Churches that Copyright are not Churches

by on October 21, 2011

This morning Twitter was all a-flutter with news that Mars Hill Seattle has sent out Cease and Desist letters to other churches with the same name.

For years, I have watched church copyrighting become a trend.  Most closely, this has happened at the megachurch that resides just on the other side of the highway from us, Watermark.  When they began, copyrighting was one of the first things they did, because they had their eyes set toward the future, which they intended to be filled with conferences and satellite churches and books and other copyright-related things.  Before we get any further, let me be perfectly clear:  I applaud their desire to think big.  I applaud their vision of extending what they are doing as far as the eye can see.  However, I have a SIGNIFICANT problem with their assumption that to do so requires legal copyrighting.  What that communicates to me is not their desire to be a group of people who are intent on spreading good news and equipping people, but their desire to be a group of people KNOWN BY NAME (and not the name of the One in which they are doing so) who does these things. And that, my friends, is a HUGE, HUGE difference.  It is, to put it as bluntly as I can, the difference between a church and a corporation.

Corporations have the goal of expanding their brand.  Churches have the goal of expanding the Kingdom.  These things do not equal one another, and I would argue, the former prohibits the function of the latter.

But let’s move on to Mars Hill.  First of all, I’m disgusted that this move has come only after Rob Bell has decided to step down as Lead Pastor at Mars Hill in Michigan.  It’s as if Mark Driscoll was too scared to make this bold move before that, because everyone knows Bell is more well-known (and frankly, more liked) than Driscoll.  That to me feels sickeningly underhanded.  They have shared a name and a public profile as two churches for over a decade. Why now?  (I do know that Mars Hill Graduate School, also located in Seattle, has just undergone a name change to become The Seattle School of Theology and Psychology. I don’t know the specifics of the process or whether it came from similar legal pressure, but I do know they’ve been debating a name change for years in order to distance themselves from the assumption of affiliation with Mars Hill Church.)

As you can tell from my comments above, I already find it theologically suspect (if not abhorrent) when a church copyrights at all.  But this becomes even more odious still when the very name copyrighted is something that has been recognized and shared by people of faith for over two thousand years.  What in God’s name gives a church the right to attempt to copyright something that wasn’t theirs in the first place???  Can you imagine what kind of letter the Apostle Paul would write to Mars Hill if he were around?!

“To the church in Seattle called Mars Hill, I appeal to you to be united with believers across your continent whose church carries the same name. For I have heard troubling reports that you have instigated quarrels among you.  Was Mars Hill crucified for you? Were you baptized in the name of Mars Hill? Your boasting is not a good thing. And haven’t you heard me say that when you have a grievance against someone (and do you really think the name of your church constitutes such a grievance?), you are to speak with your fellow believer in person? Do you dare take something to court and seek legal means before you settle it by using the wise among you? You may recall in my first letter to the Corinthians that I declared lawsuits and legal quarrels are already a defeat. Why not rather be wronged? Why not rather be defrauded? Why not allow the petty concern over church affiliation confusion to lay at rest rather than seek the glory of raising up your own church name? Do you not know that wrongdoers of such a kind will not inherit the Kingdom of God?”

I pastor a church called Journey.  In 1999, I’m pretty sure we were among the first to be named so.  As of this morning’s Google search, I found 70 pages of hits showing churches with that name.  It’s not ideal, and I do often get people who ask whether we are connected to the Journey here or there.  It can be a nuisance.  As a matter of full disclosure, one of those churches is located in DFW.  We learned of them a few years ago when they had just begun and we immediately began receiving voice messages and emails from people trying to find them instead of us.  I looked at their website and realized we shared the exact same name-Journey Community Church.  I called the pastor. We met for coffee.  We shared stories about who we were and what we were doing.  I told him we were very used to being confused with other Journey churches, but it might create a regular headache to share the same exact name in the same exact city. What can we do to alleviate that?  He was very emotionally tied to the name and, though they had not even begun meeting regularly yet, he was pretty adamant about not changing the name, even slightly for the sake of differentiation.  I will openly admit to being frustrated. (I will also admit that, had it been me, I would have opted to differentiate the name somehow out of respect for a church just miles from ours that had already been around for nearly a decade.)  So I understand the frustration of names. I really do. Everything under the sun these days seems to have “Journey” in it (including, I’ll say, a Bible study by Watermark called “Join the Journey” whose massive banner on their church, in the same font as our old font, was so confusing for some people that they wandered around Watermark thinking it’s where we met).  I also will say that I have seen other churches use our ideas in all kinds of ways. One church website a number of years ago basically plagiarized half of our website, including our core values statements. (Mars Hill Michigan strictly prohibits such a thing, so they have their own issues with copyrighting it seems.)

I get it.  It’s incredibly frustrating, not to mention dishonoring to the hard work and passion we put into it, to have another church come along and just take what you’ve done without asking permission or saying thanks or even sending you a five dollar love offering for the time it saved them not to have to come up with something on their own. Journey would have a far bigger budget if all the people who have gotten ideas from us over the  years would have left us a minor monetary thank you before returning to their massive buildings and pension plans.  I GET IT.  And maybe what we do need is a conversation about how to share things openly and respectfully in a digital world where idea-poaching is so prevalent.  Maybe we need to talk more about something along the lines of Creative Commons as a way of respecting one another’s contributions.  However, what we DON’T need is lawsuits, copyrights, or cease and desist letters.  Never for one second would I consider SUING any of these people to have them change their name, or stop using our verbiage or ideas. Never would I consider claiming that our Journey is the only Journey that can exist, because we were one of the first to employ the name.  The very thought is ridiculous, even when our shared name confusion is at its highest.

Because at the end of the day, we are ALL finding inspiration from a story that isn’t ours, and that has been freely and graciously given to us.  We  have been instructed and even commanded to take this story and to share it and to pass it along.  I don’t care how many books you’ve sold, or great church ideas you’ve employed.  We all owe our inspiration to the Holy Spirit, and she does not charge.

We are all people trying to be faithful to a story that has been around for far longer than any of our churches or ministries have.  NONE of us came up with this song.  None of us were original enough to create the ideas we share Sunday after Sunday after Sunday. We each have our own unique perspectives, some may have stumbled upon a way of communicating them that really strikes a chord with a lot of people, but we are all singing along to a song that is much bigger than we are.

The story of God is not a commodity.  The church is not a corporation.  The Gospel is not for sale.  The inspiration of the Holy Spirit does not carry a price tag.  And if we treat them as such (and boy, have we), we need to hang our heads and receive some ashes and repent.

 

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Moltmann and Gestalt

by on October 17, 2011

I have been known to describe emerging church things as “Gestalt-y” which, I know, is a word I’ve entirely fabricated.  And though I am partial to that word and idea even still, I do think Moltmann does a much better job of describing what I am trying to communicate when I use it in this excerpt below from Sun of Righteousness, Arise!:

 

Different biosystems or organisms do not merely cooperate with each other; they also integrate themselves in each other and form more complex forms of life. Without these processes life would not evolve. In the wake of these integrations new forms of organization develop.

It is generally said that ‘the whole is more than the sum of its parts’. That is true. The whole is also more than the cooperation of separate parts with each other. The whole is a new principle for organizing the functions of the parts in relation to each other and on behalf of the whole. New organizational forms of this kind evidently arise from the aggregate conditions of the parts like a leap into a new quality. Because the whole displays a new quality, it is not just ‘more than’ the sum of the parts; it is also different.

 

There are those who say (quite often, at least to me) that the “emerging church” is simply a rediscovery of something old–liturgy, or Wesleyan something or other, or Lutheran this or that. And in part, that is likely true. But I think what Moltmann says so clearly here is why I tend to reject that argument overall.  It is not simply a matter of rediscovery. It is a matter of putting these old and new things together in a way that “leap into a new quality” altogether. It is different, even if parts of it may feel the same to you. Inside it, philosophically and I would even argue metaphysically, it’s not just Lutheranism going on (as great as that might be). It possesses a unique quality that is just now emerging.

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5 Ways to Create an Empowered Community

by on October 12, 2011

This week over at Patheos I wrote down five things I hear myself saying most often when people ask how to create participatory communities of faith.  Head over there and leave me a comment!

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Two Images of Liberation

by on October 10, 2011

Pig hang-gliding in sky

A late-evening Moltmann Monday posts for those of you who remind me when I skip a week… :)  This one’s from God in Creation p.287:

Israel has given the nations two archetypal images of liberation: the exodus and the sabbath. The exodus from slavery into the land of liberty is the symbol of external freedom; it is efficacious, operative. The sabbath is the symbol of inner liberty; it is rest and quietude. The exodus is the elemental experience of God’s history. The sabbath is the elemental experience of God’s creation. The exodus is the elemental experience of the God who acts. The sabbath is the elemental experience of the God who is, and is present. No political, social and economic exodus from oppression, degradation and exploitation really leads to the liberty of a humane world without the sabbath, without the relinquishment of all works, without the serenity that finds rest in the presence of God. But the reverse is also true: men and women never find the peace of the sabbath in God’s presence unless they find liberation from dependency and repression, inhumanity and godlessness. So exodus and sabbath are indivisible. They are the necessary complements of one another. They wither and do not lead to freedom if they are once divided, and if we attempt to make only one of them the foundation for the experience of liberty.”

 

External freedom and inner liberty,  as Moltmann says, “are necessary complements of one another.”  This we’ve heard before, I know.  Inner life and outer life, personal salvation and social salvation, personal faith and communal faith lived out in the world together.  But as someone who spends time with people from across the denominational spectrum, it seems fairly clear that this is something we know but not something we KNOW. That, or nobody wants to do anything to change what we know to be incomplete.  Churches tend to focus either on inner life (how are you doing?) or external freedom (how is the world doing?).  For the love of all things, I don’t know why anybody feels the need to choose.

This is why I appreciate Moltmann bringing exodus and sabbath along as a description. It makes it feel more important, no?  Who wants to leave out the exodus? Who would say sabbath isn’t worth the effort? Both are central to our story. They are indivisible. They are necessary complements if we ever are to become mature and faithful people. So let’s figure out how to share from the best of our respective traditions and find some much needed wholeness in our approaches. Let the pig fly, people. Let the pig fly.

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Not Optimism, Not Pessimism…Just Trust

by on September 26, 2011

Happy Moltmann Monday!  Today I’m sending you a little section from Jesus Christ for Today’s World which is one of Moltmann’s “broader audience” books (read: not academic theology).  In this chapter he picks up an earlier strand of conversation he’s had with us about the  false dichotomy of anxiety and fear and tries to answer the “then what?” question.

Today, we ourselves belong to both groups of people (people of anxiety and people of hope). We read the newspapers, and are filled with anxiety. We read the Bible, and hope for God. Like everyone else, we are afraid of the dangers ahead of us in this world. Like the people in the Bible, we believe that God’s deliverance is near. This is an age of anxiety. That is true. But it is an age of hope too. We believe in God and hope for (God’s) coming, but we are not optimists–we are afraid for our world. We are afraid of the things that imperil its future: we can imagine the social catastrophes in Russia–we can calculate the ecological disaster in our own countries–we know more than we can believe. But we are not pessimists, for we have faith in God and believe that (God) will never let his creation go. People who hope for God are not optimists. They don’t need the power of positive thinking. People who hope for God are not pessimists. They don’t need the logic of negative dialectic. People who trust in God know that God is waiting for them, that God is hoping for them, that they are invited to God’s future, so that they are holding in their hands the most marvelous invitation they have ever had in their lives.  (p.131-132)

 

I often run across people and friends who feel that faith is a form of blindness, either ignorant or intentional. We either do not know enough about the world to see how it really is, or we are so afraid of what we have seen that we choose to put blinders on and convince ourselves we see something else. I confess to being overwhelmingly annoyed by these assumptions. Certainly, people believe in God (and a million other things) for these kinds of reasons from time to time. We’re all working our way toward understanding. But to say the task of faith is blind optimism and the task of fear or doubt or even atheism is staunch pessimism is far too simplistic.

We are always both people of fear and anxiety, if we indeed have our eyes open. We see the dangers of the world (even if Moltmann’s references are outdated…).  We know the future could bring hard times. But we also see the hope in God’s promise, and dare to hope. However, this tension between anxiety and hope does not require us to pick sides. We do not have to wear team jerseys declaring our allegiance to optimism or pessimism, changing teams based on the outcome of Monday morning’s headline. People of faith are simply people who trust in God. It’s not blind trust. It’s not trust that means no bad things will happen. It’s not trust that we will get to have life just the way we want it. It’s trust in a relationship—a friendship–that remains intact no matter what. Faith is not contingent upon what happens, but upon who holds us. We trust that whatever the future holds, God is with us, God is before us and behind us. Faith is trust that when all is said and done, what will be left is not optimism or pessimism, anxiety or hope, but the fullness of God realized.

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The Gospel is Not Fair

by on September 23, 2011

I had lunch with a seminary friend yesterday, and at some point in the two hour conversation we got to talking about the general misunderstanding that the Gospel is fair.  What I mean is that people assume and expect that our hard work will pay off in apparent results, and that if we are called to do something it will follow that we will succeed (in a way we expect), or that at the very least we should always feel “good” about those choices we make to follow God.

And sometimes, those things actually play out that way.  But sometimes they don’t.  Sometimes you give someone help who needed it, and they squander what you gave them, and you look like a fool.  Sometimes you are called to do something, and it lands you in the middle of total chaos and miles of conflict and human messiness.  Sometimes you do what you know is right, and nobody notices, and it didn’t really give you that much internal satisfaction, either.

None of those things should indicate that God isn’t nice, or that you were somehow wrong in your choices. Because the Gospel isn’t fair.  It is RIGHT but it isn’t fair.  Jesus says to give to those in need.  If you do that, you are being faithful.  You try to do that with wisdom, and with discernment, but at some point if you are actually doing this regularly, someone will take advantage of you, and you will feel like an idiot.  And if you think the Gospel is right but not fair, then you will pick yourself up and say, “Well, misjudged that one” and then keep on giving anyway.  If you get called somewhere and it becomes hard (and being called somewhere almost always means it will at some point be hard) and you think the Gospel is right but not fair, then you will find your center in the midst of the chaos and figure out how to listen for how God might be asking you to transform that place and stay put through the storm.  And if you spend your life trying to live by the Gospel, trust me, most days nobody will really seem to care one bit.  And it may not look like you are getting anywhere at all, because the Gospel is like yeast rising right before your eyes but at a pace so slow you can’t see it. The Gospel is like staring at a blade of grass and waiting to see it grow. But if you trust that the Gospel is “right” and if you believe that crazy mystery that the Word does not return void, then you will plug along simply because you feel called to live like the Gospel has asked you to live.

Grace is incredibly unfair.  Unconditional love is mind-bogglingly unfair. The prodigal son squandering his inheritance and getting a party thrown in his honor is unbelievably unfair.  Workers out in the field who worked six hours less than you but received the same amount of money is enough to put Americans into a complete rage for its unfairness.  But these parables tell us what the Gospel looks like.

Take it or leave it. But don’t complain about unfairness. You’re going to have to look somewhere other than the Gospel if that’s what is most important to you.

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Friendship

by on September 19, 2011

Thanks to Tony’s new book, I’m in a The Church in the Power of the Spirit mood today.  Here’s an excerpt from Moltmann’s section on Jesus and friendship, which Tony rightly highlighted in his book as one of Moltmann’s more unique takes on Christology:

 

The titles through which the church defines what Jesus means are usually called his titles of office. Whether Jesus is understood and acknowledged as prophet, priest or king, these titles always express his divine dignity towards men and his saving task on their behalf. The christological titles describe his uniqueness and set up a certain distance between him and the church. In devotion, this distance finds expression in the worship and adoration of Christ, and in obedience to him. In the garb of his titles of honor he appears with divine authority…But the fellowship which Jesus brings men, and the fellowship of people with one another to which he calls, would be described in one-sided terms if another ‘title’ were not added, a title to describe the inner relationship between the divine and the human fellowship: the name of friend.

Friendship is an unpretentious relationship, for ‘friend’ is not an official term, nor a title of honor, nor a function. It is a personal designation. Friendship unites affection with respect. There is no need to bow before a friend. We can look him in the eye. We neither look up to him nor look down on him. In friendship we experience ourselves for what we are, respected and accepted in our own freedom. Through friendship we respect and accept other people as people and as individual personalities. Friendship combines affection with loyalty. One can rely on a friend…Between friends the determining factor is not an ideal, a purpose or a law, but simply promise, loyalty to one another and openness…

The more people begin to live with one another as friends, the more privileges and claims to domination become superfluous. The more people trust one another the less they need to control one another. The positive meaning of a classless society free of domination, without repression and without privileges, lies in friendship. Without the power of friendship and without the goal of a friendly world there is no human hope for the class struggles and struggles for dominance.”

 

To add “friend” to Jesus’ list of christological offices is truly one of Moltmann’s more brilliant moves.  Prophet, priest and king are limited in scope because they are based on function and title alone.  I remember feeling this in my bones, like we were trying to recreate a recipe but forgetting that one ingredient that really made the others shine. Something wasn’t tasting quite right, like the batter was going to be delicious but not actually rise in the cooking.  And then in this part of CPS, Moltmann came into the kitchen and handed over the missing ingredient.  The “gospel” part of who Jesus is, the part that can transform and subvert even the most dominant power structures, the part that makes the whole thing SING, is not only his ability to serve as prophet, priest and king, but precisely his ability to serve as such as our friend.

It’s so good it makes me want to do cartwheels at the very thought. The sovereignty of Jesus, the messianic nature of Jesus, the reason Jesus can be called Redeemer of the whole entire universe, all rests on the fact that he is who he is and he does what he does as our friend.

I honestly do not believe I am overstating my case when I say if you miss that, you are missing out on the whole thing.  It’s all flat pancakes and sunken souffles.  Friendship, people. Friendship.

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Postmodernism, Morality…and Eschatology?

by on September 15, 2011

Recently I’ve been reading McIntyre (and if you haven’t, read After Virtue as it should be on a very short list of must reads) and discussing it at Geek Squad each week.  (As an aside, Geek Squad is exactly what it sounds like–a group of self-admitted geeks sitting around talking about things we realize make most others roll their eyes and/or yawn.  It’s our space to debate the small print as loudly and for as long as we want.)  It’s been a while since I’ve kicked philosophy around in my head, so I’m processing slowly and trying to remove the cobwebs off of all those names and books I used to remember.  What I do remember is that I felt After Virtue was a great conversation partner in the work of  ecclesiology, though McIntyre certainly didn’t intend to write a book about the purpose of the church.  As it turns out, the content and conversation is just as applicable and timely now as it was years ago.   A friend of mine referenced this New York Times op-ed piece by David Brooks about relativism and extreme individualism, and Brooks may as well have been recording part of our discussion last Thursday at the pub.

Basically, we were discussing our growing inability to think ethically or morally about issues.  I’m not even asking for us to agree on the issues, although that would be a welcome relief from time to time.  I’m just asking for the ability to discuss the concept of morality as a thing itself.  The notion of the virtuous life, however defined, is simply not something people talk about much anymore–at least not well.  I should clarify:  People talk plenty about “values” but in such a way that values are nothing more than commodities, like cans you pick off the shelf, with everyone’s basket looking a little different.  Values are not items.  They are not individually chosen.  They are not self-selected a la carte menu items you put together on a whim.  To stretch the metaphor, to attempt a virtuous life with such an approach is like trying to eat food without a plate.  Something has to hold those values, and they have to be held in concert with other values so as to create an actual meal that will sustain you and help you grow.  I find myself nodding my head vigorously (again) with McIntyre’s assessment that virtue is impossible to create when a society is based solely or even primarily upon the feeling of the individual.

On a slightly tangential note, I feel the need to argue, for the record, that the kind of flippant “Who am I to judge?” attitude evidenced by the young people in Brooks’ article is the laziest and sloppiest form of postmodern philosophy one could ever attempt to create.  I’m sure people will read that article and say, “See, that’s what we’ve been saying all along, that postmodernism will lead us to this kind of wishy-washy culture where no one knows right from wrong.”  Whether it does that or not is moot; Enlightenment rationality shattered the dinner plate of virtue way before Derrida came along.  So please don’t equate sloppy thinking with the postmodern critique.  ”Who am I to judge?” has as much to do with stress and overload in a rapidly diversifying culture without sufficient tools to help us cope with this new world as it does an adherence to moral relativism.

McIntyre’s argument is that societies based on extreme individualism and emotivism are severely broken. They are incapable of virtue, because they hold no framework.  Without a recognized and shared end-goal, virtue becomes canned values, stale and without nutrients.  And nobody cares whether they stick around or go, because they do absolutely nothing for the palate, or for the meal itself.

This is how a discussion of virtue ended up in my reaffirmation of the importance of eschatology.  When moral inquiry lacks an end-goal, there is no food but limp green beans…splattered on the floor, plate-less, no less.  What kind of eschatology is another matter for another day, but without a recognition of who-I-am-now contrasted with who-I-ought-to-be, without a shared and cohesive sense of where we all should be headed and where we all are trying to go, virtue is sure to wind up on the endangered species list.

I can only imagine this teleological discussion will come up often this year, as it seems the tensions  between those who want to make theology and those who want to keep dismantling it continues to rise.

So here are the questions I’m pondering these days:  what do we do to enliven an American framework of virtue?  (CAN we? The task itself is quite problematic…which virtue???  But the alternative–not having a framework of virtue, even civil virtue–will likely be our end.)  In what ways is the C/church called to embody a virtuous framework of shared life? CAN we?

 

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