Occasio

AIDS, Africa and U2: "I Am A Witness, What Can I Do?"

Just a quick note to let folks know that I and some students are sponsoring a ONE Campaign on World AIDS Day, December 1. This Friday in College Hour (chapel) at Fresno Pacific University we will be giving a presentation entitled, “AIDS, Africa and U2: I Am A Witness, What Can I Do?” (See the editorial by Bono that I'm referencing here.)

Our time will include:

• A video presentation of Bono’s speech at the National Prayer Breakfast
• A brief examination of Luke 3:7-14 (“What should we do?”)
• A discussion of the church’s neglect of the AIDS issue
• A clip from the Vertigo concert (“the journey of equality moves on”)
• A silent response
• A corporate liturgical prayer

Immediately following the chapel students from my class, Theology, Culture and U2, will be handing out literature and taking sign ups for the ONE Campaign (complete with ONE wristbands).

If you are in the area, feel free to join us. If you cannot make it, please consider signing the ONE Declaration below in honor of World AIDS Day.

I’ll be giving a similar presentation at the M.B. Biblical Seminary on Wednesday, December 6, 11:45-12:30. You are welcome to join this chapel as well.

Address:
Fresno Pacific University
1717 S. Chestnut
Fresno, CA  93702
Presentation will be in the Butler Church Sanctuary

Happy Thanksgiving

I'm thinking about Psalm 116 today. It's a song of thanksgiving ascribed to King Hezekiah of ancient Judah who was given fifteen extra years of life by God.

Psalm 116 (NLT)

12 What can I offer the Lord
      for all he has done for me?
13 I will lift up the cup of salvation
      and praise the Lord’s name for saving me.
14 I will keep my promises to the Lord
      in the presence of all his people.

It's a wonderful question that really helps me to keep focused: What can I offer the Lord for all he has done for me? The Message paraphrases: What can I give back to God for the blessings he's poured out on me?

What do I have to give in the end? At the very least, my thanks....

Listen to Bono sing about it - from "Bad" to Psalm 6 to Psalm 116 to "Streets."

Selected lyrics:

I'm wide awake
Wide awake
Wide awake
I'm not sleeping

I'm not sleeping

How long, sing this song
How long to sing this song
How long... (to sing this song)
(How long to - )

( - sing this song)
(How long to sing this song)

(How long...)
(Oh)

What can I give back to God
For the blessings he poured out on me
What can I give back to God
For the blessings he poured out on me

I'll lift high the cup of salvation
That is a toast to God
For to fulfill the promise I made to Him
From the heart

I want to run, I want to hide
I wanna tear down the walls, that hold me tonight
I want to reach out, and touch the flame
Where the streets have no name

Take the Plastic Christ out of Christmas

This is too good to pass up commenting on. Toys for Tots has rejected a donation of 4,000 Jesus dolls. It's all over the news feeds today (Boston Herald, CNN). The Jesus doll retails for $20 and recites six different verses, bringing the good news to any child within hearing. See the doll for yourself in this video.

The charges are already flying. Robert Marley of the Coalition to Save Christmas in Massachusetts says, “This is just more proof that there’s a war on Christmas and Christianity in this country.” Obviously it's a conspiracy.

Bill Grein of Toys for Tots says they don't want to risk offending Jewish or Muslim families who might receive the doll. That makes sense.

This morning in class my students noticed immediately that this Jesus is very white and seems to be blue-eyed. Very astute.

Regardless of whether Jews and Muslims are offended, I can't understand why Christians aren't. This doesn't have anything to do with the Christ I want to keep in Christmas. This is just another plastic manifestation of a plastic faith passed off as a witnessing strategy.

 

Does anyone else think this looks like Val Kilmer?

Update: it appears that Toys for Tots is now going to accept the Jesus dolls saying the "issue has been resolved." My guess is that they'll hand them off to a Christian agency. Here's the article.

I still think this Jesus looks like Val Kilmer.

 

The Blue Man Group: Zoo TV Revisited?

Last week the Blue Man Group came to town and Tracy got us tickets for the sixth row (officially the “wet seats” though we didn’t feel anything). What follows is a few comments about the “How To Be a Megastar 2.0” show, some fairly obvious connections to U2 (specifically the Zoo TV tour), interspersed with pics from the evening.

Tracy and Tim

The show began with various messages being scrolled across multiple screens, the now famous video of the EepyBird.com guys blowing up Diet Coke with Mentos tablets (they have a new video!) and Tracy Bonham giving a decent, somewhat artsy set of solo tunes complete with delays, effects and loops on her guitar and violin (The Edge would be proud of her signal processing).

Zoo TV comparison #1: The whole pre-show set the stage for an evening of over-stimulating media-driven messages centered around loss of identity, isolation and individualism, and confused humanity. The overall difference between Zoo and Megastar was that U2 tended toward very cerebral themes veiled in irony, incongruous images and contradictory messages. The Blue Man team worked with lighter more popular metaphors, though they still asked some fairly introspective questions. Oh yeah, another difference was that U2 was doing this in the early 90s – way ahead of their time!

The stage curtain

Text and image driven

There were really two themes running through the evening. They seemed to intersect at times through music and images in an entertaining way. The first theme: The Blue Man trio downloaded a manual which told them how to become rock superstars. Of course they had the audience participate in all the exercises. The fun was in seeing these emotionless childlike subjects interpret “rock concert movements” such as the “head bob” and the “one armed fist pump.” Great fun and eerily true to life! The second theme: A plethora of images and lyrics focusing on generic people inhabiting featureless buildings isolated by cubicles of loneliness and individualism. The concert became a journey in which these computer-generated people, often seen in welder’s masks, progressively made their way up to the metaphorical “roof.”

Zoo TV comparison #2: While there wasn’t anything nearly as diabolical as The Fly or MacPhisto, the characters on the screens were dark and hollow animations that most of us could relate to. The comparison to Jungian “shadows” was easy to make.

Downloading instructions

People in windows staring

Throughout the show the audience was immersed in a fully participatory experience. Tracy, my wife, kept saying how much she loved it because it was so “over-stimulating.” One of the most innovative, if sometimes annoying, features of the show was the use of interactive texting. A pre-show message gave instructions for “Mobkastr,” a system that allowed audience members to receive a stream of text messages on their cell phones during the show, adding another layer of story to the evening. I received and replied to about fifteen messages. People all around me were doing the same.

Zoo TV comparison #3: Whether it was to the president, Sarajevo, a pizza joint, or a cab company, MacPhisto/Mirrorball Man made good use of the phone. And in what had to be pinched from the Vertigo tour, we were instructed via text message to wave our phones around like cigarette lighters more than once. The arena was “lit up like a Christmas tree.”

The Blue Man team managed to work in their normal set of routines: pounding on sets of PVC pipe (actually very good tones), flailing electronic whips, wearing TV sets, tossing marshmallows, and banging on metal drums laden with paint. There were a couple of other notable moments. One involved the heavy satire of a mirror clad guitar player coming out for a weighty lead. Another was when the blue boys entered the audience with a micro camera and projected close-ups of people on giant screens, ending with the inside of a man’s mouth.

Sound familiar? Zoo TV comparison #4 & #5: Mirrorball Man struttin’ his stuff and The Fly’s handy video cam work (again, way ahead of their time).

Testing the PVC

Guitarist wearing mirrors

A marginally comical moment in the evening was a video spoof of our favorite front man by “Mono” and “The Side.” This bit included a humanitarian pitch for the poor old “box TV sets” which are being replaced by plasmas and flat screens. Mildly funny, you can see a low res copy captured with my digital camera here.

Zoo TV comparison #6: The Blue Man team knew they had to have a benevolent cause even if it was a lampoon of the group that can’t have a concert without one (though I admit it is less obvious on the Zoo tour than others, especially Vertigo).

Finally, the climax of the show came in a cover of Donna Summer’s “I Feel Love” which again engaged nearly all of the senses. On the main screen, the anonymous people were finding their way to the roofs of their buildings, ultimately finding hope and love among others who had also completed their solo journeys out of individualism and isolation. On the stage, Tracy Bonham sang and wore a stunning dress, itself a technical wonder, pulsing with rainbow colors in sync to the rainbow people on the roof tops and the kaleidoscope of colors on countless TV monitors and kiosks. It was a celebration akin to “City of Blinding Lights” complete with streamers.

Zoo TV comparison #7: Well, I guess this is more of a contrast than a comparison. Whereas the Blue Man show ended quite spectacularly with “I Feel Love” (and everybody really seemed to feel it!), the Zoo TV tour (from Sydney) concluded with a tired devilish character in mask singing “Love is Blindness,” screens full of b&w static, illegible words and nondescript images. And then the odd, almost parabolic twist: Bono resurfaces as worship leader for a corporate chorus of “Can’t Help Falling In Love.” Odd, but effective; maybe not so different than “How To Be a Megastar” after all.

Oh, one last thought. The concert remained interactive even after coming home. Audience members were asked to upload concert pics. You can see the Fresno show here, including a few of my shots.

I'm sure other comparisons could be made between U2 and Blue Man Group. Please leave comments with your own observations.

The Ted Haggard Scandal: Some Implications for the Church

I have followed the Ted Haggard scandal closely since it broke on Thursday, November 2, but have been waiting to comment until some distance and perspective could be gained. As was predictable, we now have confirmation from the New Life Church board that “without a doubt that he has committed sexually immoral conduct,” as well as Haggard’s own (partial) confession.

As a faculty member in Contemporary Christian Ministries I felt it was appropriate to spend several class sessions considering the many facets of this story. I could write at length on this case but let me suffice with three conclusions from my discussions with college students in ministry classes.

First, the issue of church leadership. Haggard built a church of 14,000 members over the last 20 years. This is yet another case of a church built by a man. The megachurch necessitates a hierarchical structure in which the leader operates as the CEO, often called the Senior or Executive Pastor. Furthermore, as president of the National Association of Evangelicals he was the closest thing to a pope that the evangelical church has. Why do we keep creating such grand systems of status and prestige, constantly placing pastors on pedestals? Haggard’s demise is part of a systemic problem within the leadership structures of the North American evangelical church. We continue to elevate Christian leaders to nearly divine status, allowing them no room for failure, doubt or humanity. “Whoever wishes to become great among you must be your servant” has simply become figurative language.

Second, as a church we do not know how to deal with sin in community. What happened to Haggard is predictable. He was caught, he confessed, he has now been banished from the community. The pattern is routine. We send those who have fallen away for discipline and treatment with the hope of “curing” them. We believe that sin is an individual problem to be solved “over there.” Haggard is now under the care of a group of men from another church in another state who will help “fix” him, but he knows he and his wife (and children?) will never fellowship with the New Life Church congregation again. Wouldn’t it be better to confess our sins together, admit our brokenness, bear each other’s burdens and restore one another with gentleness? It certainly would be harder.

Finally, the evangelical church will continue to ignore the more problematic issue at stake: homosexuality. Question: where is a homosexual least likely to go if he/she wants to know something about God? Answer: the church. My guess is that Haggard’s church will do what most churches do in this situation – they will focus all of their attention on Haggard (and possibly ways they can prevent other leaders from participating in such elaborate deceptions) and will not attempt to address the issue of homosexuality in the church. The topic of conversation will quickly move to that of “accountability” (see the Fresno Bee Faith and Values section from Saturday, November 11 as an example) and then to selection of a new "lead" pastor, thus deflecting the real issue. Any kind of discussion about sexuality is taboo in most of our churches. Recently one of my students told the class that her youth pastor had to arrange two two-hour parents meetings just so they could talk about heterosexuality in the youth group! Most youth leaders will never make it this far, and even fewer will address the issue of homosexuality, yet all of us know someone who is homosexual. I have challenged the undergraduate ministry students in my classes: “Your generation must begin to seriously discuss this issue in the church and it can’t be as trite as saying, ‘homosexuality is wrong.’” (Just today the 1.2-million-member Baptist State Convention of North Carolina voted to ban any church in the conference that endorses homosexual behavior.)

I hope it is clear from my comments above that the emphasis of my concern is not on Ted Haggard but on the system that Haggard was leading in. I don’t mean to dismiss the severity of his sin, but I do want the rest of us to wrestle with the larger issues: issues that will only press harder and harder upon the church in the coming decade.

Coming Soon...

I've been sick and away from my blog for a while - sorry to those who have been stopping by in my absence. Coming soon... a comment on the Ted Haggard scandal, a reflection on the Blue Man Group show I went to, an update on my Theology, Culture and U2 course. Stay tuned.