April 21, 1999, Littleton, Colorado - The First Day after “Columbine”

Through falling rain under a dreary evening sky, they came.

They came into the worship center clutching and hanging onto each other.  They hung their soccer t-shirts and other sportswear identifying them as Columbine High School students over the communion rail.  Three young ladies put their high school yearbook on the altar.  Our worship center was filled to overflowing a half hour before the service would start.  Standing room only awaited the later arrivals, and yet they kept coming. 

We sang,

God of grace and God of glory on your people pour your pow’r…

Cure your children’s warring madness, bend our pride to your control…

Save us from our wonton gladness, rich in things and poor in soul…

Grant us wisdom.  Grant us courage for the facing of this hour…

We also sang,

A mighty fortress is our God…

Though hordes of devils fill the land all threatening to devour us…

Were they to take our house, goods, honor child or spouse,

Though life be wrenched away, they cannot win the day…

Where is God?

We spoke about the falling rain as a sign of a God weeping over the senseless slaughter of his innocent children.  After all, God is the first to cry.  We also spoke of the falling rain as a sign of baptismal promises.  Sealed by the Holy Spirit and marked with the cross of Christ forever, the worst thing that could ever happen to us will not be the last thing. 

We spoke of a God who so incarnates with the human predicament that Jesus took a bullet in the school. 

A forgotten detail about the Columbine shootings is that the slain students spent the night on the floor of the high school because of the difficulty of moving bodies in a booby-trapped environment. 

Informed by a theology of the cross, we proclaimed that Jesus also laid there with them. Of course, we also know the outcome of the Jesus story, and the outcome of the Jesus story is also our outcome.  The tomb is empty.  Jesus is risen.  And because Jesus is risen we also will rise, meaning that love and life finally win. 

BC and AC

In the days and weeks following Columbine and as congregations and people of faith worked to heal our community, we became totally convinced that the experience of “Columbine” would so shock us and so move us that we would one day speak of time as BC and AC.  Before Columbine and After Columbine. 

Surely the easily availability and evil use of guns, surely the sights and sounds of children being murdered, families being shattered, and a community in deep mourning would rattle us into being made into a new culture.  Wishful thinking.

Photo: Columbine Memorial Littleton, Colorado

Spiritual Warfare and the Idolatry of the Gun Culture

Put on the whole armor of God, so that you may be able to stand against the wiles of the devil.

For our struggle is not against blood and flesh, but against the rulers, against the authorities,

against the cosmic powers of the present darkness, against the spiritual forces of evil…

-Ephesians 6:11-12

Since that awful day on April 20, 1999, there have been more than 200 school shootings in the United States.  That’s right.  Over 200.  Columbine no longer holds the hideous distinction as the deadliest school massacre in U.S. history.  And schools represent only a piece of the story.

Beyond the schools there was Blacksburg, Aurora, Las Vegas, Orlando, Charleston, Sutherland Springs, and countless more.  Of the 30 deadliest shootings in the US dating back to 1949, 18 have occurred in the last 10 years. Two of the five deadliest took place in just the last 35 days.

We have an entire generation of young people who have grown up in a violent gun culture; some call them the “Columbine Generation.”  Yet the availability of guns, especially weapons for military purpose, goes unabated.

Part of the NRA’s agenda is to be sure that the next generation has its own allegiance to a gun culture.  From 2010 through 2016, the NRA gave $7.3 million to about 500 schools for use in programs that promote the use of firearms. 

The November 8th edition of The Christian Century featured a shocking graph titled “American Exceptionalism.”  It illustrates the United States as a pronounced outlier among other countries in terms of homicides by firearms. 

One is almost six times more likely to be murdered by a firearm in the U.S. than in Canada, eleven times more likely than in Denmark, and twenty-one times more likely than in Australia. 

A Confession for This Day

After Parkland and hearing the rhetoric of the culture – including students calling BS on much of what was being said and the impotent expressions of “thoughts and prayers” – I imagined that we needed a new Lenten Confessions.  After all, Parkland happened on Ash Wednesday (as well as Valentine’s Day). 

Almighty God to whom all hearts are open, all desires known, and from whom no secrets are hid we confess that we are in bondage to a gun culture and cannot free ourselves.

Rather than address the heart of the matter, our idolatry, we deflect the matter by making the issue about mental health or about stronger background checks, or about arming teachers in our schools.

We point fingers at those who failed or should have done something.

We speak of the 2nd Amendment as a God-given right, even to the point of making the right to have almost any kind of weapon a fundamental value of what makes America great.

And those of us who do not believe in the prevalent interpretation of the 2nd Amendment as an anything goes right to have whatever arms one can buy, especially pastors and politicians, we confess our fear to speak our mind.

The pastor fears the wealthy parishioner who disagrees and who will walk out.

The politician fears the NRA. 

Gracious God, have mercy on us.

Assist us to think differently.

Assist us to see what we cannot see, dream what we would not dare dream and to work for an alternative culture in which we beat our assault rifles into ploughshares and our hand guns into pruning hooks and gun violence shall be no more.  Amen.

Stay tuned for more…

In the abiding hope of the empty tomb,

A trait that I value in persons who would be leaders of people and even leaders of leaders is “teachability.”

Great leaders are always seeking to learn from others and have coaches and others who can provide valuable feedback. As one wise person once said, “Feedback is the breakfast of champions.”

Great leaders are always evolving and look to reinvent themselves for the changing landscape and parameters of the context within which they lead and the world around them.

As I still try to process the words spoken in January by the leader of the free world that dismissed people of certain countries, I think of my greatest teachers. They have been the courageous, joyful, hopeful, and tenacious people of Haiti, people who have kept on keeping on and moving forward against the longest of odds.

A few weeks after that awful day of January 12, 2010 when the earth shook in Haiti, killing over 350,000 persons, displacing many times more, and creating over a million new orphans, I was privileged to preside at the funeral of two remarkable young people, Marc Erline and Evenson, students in the Haitian Education and Leadership Program (uhelp.net), an awe-inspiring program that has as its most long standing continuous supporting partner the Haitian Timoun Foundation (htflive.org).

This program invites the very brightest young people in Haiti who have no way to fund a college education and provides for such an education including tuition, housing, food, leadership development and much more.

The hundreds of young men and women who have graduated from this program or are in it now truly represent the very best in terms of leadership and leadership potential.

They have overcome incredible hardships and obstacles – no electricity, miles to the nearest school, inadequate nutrition, and generally only a mother or grandmother as a parent – to not only graduate from high school but to also be ranked number one in their class.

In a country where 85% of all people holding a college degree do not live in Haiti, these young people who are integrated into the H.E.L.P program have a deep desire to take their learning and invest themselves in Haiti, making it better and more just.

On this day of the funeral, the grief in the makeshift worship space under a tarp in the mid-day Port-au-Prince sun filled the air with the sounds of mourning and the shock of what had happened.

Haiti is a cruel place where the best dreams can be smacked down.

Marc Erline and Evenson, both killed in the earthquake, were amazing young people who brought joy, light, and excellence to every group they entered.

The reality on this day was not that an earthquake had taken their lives. Poverty had.

It is the kind of poverty where a country mired in it is exploited by exporters of cement who can sell expired cement to them and get away with it. It is a place where inadequate reinforcing steel can be placed in the substandard concrete because those doing it can get away with it.

Haiti’s buildings, built to withstand hurricanes but using substandard cement block, became instant death traps for those caught inside them.

But these Haitian young men and women devoted little energy to wringing their hands and crying out, “Woe is us.” They got to work, entering devastated buildings and using their learned engineering skills to repair them and the faulty electrical wiring in them. Many joined forces with the emergency medical team at a makeshift hospital deployed by HTF to attend to the injured.

Their spirit is not unlike the women in the Central Plateau of Haiti, who are in the Fonkoze-led and HTF-sponsored Chemen Lavi Miyo program.  CLM is proving that the most despicable and degrading poverty on the planet can be eradicated.

These women and their children have been told that they are nobodies, even sub-human because of their living conditions; yet, they enter the CLM program and have no quit in them. Over an 18-month period under intentional coaching and with moderate material assistance they raise themselves up to be players in the Haiti economy and society.

I once told a group of 100 women who were graduating from the CLM program (and it graduates 98% of those who enter) that they were the most courageous persons I have ever seen.

So, the question of the day is not so much about the rhetoric of our president stemming from a life born with a silver spoon in his mouth but about teachability.

What can we as Americans learn from the Haitians whom I describe?

What can we learn about a sense of community, tenacity, and a never-give-up-hope spirit? What can we learn about their hospitality, where welcoming the stranger and always making room for one more is part of their way of life?

When invited to a wedding thrown by a wealthy man for his daughter and watching how the guests arrived in their fine clothing and took their seats at the banquet table, Jesus once said,

“When you give a luncheon or a dinner, do not invite your friends or your brothers or your relatives or rich neighbors, in case they may invite you in return, and you would be repaid. But when you give a banquet, invite the poor, the crippled, the lame, and the blind. And you will be blessed, because they cannot repay you, for you will be repaid at the resurrection of the righteous” (Luke 14:12-14).

Jesus pointed to something that we who are in solidarity with Haiti know.  Our deep relationships and partnership teach us and transform us.  The relationships are so powerful that we give thanks.  Deep down we know that we need Haiti more than Haiti needs us.

In the abiding hope of the empty tomb,

It is no secret that the church in USAmerica has its challenges.

A colleague of mine in my church body’s headquarters who attends to congregational vitality and development suggests that at least one third of our congregations need to be in “redevelopment,” that is, a process of renewal and transformation driven by exploration of the missional call on the congregation. 

Late last month I sat with one of our church’s most effective directors of evangelical mission and he suggested that maybe only five to seven percent of the pastoral leaders on our roster today have the capacity to redevelop and lead congregations toward missional vitality.  I have heard more times than I can count the assessment, “The church is in a slow downward death spiral.”

I have a different view. 

I would like to suggest that we are living in a paradox.  For sure there is the troubling view.  There are the negative and necrotic outlooks.  Not to pooh-pooh these outlooks, there are countless extraordinarily faithful people who love Jesus and who seem to be unable to reverse the decline in their settings.  They read the reports.  The Pew Research Center has been front and center in reporting the rapid rise of the “NONES,” those who no longer claim any affiliation with a faith community. 

And then there are those clergy meetings that seem to excel in griping and complaining.  As a seminary president I often heard, “I was prepared for a world and a church that does not exist anymore.”  Sadly, I have also heard too often, “I can’t wait until retirement.”  Again, I am not pooh-poohing the extent to which people feel powerless and the pain of leaders who have experienced the very fragmentation of the congregation they love and serve.  It is a hard time to lead. 

But paradoxically, there is another view, a view to which I subscribe. 

It is real in that it is acutely aware of the decline and struggles of the church and its congregations, sees the same reports, and hears the same laments.  Yet it is hopeful.  I subscribe to this hopeful posture as an adventurist, meaning that I don’t have some magic potion of sure-fire strategy to transform the current situation.  But as an adventurist I am along for the ride and experience, doing what I can where I can, and trusting in the essential DNA of the church’s witness.

We have a God whose history and presence suggests that God is making all things new.  Our biblical narrative consistently lifts up the abiding faithfulness of God, even under the most desperate situations.  After all our story is grounded in a rejected, humiliated, and capitally executed Jesus whom God raised from the dead.

I am hopeful because the tomb discovered on the first Easter morning is empty.  I am hopeful because the primal cry of the church and still the essential proclamation of our witness is not, “Jesus was risen,” but rather, “Jesus IS risen,” right here, right now.  

Whether we are telling the story of God creating from chaos and nothingness to a world of intricate and complex wonder and beauty, life and purpose, whether we are telling the story of God delivering the children of Israel out of slavery and into a Promised Land, or whether we are talking about a dead Jew whose name is Jesus whom God raised from the dead, God does God’s best work when we would think that we are out of options.  And the future is already secure.

In the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus, God has already overcome everything that would cheapen us, fragment us, or crush us.  As author and pastor Rob Bell likes to repeat, “Love and life always win in the end.” 

This is a great time to be the church.

I am not going to resort to hyperbole and suggest that this is the most trying time ever for the church’s witness to be heard and experienced.  Today does not compare to the persecution of the infant church under Emperor Domitian, or to the 100 Years War, or to World War I or World War II.  But it is a time of angst and a time when the church’s hopeful message grounded in a real story of a suffering and yet risen God needs to be heard.

The issues that would cause us to be afraid are plentiful – threats of nuclear conflict, divisiveness over immigration, hate and racism becoming more overt, being in bondage to a gun culture and being unable to free ourselves and to make our children’s schools safe, the widening gap between the rich and the poor, and the ecological future of our planet.  As the church, we name the realities for what they are and point to an alternative way in the risen Christ.   

My hopefulness is not just grounded in our essential gospel claim as the church, “This Jesus whom you crucified, God has raised from the dead, and we are witnesses.” 

It is also based on experience. 

Despite all the negativity and necrotic reports, there are congregations who are thriving.  They come in all sizes and in all locations.  The view that only those congregations with great locations and attractive facilities with lots of enticing programs can thrive is a myth.  There are congregations in lousy facilities, on back streets and who have decided that programmatic focus is a bad idea and yet are thriving and profoundly impacting peoples’ lives, their communities, and the world.

What distinguishes these thriving congregations from the others?  That is a bigger question that this one blog can answer, but it starts by asking the right questions.  Too many congregations in decline are asking the wrong questions, questions motivated by a desire to survive:  How can we get more members?  How can we get our youth involved?  How can we get people to give more?  How can we stop from dying?    

The right questions start with God questions.

What is God’s call on this congregation?

What has God called us to be and to do?

What is the ache in God’s heart to which God is calling us to share and align?

The questions are plentiful, and those who prayerfully discern them discover that this indeed is a great time to be the church.

In the abiding hope of the empty tomb,