Churches are dying because young people are shut out. Let’s fix this.

October 10, 2011 By Richard Dahlstrom 4 Comments

Churches are strange. If a steel plant closes in a Rust Belt city, you can be sure that there won’t be a new one opening in the same town where the one shut down.  And yet, when it comes that thing called “church,” we’re living in an era when 3,500-4,000 churches are closing their doors in America every year.  At the same time, there are roughly the same number of new churches opening their doors each year.  As a result, we’re in this very strange time when established churches with histories, properties, and elders whose faith has been refined and wisened through decades of walking with God, are evaporating, while a newly pierced and tattooed generation does the church equivalent of the tech boom’s “start up” through the phenomena called church planting.

[Read more...]

Filed Under: bridges, church Tagged With: , , 4 Comments

Fantasy: A Door That’s Closing—And Why We Should Keep It Open

February 22, 2011 By Richard Dahlstrom 66 Comments

This past weekend, as part of our plans to insulate our attic bedroom, I was searching out the “art” part of the project and stumbled upon these lovely works from England.  They’re part of a folklore, fairy tale genre that hints at a different world—they’re not the world itself, but just a hint of it, a marker pointing us in a direction beyond what we can touch, taste, and feel in this here and now.  As Lewis says, they are “only the scent of flower we have not found, the hint of a tune we have not heard, the news from a country we have never visited.” Lewis proposes that our love of fairy tales reveals that we’re made for more than this life, more than buying and selling, living and dying, watching Glee and filling our our March Madness bracket.  He proposes that the fairy tales themselves point towards another part of our world, invisible yet real.

As Dennis Haack writes, “Right up to the medieval age, the church believed that fantasy creatures, sorcerers, ghouls, goblins, and ghosts were as ancient as creation.  Their inclusion reminded everyone that humans are more than mere mortals or machines.”  Fairy tales hint at the grand meta-narrative that permeates the universe, the cosmic struggle between good and evil.  This is why Christians like CS Lewis, JR Tolkien, and yes, even JK Rowling, tell fantastic tales, and it’s why nearly everyone’s a fan of at least of one of these authors.

During the Victorian age though, much to Lewis’ dismay, fairy tales were sanitized and moved from the parlor to the nursery.  Twentieth century evangelicals have taken the whole thing a step further, often vilifying Harry Potter and Halloween, rather than leaning into to the truths contained therein:  there are powers beyond this physical realm—real evil exists in the this world, and real good. Honor, sacrifice, and courage are things that matter, as does beauty and our longings to be caught up in a story larger than our sanitized lives.

Some of this stems from our desire to protect children from the realities of this cosmic struggle.  I understand the desire to shelter, but hear this: Life is not safe.  Following Christ is not safe.  Confronting evil in the world, whether in our own hearts or in the power structures around us, is not safe. But neither is it boring.  In our attempts to make our faith safe and sane, we’ve created a Precious Moments version of Christianity, with pastel figures splashed across the pages of our children’s bible, highlighting our sanitized view of the faith.  There’s pastel Noah entering the ark with all the happy animals (but no drowning masses).  There’s the pastel version of David strumming on his harp (but no picture of him cutting off Goliath’s head).  There’s no pastel Tamar, disguising herself as a prostitute and sleeping with Judah either.  (Did you know that in the original version of sleeping beauty, the princess was wakened, not by a kiss, but by giving birth to twins, conceived while she slept as the prince…well, you know how these things happen!)

We’ve sanitized it all, sort of pretending that there is no cosmic struggle, that there are no powers higher than our college degree and credit card.  The result is often, as Dennis Haack says, a church that offers a “therapeutic God and advertises church as a ‘safe’ place.”

What’s needed is the recovery of our authentic sense of mysticism, our sense that the world is bigger than what we see and touch, that the invisible forces of evil in our world are real (because they are), and that we’re invited into God’s story, even more so than Edmund was invited in by Aslan.  This is the kind of life I want to live—saturated with mystery and glory, right in the midst of bill paying, shopping, and yes, even insulating the attic.

What are your thoughts?  Have we sanitized our gospel too much?  How about our fairy tales?  Why are Christians afraid of Harry Potter but not CS Lewis?

Filed Under: bridges, life, Reviews 66 Comments

Thawing my heart in the heat of Africa….

January 15, 2011 By Richard Dahlstrom 7 Comments

I’m back home, and don’t know how to write about what happened.  But I wanted to share something… so here’s this morning’s entry from my prayer diary, with a few pictures thrown in.

Good morning God…

I’m back in Seattle.

I remember being in the thick of my time there – tired, hungry, annoyed by sweat and bugs and the smells that come to humid places that have no showers.  I remember thinking, “I can’t get home soon enough – back to wood stoves, and skis, cologne and college basketball, my wife, literacy, favorite smells, high speed internet.”  How shallow is that?

Now I’m home, and when I scroll through the pictures, tears come to my eyes – tears of gratitude for the privilege of meeting people who taught me things I didn’t want to learn, things I didn’t even know I needed to learn.  And I’ve a feeling the learning, and the relationship with these wonderful people, has just begun.

One thing I’ve begun to learn through this visit is that “normal”, on both sides of the continent, is in need of readjustment, and that we can help each other learn.  They need to  learn hygiene habits, and that water from a deep well is much better than water from the lowlands, where parasites and mosquitoes conspire to deal sickness and death.  They need to learn that saving money is a good thing, and that they’ve the power, even with their own limited resources, to build their lives, their families, their communities.  We can help them learn these things – we must help them – we will help them.

I (I won’t be bold enough to use “we”, though I suspect many will agree) need to learn how to dance.  Not literally so much (that’s beyond teaching in my case), but in other ways:

The dance of joy is written into their lives. Without any of the things we’ve deemed essential, they manage to smile.  For all their lack of sanitation, and vitamins, and recreational opportunities, and clean clothes, and benefits packages, and happy hours, and professional sports, I swear they’re onto something because it seems like they enjoy life more than most of us, in spite of our multi-levels of security: financial, medical, physical, emotional.  It’s sinking in, just a little, that my world won’t collapse if I don’t take my bevy of morning vitamins, or if I skip the latest seminar on making my church cool, or if I never write another book in my life, or buy another pair of shoes.  JOY doesn’t need shoes, or conferences, or vitamins, or relentless status updates – JOY, it seems, is about living in the moment, content with what I’m given – those are my impressions at least.

I don’t mean to romanticize.  There are people living with nightmares and trauma because of the Rwandan genocide in the 90’s.  There’s political tension bubbling, just beneath the surface.  Though there’s progress with infant mortality, kids die all the time, and parents don’t just take it in stride – it cuts them to the core, just like it does us.  The suffering is immense.  Still – the dance of joy is woven right into the fabric of it.  Go to church in Rwanda and watch them dance, remembering that they’re way less than one generation removed from killing each other with machetes in ways more brutal than I can stomach writing about.  And yet – joy.  I’ve much to learn.

The dance of community reveals my relational poverty. When I was there, in the thick of it, with people everywhere (Rwanda is the densest populated African nation), I longed for the solitude of my cabin.  When I’m just with me, I get along with everyone in the room perfectly.  I felt, in Africa, my impatience, my arrogance, my selfishness, my greed.  Nobody was lecturing me from a position of moral authority.  It’s just that they’ve space in their lives for gratitude, celebration, relationships.  When we went to that first village where our church had put in a well, they’d planned a feast for us – slaughtered a couple chickens, boiled a dozen eggs, and served mountains of fruit!  They would have gladly danced, eaten, and celebrated with us all day, but of course we had other important places to be, as we Americans always do.  And so, we enjoyed a few minutes and moved on.

“This ‘moving on’”, I remember thinking, “is the story of my life.”  I’m good at having a thousand acquaintances, much better at that, in fact, than having real friends.  They don’t have the “thousand acquaintance” option on the table, and so many of them have mastered the art of community and real friendships.  Now that I’m back where “solitude on demand” is available to me, I’m praying Jesus, that I’ll remained challenged by the countless examples of interdependency and community that I saw there.

The dance of faith in Christ is beauty and grace in Africa.  In one church we visited a man gave a profound and powerful sermon about how to keep moving ahead joyfully, even when you lose everything.  He wove scriptures together with personal narratives from his own life and the life of the nation, calling people to “give thanks anyway” when all hell breaks loose, because Jesus is still with us.  It was said better than that, but you get the point.  After, we gathered with the pastor, and I asked him if the man who preached was some sort of associate pastor.  It turns out he was a layman, a deacon.  You see, the deacons fast and pray with the pastor every Saturday, while the pastor trains them as leaders.  They practice preaching, learn to study the Bible, and pray for their town.  I wonder if, even in my highly paid position, I’d be willing to fast regularly, or give up one of my (often) two days off, in order to equip leaders in my church?  I wonder how many council members I’d have if fasting on Saturdays was a requirement?

It seems like this trip has had the effect of revealing a lot of arrogance I’ve had, and then squeezing it out of me, a process I hope continues.  It seems also, that I’ve a chance to live better here because of it – more intentionally, simply, generously, joyfully.  I am, now that I’m home, profoundly grateful for the learning, born in the warmth of Rwandan and Ugandan culture, that’s beginning to thaw some coldness in my heart.  I pray the thaw continues.

Thanks God, for the privilege, profoundly so, of being there… it’s great to be home – may the seeds you’ve planted through the thousand beautiful people I met bear fruit, and spare me from settling back into the insidious pull and demands of my often sanitized faith.  Amen…Amen.

Filed Under: bridges, church 7 Comments

Thawing my heart in the heat of Africa….

January 15, 2011 By Richard Dahlstrom 7 Comments

I’m back home, and don’t know how to write about what happened.  But I wanted to share something… so here’s this morning’s entry from my prayer diary, with a few pictures thrown in.

Good morning God…

I’m back in Seattle.

I remember being in the thick of my time there – tired, hungry, annoyed by sweat and bugs and the smells that come to humid places that have no showers.  I remember thinking, “I can’t get home soon enough – back to wood stoves, and skis, cologne and college basketball, my wife, literacy, favorite smells, high speed internet.”  How shallow is that?

Now I’m home, and when I scroll through the pictures, tears come to my eyes – tears of gratitude for the privilege of meeting people who taught me things I didn’t want to learn, things I didn’t even know I needed to learn.  And I’ve a feeling the learning, and the relationship with these wonderful people, has just begun.

One thing I’ve begun to learn through this visit is that “normal”, on both sides of the continent, is in need of readjustment, and that we can help each other learn.  They need to  learn hygiene habits, and that water from a deep well is much better than water from the lowlands, where parasites and mosquitoes conspire to deal sickness and death.  They need to learn that saving money is a good thing, and that they’ve the power, even with their own limited resources, to build their lives, their families, their communities.  We can help them learn these things – we must help them – we will help them.

I (I won’t be bold enough to use “we”, though I suspect many will agree) need to learn how to dance.  Not literally so much (that’s beyond teaching in my case), but in other ways:

The dance of joy is written into their lives. Without any of the things we’ve deemed essential, they manage to smile.  For all their lack of sanitation, and vitamins, and recreational opportunities, and clean clothes, and benefits packages, and happy hours, and professional sports, I swear they’re onto something because it seems like they enjoy life more than most of us, in spite of our multi-levels of security: financial, medical, physical, emotional.  It’s sinking in, just a little, that my world won’t collapse if I don’t take my bevy of morning vitamins, or if I skip the latest seminar on making my church cool, or if I never write another book in my life, or buy another pair of shoes.  JOY doesn’t need shoes, or conferences, or vitamins, or relentless status updates – JOY, it seems, is about living in the moment, content with what I’m given – those are my impressions at least.

I don’t mean to romanticize.  There are people living with nightmares and trauma because of the Rwandan genocide in the 90’s.  There’s political tension bubbling, just beneath the surface.  Though there’s progress with infant mortality, kids die all the time, and parents don’t just take it in stride – it cuts them to the core, just like it does us.  The suffering is immense.  Still – the dance of joy is woven right into the fabric of it.  Go to church in Rwanda and watch them dance, remembering that they’re way less than one generation removed from killing each other with machetes in ways more brutal than I can stomach writing about.  And yet – joy.  I’ve much to learn.

The dance of community reveals my relational poverty. When I was there, in the thick of it, with people everywhere (Rwanda is the densest populated African nation), I longed for the solitude of my cabin.  When I’m just with me, I get along with everyone in the room perfectly.  I felt, in Africa, my impatience, my arrogance, my selfishness, my greed.  Nobody was lecturing me from a position of moral authority.  It’s just that they’ve space in their lives for gratitude, celebration, relationships.  When we went to that first village where our church had put in a well, they’d planned a feast for us – slaughtered a couple chickens, boiled a dozen eggs, and served mountains of fruit!  They would have gladly danced, eaten, and celebrated with us all day, but of course we had other important places to be, as we Americans always do.  And so, we enjoyed a few minutes and moved on.

“This ‘moving on’”, I remember thinking, “is the story of my life.”  I’m good at having a thousand acquaintances, much better at that, in fact, than having real friends.  They don’t have the “thousand acquaintance” option on the table, and so many of them have mastered the art of community and real friendships.  Now that I’m back where “solitude on demand” is available to me, I’m praying Jesus, that I’ll remained challenged by the countless examples of interdependency and community that I saw there.

The dance of faith in Christ is beauty and grace in Africa.  In one church we visited a man gave a profound and powerful sermon about how to keep moving ahead joyfully, even when you lose everything.  He wove scriptures together with personal narratives from his own life and the life of the nation, calling people to “give thanks anyway” when all hell breaks loose, because Jesus is still with us.  It was said better than that, but you get the point.  After, we gathered with the pastor, and I asked him if the man who preached was some sort of associate pastor.  It turns out he was a layman, a deacon.  You see, the deacons fast and pray with the pastor every Saturday, while the pastor trains them as leaders.  They practice preaching, learn to study the Bible, and pray for their town.  I wonder if, even in my highly paid position, I’d be willing to fast regularly, or give up one of my (often) two days off, in order to equip leaders in my church?  I wonder how many council members I’d have if fasting on Saturdays was a requirement?

It seems like this trip has had the effect of revealing a lot of arrogance I’ve had, and then squeezing it out of me, a process I hope continues.  It seems also, that I’ve a chance to live better here because of it – more intentionally, simply, generously, joyfully.  I am, now that I’m home, profoundly grateful for the learning, born in the warmth of Rwandan and Ugandan culture, that’s beginning to thaw some coldness in my heart.  I pray the thaw continues.

Thanks God, for the privilege, profoundly so, of being there… it’s great to be home – may the seeds you’ve planted through the thousand beautiful people I met bear fruit, and spare me from settling back into the insidious pull and demands of my often sanitized faith.  Amen…Amen.

Filed Under: bridges, church 7 Comments
« Older Posts