The Craw

The Young Man

The young man looked at the wizened, old, Presbyterian vicar with a mix of disgust and stratospheric hubris and said, "old man, what do you think about same-sex marriage?" The old parson looked at the young man with his Victorian beard and skinny jeans and replied, "It doesn't matter what I think but what God thinks and he is against it."

Sensing his trap closing in rapidly around the seasoned saint the young philosopher countered, "In a Greco-Roman world filled with pederasty and emperors who liked boys, why did Jesus say boo about it...well?"

The old pastor lowered his bifocals to look right into the young man's eyes and said, "In a Greco-Roman world filled with idol worship Jesus never said anything about that either. He also never mentioned anything about heroin use, serial murder or Lady Gaga so I suppose those things are all good with you too?"

Clergy Shirts

Well, it's been a ages since I blogged so I think I'll jump back in on the subject of clergy shirts. I confess, I dislike black clergy shirts. They are too dour and restricting for my taste-buds. I also dislike seeing Protestants walking around in purple and red bishop shirts when they're local parish pastors. So, that leaves two options: white which looks like you're wearing a t-shirt from far away since the white band collar just melds into the shirt and blue shirts.

Blue shirts are my preference for several reasons: (a) They are versatile (b) They look Protestant (c) the contrast between the white collar and blue shirt looks good. So, what's available out there? Not much. Almost everyone sells ill-fitting, 2/3 polyester pieces of junk. And they're not cheap either - sometimes selling for as much as $135 for a polyester blend!

So, this brings me to a recent experiment. You can now get custom shirts made by Internet-based services that drop ship from China. I found one such company, Modern Tailor, that says they can make a custom clergy shirt. Their fabrics start at $19.95 and run up over $100 but this is also all-cotton in various ascending qualities and patterns. I ordered one and so I'll keep you posted on how it turns out.

America's Testosterone Problem

America has a testosterone problem.

America has a testosterone problem because, before that, the church had a testosterone problem.

I recently stumbled across this blog-post and it seemed to ring true with what I have observed regarding the pastoral ministry. In particular he writes:

2. We are mama’s boys. Apologies to the female pastors, this one’s just about the guys. I’ve read studies that higher than 80 percent of male pastors say they are much closer to their mothers than their fathers. This has a lot of implications, and it explains why we’re more likely to play an instrument than fire a gun, have coffee with a friend than watch a game, read a book than restore an old Mustang. It also means that nobody in the church gets our attention as much as the old ladies, who can make or break our day with a kind word or a disapproving scowl. When you’re dealing with your male pastor, keep in mind that he’s more likely to speak the language of nurture over discipline, collaboration over competition, forgiveness over punishment. These aren’t things he learned in seminary, these are things he learned in diapers.

I don't identify with any of this but I do believe a majority of pastors do. In David Murow's book Why Men Hate Going to Church, he posits that pastors have one of lowest testosterone levels of any occupation. This is a huge problem. If the church (a place to learn manhood) is not led by manly men, where will godly, strong, masculine men come from?

When I think about the type of guys who would have gone to church 50 years ago, I realize that nearly every one of them would have been former servicemen and most would have been WWII and Korean War veterans. They would have been manly men who would:

• Not put up with violent flash mobs or naked creepos assaulting women in subway stations but would have reflexively taken care of any threat while protecting the defenseless.
• Would have loudly scoffed at the ridiculousness of California's new Assembly Bill 1266 that allows schoolchildren to utilize bathrooms of the opposite sex because they feel transgendered.
• Would have said that parents who let a 40 year old, unmarried, childless man have sleepovers with their teenage daughters are nuts and would be watching the dude like a hawk.

But it all starts back with the Apple of God's Eye, the Church. We've been asleep at the switch and it's time to wake up. I believe the church should be intentional in discouraging effeminate men from entering pastoral ministry and encouraging manly men to apply. This is a singular step that would reap huge benefits down the road.

Don't Do It!

In a recent article on the lack of good marriageable men, Kay S. Hymowitz says of the overgrown teenagers that pass for men today:

Women put up with him for a while, but then in fear and disgust either give up on any idea of a husband and kids or just go to a sperm bank and get the DNA without the troublesome man.

So, what happens in a scenario where a child is raised by a single mother? Let's look at how this works out:

• Single moms, in general, do poorly economically for a variety of reasons.
• I admit this is partially anecdotal but it would seem that a single mother who is having a child because she can't find a male partner is having a child as a substitute for a healthy relationship with an adult. Any family counselor worth their salt will tell couples they need focus on their relationship first before they deal with their children. A spouse is a life partner (proximity and intimacy-wise) and a child is not. I have observed single parent homes for many years and often the parent cannot let the child go when they reach adulthood. This is particularly pronounced when the parent is a woman and the child is a man.
• Raising children without a father (boys in particular) is destructive in a variety of ways including criminal behavior and economic success.
• The obvious conclusion that such a child would draw is that fathers are superfluous. Mom, after all, didn't need a husband.

So, rather than stepping off into a brave new world, we ought to be humble enough to listen to the wisdom of the generations that came before us. The optimal and time-tested model for bringing children into the world is an environment that has both a mother and father in a stable relationship. This has major implications for other untested models for parental formation that are currently being pushed forward.

We need to fix men before we try something else. This "fix" is another story for another day.

Tie the Knot!

In September 1989, my wife and I tied the knot. She was 21 and already employed as a court reporter and I was 23 and still trying to find myself. I had been in the service (USMC) by this point but still hadn't finished my undergrad degree and was experimenting with different careers (artist, importing/exporting, professional lecturer) which my wife graciously tolerated. But we were married and something about that dynamic is very good for men.

Recently there have been a spate of articles and books on how people aren't getting married young anymore (the average is 30 now) or not getting married at all. In addition, dudes are losing the skills necessary to get a wife and don't want to expend the effort at all with this Wall Street Journal article as an example.

Being married matures you by giving you no outs. To begin with, I want to say that although I was very poorly mentored, I believed in a Christian view of marriage that emphasizes commitment over feelings. After a few years of trying to launch my own business, I began to feel like a real schlub. My wife was out there working full-time and I was working part-time. It made me feel pretty un-manly. My wife and I discussed this and decided I needed to go back to school, finish my degree and get a career. At 26 I finished up and went into the field of education.

Within a few years I was moving up the ladder as an administrator and had enough of a career to support my wife and our soon-to come daughter. Before my oldest daughter arrived on the scene my wife was able to quit her job (a very lucrative and skilled one) and become a homemaker and I then spent a couple of years juggling our finances as we went from being DINKs (double income no kids) to being Ozzie and Harriet. And this is where I, as a man, thrived but we had to make many sacrifices. No nice new cars every few years. No eating out most of the week. No nice vacations. But we were a man and woman in full.

So, why are men acting like overgrown adolescents and not getting married? Because no one expects them to. And that includes young women. If young ladies keep going on "dates" with these overgrown apes that consist of a text-messaged invite and end with having sex with the dolt, you get the cultural effect you deserve. And if men tolerate these man-children by not calling them out, or letting them stay in their basements instead of saying, "son, time for you to go out and make your own way in the world" then we get the cultural effect we deserve. Being married and taking it seriously makes men do things they don't want to do but grows them in ways they never dreamed possible.

So the point is being married is hard. Being married costs. But being married is what is best for most men and women and society. It grows you up because you have to and it makes you take good, bold, though calculated risks because marriage itself is risky. So step up to the plate boys and be a man!

What do we do anymore?

One of the publications I subscribe to is Inc. Magazine. It often has interesting articles packed in a tight format. I like that. But it seems like all anyone does for "business" anymore is try to invent some ap based on an ap and then try to obtain VC funding for the idea so you can sell it off as quickly as possible. In addition, the advertisements tell you a lot about where we're at. Take the example posted here. You'd get the impression that all small businesses do in America is make lattes, bake scones, or grow and make organic salads.

Meanwhile, the Chinese are building things in small shops and preparing to seize our trade networks.

Lost Worlds

As an Army brat, I lived all over the world. Most of the places we lived overseas have disappeared without a trace.

From 1969 to 1973 we lived in an Air Force Housing Area named Grant Heights (above) that was being absorbed into the Tokyo urban landscape. It was a wonderful place to live until the end. As the Vietnam War was winding down they closed the facility and we were one of the last families living on the south side of the base. Wild dogs were everywhere because people would transfer stateside and just leave their pets behind. Where there had been a vibrant community just a year before now there were abandoned homes all around us and it was haunting.

The former base was absorbed into the Hikarigaoka district of Tokyo which looks like this today. It's as though we were never there with our outpost of America.

Some Thoughts on Church-Planting Looking Back

Well, it’s been nearly 6 years since Christ Church, Santa Clarita (was Saint Andrew’s Community Church the first 2 years) was planted and it’s been an interesting journey. There have been at least 4 prior attempts to plant a Reformed church here in town over the last 25 years but we are the one that stuck. Here are some nuts and bolts observations (so they won't be super spiritual) that may or may not have any application outside our immediate context:

1. Perseverance is indispensible. At the end of the day, perseverance in church-planting is an act of faith. You see, by faith, what the church could be but what’s in front of your eyes is a little, tiny, fragile, seed. Along the way challenges arise. We grew from 22 people to 75 in one year only to lose over 40% of those parishioners over the summer because of dislocations caused by the recession. It took another whole year to claw back to 75.
2. Steady Growth is good growth. We’ve never had a huge “bump.” Because of this we have been able to absorb people and inculcate of our culture in them without being overwhelmed. Thankfully, we have also been able to grow our leadership organically which perpetuates the cycle.
3. Business Plans are not unholy. We wrote a business plan 4 years prior to the church-launch and have referred to it and revised it frequently over the years. The plan was simple (it started at about 20 pages and is now 12 pages) and included tangible goals and benchmarks. The business plan has given us great perspective on where we came from and where we are going.
4. Keep good records. We have kept detailed records of church attendance and membership. This data can be tracked and graphed. It gives one a bird’s eye view of what God has done and in the case of a slow and steady growing church, reminds you that much progress is being made.
5. Stick to your philosophy of ministry. This may seem a little co-extensive with the first point and it is. While having our peculiar liturgical philosophy of ministry likely prevented faster growth, our church is extremely strong. We also have a strong identity going forward which enables further growth. Many of the churches in town that have had rapid growth in the church plant stage have had identity crisis' of various types. I can’t point to any particular identity crisis in our history.
6. Force yourself love God through the Body of Christ. Our core group started with the idea that loving God in the church meant commitment. Because of that, most of our core group is still here which is very unusual for a church-plant. We’ve had people come and go who hadn’t fully imbibed our culture but one thing that has surprised me is how resilient our congregation has been when differences and controversy have hit us. This love (commitment) has enabled us to quickly move through difficulties often being able to laugh at them.
7. Expect God to do great things and give him the glory. It has been magnificent watching God work through our flock. I’m amazed at times watching how our church functions through ministry and friendship apart from me. When the church first started I had to be at the center of things but now I’m quite peripheral in many ways and that’s a good thing. Jesus has healed relationships and lives in our midst and he has more great things planned.

Cornelius: Who is this guy?

Here’s some cool conclusions I’ve come to while researching Cornelius the Centurion in Acts 10:

1. Cornelius was a Centurion in the "Italian Cohort" in Caesarea, Caesar's city.
2. There was one Legion stationed in Judea prior to the Jewish War, the Legio X or "Fretensis" which was originally raised by Julius Caesar and was his personal legion. They later are the legion that conquers Masada.
3. The Legio X was headquartered at Caesarea and the Italian Cohort was there according to Acts 10.
4. The cohorts of Legio X were scattered throughout Judea in various garrisons.
5. Legio X was levied primarily from local (Syrian) conscripts except, apparently, the Italian Cohort which was likely the double-sized first cohort (the storm troopers of a legion).
6. Pilate lived at Caesarea most of the year but went to Jerusalem with a major show of force during the feasts and likely would have taken the double-sized Italian Cohort (his best, closest, and most loyal troops) with him the tense Passover of Jesus' death.
7. There were 6 centuries, thus, 6 centurions in a cohort like the Italian Cohort. There is a 1 in 6 chance that Cornelius is the Centurion at the cross and, if not, he was likely in the Antonia fortress and may have been the commanding centurion of the Italian Cohort. 

The point, this is a guy is very intimately connected with the events Peter preaches to him in Acts 10 and is a Centurion of Centurions. He's a member of the most Roman cohort of the most Roman (and Caesarean) legion in the empire which is stationed in Caesar's city. Jesus is Kurios, not Caesar.

Impatient Eschatology

From the recent Isaacson biography on Steve Jobs:

In July 1968 “Life” magazine published a shocking cover showing a pair of starving children in Biafra. Jobs took it to Sunday school and confronted the church’s pastor. “If I raise my finger, will God know which one I’m going to raise even before I do it?

The pastor answered, “Yes, God knows everything.”

Jobs then pulled out the “Life” cover and asked, “Well, does God know about this and what’s going to happen to those children?

“Steve, I know you don’t understand, but yes, God knows about that.”

Jobs announced that he didn’t want to have anything to do with worshipping such a God, and he never went back to church.

Of course, the most important question was never asked, "What do the starving Biafrans think?" The answer is what happened in the following 4 decades as that region became ground zero for some of the greatest mass conversions to the Christian Faith in the midst of the greatest age of missions (late 20th Century/early 21st Century) in the history of the world.