Who wore it better: circumcision of the heart

I grew up preparing for confession with the traditional St. Augustine's Prayer Book. I cannot think of a more conservative anglo-catholic method of going about the sacrament of reconciliation. What this taught me, very quickly, was that morality was relative. The entire process is one where a sin is presented, over sleeping, but then its opposite, not resting enough, is presented. It is an entire paradigm of damned if you do and damned if you don't. The point is to extract oneself from a list of right and wrong acts and bring one to a space of reflection on ones relationship with oneself, with others, and with God. Where there is dissonance, broken relationships, pain, and barriers to grace is where one recognizes sin... not where one can put a check mark next to a "good" act or an "evil" act.  

Jesus said “Listen to me, all of you, and understand: there is nothing outside a person that by going in can defile, but the things that come out are what defile.” For it is from within, from the human heart, that evil intentions come: fornication, theft, murder, adultery, avarice, wickedness, deceit, licentiousness, envy, slander, pride, folly. All these evil things come from within, and they defile a person.”                                      Mark 7: 15, 21-23

http://www.aafp.org/afp/1998/0915/p891.html

One of the questions that percolates throughout Judaism during the time of Jesus Christ was the question of how were "modern" Jews called to live into the ancient practices of Judaism. This question was pressing while Jesus was alive but became overwhelmingly pressing after the destruction of the Jerusalem Temple in 70 CE. Various Rabbis interpreted the laws and came up with different set of expectations. A properly observant Jew would choose a Rabbinical school to follow and their observance would be measured against their discipleship to that school. Rabbis might disagree on how to interpret a rule, and argue without end, but the importance for the disciple was the living out an observance of their Rabbi's interpretation for the entire law.

Sometimes Jesus is super radical, and sometimes he says something that other Rabbis were saying as well. There is only one self identified Pharisee from this time whose writings remain in existence and this is the former Pharisee, Paul. He did not have access to the Gospel of Mark, or the other later Gospels, yet we find in the writings of Paul, specifically the second chapter of Romans, a very similar maxim: "For a person is not a Jew who is one outwardly, nor is true circumcision something external and physical. Rather, a person is a Jew who is one inwardly, and real circumcision is a matter of the heart—it is spiritual and not literal. Such a person receives praise not from others but from God."

CM Almy... who wore it better?

The two major Rabbis of Christianity, as it were, both present their followers with this idea of circumcision of the heart. That our relationship with the ancient Judaic laws is not supposed to be external, physical, and literal but internal, spiritual, and figurative. The question that has plagued us from then to now, however, is "how does this work?". As humans we always want to know "who wore it better" and while nominally one could judge who wears physical circumcision better one cannot judge who wears a spiritual circumcision better. Thus we have forever been plagued with individuals and groups recasting or creating a fresh a new set of physical circumcisions, of outward acts, that mark a person clean or unclean. Much of Christianity has, indeed, been plagued by this very reality.

The historic maxim seems to be this... that we either create a list of known good acts and known evil acts, some redaction of the Judaic law, or we descend into moral anarchy, relativism, and utter hedonism. There has to be an external, physical, literal moral and ethical law set or all is chaos. My continued critique is that this is the easy way out. This is cheap morality and ethics. This is the path of Christians who want to feel good about themselves in their own righteousness by checking off the good boxes and avoiding checking off the bad boxes. This is, in reality, a kind of negative hedonism. It is just as sinful to rise to a height of debauchery as to define oneself by not rising to such heights. One is allowing debauchery to be what defines you and Christians, and people in general, are not called to define themselves by debauchery.

What we are called to define ourselves by is our love of ourselves, our love of our neighbor, and our love of our God, in reality one great harmony with God's love. This path is not a paint by numbers book published by any church, be it based at the Vatican, Canterbury, Wittenberg, or else wise. This is the very messy path that lives into actual relationships and is transformed by them. It is a reality that constantly calls into question our literal, physical, external rules of right and wrong and ask ourselves wether they are, in fact, stopping us from having actual relationships with ourselves, with those around us, and with God. It is a reality that calls us to listen to when others tell us that our literal, physical, external rules are are, in fact, stopping them from having actual relationships with themselves, with us, and with God.

To do this, however, we have to walk away from our certainty. Our certainty in our circumcision, our certainty from eating only the right food in the right way, our certainty in the rules by which we define our goodness... and risk our hearts being once again being transformed in a world where it is impossible to tell who wears it better.     

Campus Ministry, Sharing the Numbers, Breaking the Rules

dnapersonaltraining.com/

I am going to break the rules and talk about ministry numbers and why they matter. This is a lesson I learned over the past year as I have built a solid relationship with a cross fit gym. The most intimidating thing for me, to this day, is the report out board where everyone posts how they did todays workout. What was your final weight lifted, how many rounds did you do, how quickly did you do them, etc.. I am basically in the middle of the pack now, and with my body type I will probably stay there even as I improve. Different bodies have different contexts and different capacities and what my numbers mean for me and my work out and my health are not what they would mean for any one else in regards to their workout and their health.

Still I do not want to share my numbers because I am intimidated by the numbers of the firefighters and police officers that come to the early morning classes and because I do not want to intimidate the person who is struggling through their first weeks or the recent cancer survivor working out in recovery. The deal is that claiming my numbers, sharing my numbers, and being proud of my work out for being mine is important. The deal is that the gym can create better workouts and solve systematic problems by seeing everyone's numbers. The data on that board is powerful and important on both levels.

So in the ethos of learning valuable leadership skills from outside the church I am about to share with you a lot of my Campus Ministry numbers. I am going to share them knowing that Campus Chaplains with more experience and better skills than I will have worse numbers than me this year and knowing that on some campus a group of students might be forming a campus ministry from scratch with no support or guidance that will be four times the size of mine. I am sharing them because I am proud of my work, the work of my students, and my community supporters in our ministry in Tucson to college and university students. I am sharing them because I firmly believe if more of us start doing this then we will be able to create better campus ministries and solve systematic problems. I am sharing them because in important ways numbers do matter.

The Core of my ministry are eight individuals. Three of these individuals were raised in the Episcopal Church and five of them found the Episcopal Church in college. All of them regularly attend campus ministry events, all of them actively work or volunteer for episcopal parishes, camps or schools. Six of them I can expect to go to both a parish worship service sunday morning and a campus ministry worship sunday evening. Two of them are actively discerning a call to ordained ministry or full time lay ministry in the Episcopal Church.

The worship periphery involves a group of twelve individuals, a number of them incoming freshmen, who either are planning on regularly taking part in our worship life or students who will attend irregularly. Three of these came to the Episcopal Church in college and nine of them were raised in the Episcopal Church. They are in this group because they are interested primarily in engaging us in worship.

The fellowship periphery involves eighteen individuals, all of them are not from an Episcopal Background. These are individuals who take part in our service projects, game and movie nights, and intentional open conversation space but are wary of engaging with us in worship. They are students who are becoming Episcofriendly.

At this point we are dealing with thirty eight individuals that are in regular contact with the ministry and view the chaplain as a safe adult and a provider of pastoral care and life skills advice. In this mix are twelve individuals who were raised in the episcopal church and twenty six that are engaging the episcopal church for the first time in college.

To this I will add fourteen more students that I know about, who were raised in an Episcopal context, that have either been introduced, via email, phone call, or letter, by their youth minister or parish priest or someone has taken my contact information to give them or I got a few minutes to talk to them when I visited our diocesan summer. This group also includes all the students I know attending local parishes but not engaging in the Campus Ministry Programming. This means there are twenty-six individuals that were raised in an Episcopal context whose existence on campus I am at least marginally aware of.

Episcopal Student numbers are important to me. Nationally Episcopalians make up .6% of the population and surveys of incoming students, which do not get every student but enough to be representative, show the same results of .6%. This means in a campus of 32,000 students there should be around 200 of them from Episcopal backgrounds. What this means is that the twenty-six individuals I know about, which covers every one engaging in the Episcopal Campus Ministry, everyone attending a local parish, and everyone a clergy or youth minister has mentioned to me makes up less than 15% of the students raised in Episcopal contexts that are on campus.

Comparing students raised in Episcopal backgrounds participating in Episcopal ministry versus those from other backgrounds is also noteworthy. Overall if we include everyone above the ministry is basically half students raised Episcopalian and half other. As a general rule a large amount of our growth, when it comes to bringing in non-Episcopalians comes from relationships they have with Episcopal students that are engaging in the ministry. My ability to build relationships on campus is exceptionally greater when an Episcopal student is part of that other community with which I am trying to build a relationship. Eventually students from other backgrounds become Episcopalian identified, officially or socially, but that requires time, and in a program where an individual's involvement is typically 34 months... time is something for which there is always short supply.

This is primarily to note that the involvement of students with Episcopal backgrounds is exceptionally important for me being able to build an outward looking relationship based ministry engaging the entire campus community. At this point about half of the Episcopal Students I know about on campus are actively participating or on the periphery of engaging with the community. I would say only a two or three of these are do or die Episcopalians who would overcome all odds to find us, the majority of them are with us because of the willingness of a youth ministry, parish, or camp to be in relationship with us and advocate and promote our work.

The result of this advocacy is not simply my having more robust numbers to report. It means that my overall capacity for formation and ministry grows across the board because engaging those from an Episcopalian background in an outward looking relational ministry model allows the ministry to connect with more students from other backgrounds, it allows my ministry to form everyone involved to bring this skill set to the wider church upon their graduation, and thus enriches the entire church. To that end the reality that 85% of Episcopal students on campus are in an unknown space troubles me because it represents a humungous unknown. What is going on with these 174 Episcopalians?

I do not think all 174 of these individuals are ones that the Episcopal Church has no actual meaningful relationship with. Somewhere that relationship exists for I would hope 74 of them... that would mean that the Episcopal Church had some form of relationship with half of the students with Episcopal backgrounds on my campus. Where do I have to go to build a relationship with those parts of the Episcopal church? What does the church need to do to build up an ethos of relational based ministry internal to the Episcopal Church such that these ministries connect with mine? What baggage, expectations, or practices about Campus Ministry, mine or in general, need to be overcome or dismantled to make this relationship building possible?

This might not change my numbers. Maybe only 15% of students raised in the Episcopal church will ever want to engage in Campus Ministry or Parish Ministry while they are in college in any way. My thought, however, is that the Episcopal Church has a greater capacity for forming individuals who will engage Campus Ministry than we are currently seeing. My belief is that an ethos of relationship building between Episcopal Campus Ministry and Episcopal Youth Ministry could give us a greater capacity and do this in the midst of all the issues facing both ministries.

So there are my numbers. The ones that I am excited about, and the ones that I am confused about. There is a lot of work that I need to keep doing, a lot of relationships I have to keep building and improving, some baggage between my ministry and surrounding ones I have to discover and overcome. I think there is a limit to what I, or any Chaplain, can do. The unresolved question of what is happening to 85% of students raised Episcopalian on my campus is something I cannot solve on myself. So I am sharing my numbers, the first one to post on the board. Maybe they will intimidate others, maybe some will think my ministry puny, whatever... until we start looking at the numbers, trying to make and repair the connections not being made, get more transparency, data, and dialogue in the house... I can only go so far with the capacity of myself, my students, and my current ministry partners and supporters.

teaching, learning, proving...

In school you write to prove to your teacher what you know... In academics you write to teach...

This maxim on writing was given to me upon receiving back my first rough draft of one of my major final papers in seminary. There are times in our lives where we have to learn, times when we have to prove what we know, and times when we need to teach. In the midst of university classes and degree programs the lines between these groups are rather well delineated... but in life they are not. The person you need to teach one day will be the person you need to learn from the next day and the person you need to prove you know stuff to the next day. This is the rhythm of our relationships.

Learning to flow between these states of teaching, learning, and proving is a basic life skill... its also a core ethic of Christ's teaching.

A dispute arose among the apostles as to which one of them was to be regarded as the greatest. But he said to them, "The kings of the Gentiles lord it over them; and those in authority over them are called benefactors. But not so with you; rather the greatest among you must become like the youngest, and the leader like one who serves. For who is greater, the one who is at the table or the one who serves? Is it not the one at the table? But I am among you as one who serves."You are those who have stood by me in my trials; and I confer on you, just as my Father has conferred on me, a kingdom, so that you may eat and drink at my table in my kingdom, and you will sit on thrones judging the twelve tribes of Israel."

                                                  -Luke 22:24-30

Here we are at the beginning of a new school year. We are entering into a state of learning, of teaching, of proving that is distinct. The move of God, from a state at the highest point of heaven to a point of incarnation, to a point of servant hood, is such a distinct movement. Christ here calls us to enter into this same set of movements... to move from teacher, to learner, to prover, and back again as we go about our lives... to not assume that we are here only to teach, or only to learn, or only to prove but to know that we are supposed to put ourselves in all such positions as we go about our lives. 

If we are going to create healthy communities each of us has to realize that at points we will need to enter various roles of teacher, learner, and prover. Sometimes we have to prove that we know what we are talking about, frustrating as that can be in any situation. Sometimes we have to buckle down and realize we have to learn, which sometimes is amazing and sometimes is frustrating. Sometimes we have to stand up and teach, empowering or frightening as that possibility might seem.

The problem comes when a community pigeonholes someone and makes them only a teacher, only a learner, or only a prover. When we do that we limit everyone in the community and bring about a collapse into stagnation. It might be great to be stuck into the teacher role... until no one ever gives you a chance to learn and you no longer are given chances to take a risk and prove yourself. It could be great to just learn, but then no one gets to learn from you. And none of us can survive if every day we have to prove everything about who we are to our community.

So we have to create communities where people are able to move from the place of teacher, to learner, to prover... and the way to do that is to start with ourselves and recognize times when we are called to teach, called to learn, and called to prove.

Youth and Campus Ministry... living together... mass hysteria...

Maybe this is an absurd idea... I think, however, that it would be really nifty if Youth Ministry and Campus Ministry had a healthy vibrant relationship. Youth Ministries, in my mind, should be seeking to be in healthy relationship with relevant Campus Ministries and vice versa. To be really honest for me this is a no brainer. 

Sometimes, though, when I mention this idea it feels like I have suggested we take up human sacrifice and want to plunge the church into mass hysteria. That this would be some epic crossing of the streams and we all know that crossing the streams is bad. Everyone looks at me as if I am the person who failed to keep his head clear and now a giant marshmallow man will destroy New York.

To be clear what I am not talking about is going back to a time when Episcopal Campus Ministry was an inward focused institution dependent upon the church to supply numbers for a special Sunday student program. I do not think we could bring that back if we tried and I would not want to even if we could. Episcopal Campus Ministries were forced to become nimble, crazy, and missional long before it was cool and we are not going to be forced back into that parish style box at this point. 

At this point our most effective campus ministries are running full tilt in missional/mission shaped/relationship based/emergent styles. It is the basic ethos by which the campus ministry I serve runs and one of the reasons we found a mutual call was a general commitment to this style of ministry. This means we spend a lot of time striving to create a worshiping community that relates to and impacts the campus environment and less time focused on fostering the institution of the Episcopal Church. As things stand we are a growing vibrant community with a solid grounding. If things remain as they are then things will be good. I am not writing this because if something does not change then my ministry will fail. I am writing this because if I can build better relationships then my ministry and the ministry of the Episcopal Church will get even better.

The deal is that Mission Shaped ministry and Parish ministry are not polar opposites. They are symbiotic creatures that create a robust church when brought into full partnership. They are like a jam filled pastry. A person can just eat jam or just eat pastry dough but the magic happens when one takes a deep generous bite of a jam filled pastry. If we are going to have robust mission shaped ministry and robust parish ministry creating an overall robust church then we have to put the two into interworked layers of relationship and let them bake. 

 

So the plan, the absurd plan, is that we create an overall ethos of Episcopal Youth Ministry that empowers Episcopal Campus Ministry that then empowers Episcopal Ministry at large.... we can even throw some powdered sugar on it for good measure. 

My ministry, as it stands, is doing pretty good at empowering Episcopal Ministry at large. We are baptizing, confirming, and receiving members into the church. My students are working and volunteering at Episcopal Parishes, Schools, and Camps. My students are actively discerning calls to ordained ministry. That layer is working.

It is the first layer, the Episcopal Youth Ministry to Episcopal Campus Ministry layer that seems to be having problems. The relationship dynamic here simply is not vibrant and healthy, in many places it does not exist at all. What I want to present is a place in my ministry where this relationship is working.

I have a great relationship with one of the local youth leaders. The parish is in a suburban area about thirty minutes from the university with an amazing youth and family ministry program. If a relationship exists between the parish and a student at the university I get an email of mutual introduction. About half of those emails result in a student becoming a regular participant in the campus ministry, which is fine. The point is not to force the students to involve themselves in campus ministry but to introduce them to the concept of campus ministry and the chaplain. It is great that this parish is thirty minutes away but any parish can take up this email exchange and create this level of relationship. The problem is that this does not happen.

The main reason this does not happen, that I encounter, is that youth and parish leadership just do not think to create this basic type of relationship with campus ministries and incorporate their graduating youth into those relationships. Sometimes I hear arguments about how they want the graduate to be able to freely discern, to not be forced to go to the campus ministry, to be able to be part of a parish, or the like. The deal is that every campus minister I know wants every student they encounter to be able to do just that... they just want to be sure that the student knows they have a resource as they go about that if they need it. 

So this is the core of what I would like to see with parishes. Initiative on the part of parishes to build a relationship with the campus ministries where their former youth become students, ensuring that youth know that campus ministry exists if they need it, and whenever possible a mutual introduction of an incoming student to a chaplain. I try to build these relationships in reverse whenever I can but it simply is not the same.

The other part has to do with diocesan and national youth ministries and events. Our forms should have space for high school seniors to mark where they are going to school and to provide the local chaplain or parish their contact information. Our events should have time for seniors and college students to interact with a college chaplain and build relationships and awareness. Our diocesan camp brought the chaplains in for a day this summer, just to hang around and make one announcement at lunch. The connections with graduating seniors and staff who were in college was electric. 

So that is my absurd idea. Youth Ministry having a basic and healthy relationship with Campus Ministry. I do not know why these ideas are so controversial. I do not know why these relationships are not natural for our ministries... but for some reason they are not natural. I hope someday they can be... I want my Jam Pastry... I want to cross the streams and save New York.