Please Update Feeds, Links

If you saw the title to this blog post through your feed reader (bloglines, my.yahoo.com, personalized Google home page, etc.), please update your feed. I have moved to Typepad for my blog. The new feed address is http://lutheranzephyr.typepad.com/main/index.rdf

The new webpage address is www.lutheranzephyr.com

Thank you for reading!

www.lutheranzephyr.com

I've moved out. My new address is www.lutheranzephyr.com. Some of you have graciously listed me on your blog - please update the link.

If you subscribe to my blog feed on your feed reader (my.yahoo.com, personalized google page, etc.), please use this new feed: http://lutheranzephyr.typepad.com/main/index.rdf

Getting a new template and subtitle for my blog wasn't enough. As I mentioned previously, Blogger wasn't doing it for me anymore. I've moved to Typepad, which has much better functionality than Blogger, (and I got my own domain name to boot!). The transition wasn't too hard, and I encourage anyone who feels limited by Blogger to join me in the exodus (however, all comments were lost in the transition - they still exist on this blog, but they didn't get transfered).

I'll be updating my links and blogroll in the coming days. I hope you'll come over and check out the new digs.

Post #176 is my last here at Blogger. See you over at www.lutheranzephyr.com.

Contemplating a Switch

Since I am not a one-topic kind of blogger, I'd like to be able to organize my posts according to topic (faith, life, baseball, politics, etc.). Click on the category link, and you can see posts related only to that topic. Like Lutheranism? Just read my faith posts. Like baseball? Just read my baseball posts. However, Blogger doesn't allow you to do this. So I just spent all afternoon looking at various ways to make this work on Blogger, but none of them are easy. Copy this, link to that, set up a del.icio.us account, edit your HTML for every posting . . . . Not ideal.

But Typepad does. And it just might be worth a few dollars a month for this functionality.

My New Look

I'm back on a blogging role, after giving up my Lenten blogging fast. And I have a new template - I hope my six readers like it.

But I also changed the subtitle of my blog, and this was hard for me to do. It used to read THE LUTHERAN ZEPHYR - a light lutheran wind, or a way to banish the devil. I thought this was a really clever allusion to Luther's comment that you can banish the devil by breaking wind (zephyr = light wind), but I'm not sure it adequately described my blogging efforts.

Since my blogging strays from faith to politics to baseball to the stuff of life in general, I thought a more simple and honest subtitle was in order (though I still hope that my blog banishes the devil from time to time!). Now my blog claims to be Looking at Faith, Politics, Baseball & Life through a Lutheran lens. I am amazed that so many of my blogging friends write almost exclusively about one topic (faith/religion/church), but I can't do it. I need four topics (one of which - life - is so broad it can cover just about anything). So the change in subtitle is an effort to have some truth in advertising.

Here at The Lutheran Zephyr, you're getting a hodgepodge of thoughts and reflections from an intentional and passionate Lutheran who also gets caught up in baseball, politics and life. Thanks for stopping by, and please do visit again soon.

Looking at the Big and Little Pictures

Condoleezza Rice wants us to look at the big picture in Iraq. "I know we've made tactical errors, thousands of them, I'm sure," the Secretary of State said. "But when you look back in history, what will be judged is did you make the right strategic decisions," she said. (See the BBC's great coverage for more information).

In other words - we've screwed up the day-to-day stuff of this war, but the war itself was a good idea. Saddam Hussein is gone and Iraq is on the road to democracy and freedom. The big picture is going to look good, even though the little picture is quite ugly.

But life happens in the little pictures. People live and die in little pictures, even if the scope of history has a much wider angle. If all we look at is the big picture, we miss out on the stuff - both good and bad - of everyday life.

I think that many of us Lutherans approach faith in the same way. We look at the big picture and clearly see God at work - grace, love and salvation is given to us in Jesus Christ. We are assured of heaven and feel good about our Sunday attendance at worship. But I fear that we fail to appreciate the role of faith and God in the little pictures, in our daily life - at work, in our families, in our daily ambitions, wants, needs and desires. God handles the big stuff, the big picture, but we rarely let God into the small, daily, personal stuff that constitute the snap shots of our lives.

I was convicted of this as I prepared for tomorrow's Sr. High Sunday School lesson, using material from the Here We Stand Confirmation ministry program. In a lesson on the second article of the Apostle's Creed, the curriculum suggests that the leader:

Open the teaching time by relating a personal faith story about what Jesus has done in your life. The confession "Jesus is Lord" is the root of the Christian faith. That faith is best passed on from generation to generation by believers sharing with one another how Jesus has affected their lives.

After reading this, I didn't have an immediate example of what Jesus has done in my personal life. Perhaps this teaching moment is draped in a piety not native to my East Coast brand of Lutheranism, but slinging arrows at piety gets me nowhere. This lesson points to a personal, lived experience of faith that I struggle to identify. I confess - my initial reflection on this topic tended more towards "seminary textbook" rather than "lived experience with the risen Christ." As I read this section of the lesson I immediately began thinking of the big picture stuff - salvation, new life, the freedom of a Christian. There's nothing wrong with this big picture stuff, and certainly the gift of new life and freedom from sin is a powerful and personal gift. But I couldn't clearly tell a personal story about what has Jesus done for my life. Should I have been able to point to a time and a place, a tangible experience in which Jesus' gift of love, grace and salvation suddenly changed my day, my week, my life? If so, I couldn't do it.

Well, this Jesus thing is not a single moment but a life movement, a comforting presence that has called me from despair to hope, from depression to drive, from the myopic little picture of my life to a broad big picture of God's Kingdom. Jesus isn't an occasional inspiration for good works or spiritual renewal, but rather Jesus is the reason I can strive for a life of meaning, purpose and calling.

And so we're back to the Big Picture. But it's not the low-resolution picture of Dr. Rice's camera, a camera that captures a broad and blurred big picture that fails to tell the whole story. No. Jesus' Big Picture - in which we are all included - is captured with the clarity and resolution of infinite megapixels. Zoom in and God's picture has you in crystal clear focus, down to the hairs on your head. Zoom out, and the wide angle of humanity has caught God's eye. It is this picture - simultaneously big and little, broad and narrow, focused squarely on me and squarely on the whole world - that we are called to see and called to be part of.

And so, what has Jesus done in my life? Jesus has given me a picture, a vision, of who I am and how I relate to the world and to God. This vision is one filled with hope amidst despair, life amidst death, healing amidst suffering. This vision is the Kingdom, already but not yet.

Are We Peddling Piety or Offering Significance?

What can the church learn from a downtown grocery store in Syracuse? A lot.

Developers Mark Congel and Daniel Queri in Syracuse are bucking an urban trend by opening a downtown grocery store (listen to story on NPR). The essential ingredient is not beans, bread or bananas, but rather the story of a legendary upstate New York grocer. According to legend, grocer C. L. Evers immigrated to this country with dreams and visions of being a local grocer. Today, the silhouetted image of C. L. Evers - along with his story - is the centerpiece of this new enterprise.

"Storytelling is critical," Queri says. "In order to build a concept around a story [you have to] establish your story and then incorporate all the brilliance of store planning and fixture development and all the technical components that run parallel with the creative. [Then] it delivers you a much larger, much broader and far more significant concept."

He's talking about a grocery store. This grocery store is rooted in a story, a bigger picture, an entrepreneurial hope that recalls the past and looks to the future. To capture the attention, imagination, and dollars of consumers, this store needs to be more than just a store. It needs to be a place of meaning.

But change a few words and we could be talking about the church.

Our churches are called to be more than just places that offers the spiritual commodities of worship, Bible study, fellowship, and Sunday School. Our churches need to be wrapped up in a bigger picture, a larger story - one that is rooted in a timeless faith that stretches from creation to the cross to the coming kingdom. Absent this great story - a story which grips our imagination, nurtures our faith, and lays claim to our lives - our churches are little more than corner stores peddling piety. God's story takes our pious products and, in the words of our developer, delivers us a much larger, much broader and far more significant concept.

Significance? I'd buy that.

Philadelphia's Politics of Pee

Only in Philadelphia could the words "waterless-urinals" and "imbroglio" be found together to describe a political stand-off. (See linked article, 1st paragraph.)

Comcast wants to install waterless urinals in the new Comcast Center office building in Philadelphia so that it can be certified by the US Green Building Council as eco-friendly. The local pumbers union will not stand for waterless urinals, which by nature don't need water or plumbing, resulting in less work for the union. But the mayor will not sit until environmentally-friendly waterless urinals are permited to be installed in the new building.

The union is wrong - we don't need 19th century technology in our 21st century buildings - and the mayor is right - we should do what we can to make our buildings environmentally sound. Plus, the waterless urinals are much less expensive to install than traditional urinals. Environment, expense, and common sense all say that Comcast should be allowed to use waterless urinals in their new office building.

At this point the social/political/environmental commentary is done. The blog now shifts and suddenly appeals to less dignified, baser mentalities. Proceed with caution.

But that is only part of the issue. There is a bigger danger in using traditional, water-guzzling urinals:

(Video suitable only for those with a strong stomach - you've been warned!)



This wouldn't happen with waterless urinals!

My First Time (at MySpace.com)

I've been surfing around on www.myspace.com in preparation for a discussion I'm facilitating this weekend on Youth, Ministry, and the Internet (thank you to all who posted your insights!). I had never been to MySpace until this week. A few thoughts:

1. It's an amazingly unregulated website. The quality of pages varies greatly, and I seem to have picked up some vicious spyware and other bad stuff while noodling through the website. As someone raised on traditional websites such as www.cnn.com or www.yahoo.com, MySpace is pretty overwhelming.
2. Yet the flexibility and customizability of MySpace is genious. It gives the largely young - teens and twenties - membership a chance to express themselves in numerous creative ways.
3. Since the web can be semi-anonymous, many youth express thoughts or feelings or ideas that, in my generation, you would write in a journal, share by passing notes in social studies class, or tell close friends at the pizza joint after school. But thanks to the internet, you can share your self-mutilation habit, your love of rabbits, or your sexual curiosity with millions of people with a click of your mouse.
4. But it's not just about sharing your thoughts (it's not just a megaphone), but MySpace allows you to connect with other people. Add people to your "friends" list or join any number of webrings that connect you to people who share certain interests or attributes - such as a webring for your high school, for Christian athletes, or for hot young bods looking for action.
5. And so, trying to think like an adolescent boy (not too hard), I easily stumbled upon some MySpace pages featuring pornographic images stolen from porn websites. Less frequent, but still present, are pictures of actual high school and college kids in various stages of undress or even sex acts. Many more girls post sexy - but clothed - pictures on their sites. The comments posted on these girls' sites include the IM names of people interested in cybersex, requests for more pictures, etc. etc..
6. Finding communities to share curiosities surrounding sex, eating disorders, self-mutilation aside, MySpace is actually filled with lots of inoccuous - actually, rather simple and unspectacular - musings of kids. "math class totally sucked. i cant wait till summer. jenny is such a dum ho. my little sister is driving me nuts. later."
7. And of course, MySpace offers a forum for good, not just idle chatter or harmful behaviors. Earlier this week, postings on MySpace encouraged students in Texas to protest pending immigration reform, sparking a massive student walkout in some school districts.

As much as some kids might be really drawn into sites such as MySpace, and might be influenced by what they see there, I still believe that the most enduring and significant influence on kids are their flesh-and-blood friends and family - not any virtual community that they're involved with or any freaky pictures they're viewing online.

That said, parents, concerned adults, church leaders, and especially youth ministers should be online, familiar with what is out there, and part of their youths' online community. We should talk with them about what they see and experience online. We should monitor (as possible) the web activity of our kids (just as our parents attempted to monitor and limit our TV or telephone time!).

But most importantly, we should trust our kids. If we've equipped them with good sense, strong self-identity, love of self and neighbor; if we've nurtured and formed their faith; if we've helped them learn how to make sensible decisions; if they have a strong sense of right and wrong, and know when something is unhealthy or harmful; if we've done all of this, we need to simply trust that when our kids go online, when they go to a 7th grade party where they'll be playing Spin the Bottle, when they go on their first date, when they go to college, that they'll be able to handle the pressures presented to them and that they'll cry out for help when they need it.

Youth, Ministry, and the Internet

On Saturday I'll be facilitating a conversation with youth leaders about youth, ministry, and the internet, and I'd love to get some insight from my six faithful readers. I've got some questions below, but don't limit yourself to these five questions. Also, please forward this to anyone who works with kids in the church. Thanks!

1. In general, how do you feel about the internet and kids (very open-ended question, I know)?
2. Your church kids are online - right now, probably. Do you have any sense of how they use the internet?
3. Do you know if your church kids use the internet for anything related to their faith or to the church?
4. Do you use the internet in your youth ministry? If so, how? If not, why not?
5. Besides having content (news, information, sports, pornography, music, video, etc.), the internet is also a social medium, a place to meet other people. What opportunities or challenges does the internet as a social medium present to youth and youth ministries?

Thanks!