The What-If Game

I haven't left church feeling so exhilarated and yet so frustrated in a long time. Usually, it's one or the other, but not both. I knew it was going to be a good one when the speaker apologized in advance for stepping on toes.

The message was entitled, "Can You Spare Some Change," but he quickly explained that it had nothing to do with money or poor people. He then opened up to Exodus -- which, if you know anything about the Bible at all, and in case you haven't been tipped off yet, you'll realize that this is going to be a bizarre sermon.

We covered the part when Israel forgets that they just walked through the Red Sea, narrowly escaping from their Egyptian captors, and suddenly turns mutinous because they haven't found water in three days and now they're thirsty. It makes sense, right?

"If only we had died by the LORD's hand in Egypt! There we sat around pots of meat and ate all the food we wanted, but you have brought us out into this desert to starve this entire assembly to death" (Ex. 16:2). In other words, it was better back then. It was more comfortable. Nevermind the fact that we pretty much built the pyramids.

He quoted some famous guy: When we realize that we are, in fact, on a journey, we realize how ridiculous it is to argue that we've 'never done it that way before.'

At which point he gently pointed out (okay, maybe not so gently) how many of us are uncomfortable with.... drum roll, please... change. If there is one thing that would characterize my church over the past two years - shoot, even the past 5 years - it's change. And while we've weathered it pretty well, many have been pulling out hair (sometimes theirs, sometimes not) wondering when it's going to stop.

The point: change is never going to stop. Israel wandered 40 years because they didn't trust. They wouldn't change.

It was here that he brought up sacred cows and tradition. And he said: No one wants to talk about these, so neither am I.

Instead he made a powerpoint :)

The questions started innocently enough: What if we moved the alter table? What if we took down the enormous cross at the front of the sanctuary? What if we put a screen there instead? Some of us younger whippersnappers snickered.

But then they started getting more edgy:

What if we stopped calling it the 'sanctuary'? What if we did some remodeling? What if we moved into a warehouse?

What if a person with purple hair and body piercings walked in?

What if s/he sat next to you?

What if you heard someone curse in the hallway?

What if a same-sex couple started coming?


The silence was profound.


It was a challenge to re-evaluate the status quo, to re-examine our own hearts, to return to the important things.

And for one, small moment, I felt a glimmer of hope. Maybe this time, maybe now that we are asking the truly important questions -- not just playing numbers games and asking whether a cafe would attract more people.

Afterwards, I gave him a hug and said thank you, maybe we should continue this conversation sometime. I hope we do. I hope he really ticks some people off. I hope they can't sleep at night because they're so mad. And I hope we're all forced to change. But no more of this rhetoric, please; I am tired of hypothetical change.

Another Blow

Fact: in 3rd grade language arts, we began class by correcting the capitalization, punctuation, and other syntactical errors in a sentence written on the chalk board.

Fact: the 7th graders I'm observing are doing the same thing... and struggle.

I initially justified the activity itself as test prep. CRTs and PASS tests use that format, so why not practice?

Then I noticed they forgot to add an apostrophe here, and an -es suffix there.

Unbelievable.

America, I salute you for your SmartBoards, but not much else.

It's that Time Again

Cloudy weather with a definite chance of rain, a biting wind, and traffic crawling through town, all at an unreasonably early hour on a Saturday morning... oh, yes, it's soccer season!

I also noticed an unprecedented spray of orange wherever I went. SUVs with orange flags toodling up I-35 to Stillwater, orange shirts cheering at the soccer fields and dashing out of McDonald's, and yes, there were even orange cleats. It really gave me the warm fuzzies to see. It should be noted, however, that this is NOT symptomatic of any sort of OSU fettish. That would be my father's fettish, not mine. Orange is so much more than football, just like soccer is so much more than... well, soccer.

It's community. It's tailgating. It's childhood memories - orange slices at half time. It's rivalry. It's standing on the sidelines in freezing weather, screaming, completely oblivious of the elements. It's culture.

And most importantly, it's Zac Robinson. Er, at least, the football part is...

I love fall :)

Despairing Idealizm

I guess I've been cursed with good teachers. Teachers who managed to inspire their students to do the homework and come to class [mostly] prepared. Teachers who taught whatever the hell they wanted without regard to the administration. Teachers who shunned worksheets, and teachers who taught more than mere themes - teachers who taught life. Teachers who pursued and expected Excellence.

Add to that Jim Burke's books, as well as Rafe Esquith's tendency toward tenacious, and you can probably approximate my outlook for life with one word: Idealistic.

Enter good friend and recent graduate: the First-Year Teacher. She had the same types of classes and teachers. She read some of the same books. And she's tanking. Well, not exactly. From what I can tell, she's doing a fantastic job, but she's painting a vastly different picture for me: bad attitudes, poor readers, students who come to class wholly unprepared, and a 16% pass rate for pop quizzes.

"I can finally appreciate worksheets," she says. "I hate, hate, HATE them, but I get it now. At least they get the kids into the text, answering questions. Because otherwise..." her voice trails off with a note of defeat. It's the third week of school.

How? HOW? How do teachers achieve anything, against such odds? How did my teachers do it? Is it all an illusion? Are Burke and Esquith and all those other good teachers anomalies? Well, I know they are, based on the number of bad teachers I've also had. But HOW? How do you face a class of apathy and eventually change the world? Oh, and, while we're at it, let's add PASS standards and NCLB to the equation. And yet, they manage to do it all. Obviously, they're not first-year teachers.

Great. How do you handle the first year, without being a 'first-year'?

How do you hold a problem in your hands?