Sabbath Book Discussion

NPH's contribution to a discussion about Norman Wirzba's new book, Living The Sabbath, can be found here.

NPH writes under the pseudonym "rsupinger."

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Winter Itch

Or eczema. It is NPH's daily companion, and it really likes to come for visits when the air turns cold and dry. Long, protracted visits. NPH is doing his best to accomodate his guest, who's presence is especially enthusiastic this year, by beginning to take vitamin supplements and by slathering his hands and neck with Aquophor and then covering up with white cotton gloves. Good thing they're so fashionable.

Seriously, friend, any time you wanna leave is good with me.

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Volunteer Day

NPH is spending this morning down at the Salvation Army, answering phones for the annual adopt-a-family drive. Somebody in our church is an accountant for that organization and invited us to take part. Sadly, this will be the first all-out volunteering NPH has done since moving to KC.

In addition to the adopt-a-family drive, NPH is scheduled to lead a chapel service for Salvation Army staff next Tuesday.

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Dayton Moore

NPH loves baseball, and a few short years in the Heartland has made him a devoted fan of the Kansas City Royals. NPH knows somebody who knows somebody, so he gets to go to games several times per season (although "knowing somebody" is certainly not a requirement for getting to see the Royals; they sell out exactly four times a season: opening day and the three games the Cardinals are in town). NPH reads about the Royals a lot, goes to games whenever he can, and listens to games on the radio faithfully.

So NPH devoured this article in the KC Star this morning by Bob Dutton. It's all about the decisions facing the new Royals General Manager, Dayton Moore, who was hired mid-season after Allard Baird was fired. Essentially, Moore faces the challenge of leading the transformation of an organization for consistent future success, all with scant financial resources(relative to baseball econmics, that is).

And so what's most important to Moore in that process? That's easy. Here's a money quote from the article:

"The most important exercise that we do every day,” Moore said, “is scouting and signing future talent in the international market and through the draft.”

In other words, you have to bring in new talent. And that talent has to be inculcated, coached, beat over the head with a consistent philosophy and style of play. To do this, the Royals have even created a new minor league team, a rookie squad, just so that they can bring in more young players.

There are lessons here for life, for sure. Give NPH some time to tease them out.

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Where Is Rest?

NPH is reading a book by Norman Wirzba called Living The Sabbath: Discovering the Rhythms of Rest and Delight. We're reviewing the book for The Ekklesia Project.

Note to self: write that review.

NPH struggles to rest. Even given time off, we tend to fill it with things that are not restful. Entertaining though they may be (television, blogging), they are not restful; we're more tired after them than we were before.

So we've begun to wonder: what is restuful for us? The above picture is NPH's home office, overlooking a rainy Monday afternoon on the Country Club Plaza. It's a day off, and we're using it to do loads of laundry, clean the house, straighten the office, fetch the Christmas decorations, and pay bills. And somewhere in these activities, as The Postal Service record plays through a second straight time, somewhere between the second and third loads of laundry, NPH realizes that he is resting. Yes, this is restful. Moreso than watching a movie; moreso, even, than blogging.

So, we shan't tarry; we will resume our restful working presently. Only, aware of what we are doing, and grateful for the rest and the rain.

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A Post While The Coffee Brews

A test pot of a $4.50 bag of coffee from the local Price Chopper is brewing (it's called "Pears Coffee," and it's from Omaha--expectations aren't very high), and so a quick word.

Worship this morning at NPH's church: really nice. In a small church, you have to stop yourself from becoming depressed at the beginning of every worship service, and you have to learn to really enter into worship with the people who are there. The quality of the worship had by those attending is not likely to be much better than the quality of those leading; and quality in worship has damn all to do with numbers. This morning was encouraging. NPH hopes the word was brought with a degree of depth, and he's quite sure the people there were able to give themselves to God in that time. Thank God for worship.

In a couple of hours a small group of people will gather here in the pastor's study. It's our "membership exploration" group, the only thing resembling a small group to take place here since NPH started. The group isn't limited to people exploring membership, so one elder has been participating--even leading--from the beginning. We're spending some of our time in intercessory prayer, sharing the joys and concerns of those gathered and of the community and world, some of our time in a discussion of a chapter from N.T. Wright's Simply Christian: Why Christianity Makes Sense. Then we concluding with a time of engaging the scriptures (or, rather, being engaged). Every week is a delight. NPH thinks this is the most worthwhile thing he has implemented since becoming the pastor here.

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"Resistance" as Will-To-Power

When an institutional power is at odds with the values that your community holds and the ability to reform that institution also lays outside of your community's power, you have two choices: You can either submit to the powers that be and accept gradual conformity to its values or you can organize to resist.

So begins a post on the blog Classical Presbyterian (CP), written by a Texas pastor named Toby Brown. As an ordained Presbyterian minister, Brown is a colleague of NPH's, yet the two blogging pastors probably have little else in common. Such is the state of the PC (USA), for good and ill.
Brown wrote this week about "resistance," the effort that he is now committed to, having "lost," along with fellow militant conservatives, the intra-church fights over constitutional issues (whether Brown and company "lost" anything is a seriously suspect claim by itself, but his sense of defeat points up a major flaw in the decision-making system traditionally employed by the church, a difficulty that the PUP report so maligned by those conservatives prominently discussed: the creation of winners and losers).
The premise of this resistance, as evidenced by the above quotation, is that the values of Brown's congregation are at odds with the institutional structure of the church and that the church has taken away the ability of such congregations to reform it. NPH has serious difficulties with this assertion.
First of all, the assertion that the values of a congregation like Brown's are at odds with the institutional structure of the PC (USA) gives up, immediately, the langue of "right," "good," and "true" in exchange for the language of "values." This is a cultural capitulation against the likes of which Brown would rail were it to pertain to sexuality or church property.
Lesslie Newbigin writes about western civilization's captivity to the thought forms of modernity. He notes that,

"Claims to speak meaningfully about right and wrong are discounted. Instead, one speaks of 'values.' These values are a matter of personal choice. They express what the person who holds them wishes to see enacted. They are precisely expressions of the will."

Brown supposes that the "values" held by himself and his congregation are at odds with the larger church to which they both belong. Further, he asserts those values to be "classical Presbyterian" values, derived exclusively from Scripture (he talks about "equipping the saints with the truths of Biblical faith"--a thoroughly modern view of Scripture: Scripture as an infallible repository of "truths" to be unflinchingly applied to life).
What this claim demonstrates more than anything else is the utter refusal on the part of Brown and those who agree with him to engage in anything resembling a meaningful conversation about the "truth," about what is "right" and "good" for the church. Because they have chosen their values already, and chief among those values is a refusal to change one's mind, the value of steadfastly "taking a stand" in the face of conflict. This is just as much of a cultural accomodation as anything Brown and Co. openly despise in the larger church, if not moreso; it pervades everything they believe.
NPH believes that he is part of a church that is committed to discerning truth and goodness, not just asserting "values." The "resistance" of colleagues like Brown is easily recognizable as un-true and not good, because it is little more than a strategy for imposing one's will on others by refusing to yield, even by refusing to talk. It is a capitulation to culture, albeit to the culture of modernity, not the one we live in today.

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