An average day

Here's a sampling of the headlines from my local newspaper this morning.

TWO CARS EXCHANGE GUNFIRE IN BELLE GLADE NEAR SCHOOL

THREE DEAD IN SHOOTING AT N. INDIANA GROCERY STORE

DOLPHIN'S QB'S WIFE LEAVES RIFLE IN RENTAL CAR

FATHER OF TEENS KILLED BY WIFE ASKS PUBLIC TO DONATE MONEY TO DREYFOOS SCHOOL OF THE ARTS (the wife shot the teens to death before shooting herself)

I wish these stories were unusual, but in reality they're the new normal in a gun-crazy society where even modest attempts at regulation are met with howls of outrage (see the story I posted on Tuesday). Future generations will look back on us and ask "what were they thinking?!" in the same way we look back at previous eras and wonder how they could blithely accept social evils that seems so obviously wrong in the light of history.

In the meantime here's the body count from yesterday.

The smell of foreclosure

For several weeks my wife and I have been house-hunting escorted by an intrepid and knowledgeable agent. Our area of South Florida was one of the epicenters of the real estate crash and the aftershocks continue to be felt in every neighborhood. The properties we've looked at run the gamut from bank-owned to "normal sales" -- you know, the kind where an average homeowner (not an investor) is looking to sell his house for a fair price for one reason or another. Normal sales are the minority these days in this neck of the woods.

One thing I immediately noticed about our realtor was his habit of flinging open the front door, then waiting as if expecting someone to rush out. Also I noted his practice of leaving the door open behind us instead of shutting it as I would. Today he explained why. In the early days of the post-crash real estate market foreclosure companies would often cut the power to their distressed properties. He shared horror stories of going into these dwellings -- sometimes ten or more a day -- and the smells encountered. This bred in him a healthy caution about plunging into the unknown of an abandoned property. Many of these properties look appealing based on pictures and online descriptions. Then you open the front door. . .

Things have gotten a little better. Apparently banks are now required to keep the power on and maintain at least a minimal amount of air conditioning. Still, it dawned on me today as we looked at one such house that foreclosure has a smell. It's the smell of decay. And it's not pleasant. Once our search for new lodgings is at an end -- and frankly I have no idea what our "end" will look like -- I should write a memoir of my tour of the underbelly of the Palm Beach County housing market. I'm thinking of calling it "The Scent of Foreclosure".

Amid the sights and smells I wonder about the people that used to inhabit these once liveable spaces. It's like  being at the aftermath of a car accident, or crime scene, except the protagonists are long gone. What is the story behind this.

If only walls could talk.

Surely many houses shall be desolate, large and beautiful houses, without inhabitant.

Will these desolate houses each find their redeemer? I hope so.  

Goodbye PCUSA, hello ECO

"Nothing engenders strife so much as a forced unity, within the same organization, of those who disagree fundamentally in aim." - J. Gresham Machen

Allow me a personal update. On Saturday Memorial Presbyterian Church -- the church my family are members of and where I serve as an elder -- was officially dismissed from the Presbyterian Church USA (PCUSA) and received into a brand new denomination ECO: A Covenant Order of Evangelical Presbyterians. As our co-pastor Randy Bare described it Saturday was a "historic and emotional day" as we celebrated a service of worship with representatives of the church body Memorial has been a part of for 88 years, as well as representatives of our new ministry home.

Saturday was the culmination of an arduous years-long journey on which the fingerprints of the Holy Spirit were frequently evident, and I have to say the gracious spirit that characterized this separation was due in large part to the goodwill of those with whom we have sharp disagreements theologically. For those not familiar with Presbyterian church government: individual congregations can't leave unilaterally, but must be granted dismissal by higher church bodies called presbyteries. In our presbytery (The Presbytery of Tropical Florida) we were able to disagree agreeably! This hasn't been the case in other parts of the country where separations of theologically conservative churches like our's from the PCUSA have often been accompanied by bitter strife and even litigation.

But why ECO? Why join a new Presbyterian denomination when there are already several good options for churches like us? This was a question the elders wrestled with, but in the end we decided the opportunity to be in on the ground floor of something new was too good to pass up. And perhaps most importantly several of our sister and daughter churches in South Florida were also headed to ECO.

ECO is a start-up, and as such can look with new eyes at the challenge of being a denomination in a post-denominational world, and of being missional Christians in a Western context that's increasingly post-Christian. ECO seeks to do this while holding fast to the essential tenets of our catholic and Reformed faith -- such as the authority of Scripture as the only infallible rule of faith and practice, and the uniqueness of Jesus Christ as "the sole path by which sinners become children of God" (quoting from ECO's statement of theological beliefs). I think of it as Presbyterianism 2.0.

ECO's mission statement is to grow and plant "flourishing churches that make disciples of Jesus Christ." In other words to create and nurture a healthy "ecosystem" which supports churches in carrying out the Great Commission. What might that look like? Quoting from Pastors John Crosby and Jim Singleton (two of the drafters of ECO's founding documents):

"[ECO] is intended to foster a new way of being the Church, just as traditional, mainline denominations rose to serve in their day. We aspire to reclaim a sense of covenanted biblical community, where unity is derived from a shared mission to make disciples of Jesus Christ, rather than by structural mandate. Our theological beliefs and core values unite us and inform our daily ministry, as leaders of all generations are being developed to equip God's people to speak the gospel into a rapidly-changing world. Congregations will gather together not to debate process or policy, but to collaborate, share best practices, encourage a Jesus way of life, and spur one another on to love and good deeds."

Tragically the mainline Presbyterian Church has lost this vision of unity defined by God's Word and God's mission, instead settling for a forced institutional unity that Machen correctly predicted would lead to strife. If you're inspired by the vision of ECO why don't you consider joining us? There are now 8 ECO churches in South Florida from Ft. Pierce down to The Keys, and many more nationally. Most of all, pray that all of us in ECO would be empowered by God's Spirit to live into our vision for making disciples.

Chasing John Ford

Any discussion of American filmmaking greatness has to include John Ford (1894 - 1973). During a career that began in the silent era and ended in the late 60's he created a series of landmark American films that went a long way toward defining a generation's self-understanding of the American experience. Films like Stagecoach, The Grapes of Wrath and The Searchers manage to be both personal statement and eloquent expressions of universal human themes, not to mention their monumental technical brilliance.

I'm reading a superb biography of Ford by local author Scott Eyman. Incidentally, I had the good fortune to meet Eyman at a Christmas party last year hosted by some mutual friends. I buttonholed him in the kitchen and we had an enjoyable chat about his current project (a biography of John Wayne), as well as some of the other figures he's written about. There have been other noteworthy Ford bios, but as far as I can tell this is the most exhaustive. I'm on page 107 and we're still in the 1920s! The title, Print the Legend, comes from the final scene of The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance, and it hints at the difficulty of writing about the "legend" that is John Ford, since that legend was largely self-constructed. I like how Eyman describes his biographical approach.

Any artist's work takes precedence over his life, but, to an unusual degree, Ford's work was his life; his own history and beliefs are scattered like seed through his films, and ripened into vast statements in both his middle and late periods.

I have tried to record John Ford's life, what he said and did and thought. I have attempted to resist the oppressive moral vanity of our age, in which biographers adopt the role of prosecutor and profess disappointment over human failings that occur nearly as frequently among biographers as they do among artists.

To be a serious artist is to have a single-minded mania for control, the precise quality that makes it extremely difficult to be a loving husband and father. To spend hundreds of pages primly documenting every instance of ill temper or alcoholic outburst strikes me as pointless as writing about fish and reporting with outrage that they are cold and wet.

Any artist who arouses clean, uncomplicated feelings will almost certainly turn out to be unworthy of serious attention. Human beings are not clean and uncomplicated, and John Ford was a very human being.

The great epigram of Ford's career is, of course, "When the legend becomes fact, print the legend," from The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance. With all due respect for the amber hue of myth, this book concerns itself with how the facts of John Martin Feeney led to the legend of John Ford.

Quote from pp. 22-3 of Print the Legend: The Life and Times of John Ford (John Hopkins University Press, 1999)

Marijuana - not so harmless

It's amazing to me how widespread marijuana is in our society. Maybe I've been naive? I know attorneys for whom smoking pot is a regular part of their leisure activities. Don't ask me how I know, but I know. At the other end of the economic spectrum is our neighborhood, where it's not unusual to see young black men strolling down the street in broad daylight smoking a joint. And I know some blue-collar working people that like to get high too. Has reefer gone mainstream?

Often you'll hear a distinction made between marijuana (the peaceful innocuous drug that doesn't hurt anybody) and "harder" drugs associated with crime, violence and addiction. The truth is more complicated as this news story from The Palm Beach Post demonstrates.

BOCA RATON — Three teenagers had a plan to buy marijuana Sunday night with counterfeit money, police said. But the ill-fated scheme backfired, leaving two of them clinging to life.

They used a scanner at Northwood University in West Palm Beach to make $1,250 in counterfeit money, then bought a quarter-pound of marijuana from a Boca Raton drug dealer, police said.

But the 19-year-old dealer, Thomas Fenech, recognized the fake money, grabbed his AK-47 assault rifle and ran out of his house, blasting 21 rounds into a black Mustang and wounding two of its occupants, police said.

It happened about 8:30 p.m. in the parking lot of Fenech's apartment in the 300 block of Northwest 19th Street.

KEEP READING

The well-heeled professionals smoking pot in the privacy of their home may justify what they're doing as harmless, but those drugs had to come from somewhere. I bet the other residents of that apartment complex (including children no doubt) are glad the local gun-wielding pot dealer is behind bars.

Guns

I hate 'em!

U2 360° in Miami

Last night Shannon and I attended the U2 show at Dolphins Stadium. We'd originally bought tickets 2 1/2 years ago for the original date in July 2010 which had to be cancelled when frontman Bono injured his back. As he noted last night -- some of us in attendance were two years younger when we bought our tickets, and in our case, had two less kids. Well, I'm glad we held onto our tickets all this time. It was worth it, despite the ordeal that attending an event with 70,000 of your closest friends entails. Suffice to say we didn't get home til 2am.

The most striking thing about this tour is the massive stage set-up dubbed "The Claw". It's design was inspired by the Theme Building at LAX.




It's a clever concept because it allows the typical apparatus of stadium shows (sound gear, lighting, video screens) to be suspended in the air above the stage thus affording unobstructed views from any vantage point. Band members have said that when they're on the stage the giant edifice above and around them is virtually invisible. The sheer geography of the thing is quite amazing. It evoked for me the image of the mother ship from Close Encounters. One almost expected the thing to lift off. Last night they played to this imagery by taking the stage to David Bowie's "Space Oddity" -- Ground control to Major Tom/Take your protein pills and put your helmet on. The show also features a message from space from Commander Mark Kelly of the International Space Station which introduces "Beautiful Day".

Shannon -- who's actually the biggest U2 fan at our house and I told her she should write her own review -- hit the nail on the head when she said during the ride home that the show was less about music and setlists than it was about the total experience. Once U2 took the stage it was like getting on a train with Bono as the conductor. You just sit back and enjoy the ride. All that's been said about this band's ability to make a stadium seem intimate is true. One can see the huge amount of planning that goes into a U2 stadium show, while still leaving room for Bono's spontaneity and eagerness to take chances on stage. For more on that see the article I linked to a while back: Mega-church Services: Like Going to a U2 Concert?

As one would expect the audience was very diverse. In our section there were parents with children, folks old enough to be grandparents -- and everything in between. The Spanish-speaking contingent was in the majority and Bono played to that throughout the evening. Indeed Miami is the crossroads of North and South America and the Caribbean. I'm sure most of the 70,000+ came to experience a great rock and roll show, have fun, and maybe take home some inspiration. If so, they weren't disappointed. For those with ears to hear there was a greater message embedded in the pop star atmospherics and the calls for peace, love and understanding. It came in the form of visual symbolism that was impossible to miss, and lyrics like these.

Last time we met was a low-lit room
We were as close together as a bride and groom
We ate the food, we drank the wine
Everybody having a good time
Except you
You were talking about the end of the world

In the garden I was playing the tart
I kissed your lips and broke your heart
You were acting like it was the end of the world

I reached out for the one I tried to destroy
You said you'd wait till the end of the world. . .


You broke the bonds
And you loosed the chains
Carried the cross
Of my shame
Oh my shame
You know I believe it

But I still haven't found what I'm looking for. . .
It would be nice to think that the throngs leaving Dolphin Stadium last night will reflect on that message when the euphoria of spending two hours with the biggest band in the world wears off.

Let the grass die

Here in Palm Beach County we're in the middle of an extreme drought of historic proportions. I count this as another example of the recent extreme weather events happening all over the globe. And you thought warnings about climate change could be ignored since they came from (in Rush Limbaugh's memorable jargon) "environmentalist wackos." It's gotten so bad that West Palm Beach, the city where I live, could run out of water in less than two months.

It's not as if we haven't been warned. For years observers have warned about the danger posed to South Florida's fragile water supply by over-development, over-consumption and over-irrigation. Now nature is striking back, and she can be a bitch.

It's easy to ignore the warnings when rainfall is plentiful. Just as it's easy to ignore the warnings about too many gas-guzzling vehicles and over-reliance on fossil fuels when gas prices are low. Unfortunately, I think the decades-long party we Americans have been having is over -- in a lot of respects. Welcome to the new normal.

I'm hoping some good will come out of this drought by permanently changing our paradigm of water usage. And as much as I hate the high gas prices, if they cause us to think twice about the way we use our automobiles, they could be a good thing in the long run. For one thing I'd like to see us get over our fetish for green lawns and green golf courses (no offense to you golfers out there). If the grass can't survive on what nature provides then it should be left to die. Plant native vegetation, instead of vegetation that needs massive amounts of watering to keep it alive. Irrigation for cosmetic purposes (which accounts for half of the water usage in South Florida!) is a massive waste of a precious resource.

Just my two cents. Take it for what it's worth.


Photo by Brandon Kruse of The Palm Beach Post

It's a beautiful day

The difficult embrace of Good Friday

This is a lightly edited version of something I wrote last year for my friends at Urban Youth Impact.


Passion Week begins and ends with joyful celebration. On Palm Sunday we stand with the cheering crowds welcoming our King into Jerusalem. Then on Resurrection Sunday we run with Peter and John to the empty tomb, and fall to our knees with Mary Magdalene before our risen Lord. We may sing, "Up from the grave He arose, with a mighty triumph o'er His foes!"

It's easy to love the beginning and end of the gospel narrative. It's the in-between part that's hard to embrace. Think about it. There was betrayal by an intimate friend, overwhelming sorrow, desertion, a sham trial, physical abuse, and finally a drawn-out public execution on a hill outside Jerusalem. The victory we celebrate on Easter had to travel the dusty pathway of defeat. Strength came through weakness. The foolishness of the cross challenges the conventional wisdom of our society in which winning (as defined by the world) is everything. Thomas à Kempis is right: "Jesus has many lovers of His heavenly kingdom, but few cross-bearers. . . . Many revere His miracles, but few follow the shame of His cross."

In Philippians 2:5-11, the Apostle Paul reminds us that before God exalted Jesus, and gave him the name before whom every knee shall bow, there was humility and service. I like how Eugene Peterson renders it in The Message: "When the time came, he [Jesus] set aside the privileges of deity and took on the status of a slave, became human! Having become human, he stayed human. It was an incredibly humbling process. He didn't claim special privileges. Instead, he lived a selfless, obedient life and then died a selfless, obedient death -- and the worst kind of death at that -- a crucifixion."

I doubt if any of us normally chooses powerlessness over power, weakness over strength, living on the margins versus living at the center. I know I don't! But as disciples living in anticipation of that final Resurrection Day, we're called by our master to take up our cross and follow Him. I've only just begun to learn what it means to live a cross-centered life. Much of what I do know has come through association with Urban Youth Impact. By volunteering at their annual events, as well as praying and worshiping with brothers and sisters across racial and denominational lines, I've caught precious glimpses of the cross. I'm deeply thankful for UYI because they give the Body of Christ in Palm Beach County an example of what cross-centered ministry looks like. Day in and day out UYI is taking the good news of God's love in Christ to the powerless and marginalized. I encourage you to get involved in their mission!

Gracious Father, thank you for sending your Son to become poor for our sake, so that by His poverty we might become rich. Forgive us for too often wanting to smooth over the hard path of discipleship. Enable us by your Spirit to give ourselves in love and service to our neighbors. Continue to bless the ministry of Urban Youth Impact. Amen.

Outrageous PUNmanship

Paul Copan is one of the foremost Christian apologists and philosophers of our day. I'm blessed to count him a friend, teacher, and fellow elder at our church. Anyone who's spent any time with Paul knows he's fond of puns. Very very fond. Recently some students and School of Ministry colleagues at Palm Beach Atlantic University where Paul teaches had some fun in this hilarious satire of the A&E show Intervention. Enjoy!

Taps for Jose Hernandez

@ PalmBeachPost.com

Keilly's last birthday

@ palmbeachpost.com

The inconvenient truth

From a good editorial in our local newspaper:

In January 2001, as the Bush presidency began, with Republicans controlling Congress as they would for most of Mr. Bush's two terms, the national debt was roughly $5.7 trillion. The budget was running a surplus, though most economists considered it temporary. Over the next three years, Mr. Bush and the GOP did three things - by choice, and with Democratic help - that conspired to push the debt to about $10 trillion by the end of Mr. Bush's second term.

First came the tax cuts of 2001, based on Mr. Bush's premise that, given the surplus, the government had to "give people their money back" rather than pay down the debt. A study by the Urban Institute and the Brookings Institution concluded that when the cuts expire this year, they will have cost the government $2.34 trillion. Sixty-one percent of the benefits went to the wealthiest 20 percent of U.S. households.

Next came the October 2002 vote in Congress that authorized Mr. Bush to invade Iraq. The most important cost has been 4,402 American lives and the lives of at least 100,000 Iraqis, but the mistaken war also has cost the treasury $1 trillion and counting. As late as 2006, Mr. Bush and the Republicans still were paying for the war on an emergency basis, fudging the impact on the deficit as the debt kept rising.

Finally, in December 2003 Congress passed and President Bush signed the Medicare Part D prescription drug bill. Like the tax cuts and the Iraq War, it was not paid for. Former Comptroller General David Walker, the nation's top accountant, called it "the most fiscally irresponsible piece of legislation since the 1960s." Packed with subsidies for insurers and drug companies, the bill's cost over 75 years was pegged at more than Social Security.

The bottom line?

The country can't move ahead from here without understanding how we got here. It wasn't just Democrats or Republicans or Wall Street or the government or consumers. It was all of us. To believe anything else diminishes the country.

As for my Tea Party friends -- I share their concern for out-of-control spending and debt. But I'd be more impressed with their vocal fiscal conservatism if it hadn't suddenly appeared on January 20, 2009.

Taps for Daniel Foley

@ palmbeachpost.com

An outsider experiences CF

religioUSA is the blog of four UPenn students who spent their last two spring breaks visiting large evangelical churches across the South. Last March they made a stop at South Florida megachurch Christ Fellowship. After grabbing prime seats down front . . .

The lights suddenly cut out and a quiet piano melody took over the space. A chorus filed on to a set of risers, and a band got set up in front of them. Words like "HONOR," "GLORY," and "REACH" flashed across two enormous screens to the sides of the stage. The service had begun.

As the musicians finished up their act, though, I noticed that I had to make a concerted effort to keep my focus on the live action taking place right in front of me. Yes, I had a phenomenal view, and yes, there was really no other logical place for me to rest my eyes without turning my neck, but I could not keep my focus on what was happening directly in front of me. The two huge screens (and the camera/production crew of at least 20) were doing a fantastic job of keeping my attention focused directly on their handy editing and intercutting; in all honesty, watching the TV version of church is a hundred times more exciting than watching church in person, kind of inverting the way that a live concert is much more fun than watching the over-produced DVD.

When the head pastor took the stage and started a short sermon about the church's recent trip to Israel, he also made sure to mention the value and importance of baptism to the mission of Christ Fellowship. After a brief introduction and background story, the screen cut away to Jose (a church member who was about to move from Palm Beach Gardens to Virginia) hanging out with another church official in a nondescript black room. They each said a few words, and then WHOOSH - Jose was dunked, and the crowd roared with applause.

Only as the cameras cut away and shifted their focus to the onstage action did I realize that the whole production had taken place directly above the stage in the previously hidden baptistry. The camera cutting away did not immediately line up with the change of lighting (the baptistry was directly above the stage and had been lit up for the occasion), so for a second, the illuminated baptistry was startlingly clear between the two screens.

What struck me about this was the fact that I had no idea that the baptism was going on right in front of me; it could have been happening in some different part of the church, or in another building altogether for all I knew. Instead, it was right above the stage I had jockeyed so hard to get a good view of. In a service where the pastor made sure to mention the presence of simultaneous webstream broadcasts on the church's website and on the other campuses, it seemed as though the major emphasis was on the power of technology to spread the sermon as far as possible. There are even whole areas devoted to showing just a broadcasted image of the sermon; it's like going to the movies, but instead, it's church. It sort of changed the experience of physically being inside the church, and to some degree, we were just members of the live studio audience.

You can read more of their impressions of CF here, here, here and here.

I note that the writer is part of the younger demographic that's supposed to be impressed by multimedia razzle-dazzle. Could it be that it's the boomers and busters who really dig this stuff? Not to say that megachurches don't draw a lot of young people. They do. Every Sunday morning I watch hordes of Bible-toting students walking by our little brick church to attend the local campus of CF several blocks away. I'm sure there are lots of good reasons for this (teaching that's more relevant, hipper music, age affinity, a more casual atmosphere), but could one reason be that this way of doing church is all these kids have known? For a generation that's grown up in the food court it must seem entirely normal. Once they marry, start having families, and push on into middle age I think something more organic and multi-generational, more rooted in centuries of church history will be more appealing.

Where I live (in 3D)

Goodbye John G.

Obit @ palmbeachpost.com

Over there?

Today's horrifying news from Indonesia reminded me of the following story told by Mark Labberton in his book The Dangerous Act of Worship: Living God's Call to Justice (see also here and here).

I recently chatted with a stranger in a grocery store checkout line. He lamented how tired he was and how hard he had been working. He told me about the constant travel involved in his job and how it made things difficult for him. Then, a little self-conscious of his complaining, he said, "Oh well, I guess things could be worse." An enormous earthquake in Pakistan was all over the headlines of the newspapers around us at the checkout counter, so I said, "Yes—we could be living in Pakistan right now." The man's instant retort was, "Oh, I would never be that stupid!"

The comment was shocking yet revealing. Since I didn't know the man at all, I can't know exactly what he meant. But what struck me on the surface was the range of his apparent assumptions: (a) where people live is a matter of choice; (b) everyone is free to make "smart" choices about where we live; (c) it would be stupid to choose to live in a place of suffering. This man's comments capture the warp of woof of how many in America see themselves in relation to a staggeringly needy world: "They live over there. I don't. Their reality is not my reality. I don't want to know or share their reality. I am blessed. I would think they would want to be blessed too. I guess they are just stupid or stuck in their circumstances. Too bad. That's why they suffer, I guess. I sure wouldn't choose that." (pp. 78-79)

What's Labberton's point? That disciples of Christ are to have a radically different mindset.

The gospel recontextualizes where we live. Knowing that where we live matters, God provides the good news of Jesus Christ to change our address. We didn't choose it; we were chosen. We didn't love God, but he loved us. Once we were strangers; now we are friends. Once we were far off; now we have been brought near. Once we had not received mercy; now we have received mercy (see 1 Peter 2). Everything is different. (pp. 79-80)

FYI Mark Labberton will be speaking about this book at Memorial Presbyterian Church this Sunday at 9:45am. He will also be preaching at 11:00am and 4:00pm. If you're in the West Palm Beach area please consider joining us.

The latest on Tchividjian and Coral Ridge Presbyterian Church

You may have read about the well-publicized efforts of dissident members of the congregation at CRPC to oust their new pastor Tullian Tchividjian after only several months on the job. Things came to a head, and hopefully to final resolution, at a congregational meeting this morning where members voted 940 - 422 against a motion to fire Tchividjian.

More details here.

On Friday the Sun-Sentinel published an excellent article by Tchividjian: When Churches Have Disputes