Ill attempt to my best Dave Zirin impersonation here.

The night before Thanksgiving Katy and I saw The Blind Side.

I had been familiar with the story when I read this New York Times Magazine profile of Michael Oher a few years ago.   After reading the article I bought the book, The Blind Side: Evolution of a Game.

The book was great but the posters for the movie version of The Blind Side looked horrible.  It seemed to me that this was going to be a sports movie version of Mississippi Burning .  Or might qualify for a recent blog post titled “The Five Most Unintentionally Racist Movies about Racism. Anyways, here is a nice summary of the criticism about Mississippi Burning:

[Missisippi Burning] been criticized by many, including historian Howard Zinn, for its fictionalization of history. According to Zinn: while FBI agents are portrayed as heroes who descend upon the town by the hundreds, in reality the FBI and the Justice Department only reluctantly protected civil rights workers and protesters and reportedly witnessed beatings without intervening.^[1] It was also criticized due to its portrayal of southern African-Americans as passive victims. The image of African-Americans as being passive also shapes the film’s reenactment of the assassinations;^[2] New York Times film reviewer wrote that the film’s alleged distortions amounted to a “cinematic lynching” of history.

See, The Blind Side takes place in Memphis and essentially a rich white woman comes to the rescue of a homeless black kid with an NFL body.  Hollywood could have very easily taken the very powerful story of Michael Oher and Leigh Anne Tuohy and turned into a Disnified, racial fantasy.

Never mind the fact that  Memphis might be one of the most racially polarized cities in the country and the place where Martin Luther kIng was assassinated. And the University of Missisippi?  It’s racial history is just as brutal. And “Ole Miss,”– the college’s nickname?  That is what slaves called the slave master’s wife.

Overall,  the book was better and the movie is far from being perfect.  The Border’s commercial that breaks out in the middle of the movie also might be the most annoying product placement I have ever experienced.

But still, the movie made me cry.  (The last time I cried in a movie might have been in Top Gun when Goose died.)

And I cried, I think, because I grew up around families like the Tuohy’s.  Rich. White. Christian. Republican.  I never once met someone from that background who would have opened the car door for a homeless black teenager, even if he had NFL tackle written all over his body.

And that is why I loved the movie–because if you are rich and white and powerful, it means nothing if you don’t open the door for others.

P.S. I also thought it was interesting that at the end of the movie when they were showing newspaper clippings of Michael Oher’s career the other story that appeared on the “newspaper” was about Darfur.  I think the movie producer’s were trying to make a point….

1.  Thank you to John Wesley. We missionals/emergents like to stir things up a bit, raise  some hell, speak out boldly against injustice, reach neglected communities, and open the church doors in real ways to those who wouldn’t step foot in to a church in a million years.  I think the life and works of John Wesley, the founder of Methodism, grants us that permission even if the established church frowns on or is disinterested in such  activities.

2.  Thank you to the early church. Despite the overwhelming violence and power of the Roman empire, these earlier followers of Christ  persisted and still show us 2,000 years later that love wins and that another way is possible.

3.  Thank You  to the prophetic church. Yeah, somewhere along the way (think Constantine but probably way before that as the church became more and more succesful) the church lost its way.  But the link between  mainstream religion and injustice is an age old problem ( the need for social propehtics like  Micah, Amos, Isiaiah in the first place).

Instead of liberation and community, the churches began to preach and practice and protect the status quo.   Whether it was St. Francis of Asissi, Dorothy Day, John Wesley, Dr. Martin Luther King, or countless others whose names history has forgotten, these communities figured out creative ways to be faithful witnesses of Jesus Christ, in spite of violent threats and raw military and economic power or just plain ole’ apathy.

4.  Thank You to EmergingUMC2 and beyond. Much thanks to the 30 or so United Methodists who gathered this November to talk about the possibilities of restoring missional methodism.  As a participant, it was inspiring to hear all the amazing things going on across the country as Methodists struggle to rethink church. Let’s hope this conversation keeps going.

5.  Thank You to the Emergent Conversation. I first started hearing about the emergent conversation a few years ago and it saved my faith or at least my participation in a church.

6. Thank You to no More George W. Bush in public office. Yeah, this is a cheap shot, but it is a little disconcerting that George W. Bush and Dick Cheney both claimed to be United Methodists.  That presidency might say more about the failures of the United Methodist church than anything else.

7. Thank You to the GBOD worship website. If you ever find yourself needing help with a worship service, check out the General Board of Discipleship’s worship webpage. Consistently updated and always helpful.

8.  Thank You for some good Methodist blogs. Check this blog’s home page for them.

9.  Thank You to The Future. More and more, it looks like the future of the church  will be missional and emergent.  Here is Phyllis Tickle’s take on it.

10. Thank You to Jesus Christ.  Not in that cheezy I just won the super-bowl kid of way, but for not letting fear or the quest for prestige and power get in the way of God’s plan.

It has been over a week now since EmergingUMC2: Restoring Missional Methodism finished up.  At  high noon, Saturday, November 14, our gathering headed back into the world.  Some having a 700 mile ride back home on a minibus. 

Where do we go from here?  That was the big question for me. 

We spent Thursday night watching and discussing The Ordinary Radicals, a beautiful film about what Christians are doing across the country to reclaim the faith from both apathy and the dark years of the Christian right era.  On Friday morning we walked through downtown Indianapolis and met  with arts leaders, janitors, and hotel workers, and got some context for how Lockerbie Central UMC developed and is developing its missional focus.   We spent Friday afternoon thinking about Methodist history and the current story of the United Methodist Church, especially the history of class and society meetings and their relationship to congregations.  

On Friday night some of us went to nearby Englewood Christian Church and saw Shane Claiborne speak as part of another conference going on that week, Through the Consuming Fire.

So, where do we go from here? 

A week out, that Saturday- morning seems like a blur.  I am sure I am leaving some things out.  

First off, we talked about our experience Friday night watching Shane Claiborne speak.  I showed up late Friday night  and just in time to hear Shane speak. For those who haven’t seen Shane speak before, the guy is a rock star.  When he spoke at our church, we had nearly as 1,000 people show up–the biggest crowd we probably have ever had in the 125 year history of the church. 

I know our group wa s a bit annoyed because the music prior to Shane went on and on and on and on.  And on. It went so long that the scheduled Q and A session had to be cancelled.  The thing that stuck out to me though was the power of Shane’s story–even though I had already read his books and have seen him speak before.   Here, a small group of people dedicated themselves to living out the Gospels and they launched a movement.  Nine people living together in community and in friendship and solidarity with the broader community.  That’s it.  And they are changing the world through their witness, activism, and Christian discipline.  Last year, UMC youth in Carmel, IN–the wealthiest city in the state were so moved by Shane’s Irresistable Revolution that they begged the church’s leadership to invite Shane to lead worship on a Sunday morning.  (He accepted their invite.)

Still, I feel that for some of us Methodists, Shane’s  Irresistable Revolution gets lost in translation. It might be called the Impossible Revolution for us United Methodists.  But for me, that was the great hope of EmergingUMC2.  In our own ways, given our deep traditions, we United Methodists could begin to restore missional Methodism. 

As the conference concluded and before our final worship gathering together, we broke up into small groups to talk about how we might begin to work together.  I talked with two UMC clergy from central Indiana.  It was exciting  to begin to dream about how local congregations and individual Methodists could work together in real ways. 

We finished up with a powerful  worship service that sent us back into our communities  hopefully ready to restore missional methodism.

I hope to blog out my thoughts about EmergingUmc2: Restoring Missional Methodism over the next several days.  Here is my second attempt to summarize my experience at the conference. Here is my blog post from yesterday about the conference.

After our walking/missional tour of downtown Indianapolis, we returned to the church, had lunch, and finished up the official part of our Friday at EmergingUMC2.

We spent that afternoon talking about the early Methodists and the church structure that had developed since then.  Ultimately, it was this way of doing church that got us into the ditch  that we United Methodists now find ourselves in. 

One thing is clear; John Wesley and the early Methodists were the Shane Claibornes and ordinary radicals of their time and place.  Their ministries started in prisons, coal fields, factories, in the farm fields, etc.  They spoke out against injustice like slavery and industrial reform and primarily worked through small groups called classes.  Along with the social activism and small gatherings, these early Methodists also put emphasis on personal piety and discipline. 

According to Taylor Burton-Edwards, the EmergingUMC2 conference leader, the prevailing  spirit and structure of the early Methodists started to dissipate with the creation of the Methodist Episcopal Church in 1784, especially as the church gained economic and political power and became part of the dominant, mainstream culture by its 100th birthday in 1884. 

The numbers lie sometimes but the United Methodist church is fading.  We are about to be passed by the Mormons for third place on the largest American denominations list, continue to lose hundreds of thousands of members each decade, and now the percentage of Americans who consider themselves United Methodist  have nearly been cut in half over the last forty years. (6% in 1970, 3% today).

Burton-Edwards argument on this Friday afternoon made a lot of sense; The church as congregation model hasn’t worked out very well and its well worth looking at what those early Methodists were up to! You cannot recreate the past, of course, but there is much to learn  from the pre-Methodist Episcopal Church Wesleyan movement.  

Much more could be said, but most importantly, returning to a model that emphasises the small group/class could add the vitality needed to Keep Wesley’s hope that the Methodist movement “[would] not only exist as a dead sect, having the form of religion without the power. And this undoubtedly will be the case unless they hold fast both the doctrine, spirit, and discipline with which they first set out.…” He wrote that two years after the formation of the Methodist Episcopal church.  

To back this up, Burton-Edwards quoted the following in his presentation:

•GBOD research– discipleship grows and deepens  primarily through an experience or a group outside the congregation (Dan Dick)

•Missiological observation– “communitas”–a “band of brothers and sisters who have each other’s backs struggling through a common ordeal– is the environment most conducive to missional action and multiplication (Alan Hirsch, The Forgotten Ways)

I hope to blog out my thoughts about EmeringUmc2: Restoring Missional Methodism over the next several days.  Here is my first attempt to summarize my experience at the conference.

EmergingUMC2 has come and gone. You can see the twitter conversation (#emergingumc2)  here.

 It was an event that my congregation, Lockerbie Central United Methodist, had lobbied hard to get.  We were a small congregation that had been left for dead but had found new life in the emergent/missonal way.   We wanted to show and tell our story. 

I went into the conference feeling a little bit out of it though.  In this season of the H1N1, I woke up Thursday morning–12 hours before the conference started–puking my guts out.  Lucky for me, it wasn’t the flu and I made it through the weekend. 

Thursday Night:

We screened the movie The Ordinary Radicals to start the conference  and as part of our normal Thursday night film series. We had about 1o0 people in attendance.  Director Jamie Moffett was in town and it was exciting to see Lockerbie Central’s brief appearance in the movie.  The film tells the story of “Ordinary Radicals”– everyday people whose faith and commitment to community have begun to provide an alternative to what it means to be a North American Christian.   Imagine a Christianity that actually took Jesus seriously–that is what the Ordinary Radicals are. The film follows Shane Claiborne and his merry band of Christian troublemakers (in the best of that word) and jesters (in the best sense of that word) across the country  in a grease powered bus during the summer of 2008 as part of  the Jesus For President (book] tour.

The movie was inspiring but I could tell that for many conference attendees, the Ordinary Radicals’ movement wouldn’t quite translate to the county seat churches.  Well, lets just say it wouldn’t happen over night. 

Friday Morning:  

After a worship gathering, we took a three hour walk across downtown Indianapolis.  We wanted to give conference goers a sense of our missional context. 

We headed from the church, across Lockerbie Square, and over to Mass. Ave. , where we met Pauline Moffett at the Indy Fringe Building.  Pauline is executive director of the Indianapolis Fringe Festival, a 10 day uncensored and unjuried theater and arts festival, where all ticket sales go to the performers.  Our church has worked with Indy Fringe for the last four years and last year hosted the festival’s dance performances.  I’ll talk about it more in a later post, but it was quite amazing how much the mission of Indy Fringe met up with the ideal of the conference. 

From there, we walked towards downtown, talking about Indianapolis history—the good, the bad, and the ugly– and then met with the Justice For Janitors campaign on the steps of  Monument Circle.  A half decade into the struggle, janitors won their first union contact last year with the help of clergy leaders.  If the campaign continues to succeed, 2,000 lowpaying  jobs will be tranformed into living wage jobs that can support a family.  From there, we walked a few more blocks, saw the state house, and then met with Stuart Mora, a hotel worker and Lockerbie Central member, who is working with his coworkers to organize a union at downtown hotels.  Like the janitors, if the hotel workers suceed thousands of jobs will become living wage jobs.  If clergy and the church get involved in real and meaningful ways in these types of struggles, our economy will be transformed and perhaps the church might have a future.

Having walked three miles or so, the group headed back to Lockerbie Central UMC and had lunch.  We read this qoute off of our church sign:    

It may be that the day of judgment will dawn tomorrow; in that case we will gladly stop working toward a better future. But not before. Dietrich Bonhoeffer

As strange as it may seem, Dorothy Day might have been a Methodist.  I just started reading The Long Loneliness: The Autobiography of the legendary Catholic Social Activist, and what has been surprising is about how often she talks about John Wesley and  her experience with the Methodist Church. 

Ultimatley, one of the most important Chrisitan figures of 20th century America began her faith journey by rejecting the Methodist church. 

…I had to choose the world to what I wanted to belong. I did not want to belong to the Epworth League which some of my classmates joined.   As a little child, the happy peace of the Methodists who lived next door to me appealed to me deeply.   Now, the same happiness seemed to be a disregard of the misery of the world (page 41).

I find this passage important for the future of the United Methodist Church.  The argument has been made and continues to be made that the Methodist Church is in decline because of its liberalism.  Though more of a hunch than a thesis, Dorothy Day’s epxerience tells us that something else is at play; the Methodist’s “disregard of the misery of the world.”

Indianapolis, Ind - October 30, 2009 -Kurt Vonnegut fans will gather to honor the Hoosier author on Wednesday, November 11, 2009, 7:00 p.m. at the Earth House Collective, 237 N. East St., located inside Lockerbie Central United Methodist Church, on what would have been  Vonnegut’s 87^thbirthday. 

The third annual Gospel According to Vonnegut celebration will honor the life, theology, politics, humor and local roots of Indianapolis’ most important postwar writer.   There will also be birthday cake.

“Vonnegut focused on the absurd and he found a lot of absurdity in religion,” Mike Oles, organizer for the event, said.  “He comes from a long line of religious skeptics and atheists but his hostility towards religion allowed him to write powerfully-perhaps more so than any other Indiana voice– about the historical Jesus.”

Along with Vonnegut’s riffs on God and Christianity, the gathering will also focus on the writer’s Indiana roots.  It was at Indianapolis’ Shortridge High School where Vonnegut wrote for the only daily high school newspaper in the country.  Meanwhile, Vonnegut attributed much of his moral vision to fellow Hoosier radicals like Eugene Debs and Powers Hapgood. 

Earth House is located inside Lockerbie Central United Methodist Church, on the corner of New Yorkand East Streets in downtown Indianapolis. 

 For more information, please contact Mike Oles, 317-354-3207.

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The Revised Common Lectionary takes the church this week to Mark 12: 38-44, a.k.a. The Widow’s mite.

The story of the Widow’s mite is well translated above by Johnny Paycheck in the Outlaw’s Prayer.

At our All Saints Day worship service last night, we at Lockerbie Central United Methodist used an Africana Prayer with Libation.   On a day when we celebrate those who have walked the journey before us and with, this prayer connected our church with the deep tradition of our faith.  

It was an emotionally powerful exprience. 

 According to Wikipedia,  “A libation is a ritual pouring of a drink as an offering to a god. It was common in the religions of  antiquity, including Judiasm.”    Last night after reading through this prayer, people came up to a bowl in th middle of worship semi circle  and poured out a small amount of water as they called out the name of a loved one, a personal hero,  or prayed in silence. 

Such a simple act allowed our faith community to connect deeply with the best traditions of our church.  It is a prayer that most of us won’t forget.

GENERATE MAGAZINE came in the mail yesterday. The print is small.  The vision is huge.

Some thoughts and observations.

Affordable. 4 issues for $20.  You can get a second subscription for $14.  $7 off the shelf. Generate is also made more sustainably than about anything else that will show up in your mailbox.   If you are interested in the post-modern/emergent/missional/ Christian conversation, get yourself a subscription.  And buy one for your friend or church or whoever.

[Hardly] No Advertising. The advertising that is there adds to the magazine and conversation.  Mostly ads for emergent books and artists.   Amazing that such a beautiful, sustainably made magazine is affordable with hardly any advertising.

Food Issues. The cover art is from artist Mark Menjivar.  Its awesome (how is that for an art review) but I am most excited about a byline at the end of the article:

The You are What You Eat exhibit is ready to tragvel ato a ny community or gallery that would like to use it as a centerpiece for dialog about food issues.  The exhitbit has custom crates, made with traveling in mind.  For more infromation, visit markmenjivar.com.

That is one of the most exciting parts of Generate.  The story doesn’t end in the magazine.  There is opportunity and ideas to take the conversation to your local community.

Fighting Words. Sometimes the best fights break out in the book reviews and Generate does a good job of making normally staid book reviews interesting.  The book in review is  The New Evangelism: Freeing the Church from Western Cultural Captivity. I haven’t read it, but the reviews and author response make me want to.

Doing Church Differently. The problem with magazines like Sojourners is that they often don’t highlight  the daily life of faith communities.  How they get started, where they are going, etc.  Generate highlights a few communities whose example could help emergents out as they start and restart their local cohorts, churches, and communities.  Generate profiles Presbyertian church planter and indie rocker Thomas Vito.  I will definitely be checking out Welcome Wagon.  I like what Vito says in the magazine, “An organzization made up of 100 churches of 100 committed people will be  far more effective to transform a community with the gospel than ten churches with 1,0000 people each.”

If you love or want to love the emerging church, then please support Generate.