The ArkRocker

Just when one thinks that every idea has been tried, along comes a group like ‘Unconcerned Nazarenes’. Their mission statement says it all:

“Unconcerned Nazarenes is a unique and special fellowship just for people who can’t bring themselves to get worked up about Calvinists, the Emerging Church, fundamentalism, Democrats, Republicans, the antichrist, false prophets, the rapture, speaking in unknown tongues, speaking in known tongues, biblical interpretation, Proctor and Gamble, Brian McLaren, Rob Bell, Tony Campolo, Brett Favre, or Sesame Street characters having ambiguous gender characteristics.”

Among their frequently asked questions (FAQ) is this gem:

“Question: If you guys don’t care about anything, why bother saying so?”

Answer: There is a mission field that is ripe unto harvest. It’s called people who don’t care about anything, or as I call them, the ‘apathy cohort.’ Don’t you just love the word ‘cohort’? All the researchers say that 20-somethings are Generation ‘Y’, but I say that they are increasingly ‘Generation Why Bother?’”

The apathy cohort is so big that it makes the 10W-40 window look like the front door of an Oompa-Loompa house. The apathy cohort is a virtually unreached population in the Church of the Nazarene who will not demand their rights as long as they are fed regularly. They are our ministry target. They are our man from Macedonia.”

One has to give this group credit for originality. Most grassroots religious groups form because they are upset about something. I will follow ‘Unconcerned Nazarenes’ with interest. Give them a look if you care to.

File this one in the ‘delusions of grandeur’ category. Despite the fact that the largest churches in the USA number in the thousands, we commonly call them ‘megachurches’ (mega = million). The megachurch designation is sooo 20th century though.

Look for large churches to begin referring to themselves as ‘gigachurches’. A gigachurch has everything that a megachurch has, but is at least a thousand times better. Now that we are comfortable with the ‘giga’ prefix due mostly to our exposure to computer terminology, the ‘mega’ prefix has lost its mystique. The time to change is now!!

With this site being new and all, the Google bots will surely see this post more than any human eyes. Nevertheless, I would like to take this opportunity to say that the era of Christians being in the backpocket of the Republican Party is over.

There are certainly holdouts among Evangelicals - you know the type…those who still think that George W. Bush really wanted to overturn Roe v. Wade, but he just ran out of time. There are those who perhaps think that if not for 9/11, Bush would have surely legislated gay rights back to the 1950’s.

There seems to be a growing segment of the evangelical community who realize that the Republican party has not been doing our bidding all these years and that we are just a bunch of saps. In better days, we would vote for Republicans in an almost Pavlovian manner. I sometimes wondered whether we evangelicals would vote for Satan himself so long as he could recite a few pro-life talking points.

So, like the wedding feast at Cana when the booze ran out, this evangelical power-party seems to be drawing to a close but it seems unlikely that Jesus will come to the rescue this time.

Who am I, and Why am I here?

Who can forget the profound opening line of Admiral Stockdale in the vice presidential debate of 1992? Well, maybe you can…especially if you have forgotten that Stockdale was Ross Perot’s running mate in the presidential election that year. In one sentence Admiral Stockdale set the tone for his humorous and hapless participation in the presidential race while casting doubt on Perot’s judgment for choosing him to start with.

For myself, I’ll answer the second question first. Why am I here? I want to be part of the conversation. Talk is cheap but conversation is priceless. The Church of the Nazarene needs more conversation and fewer monologues, so feel free to leave comments on my articles.

So to the next question, Who am I?  A little background might be helpful. Long ago, my eyes were opened to a dangerous reality; a disease that can rot an organization from within. The malady of which I speak is the tendency to be more interested in ‘who’ said something rather than evaluating their ideas at face value. I endeavor to be a leader who can learn from others, whether they have played the institutional game as well as I have or not. I invite you as a reader to consider my ideas wihout regard to whether I am speaking from a position of ecclesiastical strength or weakness.

And by the way, yes I am the arkrocker from the NazareneNooz.