“What are you doing here?!” His muffled scream rushed through his mask.

His face was already red with rage, the veins around his temples beginning to bulge, a fury written across his eyes.

“Are you just here to continue to perpetuate the stereotype that Christians are willfully spreading around the country, that we’re some sort of godless, anarchist playground? Are you here to destroy our protest as a wolf in sheep’s clothing?!”

This wasn’t the first time, nor the last time I’d encounter someone angry with my presence that evening. But it was certainly the loudest. 

I’ve been serving as a protest chaplain in shifts with a group of other religious leaders from Seattle. We stand by a meager table with a sign that simply reads ‘Interfaith Chaplain’ offering masks, hand sanitizer, candles for the growing memorial by the police precinct, prayer, support, conversation, blessings, and anything else someone may need to feel cared for in this space. 

Often times I’m asked to provide insight, attributing spiritual significance for what’s happening in the nearly 6-block protest zone, many of whom are simply struggling to find the right words or context.

As you look around this active protest, in many ways it resembles a street fair. Children are running around—a few with painted faces—a hot dog vendor sets up on the corner, there’s a stage in front of the police precinct where spoken word poets, bands, impromptu speakers, and organizers share their points of view. Trash teams are deployed for garbage and recycling duty, a large food co-op tent hands out freshly made meals, water, and other hygienic items. A de-escalation team working to diffuse tense situations as performance-based counter protestors and agitators make their way in a few times each day and a medical tent is set up to provide care, and not just physical care but mental care as a team of trauma counselors care for those traumatized by what has taken place. Many are still reeling from the use of tear gas and flash bangs that made the intersection look like a war zone, while others are wrestling with anger, fear, and confusion after a car plowed into the crowd of protestors, the driver shooting one of the men who tried to stop him. This, by the way, is why there are barricades on the streets now: to protect the people from those who seek to do harm.

On Saturday night I was situated with a rabbi inbetween a clothing co-op and a voter registration drive. Across the street sat a table, “Write Mayor Durkan” and next to them a black artist set up an easel to paint. The space is filled with opportunities for direct action, ways to create specific and lasting change within our city.

Seattle has had a long and strained relationship with the police department. For the better part of a decade, the Police Department has been under a consent decree for civil rights violations. And for the better part of a decade, the Seattle Police Department has failed to live up to that consent decree, with the police union finagling ways to get out from underneath it without ever fully complying. Community trust has been broken, and every act is now seen through a lens of suspicion.

He continued to yell at me, spouting every sort of hateful idiom towards Jesus and the Church that he could muster. His anger was filled with a deep, deep pain. His rage lasting for a couple of minutes. And as he drew his last deep breath, he finished with a giant, “FUCK YOU!”

I paused to take a breath.

“Did you get it all out?” I gently, and lovingly replied.

“What?” His eyes softened a bit; anger replaced with confusion.

“This is what I’m here for. Did you get it all out?”

“Wait. What?”

“If you have more that you need to say, I’m here to listen.”

His eyes darted back and forth with confusion. “I mean… what?”

“I get it. I get your anger. I’m mad too. There are so many false stories and narratives surrounding this space and what it is. So many lies about what has happened here, what is happening here. I’m angry too. I see what this place is and what it has become. I’ve been here a lot over the past few days, and I know what it is and what it isn’t.”

“Really?”

“Yeah. I understand your anger.”

“Will you tell our story? Will you share with other Christians what’s happening here and dispel the lies?”

“I’m trying to.”

Over the past several days I’ve been interviewed by Politico, the Seattle Times, Sojourners, a myriad of Twitch feeds and Facebook Live posts, even Japanese Television sent an anchor to do an interview. All in an attempt to understand what the space now known as the CHOP (Capitol Hill Occupied Protest), actually is.

Over and over I have reiterated the same story using familiar religious language. This space is a shrine. It’s a shrine to the deep seated anger and pain, the overwhelming grief and lament that is being felt by the people. Throughout the area, there are prayers written on the ground and on signs, laments and grief and anger scrawled on signs hanging from fences and buildings, memorials and vigils erected for people who have been lost in Seattle to police violence—the list is not short. This has become an Ebenezer stone of sorts with the east precinct of the Seattle Police Department the centerpiece. This has become, for many, holy ground.

Ed Stetzer exhorted Christians to be more careful with what we post online, to verify and fact check what we say before we become false witnesses and thereby damage our credibility and Christ’s message. You now have a first-hand witness, and multiple accounts of what is actually happening in the CHOP. I am making myself available to you: Ask me anything and I’ll share more with you, or I can find out the answer. But please stop spreading and bearing, knowingly or unknowingly, false witness. You are damaging the credibility of the church in Seattle. The CHOP is not what you may think it is.

On Monday night a man set up a speaker and a microphone in the middle of the intersection by our table. A group of 6 were playing basketball at a hoop on the corner that had appeared earlier that day. “I have a question.” His deep, booming voice echoed through the crowd. People stopped, and gathered around. “I have a question I want to ask you all. What does Black Lives Matter mean to you?”

A couple of his friends worked to organize a line and one by one people stepped to the mic to share. About 15 minutes in, the crowd had grown to well over 1000 people when a black man stepped up and held the mic. “Jesus,” he started. “Jesus was a non-violent revolutionary who told the world of love. Who demonstrated that love for us on the cross. He told us to love our neighbor, but also to love your enemy!” 

A smattering of applause, a couple of ‘Amens!’ and jeers co-mingled and rose from the crowd. “This right here,” he continued, “is a non-violent revolution of love in the name of Jesus. And Jesus knows what it means to suffer. Jesus knows the pain we’re feeling right here. He too was an oppressed minority, suffering under the weight of the systems and structures that murdered him and his people. He resisted. But he did it in the name of love. This right here is a non-violent revolution of love in the name of Jesus!”

All lives cannot matter until Black lives matter.

Whether or not you agree with the tactics of the protestors, whether or not you feel as if this is an affront to you personally or your political persuasion, I need you to know that Jesus is in that place. And he is at work. 

A couple of nights ago, three Jesuit priests from Seattle University (a Jesuit school a few blocks from the CHOP) stopped by. “We’ve been looking everywhere for you.” They said. “We were just lamenting the fact that there was no spiritual guidance or presence in this place. Seeing you all here brings us such joy, may we join you?” As they pointed to the streets filled with the people one of the priests wistfully waved his hand over the crowd: “Can’t you see it? Can’t you just see the Holy Spirit moving in this place and among the people?”

“I can now,” I thought to myself. “I can now.”

I hope you can too.

The post Letters from the CHAZ / CHOP appeared first on aaron monts.

This morning our church paused to pray for the victims and communities marred by the mass shootings this past weekend. While we were praying one of the kids in our community lit 33 candles to represent the 33 different people that were killed this week in Dayton, El Paso, and Gilroy. Below is the prayer we used. Unfortunately, the cities and numbers are editable, meaning this prayer can be (and will be) used multiple times in the future until this ends. Feel free to utilize (and edit as necessary) this prayer in your own communities.

[Here are some other communal prayers we have used in the past.]

Prayer of Lament for Mass Shootings

This prayer is a call and response. The words in italics are to be spoken by the congregation.

Our Father, 250 mass shootings in the United States of America in 216 days.

Lord have mercy. Christ have mercy.

For the people of Gilroy, of El Paso, of Dayton: for their grief, their anger, their loss, their fear; for the peace and lives that have been shattered.

Lord have mercy. Christ have mercy.

For the families wrecked with the loss of their children, their parents, their friends, their neighbors, their family.

Lord have mercy. Christ have mercy.

For the insidious evil that is white supremacy and white nationalism that has always been present within our country and continues unabated: Lord, come quickly. We pray for your victory and our repentance.

Lord have mercy. Christ have mercy.

For our collective, national addiction to anger, hatred, division, segregation, and weapons of war in the name of safety and security: help us beat our swords into plowshares; help us desire peace, unity, love, and reconciliation.

Lord have mercy. Christ have mercy.

May our thoughts and prayers spurn us to a collective, national action that removes this scourge from our land.

Your Kingdom Come.

Your Kingdom Come.

Your Kingdom Come.

Your Kingdom Come.

Your Kingdom Come.

Amen, amen, and amen.

The post Mass Shootings: A Communal Prayer of Lament appeared first on aaron monts.

You could smell the fumes of alcohol and bad breath mixing together in a musty cloud every time she opened her mouth to talk. If she wasn’t completely drunk, she had to have been crazy. I sat there with my headphones on with the volume at just below ear bleeding levels, all in an attempt to drown out her incessant talking, and yelling–usually thrown in my direction. At one point she thrashed about, leaning across the armrest, invading every amount of personal space I had, pressing me closer and closer to the window. Was she playing the air drums?

My flight had already been delayed an hour, a red-eye flight to New York City from Seattle. I was exhausted from a longer and busier than usual day, and just ready to get on the plane, settle into my exit row window seat and get some sleep.

I quickly boarded the plane, wrapped the pillow around my neck, threw on my headphones, settled in and closed my eyes. Sleep came immediately. Somewhere in the midst of my short slumber, my tormenter sat next to me. The “ding” of the 10,000 foot altitude mark startled me awake and my tormenter gave me the side eye. Had I jumped when I woke up? Had I somehow overtaken her half of the shared armrest? Had I inadvertently man spread in my sleep leaving her crowded in the undesirable middle seat? I gave her a smile and attempted to avoid the side-eye. She glared at me and began talking… loudly. 

I pulled back my headphones to listen to what seemed to be gibberish. What was she saying? I couldn’t quite understand her, so I nodded along for a few moments before she stopped. “Goodnight,” I said as I nodded kindly and returned my headphones to my ears and drifted off to sleep. It didn’t last long.

The cloud of alcohol and bad breath overwhelmed my nostrils, and through my headphones I could hear her shouting at me. I opened my eyes, not sure what I was going to see. “You never liked me did you?” She yelled. “You think you’re better than me don’t you? That you’re somehow superior!” Over and over she repeated these lines like a shouted mantra. 

When mentally incapacitated people hurl things like this at me on the street it’s easy to simply move away, walk around, and dodge them; so as to not create an incident of some sort. A few months ago late in the evening while waiting for a bus, a man started shouting at me, accusing me of taking his kids, of replacing him in the arms of his wife. He was 10-yards away, a good distance. And every time he drew a step closer I would take step or two away, put my hands up in surrender and apologize. Hoping that this small gesture would somehow ease his pain.

However, at 35,000 feet, on an airplane, when the person is right next to you, it’s a different story. Where do you go? The plane was completely full. I suppose I could have moved to the flight attendants area, or just sat in a bathroom… How do you diffuse this type of situation?

I chose to ignore her. Whether this was the best option or not, I’m not quite sure. I know that engagement in conversation was more than likely a non-starter, and could have escalated the situation somehow. So, I closed my eyes and turned up the volume on my headphones. Her shouting got louder. “You’re the Devil!” she yelled loud enough to pierce the sound barrier I had hoped to create with the soothing sounds of Yo Yo Ma

Eventually she quieted down and I peeked, ever so slightly out of my left eye in the hopes that I would find her passed out or asleep. Instead she was attempting to, what looked like snuggle with the lady on the other side of her. The poor woman sat there with her body rigid and as tense as a board. Her ear plugs were firmly pressed into her ears and a sleep mask covering her eyes. She didn’t move. For a moment I felt bad for my seat mate, but only for a moment. Relief settled in and I thought ‘Now maybe I can get some sleep!’ It didn’t last long.

I dozed off for perhaps 15 minutes before being awakened by her thrashing about. The entire row of seats rocking back and forth, her hair flying and whipping me in the face. I watched as she kicked and punched, crossing back and forth over the arm rest flailing in a rhythmic spasm. I squeezed myself closer and closer to the window ducking and dodging what at first I thought were punches… wait, is she air drumming? She is! What on earth?! A fifth passenger now rang a call button behind us, what I believe wasn’t for a drink or some food, but rather to rescue me and my seat-mate from our tormenter. It was a momentary respite.

She thrashed about and I tried to sleep, somehow finally succumbing to the exhaustion that overtook me. When I awoke a short time later, I woke up with my eyes closed–a trick I’ve mastered to perfection in parenthood. As I sat there attempting to feel out my surroundings, a feeling of dread began to overtake me. I’m not quite sure what it was, but it was palpable, almost as if I were in danger of some sort. I gave in to the fear and opened my eyes to see her no more than 12 inches away from my face, glaring at me with a look of death. 

I slowly pulled back my headphones and kindly asked, “is there something you need?” She simply glared at me, slowly retreating back into her own space before unleashing a slew of profanities my way, calling me everything in the book before turning it around and yelling, “Why would you say those things about me?”

My eyes grew big, “What?” I asked.

“Why would you say those things? Why would you tell me that I’m worthless, don’t you know I already know that? I wish I were dead. I wish this plane would go down right now and that I’d just be dead!” And then she stopped. Grew quiet. Closed her eyes and laid back. I quickly prayed for peace over her spirit, over her body, over her soul, that whatever was tormenting her would relent. I leaned back and watched her out of my left eye for a few moments. Maybe now I can finally get some sleep.

I settled in, and closed my eyes just in time to hear the *Ding*. “Flight Attendants would you please prepare the cabin for arrival.”

You’ve got to be kidding me. It had been four-and-a-half hours this.

The plane began its descent into New York City and the yelling returned. “We’re all going to die! This plane is going to crash!” It took me four-and-a-half hours, but I finally found the proper headphones volume and album to drown her out. (Thank you Kendrick Lamar).

We made it to our gate and she immediately bolted off the plane. “Thank you so much for your patience,” the flight attendant offered apologetically.

My fellow tormented seat-mate pulled back her eye mask; she was so completely exhausted and exasperated. She leaned towards me and offered her hand, “It’s so nice to finally meet the devil.”

The post I’m the Devil. appeared first on aaron monts.

I’ll admit it, praying for President Trump is really hard. I’ve prayed through a litany of thoughts, frustrations, aggravations and anger towards him. I’ve prayed for his leadership and decision making. I’ve prayed for his heart, for his integrity, desperately hoping that he might somehow discover even a modicum of it. Yet, over and over and over I’ve found myself crestfallen and dispirited.

Why do I do it? Why do I pray for Trump (and Congress and all our leaders)? Well, Scripture urges us to pray for our leaders and those in authority. So, I try. Oh, I try. But it’s really hard and I’ve run out of words.

We’re told that “prayer changes us, and it’s true. I have certainly been changed through my prayers for our President. But I’m seriously out of words. I thought about taking to Facebook and asking others how they pray for the President, but that felt like a can of worms I didn’t really want to spend time digging through. So, I grabbed a couple of Blessings and Prayers from John O’Donohue’s book To Bless the Space Between Us and mashed them together, adapting them, and sprinkling in a couple of my own hopes, as a newly crafted prayer for President Trump. If I’m out of words, if I’m exhausted to even try, I might as well lean into and upon the words of someone else.

So, here’s the prayer I’ve been praying and perhaps maybe you’d like to pray it as well. And perhaps, the clasping of hands in prayer will truly be the beginning to an uprising against the disorder of the world… or maybe our prayers will just keep changing us.

A Prayer for President Trump

May you have the grace and wisdom to act kindly,
learning to distinguish between what is personal and what is not.
May you be hospitable to criticism.
May you never put yourself at the center of things.
May you act not from arrogance but out of service.
May you work on yourself, building up and refining the ways of your mind, heart, and soul.

So let it be. Amen.

(P.S. – This is a prayer that can be prayed over any leader or any one in authority, including pastors, and not specific of President Trump.)

The post The Prayer I’m Praying for President Trump. appeared first on aaron monts.

We are not invisible people. I believe that God sees us. I believe that God believes in us. I believe that God desires for our lives to have meaning and purpose; that God wants us to craft our lives as beautiful works of art.

I am in my 21st year of pastoral ministry. Twenty years of working to communicate the truths of Jesus to a curious people. Twenty years of trying to demonstrate, as a member of the clergy, the ways of Jesus to a watching world. Twenty years of helping people uncover the hidden goodness in their lives, of peeling back the curtain of reality to reveal the presence, the mystery, and the love of God in all things. Twenty years.

This is and has been my working “job description” for two decades.

My “job description” is borne out of a deep conviction, and study, and understanding of what it means to live this Jesus life: and ultimately how to bring this into the pastorate. There has however, been a tremendous tension in this process. This has never been my official or stated job description.

In my 20 years of pastoral ministry, I have held many different roles: youth pastor, worship pastor, associate pastor, ministry pastor, teaching pastor, senior pastor, lead pastor, church planter, missions pastor, campus pastor–every last role coming with their own robust job description filled with tasks and expectations of programs to run or maintain. While most of those tasks and expectations were good and beneficial they created a boundary box, closing me off to a great many ways in which I was able to fulfill my own story, calling, and job description of pastoral ministry.

For twenty years I have been met with nods of disapproval, hand slaps, and reprimands: “You can’t go there”, “You can’t sit there”, “You can’t do that”, “You can’t talk about that”, “You can’t drink that, eat that, or spend time with those people!” That is simply not in your job description or in our unspoken code of conduct! And to do otherwise is completely inappropriate for a pastor.

I could feel the walls being built, statement by statement, closing off a part of who I am. Trapping a part of my self out of sight, hidden behind a wall of confusion, guilt, even shame; wondering if I somehow had this whole pastoring thing wrong. If I had mistaken the way in which I was created to interact within this world.

Have you ever felt as if some part of your profession was asking some part of you to become invisible? As if your job was asking you to not be who you fully are, to intentionally silence bits and pieces of the truth and goodness within that God has created you to be? I’m pretty sure this isn’t just a pastoral dilemma.

When we wall off pieces of our selves, we replace our true identity with masks. We live as shells of our true self. We live in constant danger of being actors in our own lives. We ultimately rob the world of the uniqueness that God created in us and asked us to be. When we hide or moderate what we are passionate about when we bind up, seal off, or quarantine our zealousness, our vigor, our fire, we rob the world of what God see’s as possible in and through us. Did I mention that God believes in us?

So here I am in my 21st year of ministry looking back on the previous 20 years, thinking about all the ways in which I moderated who I was in order to cram into the box that others created for me. Wow, has that been exhausting. There are several who have wondered how I’m still at it, how I’m still in this thing called ministry–not just because of my past experiences, which have been crazy, but also because I won’t completely fit into the tiny boxes prescribed for me. Yet, here I stand at the beginning of another potentially two decades wondering how do I make it to that next great milestone?

I think it starts by stepping into the fullness of my job description: of working to communicate the truths of Jesus to a curious people, of trying to demonstrate, as a member of the clergy, the ways of Jesus to a watching world, of helping people uncover the hidden goodness in their lives, of peeling back the curtain of reality to reveal the presence, the mystery, and the love of God in all things… and by using all of the ways that God has gifted me with and created me to be. No more cloak of invisibility, no more hamstringing the efforts and making the arduous task all the more difficult.

I am on the precipice of another 20 years. No more holding myself back.

The post The Invisible Pastor: Reflecting on Twenty Years of Ministry appeared first on aaron monts.

Acknowledging this heaviness and making space for it in our gatherings is a marker moment in the life of our church. We intentionally verbalized the phrase, ‘We hear you, we see you, we believe you’ and then were told: “Thank you,” “I have never been in a church that has acknowledged my pain like this,” or “I never felt like my pain mattered in church, that I was supposed to cover it up and just deal with it alone.” This was powerful. We pulled back the curtain to not only acknowledge but expose the heaviness in our midst. We allowed it to stir within our new church and allow the Spirit to begin a new work of healing and togetherness to emerge. And it all happened with a public acknowledgement and a focused litany.

Dr. Sharon R. Fennema said of worship,

“In our contemporary context where practices often precede belonging and belief, participation in worship is one of the primary ways that people of faith are formed in that faith. In and through preaching, sacraments, ritual, music, art, action and the experience of community, people encounter and come to know the Holy. Worship can be a place for creative engagement, for spiritual formation through participation, and for transformative experiences that offer a vision for social change.”

This is what we are striving to create in our new church, a formative and transformative environment where we can acknowledge the heaviness, experiment with new forms of ritual and experience, allowing a new vision of social change to emerge. We won’t always get it right, but we do pray weekly as a church for the courage to try what others think cannot be done.

The focused litany we used this past week (which we altered slightly to fit our context) was also written by Dr. Fennema entitled, A Litany of Confession and Witness: Believing Women. It was a powerful and tearfully transformative moment for our church, and perhaps can be for yours as well.

A Litany of Confession and Witness: Believe Women

by Dr. Sharon R. Fennema

Voice: And Eve said, the serpent tricked me and I ate. [Genesis 3.13]
All: And God believed her.

Voice: And Hannah said, No, sir, I am not crazy, I am a woman deeply troubled; I have been pouring out my soul before the Lord. [ 1 Samuel 1.15]
All: And the priest believed her.

Voice: And Tamar said, No, do o not force me to lie with you; for such a thing is wrong. Do not do anything so vile! [2 Samuel 13.12]
All: And her brother believed her.

Voice: And Esther said, we have been sold. I and my people, to be destroyed, to be killed, to be annihilated. [Esther 7.3-4]
All: And the king believed her.

Voice: And Mary said, My soul magnifies the Lord, and my spirit rejoices in God my Savior, for God has looked with favor on the lowliness of his servant. Surely, from now on all generations will call me blessed; for the Mighty One has done great things for me, and holy is God’s name [Luke 1.46-48]
All: And Joseph believed her.

Voice: And the woman at the well said, Come and see a man who told me everything I have ever done! I think he may be the one, the Messiah we have been waiting for. [John 4.29]
All: And the people believed her.

Voice: And the hemorrhaging woman said, If I but touch his clothes, I will be made well. [Mark 5.28]
All: And Jesus believed her.

Voice: And Anita said, It would have been more comfortable to remain silent. But when asked by a representative of this committee to report my experience, I felt that I had to tell the truth. I could not keep silent.
All: And a few people believed her.

Voice: And Christine said, I am here today not because I want to be. I am terrified. I am here because I believe it is my civic duty to tell you what happened to me.
All: And some people believed her.

Women: And the women said, #metoo
Voice: Will we believe them?

Voice: Jesus said to them, Have you believed because you have seen? Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have come to believe. [John 20.29]

All: Amen.

The post A Litany of Confession and Witness: Believe Women appeared first on aaron monts.

Today marks sixteen years of marriage and as I sit back to reflect I wonder if I could honestly say, bliss sums up our marriage well. I’m not even sure one word could describe our marriage, or any marriage for that matter if we’re being truly honest.

It has been sixteen years of stories: good stories, bad stories, sad stories, happy stories. Stories of success and failure; stories of frustration and and elation. Stories that span the gamut of emotion and experience.

It has been sixteen years of transitions. Sixteen years of joy and sadness. Sixteen years of laughter and anger. Sixteen years of eye rolls and “oh brother” moments. Sixteen years of embarrassment and pride, of silliness and seriousness, of comfort and tenderness, and ultimately of love.

These stories, these moments, these emotions, these sentiments… this commitment: it is all of these and more that make a marriage. Because at the very core of marriage is a promise, a covenant to one another to live life together and be the best to and for each other as you possibly can be, both in that moment and for all of the moments to come. Ringing loudly in my ears over and over again, I have found the words of Dietrich Bonhoeffer to be true: “It is not love that sustains your marriage, but marriage that sustains your love.”

Perhaps that’s why they call marriage bliss. Through the ups and downs, the left turns and right turns, the fits of stops and starts and sputters and flow, and all of the stories in between––found there, deep within the ever growing strength of your commitment is the freedom to let go of your inhibitions, to be your truest self, and enter the wide-open space of marital bliss.

The post Sixteen Years of Wedded… Something? appeared first on aaron monts.

“…Jesus was a zombie.”

Do you ever wonder how conversations end up where they do? How they wind around, weaving and twirling until someone says, “But you know, Jesus was a zombie”? That’s where my conversation stood at this particular moment. We had been waxing eloquently about the beauty of ancient architecture and whisky, the exquisite splendor of nature and the best floral notes of gin, when all of a sudden something triggered a long, drawn-out rabbit trail that ended with, “Jesus was a zombie. How anyone could believe in Jesus, a man who rose from the dead and only wants to steal your brain. Well, that’s just beyond me.”

How do you respond to that?

I sat there and stammered, “u-ummm, w-well… uh… so… u-uhh… you see it… uhhhhhh…” I sighed in confusion and fell silent, looking down at the whisky I began swirling in my glass.

I’ve had my share of interesting conversations, but never before have I heard this: “Jesus was a zombie…. who only wants to steal your brain.” The inference of such a statement is pretty clear: in order to believe in the resurrection (and Jesus) you have to check your brain at the door.

My silence felt like a speed bump but our conversation drifted smoothly back into its original lane.

Hindsight can be an important teacher.

If I had this to do all over again, I would have responded differently… I would have replaced my stammering–a sign of my own internal struggle and need to defend and attack with sharp and cunning statements of certitude and conviction (my brain is fully engaged thank you very much!)–with questions that pursued understanding, sensitivity, and kindness. I would have thoughtfully engaged in his thinking and his ideas with a posture of learning and inquisitiveness to get my head around his conclusions. It is only when we seek to understand that we can have a fuller, more rich conversation.

While I may have failed in the moment, I wanted to prepare myself for another potential “Zombie Jesus” conversation. In pursuit of understanding, I did a little digging. (There’s a treasure trove of interesting images on Google). I found that “Zombie Jesus” has actually been around for a while. Its origins are attributed to a throwaway laugh line (“Sweet Zombie Jesus!”) in an episode of Futurama from 1999. The more I looked into the depths of the inter-webs, I found that Zombie Jesus is actually a symptom of a much larger conversation at work in our culture. Zombie Jesus has become a rallying cry of critique against the anti-intellectualism of the Church. Hence the statement: “check your brain at the door.”

Check your brains at the door.

The sentiment is that the church, and Christians in general are an unthinking sort who have dismissed art, literature, philosophy, education, and science. And if you’re thinking that’s an unfair critique, the critics will quickly point to the Christian subculture that we have created. We have distanced ourselves from engaging with art and literature and replaced it with Thomas Kinkades, Precious Moments, and The Left Behind Series. They are also quick to point out our penchant for deriding public education and science. (People I meet in bars are always surprised to find out that as a Christian we don’t homeschool our daughter or have her in a Christian parochial school, but have her in the public schools system.)

In the many different conversations with people at bars and coffee shops around Seattle, I have found a growing sentiment of anti-intellectualism as a unifying critique of the church. We are a zombie church following after a Zombie Jesus intent on devouring the brains of the people.

Now, this critique isn’t without warrant. In my own history within the church I have experienced much of the same. I’ll never forget the time a man from the congregation stood up in the middle of a sermon to say the Pharisees greatest sin was that they were “too educated!” His statement received with applause and nods of agreement. Or the time I was told I would be respected more if I dropped out of graduate school and stopped pursuing greater education in favor of greater experience.

What I am finding along this journey of understanding the anti-intellectual bias within the church is, Jesus doesn’t actually need me to push back and fight against “Zombie Jesus” as a statement. He needs me to understand it and its cultural significance. He needs me to be curious. To be a learner, a pursuer. To press into the conversations and the ideas that are present in this place instead of pressing against them. Jesus needs me, and the Church to show differently.

I have found some encouragement in this pursuit through the words of Father Richard Rohr, “The best criticism of the bad is the practice of the better. Oppositional energy only creates more of the same.” I don’t want to speak out in opposition to “Zombie Jesus” and the anti-intellectualism it represents. I want to practice something better. I want to explore all of the ways in which I can better love God with all of my mind (Matthew 22.37). Or as Eugene Peterson puts it in The Message, my intelligence. This is, after all a part of the greatest commandment.

The post “Jesus was a Zombie.” appeared first on aaron monts.

We’d been through a lot together, this group of elders and I. We expected to journey together in the care and growth of this congregation for years to come–at least that’s what they told me. In fact, despite the turbulent waters we had just experienced the church had not only grown but nearly doubled in size. By all accounts, we were through the worst. The waters were settling and we were preparing for a fruitful season ahead. That is until one particular elders meeting when they determined I wasn’t actually a Christian.

It was typical for us to have good theological conversations during our elders meetings, to talk about grace and Jesus and the role of Scripture in our church community, but this conversation in particular seemed to be one that Sam had been itching to talk about for a while. “The history of our church,” he began, “was founded upon a deep understanding of the Holy Spirit. We have, for the past 20 years, moved away from that understanding and have instead quenched the work of the Spirit here in our midst.”

As a young pastor in my mid-twenties I didn’t recognize the gravity of the situation. Instead of hearing his concern, I brushed it aside, chuckled and said, “Wow, we must be a pretty powerful people to stop the will and work of God!” Sam didn’t find it funny.

“We are raising a whole generation of people in this church who are not Christians,” Sam lamented.

My head tilted back and my brow furrowed inquisitively. I knew that we had several people in our congregation that were searching what it meant to follow Jesus and there were several new Christians, but exactly what Sam was referring to I wasn’t quite sure. As I looked around the circle I saw people nodding their heads in agreement. I sat in silence trying to figure out where this was heading.

As the conversation progressed and great laments about the lack of speaking in tongues and prophecy in our Sunday morning services filled the room, my eyes grew wide. I was startled. This was not the church nor the group of elders I had come to know. Something seemed different. Sam continued, “We need to start preaching about the Holy Spirit and the mark of salvation evidenced by speaking in tongues!”

“Sam,” I interjected with concern and a bit of a hurt ego–what was wrong with my preaching, was I missing something big?!–“what exactly are you saying? What do you mean?”

“Aaron, how can people become Christians if they don’t know about the Holy Spirit? How can they be a Christian if they cannot speak in tongues?”

I let his questions sit for a moment and I looked around the room. No one interjected. No one spoke up. They sat in tacit agreement, their silence growing in weight. Never one to be comfortable with an uneasy silence, I seized the moment and offered a clever rebuke and a teachable moment (or so I thought).

This is the moment I was fired.

“Sam, are you saying that you cannot be a Christian unless you speak in tongues?”

“Right.”

“Well, do you think I’m a Christian?”

“Of course pastor.” Sam looked perplexed.

“Sam, I don’t speak in tongues.” I could see the wheels turning as he tried to reconcile what I was saying with his statement of belief. “Sam, what you’re saying is that your pastor…” I paused for affect, “is not a Christian. Are you sure you really believe that?”

I was certain this would make a difference. How on earth could they deny their pastor was a Christian simply because he couldn’t speak in tongues? I was certain it would create enough of a dissonance that we could talk about this strange belief, point back to Scripture and understand the nature and reality of salvation through Jesus alone and the role of the Holy Spirit. I was certain.

Two weeks later, I was relieved of my duties and asked to move along quietly for the sake of the congregation.

I obliged.

Being fired is a hard experience. Being fired as a pastor for not being a “Christian”… yeah, that’s a new one. (Although it wouldn’t be the last time I’d be accused of not being a Christian–but never for a lack of relationship or belief in Jesus.) Over a decade later I am still serving the local church as a pastor. This difficult experience and the subsequent difficult experiences my family and I have endured have not changed the fact that our first priority and calling are to Jesus… and his Church. It will be messy. It will be difficult at times. However, through it all Jesus walks beside us, comforts us, grants us peace, and encourages us to persevere and press forward into new and beautiful experiences of his grace. And in the process we get to experience beautiful stories of faith and new life in people’s lives.

The Church is not perfect (yes, a glaring understatement), however it is the body of Christ. I cannot walk away from the body and I cannot walk away from the hope that it can bring into this world. May we remember well the role of the Church, and step beautifully into that role so that the world may see and know, that they may taste and see that the Lord is good. Let us be better examples today than we were yesterday.

The post I Was Fired for Not Being a Christian appeared first on aaron monts.

“Aaron, I pray for you every single day. I just wanted you to know that.”

I was in my mid-twenties and the gravity of grandpa’s words caught me completely off guard. I didn’t know what to say. I didn’t know how to respond. And so I simply said, “Thank you.” (In my memory the tone of my response was a bit sheepish, maybe even a bit imperious—as if I deserved such a grace.)

It wasn’t until a few years later that I recalled this conversation and experienced the full weight of grandpa’s words. The past, now nearly 20 years of pastoral life, hasn’t always been the easiest journey—I’ve had a few “outside of the norm” experiences that have shaped and formed my understandings of life, people, the church. And in each one of those moments, the death threats, being fired, watching a dream fall apart (as a church planter), grandpa’s words came roaring into view, washing over my heart, my spirit, and my soul like none other. “Aaron, I pray for you every single day.”

I am not sure I would have made it through those life-altering experiences without the faithful prayers of my grandfather.

For a long-time I’ve feared the day he would no longer be with us, selfishly coveting his daily prayers over my life. I had often wondered, “when he’s gone, who will take up the banner of faithful prayer over my life like he has?” I have stared at this moment for years with trepidation, and yesterday afternoon it came to pass. My grandpa passed away.

My grandpa has been one of the most important spiritual fathers in my life. He has modeled a quiet faithfulness, always quick to step in and serve the community, his church, his family, never asking for recognition or fanfare but faithfully and without complaint accomplishing the task set before him.

Grandpa chose to teach me through example more than through words. He taught me to be observant, to quiet myself and simply sit. Over the past year in the couple of visits that we would have, this was what we’d do. We’d share a few stories and then sit in the silence, grandpa modeling for me a comfortability, an ease with silence, teaching me to wrestle with the uncomfortableness and eventually settle in to this foreign space. This was his final and perhaps greatest lesson for me.

While the silence is still foreign, it is here in this space that I have come to realize that grandpa’s faithful, daily prayers for me were not his alone but rather a part of a larger network, a larger tapestry of prayers by others that spans farther than I could have ever imagined. The faithful banner of prayer over me and my life that grandpa initiated is being carried out by so many others, in different places. I’ll never fully know the full extent of that reach. That is a part of the beauty of prayer, and the legacy of my grandfather in my life. I will miss my grandpa but his memory, his legacy, and his lessons will endure.

I love you, grandpa, and I will miss you… until we meet again.

The post Until We Meet Again. appeared first on aaron monts.