I am not religious but spiritual...

There are a number of reasons for which the growing trend for people to self identify as "spiritual but not religious". It is something for which I have never really understood. I do not know how one can be 'spiritual' but not integrated into a religious community. It is something that I just have not understood. This post is not about that. Rather this is a post about a quote for which I was recently given by my colleague in ministry Rev. Nancy Allen.

In true community we will not choose our companions, for our choices are so often limited by self-serving motives. Instead our companions will be given to us by grace. Often they will be persons who will upset our settled view of self and world. In fact, we might define true community as that place where the person you least want to live with lives!…

Community reminds us that we are called to love, for community can break our egos open to the experience of a God who cannot be contained by our conceptions. Community will teach us that our grip on truth is fragile and incomplete, that we need many ears to hear the fullness of God’s word for our lives. And the disappointments of community life can be transformed by our discovery that the only dependable power for life lies beyond all human structures and relationships.

Parker J. Palmer, 1977
Plain Living: A Quaker Path to Simplicity by Catherine Whitmire

After reading this quote it dawned on me that perhaps some of the reason that some identify as "spiritual but not religious". If community is what the Church is attempting to foster, and a community is that place which you did not 'self select' to participate in then I can see why there is a strong rejection of religious community. We live in a world where we self select more and more groups we are associated with, yet Church is a place which is trying to build a community which harvests the value of a community for which we did choose our companions.

For instance, in the UMC there are things for which members cannot choose. They cannot choose the ministers of their congregations. They cannot choose where all the money goes to support (we have these things called 'apportionments' for which the UMC supports ministry around the world). When you join a UMC congregation, you are choosing to join the church but you are not totally choosing all things in the church.

Congregational churches, typically known as "Bible Churches" (which by the way I dislike that name in that it makes it seem like other Churches do not use the Bible or that we use the Koran or the Vetas), these church members choose much more than the members of UMC.

Perhaps this is why the UMC is having, in part, difficulty in gaining members. We value the values of not choosing everything. We value the value of non-choosing.

Are you connected to a community for which you did not and cannot have a voice in all that the community does?

Bonhoeffer: "Life together"

In November of 2009, a group of about eight people from my local church community attended a continuing education conference which was sponsored by our Conference (the larger jurisdiction of which our local church community is associated with). The focus of the conference was asking people to take a closer look at the book "The Five Practices of a Fruitful Congregation" by Bishop Robert Schnase. After the conference, this group of eight made a commitment to one another to begin to discern what we think God is calling our church community to do and be in light of these practices. So we decided the best place to begin is to pray together.

So each Sunday (give or take a few) we have met to pray together. We have read a couple of books together which inform our conversation and we have even had a half day retreat for which we discussed what we felt God was telling us. It has been a wonderful group for one I cherish. They hold me accountable to different disciplines which I embark upon (such as my Lenten discipline).

One of our members, Reverend Nancy Allen, suggested that we read Bonhoeffer's book "Life Together". It is not a quick read despite not being very long. He uses several things in the book which the group found to be helpful as we discussed our life together in the church community we share.

Of the many things which spoke to me in this book, one thing sparked me to write out a 'T-chart' to help me see the difference between what he calls the "Community of Spirit" verse the "Human Community of spirit".

Here is the chart I made.

I was most struck by how my local church community works very hard and much of what we do is with good intentions but, I think, it is still located in the superficial (not bad, but more like "not deep") Community of the Human spirit.

I invite you to take a look at what Bonhoeffer is sharing with us and I wonder what you glean from this. Where do you find yourself living? What do you think your community strives to be in light of what it does as a church community? What steps can the UMC take to embody more of the Community of the Spirit and less of the Human Community of spirit?

A New Kind of Christianity (Brian D. McLaren) - Light metaphor

McLaren writes about a metaphor for understanding different theological lenses for different people. These lenses influence what each of us are “looking for” and “looking at” in terms of theology. The metaphor is one of a spectrum of light. There are different colors in the spectrum and no one color is more important than another, but all are needed to make the spectrum. He gives each color a particular theological bent so that the spectrum is accounting for as many people as possible. The following is just a part of the metaphor as it pertains to the violet and ultraviolet colors. I have added the emphasis.

Beyond our quest for survival (red), security (orange), power (yellow), independence (green), individuality (blue), honesty (indigo), and ubuntu (violet), I imagine there could be an ultraviolet quest for sacredness, a desire to live in a growing conscious awareness of the presence of God and the goodness of God reflected in all things.

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But here’s the rub: we are all at different places in this quest. Most of us—especially most of us in the Christian faith—are in quests for security (consider the prosperity gospel and certain magical forms of Pentecostalism) and power (consider some forms of strict hyper-Calvinism and other fundamentalisms, with their view of divine sovereignty as deterministic control exercised on behalf of the elect few). Or we’re in quests for independence (consider the many kinds of systematic theologies that pursue mastery of mystery through doctrinal systematization in almost the same way scientists pursue mastery over mystery through the scientific method) and individuality (consider the self-help focus of many megachurches, with their emphasis on “personal salvation” and its close cousins “personal spirituality” and “personal success”). That means that most of us really aren’t interested in a quest for “inconvenient truths” that might obstruct or interfere with our more immediate quests for security, power, independence, and individuality. Just as a young boy longing for a baseball glove or bicycle isn’t interested in a girlfriend or college major yet, we aren’t ready for the higher zones of our quest yet—which is why I call those truths “inconvenient.”

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The situation is unintentionally made worse by the small but growing minority of us who are entering the quest for honesty (many in the emergent conversation of which I am part would fit in this category).

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The indigo zone—while it’s great for raising honest questions—is not so great at reaching conclusions. In fact, indigo people generally seek honesty by critiquing the previous stages and by questioning the adequacy of their conclusions—something we have spent a good many pages doing in this book. But as any Ph.D. holder can attest, honest inquiry and thought do not necessarily lead to wise action. Sometimes (recalling Paul’s words about knowledge “puffing up”) our honest inquiry simply leads to conceit and a critical spirit.

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So those of us in the indigo zone commonly look down on red-, orange-, yellow-, green-, and blue-zone people and groups, calling them primitive, backward, immature, conservative, fundamentalist, and so on. We often “explain” their behavior with a kind of cool and elitist detachment, and in so doing we objectify and dehumanize them (as some of us may have been doing while reading this chapter so far). We in the indigo zone feel comfortable casually critiquing, relativizing, and deconstructing the very systems, structures, doctrines, and institutions that red through blue cultures have worked, lived, fought, and died to build and defend. So no wonder indigo people see others as obstructionists, and the others see them as terrorists or nihilists.

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In short, we in the indigo zone—just like those in the earlier zones—want to transcend and distance ourselves from everyone in earlier zones. And in so doing we resist our transcendence into the violet spirit of ubuntu, which seeks to close distance and be joined with others.

What color do you find yourself in at this day?