Following the Lance Armstrong post, I received this question:
Wondering if there is a recent Evangelical Church/Church Growth comparison to be made with stubborn superstars and cheating (doping) the Gospel. Sort of like when Willow Creek admitted they were doing "it" wrong - people weren't growing. Did other churches renounce the church growth shortcuts? Or should we have all admitted we were "doping." Or should we idolize the old days in the church of faithful prayer, solid orthodox theology, rigorous biblical study in preaching, faithful pastoral care? Can the church now continue without looking for the next superstar pastor any more than the Tour can accept someone lesser than Armstrong as its superstar?
To me this speaks directly to how we define success. In sports, I know there are different opinions on the matter. Some see doping and the like no different than diet and weightlifting - things you can do to your body to develop a competitive edge. Others see a line where potential hazards outweigh potential benefits. Still others feel as though winning through better medicine removed their own physical contributions from the process.
It all comes down to success.
I got in some heat on Facebook recently for criticizing how some of he GOP Convention speakers were equating success with making money or running profitable businesses. I'm sure that those things do equal success for some people; I hope that's not true for everyone.
As a Christian, I define success by whether or not my actions make the Kingdom of God more evident in the world. What exactly does that mean? Well, it's tough to condense. There's four gospels that try to exemplify it, a whole bunch of letters that try to advise the practice of it, and a couple centuries of experimentation (not to mention the several thousand years of human-divine interaction that the gospels re-conceptualize in the first place). But let me give it a go:
The Kingdom of God is the world as God intends it, a redeemed creation. Our faith provides us with some useful maxims to try and work out in everyday living. They're mostly parables and thus defy explanation as an exact science, but the crux of it is simply unconditional love. I believe the goal of Christian life (and thus our measure for success) is to embody with our lives this Kingdom that is coming, but has not yet fully arrived.
Did I love my neighbor unconditionally today? Did I balance my time effectively, making room for service and celebration? Have I taken concrete actions to bridge injustice? Have I served as a means of peace and reconciliation? Things like that.
I try not to measure this in degrees - as in "could I have made the Kingdom even more evident than I did?" I hope to be and try my best, to put forth top effort (and perhaps even learn to improve in the future), but I don't worry about degrees. I am a frail and fault-filled human being whose only hope is to be open and available to the working of God in my life.
It's not tough to see the jump to worshiping congregations. A lot of Christian congregations and pastors have seen their profile rise considerably in recent years, through television and books and our general cultural love of all things big. Big money, big buildings, lots of people. There is a growing trend - soon congregations will either be huge (2,000+ attendees) or family sized (less than 30).
The first and most famous of these mega-churches is Willow Creek. They mastered the world of marketing and target audience and grew to be very large. They also did an internal survey that showed their people were not actually looking more like Christ through participation. They were bringing people in and getting them involved, but they weren't succeeding in ways they wanted to succeed - in gospel measures.
There's a lot of books about the Church and consumer culture. I've read a few. They talk about the different measure of success in different branches and forms of Christian expression. There's a lot of value there.
Ultimately, though, this is the minority. We are, as human beings, much more consumed by the culture around us than we are creators of culture. As the question pointed out, there's not a large stream of congregations shifting radically from their "church growth" strategies (which is insider language for increasing attendance and income). The methods of power and success dictated by our culture just don't jibe all that well with the gospel. The CEO model of leadership can create successful non-profit corporations, if success is defined the same way it is in corporate board rooms.
There's nothing wrong with that in many sense. There's a ton of great non-profit ministries out there working directly with people in need. I've got a lot of friends doing amazing things, efficiently and effectively - succeeding, no matter your definition.
I do think there is something different, though, when it comes to a worshiping community - and we are all part of a worshiping community, whether we know it or not. That community is one whose collective life is oriented around a specific set of principles.
For some it is freedom. For others it is business and financial success. Still others worship pleasure and personal happiness. For some it is patriotism. For Christians, it is (or should be) the Kingdom - we're living into an eternity that has already begun. It means we can't live with the same principles that guide everyone else.
I don't think that means other entities and institutions are useless. There's no reason that Christians should have to abandon the best of business, education, science, or politics. The problems arise when participation in such becomes defacto worship. When the means become the ends.
Too often Christians are loathe to reject alternative definitions of success because their much easier to achieve. Just like doping in sports (we got back around to it eventually - o ye of little faith) - it's a much faster, more predictable means to an end. In sports the end is secure, for the most part - winning is the measure of success. It's certainly the measure Lance Armstrong uses (he still introduces himself as someone who won the Tour de France seven times). Not every athlete puts winning as paramount - some just seek to get the most out of their performance, to give as much as they possibly can (see: about half the guys who run alongside Usain Bolt in the 100m finals).
Christian life and worship is not about winning - not about winning attendance battles or even winning souls. It's about being faithful. Success is about re-presenting the Kingdom with our lives and our relationships.
Some of my brothers and sisters still see politics as an avenue where that's possible; I admit I can't see it. Some of my brothers and sisters see the free-market as a place where the Kingdom can thrive; I admit I can't see it. I will support their faithful endeavors, though, as much as I can. I will also be vocal in reminding them that these are but means, not ends - that there is a different measure of success to which they are accountable.
Bradley Wiggins does seem less superhuman than Lance Armstrong, as I imagine my father does next to Rick Warren. I'm just not sure we can trust our instincts, when they've been so formed by a culture that defines success in ways so foreign to reality.
Thoughts?
What I saw was the ultimate competition. Thousands of miles raced over all kinds of roads - and not just one big race, but individual races each day and multiple races over the course of the event. The yellow jersey, the white, the green, the polka dot. It was unreal.
I loved it.
In 1995 the big Spaniard Miguel Indurain won his fifth consecutive Tour, tying him with Anquetil, Hinault and Merckx, the giants of the sport. He was the first to win five in a row. He was not a specialist, performing well in the Time Trial and in the mountains, but dominating neither. He was simply a machine, willing his body to do things no man on the planet could do, and doing it in a monotonous, mechanical fashion. He destroyed people because of his consistency. Even on days when he lost ground, he was always lurking right behind, pounding away on the pedals and refusing to be dropped.
The next year was 1996. The end of one era and the beginning of another. Bjarne Riis won the event, almost gifted by his young protege, Jan Ullrich who seemingly was stronger (indeed in 1997 the defending champ waved Ullrich on to win in a gesture of ultimate grace that makes him more of a cycling legend than his 1996 win). Indurain appeared a shell of his former self. He looked pedestrian, finishing well down in the pack. He could just not keep up.
At the time I assumed that there was a cliff in cycling, a moment when great champions just dropped off the face of the Earth and that Indurain could not fight his moment off. Over time, over eighteen further Tours I learned that it's simply not true. That kind of physical gift does not just disappear if the training continues. There is a point where a champion can no longer be a champion, but in cycling, the demands on the body are so strong that genetics has as much to do with success as training. Some people are just better and they don't cease to be better because of age. In cycling, you fade away; you don't fall.
It was the memory of that moment, of watching Indurain slip back and become mediocre, that confirmed to me the truth I did not want to admit: Lance Armstrong was doping along with everyone else.
Before we go too far. LiveStrong is a tremendous success and a wonderful legacy. They do great work and I am glad to see that Armstrong's refusal to fight doping charges has not hurt (in fact helped greatly) the mission of the organization.
I also believe that Armstrong is one of those genetic freaks. A grand cycling champion, built for success in the sport - and one who also trained harder and more intentionally than anyone else (prior to Armstrong everyone ate pizza and drank beer all night because they burn 12,000 calories a day racing - now they have dietitians). I have no doubt in my mind that were the playing field level, Armstrong could win all seven of those Tours again. The playing field was level, but it was not clean.
From the outside, there were few real hints of a massive problem. The Tour raided the Festina HQ and threw the entire team out of the race one year. There were some failed tests here and there. We were OK. Lance was OK. Then the dominos began to get bigger and more frequent. Ullrich lost his title, as did Tyler Hamilton. Riis admitted to doping during his win in 1996. Guys, big name guys, were dropping like flies.
In the end, cycling came clean. The whole sport. Everyone fessed up and came forward. People admitted they were doping; the tests changed. The era was written off and the sport began to move forward. Well, for everyone but Lance Armstrong. He stubbornly refused. Even when it was more and more apparent that everyone in the sport was doping. He began to stand out like those few crackpot scientists who still claim the Earth is flat.
My brothers and my dad and I used to play online scrabble. Words with Friends before Words with Friends was a thing. At one point an email went out, "why are we still playing this, clearly we're all cheating." We were. The games ended.
That was cycling from 1996 through 2011. The final lost appeal from Alberto Contador spelled the end. The end, of course, for everyone but stubborn Lance. The guy who refused to give in to cancer, refuses the inevitable.
There's just no excuse anymore. He keeps claiming he never failed a test. He didn't. 75% of the doping racers didn't either. The tests have never been that great for the kind of doping most beneficial in cycling. In fact, Lance mysteriously retired about the time those tests started getting accurate. Barry Bonds never failed a test. "But MLB tests are a joke." Marion Jones never failed a test either - and she went to prison.
Armstrong gave up at the final hurdle of a defense that had lasted millions of dollars and thirteen years? Really? The guy who takes nothing from anyone, the most stubborn man in sports gives up right at the finish line? Really? Lance doesn't want the damning evidence and witnesses aired in open court. He wants this to go away, quickly. It should. There's no need to linger. He's forced us to linger long enough.
USADA has been accused of being on a witch hunt. USADA may be power hungry; I'll give you that, but Armstrong is not being treated any differently than anyone else. It's simply that everyone else who's been caught admitted it and moved on. Armstrong is the only cyclist with the kind of money to be able to fight it this far. If you want to know what a brutal witch hunt looks like, check out what Contador has gone through the last five years (and deservedly so).
Nearly a dozen former teammates, coaches, and doctors were set to testify against Armstrong. Sure, some of them were former dopers (but again, nearly every rider falls into this category). Some of the "disgraced former teammates" were caught on tips from Armstrong's camp after leaving his team or angering him in some way. It's tough to refute multiple doctors and friends who put Armstrong in the middle of a massive team wide doping plan, lasting almost a decade. They've got one doctor who says, "I injected him myself."
Buzz Bissinger, never one to shy away from press of any kind, wrote a piece for Newsweek defending Armstrong as a hero, "even if he did use something." The argument being that he was still better. In a sport where everyone was doping, he was still the best.
It's a legitimate argument, but it doesn't make him a hero. In Lance's statement, probably the last statement he'll ever give about cycling, he said he's quitting his fight because cycling doesn't need this. It's true. Cycling doesn't need this. Cycling needed their greatest champion to come clean five years ago, to take responsibility for his part in a rough era of the sport, apologize, and move on.
Almost every one of the dopers is back in the sport. They have to be. There would be no sport without them. Bjarne Riis manages a team. Jonathan Vaughters, a teammate of Armstrong's and one in the middle of the controversy, manages one as well. Even those riders who were never formally implicated, but assuredly were doping have made the transition to clean riding without any fanfare. Not a single rider has made any noise about "being clean the whole time" - that's a telling fact.
Everyone - the media, the riders, the teams, and the fans know what went down. The sport was rotten to the core. It has been fixed (we hope). The only ugly spot left is the refusal of Armstrong to participate in the resurrection of the sport he claims to love.
Remember, for all the good his cancer foundation has done in the world, Lance has always been a selfish person. He was a selfish teammate, both as a supporting rider before cancer and as a team leader afterwards. He dumped his wife and three young children when he got famous and didn't want to be held back from TV appearances and Hollywood parties. He dated Sheryl Crow until she wanted kids and dumped her about the same time she was diagnosed with cancer herself.
It shouldn't surprise us that his own reputation comes before anything else, even the good of his sport. This is who he is. Likely this stubbornness (along with his outrageous CO2 max) made him such a great champion, such an amazing rider. I will never forget the way he just dropped the best cyclists in the world on the most difficult mountains as if they were standing still (and despite their incredible doping - enough to kill a few of them, by the way). Ironically it's that reputation that is being tarnished by his refusal to just make things right.
This controversy is solely a US controversy. Here, where cycling is a fringe sport at best, where cycling is only in the news when Lance Armstrong is in the news, we get a media story crafted mostly by the NBC promotions department and Lance's own PR people.
In the real cycling world, in Europe where it is a way of life, this story was over well before any formal charges were leveled at Armstrong. The whole sport was dirty. Everyone was guilty by association. They've always hated Lance - not just because a brash American ruined their fun, but because they knew what was going on. This is a whole lot of nothing. People on Lance's side are those ignorant of context.
I love cycling. I love the Tour de France. I loved watching Lance Armstrong ride. Those memories are not tarnished. Those superhuman performances will always be with us. Those impossible feats of strength, the lack of human frailty, the dope-fueled records, they are forever a part of the sport.
This year's Tour was the first I got to watch with my daughter. She was about two months old as we watched Bradley Wiggins celebrate on the Champs Elysees. He beat defending champion Cadel Evans. In both of their Tours the drama was gone. Both men simply rode at the peak of disciplined performance. Neither one exhibited short bursts of superhuman strength, but an insane ability to put their body through torture every day for three weeks. They muscled through the event with machine-like consistency.
It was as if we'd come full circle. The champions of the near future will be more like Indurain than Armstrong. The races may be less exciting, but they will be no less impressive. Perhaps one day the mix of genetics, training, endurance, and pure stubbornness will coalesce again into a five-time champion to rest alongside Indurain, Hinault, Anquetil, and Merckx - but they will always be standing in the towering shadow of Armstrong.
The doping is forgivable, given the context. The stubbornness is understandable given the man. It just boggles the mind that he can't ever let it end. The only thing I hold against Lance Armstrong, the only thing most anyone holds against him, is simply a refusal to be human.
That's all we ask.
I could make bones about how his sales pitch had no mention of Jesus in it or how he didn't seem to care who I was (other than a male with a baby), or what exactly wrestling alligators has to do with "ministry," but that would be a lame, lecture-y post.
I wasn't going to write about this incident at all, except later on in the week I read an article somewhere (I really forget; this is what happens when I don't write on the blog regularly). It is likely a common theme and something well documented; it seems overly simple. Yet I had never considered it quite this way before - the article's contention that basically every societal definition of masculinity has to do with dominance, which runs counter to the gospel of submissive love. The result being that when men hear a gospel sermon, it proclaims their very existence as sinful or evil.
If you think about it, this idea of masculinity as dominance makes a lot of sense. We focus on sports (and not those wussy ones where people tie, but the real manly sports where someone has to win - even if it's in "sudden death!), we win at work, even in relationships it's the language of competition. Manly activities include killing animals (and the closer to the extremes of the "with your bare hands - with a bazooka" scale you get, the more manlier the kill). Men are encouraged to shrug off pain - to dominate their own body. It goes on and on.
It's also true that the gospel is often completely counter to these notions. Service, mutual submission, and cooperation are all hallmarks of Christ's teachings. The vision of the Kingdom is one, essentially, where there are no losers (I imagine that makes March Madness much less exciting).
There's a growing faction of pastors out there pushing the "manly" Jesus as a way to recapture the hearts and attention of men so shaped by these societal demands and definitions. All this really does is conform the gospel to the expectations of the culture.
So how do we begin to re-imagine a definition of masculinity which embraces the gospel, but also avoid the wimpy, effeminate portrayal that well serves neither men, nor Christianity?
I think we have to begin with the notion than humanity was created to be disciplined. We have many different impulses and ambitions, but while letting these roam free often benefits us in the short term, the long term effects can be deleterious. I think about the struggle in the NFL between players taught to go all out, but also to be conscious of the places and ways in which they're hitting an opponent in light of recent understandings of head injuries. It's tough to be both brutal and controlled at the same time. James Harrison believes it impossible; I will not argue with this man.
Society seems to want a man who is kind, compassionate, loving and caring - until all hell breaks loose, then they want someone who can knock a few heads.
I'm not sure it works that way.
Strength does not have to go hand-in-hand with domination. I think of Michael Clark Duncan's character in the Green Mile - someone strong and gentle. One of my favorite definitions of "meek" is "strength under control." A Christian definition of "manliness" is more akin to someone who would never use strength, under any circumstances, to benefit himself.
Can we even go far enough to differentiate winning from dominance? Is this why trash-talking is so prevalent in sports? When you reach the highest levels of competition, everyone is good. The games are more an exhibition of skill and not a contest. Trash-talk adds an element of dominance - the attempt to anger or humiliate an opponent. I'm not talking about eliminating pick-up basketball, just the need to use it as a means of proving one's worth.
Maybe that's the answer? Perhaps our equation of masculinity and dominance has something to do with worth. Does our society teach that men are only worthy in proportion to their dominance? Richest, strongest, smartest, nerdiest - men seek out their niche for domination as a way to prove worth. It happens all the time.
The men I know who most embody a gospel masculinity are those with a strong sense of who they are and that they are valued irregardless of what they bring to the table. They are men whose weaknesses are not insecurities, who cannot be threatened by force or dominance; they are men who stand up for what they believe in, even if it means refusing to stand up and fight over who's more dominant.
Isn't that what Jesus did? The Roman Empire challenged him for dominance and he just took the beating and the execution and still came out on the other side. The gospel is about refusing to dominate or be dominated. That's a tricky row to hoe and I'm not sure how well any of us can navigate the space in between.
Instead, let's watch this Oscar winning best song in a motion picture for 2012; I think this sums up my perspective on this issue well:
For those not in the know, Augusta National is likely the richest, most exclusive golf club in the world. They sponsor the Masters, definitely the most exclusive tournament in the world. You have to be super rich and at the pinnacle of your profession to be admitted.
A few years back there was some hubbub about their men-only policy and people were lobbying sponsors to pull out of the TV broadcast for The Masters. Augusta National just decided to air their tournament without commercials and paid CBS whatever they were planning to make from ads. They did this for three years!
These old dudes do not like to be told what to do.
I'm all for the membership deciding what to do with their own club - and the two women they let in are exactly the kind of people who become members, well, except for their gender.
I sure hope the members of Augusta National didn't cave to public pressure.
Deep down it seems alright that there are exclusive clubs based on gender. I had a whole post written earlier today defending the idea. Why shouldn't men and women be able to get away from each other with people they enjoy hanging out with?
Then I thought, should there be white only golf clubs? There certainly were for a while. That ended not because of legal pressure - private clubs can still discriminate all they want - but because people stopped wanting to be a part of a club that excluded a large segment of the population out of hand.
Perhaps that was the thought process of Augusta National. Maybe those rich old dudes got together and said, "why are we keeping women out," and the answer was likely a lot of generalizations about women being weepy or complaining about the cigar smoke or wanting to decorate the dining room in pink paisley. In the end they admitted two women who don't fit any of those descriptions.
Condolezza Rice once said she'd resign as Secretary of State if they asked her to be commissioner of the NFL.
In the end I don't know how to feel. I don't think a club should be pressured to diversify its membership, but at the same time I recognize the real, formational value of diversity. I can see the appeal of a place where you can feel at home with everyone, but I also recognize that any sizable group of people, no matter how exclusive, can't provide that luxury.
Perhaps this is just another example of reaching for something that doesn't exist. These old, rich men have succeeded at everything they've ever tried. When it came to building a club full of people they genuinely liked and could stand to be around, it was just a bridge too far.
I give them credit for figuring that out, even if it took 80 years. Maybe there is a little bit of wisdom that comes from age and success.
For a long time I didn't give it much thought; quite honestly, it seemed like a convenient political football for the two sides to throw back and forth - and one that really wasn't all that dangerous.
I, like many others (almost 70% of Americans) think it would be pretty easy to commit voter fraud. I've never been asked to do anything but sign that I voted (they were supposed to compare my signature with the signature I used to register, but the poll worker never even looked).
At the same time, there's very little evidence that voter fraud occurs in the kind of numbers that make any numerical difference in elections. (It absolutely occurs, don't get me wrong - there's just never been any evidence it has swung any elections any time in the recent past). We've heard the stories (apocryphal or not) of Chicago mob bosses and third world dictators stuffing the ballot boxes with votes from dead people - but the reality is that just doesn't happen in the US today to any degree that matters statistically.
Still, in this day and age where life and death seem to ride on election results for some people, it's not too tough to imagine a scheme like our worst fears actually happening. People across the spectrum want to see us be a little stricter on how we identify voters.
I doubt even opponents of these voter-ID laws would have a problem with that - if it were done in ways that don't make it more difficult for some people.
I've always said that if these laws go into effect, the State should issue ID cards (not driver's licenses) for free. That way there's no defacto poll tax (even a small one) for voters.
This week, however, I've been exposed to some additional complications. The State of Georgia, for example, due to budget concerns, no longer has a single DMV within the city limits of Atlanta, a city of 400,000 people. Those with a lack of transportation would have a pretty tough time getting an ID.
To make things even more difficult, it was brought to my attention that many black people over the age of 60 who were born in the South don't have birth certificates. Before the Civil Rights movement many hospitals would not take black patients and many black children were born at home with no official record. With new laws in place for 2012, no state is allowed to issue an official ID of any kind without a number of forms of ID, one of them being a birth certificate.
I know from experience, this can be a confusing process. My wife had to go three times to the DMV in New Jersey and had to pay for a new birth certificate from New Hampshire because her original one no longer complied with US law. If there had been no birth certificate in the first place, who knows how long or even if she could have ever proven she was born in the US.
Some people would like to make this a partisan issue (and perhaps there's some knowledgeable persons in each party doing just that), I have to believe it's more of a cultural illiteracy issue. I never would have imagined how difficult or near impossible it could be for someone to get an ID. I always thought the problem was coughing up $40 to pay for it. The problem is bigger and deeper than all that. I suspect lots of well-meaning people voting for these things are in the same boat.
That being said, I don't think this changes anyone's mind that it wouldn't be a bad idea to be a little more secure in our voting processes (my last vote in NJ, they had three sets of previous residents at our address still on the rolls as active voters). It's going to take some more care on the part of election commissions and volunteers for sure. It's also going to take some creative means of identification.
I find it hard to believe anyone would want to withhold voting privileged because of an inability to get to a DMV or the fact their birth certificate doesn't exist.
A week ago I was clueless as to why this was a problem; now I'm not. Perhaps this post can help other people to engage and together maybe we can figure out a better way to secure our voting system and also enable everyone who wants to vote to exercise that privilege.
