of telling stories that resonate, as opposed to dismissing the other who appears not to get it.
Is Google jumping the shark?
Ron Howard explained that while they were shooting the notorious episode where Fonzie jumped the shark, he knew the show had turned a corner. In the case of Happy Days, the corner was the chasing of ratings at the cost of integrity. In the case of corporations, the corner is usually the chasing of profit at the expense of the original mission.
These places don’t run out of creativity. You don’t jump the shark because you’re empty, you do it because there’s pressure to be greedy.
Google has been found to have hacked and stolen user data, circumventing privacy settings. They’ve recently announced that without asking first or sharing the upside, they may be selling the names and faces of people who use Google + to advertisers, to be included in endorsement ads. People expressing themselves online might soon find themselves starring in ads as unpaid, unwilling endorsers.
How does this happen? Public companies almost inevitably seek to grow profits faster than expected, which means beyond the organic growth that comes from doing what made them great in the first place. In order to gain that profit, it’s typical to hire people and reward them for measuring and increasing profits, even at the expense of what the company originally set out to do.
Every company at a certain stage ends up with two sorts of employees… some that work hard to improve the experience and value for the original customers, and some that tear down that experience and value in order to please shareholders in the short run.
It’s not surprising, but it’s sad.
The irony here is that in the long run, what the advertisers are telling companies like Google they want isn’t what is going to build it into an even better company (or even help the advertisers) in the long run.
Advertisers often seem to want pitchmen spraying perfume at every person who walks into the store, inserts stuffed into every periodical, pop up ads, complete data on every individual they target and the ability to spam at will. Great media companies fight back on all of these intrusions, because they know that what actually works is genuine connection built around remarkable products and services.
“I think we can’t go around measuring our goodness by what we don’t do, by what we deny ourselves, what we resist, and who we exclude. I think we’ve got to measure goodness by what we embrace, what we create, and who we include.”