counsel to the church

Posted in Church, Community of Christ, Discipleship & Ministry with tags , , , on January 18, 2010 by mattfrizzell

I was at the Temple yesterday for President Steve Veazey’s presentation of inspired counsel to the Community of Christ.   My soul was moved unexpectedly several times during the service.  I was first struck by the Spirit in our singing and words from the Gospel of John.  More than once, I was moved to tears.  But, I also felt a deep conviction of the Holy Spirit  in President Veazey’s words of counsel to us.  I want to share a portion of that testimony.

First, thinking about President Veazey’s counsel, I’m aware again about something unique about our tradition as a Christian people.  I’m not interested in drudging up old adages about Restoration distinctives.  Other movements, too, hear and respond to God’s call to prophetic witness.  But, I honor the faith and responsibility being called forth by our “theocratic democracy.”   Considering President Veazey’s inspired counsel in the light of the issues before us, we are amidst the profound moments of our theocratic democracy.  We’re being asked to discern and respond to President Veazey’s inspired counsel to us.  We are not being expected in some sectarian or cultish fashion to blindly accept or mindlessly follow our spiritual leaders.  Instead, the difficulty of the issues and call to witness before us in these words form a responsibility to faith that takes form in our personal response.  To believe the inspired counsel given yesterday, we are called closer to God, to act in faith in accordance to God’s will.  We are not only asked to consider President’s Veazey’s preparation, faith and discernment in some vote to agree or disagree.  We are also being asked to take responsibility for our common faith in the Holy Spirit’s direction.  Ultimately, the words offered ask us as a community to respond to our call to be disciples in response to his mission.  To accept President Veazey’s words of counsel, we must take greater responsibility for our sacraments and relationships with others.  But more, we are also asked to accept the stewardship of our common faith and its witness to Christ’s Gospel among the nations and cultures in which God’s prophetic Spirit flows and seeks expression.

After my experience yesterday, I reaffirm my testimony that God guides and moves among us as a movement.  The confirmation of my testimony will not be in the church’s consensus about the rightness or wrongness of President Veazey’s words, but in whether or not we respond as a people.  More than a church, the Community of Christ is called to be a movement.  We are being called in a way different than before to trust in God’s direction and pursue our faith in God’s mission to the World.

I also share my personal testimony of God’s Holy Spirit revealed in President Veazey’s words to us.  It is not the language or individual terms, themselves, that are divine or inspired.  It is the challenge and responsibility they offer to us…if we respond and believe.

In my personal study and discernment about the future church – particularly, the role of scripture in our life together and the disparate voices on issues before us -  I, too, have been called back to my personal witness and certain scriptures that President Veazey referred to.  In particular, I, too, have been drawn to listen to Paul’s witness in Galatians 3:28 and his testimony about God’s ongoing revelation and new creation in Christ.  Against the voices of division, the questions about identity and sexuality, as well as about just relationships, the role of our sacraments, and pursuit of peace in our neighborhoods and culture are not alien to the Gospel.  They are not “of man” or politically motivated, but matters central to our faith.   In other words, they are not questions of divine knowledge, but divine trust in God’s ongoing reign and movement.  As matters pertaining to life together today, they are a matter of our prophetic witness of Christ amidst the world.  To be called to discipleship, stewardship, and shared responsibility for that witness could be nothing other than prophetic.  For that, President Veazey, I offer God praise and you thanks.

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To Margo

Posted in Family, Spirituality on January 4, 2010 by mattfrizzell

There are times in life to remember those who make you who you are.  Margo, my best friend and spouse of 12 years, went back to school today after winter break. She is a Kindergarten teacher for Chicago Public Schools.  Being a teacher, some days, is hard.

She has supported me through so many aspects of my life.   So, I simply wanted to offer her this verse…to say “I Love You,” and “Thanks.”

Here’s to those who stand by us, our best of friends.

I thought of you today

I thought of you today
As we prepared your room
With little chairs and number lines
For minds not yet in bloom

I thought of you today
When I left to start my day
Laptop, coffee, and alone
You’d want to start this way

I thought of you today
As I wrote this very verse
You’re with kids in class right now
Would this day bode better or go worse?

I thought of you today
Finally hoping I’m to blame
For making your day a little different
As the one thing that stays the same

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losing the forest in the trees

Posted in Spirituality, Theology with tags , , on December 18, 2009 by mattfrizzell

I have moments in my dissertation writing when I feel like I’m a horrible writer and I need to just to quit.   I go down an emotional rabbit hole.  Writing has never been my strong point.  I’ve had moments in my academic career when professors have read my work and told me they had no idea what I was saying.  Of course, I knew exactly what I was saying.  I never really learned whether it was a problem of my choice of words, writing style, or that my flow of thought was just plain incoherent.   Maybe it is a mix of these things.  But, internally, the problem I feel is that I get lost amidst the trees.   It’s not that I don’t understand what I’m saying or thinking.  It’s that I see so many questions and connections at once, I get lost in perspective.  And, as I get lost in the possibilities of one sentence or paragraph, I make the mistake of wanting to put too much in a sentence.   That can make it difficult to cipher what I’m saying.

One fault of mine is that I’ve never been good at outlining.   I’ve never found a way to outline that works for me.  I think best in pictures and mind-mapping.  (Mind-mapping is when you create diagrams of ideas and their connections.)  But, linerality for me is hard.  And writing moves from left to write in a linear way of reading.  Structuring my thoughts in such a way that I know what I want to say in a linear presentation is difficult for me.  But, I have no problem digging in and discussing.  Texts and ideas are like bodies of water for me.  I just dive in.  The dissertation process, however, requires me to do what I don’t feel good at doing: outlining a set of ideas in an argument that I can deconstruct by simply taking another angle on my own line of thinking.   This is horribly frustrating for me because beneath all the critical thinking I am fearful of being discovered as an impostor, an idiot, simple-minded, or someone found impersonating someone worthy of a PhD.

It is difficult for me to really make sense out of the fact that I have almost 300 pages of writing and, yet, sometimes when I’m revising it I don’t really know what I am saying.  in fact, I do know what I am saying.  I just stopped and got lost, losing the forest in the trees.  I get lost in revisions.  I so easily get lost in a sentence or paragraph and don’t see the bigger connection.  I have the unrealistic, even ridiculous, expectation when I’m editing or revising that every sentence and paragraph must be decisively constructed in such a way that it analyzes the concept I am highlighting completely, as if much of my writing isn’t also supposed to be descriptive.  Since I am dealing with dialectical philosophy and theology, it is easy to get lost in analytics and forget that I am constructing a view from a certain way of thinking.

In the end, I just hope I have the sense to keep going.  I’m not that bad of a writer.   In fact, many tell my I’m an elegant writer.   I guess I am as long I have a point to make.

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you are not alone

Posted in Spirituality with tags , , on November 11, 2009 by mattfrizzell

If you feel lost in your church right now, you are not alone.

If you read scriptures looking for answers, and you either find the same old passages or stuff you just don’t understand, you are not alone.

If it seems like you are the only one your age in your church or with your viewpoints, you are not alone.

If you continue to go to church, hoping to feel the Spirit or because you need rescue from the heavy feeling that can haunts you all week…and you rarely find it, you are not alone.

If you are shut in and beyond a friend’s reach or in a hospital bed and no one seems to visit you, you are not alone.

If you rage at the world, teetering on whether to give up or lash out, you are not alone.

If you’re having a hard time feeling good anymore, you are not alone.

If you started feeling numb a long time ago and it feels like your life is a bad movie you keep watching, you are not alone.

If the world doesn’t make sense to you anymore, you are not alone.

If you feel isolated because only happy people are on television commercials and the people around you see seem shallow, you are not alone.

If you are in a bubble and don’t feel like you can actually reach out and feel someone near you, you are not alone.

If you wonder why your grandchildren don’t call, you are not alone.

If you’re afraid your kids will never get off drugs or out of debt, you’re not alone.

If you cut or wonder if you can give up the addiction, you’re not alone.

If you don’t think you’ll every dig out of debt, you are not alone.

If you’ve lost your job recently and just can’t find work, you are not alone.

If you are under 30 and have cancer or know someone who does, you are not alone.

If you feel like you were born in the wrong body and you’re just not sure who you are or want to be, you are not alone.

If you gave yourself away to someone and, now, hate yourself and regret it, you are not alone.

What’s missing on this list?   These are all things that have touched my life personally or through family or a friend.

Chances are, whatever you are feeling or struggling with, there are others who are struggling too.  There is healing in finding common experience.  There is hope in real community.

You are also not alone because some believe that God, the maker of the universe, came down to have a human experience.  He experienced injustice, abandonment, tragedy, and victimization by the world he lived in.   They said he would come, so they named him, God-with-us.

If you’re looking for a sign, well, here is one.

You are not alone.

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it’s not about tithing, but it is about the money…

Posted in Church, Community of Christ, Discipleship & Ministry, Spirituality with tags , , , , on October 6, 2009 by mattfrizzell

Over the last few weeks, I’ve been tackling problems that don’t revolve around ethereal stuff like “new ideas,” “vision” and other theological talk that can lack consequence.  In fact, I’ve been so sucked into these challenges that I’ve begun to wonder whether discussing the church’s problems or their solutions really matters if the people in the discussion aren’t somehow personally and materially invested.  They, somehow, need to be givers or prepared to become givers to what we share.  A giver gives so much more than money.   But, they give money, too.  They give to something beyond themselves.

It’s not that discussing our feelings and perspectives on church isn’t  important.  But, if the people talking about the church are thousands of dollars in consumer debt or unable to substantively invest in community with their time or energy, I’m afraid airing our views – no matter how thought out and accurate – may hold only therapeutic value.   Don’t get me wrong!  Therapy is important.  But, like any other therapeutic or academic exercise, it revolves around perspectives on “the self.”  Therefore, it suffers, at some point, from the vacuum created when the self replaces shared discipleship or Christ’s call to prophetic community.  This is the vacuum slowly sucking the life out of denominationalism:  loss of a sense of shared community, shared discipline, shared practices, and shared convictions with substantial consequence.

I realize I may sound like I’m going either institutional or conservative.   But, I meant what I said in my previous post about following Jesus or saving the church.   I’m not talking about returning to some institutional position on tithing.   I’m not talking about a pay-to-play system in the church or instituting stringent requirements for Christian membership.   But, I am talking about the problem of “cheap church” and a loss of a basic sense of discipleship in community.  If our sense of faith and Christ’s community has become so separated from our relationship with our stuff, our time, our money, and energies, that we think belonging to Christ’s community is an entitlement or a service that should be provided by denominations or religious institutions, the Spirit of our movement is lost.

So, let’s talk about the money.  Why not?

We struggle on both sides.  In the church, we have many congregations that are deeply attached to their houses of worship.  75-90% of the time, those churches are paid for.   These buildings are the ebenesers, the alters, of a previous generation.  They are the hallmark of our denominationalism.   We are no longer a frontier movement.  We now have our church on the corner.  This was the success of previous generations.   Because of them, I would bet 75-90% of our congregations have no mortgage, only maintenance and monthly bills.   Five to fifty gather in them once a week.

Often, these same congregations have difficulty raising funds for missional ministries, hiring ministers, or community projects.   Also, paying for their area campgrounds are a drain.   Often these congregations have faithful givers.   Some have less money to offer and more time and skills.  Sometimes these loyal members get in the way of new life and spiritual direction.   But, sometimes these members are more than willing to see change.   The hurdle is that, after a lifetime of denominational loyalty, they do not know how to reach out, innovate, and add to the fold.   So, they maintain.  The history of decline takes its toll.   An increasing sense of need might pull downward on the congregation’s self-esteem.  In the worst case scenario, members become entrenched.  They start guarding against outsiders, usually “liberals,” denominational leaders who talk about “change,” or those “generic Christians” who might take away what’s left of our identity.  (I still don’t know what a generic Christian is, but I’ve heard church members be worried about them more than once.)  All awhile, money and time is where their mouth is – pouring into the things we think “we” need, for “us” – both on the congregational, mission center, and personal levels.

Outside the church, we also live in a day when the relationship between spirituality and economics is wholly out of whack.  Unbriddled greed and a world sold out to the god of wealth and wealth-production, has horribly contorted the relationship of our economic and spiritual needs.   All around, I see its effects in “liberal” and conservative forms.    Many Christians have literally sold out the doctrine of economic wealth and prosperity:  we can spend ourselves out of crises, whether spiritual or economic.  This not only makes absolutely no sense, wealth and prosperity – no matter how American – are false gods.   They are not the good news, but a completely alien form of religion and spirituality.   Christian faith and the call to prophetic community operates on a different kind of sense.    Christ’s community is not based on getting what you pay for.  Nor, is its growth based on profits or consuming more.  The salvation of the church, on earth as it is in heaven, is based on what is given and what is shared:  the shared grace, disciplines, practices, vision, and shared convictions.  The church is a witness to community.

We don’t need a moralistic return to a 10% tithing to fix this.  In fact, everyone can tithe and still sell out to the economic gods.   We don’t need a denominational membership system to hold people accountable.   This would be the same old legalism.  We also don’t have to start giving guilt-ridden presentations about how much money it takes to heat the sanctuary or pay for copy toner.  That would be guilt-based politics.  However, if we’re going to get together and talk about who we are, who we follow, and what our shared salvation really means, we have to agree that Christ’s community costs us something.   And, we have consistently lift up what it promises.

Discipleship costs.  And, to some extent, it is about the money.  But, it’s not about the money so the church can have alot, or any.  It’s about the money because money is the god of the world we must face. We no longer live in a biblical world where land dictates wealth and the majority are subsistence farmers.  For many of us, our economic well-being is no longer tied directly to the earth’s fertility or patterns of rain or drought.  Instead, for the first time in human history, we suffer the “weather” of an almost wholly (not holy) (hu)man-made economy.   Our global economy is designed on the idea that human beings have insatiable appetites for things.  Selfhood, selfishness and self-interest can be paths to earthly salvation and human improvement.  This religion measures health on the flow of goods and happiness on levels of consumption.   It has its own doctrines and spirituality.   It requires that we spend and spend often in order for the god’s elect to reap their fruit: profit.  They hire us to help them do that, and we are glad that it also benefits us.

Praying for the “rain to come” and for the harvest to be plenty in our world means paying homage to this religion and god of profit.  There is little getting around it.   We have to charge, buy, mortgage, refinance, and spend.   The problem is that this god will also bankrupt us if it is the God we live by.   This god has many many victims.  If we do not put something sustainable and communal at the center of our work, life, and play, this god, alone, will have its way and its reign.  The best insurance against this kind of idolatry is Christian community, a community that shares and gives.   To find it, we must give a portion of what we have away.

http://www.power-of-giving.com/index.html

That is why the church is such an important vessel for Good News, sanity, and sanctuary in our world.   Christ’s call to give was never about denominational tithing or supporting a clergy class.  But, it was about where our faith could be.  The discipline of giving, even just a little, puts us in a stronger position in a world that believes profits puts us in a stronger safer position.   It puts us in a stronger position against religious economic doctrines that tell us we can spend our way to spiritual happiness or economic wholeness.  This is not the faith or the doctrine of Christ’s church.  Discipleship is not concerned with how much we earn or measuring our profit.  Nor, is it about salvation through gaining what can be had by spending.    But, it is about the money.

Christ owned no land, which meant he was broke.  He was an artisen, a blue collar carpeter, who never mortgaged a home.  He had no inheritance, but the inheritance of God’s kingdom.  Christ gave so that others could have and give.  Christ gave so that others would have something to take and share.  This was the miracle of his healings, his feeding of the 5000 and 4000, and the last supper.  It’s about the power and mystery of giving.

This the the open secret: the power and mystery of Christ’s giving.  Christ’s community is about this kind of sharing.  Giving and sharing makes community.  You don’t do one to make the other.  They happen simultaneously and it strengthens every time you repeat it.

In our world, a prophetic community must give and share.  And, it will always have more than a community that does not, that instead proclaims the good news of profit and blasts us with pictures of happy consumers who say “follow me.”    We cannot spend our way to financial health any more than we can borrow our way to a full life or spiritual wholeness.   The answer isn’t about denominational tithing or shopping for personal spirituality, but it is about the money.

Money will always be more than just credit, consumption, and profits.   Money always already has spiritual value, too.   It’s about the costs.  Expecting something from nothing makes no more sense economically than it does spiritually.   This is not faith.  Christ’s community is a divine gift, but it does not come from nothing.  Rather, it is a result of our stewardship and what we will share.   The church is a divine gift that can never be spiritually taken away.  However, it will always be what we make of it.   We are the church.   That is what takes faith.  Unlike the world, Christ’s economy is not based on getting what we pay for, wanting more, or making profits.  These things aren’t evil in and of themselves.   We just realize that after feeding of the 5000 (Matthew 14:16-26), Jesus “leftovers” were not his profit.  They were the abundance left over when the least of these, a boy with five loaves and two fishes, shared a little.

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save church…or follow jesus

Posted in Church, Community of Christ, Discipleship & Ministry, Spirituality, Theology on September 17, 2009 by mattfrizzell

MARK 8:34—37

34 Jesus called the crowd with his disciples, and said to them, “If any want to become my followers, let them deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me. 35 For those who want to save their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for my sake, and for the sake of the gospel, will save it. 36 For what will it profit them to gain the whole world and forfeit their life? 37 Indeed, what can they give in return for their life?

It’s so easy to forget.  The crowd Jesus spoke to in Mark 8 didn’t know he was heading toward Jerusalem to die.  They simply followed him, listening to his teaching and witnessing his miracles.

In the verses before, Jesus told his disciples that the Son of Man must suffer and die at the hands of the church.  This sets the stage for the moments of truth he was about to share with the crowd in front of his disciples.  But, the crowd didn’t hear that prior discussion.  Jesus was only talking to his disciples.  Peter was at the center of it.

Jesus had asked his disciples, “Who do say that I am?”  Peter responded with divine insight, but with lack of understanding.  “You are the Messiah,”  Peter said.  (Mark 8:29)    Jesus took advantage of the moment and tried to help his disciples see what only God and spiritual wisdom could see.    Jesus must suffer and be killed.  Death is at the heart of the Gospel, of salvation, and resurrection.  It was the only way God could vindicate God’s faithfulness, fulfill the Law, and save the faith.   But, Peter rebuked Jesus for saying such things.  (Mark 8:32)     Yet, Jesus rebuked Peter even stronger.  “Get behind me Satan!,” he exclaimed.  (Mark 8:33)

“Satan?”   Jesus used this name to tell Peter what his words meant.  The name “Satan” in the text literally means obstacle or adversary.  That is why Jesus says, “Get behind me!”    Jesus was on an anxious and profound journey to Jerusalem, the heart of Jewish faith and identity.  He needed the obstacles and opposition behind him.   He was on a purposeful mission.    His disciples where is pupils, as well as his friends.  And Peter had his mind on human things, not divine things.

So Jesus, turns to the crowd and cries out in a stern tone.  His words almost have the tone of frustration.   They were certainly words for his disciples.  To the crowd, it must have sounded like riddles.

If any want to become my followers, let them deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me. For those who want to save their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for my sake, and for the sake of the gospel, will save it.

Imagine what the crowd must have been thinking.  Has this man, Jesus, gone mad?  What does he mean?  Trying to save your life means you’ll lose it?    Jesus was on his way to Jerusalem, and only he seemed to see what that meant.

For the writer of Mark, this whole scene with Jesus, Peter, his disciples, and the crowd was an exercise in  divine revelation.    Mark is desperately trying to convey something very difficult to understand to earthly understanding, but that his followers needed to know.  We, Christians, still struggle to fully grasp the meaning of Jesus’ most essential but paradoxical teachings.   He was driving home one of the most important truths of his life: the real meaning of “Follow me.”

The crowd must have just felt bewildered.  It was something even the disciples struggled to understand.

Just because we know the end of the story, this does not mean we fully understand what Jesus was trying to say to the disciples and the crowd that day.    Even if we feel like we understand the meaning of Jesus’ crucifixion and resurrection, it doesn’t mean we fully know what Jesus was trying to say to us in those words today.   Dietrich Bonhoeffer, the famous Christian theologian and resistor of Nazi Germany, stated it so dramatically clear:  “When Jesus calls us, he bids us come and die.”  (Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Cost of Discipleship)

Jesus was talking to a crowd of Jews and Gentiles, as well as his disciples.  So, we might consider what his words mean to us, not just as individuals but also as a people – as a church.   I believe we are going through a time in the history of our movement when Jesus’ words in Mark 8:34-37 can provide a guiding like for the future.  They define our prophetic challenge.  As we confront waves of change in terms of our belief and identity, Jesus’ words define both the challenge and the promise of our journey through time.

If you want to save your life, you will lose it, but those who lose their life for my sake, and for the sake of the gospel, will save it.  Take up your cross.  Follow me.

“Follow me” meant, literally, in Jesus’ time – become my disciple.  Do what I do.  Hear what I say.  Take my path.  Leave your nets, your family, your identity…leave it behind.  I am God’s revelation.   I am the fullness of God’s faithfulness and God’s word.  You will learn it through me.

The disciples knew they didn’t have everything figured out and nailed down.   So do disciples know that, today.  Disciples know they don’t yet have the fullness of the gospel.  Disciples ask questions in order to learn and understand, not to argue and be supreme or right.   Consider the dialogues Jesus had between Peter and the ones he had with the Pharisees.  Peter kept asking, getting redirected, and still didn’t get it right.  At the foot of the cross, Peter even denied him.    But, Peter was the Rock Jesus chose to build his church upon.   In Acts 2, after Jesus finally did ascend, Peter gives the first sermon of the Christian church.  He finally sees what he could not see before.  It is only after Jesus – the fullness of the Gospel – is gone.   The eyes of his soul and mind are renewed.  Understanding is opened.  It is he who must profess Jesus Christ.  The teacher is gone and now the disciples must live as he lived and teach what he taught.  Thousands joined the movement that day.  It was just the beginning.

…for those who want to save their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for my sake, and for the sake of the gospel, will save it.

In our congregations, we can worry about our future or the future of the church.  We can take comfort in the personal belief that we have the fullness of the Gospel or fullness of faith.  We can concern ourselves with keeping church leaders at bay or trying to keep “the world” out of our sanctuaries.  We can turn suspicious eyes against culture, ‘liberals,’ ‘conservatives’ and worldly ways.   We can take comfort in our priesthood authority, believe we know and understand what we need to know about Zion, righteousness, or the fullness of the gospel.  We can assure ourselves that we know what it means to bear Jesus’ name, live his message and teach his teachings.  We can be comfortable with ourselves as a church….

….or, we can allow the shock the disciples felt seep into our minds.  We can let the awe and bewilderment that the crowd felt seep into our souls.  What does he mean?

If any want to become my followers, let them deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me. For those who want to save their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for my sake, and for the sake of the gospel, will save it.

What would it profit us to retain our priesthood authority, keep our identity, keep the questions of the world and its uncomfortable issues out of our minds and churches?  What if we gain the church, but the church loses its life?   What can we give in return for life?

To be Jesus’ disciple, Jesus only asked that we leave what we know behind and offer our new lives to him.  This doesn’t take certainty or self-assurance.  It takes faith.

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On Prayer

Posted in Discipleship & Ministry, Spirituality, Theology on September 5, 2009 by mattfrizzell

the-light-withinThe body has its own sounds for prayer.

…groaning

…cries

…silence

Words can be bent to the shape of these sounds.

But, only if we allow our soul to sound itself into speech.

Let the Holy Spirit well up through your body.

These words came to me last week during worship. I feel the words were prophetic. They came with a sweet sense of inspiration. In addition, not only did I feel I knew exactly what they meant, they came moments before I realized the scripture we were to meditate on: Romans 8:24-28. The words I was drawn to were in verse 26.

Likewise the Spirit helps us in our weakness; for we do not know how to pray as we ought, but that very Spirit intercedes with sighs too deep for words.

…with sighs too deep for words. While the words of Romans 8:26 and those that came to me were not the same, what they spoke resonated. So often, prayer is about the words. But, in the Spirit of prayer – the Spirit behind and within a prayer – it is most often not words at all but something beyond words.

Suffering.

Yearning.

Compassion.

Suffocating Fear.

Awe.

In other words, sighs too deep for words.

These feelings are experiences that live within and through our body. And, they have a sound. Sometimes groaning. Sometimes crying; sometimes crying out. Sometimes breathlessness and silence. Each carry the weight and power of life-filled prayer. They are our body’s prayer, its way of crying out like the rocks would have at Jesus’ entrance to Jerusalem – if the people would have been silent. (Luke 19:40)

Sun_Light_EnergyIn prayer, the body can know what the mind yet has to find words for. The Spirit intercedes for what cannot yet be said. We can access and hear these prayers if we pierce our armor and shed our false sense of composure. If we can be in the Spirit. But, piercing our armor of acceptability and composure can be hard. Still, there are ways.

If you pretend to cry…long enough…real tears often come.

If you cry out, persistently and sincerely enough, true grief may voice itself and liberate the soul.

If you are quiet enough, fierce, full and forgotten feelings can be found underneath the anxiety of motionlessness.

Each is a prayer, a prayer which the Holy Spirit can coax, guide, and inspire to voice, but not always words. Words can be bent to the sounds of the soul, but only if we let it speak.

Let the Holy Spirit well up through your body.

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For Katy, On Your Baptism

Posted in Community of Christ, Discipleship & Ministry, Family, Spirituality, Theology with tags , , on August 29, 2009 by mattfrizzell

IMG_0342Dear Katy,

You are being baptized this Sunday.  Wow.  I come to this event with so many feelings.  Mom and I are so proud of you, but not just because you are being baptized.  We’re  grateful because we couldn’t have asked or planned a better journey to your decision.  You made this decision on your own – in your 8 year old way.

Mom and I feel we were baptized when we were 8 years old for not the best of reasons.  Other people were doing it.  We wanted to take the bread and grape juice at church.  We knew it would make others proud.  Because of this, we didn’t want to put any pressure on you.

With the reunions and camps we go to each summer, however, we knew you’d see others be baptized.  So, we began teaching you the things we wanted you to know if you asked about it.  We wanted you to know who Jesus was and what following him meant.  We talked to you about sitting in church more, and not going to the play room.  We told you, following Jesus meant being friends with some of the kids you didn’t like at school, or with those other kids picked on and didn’t have many friends.  Mom remembers one conversation with you when you began to cry, “But I can’t do that!  I don’t want to be _____’s friend!  He’s mean!”   In that moment, you realized following Jesus wasn’t easy to do.  It was too much for you.  Mom and I let it go.  Then, something happened at reunion this summer that changed things for you.

Mom and I will not forget that night in our little pop-up camper.  It brought tears to our eyes.  You and Kenzlee had been actively attending Kevin’s campfires at family camp all week.  You guys loved campfire.  One particular night, you came back from campfire and after brushing teeth came to bed.  Campfire was always the last thing you did at camp before bed.  That night, because I hadn’t seen you guys much that day, I asked what your favorite part of camp was that day.  You and Kenzlee answered right away, almost in unison.  “Campfire!”  Kevin Henrickson was doing a wonderful job with campfire that week.

Then, you began to tell us your simple testimony.

IMG_0467During campfire that night, you said felt something touch your heart.  You were singing songs, looking into the campfire, and you said, “I felt Jesus in my heart.”  You then blurted, “I just want to get baptized right now!”  Mom and I listened.  The feeling we felt with you in the silence after was hard to describe.  You just said, “I just felt Jesus in my heart.”  We knew it was special because when we taught you about Jesus, we didn’t talk about your relationship with Jesus in those terms.   We taught you the stories.  We shared our love for Jesus.   But, tonight, you felt something in a way that lit your face and changed your heart.  Mom and I were touched so deeply and in ways we didn’t expect.  We began to remember the first time we felt the Spirit, when we felt something bigger than ourselves in and around us.  We remembered what it was like to feel Jesus for the first time…to feel Jesus and his love in us.

After you were born, I remembered the nights I often prayed for you in college.  For some reason, I was worried about the future at that time in my life.  I prayed for you, the companion I had yet to meet, and the children I might have some day.  I prayed with such earnestness and would do so from time to time.  I remember, I prayed one thing more than anything else for my children – that they would have a relationship with God, the God I knew and changed my life.

I think you are on that road.  I can only praise the God of life and proclaim my belief that something, somewhere, profound, wonderful, real, and beyond all knowledge is present and real.  I call that God.  When that God is with us, it is Jesus.

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It’s the end of the church as we know it, and I feel fine

Posted in Church, Discipleship & Ministry, Spirituality on July 26, 2009 by mattfrizzell

Those who are 30-something or fans of early 90’s pop-rock will know the title of my post is a variation on one of R.E.M.’s best songs.  If not, see below.  <grin>

It’s been several weeks since I’ve posted.  I’m still on a roller coaster ride.  I’ve spent several grueling weeks on my dissertation…reading, writing chapters, meeting with my adviser, and realizing I have alot more work to do.    And then, for a moment, everything has stopped.  I’ve had a couple weeks to attend church camps, relish in the Spirit, and partake in God’s community.  I’ve filled up, hanging out with people who know ‘church’ and make the effort to experience life together and contribute to the hard work of community.   The reunions (family camps) I went to in Chicago and Samish Island, WA were wonderful.    These experiences have made me realize something about myself:  While I AM some kind of academic, contemplative, and loner in my walk with God, I’m also an eat-em-up, extroverted, relational type who loves community wherever I can find it.   Between these two poles, my life if both rich and productive – and strangely uncomfortable and disorienting.

So, what’s this got to with “It’s the end of the church/world as we know it?”    For life in real time, everything.

As I continue to speak in congregations and watch congregational life struggle, there’s an ongoing realization that the church is significantly changing.   In ways both clear and unclear, subtle and profound, the church is facing its mortality.  Not as a “totality.”  I mean, it’s not like Christianity or the Community of Christ is going to go away.   Yet, without a doubt, in many corners of the church “it’s the end of the church as we know it.”  And, frankly, I feel fine.

Do I feel fine because I’m apathetic?   Come on.   If I was apathetic, I’d left long ago with my peers.

I feel fine because I still experience God’s Spirit alive in the church and among people who worship and expect Christ’s blessings, even as congregations and camps shrink.  Also, I’m aware that all this decline, the divisive issues, and sense of change in the church is bringing incredible opportunities to we church-types…new opportunities for honesty, freedom, and real creativity.  Facing the end of the church as we know it really makes we church-folk face our demons, tests our faith, and checks us on what we’ve really put our faith in anyway.

The future, if it is truly God’s, doesn’t belong to us anyway.  If we believed that, there would not be less anxiety.   But, I think ‘the church’ would spend alot less time trying to ‘manage’ itself and, instead, find ways to jump into the flow of spiritual opportunities, new insight, and expression flowing through the church.   I think we’d find that there’d be alot of old with the new, instead of one or the other.    It’s because the flow’s movement holds both parts:  the downward spiral of decline and demise, as well as the vortex of new life and religious expression.  This is the flow of spirituality and divine opportunities – its insight and expressions – overtaking denominationalism and corporate Christianity.

Against the alarmists who worship in the church of certainty, we are not facing the death of institutions, tradition, or faith.  Rather, we are witnessing their remaking.

It’s tempting to try to hold things together in change, even if you trust what’s driving things.  It’s especially tempting if your identity is wrapped up in the familiar and what has been.   Conservatism, whether fundamentalist or liberal, is about preserving things.   Both, however, blunt the Spirit of creation and our opportunities for amplifying our faith.  Both stunt the growth of profound revelation and spiritual discovery holding the future of divine life and Jesus-ology.

After all, Christianity is a messianic faith.  Therefore, it is and always will be hope for what and who is … to come.

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Sexual Policy and the Church

Posted in Church, Community of Christ, Discipleship & Ministry, Faith & Politics, Spirituality, Theology on June 7, 2009 by mattfrizzell

On June 6th, I posted a piece entitled “Sexual Policy and the Church” on the  independent blog SaintsHerald.com.  While I write about my experience as a minister of the Community of Christ, my observations reach beyond any one denomination.  It discusses the way the politics of sexuality and church in the U.S. church distort the issues of faith and human sexuality involved.  I try to reflect on my discipleship to Jesus in my struggle to survive these politics.

Comments are welcome at either site.

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