Category: Faith

I realize I have not updated this in awhile. I also realize that I have yet to finish my report on the Holy Land Experience nor have I reported on my first semester at LTSP or the start of my second. With a brand new schedule, five new classes, and a new travel schedule between NYC and Philadelphia, I have yet to figure out a study/work/church/family schedule that works for me yet. And I’m already behind in my reading (but just so). I will write more later but I would just like to say that I am enjoying the fact that the snow piles are finally melting and mud pits are filling the seminary campus. It almost feels as if spring is actually coming soon.

My first impression, however, of this new semester is that it will be harder than my last. I am in class quite a bit more, my responsibilities at my Field Experience site has increased, and the classes are quite a bit more challenging because we are covering areas of study that I am just not well grounded in. And I think one of the most obvious signs of this, in terms of language, is how often the phrase “in confirmation class, you did ” is used in sermons and in lectures. My first thought is always, always, “I never went to confirmation.” It’s a fun phrase that is used, usually, to ground the community in a common experience but it can also be a tad alienating. It highlights a common experience that I do not have. That is not necessarily a bad thing but it’s a reminder that I’m not just learning the language of scriptures, the language of theology, the language of pastoral care, but also the language of the “ideal” common Lutheran experience. And it’s an interesting experience especially when thought of in regard to doing ministry to people without that same faith language. It’s quite easy to get stuck in that language unconsciously. And I think I fall into that trap more than I should.

Bishop Bruce Burnside of the South-Central Wisconsin Synod of the ELCA. [via livinglutheran.com]

Last Sunday after service, the church where I am an intern, held their annual meeting. New members to the church council needed to be elected, a budget for 2011 needed to be passed, and the annual report for the congregation (60 pages!) needed to be read and accepted by the congregation. But the church decided to do something different this year with the bulk of our time together devoted towards strategic planning. Earlier in 2010, the church council had organized a committee to begin thinking about how the church’s mission should look 3, 5, 10 years from now. At the annual meeting, members of that committee organized small groups and led an open discussion on a survey of 14 questions (or so) about what the church is doing right, what it is doing wrong, and where the church should be going next. I had a great time and I think the information that was gathered will most likely be very useful as the church spends 2011 re-evaluating its mission in the local community, NYC, nationally, and internationally. It is just different being at a church where high level planning can be tdone. I’m use to congregations where staffing the current ministries is difficult and where just surviving day-to-day is the real challenge. The church I’m interning at use to be that way a decade ago. But after ten years of hard work, of ministry, of embracing the community and being God’s people, they’ve moved on to the next stage of their life. They’ve leveled up and the congregation knows it. They’re excited and I’m sure that the conversations that were had stimulated the minds, hearts, and energies of the people there. So, at the moment at least, there is a level of energy in the congregation that wasn’t there a week ago. That’s great though I’m curious how long that will last (and what the church leaders – including me – can do to keep that energy level up while the strategic planning committee takes time to digest the information they gathered). And I’m sure that one area that is going to be addressed is the website, the online presence of the church, and how exactly communication resources can be used to enhance, extend, and push the church forward.

The church, however, has no online presence (beyond a basic website). I’ve taken it upon myself to revamp their website, update its content, and spend a few moments just getting their online presence to the point where someone else can move in and take it to the next level. I’ve already heard from some folks who participated at the Annual Meeting about their ideas for the internet presence of the church and one technology that has been brought up is Twitter. Plenty of churches have signed up to Twitter to broadcast their messages in 140 characters or less and this church should as well. Twitter is, like all social media, seen as something that the church should be on RIGHT NOW. But without a developed or thought out online strategy, there is real risk in a church to merely hop from one technology to the next, never taking the time (or having a person that is designated to take the time) to see how this technology serves the church’s mission. I know, from my own experience, that if I see a church on a social media site but if that church fails to use that site, then I am merely reminded of what that church CANNOT DO rather than what it CAN DO. Barely using something can be more problematic than not using it at all.

But there can also be another problem with Twitter and other social media sites that churches who jump onto social media tend to ignore. When Jay Cutler left the NFC Championship game on Sunday with a knee injury, he was immediately attacked by NFL players on Twitter. These opinions then helped fuel further questions about the integrity of the Chicago Bears organization, Jay Cutler, the coaching staff, and further tarnished Jay Cutler’s reputation (which wasn’t very good to begin with anyways). And all of this was developing while the game was still being played! By the time the post-game press conference was held, the Bears were caught off guard and had no effective way to just respond to what had been said on Twitter because they had not spent the time (and money) to put in place a basic apparatus on how to live in a world that no longer allows a post-game news conference to manage the PR of the team. The time an organization has to create a statement is approaching zero. Social media means that the audience can talk back and it will sometimes say things that you just won’t like.

The church I am interning at has been able to grow and do God’s work without social media but that doesn’t mean that social media cannot be used by the church. In fact, I personally feel that the church SHOULD branch out and embrace social media. And I’m sure it will. But it shouldn’t embrace that technology without spending the few moments to actually understand how that media impacts its mission, how it can further that mission, and how it can continue to be used if the person responsible for its use steps down. A pastor that is in charge of the social media does a disservice to their congregation if they leave and no one exists to take over their work. A Twitter account that was last updated six months ago is just as bad as a website that still lists Christmas services on their front page. And a church that doesn’t understand that the use of social media implies that their audience is, and will, talk back to it, is a church that is out-of-date no matter how Web 2.0 their online presence is.

While we waited in line for our next “experience”, I noticed several people walking around eating giant turkey legs and having their pictures taken with the Roman guards. For a minute there, I was bummed that I settled for a corn dog rather than a turkey leg but then I realized that this wasn’t a Renaissance fair – this was the Holy Land by golly! We have no need for turkey here! What we needed was terrible crackers and grape juice. The HLE delivered.

The Last Supper experience was held inside the “Quram Caves,” a a space that was suppose to be an exact copy of the Upper Room as it was refurbished during the Crusades. At the entrance, we were given a broken cracker and a little chalice made of olive wood supposedly grown in Israel. The room was much darker than my picture shows. The seats at the table were already taken so K and I moved to the side next to some African-American ladies and an Asian family with young kids who kept trying to get onto the table. K noticed that no matter how ridiculous this thing was going to be, the number of different races and ethnicities was amazing. It would be hard to find a church with this much diversity.

The lights dimmed a bit and a woman next to me picked up her cell phone and made a call. Everyone seemed to be attempting a strange balancing act by trying to take pictures with their cameras and hoping to not drop their mini-chalice and cracker. And then the show began with John, wielding a Garth Brook’s microphone, coming out from a side room.

John welcomed us, talked about how great of an experience we’re about to have, and then – for some reason – led us in the Sinner’s prayer. I guess the unbelievers needed to be cleansed before Jesus would arrive. John pointed to the loaves of bread in front of him (that we were not going to share in) and also took the cup and waved it about. There was quite a bit of conviction in his voice and in his mannerisms – a level of conviction that felt overacted. With the last supper explained and our hearts “cleansed”, John stepped to the side and the main man himself walked onto the stage. But could this really be Jesus? It was not the same man who we just saw in the Passion Play!

Jesus, it seemed, had gotten younger and seemed to be very tired. He had an annoying habit of needing to brush his hair from his face every few seconds. While he began his prayers and his chats, I stood to the side clicking away on my camera. The woman who had made a phone call a few minutes earlier kept receiving phone calls (and did not know how to put her phone on silent) but it didn’t seem to bother Jesus. Jesus was in a zone and had a role to play! And John did as well. At appropriate times, he seemed to be there specifically to remind the audience when to praise Jesus, where the dramatic parts of the story were, and when we were suppose to feel the proper forms of reverence. And being the person that I am, the thought running through my mind was that Jesus was “doing it wrong”. Even ignoring my own high sacramental views of the Eucharist, there was no community in the experience. Maybe the folks who were able to sit at the actual table had a level of intimacy with the actor to actually feel something but I felt nothing (short of annoyance). We were, in a sense, being talked at and blessed at. We weren’t participating in this act, either passively, actively, receptively, or in any other way. This was a merely a cheap ride without the 3D glasses. I found it to be quite silly.

The bread was blessed and broken. The grape juice was blessed as well. And we ate, drank, and I tossed my little chalice in my bag to get it out of my hand. And then Jesus did something I didn’t quite expect. He came out from behind the table and squeezed through the small crowd touching everyone on the shoulder. Jesus didn’t say much, just tapped my shoulder, pushed by me, and then moved onto the next person. I hoped he wouldn’t whack into all the DSLR’s hanging from people’s necks or have his eyes poked by the few people who raised their hands in praise. It’s possible that, at this point, John led us in a praise song but I don’t remember. And once everyone was physically touched, Jesus exited from where he had originally come and John told us that the chalice was a “gift” for all of us, a reminder of our time at the HLE. And then we all shuffled our way out into the sunshine and K and I planned our next move – Christian Karaoke.

Right after the Christmas holiday, K and I took a little trip to Orlando. No, we didn’t visit the Harry Potter Experience nor did we visit the temple of Mickey Mouse. Rather, we visited that little “gem” of an amusement park controlled by the Trinity Broadcasting Network, The Holy Land Experience. Oh yes – an Orlando amusement park set in the era of Jesus. When K and I originally had the idea tovisit the park, I had misgivings because why should I give financial support to something that I knew was going to be ridiculous? But my friends at seminary encouraged me to go because they mostly couldn’t believe that such an amusement park existed.

It’s taken me sometime to actually sit down and write about my experience at the “Holy Land” because I’m still trying to wrap my head around the whole thing. It was as cheesy as I expected, historically inaccurate, and pushed every piece of TBN merchandising crap imaginable. And none of this really bothered me all that much because, well, what do you expect for a “ministry” that costs $35 bucks to enter? But there was one section of the park that did really annoy me – but I’ll get to that later.

There were quite a few of these signs around the various prayer gardens filled with ridiculous romanesque statues that were probably bought on sale from a Home and Garden center. I wonder if these signs were put in place for critics like me.

After surviving the epic weirdness that is mid-day traffic in Orlando, we arrived at the Holy Land around noon. The place was packed and we were directed into the overflow parking lots. I noticed that many of the people walking into the park were not exactly who I expected – quite a few were visitors from other countries and there were lots of minorities! I was sure that the target market was “evangelicals” but the racial and ethnic composite of park visitors was more varied than most church services I have been too. K requested that her picture be taken in front of the sign. Not pictured is the main security booth at the entrance to the parking lot that was next to a giant, and poorly done, statue of a Roman legionnaire riding a chariot.

We quickly walked into the ticket office, pasted the first of many prayer boxes that we found, paid our $35 dollars entrance fee, picked up our map and schedule of the days events, and walked into the park. Our first experience of Jesus was in cardboard cutout form.

And yes, that is a crowd release saying that our pictures might be used by the TBN network.

We arrived just in time for 12:30 passion play. The main seating area was already filled so we hung out behind some ropes to the side. The build up to the start of the passion play involved some Roman soldiers milling about and a few “townspeople” walking around. There was also a push by folks telling us to also attend the 5:30 passion play where Jesus’ resurrection is made extra special by showing his battle with Satan using dry ice, fog machines, and fireworks. Once the play started, I couldn’t help but notice how the Roman soldiers and townspeople all shopped at the same sandal shop (and some were wearing socks!). The warmup act to the show involved signing a few really really terrible modern praise songs and a couple of group prayers. I could tell that the play was specifically targeted to the unbeliever demographic though I was curious how many unbelievers actually paid the admission fee to watch subpar church theatre. TBN must have some numbers and statistics that I am not privy too.

After the warmup, we were briefly introduced to Mary, Joseph, and the birth narrative. An angel with unbendable plastic wings told Mary to buck up because she’s gonna have a baby. We then jump 35 years to the beginning of the Passion in the garden. And then the devil showed up.

The devil is a pacific islander it seems. Also, the devil loves serpents….and the same sandals everyone else was wearing.

Jesus prayed for quite a while, shed tears, and seemed very sad as the devil tormented him. Any “evil” thing said by a participant in the play was mouthed by Satan, implying that it was Satan who organized the entire Passion. An older woman next to me started huffing at this point and going “that’s not exactly how it happened!” (as if she had been there) but, by the end of the show, she was a believer in the TBN view of the experience. Judas eventually arrived, kissed Jesus, and Jesus is arrested while the disciples sat around like dopes. After his arrest, Pilate showed up and does everything in his power to wash not have responsibility for the execution which reminded me of early church history and the Acts of Pilate. I noticed that the park tried really hard to walk a fine line in terms of who should be blamed for the death of Jesus. The Jewish religious authorities were there but were downplayed. The political authorities were pushed to the background. The reasons for the execution were never clarified – rather, Jesus just had to be tortured, whipped, and beaten. Fake blood was everywhere. It was obvious that the actor playing Jesus had his skin permanently stained by the twice-daily “killings”. While Jesus is being tortured and crucified, quite a few of his followers and townspeople seemed to be around and sad for the torturing. In fact, there were shouts that Jesus shouldn’t be killed, that he should be let go, and his followers never seemed to desert him. Funny that.

Jesus hangs dead on the cross

Jesus finally died. Prior to this, I noticed that there was a change in the audience. The picture taking had lessened, people were paying attention, and even one hispanic gentlemen had to be approached by security because he had become heavily emotionally invested in the story. Even though the sound effects of the whipping (there was a lot of that) was several seconds off from the acting did not seem to dissuade people from the story. People were eating this stuff up and there was a sense of reverence in the air. I just kept tweeting my reactions and shooting with my camera. It wasn’t the only time in the day when I realized that this park was speaking to a market that I just wasn’t apart of.

A Roman Soldier eventually “converts”, Jesus’ body was taken down and placed in the tomb, and the resurrection aspect of the story began. The women run to the tomb and find that it has been opened by fog machines! And it was at that point that the passion play took a very very strange turn. The MC and Roman centurion came out and began to talk about Jesus, about sins, and about how we should all believe that Jesus was the Son of God. Praise songs began to be played over the sound speakers and the townsfolks began to hum along. K turned to me and said “This is the Tinkerbell summoning!” and she was completely right. We were told that if we really believed in Jesus, that he would come back. And we were then led in the “Sinner’s prayer”, told to believe in Jesus, and then OMG! Jesus came back!

He has a giant set of keys in one of his hands – giant plastic keys because I guess God can’t afford the real thing.

We did it! We brought back Jesus! High fives for everyone! And then we all sang one more praise song, a song that I did not know (but most people seemed familiar with it), and the play ended with another reminder to return at 5:30 to see the extra-special Resurrection. K and I instead decided that we were hungry and that we needed lunch. We ran to the otherside of the park and found a food stand with no line and indulged in a few first century Corn Dogs and Pepsi sodas. While we sat and went over our feelings about how ridiculous and silly the passion play was, we devised a game plan on what we wanted to see next.

Holy Communion with Jesus anyone?