The Problem with the Church is ______.

I swear, someone must have declared 2013 to be the year where people would use their blogs to solve the “problems” of the church.¹

I can’t tell you how many posts I’ve read this year which purport to explain what is wrong with the church or why certain people are leaving it. Many of these blog posts have come from within the fellowship of Churches of Christ (a relatively small group of people), but that fact has not prevented the analyses from being all over the place.

Depending on whose blog you’re reading, the main problem with Churches of Christ is that we are too left-brained—we are out of touch with our emotions and therefore unable to relate to our culture. Or, if you read someone else, the problem with the church is that we aren’t catering to the millennial generation (people who are roughly my age, give or take a few years). We aren’t valuing their perspectives and ideas, so they are leaving. Or, if you stumble upon a third blog, you’ll hear that people are leaving (especially preachers and ministers) because our practices in the area of church music, the role of women in the church, and leadership, are unacceptable and thus, driving them away.

After a while, reading these sorts of posts tends to frustrate me. Not because the church is problem-free (it isn’t), but because over and over again, the tone in the posts is that the author has discovered the problem in the church and is now proposing the solution. Of course, if they really had discovered the problem, you would expect there to be a little more overlap in the different posts rather than so much disparity.

Also, these posts tend to frustrate me because they are usually not based on real research, but rather on one person’s observations. I don’t mean to discount the relevance or importance of a person’s experience, but I do think we should be careful about making broad generalizations about an entire fellowship of churches based on one person’s (inherently limited) point of view.

Having vented these frustrations, I want to end this on a positive note by highlighting a couple of genuinely good things that I think posts like these indicate:

(1) People care about the church. If people didn’t care, they wouldn’t spend time and energy identifying problems and thinking up suggestions on how to fix things. Even if I disagree with some of the suggested problems or proposed solutions, I can still appreciate the authors’ intentions and the concern for the church which lies beneath them.

The alternative to this is people not caring, which is never a good thing. Apathy never solves anything, whether about politics, a football team, a business, or in the church. Generally speaking, even with people I disagree with, I can find some common ground  with people who are passionate about the church. On the other hand, there’s no point in even trying to work with people who don’t care.

(2) The Restoration spirit is alive and well, at least in one sense. People who work and worship in Churches of Christ will know this already, but for others who might be reading, Churches of Christ, while desiring to follow the teachings of the New Testament and emulate the church of that time, also have direct historical and theological roots in the American Restoration Movement of the 1800s. This movement was an attempt to unify people of different denominations by cutting away the manmade traditions and creeds which had accumulated over time in an attempt to “restore” the church of the New Testament.

That movement was only made possible by the fact that people were willing to take a hard look at church practices of the day, identify problems, and go about trying to fix them. Clearly, we still have men and women today who care enough about the church to do the same (I added the qualifier “at least in one sense” at the end, because while many of these folks are quick to point out problems in the church, they are not turning to the model of the New Testament church as the solution…but that’s a post for another day).

Restoration is an ongoing process. We should always be willing to examine what we do and make sure we’re not confusing traditional practices with biblical ones. And for those things which are just traditions, we should be willing to consider changing them if such a change would help us to better reach out to the lost or care for those who are already saved.

1By putting “problems” in quotation marks, I am not suggesting that there aren’t problems in the church. There certainly are, and this spat of bloggers have hit upon some of them. Rather, I am suggesting that not all of the issues proposed as “problems” by these bloggers are, in fact, genuine problems.

The End of Greek

So, as you may have noticed, it has been a rough semester for blogging for me.

I always have to carve time out of my schedule for blogging between the demands of work, grad school, and family, and this semester an even heavier-than-normal school schedule has simply left me with little leftover time.

Having said that, I hope things will improve in the near future, as just this week, I finished one of my classes. That, in and of itself, probably isn’t worthy of a blog post, but this was my last Greek class!

I have enjoyed studying Greek in many ways over the last two and a half years and have learned a lot that will be helpful for me as I continue to study, teach, and preach from the New Testament. At the same time, I must confess that it will be nice to cease my formal study of the language.

Of course, in one sense, my most difficult task with regard to Greek will begin now, which is trying to keep up my Greek skills without being in a class that is forcing me to do so. Those who have studied languages before know how challenging this can be.

Okay, that’s all for now—I need to go study for a Hebrew exam.

Friday Summary Report, June 28

My posting has been nonexistent over the past two weeks, which is unfortunate, but also unavoidable:

• I spent last week at Green Valley Bible Camp. This was my 20th consecutive year at Green Valley (8 as a camper, and now 12 as a counselor), and it is always a special place for me and a spiritual highlight of my summer. We had a good week, although my week was unusual as I spent a large portion of it reading and preparing for a grad school class.
• This week I have been in Memphis at HST taking a class on New Testament Exegesis. As always, I have learned a lot and enjoyed my time here, but it has been difficult. My days generally consist of about 8 hours of class time, followed by study (I took a midterm on Tuesday and will take my final exam in the morning) and research (I have a paper to write for the class and have to take advantage of the library while on campus) in the evenings. Doing this after a week of camp (which is physically exhausting) has left me pretty drained. I am looking forward to finishing up tomorrow.

Next week, I will be on vacation in Florida. I am excited about this, and am hoping to have lots of opportunities to (a) Read books of my own choosing, (b) Get back to blogging, and (c) relax. Have an excellent weekend, and hopefully I’ll have something (relatively) significant to say next week.

Friday Summary Report, June 14

It has been a crazy and hectic week, and the upcoming weeks will be similar!

(1) We have had a busy week with Kinsley. Sunday night we had to take her to the ER because she (apparently) has a peanut allergy. It doesn’t seem fair—my little girl has enough to deal with without being deprived of peanut butter as well! In more positive news, we went to Little Rock Tuesday/Wednesday so she could have another EEG. We received a good report, and so she won’t have to continue to take steroids to fight her seizures (which is a significant blessing—the steroids make her cranky and also cause her to gain weight).

(2) I am officiating a wedding tomorrow (for two awesome people), preaching on Sunday, and also preaching next week at camp, so I have had a lot of lesson prep to do. Also, as it happens, we are kicking off new lesson series in the youth group Bible class this week (both this past Wednesday, and this coming Sunday). Lotta work.

(3) I’m going to camp on Sunday. It will be fun (it always is), but I am not prepared for it in any sense.

(4) The week after camp I have class in Memphis. Between now and then I have a lot of reading to do (at camp! How is this going to work?) and assignments as well. It will be a challenge starting a week of class (which is exhausting) immediately after completing a week of camp (which is exhausting).

(5) The week after class we are headed for vacation with Caroline’s family to Rosemary Beach. I am so looking forward to it—I think I’m going to get to read books of my own choosing!

(6) With the busyness upcoming, I’m betting the blogging will be sporadic. Hopefully not too much though—I miss blogging when I am away from it.

Updated “Writings” Page

The “Writings” link in the navbar above contains a list of my favorite posts from over the years here at The Doc File, as well as longer pieces I have written (usually in the form of research papers). A couple of recent updates to this page:

• I have added some of my top articles (in my own opinion, not necessarily by popularity) from the last year or so.
• I added an older paper I wrote on the Spanish dramatist Jerónimo López Mozo. The paper is in Spanish, and probably not very interesting to the majority of my readers, but it is interesting to me, both as a reminder of work I once did, and a direction in life that I once contemplated (further Spanish study).

Half A Thousand

Today marks a milestone of sorts for The Doc File, as I noticed that I have now amassed 500 blog posts. I started this blog back in the summer of 2006, right before I got married and got into “real” youth ministry (i.e., youth ministry other than a summer internship). A lot has changed since then!

Looking back on some old posts, it is interesting how similar some things are and how much others have changed:

• I write more about ministry and theology than I used to, and less about sports and other things. Perhaps this is to be expected: when I first started the blog, I didn’t intend to be a long-term minister, and I wasn’t a theology grad student.
• I continue to write long, convoluted sentences which sometimes contain excessive commas and clauses.
• I think I come across as a little more humble and a little less arrogant than I used to. I sure hope so.
• My posts now aren’t as funny as they used to be. That’s too bad—I promise that I am still funny in person!

This blog has been a blessing to my life over the last (almost) seven years, and I want to thank all of those who read and comment. I hope it has been, in some small way, a blessing to you as well. Looking forward to the next 500 posts!

The Doc File: 2012 Blog Review and Plans for 2013

The past year was a significant one for my little blog, primarily because at the beginning of 2012, I began to view it as an outlet for ministry rather than a random hobby and this led to some significant changes.

First, it provided more motivation for me to post regularly. Last year I wrote 103 posts, which is the most I’ve ever done in a year, and was the first time I had made it to 100 since 2008 (for the sake of comparison, I blogged only 35 times in 2011). As I continue to blog as a means to teach and provide encouragement in 2013, I am hopeful to continue with a similar level of output, roughly 8-12 posts per month.

Secondly, it occurred to me that if I wanted people to actually read what I write, I needed to be more proactive about promoting my blog. This was (and continues to be) unnatural for me, as I generally don’t like attention or the idea of self-promotion. But since it’s hard for my writings to do much good if no one reads them, at the beginning of the year I started sharing posts on Facebook and Twitter. This, along with the increase in the frequency of my posts, led to a huge jump in my web traffic. By web traffic, here are the three most popular posts of 2012:

(1) What To Do When Your Hard Drive Crashes. Although I primarily write about theology and ministry, I do occasionally branch into other areas, and early in the year I shared some lessons that I learned when the hard drive on my laptop failed. As computers become more and more a part of our lives, obviously this is a problem that a lot of people have to deal with, so I guess I shouldn’t have been surprised by how much traffic this post got, but I was.

(2) The Fall of Man and the Widespread Devastation of Sin: An Introduction. This post was an introduction to a series on the widespread negative consequences of sin in our world. Regrettably, I got distracted by some things at the end of last year and didn’t finish the series, but I plan on returning to it soon.

(3) Is All Sin The Same In God’s Eyes? I like this post, partially because it was this post in large part that helped me to see the teaching potential of having a blog. It sparked quite a discussion both in the comments of the blog and also on Facebook, and led to me being branded as a “false teacher” for the first time. Exciting stuff.

Looking ahead to 2013, I have tweaked the blog a little bit to make it easier to follow and receive updates. First, over on the sidebar you’ll notice a “Followers” widget, which gives you the option of becoming a follower of the blog and receiving updates that way. This is a feature I haven’t used before, so we’ll see how it works.

Also, you might notice that at the end of each post, there is now an array of buttons where you can share a post on Twitter, Facebook, or Google+ (yeah I know, no one uses Google+), or email it to someone. So by all means, if you read something that you like and think that other people might benefit from it as well, please share it on Facebook or Twitter and spread it around.

And finally, I do tend to share many (but not all) of my posts on social networking sites, so if you haven’t done so already, feel free to add me as a friend on Facebook or follow me on Twitter.

Thanks for reading in 2012. I hope it was worth your time and that you will continue to do so in the new year.

Grad School Update

I haven’t been as active on the blog over the last couple of months as I would like, partially because I have been distracted with concerns for Kinsley, and partially because I was consumed with what has been, to date, my most challenging semester of grad school.

Speaking of grad school, I still tend to get quite a few questions from people asking how much longer my studies will be, so I thought I might as well give an update.

This past fall semester marked the completion of three full years in grad school (I started in the Spring 2010 semester). During that time have I have amassed 36 hours as a part-time student (I also work full-time as a minister), which although enough for a full Master’s degree in several programs, puts me 3/7 of the way through mine (the M.Div. is an 84 hour program).

At my current pace, I have at least four more years of study ahead of me (not counting doctoral work). It’s a long time, but I have largely adjusted to the balance of being a husband/father/minister/student. It is stressful at times to put the necessary time toward my studies and also give everything else the attention it deserves: I have had to hone my time management skills, become better at planning and organizing, and occasionally miss out on some needed sleep. 

It has been challenging and stressful, but it has also been rewarding, and there is no question that my studies, although difficult, have made me a better minister and (I think) a more mature Christian as well.

A Milestone…Of Sorts

Yesterday, The Doc File rolled over 50,000 page views. That seems like a nice thing, but since the statistics aren’t all that reliable, it’s hard to take much meaning from it:

• The Doc File has existed since the summer of 2006, and these statistics only go back to May 2008.
• Google Stats are not considered to be incredibly accurate.
• Of the 50,000 page views, roughly 30,000 of them have come this year alone.
• Google reports no stats to me from September 2008-August 2009 or September 2010-August 2011, so in addition to the nearly two years at the beginning of The Doc File’s run where I have no stats, there are two additional years in the middle where I have no stats.

So, if all of this is largely meaningless, why even mention it? It’s a good question, and I guess the only answer is that I’m one of those guys who gets excited by milestone numbers on the odometer of my car.

Friday Summary Report, August 10

I’ve read several blogs where, at the end of the week, the author will post an assortment of links and/or random thoughts that didn’t really merit their own individual post. After resisting the impulse to do something similar for quite a while, I finally decided to just go ahead and do it.

During a given week, I do a lot of reading (both on the Web and in books), and come upon several things that I would like to share, but I hate to write posts that are just 8 words long. So primarily, these end-of-week summaries will consist of links and quotations that I thought were interesting, but will also include random items that didn’t fit elsewhere. I’m not promising to do this every Friday, but I bet it will happen frequently.

(1) Although this article has been out for a while, I just came across it this week. Basically, a couple of ethicists (apparently it doesn’t take much to be an ethicist these days) have proposed that after-birth abortions (i.e. infanticide) should be permitted on newborns, because a newborn is not a person in the sense of being a “subject of a moral right to life.” This is obviously repulsive, but not surprising, and is really just an extension of the arguments that are already made to justify pre-birth infanticide. At least these people are honest enough to admit that no great change happens in the state of the infant at birth.

(2) Here is a somewhat scary article about a tech guru who had his online identity mercilessly hacked and had his iPhone and laptop wiped clean as a result (losing all the pictures of his infant daughter in the process!). I recommend reading the entire article, but a couple of takeaways: (1) Be very careful about linking online accounts together (using same usernames and/or passwords); (2) Back up all of your computer data on an external hard drive; (3) hackers are jerks.

(3) This week, I successfully finished translating 1 John from Greek (the word successfully is used somewhat loosely here). I do feel some minor sense of accomplishment in doing this, but mostly, I feel a great debt to those who have gone on long ago and translated Scripture from original texts into the vernacular.

(4) As this post remains one of my most-read, most-commented on, and most-disputed from this year, I updated it at the end, to make my intentions in writing it as clear as possible.

(5) Over the last two weeks, I’ve been watching as much of the Olympics as I possibly can. Perhaps I will have a post related to that next week.

A Comment on Comments

Some people may have a problem commenting on posts as I seem to be getting notifications of some comments which are then not appearing.

I don’t edit or block comments unless they are clearly spam, so if you are having any trouble leaving a comment, try again and if you are still having problems, please email me.

Blog Updates

I have left my blog to lie fallow for too long and needed to make a few changes. Last night I finally took the time to do so.

First, I slightly tweaked the header image. I wanted to keep it largely the same, but also update it—I think I hadn’t changed it at all for about three years, so it was time.

Also, after my announcement from last week, I thought I might as well add a link to my Twitter account. For those who are interested in following me, you can now do so by clicking on the Twitter link below the RSS feed on the right hand side of the page.

I also cut out some clutter on my sidebar—specifically, I removed a couple of large images and also a list of the main categories that I post under. I thought the list of categories was unnecessary—you can still access my posts on a given category by either searching for a category in the search bar at the bottom (by typing in say, “Baseball”), or by clicking the link to a category at the bottom of a post. I don’t really think this will be an issue, because I don’t think anyone actually used the category list anyway. I could be wrong though.

I also moved my bloglist from the sidebar to a page of its own called “Links” on the navbar. In the process, I updated the list, adding some new blogs while removing links to other blogs which either no longer exist, or no longer seemed to be updated. If I removed a link to your site and you think I did so in error (“No really, I am going to blog there again some day!”), let me know and I will be happy to add it back. I also added some links to some other sites that I think are cool for one reason or another.

Finally, I also updated the “About” page on the navbar. What I had there before had gotten somewhat out of date. Also, it was written in the third person—originally, I found that to be humorous, but the last time I read it it annoyed me. So, no more third person.

I’m still tinkering with the idea of making some more changes for the future, but that covers what I’ve done for now.

Silence

For a variety of reasons, I’ve taken an unplanned hiatus from blogging for a while (yikes, has it really been over 2 months?!).

Right now is a particularly busy time for me with school and work, so my posting might remain infrequent for a while, but hopefully I’ll now once again be posting from time to time, as I do have several things I’d like to write about.

So, at least on a tentative basis, The Doc File is back.

A New Post! (Sort Of)

I haven’t updated in quite some time, as I feel like I’ve been going non-stop since the beginning of June (if not before). After preparing for and coordinating VBS and taking the youth group to summer camp, I’m now fully immersed in reading roughly 1,500 pages of material for my grad school class which I have to travel to Memphis for on July 12.

This has resulted in me having absolutely no time for blogging (really I probably shouldn’t even be writing this; I’m just taking a break from reading). This inability to find time to blog is unfortunate, because I have several things I’d like to write about. Hopefully some time will open up after my I have class in a couple of weeks.

I Used To Like Summer…

So The Doc File has taken a backseat the last few weeks as I have been swamped with other things including work, travel, and a few computer projects that have eaten up much of the free time that I usually use to blog.

As a youth minister, summer is always a busy time for me, and the “summer grind” seems to start earlier every year. That being said, I am hopeful, maybe unrealistically so, that things will improve in a few days, and then I’ll have a chance to write about some of the things that have been floating around in my head.

The Post I Almost Wrote

I almost, almost wrote a whiny post about how I’ve been super busy lately which has prevented me from blogging as often as I’d like or enjoying life as much as I’d like.

The post likely would have included some complaining about how my laptop broke recently, how I’ve had too many youth group activities scheduled lately and how my teens are getting on my nerves, and how my left eye has been twitching continuously for the last several days and driving me crazy.

It wouldn’t have been a fun post to read, because it would’ve been filled with griping and complaining.

But hopefully, if I wrote such a post, at the end, I would have looked at things from the proper perspective. I would have mentioned something about how fortunate I am to be busy with my job in the current economic climate while a lot of people find themselves without a job at all. I would have talked about how incredibly blessed I am in virtually every way imaginable, and how most of the people in the world would love to have to deal with the things I call “problems.”

Instead, I decided not to write such a post and to get back on track next week. See you then.

A New Look

As you may have noticed, things are looking a bit different around The Doc File today.

I had grown tired of my old blog template and had been wanting to change it for some time, but I finally did something about it last night.

It’s not perfect. I don’t exactly like how the header looks and there are some different things that I plan on tweaking, but overall, I’m pleased. I think this template looks cleaner and, for lack of a better word, more professional than what I had before.

Let me know what you think. But before you do, remember that I spent a long time working on it last night and that I’m very sensitive.

Observation #4

Twitter is stupid. Unless you’re Han Solo, your life probably isn’t so interesting that I need an update on it every 30 minutes or so.

A Minor Update

I’ve been intending to make some changes to my blog for a while now, but I either haven’t had enough time, or I’ve had plenty of time but no internet (like last week during the ice storm).

Anyway, I’m still planning on changing things up, but in the meantime I decided to go ahead and update my blogroll.

So here’s the deal: if you’re linking to The Doc File but I have shamefully neglected to link back to you, let me know and I’ll fix the problem. Or if I’m currently linking to you but you don’t like the way I’ve done it (maybe you’d rather have the blog title listed instead of your own name or something), let me know that as well.

How I Did In 2008

Just over a year ago, at the start of 2008, I did something and made a list of New Year’s resolutions for The Doc File. With 2008 being completed, I guess now is a good time to go back and give the list a glance-over to see how well I did:

1. Blog on a more regular basis. Specifically, I mentioned that I’d like to blog three times a week. That would come out to roughly 150 posts in a year, and last year, I posted 100 times exactly.

Verdict: 2/3 Success. I’ll renew this resolution for 2009.

2. Blog with more balance. With this resolution, I was decrying the tendency I have to get into ruts when I blog and I even suggested dedicating certain days to certain types of posts.

Verdict: Failure, but I’ve also decided it was a stupid resolution. I’ll try to balance out topics as much as possible, but I’m not going to not post something just because it’s on a similar topic to a recent post.

3. When you start a “series,” finish it. Looking back, it seems like I did continue to struggle with some series, but I did finally bring the abortion series to a conclusion, and I was pleased with that.

Verdict: Partial Success. Still room for improvement.

4. Do a better job responding to comments. I think I responded to virtually all of my commenters in 2008, and I think I generally did so in a timely fashion (sometimes comments were sent to my Bulk mail folder, and I didn’t become aware of them at first).

Verdict: Success. I’ll try for more of the same in 2009.

Summary:
Out of four resolutions, it looks like I successfully followed through with about 2 1/2, which comes out to roughly 63%. That’s not so good on a report card, or as a slogan either (“63% Successful Since 2008!”), but I guess I’ll take it.