Archives for December 2009

RAINY DAYS ARE GOOD FOR…

December 12, 2009 by Brian Berry Leave a Comment

…decorating the tree, peppermint hot chocolate, soup, fires, christmas movies, and splashing in the puddles- or at least they are today in the Berrytribe. Here’s some picture proof:

Becky putting up her first ornament- ever, a princess Tiana doll, in honor of both the Berrytribe and Disney’s first brown princess.

Here’s the top of our tree. It’s a grapevine angel that Shannon and I have added something to every year since we were married. Last year it was Ugandan beads in anticipation of Becky and Billy. This year, she was given a classic Ugandan headdress from fabric we bought there last January in honor of Becky and Billy’s first Christmas with us. She is looking very tribal these days.

Here’ the puddle splashin’ crew. We practically had to unplug the computer to get Billy outside, but eventually, he remembered he is a boy.

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JAKE AS A FROG

December 11, 2009 by Brian Berry Leave a Comment

Jake got the lead in his school play, “the rumpus in the rainforest”.

Since I’m guessing you have never seen/heard of it. Here’s the scoop:

It’s about a frog that wants to go see the top of the canopy of the rain forest. However, he can’t figure out how to get there, since his best friend -the Toucan- has a broken wing. So Jake (or the frog) goes in search of anyone who can take him there (jaguars, humans, snakes, monkeys, sloths, army ants, you name it)- most of which refuse for one reason or another or are too dangerous to trust, cuz they might eat the frog. Things are finally fixed with some herbal jungle doctor person gives the toucan a natural remedy and heals her broken wing and she can now take her friend the frog to see “up beyond the trees, just once”.

Anyway, I got to see it this morning. He put his big personality to the test. Shannon might have just found her actor in the family. He can dance. He can sing. He loves to do the moves. Kid has been like that since birth. So cute to hear him get excited about it.

Here’s a few pics for you. Way to go Jake!!!

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IF YOU DON’T USE IT, YOU LOSE IT

December 11, 2009 by Brian Berry Leave a Comment

This is true in lots of areas in life.

Physically, a muscle you stop using with atrophy away. Stop playing a particular sport and your edge will be gone in no time.
Relationally, a friendship you stop attending to will slowly diminish.
Practically, almost any skill set you stop using will become a thing you’ll describe using the phrase “when I was _______ I used to be able to do ____________. Those were the days.”
Spiritually, stop practicing a discipline and the original growth you were experiencing in your soul will no longer be there. Perhaps it will hang around for a little while, but eventually other influences will win the day and your spiritual life will reflect the back seat it’s been given.
etc…

It is definitely true of me Academically.

For me, one of my primary frustrations with my pursuit of a masters degree (and even my reflection back on the last 30+ years of academic education) has been that there is a clear chasm between information given and information that informs and changes the way I live day-to-day. All over the place there is information tossed at me that has no real implication for me.

When I started at UC. Davis, I was a civil engineering major. This meant that I took the highest level of calculus the university offered my freshmen year. 3 quarters (an entire school year) was consumed by my brain overload on math. It’s been 15 years since I’ve touch any of it. And it’s gone. All of it. Gone. I can’t tell you squat about calculus, cuz I’ve NEVER needed or used it as a pastor.

I loved going to seminary in Seattle for the time I did because it was all about the bottom line and populated with people in full-time ministry taking the classes. I took like 8 classes before the seminary merged with another seminary for financial reasons and then changed their theology and methodology, causing me to have to go searching for another seminary. But, before things got wacky though, here’s how it worked:

I had to read 8 or so assigned books. Write a 2 page report on each book outlining it’s basic content, what I agreed and disagreed with, and then the practical implication of this book on my ministry context.
40 hours of class in a one week intensive where I listened to professor/practitioners share about what they knew and had learned.
A project that was directly applicable to my ministry context: Preaching class: write 4 messages for my student audience. Romans: outline the book in a teaching format for my ministry. Leadership: rewrite the entire student leadership structure of my ministry based on my learnings. Etc. Every class had a project that was customized to a ministry setting.

But those days are pretty far behind me. If I want to make my current classes practical, much of the time I have to do that on my own, cuz it’s not required in the academic requirements portion.

So, in the next 30 days of “no greek” before my second class starts, I have to do greek. Because if I don’t, it’ll be all gone. And I absolutely hate $1200 hoops, which is essentially what every seminary class I take is if it doesn’t flush out into practical implications. I really need these language studies to have daily implications for me. I have sacrificed too much for them not to. So far though, most of what I know is floating around in my head, rapidly heading for the drain if I don’t figure out a way to clog it up and use it regularly.

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LONERS AND LEAVERS

December 2, 2009 by Brian Berry 3 Comments

In my own personal and ministry journey, I think I’ve stumbled across at least two things that are broken in the church in general. I don’t think they are the answer to this post, but I do think they are part of the problem. I see them in my own student ministry and in the adult populous too. I think they are actually American cultural norms that have subtly seeped into the ethos of our church community that will not be broken over night, but must be challenged nonetheless.

They are the tendency among people to be (1) loners and (2) leavers.

LONERS:

Loners may come every weekend and might even call a space their “home church”, but they aren’t connected to anyone. They come in, sit down, sing, listen, and when it’s over.. they quietly walk out. They don’t know anyone really. They usually don’t serve, they might give in the offering, but they are shielded from any real emotional investment with people.

In our high school program, some avoid connection by going to “main service” where they can hide in the crowd of adults who they won’t have to speak to. Some come to our program but they remain unconnected. They sit at the same table with others or will be a mere feet from 6 kids who go to their school, and they won’t talk. Or they’ll come in, hide behind the screen of a cell phone and the ear buds of an ipod and then leave. They are loners and there are some every weekend.

Loners can be found in any crowd, large or small, and it’s not just a personality thing either. The tendency to skim in life and keep shallow, easy to manage, low level investments is at epidemic levels in our culture. We don’t talk things through with friends, we pay others to listen. We value the “I can do it” role model and don’t feel the need to connect deeply. Add to that the mixed danger and blessing of the internet/social networking and the need to actually be “physically present” anywhere is coming into question. Meetings can be held via satellite, friendships can be maintained over the internet, and we have exchanged doing life together with 140 character update that give us the false sense of proximity to one another.

I think we have a Loner Epidemic in the church and in our culture.

On the other hand, we also have (or should I say had) the LEAVERS:

Leavers stay for a while and then bounce. Maybe it’s because they’ve been burned before and out of fear, they leave. But leaving is constant. I’m not talking about those who move away or even those who God calls elsewhere, I’m just talking about the massive tendency to give up.

Real community, true community can not be fabricated or fast tracked. It takes time and hard work. No marriage escapes the storms of life: they either learn to weather them and are stronger for it, or they get destroyed by pressure and collapse in the waves of trials. The same is true of the church. Many won’t stick around for hard times. If someone says something they don’t like from the stage, they turn in a nasty e-mail and then leave. If they feel something is wrong, they find 4 or 5 others who “feel the same”, then huddle together, call it a consensus, and leave.

We have all heard that, “the grass is greener on the other side of the fence”. But I say, “the grass is greener where you water and fertilize it.” I know most of my blog readers are not farmers and like me (if they buy their fertilizer at all) get the stuff that comes in nice, sterile bags you can dispense without touching. But in case we forgot, fertilizer is essentially crap. When you stop fertilizing life with crap, you end up with a false facade of health. In southern California, where water is scarce and a nice lawn is a lot of year round hard work, many will settle for the nice, low maintenance, “green” fake stuff instead. This true in church too, we settle for fake stuff or leave if the real stuff takes too much work. True healthy community cannot be found if you don’t hang around in the midst of and through some (ie: a lot of) crap. And while we’re at it, let’s be honest: we all have lots of crap to contribute to the pile.

When God calls us to a community, we can’t truly experience what God has for us in it unless we stick around. But we don’t do that much these days. Many just leave cuz they can. Investment is low, options are high, and the desire to avoid conflict outweighs the desire for crap filled fertile soil. So they go to the next church in hopes for greener pastures or until the crap gets deep, and then the cycle repeats.

I think it’s time to call it. I don’t think we honor God as Loners and Leavers. I think we must refuse to settle for something this shallow and this insignificant. God has way more for us than this. God was way more for me than this. I’m trying to be an investor and a owner of my own faith and community. But it is not easy, and some days, it feels like swimming against a cultural tide.

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