http://danielbigham.ca/cgi-bin/blog.pl?keywords=faith Daniel Bigham's Blog en-us Our church is planning on doing some renovations of our church sanctuary, and we have been asked to contribute our personal dreams for that project. Below are my thoughts. Obviously this is something each church must wrestle with. Other than some more distant recollections of people commenting that we might consider changing the paint color in the sanctuary, comments at the annual meeting (?) or around that time challenging the congregation to undertake a renovation project of the sanctuary before 2015 are where the context of this “dreams discussion” originate for me. The tone of the announcement at church this week, as well as the note that was put in people’s mailboxes, seems to have evolved from the original challenge. I won’t get the wording right, but the announcement was something to the effect of “it’s clear that the carpet needs to be replaced in the sanctuary” on Sunday, and in the note in the mailboxes it says “the flooring needs to be replaced in the sanctuary and the foyers as a matter of maintenance”. There seems to be an implicit affirmation from leadership that this project will be undertaken, and that it will in the very least involve replacing the flooring of the foyer and sanctuary. This implicit affirmation is challenging for me because the need to replace flooring is far from clear to me. The spirit behind the project as a whole likewise isn’t something that I resonate with, and so the assumptive voice that is emerging is tricky for me. It makes me feel as if my feedback doesn’t apply because it falls outside of the assumed parameters of the discussion. In general, the way I have been thinking about opportunities to spend financial resources these days is to consider the full gamut of possibilities. With any dollar we have been entrusted with, my sense is that we should aim to do that which glorifies God the most. Obviously that is a tricky question to answer in a precise way, but hopefully the general concept is useful and something that many people would agree with. When I look out into the world and read that 20,000 children are dying every day due to preventable causes while we in our congregation live such comfortable and affluent lives, it challenges me. More and more, I feel like God is getting my attention, waking me up. I believe that even as Christians, we often live our lives without a world-wide perspective. Rather, we are very acclimatized to life within our Southwestern Ontario context. When we make spending decisions, my sense is that we typically do that with blinders on. If the broadness of our vision was really global, I struggle to believe that we would make many of the financial decisions that we make as a congregation, both in our personal lives, and in our life together as a church. Does God desire us to limit the scope of our decisions? I don’t think God desires that. Let’s take for example the choice of whether we replace the flooring. If it costs $7,500 to replace the carpet, that is perhaps 3x a typical estimate for how much it costs to save a child’s life. And so I don’t take the decision lightly. A second layer to my struggle is that our sanctuary has its primary use of about 1.5 hours per week. A week is 168 hours, so that is a utilization of 0.9%. The foyer is used perhaps 30 minutes per week for a weekly utilization of perhaps 0.3%. I believe that God desires Christians to demonstrate skillful stewardship -- can the use of our sanctuary and foyer really be considered good stewardship? Even more challenging is the fact that our small town of St. Jacobs has three church buildings. Each one of those buildings is the property of the same God, and each is likely utilized a tiny percentage throughout the week. Again, this strikes me as a sign of poor stewardship. (Can’t we share a church?) Can we honestly understand such tiny utilizations as honoring to God in a world where so many precious children don’t make it to their fifth birthday? These feelings of sadness and confusion don’t fit very well with the sentiment of the letter in our mailboxes which make comments such as “fresh and exciting”, and talks about “need”. Where I do connect with this conversation is that we must face the fact that we are surrounded by and desiring to witness to people who live in this culture, and we might be less effective at inspiring folks to worship with us if our sanctuary isn’t architecturally inspiring. And so from that angle I am fully supportive of the notion of (ironically) being good stewards of the building that we have been given, using it to its fullest potential as an instrument of witness. But even that said, it’s far from obvious to me that a pretty sanctuary that potentially costs the lives of children is a good witness to a culture that is drunk on materialism. Don’t we reap what we sow? I’ll close with something that is a bit off topic. I had been thinking that this discussion was a more general “capital project dreams and discussion” and not limited to the sanctuary project... the realization for me was that I do love capital projects. They’re exciting! It just depends what kind of capital project we’re talking about. If we’re talking about building wells or other clean water initiatives like sand dams, building schools, building churches, etc, then sign me up. On that theme, here is my dream for a “capital project”. I will use numbers not because they are overly important, but I do think they can make a dream feel a bit more concrete. A five year project focused on partnering with communities in developing nations to provide access to clean water, education, and medical services. $500,000 goal over the five years, which would be given on top of our typical church budget. (Just like a typical capital campaign) A portion of that $100,000 per year would be used for travel expenses for people in our congregation to be physically present with the people we have a heart to minister to, developing friendships, learning about their culture, being transformed, and bringing back stories to the local congregation. Rather than spending dollars that have yet to be given (and going into debt), we could have a “giving year” followed by a “spending year”. ie. There would be five spending years in a row, but the first “giving year” would come a year prior to the first “spending year”. That would eliminate the stress of having to pay down debt, and so the money spent on this capital campaign each year would be more analogous to “overflow” than to debut reduction. Rather than being purely a matter of dollars, we would pour ourselves out into research and planning, and prayer. And we would be partnering with existing organizations, whether MCC or otherwise, to leverage their knowledge and relationships. That is a capital campaign that would both challenge and excite my spirit. Carpet just can’t compare. 27 May 2013 00:00:00 http://www.danielbigham.ca/cgi-bin/blog.pl?mode=view&id=991 Something that came to mind at the Inspire Justice conference last weekend (not for the first time), is the concept of "living at church". What do I mean by that? Yup: Literally living at church. Let me back up a step. Something that causes me concern is that there are so many big, expensive church buildings. At this conference, there was mention made of one church doing a $50 million dollar building expansion! In a world where there are so many children dying from malnutrition and preventable diseases, it causes one pause. As members of a church, can we feel confident that putting our offerings in the plate are the absolute best way to be the hands and feet of Jesus in a suffering world? Are these big, little-used buildings really a core example of what it means to be "the church"? How much difference do these capital campaigns really make? I was shocked to learn that when people in the church die and leave a large amount of money to the congregation, such as $100,000, it is customary for 90% of that to go to the capital fund. Yikes. What goes along with this concern is that these buildings have their core utilization, at least in our congregation, between 9 AM and 12 noon on Sunday. That's 3 hours out of a 168 hour week. The buildings do have pastoral offices, a few activities throughout the week, and there are a couple of organizations that use some of the space, but overall utilization remains low. As a church, I believe we are called to lead by example. We should be able demonstrate good stewardship to the world. Because hey, we are spending God's money, so one would think we'd be pretty careful. Another realization here is that our church is in a small town where there are not one or two, but THREE church buildings. Can churches in a small town not even figure out how to share their worship spaces so that three completely separate buildings, all low-utilization, are required? Part of me shakes my head at this. Good stewards? How about parking lots. My home church in Woodstock recently bought a school that closed down next to it so that it could continue to use the parking lot around the school. Cost: Something like $350,000. That's money that could flow right into missions, perhaps enough to double the missions budget for a whole decade, but the money gets tied up in a parking lot. At this Inspire Justice conference in Cambridge, the size of the church parking lot was absolutely massive. Sigh. The crazy idea is this: Could people live in church buildings? Imagine a family setting up a couple of tents at bed time: One for mom and dad, and another for their two kids. Meals prepared in the church kitchen. Movies watched on the church projector. What would this look like with 5 families living in the church? Shared day-care. Having other kids to play with. If there were multiple people who "worked at home", it would create a bit of an office environment. Community. 0-minute drive to church. Shared meal prep a few times a week. Huge cost savings. Let's take it a step further: What if those families shared their income while living there together, and gave the excess to the church? It almost sounds like Acts. And yet another step further: Including a mix of low-income families, such as immigrants, etc. And yet another step further: Include a couple of elderly people who still have their marbles but can't quite take care of themselves anymore? I wonder whether we suddenly wouldn't have a building under-utilization issue any more, and that might be one of the smaller benefits. I find this fascinating. 20 Apr 2013 00:00:00 http://www.danielbigham.ca/cgi-bin/blog.pl?mode=view&id=989 Have you ever been to a marriage workshop? Our church held one this past spring and we talked about marriage in light of three dimensions... let's see if I can remember them: Passion, Commitment, and Intimacy. The book we used drew from a triangle developed by Robert Sternberg at Yale. Within the class we talked about how this triangle changes at various times in a relationship. Sometimes relationships become more passionate, or committed, or intimate, and sometimes one dimension will grow much larger than the others. But completely lacking any of these dimensions, a relationship is lacking. I was thinking how an analogy could be drawn from this as we consider our relationship with God. Perhaps our relationship with God is even more dimensional than this... sometimes we delight in theology, in heady concepts. Along the same lines, sometimes we marvel at the rich history of God's work on Earth and in man described by the Bible. Sometimes our hearts burst with passion, an almost sensual experience of God. Likewise, commitment. No wonder God painted the picture of the bridge and bridegroom for us. With all of these dimensions of our relationship with God changing shape over the years, no wonder we are often thirsty -- we yearn for aspects of God that we haven't tasted like we did in years past. 19 Oct 2009 00:00:00 http://www.danielbigham.ca/cgi-bin/blog.pl?mode=view&id=788 I recently watched this video about Michael Pritchard's Lifesaver bottle. Wow, wow, wow. I checked out the company's website, but there was no reference at all to using the bottle for humanitarian uses. Confused, I sent an email to info@lifesaversystems.com: Hi there, I just watched Michael Pritchard's TED talk about the Lifesaver bottle, and to say I'm excited is an understatement. I resonate with Michael that this bottle could make a mind-blowingly significant difference to people living in third-world countries. I visited the Lifesaver website hoping that there would be more information about things like: - Lobbying governments to support an initiative of distributing bottles to third world countries. - Ways that individuals can raise money to donate bottles to third world countries (ex. A charity that is able to give tax receipts, etc.) - Discounts for the bottles when used for humanitarian reasons. - News about people's efforts using the bottle for humanitarian causes. - Forums to help connect people on this cause. - etc. ... but all I found were pictures of military people using the bottle, which was a little depressing. So what's the deal? Thanks, Daniel We'll see what they have to say. UPDATE: It has been a couple of weeks and I haven't gotten a response... oh well. 27 Aug 2009 00:00:00 http://www.danielbigham.ca/cgi-bin/blog.pl?mode=view&id=779 Here's my reply to a recent Slashdot article: When I read stories like this, I have two reactions. The first is to be encouraged that people are investigating the experience of consciousness (qualia), because in my opinion it is probably the most bizarre/amazing thing in the universe, and yet almost completely not understood. (And not studied very much given how amazing it is) My other reaction is, gosh, we just don't seem to get it. It seems so obvious to me that the experience of consciousness cannot be a result of "software", nor "hardware" -- it cannot be the result of atoms, molecules, and electrons. Isn't that obvious to anyone else? And I'm not even talking about religion, I'm just talking about common sense. But science is so set on explaining everything based on physical observation that it seems to conclude that the experience of consciousness MUST be due to atoms and molecules and electrons, end of story. Again, I'm not advocating for the "spirit" here, I'm just saying that I find it dumbfounding that we're still convinced that something as completely bizarre/unique as this can be due to the physics that we know. I guess that's why people are interested in exploring any possible connections with quantum mechanics, because if it's not due to classical physics, which it simply cannot be, then it must be due to something else, and quantum mechanics is the only "other" thing under the physics umbrella. The only physical analogy that makes sense to me, personally, is dimensionality... that in addition to the classic dimensions we're familiar with, there must be additional dimensionality to our reality that allows for the experience of consciousness. That makes some sense, because there is obviously an extremely strong spatial and temporal correlation between our brain and whatever it is that allows us to experience consciousness -- any distance in time or space space completely interrupts consciousness, and that's something that we can observe. So if there is additional dimensionality that allows us to experience consciousness, is there any way to "observe" that other than the usual way, which is simply to be alive and experience life? I guess to interact with something in a dimension, you need something else that is at the same coordinates in that dimension. For example, to affect something at a current XYZ coordinate in the universe, typically you need something else at that XYZ coordinate. Or to affect something directly at a certain time in history, you need to be at that same time in history. Perhaps this is similar with additional dimensionality to the universe: To observe it or affect it, you need to be at the same "coordinates" in that dimension -- and as far as I know, we don't have any scientific sense of anything in the universe that can observe or affect that dimensionality other than our own brains. So humph, a mystery. But yeah, I wish people would talk about this more and I wish that our society and government would spend more effort encouraging the study of what, seriously, is the most mysterious, amazing, observable phenomenon in the universe! 24 May 2009 00:00:00 http://www.danielbigham.ca/cgi-bin/blog.pl?mode=view&id=741 As Meredith and I were flying down to Florida in February, I was looking down at the thousands upon thousands of lights on the ground. They were seemingly endless. And I imagined all of those people, hundreds of thousands of them, going about their lives, completely oblivious to the fact that I sat from my vantage point observing them. In a sense, I felt completely irrelevant, because I was totally detached from each of their lives, without any power to be seen or to affect them. I guess it was a kind of loneliness. But then I imagined that down there, in that sea of humanity, people were praying. Maybe I couldn't see them, but they were there. Some of them were laying in bed, reaching out to God. Some of them in their cars sending thoughts to heaven. I had this moment of understanding, a window into that aspect of God's relationship with us: In a sense God is like I was, watching us, desiring this sea of people, despite their hectic lives, to turn their attention to Him. And when, against the odds, people do, how wonderful that must be to (proverbially) look down and see faithful people. Prayer is a loving act. 17 Mar 2009 00:00:00 http://www.danielbigham.ca/cgi-bin/blog.pl?mode=view&id=722 Something that I've never really understood is post modernism. It's such a slippery, mushy concept to me. One of the things at the core of post modernism, I think, is the concept of relativism rather than absolutism, and that's another concept (relativism) that I've struggled with. But I think I've got it. I had this sudden realization that my private "reality" is very different than everyone else's private reality: the stuff that's inside your head. What's at the core of this idea is that perception is reality. Our brains assemble all of our perceptions, they combine them with our beliefs/predictions about the world, and out the other end comes this thing called "reality". And so Bob can say to Joe, "that might be your reality, it might seem true to you, but it's not my reality". And in a sense, he's right. His perceptions are knit together in a very different way than Joe's, and they form a "reality" that is, therefore, different. Now here's the crux: I don't think that people who hold up this idea of "relative truth" are debating whether absolute truth exists, I think what they're saying, at the core of their argument, is that absolute truth isn't important. They're saying that, ultimately, it's the relative stuff that we experience, that makes up our private realities, and if the sum of our collective private realities make up the whole sum of experienced reality, it is thus what's truly important. Clear. It's so clear to me now. So let the debate rage on: Not whether one exists and the other doesn't, but this: Which reality is more important? 19 Jan 2009 00:00:00 http://www.danielbigham.ca/cgi-bin/blog.pl?mode=view&id=709 Today was a little mind blowing: I feel like someone hit the fast forward button and I'm sitting here at some point in the future. (Ok, so technically every moment in time is the "future") Let's review: Last night I was in iTunes and I came across podcasts, which I've never really explored. When they showed up on the scene a few years ago I liked the idea but I didn't find enough content to get me excited. As I came across them again last night, I was intrigued. Ok, so maybe it was the fact that it was a link to a NASA podcast and the space nerd inside of me was tickled. This morning as I was getting ready for work, I checked out the NASA podcast, and what I saw next blew my mind: An NBC Nightly News podcast, an ABC News podcast, and a CBS News podcast. Video. Podcast. Video on demand. TV on demand! Throw a kitchen computer into the mix and you have the ability to watch the news in the evening or morning as you're sitting there enjoying your munchies. Revolutionary, really. So tonight Meredith and I watched the news together, which we haven't done in a really long time. We cut our cable last year, and even before that, stopping what we were doing and going downstairs in time to catch the news was far too much work. It was like it became culturally passe for us to have to sit at the TV at a specific time of day. No: Not our generation; we want to watch something when we want to watch it. Or, most times, we won't be bothered to watch it at all. And the basement, it's a nice "far off" place to watch a movie, but we live our lives on the main floor. So having the news beamed to the kitchen, on demand, to a beautiful 20" iMac screen, it's mouth watering. So video podcasts have become one of the killer apps for this concept of a "kitchen computer" being a central tool in the home. Before I close, I wanted to touch on what made this day feel so "in the future". Beyond the video-on-demand, the actual subject matter of the news was Barack Obama's inauguration. Some of the African Americans that were interviewed talked about it being a quantum leap, and I think they're right on the money. Bono's remarks, too, were very revealing. I forget how exactly he put it, but basically he said that it changes everything, that somehow, in some mysterious way, this changes everything. I don't know whether he's right, but I feel too like we're sensing the tip of an iceberg: That this event is symbolic of something big. Next: After watching ABC News, I was curious to find out more about this "Andrew Bird" musician that they interviewed, so I typed his name into the iTunes music store and within 30 seconds I had purchased two of his songs, which are fantastic by the way. Do you see how everything was connected? I was able to get the News when and where I wanted it, and that meant that I actually watched it, and because I'm watching it on a PC, I then immediately put into action the things that the news brought to mind, and an economic transaction happened within 1 minute. That's an economy moving at the speed of light compared with how that series of events would have unfolded 20 years ago. Pretty amazing stuff, thus the feeling that I'm sitting here in the future. And to contrast all of these themes, the Old Testament: I've just finished first and second Kings, and the enormity of the world and its history is fresh on my mind: What a rich globe we live on, what a rich history. And in addition to the Bible being at the centre of Christian theory, it is a mind blowing (term of the day apparently) account of history. I find it breath taking that I can read intimate stories of people, families, and an entire civilization thousands of years in the past. Almost everything in this world fades to dust, but these scriptures and stories are in tact. Wow. The future, the present, the past, if you haven't been reminded in a while, this is an amazing planet. Praise be to God! 19 Jan 2009 00:00:00 http://www.danielbigham.ca/cgi-bin/blog.pl?mode=view&id=708 I had a flashback sitting in church today, to when I was in grade 9 or 10. I was sitting in science class, not paying attention, and our teacher Mr. Ross asked a question. As he finished his question, my attention snapped back. He had asked something about evolution. Did he just ask whether we believed evolution? I wasn't quite sure. The room was completely silent. I think he asked for a show of hands. I felt a need to answer the question, but I didn't know what the question was, exactly, and I was too embarrassed to put up my hand and ask for the question to be repeated because I wasn't paying attention. After the class, a Christian girl approached me and inquired about the situation. She said something to the effect of "Do you think we should have put up our hands?", and in a stroke of idiocy I said something like "Maybe it wasn't really the best time". Wow, lame. I should have just admitted that I wasn't paying attention, and that yes, we should have. I've often thought back to that occasion. 28 Sep 2008 00:00:00 http://www.danielbigham.ca/cgi-bin/blog.pl?mode=view&id=630