June 26, 2010 by cpiatt.

WHERE’S THE FAITH ?

New series of books tackles questions, issues that challenge young Christians

CHIEFTAIN PHOTO/JOHN JAQUES Pueblo author Christian Piatt talks about a series of books he is collaborating on with a variety of authors from throughout the country.

BY LORETTA SWORD

Have you ever questioned the believability of the virgin birth of Jesus Christ? Ever wondered why, if Mary conceived as a virgin, the Bible traces Christ’s lineage through Joseph?

Chances are you’ve pondered these questions and many others about the Bible or Jesus, but never discussed them with other Christians — and certainly never in church.

That’s what gave local author/editor Christian Piatt and partner Brandon Gilvin the idea for WTF (Where’s the Faith), a series of books that pose such questions to a wide variety of religious, agnostic, social justice and other leaders and thinkers — some of them well-known in religious and spiritual circles. The books are published by Chalice Press. Gilvin is the associate director of Week of Compassion, an international relief and aid ministry of the national Disciples of Christ organization, based in Kansas City, Mo.

The books are aimed primarily at young adults — a demographic that churches are struggling to hold onto as their congregations dwindle in all age brackets.

The first book in the series, “OH God, Oh GOD, OH GOD! Young Adults Speak Out About Sexuality and Christian Spirituality,” was released earlier this year and provides “honest and open dialogue about the beauty and gift of sexuality while understanding it in a mature way, including the risks and consequences” but without the moral and doctrinal overtones of most Christian books on the topic, Piatt said.

He and Gilvin edited the book, and Piatt contributed an essay about abortion.

Two more books, which address questions that many Christians ponder but rarely explore  in depth or among each other, will be published next year — the first, “Banned Questions about the Bible,” in February and the second, “Banned Questions about Jesus,” in August 2011.

All of the books “take a more emergent-church approach. There’s no focus on denominations or creeds so much as on content and providing a variety of information, including other sources to study, to help people make up their own minds. We’re trying to present multiple perspectives so people can choose for themselves. It’s about seeking your own understanding of various issues through prayerful seeking, and trusting that if you take the first step, God will meet you halfway and help you find the answers you’re seeking,” Piatt said.

“Churches are dying everywhere, and I believe it’s because there’s been a disconnect between the lives of most people and what they hear in church on Sunday.

“These books are intended to break down the taboo of ‘We don’t talk about that in church.’ In a healthy church, there should be no boundaries, no limitations about what is explored. We’re supposed to bring our whole, human selves to the church and to our faith.”

Another book due out this August, “Split Ticket: Independent Faith in a Time of Partisan Politics,” addresses the interconnectedness of faith and politics and explores how Christians can be part of the process without violating their faith or turning their backs on social justice issues and the political process for fear of conflict. Piatt is a contributor as well as co-editor of this volume.

“You People: Faith and Race,” will follow “Split Ticket.” All of the finished books are available through the Chalice Press website or its catalogs, at Amazon.com or through Piatt’s website. Some also are available by special order online from Barnes & Noble and smaller national booksellers, and all are stocked at Cokesbury Christian book stores nationwide. The works in progress will be as well after publication.

Piatt, who founded Pueblo’s Milagro Christian Church six years ago with his wife, Amy, who is pastor there, said the “Oh God” book already has sold more than 1,500 copies — to individuals and to churches that are using them in youth groups and young-adult book-study groups.

“The content is heavy enough that we wouldn’t recommend just throwing these books in a teen’s lap and saying ‘have at it.’ It needs to be navigated with the help of an adult leader,” Piatt said.

Despite brisk sales and many positive reviews in Christian and mainline publications, negative reaction from some conservative Christian groups has surfaced, too, Piatt said, but his response is always the same: “Why is it that sexuality can’t be discussed in the context of faith unless the whole focus is abstinence, which we all know doesn’t work?”

He gets few responses to that question, he said, and doesn’t worry about the criticism because “the people who react that way aren’t the target audience for our books.”

The same critics no doubt will see the “banned questions” books, and “Split Ticket,” as too frank and “not nice,” he predicts.

“But we believe it’s more important to be authentically relevant than it is to be nice. Jesus wasn’t always nice. He challenged the status quo and he didn’t tolerate injustice. He encouraged frank discussion about difficult issues. But some Christians can’t tolerate controversy or confrontation at all, and others only get involved — often in an angry, intolerant way — with all the things they are against.”

Piatt said he and his partner in the WTF series, and authors who contributed responses to questions or essays — despite their widely divergent religious beliefs — “all believe that our responsibility is to get actively involved in these things we’re afraid to talk about” so that younger Christians, especially, will be more inclined to form deeper commitments to their faith and to service than to abandon their church, or religion altogether. They can only do that if they’ve reached their own conclusions rather than having beliefs force-fed to them.

At the end of life, Piatt said, what will matter most is not how many souls someone has “saved” or how many foreign missions were conducted, or how big and beautiful the church is because believers were willing to give cash but not their time.

What Jesus will want to know of every individual, he said, is “What did you do for the poor, for the oppressed, for the imprisoned — for ‘the least among us’?”

Doing nothing, he said, only condones the suffering and injustices that humans inflict upon each other.

“Not getting engaged, not dealing with these issues, is not an option if you consider yourself a person of faith.”

For more information about the WTF series, upcoming books, or past titles by Piatt, go to: www.christianpiatt.com, which also provides links to videos of Piatt and some of the other authors and a link to his blog.

Posted in current events, pueblo, politics, theology, church growth, WTF, books, sex, youth, young adult, faith, Lost Book, Columns, church, culture, church transformation, emerging church, Uncategorized | Print | No Comments »

April 9, 2010 by cpiatt.

Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell…in Church?
By Christian Piatt

Originally published in PULP

Lots of adjectives have been attached to my name in the past, but “provocative” is one that seems to keep sticking. As a writer of mainly theological material, it’s expected that I’ll use certain buzzwords and will avoid some topics that simply should not be talked about in polite company, let alone church.

Sounds like a challenge. I like challenges.

Enter the new book series I’m co-creating and editing for Chalice Press, called “Where’s the Faith?” The acronym by which the series is known is “WTF?,” a brief nod to the provocateur in me. Part of the idea behind this series of books on matters of young adults and faith is to tackle the issues we’re supposedly not allowed to, so of course, the first book out of the gate had to be about sex.

After about eighteen months of planning and hard work, Oh God, Oh God, OH GOD: Young adults speak out about sexuality and Christian Spirituality hit the streets to – at least so far – rave reviews. The common sentiment, at least from those who will actually pick the thing up, is that it’s about time we started talking about things like alternatives to abstinence-only sex education, homosexuality, pornography and other hot-button topics.

For the essay on homosexuality, I was excited to bring on my friend, Shannon, who attended seminary as an openly gay man with my wife, Amy, back in Texas. In his essay, “Growing Up Gay,” he talks in both humorous and heartbreaking terms about what it’s like being a man living in a faith calling, while also being transparent about his sexual orientation.

“I was afraid of being stabbed in the middle of the night,” he writes, recalling his childhood in North Carolina, and “of being kidnapped, of being beaten up by the bully at school, of failing my grade and of missing the rapture. I was most afraid, however, of being different in general and of being gay in particular. I didn’t want to be laughed at and made fun of and called names. Instead, I just wanted to fit in and be like everyone else.”

As one who serves in a local church, I can tell you that working in ministry isn’t exactly the best way to blend in. But he feels led to a life of spiritual service, sexuality aside, and so the long, uphill climb began.

Actually, the phrase “sexuality aside” doesn’t exactly fit the situation, as I learned while watching him struggle through the ordination process. When a seminary student completes his or her graduate school requirements and practical ministry work in our denomination, they may apply to be ordained by a team of other ministers in their region. Our denomination, the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ), varies widely from region to region in policies, given that we have an intentionally weak central governance structure.

But this also means that, while some states or regions will gladly ordain openly gay ministers, others are less affirming, or even tolerant. No surprise that Fort Worth, Texas, fell into the “less affirming” category. Basically, they take the Bill Clinton approach to this issue, which is “don’t ask, don’t tell,” at least during the ordination process. This creates a system that, put simply, asks people seeking a life in ministry to lie or obfuscate to their peers.

Everyone on the ordination committee who knew Shannon knew he was gay, and if you meet him, it’s not exactly hard to figure out. I mean, the guy has a poster of Barbara Streisand in his entryway, for God’s sake. But he was advised to make his sexuality a non-issue as he moved through the process, buying into the game long enough to get his certification, at least.

Easy enough for someone who is straight to say. As a left-handed person in a right-handed world, I notice how very little righties think about being right-handed. But we lefties encounter things every day, from scissors to keyboards and so on, that make real the bias of the world against our nature.

I can only imagine the anger and disappointment Shannon must have felt in being told that something so central to his identity was a “non-issue.” On the contrary, his sexual orientation had everything to do with his ministry. Not that he wanted to start a “gay” church or anything, but it pointed to the very issues of justice and compassion of which he has become an unfortunate object lesson, far too many times.

So he came out to the committee and forced its members to deny him ordination because of his orientation, which they did. Several times in years since, he has considered leaving the ministry, though we encourage him to hang in there. After all, why would the systems ever change if there’s no one on the inside trying to break down the old walls of intolerance?

It’s tragic, though, that his road is so much harder than ours, simply because of who he is. What in the world would Jesus think?

Posted in pulp, pueblo, theology, sex, WTF, books, politics, church transformation, faith, Columns, church, culture, emerging church, Uncategorized | Print | No Comments »

April 7, 2010 by cpiatt.

Posted in young adult, church transformation, 2.0, current events, theology, emerging church, culture, spoken word, faith, church, technology, Uncategorized | Print | No Comments »

April 4, 2010 by cpiatt.

Jesus is standing in front of the temple in Jerusalem
the massive gleaming brick and stone and gold house of God
and he says destroy this temple
and I’ll rebuild it in three days

the people listening to him said how are you going to do that?
it took 46 years to build this temple!
but he wasn’t talking about that temple
he’s talking about himself
he essentially says, listen
I’m going to be killed
that’s where this is headed
because you don’t confront corrupt systems of power
without paying for it
sometimes with your own blood
and so he’s headed to his execution
if you had witnessed this divine life extinguished on a cross
how would you not be overwhelmed with despair?

is the world ultimately a cold, hard, dead place?

does death have the last word?
is it truly, honestly, actually dark
and so whatever light we do see
whatever good we do stumble upon
are those just blips on the radar?
momentary interruptions in an otherwise meaningless existence?
because if that’s the case then despair is the
only reasonable response

it’s easy to be cynical

but Jesus says destroy this temple and I’ll rebuild it
he insists that his execution would not be the end
he’s talking about something new and unexpected
happening after his death
he’s talking about resurrection

resurrection announces that God has not given up on the world
because this world matters
this world that we call home
dirt and blood and sweat and skin and light and water
this world that God is redeeming and restoring and renewing

greed and violence and abuse they are not right
and they cannot last
they belong to death and death does not belong

resurrection says that what we do with our lives matters
in this body
the one that we inhabit right now
every act of compassion matters
every work of art that celebrates the good and the true matters
every fair and honest act of business and trade
every kind word
they all belong and they will all go on in God’s good world
nothing will be forgotten
nothing will be wasted
it all has it’s place

everybody believes something
everybody believes somebody
Jesus invites us to trust resurrection
that every glimmer of good
every hint of hope
every impulse that elevates the soul
is a sign, a taste, a glimpse
of how things actually are
and how things will ultimately be
resurrection affirms this life and the next
as a seamless reality
embraced
graced
and saved by God

there is an unexpected mysterious presence
who meets each of us in our lowest moments
when we have no strength when we have nothing left
and we can’t go on we hear the voice that speaks those
words

destroy this temple and I’ll rebuild it

do you believe this?
that’s the question Jesus asked then
and that’s the question he asks now

Jesus’ friends arrive at his tomb and they’re told
he isn’t here
you didn’t see that coming, did you?
he’s isn’t here
there is nothing to fear
and nothing can ever be the same again
we are living in a world in the midst of rescue
with endless unexpected possibilities

they will take my life and I will die Jesus says
but that will not be the end
and when you find yourself assuming that it’s over
when it’s lost, gone, broken and it could never be
put back together again,
when it’s been destroyed and you swear that it could never
be rebuilt

hold on a minute
because in that moment
things will in fact have just begun

Posted in church transformation, theology, emerging church, church, spoken word, faith, Uncategorized | Print | No Comments »

February 24, 2010 by cpiatt.

Unless you’ve been living under a rock for the last couple of decades, the recent results of a study by the Pew Research Center should come as no real surprise. In fact, at the risk of being self-referential, it confirms much of what my wife and I wrote in our book, MySpace to Sacred Space: God for a New Generation, more than two years ago.The Study arrives at a few key points, which include the facts that younger people are as interested in making space for both God and prayer in their lives as the generations that precede them (in some ways more so), but they increasingly don’t see the church as the necessary mediator for that experience.

There are tons of reasons for this, including general mistrust of and disaffection with institutions as a whole. Since Vietnam and Watergate, our perceptions of institutions have been in precipitous decline; add to that daily news stories of corporate malfeasance and millions of layoffs and you have a villain in the making.

And let’s not revisit the scores of religious figureheads who have succumbed to temptation and corruption, and the institutions that too often have tried to justify, minimize or even cover up the problems. On top of all of this, our understanding of community has become more disparate and virtualized with the advent of social networking. Though some may see this as a poor substitute for “real” community, at least it’s something.

After all, where were all these people when front porches were replaced by attached garages? Or when nuclear families gave way to professional upward mobility? Or when more than half of our parents got divorced and moved hundreds or thousands of miles apart? to blame social networking for the dissolution of physical community is to focus on the finger, ignoring the thing it’s pointing to.

But I digress…

A changing/evolving sense of community aside, there are some other interesting differences between younger people today and those older than them, summed up well by this paragraph in the Pew Study:

In their social and political views, young adults are clearly more accepting than older Americans of homosexuality, more inclined to see evolution as the best explanation of human life and less prone to see Hollywood as threatening their moral values. At the same time, Millennials are no less convinced than their elders that there are absolute standards of right and wrong. And they are slightly more supportive than their elders of government efforts to protect morality, as well as somewhat more comfortable with involvement in politics by churches and other houses of worship.

Though some may read these more “progressive” social values as an indicator of younger people straying from the moral values imparted by traditional church, we in mainline and more moderate to progressive independent congregations should see this as a tremendous opportunity for relevance. But be careful not to read this as an opportunity to pack your pews with youth and young adults. It’s more about a chance to connect over shared values of social justice and change, and in so much as we can be an agent or facilitator of that change younger people seek in their communities, they may find a great ally in the church.

But they still may never come to worship. So what’s it going to be, church? Real, relevant, gospel-inspired change, or survival of the institution of church as we know it/ There’s a real possibility we may not be able to have both.

When I speak and lead workshops for congregations and denominations, I often pose this question: if you could fully live in to you church’s mission today, but if the cost would be shutting your doors forever, would you do it? Of course this is a hypothetical posed in extreme language on purpose, to push people within the church to consider what’s really most important to them.

Consider Jesus (I know, a radical concept). He never had a church building, no budget and no salary. He walked around, noticed needs before him and went about meeting them, then he called others to do likewise. He shared wisdom through story and didn’t worry about retirement packages, balance sheets or mortgages. He focused instead on living out what he believed every day, and left the rest up to God.

Now, I’m not one to leave myself out of the group that this challenges. Though I don’t get paid by my church, my wife does, and the prospect of giving that up and simply walking the earth and meeting needs – especially with two kids – seems nuts. And I’m not saying this is necessarily what we’re all called to as church leaders, but it’s a question worth asking.

If, like the rich man in the Gospels, we’re coming to Christ and asking what is required of us, what will be our reaction if the answer is “leave everything behind and follow me”? What if the trend of younger people walking away from church is the kind of necessary pruning back that scripture calls for, rather than the cultural crisis of faith that many churches label it as?

Yes, there is still a need for communities of people offering one another love, wisdom, support and mutual accountability, to challenge people to put their faith into transformational action and to give them the tools to do so. And insomuch as institutional church can facilitate that, I believe there is a place for it in today’s culture. But the degree to which the existing buildings, paid staff, boards of directors and bylaws will – or even should – be a part of that, I’m not so sure.

Posted in youth, young adult, social networking, current events, church growth, theology, church transformation, emerging church, faith, Blogroll, church, technology, culture, Uncategorized | Print | No Comments »

February 23, 2010 by cpiatt.

Smells Like Spirit
Is faith hiding in the closet?
By Christian Piatt
(Originally published in PULP)

For a long time in American history, it’s been relatively taboo to admit you’re an atheist, or even an agnostic. In some ways, the bias favoring people of faith still holds. Imagine an atheist candidate for president trying to get nominated, much less elected, and the storm of controversy that would surround it.

Though some positions of political power may be out of reach for those who claim no faith, it has become more acceptable in recent years to admit agnosticism or even atheism. In fact, there’s even a bit of counter-culture hipness to confessing it.

While the relaxation of social strictures that allow people to speak freely about their faith – or lack of it – has opened up public dialogue in arguably healthy ways, the pendulum also has swung the other way, at least a bit. In a recent article on Salon.com, Ada Calhoun writes about an experience where a friend of hers caught her dressed up on the street on a Sunday morning, joking with her that she must be headed to church. She laughed it off and sheepishly continued on her way to Catholic Mass, too embarrassed to admit it to her friend.

“I’m not cheating on my husband, committing crimes or doing drugs,” says Calhoun. “But those are battles my cosmopolitan, progressive friends would understand. To them, my situation is far more sinister: I am the bane of their youth, the boogeyman of their politics, the very thing they left their small towns to escape. I am a Christian.”

Part of this is likely a normal social cycle, back and forth along the spectrum of the sacred and secular. However, Christianity in particular carries sufficient weight for the embarrassment these reticent faithful exhibit.

“Who wants to be lumped in with all the other Christians,” asks Calhoun, “especially the ones you see on TV protesting gay marriage, giving money to charlatans, and letting priests molest children? Andy Warhol went to Mass every Sunday, but not even his closest friends knew he was a devout Catholic until his death. I get that.”

So do I. As one who is seen both in our local community and in larger literary circles as a figurehead for postmodern Christianity, I spend as much time and energy responding to these negative connotations attached to my faith as I do speaking positively about what a community of faithful, committed to causes of service, compassion and social justice, can do to make the world a better place.

It’s important to understand how far and wide this disaffection for organized religion runs. There are huge groups of people who, though they study and practice the teachings of Jesus, choose not to call themselves Christians because of the baggage attached to the term. Instead, they prefer the term “Christ followers,” both because it is less encumbered with negativity, and also because it speaks of what they do, rather than define what group to which they belong.

There are lots of books on the subject too, such as “un-Christian,” by David Kinnaman and Gabe Lyons, or “They Like Jesus but Not the Church,” by Dan Kimball. One common sentiment throughout these texts is that the image of God, or more specifically, Jesus, should not suffer because of the crap that humans do in their name.

Not surprisingly, there’s a healthy amount of blowback from the institution of church as well. While some faith communities see the writing on the wall and seek to learn from history’s lessons, others are building defenses still higher, lobbing verbal salvos from the other side.

Authors like Peter Rollins, who wrote “The Orthodox Heretic “and “How (Not) to Speak of God,” among others, have been labeled as brazen heretics, masquerading as Christ followers simply to further the mythical goal of reducing church to rubble.

Meanwhile, people like Ada Calhoun skulk in the shadows to practice their faith, worried that being associated with those with whom she strongly disagrees will be a social albatross around her neck. Though it will take much time and no small amount of effort, it’s my hope that Christians once again earn the respect and appreciation of the public, and that Calhoun and her peers can come out of the closet and be proud to openly call themselves “Christian.”

Posted in current events, young adult, pulp, theology, church growth, church transformation, emerging church, Blogroll, Columns, faith, church, culture, Uncategorized | Print | No Comments »

January 13, 2010 by cpiatt.

Admitting powerlessness
By Christian Piatt
(Originally published in PULP)

I travel sometimes for work. Every time I do, my wife, Amy, worries about me. Before a recent trip alone, she admonished me no less than four times to travel safely. Though I don’t have much control over that in flight, except for using my seat cushion as a flotation device in the event of a water landing, I told her I would.

What neither of us was thinking about was the safety of the family I left behind.

Amy joked that my little Prius was doomed for an apocalyptic fate, since she had cleaned it for me while I was out of town. An innocent joke, but it turned out to be eerily prophetic.

I got a call on Wednesday afternoon from Amy. She was crying.

“Everyone is all right,” she said between sobs, “but we got in a pretty bad wreck.”

With the kids in the back seat, Amy pulled out of a parking lot after being waved out by a driver in the right lane (what we’ve since learned is called the “death wave” by insurance folks), and was met by a full-sized pickup in the center lane whose massive grill guard lifted our little hybrid off the ground, shearing the front completely off.

She sent me a picture from her phone and my stomach sank. Even though I knew no one was hurt, just seeing the car so mangled and knowing my whole family had been so close to a similar fate, made me nearly sick.

Times like that make harshly real how tenuous our grasp is on anything in this life. I had no control over what happened, whether or not I had been there, or if I had spent more time worrying about what might – and this time, did – happen.

Strangely, this sense of powerlessness made me think of a friend of mine who has been working on his sobriety for some time, but who resists involvement in a 12-step group or any sort of faith community. The reason, as it’s been suggested to me by a couple of people, is because he has a hard time with the idea of handing over power to a higher authority.

Anyone in AA or the like can tell you that you don’t have to believe in God to have your recovery work. Your higher authority can be whatever you choose, but the idea is to admit your own powerlessness. After all, as one friend of his pointed out to him, he yielded to the higher authority of drugs and alcohol for long enough. Why not try something or someone else?

One of the scariest things about admitting powerlessness, whether we’re addicts or not, is that we’re conceding the reality of suffering in our lives. We can’t stop it, and that angers us. To me, a healthy faith is not one that leans on promises of wealth, comfort or a lack of hardship, but rather one that strives for peace amid an unavoidably hard life.

In the end, my own peace is the only thing over which in fact I have any control.

Posted in emerging church, pueblo, pulp, theology, culture, church, Columns, Blogroll, faith, Uncategorized | Print | No Comments »

December 14, 2009 by cpiatt.

Below is a link to a survey I’m conducting for my book on postmodern male identity and faith, tentatively called BE A MAN. Please take the 10-15 minute survey if you’re a guy, and pass it along to anyone else who might be willing to share their thoughts for this book.

You do not have to be practicing a particular religion or have any faith at all to take this survey. In fact, we want to hear from people inside and outside of organized religion, and those who believe in God, those who aren’t sure, and those who do not.

http://www.surveymonkey.com/s/beaman

Thanks for your help with this. And please do pass this on to as many men as you can!

Sincerely,
Christian Piatt

Posted in parenting, 2.0, social networking, theology, sex, men, books, youth, young adult, faith, Blogroll, church, culture, church transformation, emerging church, Uncategorized | Print | No Comments »

December 5, 2009 by cpiatt.

I’m working on a new book lately called BE A MAN, which seeks to answer the question about what male identity looks like in the twenty-first century. Part of the project involves interviewing other folks about what they think it means to be a man in a postmodern culture. These two podcasts are excerpts from an interview I did with Ryan, who actually was born as Tiffany and has undergone the transgender process.

It turns out that there are lots of things about male identity that we men take for granted and are never consciously aware of. But for someone born as a woman who now identifies as male, there’s a heightened sensitivity around matters of gender.

To hear the interviews on my podcast, check outhttp://christianpiatt.podbean.com.

Posted in pueblo, politics, current events, theology, books, sex, young adult, church transformation, faith, Podcast, church, culture, emerging church, Uncategorized | Print | No Comments »

November 11, 2009 by cpiatt.

Some of you know that I recorded a live album of my spoken word with a couple of jazz guys last summer, but today I decided to try my hand at a solo track.

Since the original trio was called “S’aint Trio,” I’m keeping the same idea going and using the moniker “S’aint,” as in “I ain’t no…”

Anyhow, I recorded this at home on my hand-held recorder and using some loops and such I gathered and mixed on my computer. Interested in folks’ feedback, as I’m considering doing some more like this.

http://christianpiatt.podbean.com/

Christian Piatt

Author, MySpace to Sacred Space and Lost: A Search for Meaning

Editor, WTF: Where’s the Faith? Book series

Editor, Pueblo PULP

www.christianpiatt.com

Blog: www.christianpiatt.wordpress.com

Podcast: http://christianpiatt.podbean.com

Posted in emerging church, emergent worship, young adult, theology, culture, church, Blogroll, Podcast, spoken word, faith, Uncategorized | Print | No Comments »