I’m up late tonight, getting things organized for this week-long conference that our team is attending. I tend to procrastinate packing until the last minute. I’ve been listening to Sun Kil Moon recently, thanks to Mr. Quade persuading me to give them another try…

I’m heading to bed soon, and will be gone for a week, but wanted to give you something to chew on in my virtual absence:

“The whole story of creation, incarnation and our incorporation into the
fellowship of Christ’s body tells us that God desires us, as if we were God,
as if we were that unconditional response to God’s giving that God’s
self makes in the life of the trinity. We are created so that we may be
caught up in this; so that we may grow into the wholehearted love of
God by learning that God loves us as God loves God.

The life of the Christian community has as its rationale – if not
invariably its practical reality – the task of teaching us this: so
ordering our relations that human beings may see themselves as desired,
as the occasion of joy.” 

- Rowan Williams

I recently found out that a paper of mine got accepted at a theology and philosophy conference
in Rome. The University of Nottingham’s Centre of Theology and Philosophy is hosting the conference and is bringing together today’s leading theologians and philosophers for one week near the Vatican City. Now, I am by no means on par with the likes of Stanley Hauerwas, Graham Ward, John Milbank, Fergus Kerr, David Bentley Hart, Slavoj Zizek, or Peter Van Inwagen, but this young boy from Iowa is quite honored to have this
opportunity to humbly read his paper within earshot of these giants.

I can see how it might not be immediately clear just what this has to do with church-planting, and therefore what this has to do with my work in Ancona.  First of all, I can’t emphasize enough the importance of getting out and being involved in the Italian community, whether it’s with local business owners in Ancona, or the larger academic community in Italy.  Additionally, I have found that in pursuing these kinds of opportunities, some of my friends here in Ancona who have more intellectual objections to faith in Christ are more willing to listen a bit longer to what I have to say to them.  So while directly, being a part of something like this may not get a church established overnight, it does however show me how God is letting me and my team find respect and favor among the Italians here in Ancona. The conference isn’t until September, but I’d thought that it would be a good idea to let people know beforehand so they could be praying for me.

a word of wisdom to pastors (and missionaries)

Bishop William H. Willimon describes a common bump in the road as ministers move from seminary (you could read bible college) to their first parish (you could read ministry):

“too much theological training … places the modern reader above the texts of the church and assumes a privileged, detached and superior position to the church’s historic faith. The academic guild trains pastors to stand in judgment of the texts. This sets up the pastors for a jolt when they find themselves in the role of the ordained one who leads the church not in detached criticism of the texts, but rather in faithful embodiment of them. Pastors are ordained to communicate that scripture and convey their tradition compellingly and faithfully to their congregations, not primarily so that the congregations can think through the tradition, but so that they can incarnate Christian truth in their discipleship. Pastors are not free to rummage about in the recesses of their own egos, nor are they free to consult extraecclesial texts until they’ve done business wiht scripture itself.”

For those who are inclined to receive advice from Bishop Willimon, he offers seven nuggets of wisdom:

1.  Learn to speak and teach scripture. Laity sometimes complain that their young pastor uses “religious” words like spiritual practice, liberation, empowerment, intentional community … which no one understands and no one recalls having encountered in scripture. We are ordained to lovingly cultivate and actively use the Bible’s language.

2.  Learn to appreciate the thought and speech of people who are outside of the restrictions imposed by the academy. The difference between the thought of the laity in your first parish and that of your friends back in seminary is not so much the difference between ignorance and intelligence as it is a difference in ways of thinking.

3. If you have difficulty making the transition from seminary to parish, remember who you are: the point of studying and examining the Christian faith is that you embody that faith. The point is not to devise something that the modern world finds interesting but rather to rock that world with the church’s demonstration that Jesus Christ is Lord. At times your memory of questions raised and arguments engaged in seminary may distract you from the church’s mission and purpose.

4.  On the other hand, remember that the church has a tendecy to bed down with mediocrity, to accept the status quo and to let itself off the theological hook too easily. At its best, theology can and should make Christian discipleship difficult. An accomodated, compromised church reassures itself that “all that academic, intellectual, theological stuff is bunk and irrelevant to the way the church really is.” Criticism of the church ought to be part of the ongoing mission of a faithful church that takes Jesus seriously. I pray that your theological education has made you permanently restless with the church as it is, and eager to look for the church that is to be.

5.  Theology tends to be wasted on the young. It’s only when you run into a complete parochial dead end, when you are fed up with the people of God (and maybe even God too), that you will need to know how to have a good conversation with some saint in order to make it through the night. Your winning smile, pleasing personality or winsome way with people will not be enough to sustain you as you work with Jesus, preaching the Word, nurturing the flock, looking for the lost. Only God can sustain you, and God does that through the prayerful, intense reading and reflection that you began in seminary. When you’re in a small church alone, with total responsibility on your shoulders and a weekly treadmill of sermons and pastoral care, there is little time to read and reflect. Ministry has a way of coming at you, of jerking you around from here to there. You will be tempted to take short cuts and borrow from others what ought to be developed in the workshop of your own soul. Take charge of your time, prioritize your work and don’t neglect the essentials while you are doing the merely important.

6.  Try to ignore your parishioners when they attempt to use you to weasel out of the claims of Christ. “When you are older, you will understand,” they told me as a young pastor. “You’re still full of all that theological stuff from seminary. Eventually, you’ll learn,” said older, cynical pastors. (Now it’s, “Because you are a bishop, you don’t really understand that it’s unrealistic to…”) God has called you to preach and to live the gospel before them. Be suspicious when you’re encouraged to settle in and make peace with the “real world.” There is much that passes for “the way things are” in the average church that makes Jesus want to grab a whip and clean house.

7.  Get some good mentors. Ministry is an art, a craft, and one learns a craft by looking over the shoulder of a master, watching the moves, learning by example, developing a critical approach that constantly evaluates and gains new skills. There is something built into the practice of Christian ministry that requires apprenticeship, from Paul mentoring young Timothy to Ambrose guiding the willful Augustine. In my experience, one of the most revealing questions that I can ask a new pastor is, “Who are your models for ministry? Whose example are you following?”

if i could spend 10 min in an elevator with any artist, it’d be with Bon Iver

Tonight, I went down to eat some pizza at Tarek’s. It had been over a week since I’d been there, and he wanted to know where I had been. I had a horrible headache this evening, so when he asked me how I was doing, I told him the truth. “Even better!” He said as he was throwing the pizza dough up in the air. I was confused, “Why is having a headache better?” He tried hiding the smirk on his face, “Because after a week of vacation, you deserve a headache for not working!”

I ordered my usual sausage pizza, and tried reaching as far back into the fridge as I could, hoping for a cold Coke. Outside, there were some wobbly tables set up, and I sat there waiting for my pizza and for Jen to show up. Tarek followed me out for a smoke break and to ask how my trip in Bari went. Customers flowed in and out, which kept him running back and forth from our table to the pizzeria. His wife, Noha, came with the family in tow, and I had the opportunity to meet Adam, their newest as of two months ago. We chatted a bit and then Tarek brought out some espresso, symbolizing the end of the meal. He makes no hesitation to tell the other customers, when they ask for coffee too, that he only makes coffee for his friends.

As we finished up the coffee, he remembered a story from this week that he wanted to share. He couldn’t remember exactly how I came into the story, but a customer stopped by who Tarek identified as “a communist” and somehow he asked the communist if he knew who I was. The commie shook his head, “Nah, I don’t know who Josh is.” Tarek started to tell him about me, “Oh, well Josh is an American priest here in town that I’m friends with and who comes by to eat my pizza all the time. Every Sunday, Josh comes by and picks up the bread that I make for them to use for their Mass.” Tarek said that the commie stopped him in the middle of his story, “Wait a minute, you’re telling me that you, a Lebanese Muslim, makes bread for the Mass for an American Priest!?” Tarek smiled real big, and said, “Yea, why wouldn’t I? Josh is a friend of mine.” The commie shook his head again in disbelief, “Lebanon and America aren’t supposed to get along. Muslims and Christians aren’t supposed to get along. If a journalist got ahold of this story, it would be all over the news!” Tarek smiled again, “Yea, well I don’t think of it as some sort of publicity effort. We’re friends, and that’s what friends do.” Tarek closed his eyes, imitating the response of the commie, and made an Italian gesture with his hand, quoting him, “E’ veramente bellissimo!”

Now, I’m not really a priest and what we do on Sunday’s isn’t really a Mass. But Tarek’s lived in Italy now for over a decade, and for Italians it’s very hard to think about Protestants without framing them up into Catholic categories. At the table though, I didn’t feel the need to correct his misdescription of what I’m doing in Italy because despite his using the right kinds of categories to describe me, Tarek was able to get one thing completely accurate, and that one thing carries the Gospel in with it–that one thing is our friendship. I like how the beauty of such a friendship can give a commie hope in this mixed up world and have the kingdom break through their preconceived notions of how followers of Jesus are supposed to react to the marginalized. E’ veramente bellissimo!