A letter to the Class of 2013

April 24, 2013

Dear Ashley,

            I was so happy that you asked me to write you a letter for your high school graduation! Even though we are separated by many years, in some ways, we still have the same outlook on life.

            What do I mean by that?

            Well, let's start by saying that we both love New York. And we both know what that means. It means that we both sense that there is so much more to life than most people around us realize. And that can make us frustrated. It makes us frustrated because we demand the best from ourselves and also the best from those around us. If we're around people who don't bring their A-game, then we start to slack off ourselves. And then we stop trying hard. (Am I right?) And if we stop trying, then we know that we are not living up to our potential. So that is why we both want to be in New York. Because we know that this city will never let us off the hook until we have given life the best we have to give. If our best is still not good enough to make life's A-list, well then, New York will respect us for trying -- and we'll be so much better than those who didn't try. (You know it, girl.)

            The next thing we share is that you have dreams that no one gets. You may not even be able to speak them to yourself yet; in fact, I'm sure you can't. At 18, no girl can. Sure, there are a couple of thoughts, sentences, phrases, words that come to your mind. But your dreams are still gelling. You've got dreams and that's awesome because a lot of people never look up from the muck long enough to dream. The other evening I was walking home along Central Park South and the moon was coming up over a skyscraper. I took a picture of the moon. How many thousands of people were around me right then and there at that moment? How many stopped to look up at the moon at dusk? A handful? Five? Ten? Maybe just me? That's what dreams are like. It's you, standing alone, but surrounded by thousands of people, who can't see what you see. It's you wondering what the hell you're looking at; wondering if anyone else sees it too; wondering if you even understand what you're seeing.

            To that last point, I can pretty much assure you that you have no freakin' idea what your dreams mean. You're 18 and you're going to spend the next 18 years getting your bearings. But don't be afraid of that. The joys that are going to come -- they are real joys. The hurt that's going to come -- it's going to hurt like hell. The day will come when you will wonder why you were born. And that's when you'll remember the moon. The moon rising over Central Park South. And you'll know. You'll know that moon was meant for you. It was your moon.

            So don't give up on your moon. Don't give up on your clear, blue New York sky at dusk. You, and thousands of girls like you, will come to this city, or other cities and towns all across America to start your lives, to follow your dreams, to find your love, to offer the very best that you've got to give. Never, never hold back when it comes to giving life your best. It's all you've got, Ashley. It's all you've got.

            I wish you all of the wonderful joys life has to offer.

                                                                       

Your friend,

                                                                                    Jake

            

Church Marketing for a Digital Age

Church Marketing for a Digital Age

"Ellie Takes the Pulpit!"

I just finished presenting "Church Marketing in a Digital Age" at the 2013 Episcopal Communicators Conference, April 3-5, in San Diego, California.

In both workshops I opened with my homage to American Girl meets the ordained ministry, Ellie Takes the Pulpit! Ellie, a young minister, faces declining attendance and must do something quick before the bishop closes her church for good!

Click on the link below and help Ellie save her church by learning:

• The six elements all good stories have in common
• Why churches don't tell their story -- or worse -- tell the wrong story
• The simple trick that 99% of Episcopal churches can use to reboot their storytelling
• Why digital and social media is not a silver bullet
• The five things you must do to market your church effectively

Click here to view or download "Church Marketing in a Digital Age."

Update: here's a link to the white paper, "Marketing Your Parish: Advertising Best Practices for Effective Evangelism" which is referenced in the presentation.

A Beat Sheet for The Shepherd of Hermas

I recently read the forgotten Christian classic, The Shepherd of Hermas.

According to Holmes, "The Shepherd of Hermas is one of the more enigmatic documents to have survived from the postapostolic period ... and stands as an important witness to the state of Christianity in Rome in the early to mid-second century."[1]

I have also been reading Blake Synder's Save the Cat! series on screenwriting in which he develops important concepts in story structure such as the pitch, the logline and his 15-point "BS2" beat sheet.

Blake writes, "All stories are about transformation and that includes the death of old ideas."[2] The Shepherd of Hermas is no exception. Hermas is about the death of an early Christian idea -- the idea that Jesus would return to earth again very soon.

Hermas replaces this idea with a new teaching, a teaching that says the baptized may sin once -- and only once -- after baptism. If they repent of this one sin, they may still be saved.

That idea was eventually discarded and replaced with the medieval system of confession, penance and purgatory, which, in turn, was discarded by the reformers of the church in the 16th century.

Over time, the church became more sophisticated and systematic about changing its mind.

Hermas reads like a Marvel comic book. Lusty Hermas sees his mistress bathing in the Tiber and desires her. For his sin he is given a task. He must deliver a message to the church. If he fails, the church is doomed. If he succeeds, he and the church will be saved. But a hideous beast and his own lack of faith block his path. In the end, through courage and with the help of an angel named Thegri (who is kind of a beast master) Hermas prevails.

But this mode of theology by storytelling was quickly replaced by council, creed and the professional theologian.

I don't know about you, but I kind of like theological storytelling -- take the reimagined Battlestar Galactica for instance.

As an exercise, I decided to apply Blake Synder's methods to Hermas and reverse-engineer his 15-point beat sheet. The narrative itself is clunky by today's storytelling standards, but all the beats are there; suggesting that while there is no formula for good storytelling, there is a formula for a good story structure.

You can read my Shepherd of Hermas beat sheet here.

---

[1] Michael W. Holmes, The Apostolic Fathers, (Grand Rapids, Mich: Baker Academic, 2007), 442.

[2] Blake Synder, Save the Cat! Strikes Back, (Save the Cat! Press), 19.

Go Into Hiding

Homily for Tuesday in Holy Week

"Go Into Hiding"

By The Rev. Jake Dell

I wanted to read all of the readings today.

In Isaiah, God elects to make the messiah not just a leader for the chosen people, but a light to the Gentiles.

He says:

"It is too small a thing for you to be my servant
    to restore the tribes of Jacob
    and bring back those of Israel I have kept.
I will also make you a light for the Gentiles,
    that my salvation may reach to the ends of the earth."

Paul then claims this prophetic promise and applies it to Jesus: "but we preach Christ crucified ... to those whom God has called, both Jews and Greeks." Yet even Paul admits that the whole way salvation unfolds is "foolishness" -- albeit God's foolishness.

Finally, in John's Gospel, we get to spend a rather poignant moment with Jesus as he prepares for his own death. His soul is troubled and even he starts to think the Father's plan is foolish especially in so far as it seems to require his own death. At the end of it, Jesus does something quite human, he goes and hides from his disciples and followers.

I wonder if he was even trying to hide from God in that moment. I imagine he was.

Hiding is a natural thing to do when you are ashamed; when you've been made into a fool. When, because of God's foolishness, you find yourself part of an outlandish plan to "restore the tribes of Jacob" or to be a "light to the Gentiles."

Holy Week is a good week for hiding. In fact, that's what I suspect we'll all find ourselves doing sometime around the third cock-crow; hiding and denying that we even know Jesus.

So my word for you on Holy Tuesday is this: go into hiding. Enter into it knowing that Jesus is in hiding too.

Wait with him there.

Wait with him in hiding for as long as you need to.

Preached at the Chapel of Christ the Lord

815 Second Avenue

New York, New York 10017

March 26, 2013

No God At All

Homily on the Feast of G. A. Studdert Kennedy, Priest, d. 1929

"No God At All"

By The Rev. Jake Dell

Humanist philosophy professor, A.C. Grayling, argues in his new book The God Argument (due out in May 2013) for the end of religion.

As one of the leaders of the "New Atheist" movement, Grayling makes three points:

1. While offering many benefits, religion causes more harm than good.
2. Arguments that explain things about the world that rely on God are unreasonable at best, silly and superstitious at worst.
3. For the good of society, faith and religion must be confined entirely to the private lives of individual believers.

I must say, there is something to be said for the atheist argument.

The amount of violence done in the name of religion is astonishing.

Furthermore, I am not aware of any scientific theories that either require or include God in their proofs. In other words, no argument for an explanation of natural phenomena is improved by including God in the theory.

Some argue that God explains the things we can't explain. But the problem with that argument is that the more we can explain -- the bigger our knowledge of the universe grows -- the smaller God gets.

Better to leave God out of it until he disappears entirely, the atheists say.

And that is the great atheist hope -- if you can call it that -- that God will disappear into the private lives the individuals who still believe in him.

You know, if I believed that human beings were entirely rational, I'd probably be an atheist.

The thing is ... I know we're not.

There is a madness to our race that only God can comprehend.

This madness is not part of our fallen nature (far from it) but rather a true reflection of the one in whose image we are made.

Today we remember G.A. Studdert Kennedy, a priest and chaplain in the British Army during World War I.

Kennedy wrote poetry both for and about the men he served as a chaplain. A stanza from one of his poems struck me today, and gave me the answer I needed to counter the atheist argument -- at least for the moment.

Writing about the soldiers gone off to die Kennedy says, "Of their travail and torture, Christ's fools, / Atoning my sins with their blood, / Who grinned in their agony sharing / The glorious madness of God." (From "Wolfbine Willy", emphasis added.)

The glorious madness of God.

Now does casting God as a divine lunatic help our rebuttal? Probably not. But I'd rather keep company with a God who has been where I've been, felt what I've felt, and loved with abandon those I've loved with abandon than a God who knows none of these things.

That would be no God at all.

Preached at the Chapel of Christ the Lord

The Episcopal Church Center

815 Second Avenue

New York, New York 10017

March 8, 2013

Good Church Grammar

Homily on the Feast of Cyril and Methodius, Missionaries to the Slavs, d. 869, 885

"Good Church Grammar"

By The Rev. Jake Dell

Saints Cyril and Methodius are remembered chiefly for their struggle to bring the Gospel to the Slavs.

There they encountered two problems. The first was that the native tongue of the Slavs, Glagolitic, had no alphabet. The second was the prejudice of fellow Christians, specifically the German clergy, who opposed Cyril and Methodius's efforts to translate the liturgy into Slavonic.

They solved the first problem by creating the Cyrillic alphabet and they solved the second by appealing to the Pope in Rome against the German bishops.

From this we see that product innovation is nothing new for church, nor is taking your cause to another bishop if your local one doesn't give you what you want.

But it is not their talent for translation or their political acumen that interests me most about Cyril and Methodius.

Instead what interests me is what their story tells us about ourselves today -- specifically what it shows us about how we use language.

We make a big deal about language and we always have.

Perhaps the most accepted, wide-spread, still-fashionable and automatic prejudice we indulge in today is found in the fault-lines of our speech.

How we talk identifies us and sets us apart perhaps more than our skin color, gender or how we dress.

We readily judge, look down upon or show deference to people from the moment they open their mouths. A syllable, an accent, or usage immediately suggest family or region of origin, level of education, competence, sophistication, trustworthiness, intelligence and a host of other things.

We correct our children -- often with surprising venom -- for speaking a certain way. Candidates are dismissed sight unseen during phone interviews. In short, our linguistic prejudices are as fierce as our racial and gender prejudices were a generation ago.

Perhaps they've simply morphed and not gone away at all.

It wasn't always this way. There was a time when all men and women spoke the same language. But (the Bible tells us) God scattered the nations and confused our languages so that we could no longer work together. So that we would come to despise each other for the way we spoke our words.

Whether it's fair to blame God for our present state of affairs I won't say, but I will say that it is the mission of the church to fix it -- not by building a new Tower of Babel -- but by building a family.

Now the irony here is that the Tower of Babel was probably going to be a wonderful thing. I am sure its architecture was soaring. I am sure it would have inspired awe. I am sure its iconography and symbolism would have communicated any number of things about God and man and the respective place of each.

Kings here, slaves there. Women over there. Everyone in his place and a place for everyone.

It would have had a grammar. It would have spoken a language. It would have been flawless. And above all, it would have made sense.

A family, on the other hand, can often be a mess. Husbands and wives betray and sometimes abandon each other. Children can disappoint as often as they delight.

The church is built on the family model. This means we belong to each other and to God -- not that we belong in our place.

If a mess is the price we have to pay for living under the Fatherhood of God and with Jesus Christ as our brother, then I am willing to accept a mess.

I pray for the grace to do so gladly and with good cheer.

Preached at the Chapel of Christ the Lord

The Episcopal Church Center

815 Second Avenue

New York, New York 10017

February 14, 2013