On TV Shows and Process

by Ben Howard

I know I’ve been good at hiding it, but I must confess that I’ve been in mourning this week. I lost something that was very close to me, something that brought me joy and laughter, something that I regarded it as a friend for the last five years. 

NBC cancelled Community.

You’ve probably heard about this already because you probably have that one friend who loved Community to an annoying degree and would never shut up about it and it kind of ticked you off. Or maybe you heard about it because you’re reading this on the internet, which is apparently the only place in the universe that Community was popular at all. #sixseasonsandamovie

But this is also the week for a lot of other news about the future of your TV consumption. This week came with announcements about future seasons of Nashville and Hannibal, the pick-up of new shows like The Flash, Gotham, and Agent Carter, and the end of several shows you never knew the names of (which is why they’re now cancelled). All of these announcements, including the cancellation of Community, are part of network Upfronts.

If you’ve never heard of Upfronts before, here’s a quick primer. Every year around this time, the major broadcast networks (NBC, ABC, CBS, Fox, and, curiously, The CW) unveil their new fall TV schedule in a series of elaborate press conferences designed to convince advertisers to purchase commercial time during all their new and returning shows. (And if you were born after 1990, a “commercial” is a short-film that used to show up all the time during moments of dramatic tension where someone would try to convince you to buy something.)
 
This year, something particularly interesting happened at Upfronts. Fox broke the mold for the way broadcast networks usually make TV shows. Fox stopped making pilots. Or at least, they stopped making a lot of them.

The process of getting a TV show to air is a rather long and arduous one. Networks pick from maybe 100 or 200 concept pitches and order pilot scripts for the shows they think sound promising. Any given network might order 50 or more scripts from which they’ll choose a few dozen to cast and shoot an actual episode. From this group of 20 to 25 pilots, they’ll select 5 or 6 new shows to air every year.

As you can probably imagine, producing all of these scripts and all of these pilots, is a rather expensive, not to mention inefficient, proposition. TV history is littered with highly-anticipated, expensive, star-studded pilots that never made it to air. Just in the last three years, there were pilots shot for Wonder Woman starring Adrianne Palicki (Tyra from Friday Night Lights), Beverly Hills Cop with Eddie Murphy, and just this year, a How I Met Your Mother spin-off called How I Met Your Dad headlined by indie darling Greta Gerwig. None of these shows made it to air.

But this year, Fox has adopted the cable model of making TV shows. You find a concept you really, really love. You give the creators a ton of time and money and a room full of writers and you let them hone their script and characters and vision for a show, a process of refining the material again and again until it’s finally ready to shoot. This is the process that produced Breaking Bad, Mad Men, and Game of Thrones among others.

And it’s a better process. It allows for focus and precision and dedication. It allows for depth, vision, and the opportunity for something like transcendence. That’s a lot harder to come by when you’re working in bulk, churning out dozens of rough drafts, and just hoping that something sticks.

This is the place where I would usually spin this into a metaphor for the church, for how we interact with each other in daily life, how dedication and focus on relationships matter. And while I do indeed find it to be an apt metaphor, I think you’ve probably already made those connections on your own without needing me to spell it out.

Instead, I want to point out something else entirely. Even though this is a definitively better process, it does not guarantee success. Even a good show with a lot of resources behind it can fall flat in the ratings like Terriers did a few years back on FX. Nor, for that matter, does this process guarantee quality. Smart, talented people can still put out a bad show like AMC did with Low Winter Sun. A better process, even the best process, is not a guarantee; there is no silver bullet.

But we want there to be. We prefer the logic that the perfect process will yield the perfect result (we have entire industries built on that premise), and we’re conditioned to assume that if we can just get the process right, the rest will fall into place. But that conditioning tricks us; if we expect success to flow systematically from process, we see failures as indictments of the whole system. We link them so closely that they sink or swim together. We base our assessment of the whole enterprise on the narrative of results.

Except results are prone to all sorts of uncontrollable circumstances, they are dependent on the relative nature of time and space and chance, things we couldn’t control even if we wanted to. And that’s why it’s so crucial to focus on a good process, the kind that allows for commitment and thoughtfulness. The kind we can believe in that makes room for new ideas, better ideas, and allows us to follow their call and see where they lead.

It doesn’t guarantee us success (whatever success might mean) and it doesn’t guarantee us quality, but it does give us a better shot. It allows us to be focused and dedicated. It allows us to have depth and vision. And maybe, just maybe, the opportunity for something like transcendence. 

Ben Howard is an accidental iconoclast and generally curious individual living in Nashville, Tennessee. He is also the editor-in-chief of On Pop Theology and an avid fan of waving at strangers for no reason. You can follow him on Twitter @BenHoward87.  

You can follow On Pop Theology on Twitter @OnPopTheology or like us on Facebook at www.facebook.com/OnPopTheology. If you'd like to support what we do here, you can donate via the button on the right of the screen.

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The Case Against "I Believe"

by Lyndsey Graves 

We believe in one God, 
The Father, the Almighty, 
Maker of heaven and earth, 
Of all that is, seen and unseen.

“I think it would be terrible to have to lie in church like that.” A classmate shared an anecdote about a friend who wasn’t sure he could agree with everything in the Nicene Creed, and I felt confused. Does this guy really think that everyone in the room believes everything in the Nicene Creed?

We believe in one Lord, Jesus Christ, 
The only Son of God, 
Eternally begotten of the Father,
God from God, Light from Light, 
True God from true God, 
Begotten, not made, 
Of one Being with the Father.
Through him all things were made.
For us and for our salvation 
He came down from heaven: 
By the power of the Holy Spirit 
He became incarnate from the Virgin Mary, 
And was made man.
For our sake he was crucified under Pontius Pilate; 
He suffered death and was buried.

I, for one, am expecting a pretty mundane Holy Week; I’m not really feeling very holy. I’ve complained to everyone I know about my Lent fast, which I’m pretty sure is not its point, and besides that, I’m just too busy for Holy Week. I know you’re not supposed to say that, but I’m also too busy to guilt myself into fixing it or whatever, so it is what it is. Maybe this means I don’t really believe in Jesus; in fact, I’m pretty sure it does. I’m pretty sure if I believed, I’d do whatever it took to spend as much time as possible at least for this one week contemplating and celebrating these momentous events. But I’m probably not going to.

Go ahead and whisper that maybe I’ve gotten a little lukewarm if you wish. I don’t think I have. I know what I’ve gotten, actually - I’ve gotten burned out. After moving across the country to work at a church and then going to seminary, I’m quite done playing Christian, completely over doing things because I’ve decided that I “should,” and especially sick of what “I believe.” Various ones of my beliefs have been deconstructed block by block; some have been demolished in an instant. Others are buried and mourned; pushed, pulled, shoved and yanked, all without actually budging; nudged and finessed and nuanced into crystalline precision; and over-defended to within an inch of their opponents’ lives. My beliefs have been treated as if they were of utmost importance in the name of “orthodoxy” and “critical thinking” and lots of things about “context” and “epistemology.”

On the third day he rose again 
In accordance with the Scriptures; 
He ascended into heaven 
And is seated at the right hand of the Father.
He will come again in glory to judge the living and the dead, 
And his kingdom will have no end.

I’m not going to say that beliefs aren’t important. Our beliefs, stated and unstated, do change our actions; our theologies do affect our relationships to God. But my beliefs aren’t nearly as important as some teachers and pastors and denominational officials make them out to be. As one of my housemates said, “Some days you decide that Jesus didn’t actually do any miracles or rise from the dead. And you go on living your life for a day or two, and then things are fine again.”

We’re told, “You are going to be A Religious Leader. You must determine What You Believe.” We wrinkle our foreheads and Critically Think. We start to align ourselves with certain writers or systems and against certain enemies. But it all rings a little bit false.

We believe in the Holy Spirit, the Lord, the giver of life, 
Who proceeds from the Father and the Son.
With the Father and the Son he is worshiped and glorified.
He has spoken through the Prophets.

People sometimes believe things based on what they’ve decided intellectually. But mostly, they believe whatever everyone else believes, because that’s the thing that the culture treats as reality. I know lots of churches say their creed this way – Credo. I believe. But there’s rarely any such thing as, “I believe.” There is mostly just “We do. We assume. We expect. We disbelieve. We censor. We remember. We are.”

We believe.

What’s important is that we are reminding one another what, in our moments of greatest fidelity to tradition, underlies the things we do, assume, expect, disbelieve. I don’t have to believe all of it before I can proclaim to my community what we believe. Nor do I even have to say it before I can belong to that “We.”

We believe in one holy catholic and apostolic Church.
We acknowledge one baptism for the forgiveness of sins.

For long months of the darkest night of my still-young soul, I went to church and did nothing but stand. I dragged myself in as the sun set and watched the songs go by, feeling as lonely as ever, with a sort of numb wish to think the songs were true. Some days I silently raged through others’ prayers, prayers they clearly felt so deeply - What does this have to do with me? I used to pray like that. But you just wait till God leaves you, and then we’ll see how you pray. And then I would stand for the creed, say only the words, “We believe,” and cry helpless tears through the list of the things I didn’t believe. And in the midst of it all, the people of Emmanuel Fellowship bore me through that dark night on the raft of their imperfectly-faithful words, the repetition of the creed.

We look for the resurrection of the dead, 
And the life of the world to come.

Let Holy Week be for the doubter. Let Holy Week be for the lukewarm. Let Holy Week be for the burned-out, the sinner, the child, the angry, the bewildered, the bitter, the confused, and the liars. Say what you can; or say what someone else believes; or let the rest of us say it for you.
 
This is what we believe.

This is what we hope.

Amen. 

Lyndsey lives in Boston, MA where she is pursuing her Master's in Theological Studies at Boston University. She enjoys Community, Mad Men and Beauty and the Beast and her spirit animal is a sloth. She would like to know if this is some kind of interactive theater art piece. You can follow her on Twitter @lyndseygraves and you can find more of her writing at her blog To Be Honest. 

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I Need You To Kill Me

by Justin McRoberts

Nothing curbs the appetite of my fierce personal preferences or consumerist instincts like falling in love with someone else. Doing so means entering the comic tragedy of living with, caring about, and wanting the best for someone who has their own set of appetites and preferences. In this spirit, I believe that life together, in committed community, provides the most viable antidote for the consumerism with which I am grown so fatally sick. That I will die is a foregone conclusion. But the character and nature of my death is exactly what the Christian story aims to redeem. There are better, more beautiful, truer deaths, the pursuit of which, in my estimation, determines the quality of life I lead.

I want to die well. I need you to kill me.

Dying to myself ends up being a far less individualistic discipline than I had imagined, as John’s oft quoted aphorism makes clear. “He must increase, but I must decrease” presupposes another person’s presence and role. I had generally thought of the practice of “dying to myself” as an endeavor of isolation, like Thomas Merton or Carlo Carretto, hidden away in a cave, high on a cliff-side, eating dust and stale bread until I’ve sufficiently starved my selfish desires away. But that’s not been my practical experience. The most powerful impetus for my self-denial has, instead, almost always been the desire to make room for those I’m given to as Family, those with whom I follow and worship Jesus. Often, I want blessed goodness for those I love more than I want it for myself. Seeking it for them has frequently meant putting my needs, tastes and preferences aside… and when I have been lucky, it was long enough to see just how small and petty they were.

And sometimes, that moment of clear vision grants me wisdom enough to leave those tastes and preferences at my periphery…. further from the core of my own identity… making more room in me for the blessed goodness I want for you. Help me displace them. I need you to kill me that I might live again.

Strangely, many of my best efforts to snuff-out my consumeristic impulses become simply more nuanced forms of consumerism. I strive for self improvement through the belief in self reliance - and I end up chasing after the latest, best, most moving version of my own faith. On the other hand, nothing has been as effective or (dare I use the word) authentic as dying to myself in order to make room for you.

My politics.
My theology. (and yes, I’m suggesting that personal preference plays a significant role in the development of my theology)
My sexuality.

…all become secondary aspects of my person.

You are more important than my politics.
You are more important than my theology.
You are more important than my sexuality.

“The more genuine and the deeper our community becomes,” writes Bonhoeffer “the more will everything else between us recede, the more clearly and purely will Jesus Christ and His work become the one and only thing that is vital between us.” - Life Together

I need you to kill me that I might live again, in and for Christ, with and for you, and in loving, hospitable pursuit of those who have been unable to find a place for themselves in the Kingdom.

A few years ago, reflecting on this same principle and practice, I became keenly thankful for the central role the eucharist has played in church life. As part of a longer piece, I wrote this:

“I spend a good deal of my social energy trying to surround myself with a tribe of people more reflective of my tastes and preferences. Then, at the communion table, Jesus asks me to do something dramatically different: deny my expectations, my tastes and my preferences and receive into my life and family anyone God gives me to.”

And still, it is true. I want to live well. I need you to kill me.

Justin McRoberts is a singer, songwriter, blogger, pastor and teacher living in San Francisco He is also the mind behind the CMYK Project. You can follow him on Twitter @justinmcroberts and find more information about his other endeavors here.

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I Like Christmas Without The "Christ"

Image via Alan Cleaver

by Ben Howard

I have a lot of nostalgia for Christmas. I vaguely remember going to see Santa at the mall when I was little and squinting at him, cocking my head to the side, trying to contemplate how he got into our house since we didn’t have a chimney. I was very worried about our lack of a chimney. I remember re-arranging presents under the tree and trying to guess what was inside in the days leading up to Christmas morning. We watched Rudolph and Frosty and Charlie Brown too in those days. 

A few weeks ago I found myself watching the three Christmas-themed episodes of the show Community. In its rather wonderful satirical way, one episode pokes fun at the political correctness that has come to dominate so many discussions of Christmas. The Dean dresses up as “non-denominational Mr. Winter” and refuses to decorate the school with Christmas trees. A separate episode, shot almost entirely in claymation, follows the study-group on a magical Christmas journey replete with a little drummer boy, a toy robot, and the Cave of Frozen Memories, all of which turns out to be the delusional fantasy of one of the show's characters. Another focuses on the group's putting on a Christmas pageant (while simultaneously mocking Glee).

These stories, even with their heavy satirical edge, resonated with my own experiences of Christmas: the holiday festivals at school, the claymation TV specials, and the Christmas programs and pageants (I played a turtle in a 4th grade Christmas play; I’m told I was excellent).

Image via The Turtle Hospital

But I’m always struck by a curious incongruity when I think back on the Christmases of my youth. Even though I was raised in a church and I’m the son (and grandson) of a preacher, none of my childhood Christmas memories aren't even remotely religious. 

It’s not that I didn’t know that Christmas was religious, it’s just that the tradition I grew up in didn’t place any particular significance on it. In opposition to the “Keep Christ in Christmas” and “Reason for the season” crowds, I was far more likely to hear people discuss how Jesus was probably born in the spring or how the Bible never says how many  wise men there were or some other deconstruction of the romanticized version of the Christmas story. Needless to say, we didn’t go to church on Christmas because there was nothing particularly special to celebrate. In fact, I vaguely remember church being cancelled when Christmas fell on a Sunday. 

It wasn’t until my early twenties when I started diving into theology and regularly attending a liturgical church that I started to appreciate the Advent/Christmas season for its religious value. As I’ve grown and learned, the incarnation has become increasingly important to me adding even more depth to this time of year. And while I’m not particularly good at waiting, I look forward to Advent as an opportunity to take another shot at patience.

Image via Brent Flanders

But I’m still left with this cognitive divide. While Advent feels holy and spiritual to me, I still experience Christmas as the cultural, secular festival that I grew up with. I adore the dark nights filled with the songs of waiting and longing which make up early December and find the theology of incarnation and renewal beautiful. Yet, when I hear “Christmas,” I think of decorations and reindeer and a large smiling man trying to stuff himself down a chimney. I think of Red Rider BB Gun’s and Bing Crosby. 

I love Christmas, but I’d be lying if I said it had anything to do with Christ. To me Christmas is friends and family, food and laughter, gifts and stockings hung over a fireplace, and I’m perfectly happy for it to stay that way. I'm perfectly happy with a Christmas without the "Christ." 

Ben Howard is an accidental iconoclast and generally curious individual living in Nashville, Tennessee. He is also the editor-in-chief of On Pop Theology and an avid fan of waving at strangers for no reason. You can follow him on Twitter @BenHoward87.  

You can follow On Pop Theology on Twitter @OnPopTheology or like us on Facebook at www.facebook.com/OnPopTheology. If you'd like to support what we do, you can donate via the button on the right of the screen.
  

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The Church of Sharknado

by Ben Howard

Let me be clear up front, Sharknado is arguably the greatest achievement in cinematic history. In fact, there's a good chance it ranks in the Top 100 in the annals of human existence, right up there with The Great Wall of China and videos of panda bears sneezing. Certainly, Sharknado's creators did not aspire to such lofty heights, but they attained them nonetheless through grit, guile and ravenous sharks hurtling through the air.

Since you're on the internet reading this, I can safely assume that you've at least heard of Sharknado, but to be safe I'll let IMDB give you a quick synopsis: "When a freak hurricane swamps Los Angeles, nature's deadliest killer rules sea, land, and air as thousands of sharks terrorize the waterlogged populace." Exactly. Of course, this summary forgets to mention that our star is none other than Ian Ziering (aka Steve Sanders from 90210) and that he's flanked by the great Tara Reid.

Over the course of 86 minutes we follow Ian and Tara on their adventures through the greater Los Angeles area. We mourn for them at the loss of their friend George (aka The Dad from Home Alone), we rejoice with them when they finally utter the word Sharknado (it's a tornado with sharks, get it?), and we stare at them quizzically when they somehow extinguish a tornado with a bomb (I...I don't even...).

However, the most enjoyable part of watching the movie had nothing to do with the movie itself. My friend Lauren recorded the movie and organized a watch party for about 15 of us. We had snacks and told jokes and drank sangria. I was able to catch up with people I hadn't seen in months and connect with entirely new friends. It was an amazing night. And all of this happened around a poorly acted, bizarrely written made-for-TV movie about sharks that get sucked into tornadoes.

And this is church. This is church, sort of.

We did all the things you do at church. We ate the food (crackers included), drank the wine (muddled with fruit and sugar) and enjoyed spending time together. We even heard a bloody tale of redemption (with 100% more sharks). We had conversation and community and laughter.

And this was, in some sense, holy. It wasn't time-honored traditions and incense, nor were there prayers and benedictions, but it was holy in the sense that people who cared for one another gathered together to celebrate their friendship and this kind of act is holy.

But even so, this is not church. Not quite.

Though there was community (and as any first year Greek student will tell you the word for church means community), this gathering lacked the necessary components of a church. A church requires a center and regrettably that center is not Sharknado.

Not to be trite, but the center of the church is Christ. I don't mean that in the sense that would make you imagine fake smiles and metaphorical bunnies, but in the deeper, more rooted incarnational meaning of the term. Church is rooted in the physical reality of a God who walked among us, who chose to come to us, and who remains with us still. This is the God we commune around, commune with, and worship.

Yet it is restrictive to say that this communion can only take place within a building or within the bounds of an institution expressly designed for the purpose. Many have realized the limitations of this conception of holiness and sought to deconstruct the boundaries of what it means to be a church, of what it means to commune together.

In many ways this deconstructed vision of church and communal life is a beautiful one. It recognizes that Christ, who is with us during a worship service, does not abandon us as we go about the rest of our lives. It allows holiness to seep into the mundane.

However, it often allows for a subtle replacement wherein the ideal of community focused on Christ is subsumed by the idea of community period. This is holy, but this is not church.

This move is understandable when church has too often been relegated to that which happens within four walls on a Sunday morning, when it has forgotten its roots as a community focused on Christ. As a response many of us have grasped for community wherever it can be found and we have named this community "church" for this is what we desire church to be. But giving something a name does not make it so.

And this is why watching Sharknado is not church. Though I still hold that the night was holy, Ian Ziering is not Christ and chainsawing your way out a shark is not resurrection (technically). There was laughter, there was love, there was community. Community is essential to a church, but it is not a substitute for all that church is.

Peace,
Ben

Ben Howard is an accidental iconoclast and generally curious individual living in Nashville, Tennessee. He is also the editor-in-chief of On Pop Theology and an avid fan of waving at strangers for no reason. You can follow him on Twitter @BenHoward87. 

 

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Why I Shaved My Beard: Thoughts on Fear, Chaos and Community

Fear the beard.

by Ben Howard

I shaved my beard yesterday.

That may not mean a lot to you, but it means something to me. The only time I shave, or get a haircut for that matter, is when I'm in need of some kind of emotional catharsis. And lately, I've needed that kind of emotional release.

Let me explain. I'm terrified.

I'm terrified by this endeavor and how it's become such a huge part of my life.

I'm terrified by how much it has grown. I track my page views daily (which I realize is crazy narcissistic, but it's part of being a blogger), and I honestly can't believe how much the place has grown.

I'm terrified by how I feel things have matured, both in terms of other talented writers joining me and the way I can see my own writing improving.

But what I'm really terrified of are none of those things. I'm terrified of failing. The better I feel about this endeavor, the more I realize that it would hurt if it all turned south and went down in flames. Or even worse, if it just wasted away, starving until nothing was left but the shell it left behind.

But I am scared that in an attempt to stave off failure, I'll change, and that I won't like who I become. I want to bring you beauty, and humor, and spur your mind and your imagination about what it means to be live in this world, and what it means to seek after a better one.

But I also want you to like me. I want you to read my posts. I want you to say nice things about me. Sometimes these desires work together, and sometimes they don't. Sometimes I worry about which one is winning.

Ugh, feelings.

Life is messy. I know it's messy, but I don't want it to be. Sometimes I pretend it's not. Sometimes I let it all show. That's why community is so useful. It's a place to let it all show.

I assume this chaotic tug-of-war is present in everyone. We battle our own emotions, desires, needs, and fears on a daily basis. Too often we seek easy answers about ourselves and others. We attempt to clarify our emotions and motivations in an attempt to explain ourselves. We attempt to uncover the motivations of others by dissecting their actions.

We assign grand narrative arcs to ourselves and those around us that look very tidy and clean and believable, but which ultimately bear little relation to the jagged, chaotic tumble of everyday life. We rarely know the whole story, even when it comes to our own interior struggles.

This is where I find the importance of community. We let people in and we let them know us, and in the process of letting them discover who we are, we attempt to know ourselves a little better. 

It's scary to be that vulnerable. I'm nervous right now that you'll read this and see me as self-absorbed, or needy, and to be honest, that is who I am. I'm a chaotic mix of diverging emotions most of the time. I rarely make sense even to myself.

Through that vulnerability and through this growth within our communities, experiencing pain and joy alongside others, we learn about them and about ourselves. The discoveries we make aren't always pretty, sometimes they're quite disappointing, but they allow us to grow and develop.

These communities allow us to overcome fear and failure, insecurities and chaos, and live into a better version of ourselves and a better version of our world. Sometimes they help us to know that we just need catharsis, that we just need a release.

That's what I needed.
 
And that's why I shaved my beard.

Peace,
Ben

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Contact us at onpoptheology [at] gmail.com.

Community and Nostalgic Zombies

I will remember you *da da da dada*
Will you remember me?

by Ben Howard

I loved the show Community. Yes, that sentence is in the past tense.

For the duration of its first three seasons, Community was one of my favorite shows on TV. Not only was it a absurdist meta-comedy which commented continuously on the very sitcom conceits it was enacting, but it also showcased a level of heart and depth that very few shows attempt to achieve. A lot of people focus on the jokes, or the concept episodes, but I loved Community because of the way it explored neuroses, and loneliness, and, well, community.

It mined dark areas of life and found comedy, camaraderie and warmth in the midst of real pain.

The show has never had good ratings and has always been on the verge of cancellation, but it was still a surprise when the creator, show runner and creative force behind Community, Dan Harmon, was fired after the third season.  Harmon was notoriously irascible and difficult to deal with. His borderline dysfunctional personality made him a headache for the network, but it also fed the creative energy that made the show what it was.

Harmon was replaced by two veteran TV writers, but when the show came back for a fourth season a few weeks ago, it was evident that they had not been able to recapture the magic of Harmon’s Community.

Zombie Troy

I will continue to watch Zombie Community, but it will be with a tinge of sadness. That’s the way these lightning in a bottle moments go. When you’re in the midst of it, it feels like it will never end.

I don’t want to bemoan the shift from Harmon Community to Zombie Community too much. I mean, it is only a sitcom after all, but I think it highlights something important in the realm of Christian memory.

The happy feelings I have about Harmon’s version of community exist in as memories, while the frustrated feelings I have about Zombie Community are fostered by a sense of nostalgia. I’m frustrated by Zombie Community because it not only reminds me of something I miss, but it makes me want to return to a past that I can no longer access.

Christians face this problem all the time. We remember the greatness of our past and in our hunger for a better present we try to imitate the greatness that has come before us, but that imitation of the past leaves us empty because it calls us to create a world that no longer exists.

I grew up in a faith tradition that constantly referenced the first century church as a model for life. When questions of church practice were asked, one of the first places they’d look would be the practice of the first century church. The problem with this should be self-evident: the tradition in question exists in the 21^st century which is, quite clearly, not the same as the first century.

The resulting community looks like a Zombie First Century Church, which leaves most people frustrated and nostalgic.

Boldly going we're no church has gone before

I understand the appeal of the past. When we look to the past we look to things that we know worked, we remember things we know we enjoyed, we see things that we know were beautiful, but it is impossible to remake the past. It is impossible to recapture the lightning we once had.

Christians are not called to remake the past and tilt at nostalgic windmills of a bygone era; we are called to live into the future. Living into the future requires imagination and creativity. It requires us to wrestle with things we do not understand. It requires us to be vulnerable to questions we have not yet asked.

It requires us to learn to love the past and remember it fondly, to be inspired by the things that came before, but to make something new. It requires us to be more than zombies.

Peace,

Ben 

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