My friend Jason Watson did an excellent analysis of the logic used here, which is definitely worth a read.

I have to say, I can relate with everything the guy in the video says. Yes, some churchgoers are hypocrites who do hurtful things; yes, some churches focus on rules at the expense of the big picture. I understand why he’s saying everything that he’s saying, and I’ve said some of these things myself. But I still don’t agree. In addition to everything that Watson said, here’s why:

The video’s poet completely ignores the fact that the “rules” he speaks of are usually pulled straight from the Bible. Not out of context, either. Some extremist views, such as his example of the single mother being denied community, carry this to an extreme; but, as Watson said, these are the actions of a very vocal minority, and none of them are woven into the “rules” of faith. I know a great many pastors, and I can’t think of a one that isn’t outraged by things like that.

(I also realize that there are some “rules” proclaimed by many, such as urging women to remain silent in church and banning short haircuts on women. I would argue that we have to examine the cultural climate of the Bible and dig into why these things were said. This is a much larger discussion for another time.)

If you’re not familiar with Maslow’s hierarchy of needs, here’s the Wikipedia article on it. If you don’t know, the hierarchy lists out needs in order of complexity. If simple needs like food and water aren’t being met, we’ll have a much harder time meeting higher-level needs like love and acceptance; similarly, if mid-level needs like love and self-esteem aren’t being met, we’ll have a much harder time meeting the self-actualization needs, which is where religion does the most good. In churches, we often find people who are really just there to try to meet lower-level needs like acceptance and self-esteem. I think these are important things and that the church can be a good place for those—but it should not be the only place we see those needs met, nor should it be the only reason we’re there.

Being religious to meet these needs is like turning on a fantastic movie to light a room. It’s frustrating. Movies weren’t designed to meet that need, so they flicker different images on the screen with varying levels of light. It’s not the best tool for the job. Really, we need to get the lighting under control so we can enjoy the movie.

When we rely on religion to meet needs it was not explicitly designed to meet, we’re frustrated with the gaps. And some go as far as to try to fill in those gaps themselves. If a need for acceptance isn’t consistently met, the emotional need for a common enemy can help to fill that gap; if a need for self-esteem isn’t consistently met, the need for a smug sense of superiority can seem like the missing puzzle piece.

I’m not saying that every Christian that says hurtful things or excludes others is simply immature—it’s not so simple. But I would wager that most of the polarity that the church exudes is due to a desperate desire to see these needs consistently met.

The “rules” are not the problem, as the video’s poet suggests. An unhealthy obsession with rules at the expense of their purpose is a problem, but that problem is not inherent in religion. Religion without rules is a system of belief with no defined expectations, which means its followers would have no idea how to live out those beliefs. Yes, Jesus’s grace does cover us in any circumstance—but if we have no desire to better ourselves because of it, we’re missing out on the most important part of that grace. We’re settling for spiritual certainty (a lower-level need) and missing out on being something bigger and better than what we are now (transcendence, the highest-level need on the chart).

So this video on missing the point ironically misses the point. Christianity should never be defined solely by its rules, but it shouldn’t forget them, mock them, or look down upon them. Replacing one extreme with another is rarely a good course of action.

Sorry for the unofficial posting here. I’m Brandon, by the way. I was playing bass.

It is so on the stage, as you know well enough, that someone sits and prompts by whispers; [he is hidden;] he is the inconspicuous one; he is and wishes to be overlooked. But then there is another, he strides out prominently, he draws every eye to himself. For that reason he has been given his name, that is: actor. He impersonates a distinct individual. In the skillful sense of this illusory art, each word becomes true when embodied in him, true through him—and yet he is told what he shall say by the hidden one that sits and whispers. No one is so foolish as to regard the prompter as more important than the actor.

Now forget this light talk of arts. Alas, in regard to things spiritual, the foolishness of many is this, that they in the secular sense look upon the speaker as an actor, and the listeners as theatergoers who are to pass judgment on the artist. But the speaker is not the actor—not in the remotest sense. No, the speaker is the prompter. There are no mere theatergoers present, for each listener will be looking into his own heart. The stage is eternity, and the listener, if he is the true listener (and if he is not, he is at fault) stands before God during the talk. The prompter whispers to the actor what he is to say, but the actor’s repetition of it is the main concern—is the solemn charm of the art. The speaker whispers the word to the listeners. But the main concern is earnestness: that the listeners by themselves, with themselves, and to themselves, in the silence before God, may speak with the help of this address.

The address is not given for the speaker’s sake, in order that men may praise or blame him. The listener’s repetition of it is what is aimed at. If the speaker has the responsibility for what he whispers, then the listener has an equally great responsibility not to fall short in his task. In the theater, the play is staged before an audience who are called theatergoers; but at the devotional address, God himself is present. In the most earnest sense, God is the critical theatergoer, who looks on to see how the lines are spoken and how they are listened to; hence here the customary audience is wanting. The speaker is then the prompter, and the listener stands openly before God. The listener, if I may say so, is the actor, who in all truth acts before God.

- Soren Kierkegaard, Purity of Heart

This is spoken so simply that I don’t actually have much to add except a little context.

Remember that in Kierkegaard’s time and country, Christianity was the state religion, so everyone was a Christian. It was pretty preposterous to think of other people as the theatergoers, since they were all supposed to be actors, playing off of the pastors’ script, so to speak. Today, things are a little different in that not everyone is an actor in this sense of the word, and those who are neither actors nor prompters become theatergoers, observing and passing judgment on the actors whether they realize they are performing or not.

I could go on a little rant about how church and pop-Christianity are turning into entertainment, but that’s aside from the point. The point is that we, as church leaders, need to place the responsibility of this “performance” (although the stage is eternity, so there’s no breaking character—these are not alter-egos, but our regular everyday selves) on church congregants. I’ve talked before of church leaders measuring success not by the merit of their own efforts but by those of their congregants. This is just another reminder that our ultimate success, whether as worship leaders, pastors, small group leaders, or anything else, is to be measured in how much our listeners reflect God and change the world.

If you’re not a church leader but you are a Christian, remember that you are always on stage, whether for God or others; if you are not a Christian, I welcome any dialogue you have on the matter, as I’m sure there are a lot of experiences to be shared, both good and bad.

Afraid your friends won’t believe you know a real, live Methodist model? Show them this.

When a man turns his back upon someone and walks away, it is so easy to see that he walks away, but when a man hits upon a method of turning his face towards the one he is walking away from, hits upon a method of walking backwards while with appearance and glance and salutations he greets the person, giving assurances again and again that he is coming immediately, or incessantly saying, “Here I am”—although he gets farther and farther away by walking backwards—then it is not so easy to become aware. And so it is with the one who, rich in good intentions and quick to promise, retreats backwards farther and farther from the good. With the help of intentions and promises he maintains an orientation towards the good, he is turned towards the good, and with this orientation towards the good he moves backwards farther and farther away from it. With ever renewed intention and promise it seems as if he takes a step forward, and yet he not only remains standing still but really takes a step backward. The intention taken in vain, the unfulfilled promise leaves a residue of despondency, dejection, which perhaps soon again leave behind only greater languor. As a drunkard constantly requires stronger and stronger stimulation—in order to become intoxicated, likewise the one who has fallen into intentions and promises constantly requires more and more stimulation—in order to walk backward.

- Soren Kierkegaard, Works of Love

So what does this have to do with worship leadership? Let’s take a look back at an unorthodox, although very Biblical, definition of worship.

“Why do we fast, but you do not see? Why humble ourselves, but you do not notice?” Look, you serve your own interest on your fast day, and oppress all your workers. Look, you fast only to quarrel and to fight and to strike with a wicked fist. Such fasting as you do today will not make your voice heard on high. Is such the fast that I choose, a day to humble oneself? Is it to bow down the head like a bulrush, and to lie in sackcloth and ashes? Will you call this a fast, a day acceptable to the Lord? Is not this the fast that I choose: to loose the bonds of injustice, to undo the thongs of the yoke, to let the oppressed go free, and to break every yoke? Is it not to share your bread with the hungry, and bring the homeless poor into your house; when you see the naked, to cover them, and not to hide yourself from your own kin?

Isaiah 58:3-7

So, by this definition, the point of worship is not an internal choice, but an external life in line with God’s ideals—and, again, an external life measured by its impact on others rather than its own perceived morality. Worship is measured in love and love is measured in sacrifice.

I think, as a worship leader, that I sometimes struggle with trying to bring people to outward signs of an internal choice, but I have no real desire to make sure that internal choice (and its eventual external expressions) are actually being made real. For instance, I feel I’ve succeeded most when I see a congregant raising her hands or singing with feeling—those are our fasting and sackcloth and ashes—but I have no idea how many of the congregants at my worship service are participating in service activities.

To make matters worse, I feel I reward those initial expressions rather than meaningful, impactful change by measuring success based on that criteria and altering my approach to elicit more of those responses that may or may not spring into something more.

Such an approach can turn into a backwards march when we fail to connect the cause with the effect, turning the mean into the end in our minds and theirs. Don’t get me wrong—worshiping God through intellectual, emotional, and philosophical self-sacrifice are important—but the goal is to lead them into a deeper level of love through a deeper level of sacrifice on all levels. Let’s say a congregant goes to the worship service on Sunday, and then has to choose between another worship experience or a service opportunity. As a worship leader, I feel like I would measure my own success by counting attendance at the former when I should be counting attendance at the latter. So really, we’re not worship leaders so much as worship instigators.

Please don’t read that I think true worship is limited to service opportunities. I just think one should not be at the expense of the other.

Anyway, those are my thoughts, and my confession, as a sometimes-misguided worship leader. Any other thoughts? Any other ways we lead a backwards march?

New videos

Janelle is the voice of Katie, and Janelle and I co-wrote the scripts for both “How to Raise Your Parents” vids. I think there are going to be more of them too. I’ll keep you posted on those.

I grew up in the church, actually, so I don’t have a miraculous conversion story to tell. Christianity is something I eased into and then grew into. I’ve never really had a period of falling out with God. This is odd, because when I hear about other people who haven’t had a real falling out with their faith, I tend to think that they haven’t given it enough thought. I have a pretty strange outlook on faith.

Before talking about my teenagedom with Jesus, though, I have to explain. I moved around a lot as a kid. I grew up in Hawaii, going to public school from first grade through fourth grade. At grade five, my parents moved me to a private Christian school. Halfway through that school year, we moved to a different country (the Cayman Islands). After a year and a half there, we moved up to Florida. Bearing in mind that I’m a severe introvert, you can imagine the havoc this wreaked on my social life. I developed flaky, superficial relationships based on essentially nothing.

At age 12 or so, my family moved up to Florida and I got involved with a youth group for the first time in my life. Socially, I wasn’t doing so well in school at the time, so the youth group provided me with a nice safe grounds to have a social life. I remember showing up with my horrible mullet in sweatshirts that didn’t quite fit and finding socially healthy people who were actually pretty excited to see me. So it was good for me in a lot of ways, really.

(I started doing the puppets at around 13, for reference.)

Around age 14, I started to actually become self-aware. I started realizing the superficiality of my life, both in church and out. It wasn’t an easy realization, partly because I never wanted to think of myself that way, and partly because I didn’t know how to get out of it. Given the structure of my life, it’s really no surprise that the first thing I deconstructed was my faith. I had always gone through the motions, but I started asking a lot of Why questions: Why do I believe this? Would I believe this if my parents didn’t? Am I just doing this to fit in? I took what my pastor and youth pastor said as law and based my answers around that.

This is also the time in my life when guilt became a motivator for many of the things I did. They won’t admit it, but fundamentalist Christians have realized the changing power of guilt and frequently measure the spiritual success of their communication by it. They have a very healthy respect for God and a knowledge of the scriptures that puts many of us Methodists to shame, but they’re quite fond of the guilt.

When I turned 15, my parents got divorced. This was a shock to just about everyone, including our family. Before my soul-seeking year prior, I had simply believed what my parents believed; now, my deconstruction and eventual reconstruction of faith was necessitated. So, while this was a painful time in my life, it actually gave my faith—and my life—some substance.

What I was really surprised to find was that all of this actually made me a leader in my youth group. I later realized that this was because I could explain my faith without quoting other people, and that I knew that shit happened, and that that was biblical. (Seriously, the book of Job can be summed up in two words: Shit happens.) Unfortunately, this new insight also gave me a new outlook on many of my fellow church-goers. So while my church was drawing me in, I began this love-hate relationship with it. That sets the stage for the rest of my story.

So I started asking a whole slew of new Why questions: Why do we hate gay people, even when we say we don’t? Why do we preach joy at the expense of dealing with our pain? Why do we let blind faith become an obstacle in honestly talking to God? I can’t say I got a lot of answers from my church, or from my friends. So at about that time, I left my church for another one that a few of my friends went to. (That was the rock band I left for as well.) That church actually served me well for a few years.

At 17, I left for college, but was still close enough to return on the weekends and see my friends there. My dad was a little skeptical with this whole college thing because he was afraid that I would spend too much time with liberals and get infected with their ungodliness. And, much to his chagrin, this is exactly what happened. I started spending time in the inner city, talking to homeless folks and the urban poor, and talking to people trying to help that first group of people. I realized that most of my political beliefs were based on assumptions that these people didn’t really need to be helped until they helped themselves.

I started talking about these things with my church friends. Some were receptive, some were not. Almost all of them had a problem with me saying I would be voting democrat, though. This is all about the time that Bush got elected for the first time, so you can probably see where this is heading. I don’t actually want to talk too much about this, because frankly, I’m sick of the division due to politics.

One day in church, my pastor was talking about marriage, and referenced a study conducted in Massachusetts that pointed at the importance of a strong marriage. He followed this by saying, “And that’s just a bunch of liberals who don’t have a clue who God is!” I had some words with him after church. A few people overheard, and that started the rumor mill on me. I was a rebel as a kid in Sunday school, and now, despite my best efforts and intentions, I was still a rebel in church.

My personal hero, Soren Kierkegaard, was a theologian who grew to loathe his church community so much that he joined an atheist organization just to get away from them. He never really lost his faith, though. I think I know how he must have felt. As the political climate of America polarized, I found myself drawn to the left pole while my church found itself compelled to become really, really Republican. This all culminated in a sermon against gay marriage in which my pastor used verses which talked about divorce to condemn gay marriage. He mentioned divorce once and only once and actually apologized to anyone in the congregation who might be divorced. I had some more words with him after that. (I know for a fact that there was a bisexual in the congregation that day. She never came back.)

I forgot to mention that I discovered in college that I liked girls at least as much as I liked Jesus, which was an awful lot. I really got to know girls in ways that my church didn’t really approve of. (But the girls approved. Oh, how they approved.) Needless to say, guilt was not the motivating factor it once was. This was a rather difficult balance to maintain and is a little more than I care to discuss here.

By the time I hit 21, I was leading Bible studies in coffeehouses and counseling friends of all ages. I found myself actually starting factions within the church, largely unintentionally, but unrepentantly nonetheless. I actually gathered my little group of followers and had my critics within the church. Looking back now, I can’t believe I did that. It was a petty thing for me to do, and I took a very adversarial approach to my beliefs (probably ingrained in me from my fundamentalist upbringing), and it didn’t really help the church as a whole.

It didn’t help that I had fallen in with a missions organization and was now a complete missions freak. I was the religious equivalent of a PETA or GreenPeace member. Mind you, I wasn’t tirading against people who didn’t want to get saved—I was tirading against saved people who didn’t want to support charity work. I spent a month and a half one summer traveling around to different Christian concerts telling people about translation and literacy work in third world countries. It gave me a strong sense of purpose, but also a sense of moral superiority, which is a very dangerous thing for anyone with a fundamentalist upbringing.

At the tender age of 23, I left Florida with few regrets for the great state of Kansas to work for a new church plant. The story there is a long, complicated, and frustrating one, but it involved me reconciling my adversarial beliefs. The past few years have mostly been about finding and promoting balance. Balance was something I lacked my entire life, so this hasn’t exactly been an easy process, but I think I’m making some progress.

I like to think of the general Christian community as my bratty little brother. I’m sometimes proud, and sometimes ashamed of him; there are times I love being around him, and times when I want nothing more than for him to go away; there are many times when I just want so badly to help him grow up, and other times when I realize that I’m the one who needs to grow up. Through it all, I can’t deny that this is my family. There’s good, there’s bad, and everything in-between, but in the end, blood runs thicker than water, and I think I’ve finally come to grips with the fact that he will always be there for me and I will always be there for him.

So that is my extremely long spiritual journey thus far. My deepest thanks to any who have read this far. Feel free to drop me a line if you want to discuss any of this further. I love talking about it, even if we’re not in any sort of agreement, so don’t feel like you’re going to offend me or turn me away, no matter your viewpoint. Actually, I take that back—if you’re just going to talk to me about how I’m slipping away from a solid Republican faith, then you can take your conversation elsewhere. Otherwise, I’m all ears.

As a teenager, my family attended a Southern Baptist church. (Yes, the women-can’t-be-ordained, gays-are-attacking-marriage, Postmodernism-is-an-attack-on-truth Baptists.) In the South, that’s the thing to do—lynchings and book burnings are so passé. Around age 14, I joined a “creative arts ministry team.” Now, mind you, we didn’t really have any musicians or fine artists. We were just a bunch of people with our hearts in the right place. (You know the type.)

I should probably explain that I spent most of my adolescent life with acute social anxiety and severe depression. It was a big struggle for me to just make it through a school day mostly unnoticed. So there was no way in hell I was going to get up and act or do hand motions to emotionally moving songs. This left me with limited options:

• Stage tech
• Prayer warrior
• Puppeteer

(I actually wound up doing all three, but the third makes for a better story.)

So I actually devoted some serious time to studying puppetry. I read books. I attended workshops. I held books over my head to develop puppet muscles. I practiced in the car to the radio. (Puppet Linkin Park is about the greatest thing ever.) I don’t mean to brag, but I was a damn good puppeteer. I looked down on Sesame Street (bunch of amateurs). We had freaking pyrotechnics, just like Metallica.

What performances looked like weren’t quite as impressive as my puppet prowess and the bulging deltoid I had on one arm. If you don’t know, there’s actually a surprisingly large collection of Christian puppet material, ranging from bad scripts to bad music. One big phenomenon in the Christian puppeteering world is re-writing pop songs to have Christian lyrics. Mind you, they weren’t parodies, mainly because they weren’t funny. They were just really, really Christian. Here are a few travesties available on cassette:

• “Manger Zone” (“Danger Zone”)
• “Shepherd Boy” (“Sk8er Boi”)
• “Turning Christianese” (“Turning Japanese”)
• “Payin’ Your Tithe” (“Stayin’ Alive”)
• “We’re Gonna Read the Bible” (“We Didn’t Start the Fire”)

Don’t believe me? You can buy CDs and listen to samples here. Here are some to make sure to listen to:

• “Three Wise Men”
• “Hey, Hey, We’re the Christians
• “Hey Job”
• “You Give God a Bad Name”
• “You Must Be Born Again”
• “I Love Jesus Christ”
• “I Wanna Know What God Is”
• “When He Saved the World” (Coldplay!)
• “You Really Saved Me Now”

I have to break composure here, just for a moment, to say, Dear God! These are so bad!

It’s not like the songs were the end of it, though. In one performance, we had choreographed a rather epic puppet number, with seven different puppets and pyrotechnics. I don’t remember the song at this point, but it was probably very much like the songs I posted above. It got to the climax of the song, and we were all naturally feeling like puppeteer badasses, when the pyrotechnics went off and blew a fuse. The performance was outdoors, so all of our power was coming through a single extension cord, including the power to the sound system. The song stopped abruptly and mass panic broke out behind the thick black curtains.

“Act confused!” I yelled out. All of the puppets started looking around, as if the song had run away and could be coaxed back out with some kind words. A few started whispering to each other and pointing at the audience. My puppet buried his head in his hands and shook his head slowly. After about ten minutes, the song started up right where it had left off (we were using a cassette tape) and we jumped right back into our song and dance number.

To the best of my memory, this sort of thing happened once or twice a year.

It was the allure of starting a rock and roll church band that finally drew me out of puppetry. But that’s a story for another time.

Man, reading over this, I can’t help but notice what an abstract thinker I am. Details mean nothing to me. If there’s ever a crime, leave me off of your interrogation list, officer, because I will be no help at all.

For those who don’t know, I adopted the cause of the abolition of human trafficking a few years back. Basically, it’s the buying and selling of humans on the black market. Love146 is an organization dedicated to helping to stop this, so we organized a benefit concert for them last year and we’re approaching our second one (coming January 17).

Here are some quick facts from the Love146 website:

• 1 child is sold into slavery every 30 seconds
• Approximately 1.2 million children are sold annually
• $32 billion is brought in annually from human trafficking
• $28 billion is brought in annually from commercial sexual exploitation
• Humans are the second biggest trade on the black market, beating out weapons and trailing behind only drugs

The concert’s website is here. (Notice the striking similarity to this site. You’ll never guess who designed it.) If you live in the KC area and you feel compelled to help with this cause, please help promote this concert. If you have a blog, blog about it; if you go to church, tell them about it; talk to people at work or in bars.

The goal isn’t just to have a successful concert, but to start a movement in the Kansas City area. Already, we have a strong student group forming. (It’s a national group based out of the KC area.) Last year, we had some people talk to local publications about refusing to advertise unlicensed massage parlors (a common front for slave prostitution). Just a few years back, they shut down one of these massage parlors in Overland Park that was filled with trafficked humans.The movement is starting. We need members.

If you’re not in the KC area, check out Love146, which focuses on abduction prevention and aftercare, and International Justice Mission, which works on a macro level with governments and law enforcement agencies to make trafficking harder for traffickers. There’s lots you can do.

The point is that people have to know about this. It can’t be kept America’s dirty little secret any more. Trafficked women are pimped out in the Adult Services section of Craigslist every day in hundreds of cities across the nation, and hundreds of these “massage parlors” are in operation and are advertised in our daily newspapers, all because people don’t know not to stand for it. Most of the clothes we buy, even some clothes that advertise “Made in the U.S.A.,” are made by trafficked children in sweat shops.

I do not want any of you to come away after reading this and feel guilty about not helping. I also don’t want anyone to feel guilty if they choose another cause over this one. This is my cause, but I realize that there are other ones as well. The point is to do what you do well to do good.

Feel free to contact me with any questions you have on this. I’m pretty passionate about it, and I have some additional resources on-hand if you want any.

http://focusfamaction.edgeboss.net/download/focusfamaction/pdfs/10-22-08_2012letter.pdf

You can also get to it from their Election Coverage section.

If you don’t want to read it, it includes a fictional letter written after four years under Obama. Here are some of the things it speculates will happen:

• Gays will receive bonuses for enlisting in the military
• Open displays of Christianity will be banned in schools
• Hardcore pornography will be aired on daytime network television
• Guns will be outlawed, which will dramatically increase inner-city crime
• Terrorists will carry out attacks on four U.S. cities
• Gas will cost $7 per gallon, and the Democrats will be happy about this increase
• Liberals will shut down conservative talk radio
• Barnes & Noble and Amazon.com will stop selling Christian books due to a campaign of vandalism and hacking attacks from the gays

Toward the end, the letter states that electing Obama was “a mistake that changed the course of history.”

I’m not even going to attempt to argue against this. I think it stands on its own well enough. There are two really sad things about this, though:

1. It gives sensible conservatives a really bad name
2. It will probably work, to a significant degree

You can tell Focus on the Family how you feel here. Just please, please, please don’t give them any encouragement in thinking that they’re suffering persecution for their faith.