Setting the Table of God

This past Sunday, through one of those situations that happens from time to time, my congregation found ourselves without our usual communion bread for worship. We have a wonderful team of volunteers who make homemade bread for us every week, but last week, none showed up. Thankfully, we keep a box of wafers around just in case and we pulled them out for the holy meal this day.

For anyone who isn't familiar with communion wafers, they are thin, tasteless discs about an inch in diameter that are engineered to dissolve quickly on the tongue and have a shelf life of about one hundred years. I jokingly refer to them as "crispy Christs," but for many people who grew up in the church in the twentieth century, these wafers were the norm for years.

For kids at Martin Luther Church, though, they are not.

This fact became clear during communion. Several appeared puzzled. One young person audibly said, "ugh" when I handed him the body of Christ. Another looked at it with a confused expression and then handed it to his mother.

At the time, I chuckled to myself over their honest reactions. As I thought about it later, though, I realized there was more than a "kids will be kids" truth to their reaction. They came expecting good food at communion -- and why shouldn't they? If "this is the Lord's table" (which I say every week), and our Lord is generous and loving, why shouldn't we expect good food at God's table? If the Lord's Supper is meant to be a "foretaste of the feast to come," I think fresh bread and a decent cabernet is a better representation of that feast than stale wafers and Manischewitz.

Going beyond the quality of communion, I think the same could be said about other aspects of church as well. Do we participate half-heartedly in worship? Do we allow clutter and disfunction to persist in our church? Do we serve weak coffee and stale cookies? (Seriously, why can't more churches make a decent cup of coffee?) Or do we offer our best as a community to both regulars and guests as a reflection of the great gift we've received in Christ?

Now, giving our best isn't the same as being perfect, but I believe we should act as though what we are doing matters to us and furthermore, we want it to matter to those around us, too. How do we set the table of our church on Sunday and our lives during the week so that people come to expect the best of God when they gather there?

From the Gray,

Pastor Ari

“I know you’re supposed to be my steering wheel, not just my spare tire.” -Arrested Development, “Tennessee”

Big Insights from Living Small: A Reflection on the Film "Tiny"

Tonight I took advantage of some free time to watch a documentary called "Tiny." The film follows a 30 year old on his quest to build a tiny house under 200 square feet and profiles several people (including couples and a family) who have built and moved into similar-sized homes. (If you're interested, it's currently streaming on Netflix.)

I've mentioned before that I'm interested in the concept of design and I've been fascinated with the way design intersects with architecture and living spaces in particular to create spaces that can be simple, beautiful and functional. Therefore, I tossed this movie into my Netflix queue as soon as I discovered it. (Have I mentioned that I also love documentaries?)

As I was watching the documentary, however, I was surprised by the comments made by the people who had moved into tiny homes. Time and again, they made comments about how happy they were living in a small space. One man talked about the freedom it gave him because he didn't need to spend so much time and money cleaning and doing maintenance on his house. Others talked about how the small space focused them into deciding what was really important for them. (Some had moved into tiny homes after the Great Recession led them to lose much of what they had or reevaluate what they wanted from life.)

And then one woman in Olympia, Washington, made a comment that really brought out the spiritual theme that was running (unintentionally?) through the whole movie when she said that our culture doesn't give us many opportunities to practice humility and gratitude, but building a tiny house from scratch did. She had to learn to ask for help in building and to live with less, which made her more aware of what she did have.

Humility? Gratitude? Freedom? Is this a documentary on architecture or spirituality?

Our culture is built largely upon consumption and collection. The more we own/possess/control, the more successful and enviable we are perceived to be. Many of us shake our heads at this fact, but we all participate in it in some way.

Watching the movie made me think back to my first tiny apartment and how I thought if I just had a second bedroom I'd be happy. My second apartment had two bedrooms and I wished I had a dishwasher. My third apartment had a dishwasher and I wished it had a laundry room. And so on.

I like to believe that I live fairly simply, but I was amazed at the joy and satisfaction demonstrated by these people who had given up much of what my younger self thought would make my life perfect precisely because they'd given them up.

As I watched "Tiny," I couldn't help but think of a quote attributed to St. Augustine: "From what you own, set aside what you need to survive. The rest belongs to God." As I watched these people happily live in 200 square feet, it made me question exactly what it is I "need to survive." I can sit in my living room and see more things than I'd like to admit that I don't use, need, or even want any more. And if humility, gratitude, and joy (as expressed by these tiny home owners) are indeed spiritual fruits, then does having less space to live paradoxically make more space for God?

“If I die before I learn to speak, can money pay for all the days I lived awake but half asleep?” -Primitive Radio Gods, “Standing Outside a Broken Phone Booth with Money in my Hand”

The Theology of Intelligent Design (But Not the One You're Thinking Of)

I saw this video online the other day and (because I'm a pastor) I immediately thought about it in terms of the church.

I should probably say that I find the field of design fascinating (I blame my college roommate who was an art/design major). While I don't consider myself a design expert, what I've come to understand and appreciate is that design isn't just about what something looks like, but how someone uses and experiences the product. Good design makes someone want to use the product and feel good while using it. Some of the best design solutions may even go unnoticed because they work so intuitively that we don't even think about how to use it.

So when I watched this, I started thinking, "How could the principles of good design help improve the church?"

Now whenever I use the word "church" in the same sentence with words like "business," "marketing," or "design," I see many Christians get a panicked look in their eyes that says, "He wants to turn the church into a shopping mall! It'll be Six Flags over Jesus!" So let me be clear, I do not think Jesus is a fully customizable pick-your-own-religion kit to be sold. The Gospel challenges and changes us, not the other way around.

However, as Mark Parker says in the video, "Good design is a part of any brand realizing its full potential." And unless I missed the memo where suffering and disease all ended, then the Church has not realized its full potential. Yet it seems like many Christians are so insistent on not being a "business" that we almost take pride in our buildings being hard to navigate and our worship services being confusing for visitors.

My point in appealing to good design isn't to offer a one-size-fits-all packaged idea to "fix" any church. My point is to raise a question. Parker says that design is "creating products and services that really excite and delight the consumer." So if Jesus is the bread of life and living water that quenches all thirst, shouldn't that be shared in a way that "excites and delights"? Shouldn't that naturally be something we want to use and feel good while using?

I have often experienced faith as a beautiful, mysterious, and endlessly fascinating thing that keeps drawing me back and deeper. But I know that some find their initial experience with faith/religion/church is quite the opposite and therefore miss glimpsing the "full potential" of the Church that "excites and delights" those of us who love her. So how do we pay attention to the design of church so that it feels more like "Double Rainbow Across the Sky" and less like Dana Carvey as the Church Lady?

“Be part of the miracles you see in every hour.” -10,000 Maniacs, "These Are Days"