IVP - Strangely Dim

If You're Sad and You Know It, Find a Robot?

A story on the news last week struck me as extraordinarily ironic. A conference in Amsterdam featured robots--all made from Lego robotics sets--created for a contest to "show how humans can live better with robots," as reporter Jeremy Hubbard stated it. Many of the robots were centered around the idea of emotions; one in particular has, among other features, movable eyebrows and is supposed to help children learn to express and deal with fears.

I didn't need a robot to help me express what I felt after seeing the story: namely, sadness and even some fear. While I realize not everyone is able to express their emotions easily or in healthy ways, are we really at a place where we need robots--machines incapable of actually feeling anything--to teach us and our children how to do it? I hope the only way these emotion-portraying robots help us is to perhaps highlight the places we're failing at human connection and authenticity, and spur us to action.

Hospitality 101: All Those Who've Ever Burned Chicken Welcome

I am, unfortunately, not a very hospitable person in the traditional sense of the word. I like the idea of having people over, and I generally have fun while they're there, but I don't entertain with ease. I worry about almost every detail: getting the apartment clean, making sure people have what they need, figuring out who should sit where, keeping the conversation flowing, etc., etc.

If the event involves cooking a meal, the stress factor gets bumped up about sixteen notches, because I'm not a great cook. The various dishes probably won't be ready at the same time, or something might be a little undercooked, or it might be a little black and crispy and stick to the pan . . . Unless we just eat cookies. I make good cookies, and good homemade chai. But let's just say, no one has ever asked me to serve on a hospitality committee. And I haven't volunteered.

I've been realizing more in the past few years, though, that as Christians, hospitality must define us. Not necessarily (and thankfully) being able to cook a Martha-Stewart-approved meal, but the much broader and deeper meaning: the art of welcoming people in, just as they are, of listening well with openness and compassion, and then responding with grace and truth. This kind of hospitality, I'm learning, is core to who I'm called to be as a follower of Christ.

I'm reminded of that truth even more powerfully right now, as we've intentionally pondered Christ's final week on earth and the pain it entailed, and then celebrated his resurrection and victory over death and sin. No one will ever give us a stronger picture of hospitality than Christ, who invites us with deep love and mercy to come to him with all of our messiness, brokenness, sinfulness; who knows the hardness of our heart, the ways we've denied him, the lies we've told, the ways we’ve hurt others, the ways others have hurt us. And he doesn't just listen well and offer compassion; he actually takes on our sin and claims it as his own, offering us full forgiveness and freedom and life. Only with Christ can we be completely ourselves, fully open about who we are, because he knows us in every way anyway, and still joyfully, lovingly calls us to himself.

As his followers, we have the perfect example of hospitality to imitate. Yet, without having done any polls, I am pretty certain hospitality is not the first word that springs to mind when people think of Christians. Two bumper stickers I saw on one car illustrate well the reality of our level of hospitality. One read "The [denomination name that isn't really important because it could be any one] welcomes you." Okay. That's friendly when you're stuck in traffic, right? And then, above it, the other bumper sticker: "My poodle is smarter than your honor student." Gee, I feel right at home. Totally welcome. Don't you?

The reality is, offering hospitality is hard. It's hard to listen well to someone whose point of view is different from ours. It's hard to welcome someone whose needs feel bigger than we have time to address. It's hard to welcome someone whose sin has hurt us or someone we love. But it is one of the greatest gifts we can give to others and one of the most powerful paths to reconciliation and understanding.

As hard as offering hospitality is, though, receiving it--sharing my messiness with others and letting them offer me grace and truth--is even harder for me. Being an extraordinarily private person, I'd rather keep my brokenness and sinfulness and ugliness and confusion to myself, thank you very much. But a few close friends who are willing to share with me who they are--good and bad--are teaching me the power of letting my mess be known by them as well, and the freedom, grace and growth that come as a result.

I long to be that safe person for others--the hospitable, compassionate, grace-and-truth-filled friend who invites others in just as they are. However, I know that until I am more willing to really show others who I am--a scared, not-so-put-together twentysomething who is a little confused about how to love and live this life she's been given--it will be hard for them to feel comfortable coming to me just as they are.

But this keeps me working at it: Christ on the cross, taking my sin on himself; the risen, victorious Christ appearing to his disciples who betrayed and denied and deserted him, speaking words of peace and forgiveness and promise of the Spirit to come and the ways he would use them; Christ ascending and interceding for us; Christ constantly whispering to me "Come to me, come to me, come to me."

So come on over if you want to. I'll put the chai on and resist the urge to clean before you arrive. You bring your messiness and your joy, and, with some patience from you, I'll do my best to invite you into mine.

And Christ--the risen, living, loving, perfectly hospitable One--will be there too.

On the Great Cloud

You have these moments, every once in a while, when you discover that what you thought was just another ordinary moment is actually something closer to momentous. I had such a moment this morning, when I interviewed an author for an IVP office meeting and, mid-question, realized that this particular author, over the past half-century, has helped to define much of what American evangelicalism has become.

Marie Little is a petite, unassuming ninety-year-old woman with poor eyesight and even poorer hearing. She lost her husband, Paul, in a car accident thirty-three years ago. Since then she's regularly revised and updated his writing to keep it fresh and relevant in a changing publishing climate. Last month IVP Books rereleased two of Paul's books--Know Why You Believe and How to Give Away Your Faith--alongside two books we recently acquired from another publisher: Know Who and Know What You Believe. Marie came to the office for an interview and a reception.

Paul's writing was an extension of his work for InterVarsity Christian Fellowship, addressing the core issues he encountered as he spoke to and, more important, listened to college students. There's great footage of Paul interacting directly with students in the video on our website. These college students had sharp intellects and a sixties-era suspicion of all things inherited, particularly the church. Paul honored their skepticism and their intellect, and very effectively turned them again and again toward Jesus, the author and perfecter of their faith. He would go on to write books such as the million-selling How to Give Away Your Faith and Know Why You Believe, one of Christianity Today's fifty books that have influenced evangelicals the most. He would also help to shape the Western church's approach to missions and evangelism through Urbana student mission conferences and the Lausanne Conference, and to teach evangelism to budding pastors and ministers at Trinity Evangelical Divinity School.

Marie was no slouch herself, having spent four years in China in the midst of its Communist upheaval, having started a campus Christian fellowship under the skeptical supervision of a dubious university president, having sought out and nurtured international students as they struggled to make a home in an alien environment. Nor has she been a slouch in the thirty-plus years since Paul's death, both in her writing and revising, and in her ministry to laypeople and leaders at her church and neighbors at her retirement home.

I had four questions to ask Marie during the interview, three of which I dumped in favor of more fascinating topics. The question I kept was this: What is the ongoing task of Christian publishing? She responded with a heartfelt appeal to keep the Word of God central as a point of magnificent connection: the Bible reminds us throughout, and centrally in Christ, that

The LORD your God is with you,
he is mighty to save.
He will take great delight in you,
he will quiet you with his love,
he will rejoice over you with singing. (Zephaniah 3:17)

Lately I've found myself in a lot of direct interactions with the elderly, and it's only when I'm particularly alert--and even then at best midway through the conversation and more often long after the encounter--that I realize how much history is contained in a single person: how much each set of eyes, however weak, has seen; how much each set of ears, however compromised, has heard. I tend to make much of the up and comers, those authors and thinkers and doers who will define the church out in front of us. But today at least I was reawakened to a healthy respect for those who came before me and whose sweat and anguish contributed to the faith that's been handed down to me.

Retreat! Retreat!

Last weekend I attended the annual winter retreat for my church's high school youth group. It was my fifth winter retreat with this group, and while the kids are fantastic, the snow beautiful and the options for activity numerous, to be perfectly honest this retreat usually makes me want to--well, retreat. A long winter weekend in northern Wisconsin with a couple hundred high-energy people does not a happy space-heater-loving introvert make. In years past, the goodness of being away and the fun of being with students were somewhat overridden by coldness, lack of sleep and a desperate desire at some point in the weekend to find some place--inside--besides a small shower or bathroom stall to be alone.

After all that, I get back Sunday night, almost too tired to drag my poor suitcase--overstuffed as it is with almost everything warm I own--through the church parking lot to my car. Then I try to decide if an overpowering need for personal space can constitute a sick day on Monday. I always decide it can't, so I drag myself to work Monday morning after emerging from a sleep so sound that I'm pretty sure not even the arrival of firefighters to put out a fire in my own bedroom would wake me up. (I probably would just enjoy the extra warmth a fire brings.) Needless to say, I approached this year's retreat with some trepidation.

But, even with trepidation intact, the retreat last weekend was a good one--maybe my favorite of the five years I've attended. The senior girls, my coleader and I had a cabin all to ourselves, and therefore lots of time to talk and laugh and eat chocolate. And I actually got to play in the snow--as opposed to just scraping it off my car and driving around in it like I've been doing at home. And the camp has peanut butter and bread set out the entire weekend, day and night, for the snacking. You can hardly complain about a camp that is hospitable enough to provide peanut butter round the clock. Not to mention the fact that the youth group I help with won the extraordinarily competitive broomball tournament, my fellow youth leaders and I successfully snuck the speaker's car onto the broomball court during the final large-group worship session, and I learned that high school students still like to be read to.

In the midst of the fun and the stress and exhaustion of a retreat that was not exactly a retreat, I was tired enough, quiet enough, still enough, open enough to listen to God and watch for God and hear God and see God. I was also reminded what an amazing privilege it is to walk alongside others--especially this small group of fantastic senior girls whom I've watched grow and learn for the past three-and-a-half years--and help them look for and see God too.

I'll admit that the following weekend I thought a couple of times how grateful I was to be in my own bed and apartment, to be warm, to not have to be constantly social. But I've also been even more grateful for the girls I lead, and for the ways and places God speaks. Extraordinary Tiredness met God and had to depend on God in new ways. And God answered--like he does here, in the midst of my everyday life when I'm still enough, quiet enough, open enough to go to him.

While you ponder that, I'm going to go fix something hot to drink and turn up my space heater. I'm still making up for lost time.

What I Dithcovered in Theattle: The Latht Entry

I'm in Seattle for the New Conspirators Conference. Here's round four of what I learned.

* Jesus wants to know whether I am a sheep or a goat.
* You'd be hard pressed to find a cul de sac in the suburbs called Martin Luther King Court or Malcolm X Way. (Efrem Smith)
* The beloved church is a loving, abiding, confessing, perfecting church. (Efrem Smith)
* If you keep the beginning and the ending of your worship service the same, most congregations will let you do what you want with the middle. (Mark Pierson)
* Software, not hardware, is the key to the future.
* I can browse the same books at the same bookstore over and over and over again without getting bored.
* I'm not a very competitive person largely because when I compete, I lose.
* Mark Scandrette is the coolest guy in the room, regardless of the room.
* The game of "Rabbit" does not favor travelers or residents of the west coast.
* Kimberlee Conway Ireton writes a killer book and cooks a killer souffle. (Keep an eye out for the book, due out this winter; step lightly around the souffle.)
* It's hard to select a church to attend when visiting Seattle, but it's easier to select two.
* I'm looking forward to being home, and to visiting Seattle again.

What I Dithcovered in Theattle: Third Timeth a Charm

I'm in Seattle for the New Conspirators conference. Here's what I'm learning.

* The least are the new most.
* Some reports put "regular church attendance" at once a month.
* Third places don't have clocks. Neither are they monoprogrammatic.
* As long as you have a segregated city, you will not be a leader in the multiethnic church. (Tali Hairston)
* Seattle is a lonely city; in such a context, hospitality is prophetic.
* Commercialized community further marginalizes the poor and outcast. (Karen Ward)
* To create is to not destroy. (Karen Ward)
* As soon as you are willing to be told what to do by a twenty year old, you will have twenty year olds in your church. (Karen Ward)
* We are called to be ourselves, remembering that our true self is a child of God, redeemed in Christ, enlivened by the Spirit.
* I miss Lombard.

What I Dithcovered in Theattle: Thecond in a Therieth

What I Dithcovered in Theattle: Thecond in a Therieth

I'm now done with day two in Seattle, where I'm attending the New Conspirators conference. Here's what I've learned:
* Seattle has pretty good coffee. Don't know if you'd heard that before. El Diablo and Caffe Vita are destined to be my breakfast and lunch destinations while I'm here.
* A quarter doesn't buy you near as much street parking as you might hope.
* Walking in Seattle, with its steep inclines, is a good workout for your calves and buttocks. Seriously, I can feel the burn.
* If you are driving within the broadcast range of 103.7 "The Mountain," you don't need to bother with your i-Pod. You also only rarely need to leave your car.
* Every "Mars Hill" is just a wee bit different from every other "Mars Hill."
* Good fences may make good neighbors, but good churches may make something else entirely.
* I could live here, I think.
More to come!