Living in Babel

So the Lord scattered them abroad from there over the face of all the earth, and they left off building the city. Therefore it was called Babel, because there the Lord confused the language of all the earth; and from there the Lord scattered them abroad over the face of all the earth. Genesis 11:8-9

This Bible story, about the Tower of Babel, has been used to describe how people were scattered across the earth with different languages. This passage was used Tuesday morning, as Broad Street led worship for the meeting of the Philadelphia presbytery. Jud Hendrix was our preacher. He is the founding pastor of Covenant Community Church, a new PC USA church development often labeled with the loaded term "emergent church." In his sermon, he reminded us that the story of Babel teaches us that God wanted diversity. God didn't want us to live comfortably within our own cities and towers. God came down and messed everything up for a reason! God wants us to live in "babble." When Jud reached this point, he said that he had planned to explain where to go from here. However, he realized in that moment that he would be giving specifics that may lead to "building a tower," so he stopped, mid sermon. I've never experienced a sermon done so purposely that way, leaving the congregation hanging in thought. He left us with the idea that God wants us to live in babble, and it is up to us through the work of the spirit to navigate through this.

The Pentecost story was our other text, which is often used in paradigm to the story of Babel. In this story, the church gathers, is filled with the Holy Spirit, and begins to understand one another, despite the fact that they speak other languages. Looking at these two stories, we realize that the Holy Spirit gives us what we need to be the church, it is not something we build ourselves. Like Bill and many others said that morning (quoting Brueggemann), we live in a myth of scarcity. We are so worried about our "cities" and "brick and mortar," that we miss what it means to be the prophetic church in the here and now.

Out of this sermon, we went into a practice that was unusual for Presbytery meetings. We met in small groups! In these groups, we talked about the "towers" in our churches - the things that we work on that end the end are worth nothing. My particular group discussed all the debates around money and building management. They were all united in the mindset that way too much time is spent on these areas, which distracts the church from its purpose of being more deeply engaged in the community around. From here, we moved on to assure one another of God's provision and bless one another in being more attuned and committed to the working of the Holy Spirit.

Worship that day was extremely moving. Besides these wonderful moments, we had a powerful liturgical dance, the choir that shook things up as usual, and an artistic confession of faith that included people attaching written confessions onto a poster board cross. Many of the 300 plus gathered for Presbytery that day were shaken and moved. I hope that others can find the time and ability to explore such possibility and freedom in worship.

Now...what have I been up to?

This past week has been very hectic! I'll give a brief run-down.

Last Wednesday, Tony Campolo and Shaun Casey led a conversation on the changing face of evangelical politics, which was very interesting.

Thursday, got to experience the season premiere of It's always sunny in Philadelphia in a bar! It was awesome.

Friday, I got to hang out with my good friends Gabe, Sarah Beth, and Lindsay around the city.

Saturday, we hosted the annual Block Party, an event for University of the Arts students in center city. We had food, games, and music!

Sunday, I worshipped at Arch Street Presbyterian, where Rev. John Galloway preached a powerful sermon about the power of the Holy Spirit. We worshipped that evening at Broad Street as usual.

Ok. Sorry for the long recap. I'll attempt to post more often as to not have to load up my blog with these details!

Peace.

fashioning a new church?

I had a very unique opportunity today to sit in on an administrative commission meeting set up to breathe new life into Arch Street Presbyterian Church. The commission spent a lot of time discussion “strategic imperatives,” or basically, what is it that this church should do to be what we hope it to be. In other words, they were discussing what the ideal situation for this church would be. (in case you missed the earlier post on what's going on, Arch Street Pres literally was dissolved after losing almost all its members amidst crumbling walls, a dissolved session, and a crumbling budget. This is a very sad situation, yet hopeful in that there are many who hope for a new life for this church. The administrative committee was set up by Presbytery to set up a new form for this church.)

This opportunity is very unique because most churches never take time to have these conversations about their hopes and dreams for what they can be. Often times churches are understandably unable to due to existing structures and customs that work well. Although you can’t always just fashion a new church from the ground up, you can at least have conversations about your hopes and dreams for the sake of community development and church growth.

This administrative commission roughly discussed the following imperatives in their discussion:
I. Honor our legacy
II. Re-Imagine our identity
III. Call the community together in a spirit of inclusion and social justice
IV. Raising Christians up in the church to be disciples.

What's exciting is being able to think of how these areas will manifest themselves in the future. Well...exciting for us church nerds at least haha. Particularly for Arch Street: being in the MIDDLE of the business district, sharing a wall with the tallest skyscraper in Philly, brings millions of exciting possibilities for people during the work week from all walks of life and situations.

Thus I pose the question: If you could fashion a church from the ground up...what would you want it to look like?