Who is God?

How do our religion and service attendance and participation habits reflect our image of God? Have you thought about it?

Let’s say you attend religious services because you feel bad about yourself and you feel as though you need to seek forgiveness or set things right. Might this mean that you see God as a parent figure that will decide whether or not you get rewarded or punished (either here or in the afterlife)? If it weren’t for this understanding of God, would you still feel bad after failing to act in the ways you or your religion have deemed appropriate?

Along the same lines, maybe you don’t attend all that frequently because if God is loving and forgiving he/she’ll understand the trials and tribulations already and there’s no real need to rehash things at a service. You can think about what you are doing at any time and an all present God will know.

Maybe you go to service to worship/adore/thank God? Do you think an all powerful, all knowing God needs thanks and adoration from his creations? Why do we need to adore, worship and thank God? Is this a reminder for us on how good we have it and what if things turn bad in a Job sort of way? Will we maintain our motivation to give thanks or is our adoration contingent on our well-being? So God created you and if you worship, thank and adore him/her, then you will be rewarded with eternal happiness if you don’t it’s hell.

Do we really think everything we have is a gift from God or does our behavior reflect that God has been pretty good to us and we need to tip him/her to keep things going in the right direction? Here is a little something for you God now keep those aces and tens headed in my direction.

How about the age old question of what happens with people who do not believe and worship as you do (or don’t at all as the case may be)? Did God create humanity and reserve eternal life for Christians or Buddhists or Muslims? It doesn’t seem like you can have it both ways, either there are multiple religions (ways?) to eternal life or there isn’t. If there isn’t then one has to seriously wonder whether you are playing on the right team or not given the number of different options. If there are then one should feel compelled to examine the different options to find one that is most effective in helping one treat one’s neighbor as oneself (which seems to be one of the more universal themes in religion).

I am not sure there’s a point in all of these questions. I guess I was thinking that we need to understand why people do or don’t attend religious services and work with the results. I also think that we need to be clear about our understanding of who God is and develop a lifestyle that is consistent with this understanding. Organized religions have created some very elaborate and complex rules and practices that define God different ways. In delving into why people do or don’t chose to more fully practice their chosen religion, it seems there needs to be a link between the religion’s understanding of God and why the religious activities are important. And so in the case of my parish who is trying to get more people to attend Mass, can we link our understanding of God with the benefits or reasons of mass attendance? If the people who we want to attend mass don’t have the same understanding of God, then it seems that we either need to change their understanding or change the service.

Mass it matters?

What is the value of attending a religious service regularly? Our parish has asked and attempted to answer this question. The idea we had is that if we publicized why the service matters for a wide variety of people, the people who aren’t attending might take notice and start attending.

While I think this is a wonderful idea, I am not sure how effective it will be in changing the habits of those who don’t or periodically attend. The testimonies of the individuals are varied and on-balance very good. However, I am not sure the 65% of the registered members will respond to their messages though.

I guess what I am thinking is that if the people who faithfully attend religious services behave differently than those who don’t, that would potentially be a motivation for getting more people to attend. So if the people behavior, attitudes, actions and lifestyle of those who attend are judged to be better by those who occasionally attend, then the occasional crowd would probably start showing up.

What sort of behavior, attitudes, actions and lifestyle hallmarks would you expect from someone who attends services compared with someone who doesn’t? Can they be defined or seen? You’d think there would be some outward sign. “Look at Joe, he seems like he is almost always at peace with the world.” “Sara is so compassionate about those in need and she really enjoys helping people.” “Johnny is a great father, husband and balances work, play and service to the community.” Are these the sort of people we would conclude attend religious services regularly? Are there fewer people like this who don’t attend services (statistically do service attendees behave more morally than those who don’t)? Finally and most importantly, do you think the people who don’t attend or seldom attend actually aspire to one of the above lifestyles?

I have a new theory about religious service attendance – people who don’t attend don’t want to change. If they do want to change, it might not be the change that occurs at the services. Services don’t typically make people thinner or richer or more popular or more attractive which are the types of changes many in our culture desire. The problem with religious service attendance is the carrot that is offered isn’t the one that society says will taste good. People are better off spending their time and energy trying to make money or look better and not try to endeavor toward a positive experience in the hereafter.

While I’d like to think we can change this scenario, I see it as a huge uphill battle. I think part of the problem is that attendees lives aren’t sufficiently differentiated from those who don’t or seldom attend to make a compelling case to attend. Maybe we need to worry about making the service have a compelling impact on the lifestyle of the attendees to attract people.

Mass Appeal

I have written in the past about how fewer people are attending mass at all and/or on a regular basis. I kept wondering what people are looking for from their church and why is it they are not apparently finding it. Either their needs have changed or the churches aren’t meeting them.

I think people come to church services for a number of reasons. One important reason though is they want a sense of community and a reassurance that there are others who believe and who are trying be better people. To take this a step further, they are looking to be in relationship with others who have a similar view of the world.

I might even go to say that they are looking for intimate relationships. Intimate in that there is an implied sharing where those who attend reveal themselves as believers and as humans on a collective journey. So do churches foster this opportunity in what they do? Do they create an atmosphere of trust, safety, welcoming and honesty? Do people feel comfortable being who they are and expressing themselves? Is there a purposeful effort to create an atmosphere of emotion and reflection?

The other possibility is that people should want this and maybe unconsciously know they need this, but don’t want to invest themselves. They are unwilling to take the risk to open themselves to others and their faith and so when they go to services, it’s like watching bad TV for them. There are no stunts, the action is very predicable and the actors are not of star quality.

I have suggested that churches should be more intentional about building social relationships. My suggestions have been countered with the idea that people have enough to do in their lives already and don’t need the church to provide them with more things to do. The make their friends on the soccer sidelines, ice arenas and neighborhoods and won’t be interested in coming to low social risk events to meet people who attend the same church.

So where does all this amateur analysis leave us? People aren’t coming to church because they have no personal connection, when they do come there isn’t enough done to emotionally engage them and they have their social needs met with other institutions and won’t participate in social activities at church so as to create personal connections.

I guess I think something needs to change or things will stay on their current downward trend. I am thinking there either needs to be more attempts to turn strangers (who sit next to one another) into friends during the service – maybe take a minute or two before the service and have everybody say hi to one another. I also think the leader must make his or her own emotional investment in the service. They must create an intimacy by fully revealing themselves.

Greatest Hits Vol.1

I was combing through my music collection this morning to figure out what I wanted to listen to while I was working. I sorted the music by album name (I just down loaded a free Celtic album from Amazon that I wanted to listen to first). I got to the greatest hits section and started reading through some of the groups that have greatest hits albums which included: The Move, The Go-Betweens, The Outlaws, The J.B’s – not exactly groups that come to mind when you think of ‘greatest hits.’ So I started thinking about at what point does a group qualify to issue a ‘greatest hits’ album. It’s a two part question a) what is a great hit and b) how many great hits do you have to have to issue an album full? There is a related question as to when do you issue a, ‘greatest hits vol. II’ album as well.

Naturally, I started putting this question in terms of my own life and who am I to be questioning, ‘The Outlaws’ greatest hits album when a poor rendition of ‘Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star,” is about all I would have to offer as my own. But that’s probably not an apt comparison since, ‘The Outlaws’ are professional musicians and I am not. So the appropriate question is what would be my greatest hits and what is my life genre?

As a business administrator – I guess it would have to be addressing the budget crisis of 1991-92 at Roncalli High School, assembling the employee handbook in 1996, and coddling a boss at an undisclosed location who was ready to wield a large metaphorical chainsaw with irreparable legal and financial consequences certain to result. Actually, I made these up mostly because I had to. I don’t know that I have accomplished anything professionally that is worthy of a greatest hits business management album.

How about my hits in my non-professional life? What would my greatest hits album include in this area? Other than the obvious wife/children/faith sorts of things, I am not sure what I would put on the greatest hits of my life album. It is a very interesting question- I will give myself a top 100 billboard hit this week for coming up with the concept of applying a greatest hits album to ones life events. So I got that going for me.

Let’s see what else have I accomplished that I would put on my greatest life hits album? I’ve only had two driving tickets and they were both from very marginal offenses in income generating ‘trap’ situations. A related hit – I’ve never been in a car accident that was due to my fault/driving skills. I get/got good grades. I very seldom miss work. I can name/recognize NBA players from the late 70’s (quite a feather in my cap). I know my states and capitals.

How about you? What would you say your greatest hits are?

Identity Crisis II

I was totally sucked into this show on the golf channel. The show takes a great teaching golf professional and pairs him with a terrible golfer. The show tracks the week to week interaction on how the golf pro helps the golfer get better. The bad golfer is former NBA great, Charles Barkley. He apparently was a decent golfer at some point but somehow developed a mental ‘hitch’ in his swing. He will swing the club back and then he starts down and stops the swing (like a check swing in baseball). At times he stops and starts two or three times before trying to hit the ball. Predictably, he doesn’t hit the ball too well.

On the last show Charles was getting warmed up for his round with Doctor J (another NBA great). He was hitting practice shots on a simulator (hitting into a screen) before the round and blasting it. The coach was glowing with pride and filled with confidence as his pupil was about to hit the course. Charles gets the course and the demons come back to roost with vengeance. The hitch, which the two spent weeks trying to kill and bury, appears on the first swing and never goes away.

What is my point in bringing this up? I think there is a lot to be learned from the situation. I think we are all Charles Barkley in some facet of our life. I watch him and can’t believe how a professional athlete doesn’t have the kinesthetic wherewithal to keep his head in the same spot while trying to hit a golf ball. Just keep your head still and swing without stopping at the top – how tough is that?

However as I thought about it, I realize I am doing the same thing in different facets of my life. If someone were filming me playing my game of life, I have no doubt that they would say – how tough is it, just be more positive or be more supportive or more loving or more open or more joyful or smiling or whatever. Fortunately for me, there is not a camera following through my life and sifting through my faults or I would probably be like Charles and have millions of people saying, “How tough is it to…”

From a moral perspective, I guess I’d have to believe that God is looking down on us and thinking that it shouldn’t be so difficult to be good people. “I sent my Son to help you figure out what to do to be joyful all you have to do is believe and respond. You make it so tough – just keep your head in the same place and swing the club around your body.” Is really that simple or is being good that hard?

 

Identity crisis

How does an institution get a better sense for who it is? Our parish went through a process to develop a strategic plan over the last year and we have revised documents that define us but I am not so sure we have a true understanding of who we are and who we want to be. Maybe I lack the wherewithal to fully grasp the written content that defines who we are and where we are going.

How would you be able to tell an institution that has a clear sense of identity from one that doesn’t? It seems to me that if you approached a staff member or active parishioner and asked them to describe the institution, there should be a lot of overlap if the institution has a good sense of identity. If you ask these stakeholders and get some confusion and inconsistency in the answers, then I would say there is not a clear sense of identity.

You could easily argue that my hypothetical test is not the best measure of knowledge of institutional identity, but I think if you look at successful organizations, you will find stakeholders have a common sense of purpose and direction.

I think another test to see if an organization knows itself is how difficult or easy decisions are and how easy or difficult it is to plan. For certain, there are difficult decisions for all organizations but the greater ease which an organization can make smaller decisions and create plans efficiently, the greater sense of self it has.

So back to my original question, how does an organization get a better sense of who it is? A related question might be, “Is trying to be nearly all things to most people?” an identity? My fear is that an organization can pile on activities and staff until its resources run out but not until then. Rather than meaningfully asking who we are the only question is what more can we do.

The necessity to cut back expenses/activity can be an opportunity to say – this is what is most important to us and this isn’t quite as important. Or you can cut things across the board.

One risk, particularly for churches, is to conclude that we need to take care of ourselves first and curtail the financial outreach. I think this is a very dangerous strategy. What sort of message are you sending the people of the parish? If you are short on money, cut back what you give to others?

Well if you’ve made it to this point and were expecting some profound answers to the questions raised, you are going to be disappointed (and you haven’t learned your lesson from nearly everything else I have ever posted). With a clear motivation to headaches generated from banging my head against the wall, I think it’s best I worry about the identity of my sphere of the institution and let the big picture get sorted out by the larger forces.

Pontificating again

As a worker in the Catholic Church I am really at a loss in determining what an appropriate response should be to the Pope’s recent decisions. I would guess most of you have heard about them. There were actually three decisions. The first was letting some priests back in the Church who were excommunicated for not accepting the stuff in Vatican II. The second was naming one of these people to be a bishop. Well it turns out the guy has publically stated that the Holocaust never happened. The final decision was appointing a bishop who blamed Hurricane Katrina on sins of New Orleans.

So what does a guy do whose collecting his check and keeping his family fed by working for this guy (albeit indirectly)? If your boss decided to hire a professed racist to a high ranking position in your company, what would you do? What do you think the customers would/should do?

Okay and then a couple of weeks later, your boss hires someone to run accounting department who thinks using paper ledgers instead of computers is the way to go. Right this bishop’s theology is clearly from the Old Testament. He hasn’t accepted all that junk in the New Testament apparently.

My guess would be if your boss made these decisions you would be a) scratching your head b) very concerned about the future of the company c) be looking for employment elsewhere.

Am I making too big of deal about this? It did happen. It wasn’t a mistake or an accident; they had to be deliberate decisions, right. I suppose the Pope might be losing it or has surrounded himself with nut-jobs. Either way, the result is the same so I suppose it doesn’t really matter how it happened.

Maybe the most practical response is just to forget about it… That nutty Pope, look what he’s doing now. He must know best – not my problem in Plymouth, Minnesota. Keep your head down and nose to the grindstone and let the big boys figure it out.

Any suggestions?

Whatever you do…

I am sure I have posted on this topic before, but it’s an issue that seems to trouble me frequently. I am not a Biblical scholar by any stretch of the imagination, so I don’t have any intellectual context to interpret the quote from Jesus that goes something like, “whatever you do to the least of my brothers, you do unto me.”

It seems to me if you take the life of Christ seriously, you’d have to pay close attention to this statement. There is also some references to giving up what you have and following Jesus – remember – the guy that had too much and couldn’t give it up? So if you take these two statements as the gospel within the Gospels, what implications are there for how you live?

As a husband and father, my instincts tell me to look after my family first in many aspects of my existence. Sure, I can help the least of my brothers but it will be right after I try to make sure my family is comfortable, safe, entertained, educated, healthy, etc. Surely Christ wouldn’t want me to help the least of my brothers and have my kids not getting their comfort/entertainment/education/health? Or would he not understand? Maybe being a parent is trying to teach your kids to serve the least of their brothers and worry a lot less about the other things parents provide their children.

I’ve heard the quote interpreted in several different ways as to who is the least of your brothers. I tend to think of it in terms of resources and choices. There are financially poor here in the Twin Cities and there are poor people nearly everywhere else. Some are clearly poorer than others and some of made choices to put themselves in their situation and others have had no real choices. Who are the LEAST of my brothers?

Another twist on the least of my brothers interpretation is that it’s about poverty or a deficiency and there are many people who are deficient in some capacity even in the tawny metropolitan suburbs. Maybe helping the least of my brothers is helping a rich godless person have faith. Maybe helping people who don’t get along develop and improve relationships counts as helping the least of my brothers.

Here’s what I am worried about:

“Dan, we are sorry, you can not enter the gates of heaven. As you are well aware having read the Gospel, you were to help the least of your brothers and give up what you have and follow Christ to get in. Wasn’t’ that clear enough for you? We thought we spelled it out so there shouldn’t be any doubt on what to do. Tough luck, you took a stab at it, but serving your family and your rich neighbors instead of the poor, is going to cost you. Hope you don’t mind extreme heat for all of eternity.”

About Face…about Facebook

I always thought these social networking sites were a bunch of crap.  It would be just one more thing in my life where I get it started, quickly lose interest and eventually leave behind a pile of idle bytes serving no purpose.  Recently, a company was giving out a free sample on the condition you signed up to be there friend on Facebook.  I took the bait and signed up for Facebook account.

 I am still a rookie and have not resolved whether this tool has any true value or if it too will become a pile of discarded bytes collecting vitural dust on some computer server somewhere.  However, I have noticed it suits my personality well.  There are people who I’ve exchanged messages with that I haven’t talked in 25 years.  I am ‘friends’ with people I really don’t know.

 There are others who I may have seen one or twice in the last three years but have never spoken with and now we are officially friends.  I am left wondering if this virtual friendship will spill over into the real world.  Now that our friendship is officially recorded on the Facebook database will we converse the next time we are face to face or do virtual friendships remain just that.

 

I even went out on the limb yesterday and created a Holy Name of Jesus group on Facebook.  I am not altogether certain how to leverage the group yet, but there are already three members (YIPEE).  In theory, I suppose it could be used as yet another way to keep everyone informed and to build social relationships between members (which is largely what we need to do anyway from my perspective). 

 So I am throwing it out to my posse out there – join up.  Throw your hat in the social networking ring and be a happening dude or dudette.  If you do, make sure you add me as a friend as they are altogether too scarce virtually and otherwise in my quarters.

How to sell a truck

I have never really been too interested in buying a truck.  I don’t haul stuff other than my family and I am secure with my sexual identity.  I have however, started watching truck commercials more closely because I have noticed nearly all of them set up some sort of elaborate stunt to highlight the trucks attributes. 

 

I saw one where they were driving a truck with a trailer up a spiraling trail wrapped around a gigantic cone.  It must have taken forever to construct the apparatus all to sell people on the hauling capabilities of a truck. 

 

Watch the commercials, they all have some goofy scenario that truck drivers would never encounter by exemplify a particular attribute whether it’s the torque, pulling power or braking.  They’ll set up something to show it off.

 

I suppose car commercials are similar in that they like to show them cruising around corners and dodging obstacles but they are different in that they are far less contrived.  Based on this observation, I am left wondering what is it about truck buyers that require the peculiar demonstrations to win their allegiance?

 

I was thinking about buying a Dodge but I saw this commercial where the Chevy was pulling an airplane down the runway and decided that’s got to be a better truck.  I’ve always been a Ford guy, but when I saw that Toyota stop before hitting the dropping crane arm despite pulling a thirty foot boat – hey, how could you not buy the Toyota.