Page 1227 – Christianity Today (2024)

There is likely no image in baseball history as consummate, as metaphorically rich and breathtakingly pure, as that of Willie Mays’s backside, running down the deep cavern of the Polo Grounds centerfield, head up and glove up higher, with the baseball descending to him, 450 or so feet from its launch off of Vic Wertz’s bat, late in Game 1 of the 1954 World Series. It is pure baseball, and the choice of this image for the cover of Bill Madden’s homage to that great season seems both inspired and pleasantly obvious. The greatest player making the greatest play on the greatest stage.

But Madden’s narrative is oblique to this sort of “pure baseball nostalgia”; indeed, his subtitle pushes out into the sociological waters that his forebears in New York sportswriting had skirted or loosely handled at the time, and his work is equal parts celebration and indictment of baseball’s early days of integration. It’s a tough narrative to latch onto, in one sense, because it’s the season itself, other than any individual player or team, that is the protagonist, so that there is not particular thread, but a kind of tapestry, a mix of social issues and tensions woven into the on-the-field tensions of batting races and pennant races. The episodic feel of the book is occasionally frustrating, since we never stay with one player (not even Mays, certainly not Larry Doby, who broke the color barrier in the AL a few months after Jackie Robinson’s debut in the NL, and whom Madden once discussed helping with a full-length memoir) long enough to feel we know the person beneath the player. Madden creates the longing to know the men, but we end up knowing the times, especially the times for baseball, which are glorious and transitional and full of hidden slights. To the author’s credit, things never get soap-operatic, and he keeps returning to the games, to the standings, to the day-by-day, week-by-week, month-by-month slog of the major league season, with the ebbs and flows and constant streaks and tensions: the season, the flow of time, the inevitability of change and of triumph beside tragedy, seems to be the protagonist from start to finish.

That being said, the issue of race and of racism and of its opposite, true community, are paramount in Madden’s story. Of course (and sadly), ironies abound. Madden frames his tale around the Brown vs. Board of Education Supreme Court decision to desegregate American public schools, and he points out that Baltimore was the first southern city to do so. But at the same time, with the St. Louis Browns moving to Baltimore and becoming the Orioles for the 1954 season, the rude awakening for the few black players in the American League was that Baltimore’s hotels were still decisively segregated. Indeed, rather surprisingly, “seven years after Jackie Robinson broke the color line in baseball that had existed since the game’s origin in 1876, half of the sixteen major league clubs—the New York Yankees, Pittsburgh Pirates, Boston Red Sox, Detroit Tigers, Cincinnati Reds, St. Louis Cardinals, Philadelphia Phillies, and Washington Senators—still had not integrated as of spring training 1954.” The Yankees come in for substantial vilification here, for their willingness to sign but not to promote or develop black players; they traded away rising stars Vic Power and Ruben Gomez before they made the big club, and eventual All-Star catcher Elston Howard was inexplicably loaned to Toronto of the International League for the whole of the 1954 season, though he’d been starring in the Negro Leagues and the high minors for seven years! (Just to spread the blame around a bit, though, the Cardinals had refused to sign Howard in 1947, even though he starred at a hometown high school and their lead scout, George Sisler, Jr. , said “I worked him out for two days and I’d stake my job on his ability to make it. But they won’t let me sign him.”) Furthermore, Madden indicts the Yankees and their icy brass are blamed for forcing Bill Veeck to sell the Browns to Baltimore, for colluding to keep Veeck out of the Los Angeles big-league market for which he owned the rights, forcing the sale of the Philadelphia A’s from Connie Mack’s sons to Yankee-friendly owners in Kansas City at the end of 1954 (and hence making KC more or less a major league feeder club for talent heading to New York). And these are the Yankee glory days?! Madden definitely casts a pall on the legends of the “golden age.”

For teams that actually were integrating, the sudden and drastic thrusting of black players into the ranks often leaps out. The careful preparations whereby Branch Rickey sent Jackie Robinson to play in Montreal for a year, and famously worked his amateur psychology to assure that Robinson would know what he was in for, seemed to have been the exception rather than the rule. The Cubs had done a junior version of the Yankees by leaving their major-league worthy black shortstop Gene Baker to play for four seasons as an all-star in the Pacific Coast League without a call-up, but when they did decide to integrate in late 1953, they signed Ernie Banks from the Kansas City Monarchs and immediately put him on a bus to Chicago. As Banks narrates it, “I went down to the clubhouse to get my uniform, looked around and saw all these guys, Ralph Kiner, Hank Sauer, and I’m saying, ‘Ho-ly! It’s the major leagues!’ But I’ll be honest, I was a little uncertain about being there. I wanted to stay with the Monarchs. I was raised in Dallas in a time of segregation. I didn’t understand integration. This was a whole different world for me. I had no fear—I learned that from the Bible. But I had lived in a black community, went to a black school, played sports at a black YMCA, played baseball for a black team with a black manager, and that was all I’d ever known.” But there were some gains amidst these travails: the Cubs opened 1954 with Banks at shortstop and Baker at second base, giving them baseball’s first black double-play combination. Likewise, the Indians teamed their all-star CF Larry Doby with rookies Al Smith in LF and Dave Pope in RF on August 6, creating baseball’s first all-black outfield—though, if anything, Doby’s introduction to the majors had been more shocking than Banks’s. Doby had been batting .458 for the Newark Eagles of the Negro Leagues in 1947 when Bill Veeck, then owner of the Indians, called on July 3, “telling him to report two days later to Comiskey Park in Chicago, where the Indians were playing a series with the White Sox. As Doby further recalled, his welcome to the big leagues as the first black player in the American League was anything but warm and congenial. Not until 1954 was Doby finally allowed to stay with the team during spring training in Tucson, as the team pressured the hotel to relaxed its segregationist policies.

Even if the steps towards racial equity, both inside and outside baseball, were still tiny in the mid-Fifties, Madden does capture certain hopeful turns, especially the dynamic of the central team in his story, the eventual world champion New York Giants. None of the players on the team was a crusader for race relations like Jackie Robinson or, among white players, Ted Williams—indeed, Madden relates that just a few years ago, Mays was still elusive on the question: “When I posed my first question to him about the ’54 Giants championship team’s unusual dynamic for that time, in which the core players were composed of so many white players from the South and three blacks—Mays, Monte Irvin, and Hank Thompson—he quickly cut me off. ‘I ain’t talkin’ about race,’ Mays said. ‘I’ll talk about anything else you want—the games, the World Series, Leo, whatever. But I don’t ever talk about race.’ ” And yet Monte Irvin affirmed to Madden that “none of those Giants talked about race. It just wasn’t an issue with them,” and so Mays’ avoidance was perhaps more genuine than it might seem. This team was strange, in ways baffling and ultimately remarkable.

The key player for this team’s successes was obviously Mays, who had missed the previous year and a half to military service, and whose return had Giants GM Chub Feeney (later president of the National League and one-time Jeopardy contestant!) singing a refrain to the press in the spring of ’54: “‘In six more days … in five more days … in four more days … we’re gonna have Willie Mays.” When Mays finally arrived, manager Leo Durocher bear-hugged him and began to shower him with gifts of clothing and jewelry. Monte Irvin noted that “Leo did all these things for Willie and forgot about all the rest of us. I remember Alvin Dark saying half-kidding one day, ‘Hey, are we still part of the team?’ ” Such behavior would seem tailor-made to create a cancer of favoritism in the clubhouse, especially with a team composed of a core of white southern players like Dark, Whitey Lockman, and Dusty Rhodes, but “there was no jealousy of Mays; rather, Mays’s effervescent personality and passion for the game endeared him to the southerners. He brought laughter to the clubhouse, and they had fun with him because he could also laugh at himself.” And he could play like no one ever had, or ever would. The first spring training split-squad game, Durocher waited to insert Willie, building the drama, then the team witnessed a 420-foot home run, a diving catch, and an over-the-shoulder catch in center, and then the patented catch-pivot-300-foot throw to double off a runner. “It was as though a bolt of lightning had struck and electrified the entire Giants’ spring training complex.”

But if Willie was the key performer on the team from day one, it was Alvin Dark who was the key figure, the captain with the athletic pedigree to match Mays (Dark had been in the same backfield at LSU with NFL Hall of Famer Steve Van Buren) and a burning competitive drive. There had been some concern when the Giants acquired Dark in 1949 that the shortstop would balk at playing beside black third-baseman Hank Thompson. “What they didn’t know was that, as [a] youngster in Lake Charles, Dark’s family lived a few blocks from the predominantly black area and that Dark frequently participated in neighborhood pickup games in which the blacks and whites mixed harmoniously.” And Dark’s deference and affection toward Willie remained undaunted a half-century later, at a reunion of the surviving members of the ’54 team held at SBC Park in San Francisco, where Dark lauded Willie as the “the greatest player I’ve ever seen. The best all-around player. The greatest,” and then Mays rose to a silent room and “looking down at Dark, the team captain, who lived his whole life in the South and, years earlier, as manager of the Giants, had been accused of having inherent racist views when a New York sportswriter for Newsday quoted him as questioning the ‘mental alertness’ of black and Hispanic players, Mays said, ‘I just want everyone here in this room to know I learned more about baseball from Alvin Dark than anyone else. More than from Monte here, more than from my father, more than from Leo. I love you, Alvin.’ For a moment Dark sat there and wept. Then he rose to embrace Mays, as the rest of his teammates got up from their tables to do the same.” In a narrative about the imperfections and immaturities of the baseball establishment in embracing integration, Madden’s finale here provides a transcendent glimpse of the possibilities of kinship across all boundaries.

But, oh yeah, there was a baseball season in 1954, with a neophyte Cactus League spring training in Arizona that had the Giants scrimmaging the Indians no less than 21 times, in a World Series preview no one could have anticipated in light of the Yankees and Dodgers having dominated in 1953. There was the rollicking pennant race in the AL, with Casey Stengel leading the Yankees to 103 wins, his most in 12 seasons with the club, but losing out to Al Lopez’s Indians—the integrated team beating out the all-white defending champs (though Larry Doby’s HR and RBI crowns were not enough to give him the MVP, as Yogi Berra, the man he’d outslugged in the final week, 12 RBIs to 1, got the inexplicable nod). There was the native of Mexico, Bobby Avila of the Indians, beating out the black native of Cuba, Minnie Minoso, for the AL batting crown, in a historic showing. In the National League, there was the tight three-way pennant race, as the Giants held off first their arch-rivals, the Dodgers, then the late-charging Braves (whose clean-up hitting rookie Henry Aaron would likely have been the Rookie of the Year had he not broken his ankle, and the Braves hopes, late in the season). Likewise, the NL batting race was three-way affair, with two Giants (the slap-hitting leftfielder Don Mueller and, of course, Mays) chasing down the Dodgers CF Duke Snider, until “with one game to go, the batting race stood a virtual three-way tie, with Mueller at .3426, Snider at .3425, and Mays at .3422.” Mays hit a single, double and triple off the tough Phillies righty Robin Roberts to claim the title, in a charmed season where he also slugged .667, and, when the Giants were struggling early in the season, put the team on his shoulders: “Beginning on May 22 the Giants, who’d been wallowing at .500, went on a 41-11 tear-up to the July 11 All-Star break. Over that span, Mays hit twenty-three homers, one fewer than he hit in his entire first 155 games in ’51 and ’52.” And his hitting paled in light of the outlandish catches and dives and throws that he exhibited from centerfield!

Yet, wait, the most valuable member of the Giants during the 1954 season might not have been Alvin Dark or Willie Mays, nor even the rejuvenated young left-hander Johnny Antonelli, who came over in the off-season trade of Bobby Thomson to the Braves, and who went 21-7 with a 2.30 ERA. No, the protagonist for this season was the skipper, Leo Durocher, not only for his inspired handling of the team dynamics involving Mays and “everyone else,” not only for his literal Hollywood lifestyle with actress-wife Laraine Day, not only for his devil-may-care attitude toward both Giants ownership and the baseball establishment, but mainly because he had a managerial dream-season in 1954. After the slow start (and rumblings from owner Horace Stoneham about a replacement), all of Durocher’s pinch-hitting decisions seemed to work. Reserve outfielder Bill Taylor hit his first big league homer in the tenth inning of a scoreless game, after Durocher told him “Lose one, and I’ll give you a hundred bucks!” Journeyman Hoot Evers won a game in June on a pinch-hit homer against the Cardinals, “his only hit in eleven at-bats for [the Giants] when he was released a month later.” Remarkably, over the course of the season, Durocher’s machinations led to ten pinch-hit home runs, and “eight of them turned defeats into victories.” And, with a pinch of irony, Leo’s best pinch-hitter, hard-living Alabamian Dusty Rhodes, was a player whose reckless lifestyle had led Durocher to demand his trade a year before. But 1954 changed that whole dynamic, and the skipper admitted later “Dusty was the one guy I didn’t have any training rules or curfew with. Hell, I’d often take him out to the bars!” The manager’s confidence in Rhodes’s steely nerves would pay dividends at World Series time. In the meantime, Durocher’s only glaring failure this season was his perpetuation of a long-standing animus towards the gentlemanly Stan Musial, who had charged the mound for the only time in his career as a result of incessant knock-down pitches from Durocher’s Dodgers in 1943, and who avenged himself by abusing Antonelli and other Giant pitchers in April of ’54 during a double-header: “The strategy, as it almost always did for Durocher when it came to Musial, backfired miserably. Stan the Man went 4-for-4 with six RBI in the first game on Sunday, slamming three homers, two of them off the rusty Antonelli, who lasted just four innings in the 10-6 Cardinals romp. In the second game Musial slugged two more homers for three more RBI. His five homers in a doubleheader were a major league record, and afterward Musial’s bat was sent to the Hall of Fame in Cooperstown.” Speaking of the Hall of Fame, Monte Irvin later reported that “‘I have to believe Leo was the only guy Stan ever had no use for. I just know that when Stan and I were on the [Hall of Fame] Veterans Committee together, Leo was the one guy Stan ever said he couldn’t vote for.” Yet, while alienating his opponents, even the genial Musial, the shrewd Durocher (who may have prepared the supposedly spontaneous quip “Nice guys finish last”) won the NL pennant and a World Series date with the team the Giants had played ad infinitum in the spring, the Indians.

The 1954 World Series was probably the most exciting sweep ever, with perhaps the best and most decisive Game One ever (though the 1988 Dodgers walk-off, with the gimpy Kirk Gibson taking the unassailable Dennis Eckersley deep, has similar resonance). That game, on September 29, 1954, was “the first World Series game in history with players of color on both teams. In large part, of course, this had to do with the absence of the Yankees, winners of six of the previous seven World Series and who remained the most prominent of the four teams (the Red Sox, Tigers, and Phillies were the others) who had still not integrated.” Not much was made of this fact among sportswriters. Instead, the stadium itself, Manhattan’s quirky Polo Grounds beneath Coogan’s Bluff, would provide the real drama, the decisive idiosyncrasy for the hometown team. The dimensions of the ballpark included a mind-boggling 483 feet to dead center, and something akin to 260 feet down the right field line, and thus Willie Mays was able to track down Vic Wertz’s line-drive 460 feet from home with the most famous catch, indeed “The Catch,” and then spin and hurl the ball back to second base in time to keep both base runners from scoring, in a tie game in the bottom of the eighth inning—a play immortalized by Daily News photographer Frank Hurley on his Hulcher 70 high-speed camera, designed for military surveillance work. A baseball ballet for the ages, captured in five extraordinary frames. The Indians stranded their baserunners, and though they put on two more in the tenth (after a double by Wertz, who hit a line-drive almost every at-bat in the series), they couldn’t break through. Then Durocher played a final pinch-hit hunch, with two on in the bottom of the tenth, and Dusty Rhodes hit a pop-fly to right-field. In another extraordinary photograph included in the book, Indians rightfielder Dave Pope is leaping high against the 12-foot fence, with second baseman Bobby Avila also in the frame (Avila apparently thought it was shallow enough for him to make the play before the wind caught it)! Then the ball descended into the first-row spectators and the game was over. Madden notes that “When it came to cheap-shot home runs, this one had no doubt been the dandy of them all. It was the accepted slang of the day to call such shots ‘Chinese home runs.’ ” He adds that New York’s Chinese community protested the public use of this disparaging phrase. (A petition to the Giants brass included this irrefutable line: “It isn’t the fault of the Chinese if have 258-foot fences.”)

From there, the Series swung in the Giants’ favor, and when Al Lopez, down three games to none, decided to pass over the veteran Bob Feller to pitch Bob Lemon on two days’ rest, the Indians’ fate was sealed. Lemon gave up seven runs through five innings, and Monte Irvin later revealed that “We knew we could hit their pitchers. The only one Leo said he was a little worried about was Feller, and Lopez never used him.” For Indians slugger Al Rosen, the miracle 110-win season of the Indians had drained them by the World Series, and then they’d been felled by a double trick of fate: “The first game was probably the turning point. We got beat by a catch on a ball that would’ve been a home run in any other ballpark in baseball, and a home run that would’ve been an out in any other park.” Ah, the ironies, the opportunities missed and those doggedly seized hold of, the hunches and panics, the justice and the injustice, the equality declared amidst inequality, the “Golden Age” played under a cloud. Bill Madden weaves all these taut strands into a narrative web that, if not sharply focused and linear, nevertheless has many spirals and twists that intrigue and even stir the reader. Ultimately, the Indians are perhaps the more apt metaphor than the Giants, when it comes to judging the meaning of the 1954 season—so much accomplished, so many surprises and triumphs, but so much left undone and frustrating. The march toward the pennant and the World Series is a long journey, even in the best of seasons—the march toward equality for a society, even more so.

Michael R. Stevens is professor of English at Cornerstone University in Grand Rapids, Michigan.

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Amy Sherman discusses the three reasons why the conversations beween faith and work are so important.

Trustees at Eastern Mennonite University (EMU) in Virginia voted to delay a formal decision on a policy against same-sex relationships, effectively allowing faculty to violate the current policy indefinitely.

The university is one of 120 members of the Council for Christian Colleges and Universities (CCCU), whose members include Biola University, Wheaton College, and Gordon College. EMU's board deferred to ongoing conversations in the Mennonite Church USA in its June 20 statement:

We reaffirm EMU's mission—to prepare students to serve and lead in a diverse global society—and EMU's role as a university that fully engages the difficult questions of our time and welcomes diverse perspectives and experiences into the conversation. Out of respect for EMU's relationship with Mennonite Church USA and its ongoing discernment of human sexuality, we defer action on formally changing EMU's policy on hiring employees in covenanted same-sex relationships. The November 2013 board decision to suspend personnel actions related to the current hiring policy will remain in effect as the discernment process continues.

CT previously reported that faculty would not be penalized for violating the policy during the review process. In a November 16 motion obtained by CT, EMU trustees unanimously instruct that "between now and June 2014, EMU will suspend taking any human resource actions based on hiring practices that are currently under review."

This means "some professors in same-sex relationships could keep their jobs or be hired" during the review period, Inside Higher Education reported.

The CCCU declined to comment on the board's choice to delay the decision.

"The CCCU does not have a statement on or speculation regarding the deferred decision," said Pamela Jones, CCCU vice president for communications, in an email.

In a 2001 report, a CCCU ad hoc task force on human sexuality emphasized the church's historical opposition to same-sex marriage but also encouraged "each member institution of the CCCU to decide its stance on this difficult issue explicitly and deliberately":

While there can be no question that we face challenges in applying the scriptural view in contemporary and pluralistic Western culture, there is a fair consensus that the historic stance of the Church, grounded in the unambiguous teaching of Scripture, cannot be explained away. Arguments that there are other ways to read the scriptural witness on this matter or on the broader vision for sexuality and sexual ethics have not rendered the traditional judgment irrelevant.

Stanton Jones, author of the report and provost and psychology professor at Wheaton College, noted "the peculiar challenges" faced by Christian colleges:

We are all painfully aware of the trend for religiously-affiliated (or religiously-identified) institutions of higher education to lose their religious identities. The leaders of those formerly sibling institutions either failed to see (or did not care to respond to the recognition) that our institutional religious identities are fragile indeed, capable of being sustained only through creative leadership, constant rearticulation of our mission, and through the providential care of God. The issue of hom*osexuality appears to be one of, if not the "issue of our day," an/the issue on which our institutional identities are being tested. Institutions will avoid dealing with this issue at their great risk.

Students at CCCU member universities may participate in "Best Semester" study abroad programs through the CCCU, where they agree to a behavioral statement promising to avoid "sexual immorality."

At EMU, the just-concluded six-month listening process began in January with the goal of reviewing "current hiring policies and practices with respect to individuals in covenanted same-sex relationships."

The process, intended to engage members of the EMU community, including current students, alumni, faculty, staff, donors, and church leaders, concluded with the board meeting June 20. In May, the president's cabinet prepared a list of recommendations to present to the trustees, who met over the weekend to reach a decision.

More than 7,000 people responded to a survey the president's cabinet sent to students, faculty, church leaders, and others during the listening period, and 300 individuals participated in on-campus meetings, according to an EMU statement.

EMU president Loren Swartzendruber said feedback was "divergent and often passionate."

"We never expected to see consensus on this matter," he said in a statement. "EMU's role as a university is to grapple with the difficult questions of our time."

The school would not be the first in the CCCU to hire faculty in same-sex relationships, according to an FAQ page published by EMU in January:

Many colleges in the Catholic and mainline Protestant Christian traditions allow for same-sex persons to be employed. In addition, some colleges have adopted a "don't ask, don't tell" practice, including some who are members of the Council of Christian Colleges and Universities.

EMU currently requires faculty members to sign the Community Lifestyle Commitment, which asks faculty to "refrain from sexual relationships outside of marriage." The commitment does not mention same-sex relationships, or hom*osexuality in general.

"A growing number of EMU students (gay and straight), like young adults in the larger culture, do not see the matter of same-sex relationships as a significant issue," the school's FAQ page says. "Our students, for the most part, want to participate in the church and some do not think that persons in same-sex relationships should be barred from church membership or from employment in church colleges."

The university's current lifestyle statement for students, adopted in 2001, reads in part:

I recognize that some social practices are harmful to me, as well as harmful or offensive to others. Therefore, respecting the values of others and the mission of Eastern Mennonite University, I recognize my responsibility as a member of the community to refrain from sexual relationships outside of marriage, sexual harassment and abuse, p*rnography, acts of violence, abusive or demeaning language and the use of illegal drugs. Recognizing that EMU supports nonuse of alcohol and tobacco, I will respect and abide by the university policy that prohibits the use of alcohol and tobacco on campus or at university functions and the misuse of alcohol off campus.

The university said in an online statement there is no definite timetable to make a decision.

CT noted when EMU came under fire for its policy on same-sex relationships in 2004, when it announced the listening period in November, and on loosening of denominational ties among Christian colleges and universities.

In a culture all mixed up about judgment, how can Christians model a path between anything-goes apathy and bloodthirsty outrage? Seeking an answer, A.J. Swoboda puts an ear to the ground. Listen with him for the voice of blood.- Paul

Whether you paid attention or not, many of us watched the world mercilessly turn against a man this past spring. Donald Sterling, the now ex-owner of the NBA's Los Angeles Clippers, became a poster-child for racism, hatred, and bigoted wealth. Sterling's racist, thoughtless comments, recorded secretly and posted on a gossip website after lots of money changed hands, reveal a man whose words and actions betray his very character and his future. Sterling was banned from the NBA for life for his comments, and fined 2.5 million dollars. Reactions of outrage, even outright hatred toward him were everywhere online.

There is no excuse for his comments, no justification—by any stretch of the imagination—for the opinions that spawned them. But from my perspective, our culture's reaction, angry and judgmental, reveals something deeper and darker than simple righteous indignation. It reveals how broken our sense of judgment is, and how much we need a better one.

Judging judgment

The mantra of American culture is that judgment is bad.But then, as it talks out of one side of its mouth, it turns hypocritically around and judges without grace the words and actions of someone it deems to be wrong.

The mantra of post-modern, post-Christian American culture is that judgment is bad. Keep your judgment to yourself, it says. After all, who am I to judge? But then, as it talks out of one side of its mouth, it turns hypocritically around and judges without grace the words and actions of someone it deems to be wrong. Did Sterling deserve a strong reaction? Was he wrong? Without question, yes! But can we really say Who are we to judge? when we do what we do to the Donald Sterlings? No.

Our culture needs to admit that we all judge. But for that to happen, the church must demonstrate that judgment, done in the Spirit of a graceful Jesus, is needed for human flourishing. Without judgment, hatred, rape, murder, and racism would go unchecked. But to avoid the hypocrisy that undercuts the true purpose of judgment, we need to re-learn the art of graceful judgment.

The cry of injustice

Judgment, in the end, is ultimately God's.

The tale is well-known: Cain, jealous that his brother Abel's sacrifices are acceptable before God while his own are not, lures Abel into a field outside the city. There, Cain commits the first murder in the Bible. (As a disturbing aside, remember that the first murder recorded in the Bible is a religiously motivated murder.)

God saw, and God visits Cain. God asks, "Cain, where is your brother?" Cain's response, like Adam and Eve's before him, is deflective: "I don't know. Am I my brother's keeper?" (Gen. 4:9). The Lord replies quickly and pointedly: "What have you done? Listen! Your brother's blood cries out to me from the ground" (Gen. 4:10; italics mine). In Hebrew, Abel's blood was tsa`aq; it "cried out" the way Israel would later "cry out" to God in Egypt. God is not only aware of Abel's murder but can actually hear his blood crying out, seeping into the ground.

Then God curses Cain.

Abel's blood screamed out for justice, crying out for rightness, for righteousness. But why must we linger on that point? Because injustice will always cry out. Injustice will not hide. Injustice will cry out until wrongs are righted. And the blood will not shut up until it is. Thomas Dozeman has pointed out that once Abel's blood falls to the earth and is no longer in its proper place, it becomes a kind of pollutant rather than a life force in Abel's body. As Dozeman puts it in The Priestly Vocation, blood becomes a "virus" infecting the story of creation from that story on.

But in the great story of scripture, the blood of Christ becomes a kind of reversal of this viral hatred. The Gospel stories about Jesus of Nazareth not only rely upon such narratives like Cain and Abel, but actually build upon them as a kind of narrative backbone. Jesus, like Abel, made religious people squirm—he infuriated the Jewish leaders with his ability to inspire the crowds and speak of his intimate love of his Father. They grew jealous at him. He infuriated them all the more by instructing them that righteousness, righteousness embodied, was among them. He was that righteousness: "I am sending you prophets and sages and teachers. Some of them you will kill and crucify; others you will flog in your synagogues and pursue from town to town. And so upon you will come all the righteous blood that has been shed on earth, from the blood of righteous Abel to the blood of Zechariah . . . whom you murdered between the temple and the altar" (Matt. 23:34-35). Jesus' blood would be the most righteous blood of them all.

Not unlike Abel's blood, the blood of Jesus cries out to God eternally on behalf of creation. It cries forgiveness, love, peace, and acceptance. And that blood calls out to us as well.

Jesus, like Abel, was not received by his own (John 1:11). In the end, Jesus was taken outside the city by his Jewish brothers where he would die on a Roman cross, blood dripping into the cracks of the sun-scorched earth. His blood, like Abel's, still cries out. And not unlike Abel's blood, the blood of Jesus cries out to God eternally on behalf of creation. It cries forgiveness, love, peace, and acceptance. And that blood calls out to us as well. It pulls at us. It calls to us. It disturbs us. It whispers to us.

Paul describes Jesus' blood as the blood of divine reconciliation, a sacrifice that tears down walls of false separation. We have been, as the Pauline letter to Ephesians says, "[B]rought near by the blood of Christ. For he himself is our peace, who has made the two groups one and has destroyed the barrier, the dividing wall of hostility" (Eph. 2:13–14).

Is it possible that the blood of Christ that fell upon the earth could heal even the enmity between Cain and Abel? It could reconcile us to God—why not Cain to Abel?

Is it possible that the blood of Christ that fell upon the earth could heal even the enmity between Cain and Abel? It could reconcile us to God—why not Cain to Abel? Could Jesus' blood break down that dividing wall of hostility? Miroslav Volf, in a provocative reflection on the reconciliatory power of the coming age ushered in by the sacrifice of Jesus, argues that it will be in that coming day where enemies will be made right. In that day, righteousness will prevail. It is there, in resurrection reconciliation, that Cain and Abel will once again face each other. Volf writes in The Final Reconciliation,

If Cain and Abel were to meet again in the world to come, what will need to have happened between them for Cain to not keep avoiding Abel's look and for Abel to not to want to get out of Cain's way? . . . If the world to come is to be a world of love, then the eschatological transition from the present world to that world, which God will accomplish, must have an inter-human side; the work of the Spirit in the consummation includes not only the resurrection of the dead and the last judgment but also the final social reconciliation.

Volf points out that once, when Karl Barth was asked if we would see our loved ones in heaven, he glibly responded: "Not only the loved ones!"

Judging gracefully

When Karl Barth was asked if we would see our loved ones in heaven, he glibly responded: "Not only the loved ones!"

Judgment is God's. In the final reconciliation, justice and judgment will be served—justice between the oppressors and oppressed, murdered and murderer, perpetrator and perpetrated. Perhaps that is why John's Revelation looks forward to that day as a day when, "He will wipe every tear from our eyes. There will be no more death or mourning or crying . . . for the old order of things has passed away" (Rev. 21:4; italics mine). John knew we will enter the heavenly dimension with many tears from a life of crying and mourning. He also knew, however, the tears will be wiped away.

What does that say to us about how we judge today? First, we need to learn to judge humbly. Jesus said that in the same way we judge, we will be judge (Matt. 19:28). That means: If you judge with no grace, expect the same. If you judge with grace, expect the same.

I must practice humility in judgment. So must you. As a Christian pastor, I know unequivocally that there have been conversations that I've had (you've had them too) in quiet places, that if recorded and published would get me fired, judged, and hated. When we judge, we should judge gracefully. We are people who have hearts as dark as any.

Second, we must recognize that no hatred, no bigotry, no racism will go unchecked forever. But that ultimate judgment is God's.

Jesus' blood is so powerful, so majestic, so able, that in the final reconciliation, if Donald Sterling and Magic Johnson were to submit their lives to the Lamb who was slain they would be so covered in love, forgiveness, grace that they could (and will) share iced teas by the pearly gates. Jesus' blood is that powerful.

Powerful enough for you, and the enemies that you have managed to make, to be drawn near. So if you judge the Donald Sterlings, remember that the very thing you hate is alive in your bones as well.

Judge gracefully.

A.J. Swoboda is a pastor, writer, and professor in Portland, Oregon. He is @mrajswoboda on Twitter.

Update (July 22): Ibrahim's family has filed another lawsuit against her, this time attempting to annul her marriage. Reuters reports the lawsuit is yet another attempt to keep Ibrahim from leaving Sudan.

If the lawsuit is successful, Wani would no longer be considered the father of his two children, according to World Watch Monitor.

Sudanese officials have assured the U.S. State Department that Ibrahim and her family are safe, and World Watch Monitor reports that she and her children are approved to enter the U.S. when they leave Sudan.

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Update (July 17): Meriam Ibrahim could now be free to leave Sudan after her family dropped the lawsuit they filed against her to prove she was the daughter of a Muslim, reports Reuters. Abdel Rahman Malek, the family's lawyer, did not give a reason for dropping the case a day before its first scheduled court hearing.

Ibrahim has been staying at the U.S. Embassy, along with her family.

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Update (July 10): Following a grueling week of release and rearrest, Meriam Ibrahim is safe at the U.S. Embassy in Khartoum but is still stuck in Sudan. Ibrahim may face new charges to prove she's part of a Muslim family, according to Reuters and Businessweek.

Meanwhile, CNN reports that a community with ties to South Sudan waits to welcome Ibrahim and her family to Manchester, New Hampshire, her husband's U.S. home, when she reaches the country.

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Update (June 26): Meriam Ibrahim has been released on bail and has been transported to a safe location in Sudan, along with her family, according to a United States Department of State press release. The Associated Press, CNN, and Al Jazeera report more details.

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Update (June 25): Meriam Ibrahim is still in Sudanese custody, along with her family, according to reports. Ibrahim was trying to leave Sudan using South Sudanese emergency papers, as well as a U.S. visa, which Sudan's National Intelligence and Security Services considered a "criminal violation."

Religion News Service, CNN, and Reuters report more details.

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Update (June 24, 5:18 p.m. CDT): Meriam Ibrahim and her family have reportedly been released after being temporarily detained on their way out of Sudan, reports BBC.

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Update (June 24, 9:45 a.m. CDT): Sudanese authorities have rearrested Meriam Ibrahim along with her husband, Daniel Wani, as they tried to leave Sudan from a Khartoum airport. About 40 security officers detained the family of four and took them to the headquarters of a Sudanese security agency as they were trying to leave for the United States, according to the BBC. They were not told why they were being arrested, according to the Telegraph.

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A court in Sudan has ordered the release of Meriam Ibrahim, the 27-year-old Sudanese woman who was sentenced to 100 lashes and death by hanging for alleged adultery and apostasy.

Sudan's high court in Khartoum canceled the case, the Associated Press reports.

Ibrahim's lawyer, Elshareef Mohammed, said she had been sent "to an unknown house to stay at for her protection and security," the Daily Mail reports. "Her family had been threatened before and we are worried that someone might try to harm her," he said.

Officials promised that she would be released "in a few days" in late May, more than three weeks ago, according to the BBC.

Ibrahim's case incited international outrage over Sudan's treatment of Ibrahim, a wife and mother of two children. After giving birth to her second child in a Sudanese prison in May, Ibrahim was given two years before the courts would enact the death sentence. But the international pressure to free Ibrahim has paid off, a human rights activist told the Daily Mail.

"The Sudanese government was embarrassed by all the attention so they freed her," said Safwan Abobaker of Hardwired, a religious campaign group. "The Sudanese government needs to grant Meriam asylum or find a way to let her come to America right away."

Laws against apostasy — the act of abandoning one's faith — are on the books in 21 countries, and punishments range from fines to death, according to the Pew Research Center. They are most common in the Middle East and North Africa, where more than half of the countries have them, and there are five on the books in the Asia-Pacific region and four in sub-Saharan Africa. Sudan's legal code dictates that a pregnant woman not be executed until she has had two years to raise her child, according to Human Rights Watch.

Blasphemy laws are increasingly important tools for authoritarian governments and extremists in the Muslim world to gain and maintain power, according to Paul Marshall, senior fellow at the Hudson Institute's Center for Religious Freedom. And apostates pardoned from government sanction are often not safe from the court of public opinion, he notes:

While there has been no systematic study of the matter, and many punishments are not publicized, it appears that actual state-ordered executions are rarer than killings by vigilantes, mobs, and family members, sometimes with state acquiescence. In the last two years in Afghanistan, Islamist militants have murdered at least five Christians who had converted from Islam.

Vigilantes have killed, beaten, and threatened converts in Pakistan, the Palestinian areas, Turkey, Nigeria, Indonesia, Somalia, and Kenya. In November, Iranian convert Ghorban Dordi Tourani was stabbed to death by a group of fanatical Muslims. In December, Nigerian pastor Zacheous Habu Bu Ngwenche was attacked for allegedly hiding a convert. In January, in Turkey, Kamil Kiroglu was beaten unconscious and threatened with death if he refused to deny his Christian faith and return to Islam.

U.S. politicians and residents called for Ibrahim's release with official statements and a petition garnering 53,000 signatures. Secretary of State John Kerry criticized the Sudanese apostasy law:

I urge the Sudanese judiciary and government to respect Ms. Ishag's fundamental right to freedom of religion. I also urge Sudan to repeal its laws that are inconsistent with its 2005 Interim Constitution, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, and the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights.

CT has chronicled Ibrahim's case, including her initial death sentence as well as the birth of her daughter, Maya, in prison in May, also noting the false reports of Ibrahim's release. CT reported the crackdown of Christians in Sudan following the country's move to become 100 percent Muslim and has also reported on violence against Christians.

Cows like to turn their backs to the wind. At least, all the cows I know do. Slowly, awkwardly, eventually, all that beef will run parallel to the breeze.

People aren't too different. We align ourselves safely into herds, comforted by the hot breath of others breaking on the backs of our necks and ears. Then we huff and we puff and we blow at the fools turned in the wrong direction.

Is there anything more compelling to us than the heavy synchronized breathing of a mob, especially when combined with co*cked eyebrows of disdain and curled lips of disgust? This is the zeitgeist, inside the church and out, and it will judge you until you conform and commune. This is cool-shaming, and it will make you squirm and itch to turn your back to the wind, to stand with all the other cows.

The trendsetters and vision-casters in a herd start the movement, motivated by profit or power or personal gain, as well as genuine striving for holiness and righteousness. They target their breath, their words, their media, and their coolness accordingly.

But for the rest of us, the single greatest factor in our decision-making is simple compliance. We turn with the crowd because we want the awkwardness to stop. We want them all to stop looking at us like that. We want to feel the wind of opinion at our backs.

How did otherwise intelligent people go along with the Third Reich, the invasion of Poland, the extermination of Jews? We may assume they were evil, brainwashed, or a bit of both, and in part we're right. But when was the last time you hedged on an opinion because of the hot breathing of those around you? When did you last choose your words based more on the politics of a situation than on truth?

The power of the zeitgeist helped propel the agonies of race-based slavery, and the zeitgeist threw it away in a bloodbath. The zeitgeist gave us institutional racism, and when enough shame had been applied, the zeitgeist (at least officially) struck it down. The zeitgeist set the Medes and the Persians praying to Darius, and threw Daniel in the lions' den (Dan. 6). The zeitgeist can kick up the fervor of ungodly war, and it can hang its head in cowardice when a true challenge comes.

The zeitgeist is a fickle master, because the zeitgeist is us.

It's no wonder that one of the first tasks of any prophet was to make himself shameful. John the Baptist wore camel hair and ate insects. Isaiah had to walk around naked for years. Ezekiel had to cook his food over dung. Elijah ate only food carried by ravens—nasty carrion birds. The first thing God told Hosea to do was to marry a whor*.

Prophets must be fearless, immune to the pressures of kings and crowds, aligned only with the breath of God.

We are in need of prophets now. Christians are scattered, but the world's wind is heavy and unified.

Truth and ultimate glory may be in the hands of our Maker, but the keys of earthly shame are in the hands of the mob. Prophets must be immune to floggings on Facebook and Twitter. They must be fearless before friends and tenure committees and stadiums filled with the priests of Baal. The cool-shaming can have no sting. The world is busy applying pressure on "social issues," and Christians are busy caving left and right, trying to accept fresh cultural dogma simply so that they might be accepted.

Many of us would rather be in compliance with the crowd of now than successfully image the loves and hates of our Father. But his breath rolls the North Sea and props up mountains. His words ripen fields of grain and infants still hidden in wombs' warmth. May we run parallel to his breeze alone.

All of our positions—especially in controversy—should flow from honest exegesis, not from the mood at the local coffee shop. And we could all benefit from some shame. When the hot pressure comes, we need to be immune. If God wants it, we should be ready to wear camel hair while cooking locusts and raven scraps over a dung fire in the lions' den after our marriage to a whor*.

Shame is easy to find. All we have to do is stop hiding. We already have seriously uncool friends. Moses. Paul. Christ himself. Enjoy them. Like them. In public. Offend the zeitgeist. Become immune.

When we turn, we must turn for Truth, never for the mob—not when it's running to the revival tents, and not when it's running to the guillotines.

N. D. Wilson is a best-selling author, observer of ants, and easily distracted father of five. His latest book is Death by Living.

In the age of of cyber-bullying, we see deplorable instances of public shaming to rival Hester Prynne's scarlet letter. Yet, simultaneously, we are in the midst of what psychotherapist Joseph Burgo calls an "anti-shame zeitgeist." Just as it's become common to deride all who disagree with us with the epithet "haters," it's now popular to label those with any deeply held moral conviction as "shamers."

The en vogue phrase "slu*t-shaming," which is sometimes used to rightly discourage victim-blaming, is often wielded as a bludgeon to silence anyone who questions a woman's sexual choices. I first heard the phrase less than a year ago, when bloggers at New Wave Feminists were chastised as "slu*t-shamers" for their opposition to abortion.

Increasingly, we dismiss experiencing shame for any reason as a bad thing, something we shouldn't feel, something that's probably someone else's fault. From pop stars to college presidents, Burgo contends, the cultural voice is united: shame is the enemy, a "uniquely destructive force… to be resisted." Instead, we are encouraged toward pride and radical self-acceptance. But understanding shame in solely negative terms is reductionist and overly simplistic.

If we seek to smother any ember of shame or stamp out moral disagreement, will we douse our ability to experience true moral conviction and culpability? Perhaps at times, our experiences of shame are a natural, needed (if not inevitable) response to the reality of sin.

We need to allow our discussion of shame to be as complex and variegated as that of other emotions like anger, grief, or guilt. Some forms of shame are indeed distorted and pernicious. We experience false shame from manufactured standards of beauty and perfectionism or from being marginalized or abused by those in power. While false shame is routinely used to sell tooth-whitening products or shout down opponents on Twitter, it can be profoundly damaging and deeply destructive. I want to be clear: misplaced shame can be very, very hurtful. We need to hear cultural critiques that give voice to that reality. And we Christians need to be the first to admit that religious communities have misused shame as a weapon to control, judge, and silence people.

But I'd like to suggest that there is another kind of shame, akin to pain in our bodies, a natural indicator, a check engine light that signals that something is spiritually awry. This kind of shame—let's call it "ontological shame"—is inescapably part of what it means be human in a fallen world, as unavoidable as stomach aches, sadness, and boredom. And like physical pain, ignoring it or ceasing to experience it altogether poses a danger.

Burgo points out that even within the current anti-shame zeitgeist, we still unanimously condemn certain behavior with resultant social shame—fathers who abandon their families and refuse to pay child support or, a more extreme example, those who sexually abuse children. As a broad society we don't want people to be proud or self-accepting of this behavior, so it remains stigmatized.

And although there can be intelligent disagreement about what beliefs, attitudes, and choices should and should not warrant shame, to begin that discussion, we have to stop understanding shame as merely a boogeyman to run from. And we cannot reject any moral stance that might cause another person to experience shame as, therefore, intrinsically wrong, oppressive, or untrue.

Some Christians try to mitigate shame by relaxing or ignoring biblical standards—there's no reason to feel shame since nothing is all that wrong. The theological term for this lax permissiveness is "antinomianism." Others turn to moralism and try to become spiritually perfect enough to avoid feeling shame. We work hard to keep our own sin managed and hidden while shaming others for theirs.

But the antidote to shame is neither relativistic self-esteem boosting or rigorous self-improvement. It is truthful, full-orbed grace. We have to own up to our shame, admit it, recognize the truth it tells about our rebellion against a holy God, and know that, in Christ, we are utterly loved, forgiven, and accepted.

In the Genesis story, when Adam and Eve first rebel against God, their instinctual, even primordial, response is shame. They don't simply experience guilt—the sense that they made a poor choice—they also recognize that that choice came from a corrupted self-orientation and self-obsession. They're humiliated. They hide. They realize that they're naked and grab the closest thing they can—some leaves—to cover up, a response that is tragic and ridiculous and so very human.

But when God pursues them, he doesn't tell them that they ought not be ashamed or recommend self-acceptance. There is a new order in the world, and, in it, shame is real. He doesn't minimize sin or excuse their shame. Nor does he tell them to begin a rigorous self-improvement plan, try harder, get themselves together, and make better leaf underwear. And he does not abandon them. Out of love, God takes it upon himself to deal with their shame. He clothes them. He restores their dignity. He begins his long work of redemption.

When we rebel against God, we feel shame. If we respond defensively, dishonestly, or by isolating ourselves, it can be destructive. But shame can serve as an indicator that we need to repent. The proper response to shame is to run to Christ to clothe us.And grace is not just an invisible idea. It is made palpable in the community and practices of the church. This year, I've been part of a group at my church that practiced the discipline of confession. Each week, we told stories and secrets. We were honest and specific about our sin, the dark, embarrassing, unedited, selfish parts of us. It was hard. I cried a lot. And, at times, it was humiliating to show others these parts of me that I'd rather keep hidden.

The women in my group never made excuses for me. They never justified my sin or told me that it was understandable or not so bad. But they responded lovingly and gently. They prayed that I'd know I was entirely forgiven and accepted by God. They anointed my head with oil and prayed that God would free me from sin. They helped me sort out false shame and true conviction. They reminded me of the gospel and pronounced blessing. Each week, on Sunday, when I receive communion with these women, my co-confessors, in the pews around me, grace is made visible, fleshy, and real. They know me, both the shameful and beautiful parts of me, and, as a community, we feast together in a meal of redemption.

In her famous TED talk on shame and vulnerability, researcher Brené Brown claims that the remedies to shame are vulnerability, letting ourselves be fully seen and known, and the belief that we are worthy of love and belonging. The practice of confession takes our hand and walks us out of hiding. When we confess our sin, we acknowledge our nakedness and shame before God and his church and believe again that we are forgiven and clothed in Christ. As Christians, we can face the reality of shame because we are fully known by God and we belong to a people who Jesus made worthy and calls beloved.

Tish Harrison Warren is a priest in the Anglican Church in North America. She and her husband work with InterVarsity Graduate and Faculty Ministries at The University of Texas at Austin and have two young daughters. She writes regularly for The Well, InterVarsity's online magazine for women, and was featured on The White Horse Inn. She's on Twitter at @Tish_H_Warren.

Every family has its weirdos. For some it is Aunt Trudy (the cat-lady), Cousin Sarah (who still can't hold down a job), or maybe Uncle Chet, who always, always speaks his mind—whether his thoughts have anything to do with the occasion at hand … or not. We try not to exclude these characters from family gatherings, but sometimes we are (shamefully) relieved when they're unable to attend.

It is no different with the family of the Christian church. We have more than our share of odd-balls, characters we begrudgingly include in our history texts. Many of these fringe-dwellers have been relegated to a club, affectionately ("bless their hearts") referred to as the "Mystics."

Thanks to a recent "Spirituality of the Mystics" class at George Fox Evangelical Seminary, I have been drawn back to those often outcast writers of old. Those strange sages of spirituality (Teresa of Avila, St. John of the Cross, Gregory the Great, Bernard of Clairvaux, Jan van Ruusbroec, etc.) have quirkily burrowed themselves once again inside my soul, inspired my imagination, and have even renewed my hope for the church and our sacred mission.

What to do with the weirdos?

There is little doubt that the Mystics are a complicated band of personalities: desert-dwellers and pole-sitters, ascetics and scholars. Their discourses are often difficult to follow, full of foreign metaphor and rhetorically tedious, to say the least. To put it even more frankly, much of that world is downright scandalous to our modern sensibilities.

My friend Chuck Conniry recently said that many of the mystics would likely find themselves hospitalized if transported to today: talking to animals (Francis of Assisi), bizarre wounds, possibly self-inflicted (stigmata) and self-destructive eating disorders (the fasting of Catherine of Siena.)

Scandalous? Yes, the Mystics are. But let us not wholly dismiss our obscure aunts and uncles. There is much for us to glean and utilize from the lives and teachings of these ancient guides.

To that end, I was recently inspired to ask this question: What contributions can the Mystics make to the 21st century proclamational mission of the church?

1. The gift of the "messy." Broader society often dismisses the church today because it is perceived as fake. That's right, fake. We reinforce that perception—often unknowingly—when we present a triumphalistic message fueled by the illusion that Christianity is always clean, neat, together, well-dressed and convinced. "Perfection" smells like "manufactured and manipulated" (think of the movies The Truman Show or The Stepford Wives).In contrast, the mystics give us story after story of struggle, of organic, clumsy pursuits of God, including: embracing extreme poverty, rejecting broader society, and scandalous acts of devotion. A whimsical and affectionate story about one of our odd-relatives could help open a transparent faith conversation. (For more, read Messy by A.J. Swoboda.)
2. The gift of the ancient. Most people live in a world that is only 15 minutes old. Everything they interact with is immediate, shrink-wrapped, faddish, fleeting, and transient. Most people don't even have intimate relationships with their own grandparents, let alone a sense of being part of an ancient tradition that has been tested by time and reaffirmed by generation after generation. We are titillated by the words of a pop-star (or a pop-preacher), but the human-soul is ultimately inspired by time-tested wisdom. The mystics, within the surrounding cloud of witnesses, can give our neighbors a link to the ancient that the rest of society has neglected. (For more, read Beyond Smells and Bells by Mark Galli.)
3. Expanding our metaphoric vocabulary. The church is perceived by many to be verbally constipated. Our vocabulary is as predictable and unimaginative as the trinkets in a religious bookstore. We describe God by well-worn images such as "lion," "king," or "Lord," but would we dare to refer to God as a "rainbow," "black widow," or "grandmother"? Heck, Jesus displayed the Divine as an Unjust Judge, a wind, and a fig-tree murderer. The teachers we choose help us explore the boundaries of our vocabulary. The mystics were far more courageous than most of our modern thinkers. Maybe we could lean on them to expand our rhetorical comfort zone and thus light a more imaginative fire in the souls of our neighbors.
4. Helping us bring the creation (environment) into our spiritual dialogue. One of my dearest friends has left the Christian faith. He is sincerely inspired by the life of Jesus and even fondly respects many of the Christians in his life. However, he flatly refuses to be a Christian. Once I pressed him to explain to me why. The first thing he said with passion and supreme sorrow in his eyes was, "I have tried to believe, but I cannot get past the fact that Christianity has no coherent and practiced theology of earth-care." For the sake of my friend and many more of our nature-devoted neighbors, I hope that stories like those of Francis of Assisi (who loved all creatures) and Ignatius of Loyola (who teaches us to find the voice of God in all created things) help provide language for the church's long-held (if minority) dedication to environmentalism. (Look for Introducing Evangelical Ecotheology: Foundations in Scripture, Theology, History, and Praxis, releasing October, 2014, from Baker Academic.)
5. Show us we are not alone. Loneliness is becoming epidemic in society today. Our detached and depersonalized culture starves people's souls, and the resulting entertainment and consumption addictions keep people trapped in those pain-filled states. The writings of the mystics are littered with many a "dark night of the soul" and they can help us demonstrate how spiritual pain and loneliness are an integral part of the human experience. (For more, read Leadership Journal's Fall 2011 issue on "dark nights of the soul" in ministry.)
6. Illustrating that "we are all on spiritual journey." It seems counter-intuitive to my life-long religious training, but in our culture today, it often breeds credibility for me to lean on teachings—like those of the Mystics—that I cannot fully explain or cite teachers that I do not even fully agree with. Each time I do, I communicate to my neighbor that I am actively wrestling with my faith, that my hope is not in my thinking alone but in God, and that I am open to new ideas (which is exactly what I am asking my neighbor to be).
7. Bringing reciprocal exchange to cross-spiritual conversations. If my neighbor sees that I am willing to learn from weirdos (especially if I can do it in a laugh-at-myself, non-anxious way), they may in turn believe that I am willing and wanting to learn from them as well. There is nothing as powerful as a cross-spiritual conversation fueled by genuine exchange, genuine mutual trust and affection, and genuine hearts for learning.

Weirdos in the pews

Well, I don't know about you, but I am convinced. Even though there is no doubt that many of the Mystics dabbled in the heretical. It is also true that most of these characters would make for challenging additions to any modern congregation. But still, for the above reasons and many more, there is much for us to learn from these weirdos of old.

But before we go, this conversation begs one more question. If I am willing to give the benefit of the doubt to the oddballs of yester-year, then what about the oddities of today? Am I also open to affording them the same benefit? I am talking about the unique personalities that walk the halls and foyer of most every church. You know who they are: syrupy-spiritual-lady, the one-issue activist, mumbles-to-himself, always-raises-hand, passion-prayer, always-critical, under-socialized, never-speaks, the list-keeper, old-curmudgeon, young-zealot, Bible-thumper, political-extremist, etc.

Will I offer them my ear; treat them as my teacher?

If there is one thing that the Mystics remind us, it is that God is not limited in the palette the Divine might draw from in order to reveal the Kingdom to the world. If I believe that God is truly an unhindered communicator, then I must even open my learning to the weirdos all around me: across history, and across the pew.

Tony Kriz is a writer and church leader from Portland, Oregon, and Author in Residence at Warner Pacific College.

Copyright © 2014 by the author or Christianity Today/Leadership Journal.Click here for reprint information on Leadership Journal.

In the epic tale All The President's Men, the secretive informant known as "Deep Throat" badgers Washington Post reporter Bob Woodward to "follow the money trail." Deep Throat, who we now know to have been Mark Felt (the #2 man at the FBI), was convinced that if people knew how money was spent by the Committee to Re-Elect the President (CREEP) they could figure out exactly what happened, who did what and when. The same is true in the church. I believe many churches are not forthright about how they spend money, for a number of reasons.

Two sad snapshots

I served for three years as the executive pastor of a mid-sized congregation with a $3.4 million budget. The business administrator of the church was strident about reminding the congregation that 10 percent—a whopping $340,000—went to missions each year. We wore this truth as a badge of honor.

However, as I followed the money trail, I learned that included in the $340,000 was the $64,000 salary of the missions pastor and the $30,000 salary of the mission assistant, along with a variety of office expenses. So in reality the church "gave" about $230,000 to missions, and perhaps less.

The second money trail relates to the ever-sensitive matter of senior pastor compensation. I consulted with a church some time ago where the senior pastor's base salary was $111,000 with another $21,000 in benefits for a total package of $132,000. The next highest paid staff person—an associate pastor who had served at the church for 15 years—earned $70,000.

On one occasion I asked the administrative pastor of the church about this gap in compensation. He explained that he estimated that the senior pastor brings in excess of $1 million in tithes and offerings each year due to the fact that he was an incredible preacher. "When Patrick preaches the offering is 25 percent higher than when someone else preaches." I asked if the congregation was made aware of the salary scale of the staff. Aghast, the business administrator told me the congregation could not handle that information well.

Where your treasure is …

Jesus said, "where your treasure is, there will be your heart." I think this applies to churches too. Consider these real-life examples of churches and where their treasures reside:

• The church that spends $3.6 million per year ($57,000 per week) to professionally produce their worship services (think, "lights, camera, action").
• The church in which the budget is $500,000 per year and the senior pastor's compensation package is $100,000 (about 20% of budget).
• The church in which the budget is $1 million per year and the congregation gives away an increasing percentage each year.

A while ago I was helping a church that was in a major crisis, one that would cause it to close its doors six months later. "How must we change?" asked the interim senior pastor. "The first thing you need to do," I said, "is to do one ministry very well. And that ministry should be toward people who are outside the congregation, preferably people who are in great need, such as the homeless."

In that instant I could tell the pastor wrote me off. He tried to be polite and thanked me for my input. Realizing that I no longer had very much credibility with him, I pressed further. "In order to do that one ministry well you will need to make much deeper cuts in staff. And I think your compensation should be first. You make $75,000 per year. You will need to take a cut to $50,000 at most." From that moment on the interim pastor was always cordial with me, but not once did he ask for my opinion again. Three months later the elder board forced the interim pastor to resign due to mismanagement of finances.

The original question remains, "How must we change?" More churches in North America should be asking this.

Three innovative changes

What might have helped that church escape the "crash and burn" that it experienced in the years leading up to its demise? These three things might have helped:

1. Each year publish the salary and overall compensation of the pastors of the church. The transparency of this act will automatically cause the budget committee or whoever oversees the finances to take a hard look at each person's salary. In the words or Ricky Ricardo in the I Love Lucy show, "you have some 'splaining to do!"
2. Diversify the leadership team, especially in two ways. First, have men and women give input, perspective, and make decisions together on the use of money. Second, include a diverse socio-economic group: blue collar and white collar, educated and uneducated, etc. People with less money have a very different perspective on it than people with large amounts of disposable income.
3. Track the actual money that is given to people and causes outside the church. This is not just about giving 10 percent to missions, although that might be one step in the process. More important is the focus and attention given to causes outside the congregation. This posture invites people in the community to become more and more sensitive to those less fortunate and in great need.

The "business" of church

What is the "business" of church, if we can be so crude? It is as the primary agent of God's kingdom coming on earth as it is in heaven. If this is the core business, should not our budgets reflect this? If so, our vision must be on those who are far away from the kingdom, who need to be introduced to the King of the kingdom.

I was senior pastor of a church in Amsterdam (The Netherlands) for five years. We wrestled each year with how to spend the $750,000 faithfully given by the church community. At first I felt proud that we dutifully gave 10 percent to missions, and that my salary of $60,000 was not "extravagant." The executive pastor and worship pastor were each paid $50,000 and I was quick to tell people these financial facts.

Then one winter we spent three months preaching and learning from the Sermon on the Mount. We heard Jesus saying things to us such as, "Blessed are the poor in spirit," and "Where your treasure is there is your heart," and "Do not worry."

Jesus turned my paradigm about finances upside down. Instead of thinking about how to give away 10 percent to missions, we began to dream about mission and not as a mere percentage or number. Instead, we began to talk about how we could operate on the smallest administrative budget so that the most could be given away.

I began to feel free as a pastor … free to bless others and free to be honest with my congregation about what we did with every euro given. Over time I invited everyone and anyone to "follow the money trail" at my church. People could look at every line item and how we spent money and we could explain it without embarrassment.

The blessing of blessing others

I am not currently a pastor of a church. I am a parishioner of a church of 1,200 people—most of them are half my age. The church is led by a group of elders and pastors who try to model a "Blessed to be a blessing" lifestyle. Our church seeks to give away an additional 1 percent each year from its budget. In 2014 the hope is to give away 16 percent of all money that comes in. The church is growing, and income is increasing as well. In real dollar terms my church will have much more money this year to bless people! What a great "problem!"

I had to smile when the senior pastor, Michael, was asked a pointed question at a recent leaders' lunch of key people in the church. "When will we stop adding a percentage each year to bless others?" the person asked. Michael paused for a moment, smiled and said, "Never. Hopefully we will be giving away 80 percent of the income each year!"

Many of us smiled in agreement. The business manager of the church looked a bit perplexed at the moment, but then he also gave a big grin! Most of all, I think Jesus was smiling too.

Brian Newman served as senior pastor of Crossroads International Church of Amsterdam for five years. He also served as an assistant pastor at a church in Geneva and as executive pastor of a church in Denver. He has consulted with a number of churches going through major transition.

Copyright © 2014 by the author or Christianity Today/Leadership Journal.Click here for reprint information on Leadership Journal.

God wants us to be willing to let go of our dreams. Whatever dreams we can't let go of are idols, no matter how "good" they are.