Urbana 2009, St. Louis, Missouri

Every three years, InterVarsity Christian Fellowship (along with their Canadian counterpart) holds a a conference called "Urbana", because it used to meet at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign. Those facilities, however, became too small, and so it has met in St. Louis Missouri since 2006. It takes place from December 27th to just after midnight on January 1st, and its attendance is somewhere around 18,000 people, I think. It's aimed at college students, but seniors in high school and post-college folks have been known to attend as well. It features a whole of speakers and is focused on what Christians call "missions", the preaching of the Gospel everywhere.

When I went to Urbana 06, I didn't have a reason to go, just that everyone said it was cool. People said I should probably have some reason, but I didn't ever figure that out, try though I did. All the promotional material about Urbana said "YOU HAVE A CALLING", like if we came to Urbana maybe God would reach down his mighty hand and give us some special revelation concerning his intentions for our future and what we should do. I was pretty cynical about it. I didn't go to very interesting seminars, but I did like some of the talks that people gave. Every morning included a sermon, more or less, which in tandem with Bible Studies (small groups of 2,000), worked through Ephesians, and I really liked those, but I can't remember what I learned. There are a few memories that stick out, like hearing an African pastor challenging our Western-centric views, making fun of Rick Warren and skipping Bible Study to see the St. Louis Arch, because Inductive Bible Study with 2,000 people really wasn't working. There was a big room full of representatives from "Missions Organizations", and it felt too much like a college-fair, like they were trying to sell their organization to you, and I was so sure that that wasn't how God works. After Urbana, Ryan and I got a reputation with the IV Staff in the area as being "the guys who didn't like Urbana", which is apparently a rare condition.

When people started talking about Urbana 09, I had mixed feelings. I wanted to give Urbana a second chance, because people who I trust think Urbana is really great. I had given my 2006 experience a lot of thought, but that's not the same as reaching a conclusion. Additionally, I wouldn't be a student anymore (having graduated in May 09) and, as December approached, it was looking more and more likely like I wouldn't be employed by then either, which was great for having the time for Urbana, but not great for having the money for it. One Thursday night, and I don't remember the reasons why, I found myself back at IV's Large Group meeting at UMBC, despite being an alum. Bethanie was speaking, and she told us about how her experiences doing the Baltimore Urban Program, a sort of missions trip experience thing during the Summer, had convinced her that cynicism is a sin. I'm not so sure it's a sin, but she got me thinking.

Eventually, I did decide to go. In order to save money, Mike German and I didn't get a hotel room, but instead found a host on couchsurfing.org. We didn't pay for a seat on a bus, but instead, along with two others, drove. We didn't buy much food from restaurants while in St. Louis, but instead purchased our meals (excluding Urbana-provided dinners) from a local grocery store chain called Schnucks, a plan we ultimately turned into a UMBC-&-friends "Lunch Collective". We drove downtown from our host's house every day and parked for free at a casino near the convention center. Thanks to some help from my church and our money-saving efforts, the money worked out fine.

I have to at least mention the journey. Julian, as an IV Staff Intern, had to be in St. Louis by 2pm on December 26th, a day before the conference started. Thus, we left Baltimore at 11pm on Christmas Day, and drove all night long. The morning of the 26th, a Saturday, we found ourselves lost in the snowy streets of Indianapolis, trying, with the help of Mike Weber's family's GPS, to find a diner recommended by someone on Couchsurfing, a search which ultimately led to what seemed at the time to be the funniest breakfast ever. We listened to the entirety of Sufjan Stevens' "Illinois" while in Illinois. I am not sure I recommend the all-night-driving method, but it worked out. Because we got there a day early, we got to go to church on Sunday morning at New City Fellowship, which has a lot of connections with IV and felt a lot like Newsong in Baltimore.

Part of living and traveling with Mike was my desire to get a little bit of what I called "The Mike German Experience", which is how I found myself sitting in a parking lot in Mike's car in the cold of December, eating tuna fish out of a bag after having the free beer at the end of the free tour of the Anheuser-Busch brewery. I was consistently skeptical of Mike's plans, particularly when he invited a Canadian he had just met who had no where to stay, to come back to our host's place. I was right to insist we check with our host first, but even after that I was skeptical, yet Joe turned out to be a great friend that week. Thanks to my upbringing, I was never truly comfortable with our daily walks through the casino from the parking garage, but that free parking was a great thing. I was out of my comfort zone, and it was probably good for me.

Urbana opened with a dance performance, accompanied by a spoken-word piece based on John 1. Jesus, the Word, was portrayed as a dancer, calling the universe into being with tap, then forming humans who danced as he did, then sad as they turned to a new, uglier sort of march. John the Baptizer made an appearance as a hip-hop artist, loudly proclaiming Christ's arrival, and Jesus then got to work teaching those who would learn to dance with him. I had seen dance and various other arts used in worship before, but I hadn't seen them used so well before. It just worked.

The two biggest ideas I had for making Urbana 09 a potentially better experience were not being cynical and having a list of goals. One of the biggest goals on that list was to go into the big room of organizations, willing to hear out the people from the organizations, instead of just deciding the room was terrible. I went in, I walked around, I didn't really talk to anyone, and I left. This time though, I realized that that room is useful to some people. Some people really can find what they're going to do with their summer or even their lives by talking to people in booths. I am not one of those people, but I should not write off that whole method of communication as being a bad idea.

I tried hard to make sure I went to good seminars, this time. I heard someone talk about The Church and Homosexuality, and how Christians are doing a terrible job loving people who don't identify with heteronormative values. She didn't really have answers on what we should do, but it was good to hear and see other people who are concerned about this, maybe even ones who aren't Derek Webb fans. I heard a panel of members of various New Monasticism communities talk about their struggles and desires. During the Q&A time, someone asked about their style of ministry in non-urban contexts, and the panelists had nothing to say, no experience from which to comment, thus checking off another one of my goals. I heard a man talk about moving his wife and kids to Darfur, Sudan, while various Missions Organizations have policies that their workers can visit Darfur for a day maybe sometimes, but certainly not live there, much less bringing their families along. He talked about preaching to a gathering of village chiefs, and about confronting warlords. His talk scared me, because I thought "What if that is me, someday?", but he closed by saying "Please don't think there's anything special about me. I am just like you. It's God doing the work." I had two separate opportunities to hear John Perkins, one of the founders of the Christian Community Development Association, speak, and one of those was in tandem with Shane Claiborne. Perkins is 80 years old, and it was really good to hear his wisdom, even if he does ramble on and on sometimes. The second time I heard him, a lot of people showed up to hear Shane Claiborne, but Perkins did most of the talking. I think it was good for them.

The last night, sitting in the big stadium listening to Brenda Salter-McNeil preach, a guy three rows in front of us came back to his seat with a box of pizza. He took a little bit (It was cut into small squares), then passed it on. Soon, there were many of us eating pizza. Elise took out a cookie, Smitty took out Peanut Butter Crackers, and those were shared too. Kathy, who's IV Staff in Baltimore, said "I think we just had communion." and I agreed. A little while later, I took communion, bread and wine, offered by the aforementioned Brenda Salter-McNeil, a woman now wearing white vestments. The German missionary in Darfur told us to think of the darkest place we could, and then go there, because God is with you, so you have no reason not to. People talked about hard problems without presenting answers, and that was okay, because Jesus is in control. Native Americans danced in ways that made no sense to me, but they said they were worshiping the one, true God who made all things. Mike invited a man we'd just met to come live with us for a week, because he had nowhere else to go. All these surprised me and scared me, because I agreed with them.

The drive back from St. Louis was similar, but we had Kaylyn with us now, and it was daytime when we started. We bought donuts at a gas station in Illinois, even though we had breakfast already. We ate at Steak 'n' Shake, and it was just as good as Robert Ebert said it would be. We saw the great flat places on Indiana, where you can just see forever 'til the world curves away. Instead of going back to Baltimore, though, they dropped me off in Ligonier, at Camp, for the Staff Reunion. It was like leaving a giant family reunion and going to a different one, and while there I had a long talk with people about figuring out life and where we want to go and do. I still haven't figured out all the meaning, implications and applications of my experience at Urbana, but I'm glad I wasn't cynical.

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Footage hosted by Vimeo.

Love, #1

Jesus says I should love God with everything in me, with everything I have. People have told me, many times, that if I fully love God, I will love the things he loves. Thankfully I am not Jewish, or I would have to love not eating bacon. Jesus then goes on to say that I should love everyone else as much as I love myself. It's a good thing that's the second command, or I might have to hate God, because maybe some people love hating God. I'm supposed to treat others how I treat myself, or maybe how I want them to treat me (though not with the actual expectation of reciprocation).

I think it's interesting to think about the fact that I might be wrong about what is the best way to treat others, but loving them only obligates me to love as I think I ought to, not as I actually should. I mean, there's no other way to do it, really, but it's still interesting. The other interesting bit is that if loving God fully means loving the things he loves, then maybe loving God more fully than I do now will cause me to love others more in the right way, instead of however I presently believe I should love them. So learning to love God more fully helps me love both God and others more fully.

Reasons

I want to do the right things for the right reasons. It's not enough for me to just do the right thing, it's gotta have the right reasons. I want to give the homeless man money because I love him, not because I feel guilty or ashamed of having wealth when he does not. Does feeling bad about my money and his lack and the disparity between the two count as love?

It gets worse. I don't want to not do wrong things for the wrong reasons. I don't want to not have sex because I am afraid of getting the girl pregnant, but I want to not have sex because I love God, want to obey his commands, and love this hypothetical woman enough to wait 'til we're married. Does being afraid of the consequences count as love?

The Bible says we're supposed to fear God, most famously when the Psalms tell us that the fear of the LORD is the beginning of wisdom. Everyone today is hasty to point out that it does not mean the sort of cowering fear that we think of, but instead a healthy awe and respect. On the other hand, I would be afraid to meet a tiger in the wild, because that thing can tear your face off, and God can do much the same.

Jesus says that all the Law can be summed up in "You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind." and "You shall love your neighbor as yourself." I've often been taught and taken this to mean, probably after a lot of theological inferences, that we should obey God because we love him. If you love him as your God, you will do what he says. He knows best, and you love him and his ways and his attributes, so you want to do what is best according to his instruction. Okay, so far, so good, I think. But what if I am obeying him because I am afraid he will bite my face off? Is that love?

Jesus tells us that being angry at someone is the same as murder, and lusting after someone is the same as adultery. So not having angry thoughts is a good thing. But he doesn't say we have to not have angry thoughts because we love God; he does make sure we're aware that insulting people could land us in hell. Does it matter why you do something?

Homosexuality, Gay Marriage, Christianity, etc

A friend of mine recently asked me for my thoughts on "homosexuality, gay marriage, etc". This is what I wrote in reply.

No matter where one stands on the factuality of the first few chapters of the Book of Genesis in the Bible, and I am pretty sure dinosaurs and people were never around at the same time, the intention and meaning of the story is fascinating. God makes the first man out of dirt, and the first man is lonely, and needs a "helper-partner" (I've been told that the Hebrew is "ezer-konegdo" and that's what it means, but I don't speak Ancient Hebrew myself), and so God goes and makes his wife, thus completing the species. Now things get messed up a little bit later on when they start disobeying God, but that's besides the point for this discussion. My point is that I'm pretty sure one of the first things that the Bible talks about (after it makes some statements about which kinds of creatures have dominion over which parts of the planet) is that men and women are meant to be equal partners in marriage, and that's the intention for us, as humans. Lots of other things in the Scriptures agree with this, and so we have homosexuality as sin.

I have no idea why men fall in love with men and want to marry them, and likewise with women, but apparently they do it. They then raise the objection that they did not choose to be the way they are, etc, and I see no better choice but to believe them. But there are two thoughts I have about that: First off, it's not genetic, as far as I know. Second off, there are lots of things that people didn't consciously choose that aren't genetic. Furthermore, they say that because they didn't choose it, they can't change it. I, frankly, have no idea if this is true or not, but I do know that there are things about people which they didn't choose but can change, and there are things which they can't change. So that's about all I've got on that one; it is not a settled matter in the least.

Concerning "Gay Marriage", that hot political debate of our day:
First, it's going to happen. Second, I don't really care, with one exception. This is not "A Christian Nation", as if such a thing could even exist, and the majority of people in America are okay with it, so it ought to happen. That's how Democracy, or whatever our system of government is, works. The one exception is the administering of marriage or whatever you want to call it. If there comes a day when churches are not allowed to refuse performing a marriage ceremony for a homosexual couple, on the grounds that such a thing is discrimination, then we've obviously got a problem. I mean, honestly, I am not sure the government should be involved in deciding who can and can't get married at all in the first place, but that's not a very likely situation.

The other thing I've got on my mind is the way that Christians treat homosexuals. Far, far too often, we do a really horrible job of loving them, which is lousy, because Jesus tells us to love everybody. Now, if homosexuality is a sin (is it just the gay sex? is it the attraction? this gets complicated and I'm not sure anyone has the answers), then God wants to save people from that too. How the heck God does that, I don't know. How we (and by we I mean Christians) are supposed to tell people that without their thinking we hate them, I don't know if people have figured it out. But it's a big problem, you know?
A guy who makes music and is also a Christian (but don't tell him he makes Christian music; he gets angry) named Derek Webb, whose music I really like, came out with a song recently called What Matters More, and it's been on my mind a lot recently. You'll find the video below.

Family

Jesus says he didn't come to bring peace to the Earth, but that instead, of all the things you might not expect, he came to bring a sword, because swords violently divide things. Have you ever read Matthew 10, verses 34 through 39? He says that my enemies will, or at least could be my own family! I don't want to be divided from my family, but there's Jesus, threatening to chop us up. When his family shows up to see him, he says they're not his family, people who do the will of God are his family. That makes sense, because then we all have one Father, but it still sucks for families. But on the other hand, if your family is more important to you than doing the will of the Father, then you're not following Jesus (he says so). So much for Jesus valuing the nuclear family! Now, for me, a good thing to keep in mind is that my family are Christians. At the same time, however, Jesus says that being a Christian redefines who my family is. So although my family may still be family, my family is not longer restricted to them.

I often wonder what it means to be family, since both the existence of adoption and the teachings of Jesus tell me it means something other than blood relation. Personal experience suggests it means the people you love best. People say you don't have to like your family, but you do have to love them; I've never been clear on how to love someone without at least not disliking them, but personal experience may help here too. At Camp, there are plenty of people who, if not for Camp, I probably would never be friends with. To be more precise, I would not consider them a friend, if not for Jesus. This, I think, is significant. Here are people I would not love except for the fact that we follow Jesus, and, indeed, I consider them my brothers and sisters, despite that we enjoy different things, think different ways, come from different places, etc. If we weren't brothers, I'd probably dislike some of them even, but instead I want to love them, despite our differences. Maybe family means that you hold in common your most important bond. For many, this is blood, DNA, relation. For Christians, this is our Father.

I'm supposed to love my neighbors, which means people who help me when I'm beat up, and I'm supposed to love my enemies too. So how do I treat my family any different? If there's no difference in how I treat them, why does it matter their family? Laying aside that complicated issue, what would it look like if I treated all Christians like family?

If all Christians are my family, and we're supposed to be a family that loves each other, not some kind of dysfunctional mess, then we can't just move away and stop talking if we disagree about stuff. If all Christians are my family, then I need to eat with them, I need to talk with them, I need to live with them, and I need to take care of them.

If I treated all Christians like family, I'd let them live in my house whenever they needed to (presuming I own a house, I guess). Of course, Jesus tells us to do that for people, because when we do, we're actually giving Jesus a home, somehow. I'd give them food when they needed it, and much the same comments apply here. I'd love and trust them above all, because ... well, because they're family. Trusting everyone who loves Jesus?

That really is the problem, I suppose: loving people.