the running reverend
Josh Rhone is a husband, father, pastor, seminarian, and follower of Jesus who is trying to figure out how to best walk in the way of love.
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There were two stories in the news last week that fascinated me as I watched them unravel. The first was the meteoric rise of the viral 30 minute video Kony 2012 that took over Twitter, Facebook and Youtube. The second story was an NPR radio episode of This American Life about working conditions in the Apple factories in China. The story centered around a play/monologue by Mr. Daisy about his trip to China to investigate the matter. Over 1 million people had downloaded that NPR podcast – by far an all time record.
Both stories turned tragic last week. Invisible Children, the group responsible for Kony 2012, came under heavy criticism. It turns out that the conflict as it was presented was not all that accurate – It had been accurate in the early 2000s but after 2004 no longer represented the true affairs of the country and Joseph Kony himself had left Uganda and migrated to a neighboring country.
People accused the film’s star Jason Russell and his Invisible Children crew of knowingly misleading people and falsifying content in order to elicit a greater emotional response.
The Apple story went down a similar road for Mr. Daisy. It turns out that he had taken some artistic license in presenting his one-man-show and that not everything he claims would qualify as ‘journalistic standard’ of truthfulness. For instance, while he was in China for that week, he saw a news story about some factory workers in another province suffering horrible effects from a chemical. He never went to that province nor talked to those workers but just imported that story and connected it to his subject. The result was that this one factory seemed to be layers and layers of horrific working conditions – but in reality what was presented was an amalgamation of many factories in several provinces.
In the follow-up interviews this weekend Mr. Daisy said that he took license with the facts because he wanted people to care about this. He knew that the conditions were bad and so orchestrated the story to draw a response.
These two stories, taken together, point to a series of issues that are relevant to the church and her theology.
The first issue is complacency. Both of these ‘presenters’ knew that some tweaks and modifications needed to made in order to overcome our collective complacency. We see so much bad, that unless something is really bad – it just doesn’t register. We are so overwhelmed with images, adverts, messages and pleas that unless something is sensational or horrific, we have evolved mechanisms and filters to catch it and screen it out. The result is that we become complicit in maintaining the status-quo and passive participants in the system, structures and institutions that comprise the ‘Powers the Be’ that Paul reference in Ephesians 6.
The second issue is Paternalism. At some point white people from the West are going to have to stop thinking that the solution to what ails Africa or Asia is us coming over and fixing it. Now, I applaud the generous heart behind both Invisible Children and Mr. Daisy but until we repent of our Colonial impulse and step away from that model of missions, we are going to continue to run into problems and run over the very folks we purport to be helping.
- We want to help – that is great.
- We do it in our way – and that is hurtful.
There is no doubt that in global system of international trade and foreign policy that the church must come to terms with our inter-connectivity and inter-relatedness in a way that transcends outdated clichés and antiquated platitudes of centuries past. We live in an evolving world that is experiencing exponential and radical change.
I love that good folks want to care about that and not just go shopping to bury their head in the sand. BUT until we repent of our ongoing paternalism and acknowledge the devastating effects of our colonial missions we will continue to replicate the harm and multiply the devastation.
As Christians, do we need to think through and address our participation in the global market and international structures that dominate our contemporary economy? Yes.
If, however, we do not first repent of our Colonial missions mentality, we will continue the pattern of paternalism and Imperial impulse that has created these very situations we want to address.
p.s. I know about Jason Russell’s
—>arrestepisode this weekend but did not want to distract from the bigger issue.I wanted to share this post by Bo Sanders (of Homebrewed Christianity) because: a) he doesn’t add fuel to the fire regarding #KONY2012 or Mr. Daisy and, b) he does a fantastic job of outlining two ways in which this impacts the Church and her theology. Well worth the few minutes it will take to read the story.
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A week from today the Ecclesia Network National Gathering kicks off in Chevy Chase, Maryland. The gathering itself looks fantastic, with the likes of Drs. Ivy Beckwith, A.J. Swoboda, and John Perkins slated to speak. (Unfortunately, I received word earlier today that Dr. Perkins has had to withdraw due to health reasons.)
I had hoped to attend the gathering in its entirety. With Crystal’s recent health issues staying for the duration of the gathering proves to be an impossibility. In fact, I wasn’t going to go at all. An unexpected email from Geoff Holsclaw provided some extra incentive for me to attend (albeit, only for Monday). I’m looking forward to attending more than ever as I will have the opportunity to see an old friend (A.J. Swoboda), a new friend (Andy Campbell), and have the privilege of meeting and conversing with some of the folks whose blogs I have been following for a while (Geoff Holsclaw, David Fitch, J.R. Rozko, and Winn Collier to name a few).
To have the privilege to eat, talk theology and missiology, spend time with these folks, and lay the framework for a “younger missional theologians network” makes the six or so hours that I will spend in the car more than worth it!
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Video! Audio! Disco! the blog of Josh Walters
The blog of A.J. Swoboda
Jesus Creed the blog of Scot McKnight
Homebrewed Christianity a collaborate effort of Bo Sanders, Tripp Fuller, and Chad Crawford
Reclaiming the Mission the blog of David Fitch
The Crooked Mouth the blog of Andy Campbell (you need to check out his post “A Brief Guide to Donuts” which does for philosophy what Doug Ray did for social media)
LiturgyLink (more of a liturgy collective than a blog)
The Immanent Frame a blog dedicated to discussions related to secularism, religion, and the public sphere
P.OST Andrew Perriman’s blog where he discusses what he terms “evangelical theology for the age to come”
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At this very moment I am sitting in bed typing away on my iPad while watching reruns of MacGyver on Netflix. As I watch I can’t help buy chuckle. In this particular episode MacGyver has been buried in an avalanche. Someone, using just the handful of items he finds on his person, he manages to survive.
As a kid, I was amazed by MacGyver’s ingenuity and his ability to patch together a solution to whatever problem he might be presented with in a particular episode. Then, it was good TV. Now, however, it is both irritating and laughable.
It hit me as I was watching tonight’s laughable rerun that many a pastor and a church operate from an ecclesiological paradigm that is very MacGyver-like. The shifting tectonic plates of culture collide causing an avalanche that seemingly buries the church alive.
The church and/or its leaders survey their surroundings looking for some “thing” that will keep them alive. Some thing that will allow them to hang on at least a little while longer until help comes.
In more than a few instances that “thing” has been a convenient and easy to digest theology (e.g. the “prosperity gospel”) that fills the pews for a time.
Other handy solutions have presented themselves in the form of material and/or programs that have worked in another church. “If it has worked before,” the argument goes, “Surely it will work again and breathe new life into our situation.”
When times get tough and the pews get barren, the church gets resourceful.
Unfortunately, these changes, born out of necessity, are often reactionary. As such they tend to be based upon “what works.” “What works,” however, has a short lifespan. What works, and draws crowds to fill the pews one week, may not the next week. What works, and results in a need for bigger buildings, may not work a year down the road, resulting in a big but empty building that has mortgage and utility payments that still need to be made.
The MacGyver approach to church ecclcan (and does) work for a time.
There is a time and a place for the MacGyvers. There is a need for them.
But this world, God’s kingdom, and the church also need those who do more than simply improvise and react when a crisis comes.
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Photo courtesy of Happy Hotelier’s Flickr stream
Theology lives between the stories — God’s story of the world, and humanity’s ever-changing account of itself and all things. Theology is what happens when the two stories meet.
Douglas John Hall in Thinking the Faith, page 91.
