Erika Haub is kicking your butt, and you don’t even know it.

She is a fantastic blogger with lots of great earthy-spiritual insight. Check out these posts for a sampling:

1. Good enough.


2. One more.


3. Does Sunday morning really matter?

Out of Ur posted an excerpt from an article by Sally Morgenthaler. The title of the blog post is, “Does Ministry Fuel Addictive Behavior?” It’s well worth the read for anyone in a congregation. If you’re in a formal ministry position, it’s a great piece to remind us of self-care. If you’re a congregant, the post will hopefully open one’s eyes to some of the pressures those in formal ministries face.

Image building is a dangerous game. And it’s at the core of addictive behavior. Addictive family systems are built on image, from the practice of keeping secrets (the “no-talk” rule), looking good to the community at all costs, to living a double life. If a pastor comes into the ministry with an addictive family background or has otherwise developed addictive tendencies, a congregational system that requires him to uphold an impossible, squeaky-clean image is going to function like a match to gasoline.

While studying at UC Davis (Go Ags!) I caught wind of a growing trend of evangelicals leaving their churches and denominations of origin and joining more high church traditions such as Anglicanism, Roman Catholicism, or Eastern Orthodoxy. [1] I first heard of this phenomenon in the pages of the now defunct journal re:generation Quarterly, which was a fantastic publication. Then I began to see it with my own eyes as a few friends discovered that they resonated greatly with the liturgy, history, theology, and traditions of these older expressions of the Church. It seems the exodus is still happening, though I haven’t seen hard numbers on the matter. David Fitch wrote about the phenomenon for Out of Ur in the column “Evangelical Immigration” a couple of weeks ago and he proposes that we all stay in our traditions and try to bring about change rather than leaving. (For what it’s worth, I tend to like the term immigration, for it seems to respect the seriousness of changing traditions without overstating the fact like the term “convert” does. See the discussion of terminology in DP’s post.) There has been much discussion regarding the reasons of the immigration, but I find something lacking. I believe that there is another reason, but it is a reason strongly related to those one finds in the descriptions of the immigration.

When we come and participate in and as church, we bring assumptions of what church is and means along with us. These assumptions act as lenses through which we see, understand, and speak of our congregations. Many times, we never say these assumptions and I believe that many of our conflicts in church stem from people with different understandings of what the church is supposed to be interacting with each other. These differences often do not diametrically oppose each other and in fact I believe they are generally complementary.

Last night I was able to participate in my church’s confirmation class by facilitating one of the lessons. My time with the students—mostly junior highers or high school freshmen—was fun and refreshing. I haven’t had the opportunity to spend much time with people of that age group and I greatly enjoyed just being a fly on the wall as we ate dinner prior to the lesson. I listened with a growing smile as the students expressed their opinions on recent episodes of Gilmore Girls, as they shared what songs they were singing in school choir, and as they tried to explain to one another why you can’t divide by zero with surprising verve.

The confirmation curriculum, which lasts for a couple years, follows a biblical overview, then moves into some basic systematic theology, and finally ends with the specific theology and history of the Evangelical Covenant Church. Last night we looked at Jesus’ baptism and temptation in the Gospels, but the curriculum also used the biblical narratives to explore the topics of baptism and temptation in general. The students’ interaction with the material was impressive. They shared profound questions and showed a willingness to wrestle with difficult material. There is joy when you see sparks of wisdom and insight come to people as they consider what they believe. And, the students were funny in the blissful way that only people that age can be. It is a humor that comes out loud and often unfiltered and borders on obnoxious, but it is pure and hints at the wonders of that period of early adolescence, so full of mystery, change, and terror. (It is also a period I honestly wouldn’t wish on anyone.)

And for those wondering, unlike when I recently preached, I didn’t cuss during the lesson.

Oliver is a friend from UC Davis (go Ags!) with whom I was in an InterVarsity Bible study back in 1999-2000. He has since joined staff with IV at Davis and is currently part of the Bay Area Urban Project or BayUP—a summer program IV runs to introduce college students to the realities of urban living in the San Francisco Bay area; there are several other Urban Projects throughout the country. Oliver writes the following in his most recent update:

thus comes to my other thought. why aren’t there more guys here on this project?!!?
then i began to think more…why aren’t there more men who volunteer to help out the kids?
little boys grow up to be young men. but here in the city, there may not be older role models to grow with the kids. so as the boys grow up, they can just stick together, but just hangout and not necessarily do anything productive. thus it saddened my heart that in coming here to oakland, i thought i’d have the opportunity to meet some older youth…but that hasn’t happened. have i just witnessed a lost generation of teenaged kids? and these the same kids that our pastor and other people in the church tutored and read to when they were little?!?