Vegas Cohort

Vegas Cohort (Emergent)

1. Church and Life Cycle
   
   What if when a church planter laid out a vision for birthing a new church they also included an expiration date? So not only would the planter be planning for when the church is born, but then also when the church should die; 10, 15, 20 years in the future.
   
   What if the planter anticipated the irrelevance of the church in the future, and so set a date to declare the church dead and bury it? How would that impact the way people in the church view the mission? Would it discourage them, because they know the day is coming when the church is no more? Or, would it embolden them to know exactly how long they have to accomplish the church's goals? Would it cause them to stay and be apart of the story to see how it ends?
   
   Perhaps it would give the people a unique opportunity to celebrate the different stages in life that church might go through. Its infancy, its childhood, its adolescence, its adulthood, its senior years, and finally its death and burial. Imagine a congregation coming together to remember the journey of their fellowship, tears and nostalgia flooding the aisles as the founding pastor eulogizes the church that has accomplished so much. People who have been there since the beginning side by side with those who joined in only the last year. Appreciating together the shared experience of having been apart of a story, as the last page turns and "the end" is slowly and deliberately placed at the bottom.
   
   How would it make you feel to know your church has an end date? What about that would be good, what would be bad?
   
2. “Sarah Palin hired by Fox News in effort to regain its neutral position in politics”
   
   In a stunning announcement, Fox News and Sarah Palin have come to an agreement that puts Palin on staff at Fox as a conservative commentator to their usually liberal news shows. “We needed something” admits Fox owner Rupurt Murdoch, “to counter-balance the tendency of our channel to be left leaning and progressive. Sarah Palin is the cure.”
   
   The move is applauded by journalists the world round as being reactionary to the now obvious liberal bias observed at Fox. “We just need to keep things balanced”, said popular news anchor Glen Beck in a statement about the decision, “I expect she and I will knock heads often, but because I value journalistic integrity and despise propaganda, I have to affirm her place here.”
   
   Bill O’Reilly agrees. “If Fox News is a boat in the ocean it is tilted toward the port-side. We have needed a serious weight to counterbalance that tilt and bring us back to center. Had we been any less left her presence would have capsized us on the right, we’d have gone right off the deep end if you know what I mean. Luckily we lean left.”
   
   Few are critical of the deal since most acknowledge that recruiting Palin was counter-intuitive for both she and the network, but some have voiced concern. Alan Colmes, one of the many outward liberals on Fox, observed that Palin “is a failed Vice Presidential candidate, a failed Governor, a failed blogger, an inauthentic author, and an insane fringer who’s views are universally known to be brain poison and word vomit. And Fox is a conspiracy toting fraudulent news organization that only poses as legitimate. ” Pausing to breathe and wipe the sweat from his upper lip Colmes added, “This is fucking crazy.”
   
   In the wake of his comment Fox has announced that Alan Colmes will no longer be employed at its network, replacing him with noted journalist and obsessively balanced thinker Dick Cheney.
   
   
   
3. 
   
   Emerging Church, pronounced dead Thursday, missing from grave.
   
   

   Writ Large by Jimi Jobin
   

   1/09/10
   
   
   In a mysterious turn of events, the grave of recently deceased Emerging Church was discovered empty this morning after Church was buried Thursday afternoon. Speculation surrounds the sepulcher, with few credible witnesses to the event itself, but at this time there are several theories as to the disappearance of the body of Mrs. Church.
   
   A frantic Phyllis Tickle claims to have seen an illumination hovering above Church’s grave around 1 this morning. “It was bright and glorious,” reports Tickle, “it seemed to dim for a moment as it paused over the grave- almost as if it were reading the head stone- then, it furiously exploded with light and the ground shook. I fell into a bush with all the commotion, but when I saw the grave again, the coffin was laying beside it, opened and empty.”
   
   Others, like Church’s former husband Mark Driscoll doubt Tickle’s account. “She has said this sort of thing before. Phyllis has a terrible habit of imposing other’s narratives where they don’t belong. She’s only doing that again here.” Pressed to explain the disappearance, Mr. Driscoll offered that Emerging Church had many devoted friends who were in disbelief at her death. “They probably stole her body”, concluded Driscoll.
   
   While authorities have begun a search for the body, opponents of Mrs. Church’s former social and theological efforts are decrying the implication that Emerging Church has risen from the dead. “What is she now some sort of zombie?” exclaimed one critic who wished to remain anonymous, “that’s just absurd”.
   
   Still, rumors abound in the wake of this enigma. Reports now flood in of people having witnessed Emerging Church in a litany of locations. Some claim to have seen her in the American South, visiting Seminaries and disrupting congregational board meetings. Others say she has been observed at used book stores, browsing through well worn copies of Brian McLaren’s “A New Kind of Christian”. As of yet, no hard evidence of these encounters has been produced.
   
   Reached for questioning as to the allegations that Emerging Church had in fact been risen from the dead by some supernatural phenomena and is now rifling though old copies of his book, Mr. McLaren had this to say: “I for one am not surprised that she is believed alive. Many have said that the last word in her story was ‘death’, but I have always held out hope that there was another word after that, that the story she found herself in, one that I have been lucky enough to share, was one of generosity and lasting change. Hope, as they say, dies hard.”
   
   Left with only questions at this point and very few answers, the world stands in shock at this incredible mystery. Reports continue to come from almost every corner of the globe, people claiming to have witnessed Emerging Church in their communities and even in their living rooms. Some distinctly observing only a feature of Mrs. Church, a hand or a foot as she left a room, say that her presence, though not always conspicuous, is easily evident if you know what to look for. Time will tell it seems, as the world waits for the next chapter in this unique and captivating story.
   
   
4. Evolution of Christianity
   

   
   

   
   

   
   

   
   

   
   

   
   

   
   

   
   

   With the discovery of a 47 million year old transitional ancestor, Darwin has just been fully confirmed, and as a documentary will soon claim, this changes everything.
   
   “'Whither is God?' he cried; 'I will tell you. We have killed him---you and I. All of us are his murderers. But how did we do this? How could we drink up the sea? Who gave us the sponge to wipe away the entire horizon?...Do we hear nothing as yet of the noise of the gravediggers who are burying God? God is dead. God remains dead. And we have killed him.'” These are the ominous words of Frederick Nietzsche's madman, who stumbled into a circle of unbelievers and pierced them with his eyes. Such words have a significant new meaning with the discovery of the “missing link” and the subsequent confirmation of Darwinian evolution, something creationist/author Lee Strobel has said “puts God out of a job”1.
   
   Nicknamed “Ida”, a once fabled transitional ancestor between mammals and primates has been found and will soon be displayed for the world to see in an A&E documentary called “The Link”, which aires this memorial day. Over 47 million years old, Ida has already made international headlines as the “8th wonder of the world”2, and is considered to be the final blow to the creationist campaign against Darwin's theory of evolution.
   
   But have we killed God? Has our search for truth yielded freedom from even the gravity of God's love? Have we finally, as Dawkins would hope, evolved into atheists? What room is there for a Christian in the wake of such a stark and vibrant confirmation of the dreaded theory of evolution? Is God truly dead?
   
   Dr. Karl Giberson doesn't think so. In his book Saving Darwin he writes, “I think evolution is true, its an expression of God's creativity...[but] in deep and important ways we have not dispelled the mystery of our existence at all—we have simply established it with greater clarity.” For Giberson and a growing number of Christians, evolution is our generation's helio-centric universe. Darwin is Galileo, and sooner or later we are all going to have to adapt our theologies to the tidal wave of information that comes as a result of the progress of science. It isn't that God is being ousted by science, its that science is reshaping the way we see God.
   
   Enter the evolution of Christianity. It isn't that God has died, but rather our understanding of Him. As the church in the 17h century struggled to reconsider their faith in the wake of empirical science and its placement of Earth in orbit around the Sun, so also the contemporary form of Christianity must adjust to the now obvious truth of evolution. It doesn't displace God, it merely causes us to wonder all the more at His mystery.
   
   What has died is our hubris. Our babelic tower of over-confidence topples just as we were sure it had reached the heavens. We are forced to remember how small our knowledge is, and how little we actually know. For many this is a hard truth. God is best imagined as a conspicuous, domineering, whiz-bang creator; not as a subtle and indirect guide. Though truth be told we know him better as the latter, somewhere along the way we came to prefer the idea of the former. But this concept has not always been in vogue.
   
   Blaise Pascal, the 17th century scientist and mathematician, believed that Christianity uniquely respected the obscurity of God. "If this religion” wrote Pascal in Pensees, “boasted of having a clear view of God, and of possessing it open and unveiled, it would be attacking it to say that we see nothing in the world which shows it with this clearness. But, on the contrary, it says that men are in darkness and estranged from God, that He has hidden Himself from their knowledge, that this is in fact the name which He gives Himself in the Scriptures, Deus absconditus (God Hidden).” It was the opinion of this intellectual giant that Christians can be trusted precisely because they don't try to rigorously explain what God is, or how he does things. Christians being comfortable with mystery makes them better representatives of the mystery that is God.
   
   Of course, with the tectonic shift of accepting evolution, our systematic theologies are left dismantled. We must again ponder the mysteries of the cross, the atonement, the creation, and now even the fall. But this reconstruction is nothing new. “Theology can usefully be thought of as a science”, Says Dr. Nancey Murphy in Reconciling Theology and Science, “We can think of doctrines as being comparable to theories in the sciences, rationally justified by their ongoing ability to explain the data....However the traffic between theology and science goes both ways, we sometimes have to correct our theology as science advances.” Correcting our theology is something Murphy claims Christians do every day in the wake of their experiences. If a grandmother dies despite prayer and petition, a Christian learns how to interpret the verse “ask anything and it shall be given to you”. This hypothetico-deductive side of Theology is the mechanism we use to conclude doctrines, and at varying times in history it has been used to determine all sorts of spiritual truths.
   
   When the Pope's crusades failed miserably Christianity reconsidered exactly how much say the Pope had as the head of the church, which changed our theology of authority. When Martin Luther decried grace by works it changed our entire theology of salvation. When John Wycliffe ended priest corruption of scripture by printing the Bible in common english our theology of the bible was never the same. Our theology of worship has changed from austere chants to decadent guitar solos; our theology of marriage has changed to consider both wedded clergy as well as pious homosexuals; our theology of purpose has changed from conquering the world under Christendom to engaging the world's pain and fear with the teachings of the Kingdom of God. Not 200 years ago our theology of humanity changed as we realized slave ownership was evil. In the last 10 years we have seen our theology of environment change as we consider industry's poisonous effects on the world around us. It is the way of Christianity's narrow path to twist and turn into directions we could never have imagined, our job is merely to follow that path, not determine where it will go next.
   
   God is not dead, but some of the ideas we have used to describe Him are. For us, creationism now goes the way of the geocentric universe, we must accept evolution as a revelation from nature and adjust ourselves accordingly. But even with Darwin navigating the old church van, God is still in the driver's seat. As G. K. Chesterton once said, “Nobody can imagine how nothing could turn into something. Nobody can get an inch nearer to it by explaining how something could turn into something else. It is really far more logical to start by saying 'in the beginning God created heaven and earth' even if you only mean 'in the beginning some unthinkable power began some unthinkable process.' For God is by its nature a name of mystery, and nobody ever supposed that man could imagine how a world was created any more than he could himself create one.”
   
   Christian theology is not meant to declare God's truths, it is meant to discover them. In this sense it is the truest nature of Christianity to evolve.
   

   
5. Ponzi Prosperity Gospel
   

   Today we shriek as we hear of financial scams, corporate greed, and virtually anything money related that isn’t entirely on the up-n-up. While religion has generally been a help in these economically difficult times, there is one segment of Christianity that is scamming as many as they can. Those who have ears (and debt) let them hear.

   The Prosperity Gospel, which is manifested in the “Word of Faith” movement (a louder voice in Pentecostalism), has been writing checks with its lips that’s its theology can’t cash. Last year’s Pew Foundation mega poll, which surveyed nearly 35,000 people (one of the largest religion polls ever accomplished), revealed a few interesting facts about Christians in the Pentecostal tradition¹:

   • Pentecostals have the lowest incomes of any other Christian denomination.

   • Pentecostals have the lowest education of any other Christian denomination.

   The results show that Pentecostals have the most high school dropouts, the fewest college grads, and also the fewest post graduates. But the most interesting thing is that they earn the least annual income of ANY other Christian tradition polled. This is shocking, considering that a main feature in popular Pentecostalism is the Prosperity Gospel, where church members are promised that God will make them rich beyond their wildest dreams if they tithe generously and believe that they will receive the money.

   The trouble Ive seen...

   These Pew findings fly in the face of the main tenets of the Prosperity Gospel. Not only do Pentecostals fail to out-earn the regular “non-spirit filled” Christian, they make less. For me, to read such information is heartbreaking. I am a teacher in a private school that’s part of a Word of Faith church. The church is doing very well for itself, as most Pentecostal churches are, but the people are suffering.

   Frequently I speak with coworkers and church members who are slowly slipping into despair. I watch helplessly as their hopes dim, and their pennies fade. When I attend a service at this church I hear the Pastors declare that God will make everybody rich, if first they will throw what little they have into the offering plate. Loud confident voices echo off the palatial walls of the sanctuary, while weary, struggling believers bristle with the hope of God’s "promises". My once weeping friends gleefully dance down the plush expensive carpet to the altar and pull out their dollar bills (not their food stamps and government checks, though they have those also) and cheerfully give. The Pastor nods approvingly as his hands are folded in prayer (a shiny Rolex on his wrist) and his eyes tear up.

   Say what you want about the corruption of the pulpit, or the decadence of the minister- that’s not my issue. My point is that while the world howls at the scam artists who make big promises then don’t deliver, Christianity has its very own Ponzi scheme that’s alive and well. At least when Bernie Madoff promised big returns he initially delivered, the prosperity gospel doesn’t even do that much. When Joel Osteen, Ken Copeland, Paula White, or Benny Hinn take your money, you’ll never see it again (unless you happen to glimpse one of their private jets leaving a runway for Bermuda)²

   Creating “The Least of these”

   When a major tenet of your theology is that people who invest in your church will experience wealth, but then the facts show that your congregants are among the poorest and most disparate in the country, you have just been falsified. Further, when the national economy is in shambles, it should be criminal to continue to avoid taxes as a charity, yet earn immense amounts of capital on the promise of a better future. When we see such things in the business world, we rightfully call it a scam and send those people up the river. Why are we so silent while this happens in every neighborhood in America?

   Another concern that the Pew Poll raises is the type of person that is being taken advantage of in these churches. The Pentecostal tradition holds more uneducated people than any other denomination, making them a prime target for would be millionaire pastors. In many ways I am as green with jealousy as these prosperity preachers are with greed, in that the scammed believers have more faith in their little finger than I will probably ever know in my lifetime. They would give the shirt off their back if they believed God wanted them to, and many of them have. These people, while simple, are in essence the purest of Christian hearts, trusting like children the intentions of their Shepherd, and being led as lambs to the slaughter.

   If not for the absurdity of the scheme, or the arrogance of the theology, then for these poor, benevolent, mistreated souls our hearts must break. That these people, who would be the very first to give of themselves to please God have been allowed to flush so much money into the off-shore bank accounts of so few is a travesty. While their pastors make a spectacle of themselves these poor faithful who are the least able to earn a decent wage in our society run to the altar with everything they have as an act of worship. If even a tenth of what they have given had been redirected to the charities that truly do serve God, our country and our world would be substantially better.

   Bankrupt Prosperity

   Imagine that there was a brand of theology in which people were taught that God has promised to give followers an additional arm, say right from the center of their chest. It taught that scripture had everywhere indicated that this was the case³, and that by believing this “fuller” version of the gospel, you were opening up the as-of-yet closed off area of blessings that Christians have forgotten about (ie growing another appendage to better do God's work). After about 50 years the movement has spread worldwide and followers number in the millions, and you look to see how many of these folks have in fact grown that “arm of the Lord”. Upon inspection you find that the vast majority of them have lost an arm, leaving them worse off and less able to even serve God than even two-armed folk do. The irony would be overwhelming, that while it was said that God would give these people more for realizing this secret truth, somehow they have ended up with less than they perhaps even began with.

   Despite the fact of statistics, and the continued empirical evidence of devastated human lives (Pentecostals also have the most divorces⁴), few if any Christians have plainly spoken against the Prosperity Gospel, or raised awareness that measures any merit. While high level corruption, and financial disrespect are the soup de jour of each week's media cycle, this prominent and aberrant theology has been allowed to wreak havoc on a mass of people who are grasping at economic straws.

   Prosperity Gospel theology is bankrupt. The debate raged for years about how much sense coveting money made in the context of biblical principals, but now the fruit has been born and the numbers don't lie: those who attend prosperity gospel churches are in fact worse off for it.

   1http://religions.pewforum.org/reports/detailed_tables

   2All except Osteen have been suspected by the Senate of Tax Fraud due to their ostentatious lifestyles on the backs of non-profit “charities”

   3Maybe John12:28 would be their anthem (This was to fulfill the word of Isaiah the prophet: "Lord, who has believed our message and to whom has the arm of the Lord been revealed?" )

   4Of all major denominations Pentecostals had the highest amount of divorced members (16%). While the “Reformed” group was higher (18%) it was only a tenth the size of most every other denomination.