Coming Clean, volume 2

When I was in Washington, I bought a copy of The Episcopal Handbook. Hilarious little how-to. One of the questions they ask is whether coffee is the third sacrament (the answer is "yes, probably").

I've got to admit that the coffee hour was one of the main things that attracted me to St. Matthew's. Now when I say "coffee," that's really a poor description. The menu at the most recent included (and I'm sure I'm missing something):

• Home-made chicken rice soup
• Home-made rolls
• A cheese and sausage tray
• Chips and nacho sauce
• Date bars
• Fruit
• Coffee

By local standards, that was a fairly slim "coffee" menu. There always seems to be more than enough, and you're always welcome to sit at anyone's table. "Coffee" takes at least an hour after church. It's an extremely important part of what happens there. I recently took a couple of loaves of bread to a potluck, and people are still talking about them. (As bread goes, it wasn't that wonderful, but I feel very good every time someone brings it up again.)

I think the welcome there is an extremely strong draw. When I showed up for the first time, the priest actually remembered that I'd visited two years ago. They seem honestly glad to see me, and that hasn't diminished now that I'm a "regular." (Later I'll talk about the odd string of coincidence when I walked in the first time.) OK—it's an extremely small group (like 30 or so), but I'm still impressed that they keep offering me ways to participate. It takes a bunch of people to make Sunday happen. Aside from the food and the invisible things like cleaning, there are greeters, a reader, a couple of torch-bearers, someone to carry the cross, and a few others. And it's assumed that these responsibilities will rotate throughout the congregation. Not a spectator sport at all.

Anyhow, the welcome is strong, and from what I hear, that's an Episcopalian characteristic.

Curt's Culinary Disasters

The small group idea is evolving. My apartment is so small that five or six is about the limit. My downstairs neighbor (in a slightly smaller apartment!) has half a dozen or more people over more than once a week. Why not me?

Anyhow, I needed a theme and the title of this post came to mind. Most of Mansfield is incredibly conservative about food. Burgers, fries, pizza, and steak—and we've exhausted the entertaining menu possibilities. But some of the best food is incredibly unlikely sounding. How about pan-fried steak with an espresso coffee rub? Speaking of fried, Welsh pan-fried cakes with currants. Cornish meat pies with rutabaga. The key drawing card could be "what on earth can he come up with NEXT?"

unChristian: Get Saved!

This is one of those chapters that proves the worth of Barna. Most insiders make assumptions that are totally out of synch with the truth. Here's a sample of those assumptions, all false according to Barna research:

• TV, radio, and large tent meetings are effective evangelistic tools.
• Quick little tracts are persuasive.
• Outsiders see and respect the sincerity and love of evangelizing Christians.
• Most outsiders have little experience of the Christian faith, so all we have to do is inform them.
• A "salvation experience" at a meeting or conference usually sticks for the rest of a person's life.
• Many adults are looking for a change in their spiritual foundation.

The truth is that most Americans have tried Christianity, usually as children and teenagers, and resent evangelism as an insincere attempt to bulk up a church's membership numbers. Another truth is that lack of ongoing relationship with outsiders dooms the whole project from the start.

As a personal note, the Alpha Course strikes me as just plain deceitful and wrong. The idea, as I understand it, is to set up a weekly small group, mainly for outsiders with a few church members mixed in, that includes a friendly dinner followed by a discussion of some spiritual or personal issue, with the implication being that Christian faith and community will meet some of the needs of the people who attend. The deceitful part is that the Alpha Course is a dead end. After the course is done, nobody ever has anybody over for dinner again, and small groups are never focused on friendship.

Have you ever noticed how often a newcomer to Grace shows a lot of interest, attends a lot of functions, gets  baptized, then never comes back again?

Really cooking

Did cooking marathon today. I promised to take a meal to a church family (recently out of hospital), and it just sort of got away from me. Of course the church family is getting my usual—an enormous pot of fairly mild chili. And that's not much of a meal, so I made some wheat bread to go with it. One loaf is about as much trouble as two, so I made a loaf to take over to Joel and Heidi, just recently back in town from South Carolina. And a meal really needs a dessert, so I threw together some chocolate chip cookies from a mix. Then I realized that I had nothing for my own lunch, so it was time to boil some pasta and throw some basil pesto on top.

The poor stove doesn't know what hit it. It's been working hard from about 9:30 to 2 p.m. And that's not even counting Jared's three loaves of bread and my pan of brownies for the church Christmas party on Saturday.

The Word from USA Today

In case you missed it in either USA Today or reprinted in the Mansfield News Journal, this article about church hospitality suggests that eating at church is the "next big thing," and likely to be a real healing influence.

I'm not sure why, but the coffee-and-cookies after church at GFC really doesn't work quite the way it's supposed to. I doubt if it's bad memories—few of the current members remember the awkward announcements when this idea first surfaced (coffee was free for guests but members were expected to pay). Maybe it's the lack of places to sit? Maybe it's the crowd around the window? For whatever reason, the coffee bar isn't fostering the congregational meeting and mixing that we need so much.

The USA Today article seems to be talking about much more substantial food, too—both quantity and quality. Starbuck's is a hard act to follow.

But that's another subtopic

I've always had a deep love for botany—no doubt beginning back in my Boy Scouting days, and nourished by college professors like Barry Commoner. Aside from my distress at (and, alas, complicity in) environmental destruction, global warming, etc., one thing that always strikes me when I look at a plant in its environment is that this is really good stuff! The way a plant or animal is put together and interacts with its environment is beautifully orchestrated, carefully adjusted, and extremely elegant. As a very minor illustration, the BBC website today had a video of octopus tool-making.

Somehow, though, when we Christians get together, our food, music, and most of our other preparations have to be last-minute, low-quality, unplanned, and slapdash, or they are not "of the Spirit." I'm not convinced.

Late-breaking comment

This morning (Tuesday, December 22) I looked back at this comment and sighed. Sunday morning was supposed to be a big, well-organized Christmas extravaganza. Dozens of people put weeks of work into it. And the worship team, whose job it is to lead the congregational singing, didn't get around to making a list of songs for the PowerPoint team until about 9 a.m. Two of the songs were new ones that nobody knew and nobody had the words. But of course, if you listen to the Christian radio station you know them anyhow, right? But hey, if you play guitar, you can't think things up in advance. It's just not spiritual.

Mama Jackson

Lots of folks may scorn the idea of Mama Jackson's candy bag. It's not spiritual. It's not health food. It promotes at least one of the deadly sins (greed). When the kids are thinking of the candy bag, they aren't focused on singing or dancing or speaking in tongues or something.

But you know, when the kids grow up and return to the church, that candy bag is one of their fondest memories.

Years ago, when I was still involved in youth ministry, I remember an article in Group magazine, a professional magazine for youth group leaders. Someone wanted to find out why Church A had poor attendance at their youth groups while Church B was doing extremely well. Charismatic leaders? Great music? Thoughtful programs? So they asked the kids and got a simple answer.

Pizza.

And every time I tell someone from outside the church how rarely we eat together and try to describe our BYOF (Bring Your Own Food) church picnics, I receive the same puzzled look. My mother gave me the look this morning. I might have been describing a ceremonial bloodletting from the look on her face.

Anyhow, as I've been getting into cooking more and more—getting good with breads and cookies—one question has crossed my mind: When will I ever have a chance to do this kind of baking for someone else? I don't have an answer. And I get pretty tired of eating from the same batch of brownies for a week.

I've strayed from my point. I was intending to end this with a suggestion that the church begin thinking of food in the same light as music. Put the same amount of effort and money into congregational eating as we have in congregational singing, and appoint a Food Czar. And my nomination would be Mama Jackson.

A couple of nuts and bolts

I mentioned Grace & Peace Fellowship in a previous post. Here's a link to their homepage. I was there at the beginning, in Ted and Gladys Smith's living room on Washington Street, back in the days when one had to walk up to a stranger's door on Sunday morning and simply open it (because the talk and noise inside was too much to allow people to hear door knocks) to attend Sunday worship.

I've added a label, "church food" to the bottom of my church food posts (duh!). Click that and you can ignore all the rants about electronic banking, etc.

Next Step for Queen Mary

That whole "everything is a sacrament" idea came from reading Robert Farrar Capon's books, for example Supper of the Lamb. It really does change the way I look at such disparate things as marauding deer and encroaching weeds.

One of my enduring memories of Grace & Peace Fellowship, the church in St. Louis where we had 52 potluck dinners every year, was that nothing was fake. We had real china dishes, not paper plates. Squeeze margarine was forbidden. Bread was the genuine stuff. Dinner was more than a way to get fed after church; it was a theological decision to share our lives and express our understanding of the Kingdom of God. And "potluck" really meant potluck. There was no arranging. Nobody assigned main dishes, etc. Whatever people brought we ate.

One problem we had, which is similar to a problem in Mansfield, was quantity. People like to think of a potluck as a free meal. More than once at our local church, I've seen a family of four show up for dinner with a two-cup portion of green beans (or sometimes two cans of beans still in the can!) as their potluck contribution. It would be interesting to see what supper is like in that house. Do the four people somehow get by on the equivalent of two cups of beans? Or do they eat something else? Perhaps more.

Next question

Let's assume we've got the idea that God actually likes the natural creation and likes the idea of people sharing food. What's next?

Perhaps I've been unjust in accusing national radio personages of preaching isolation, but the message came from somewhere. One of my friends tells me that a church elder approached him at his wedding reception (this was a decade ago or more) and said, "Now it's time for you to dump your friends and concentrate on your wife." My dear friend W was a frequent companion for coffee, evenings of TV, and hikes in the park. Then he found a wife and I never heard from him again. And anyone who has been to a GFC potluck remembers the whole idea of "family tables," particularly if you have been told that you can't sit with someone because they are trying to reserve a table for their own family.

Now the threatening question: does an emphasis on hospitality split and endanger families?

It is really difficult to have a rational discussion on this one, particularly because the conservative side of the USA spends a lot of attention on paranoid, hysterical rhetoric. It seems that absolutely everyone who isn't on my Form 1040 is an enemy. Everyone is aiming at undermining the core of MY family. Nobody is on my side. I need to be very bristly and keep everyone on the other side of the door. Maybe with a gun.

Nothing could be much further from the spirit of the New Testament. The New Testament believers seem to have been open, friendly people who would share their belongings with others, people whose lifestyles were so attractive that nonbelievers were attracted even before the theology and tracts began. Apparently, they actually thought God would take care of them when they spent their money and time on strangers.

Or consider the example of Jesus. He had close friends and was such a frequent dinner guest that the more "proper" religious folks were scandalized. It wasn't just the preaching. Religious authorities objected to his social life. He acutally liked being with people, even the less clean ones.

OK—now the real next step

Few of us actually know anyone. Even among fellow church members, a dinner invitation would be a frightening matter of picking a random name from the church directory. So we need something a little less intimidating, something that doesn't seem to challenge the encapsulated nuclear family structure. The next step must:

• not make me feel like I'm going to be judged
• not raise the defenses of those who are afraid that everyone wants to invade their family space
• feel natural—at least to some extent
• somehow build on existing relationships
• somehow be an on-ramp to something more.

The one-shot "dinner with a stranger" thing last summer was a pretty good idea, but it only happened once. How about something continuing—perhaps as simple as having coffee after church in a place where people can actually sit down? Maybe even with generous cupcakes and muffins?

Turning the Queen Mary

One friend responded to my post about church hospitality and said it would be like "turning the Queen Mary." I hope the comparison isn't too close because the Queen Mary has been immobile since 1967. If a ship isn't going anywhere, it can't be turned.

I can think of a lot of places to begin, but one is a change in our attitude toward the meaning of stuff.

What, exactly, does the physical universe mean?

A lot of Christian answers have been proposed, many focusing on the Christian's task of avoiding "the world, the flesh, and the devil."

Neo-Amish Abhorrence
Some of us have taken the attitude that asceticism is the way out of the world-flesh-devil trap. White bread is always better than chocolate cake—on a moral level. Doing anything just for the fun of doing it is to be avoided because, at root, a Christian must avoid all frivolity. I don't know what it would be like to get an invitation to this sort of household for dinner because dinner parties are, by definition, fun, and to be avoided.

Didacticism
Everything is here to "teach us a lesson." A trillium isn't just a beautiful flower, The point of its structure is to give us something to use in teaching people about the Trinity. Dinner with this crowd is like a Seder service. Everything has a meaning, which must be exhaustively (and exhaustingly) explained.

Recruitment ploy
The only point of life is to bring people into the Kingdom, so everything is part of a great advertising come-on. It's all very similar to those Ponzi organizations like Amway. We're only interested in getting you in. God's only interested in getting you in. Dinner with these people is wonderful, but once you sign on the dotted line, you're pointless. No more dinners. (Note: Does this sound like the way churches use the "Alpha Course"?)

It's all burning soon
In some people's view, the entire physical universe is some sort of short-term experiment on God's part. It's pointless to worry about global warming because the world won't even be here in another five years. So drive your Ford Expedition. It's God's will for us to dominate and use up the natural creation. I suspect that dinner with these folks would have an enormous abundance—even waste—but there's not a great deal of respect for stuff in this view. This one doesn't seem to see God's love for his creation, and easily goes to Wal-Mart and craft show accumulation. Dinner? Pre-packaged mixes.

Everything's a sacrament
Christians over the ages have battled about the number of sacraments. Seven? You're Roman Catholic. Two? A Protestant. Dozens and dozens? Perhaps you're an Episcopalian. Saint Augustine defined a Christian sacrament as "a visible sign of an invisible reality." If we really follow that one up, coffee, brownies, and a friend is some sort of sacrament, a sign of God's love and provision. And if we get off the theology that sees God as a grim, nasty preacher and begin to see him as he really is—a lover—we've got something. His first words after creating the earth were "Mazel tov!" ("Good luck has occurred.") And, being Jewish, the next obvious thing to do would be to pour a glass of wine to celebrate.

Shifting from Episcopalian to Presbyterian, the first question of the Westminster Shorter Catechism is "What is the chief end of man?" The answer: "Man's chief end is to glorify God, and to enjoy him forever." I like the "enjoy" part of that, and surely part of the "glorifying" is to love what God loves. To be really blunt, God loves wine and bread and a good dinner and friendship.

Enemies and hospitality

I've been thinking deeply about hospitality and the lack thereof in the Mansfield church.

When I moved here from St. Louis, way back in 1977, I was coming from a tradition where hospitality was one of the treasured characteristics of the local congregation. We had a potluck dinner every Sunday, 52 times a year. Parties were common. People would go to each others' houses for dinners, for dessert, for an evening of board games, or for an evening watching TV together.

None of that happens in Mansfield. I doubt if, throughout the congregation, more than six shared dinners happen in any month. Maybe there's one potluck a year. Maybe we miss a year. (We do use congregational meals as fundraisers: big pots of generic spaghetti for $5 per person.) To be perfectly fair, there's a congregational dinner in March (catered) and many years a Christmas and/or "Halloween" party. But often those don't happen.

Why so little action?

Some would say it's because people are too busy, and I can believe that. Nearly everyone home schools or has kids at the private Christian school, and both are extremely time-consuming, but I don't think that excuse covers those whose kids are out of school.

Dr. Dobson and some local leaders have pushed the idea that family is so primary that absolutely any outside activity is wrong (and of course, having a friend over for dinner is a deduction from the intense one-on-one time of the family).

Some say that entertaining is too expensive—though the price tag for a pot of coffee and a plate of brownies from a mix isn't that high.

And of course, there's the pietistic thread in the local church, saying that no human activity is worthwhile unless it's specifically (and didactically) religious. Thus we have all those past barbecues that turned into hymn-singing evenings and the New Year's party that's just a prelude to a prayer meeting. And to tell the truth, there are just so many of those meetings that a person can stand in a month.

But I think there's a more basic reason we avoid hospitality.

I think it's fear.

We've been soaked in the idea that outsiders are a threat, and we've bought it. Of course, there's the threat that if one were to invite a Jew or a Muslim for tea and cakes, somehow there would be a theological battle or perhaps the Christian faith would be shown up as false or something. So of course the Jew and Muslim are off the guest list. And if we invite the nonreligious neighbor in, he might do something nonreligious—might tell an inappropriate story or something. And if our kids got to know that Jews, Muslims, and the nonreligious can occasionally be interesting people, our kids' faith would be weakened. They wouldn't see the Christian faith as the only lifeboat in a sea of terrible people.

But that's not what I want to talk about.

We're afraid of other Christians. Not just the demon Catholics or the accursed Presbyterians or the heathen Lutherans. Our very own kind.

I've been told that people are afraid to come to my place because it's an apartment (which means "tenement" which means "housing project" which means you'll get knifed in the hallway). One of my few visitors asked to see the expiration dates on the food I was offering. I've never had enough money for a cleaning lady, so my carpet is needing shampoo right now.

And of course, almost every fellow church member I can name has some sort of food allergy, food fad, or some other food fetish going. One can't be anywhere near anything artificially scented. Another must never eat anything containing any form of sugar. Yet another exists entirely on mangosteen juice. And of course, there's an implied judgment (you put SUGAR in your cake???). It doesn't take much of this stuff before a person simply locks the front door.

I know others have suffered similar insults. Chapters such as Romans 14 and I Corinthians 8 really don't carry much weight around here. It's sad, really. "Keeping oneself unstained from the world" by avoiding all human contact outside the nuclear family is kind of boring.

Sort-of Church Dinner

Sigh!

We've got another of those bring-your-own-food church dinner things tonight. I'm always tempted to just stay home, and I usually give in to the temptation. Yes, they solve a lot of problems:

• Our church potlucks never had enough food. If a family of four brought a side dish, they would bring exactly four servings, then load their plates liberally from all the serving dishes. And there were always freeloaders who brought nothing.
• Conservative churches are very big on food-fad people. One cannot eat any sugar. Another only can live on mangosteen juice. Yet another is convinced that the chiropractor's list of forbidden foods is gospel. So the BYOF (Bring Your Own Food) approach works for them.
• And since this church cannot possibly organize anything complex, the BYOF approach means that (at most) someone is going to have to organize paper plates, weak coffee, weak lemonade mix, and a clean-up crew.

It's sad, though. Any sharing of food is strictly ruled out. If someone shows up and has misunderstood the BYOF rule, he is welcome to drive to Taco Bell and get something to bring back. That's incredibly dreary. Incredibly unwelcoming. And it all makes me wonder why I don't just have my own food at home, then show up for the program.