In honor of BikeMovements 5th Anniversary, I’ve posted the documentary and supplementary material to YouTube (even YouTube has made some quantum leaps from where it was 5 years ago). Our hope is that through this documentary the conversation will continue and that it will enrich your own journey.

This is the 46 minute abridge documentary:

If you can’t find time to at watch the documentary, I’d encourage you to at least check out several other shorter clips that came out of the trip:

BikeMovement Documentary Trailer
Additional Material

• Community: Lessons from the Road 3.5 minutes
• Feeling Alone: Reflection on Race 3.75 minutes
• Gender Equality in Church 2 minutes
• Holly’s Story: Finding faith through experience & hard questions 4.75 minutes
• Interactions between people of different beliefs 4 minutes
• Language: Individual Salvation 4.75 minutes

Short Topical Clips

• Introduction to BikeMovement 1.5 minutes
• Community: Parallels to Church 2.75 minutes
• Questions? 2.75 minutes
• Young Adults: Visions for Church 2.75 minutes
• Language 2.75 minutes
• Living the call: Re-imagining Church 3.25 minutes

If any of you are interested in using this in a Sunday School or small group setting, there is a full length DVD with an accompanying study guide (I have several extra DVD copies laying around if anybody is interested). More information on the trip and two trips after that is available at http://bikemovement.org.

For any old (yes we are old now) BikeMovement participants out there, happy 5th anniversary. Hope life is treating you all well and I miss you all and our little traveling community we created that continues to shape me today. Peace.

Most of you are probably familiar with Galileo. In the 1600’s he made the bold claim that the earth was round, not flat as was the common understanding of the day. This bold assertion was met with strong opposition from the church. The earth could not possibly be round. Clearly this notion was contrary to Scripture. There is more to Galileo’s story, but that is not point of this post.

In the 1859, Charles Darwin published the book “On the Origin of Species” in which he made the bold claim that life on earth came through a process called evolution. This bold assertion was met with strong opposition from the church. All life was created by God in the span of a week approximately 6000 years ago. Clearly the idea that species evolved into new species over billions of years was contrary to Scripture. There is more to this debate that pits science against faith, but I should probably get to my own story.

I was raised in a Christian home and attended Christian schools all my life. In high school, I was an active member of the youth group. I still remember my youth pastors warning before heading to college. “When you get to college, watch out. There will be professors/students who will challenge your faith. Check everything against Scripture.” These weren’t his exact words, but he strongly cautioned me about the faith challenges academia might bring.

This was a man who I hold a great deal of respect for even to this day. Perhaps I misunderstood his advice, but in general I shied away from anything that seemed to conflict with my understanding of Scripture. So this was true for the duration of my college career. It was a Mennonite college, so it wasn’t too difficult to avoid subjects that would have challenged the authority of Scripture (or at least how I understood it). So I made my way through college with my mainstream conservative Christian theology intact.

In regards to creation of the earth, I believed in a fairly literal interpretation of Genesis. God made the earth. I probably suspected the earth was older than 6000 years, but I was buying the creationist explanation that the flood was the answer to most challenging fossil records. In my mind, I was fairly certain that the earth was not billions of years old, and macro evolution (the idea that species evolved into new species) was invented by atheists trying to cut God out of the picture. In general, I avoided any evolutionist theories because they didn’t make sense in my Scriptural worldview.

It wasn’t till I was two years out of college that I seriously dealt with the evolution question. I was with a group of young adults biking across the United States. While all of us were on the trip for different reasons, one common thread was that we had questions. Questions about what it meant to be a young adult in the context of the church and what it meant to be followers of Christ in this day and age. An environment was created in our group where it was safe and actually encouraged to question some of our preconceived notions and to reexamine what we had grown up learning.

Five days into the bike trip, I stopped at a museum in Oregon to inquire about a camping site. At one of the exhibits, they described their discovery in that area of layers after layers of dinosaur bones separated by millions of years with completely different dinosaur species, plant life, and climate zones. Suddenly the creationist flood theory didn’t make sense. And I was forced to wrestle with what I really believed about how the earth was formed.

Several weeks after my encounter with this dinosaur exhibit, we had made it to Iowa, and I interviewed a college friend who is an evolution biologist and also a Christian. For the first time in my life I realized that the being a Christian and believing in evolution was not mutually exclusive.

After the trip ended, I continued to dive into the topic of evolution. I went to a local college’s series on Genesis. I watched a creationist video series to balance out what I was learning about evolution. The deeper I looked, the more this evolution idea seemed plausible and the sillier the creationist sounded trying to use Genesis as a science textbook.

By this time my faith felt like it was falling apart. If God didn’t make the world 6000 years ago in six 24 hour days, then Genesis had it wrong! If Genesis was wrong, what about the rest of the Bible? My faith built upon this literal interpretation of all Scripture was crumbling.

Fortunately the moderator at the local college that was hosting the series on Genesis pointed me to “The Language of God” by Francis Collins. Collins was the lead scientist on the human genome project. He is scientist who became a Christian later in life, and believes that God made his creation through an evolutionary process. In his book, he frequently referenced C.S. Lewis’s writing because Lewis was of a similar persuasion on the topic of evolution.

Wow. Here were two very smart dudes saying that it was possible to be a Christian and understand Genesis in a new light. My faith didn’t have to die! But it did need rebuilt.

Suddenly I had more questions than ever before. How do I understand Genesis? How do I interpret scripture? If God created the world through an evolutionary process, then physical death had to exist before the fall of man. But that seems to change some of the assumed theology that I grew up with! So was the fall of man all about man’s spiritual death? What is the soul? What separates us from an ape? What was the ensoulment process? How did we become human and how was God involved in the process? Did Noah really build an ark if there is no evidence of a worldwide flood?

The hardest part for me when I felt my faith crumbling was that suddenly God felt very distant. What happened to my personal God whose hands molded the earth? It seems like 14 billion years ago, in a great burst of energy, God started everything in motion, and left things go on its own. Does God really care about me? Is there really an afterlife?

What followed this meltdown of faith was a period of rediscovering faith. I still don’t have answers for all my questions, but today I cling to the hope that God does care. And this faith is now centered squarely on this Jesus fellow. He is real right? He came to earth claiming to be God’s son. By making this claim, he was either insane, lying, or really was God (a C.S. Lewis argument). I believe that he is God and that he will follow through on his promises for those who choose to follow his narrow way. And he cares for ME. He is a personal God, not a distant God, and my relationship will last long after my physical body quits on me and in ways I can not begin to comprehend now. This is what gives me hope, and what I am pinning my faith on.

So what is the point of my post? For those of you out there who are not followers of Christ, I want to say this. To become a Christian does not mean you have to say the world is still flat. Jesus called us to live in ways that didn’t make sense to this world, but he wasn’t asking us to abandon reason. The Pharisees were the religious leaders that lived when Jesus was on earth, and they had all sort of rules about what to believe. Don’t let Christians who insist the earth is flat get in your way of following Jesus.

To fellow followers of Christ, I offer this. Whatever your beliefs are about the origins of the earth, I’m not trying to change them. We should be able to agree that God made us. How he did it is open for debate, but it should not get in the way of allowing others to be followers of Christ. And don’t be afraid of the questions that may challenge what you believe. Questions have the power to refine your faith, and center it on what truly maters.

When I start to get preachy on this subject, my wife reminds me that my approach is no different then a right wing Christian who is pushing an extremely literal interpretation. So I apologize if I came across this way. No matter how well I think I have something figured out, I’m still learning to be humble and open to God’s teaching.

Thank you for taking the time to read my story. I welcome any feedback and would love to hear your own wrestling with this topic and what faith and theological implications it may bring.

Young Adults Begin Ecumenical Sunday School Project

By Denver Steiner

OMC Young Adults members fellowship with the young adult class at Orrville Baptist Church.

Operation “Orrville Church Visitation” kicked off this past Sunday, November 11, when members of the young adult Sunday school class from OMC (Orrville Mennonite Church) visited our church neighbor Orrville Baptist Church for their morning young adult Sunday school time. We began the morning with refreshments and coffee while meeting and fellowshipping with church members. The introductions continued as we moved into the Sunday school time, and we got to know two Buehler’s employees, a laser operator, an electrician, and several other Christian brothers and sisters connected to our community. Following a prayer, the leader of the class, David Barber, led the group in a study of Galatians 3.

In Galatians, Paul writes to a church that was forcing its Gentile members to follow Jewish customs and laws. In chapter 3, Paul tells the Galatians that they do not receive the Holy Spirit through obeying the law; rather it is through faith in Christ alone. Through faith in Christ, we are no longer bound to the curse of the law. How refreshing it is that experiencing Christ isn’t bound to obeying a set of rules or steps outlined by our denomination and traditions! Christ transcends that, and through faith in Him, we are all children of God. There is neither Mennonite nor Baptist, male nor female, for we are all one in Christ Jesus (paraphrase of Galatians 3:26-28).

What a fitting passage for our first church visitation. With this church visitation project, the young adults at OMC hope to meet other young adults in the Orrville area for the purpose of Christian fellowship with other members of Christ’s church in order to create a more unified Christian witness to our neighborhood.

For more information about this project and upcoming church visitations, check out our website: http://orrvillemenno.net/ya/. We encourage other small groups to consider undertaking similar projects as a way to meet other members of Christ’s body in your community in order to grow together in faith while sharing Christ’s love with your neighborhood.

Many of you have probably heard of BikeMovement. If you haven’t, we were a group of young adults that biked across the USA last summer talking about church and several other topics discussed on YAR.

Well the documentary following the trip is now complete, and a free copy is being sent to every MCUSA church this next week. For those of you connected to Mennonite congregations, I wanted to give you a heads up, first of all to let you know that this resource is available, and second, to encourage you push your church to use it. Included with the DVD is a study guide, making it ideal for a 3-6 week study group/Sunday school class. We strongly encourage you to try this in an intergenerational study group.

While we don’t claim to speak for all young adults, at the very least we hope you will be able to use this documentary as a tool to spark conversation about important topics relevant to your context.

I’ve posted the abridged 45 minute version of the documentary here:

1. Intro
2. Community
3. Questions
4. Connecting to Church
5. Creative PostModern
6. Language
7. Connecting Generations
8. Final Reflections

For more information, or to order your own copy of DVD which includes the full length documentary, study guide, as well as additional material, please visit: http://bikemovement.org/documentary/Order.php. All proceeds will be going to Amigos to assist young adults from all over the world to be able to attend the 2009 Mennonite World Convention in Paraguay.

A quick plug for “BikeMovement the Documentary – A young adult perspective on church” that will premiere at San Jose 2007 Mennonite convention and be available for sale on-line in about a week. For those of you who don’t know, BikeMovement was a group of young adults who biked across the United States last summer talking about young adults and church. (BikeMovement involves more then just this, including a recent biking trip through Asia, but for the purpose of this post, I’ll focus on young adults and church in North America.)

BikeMovement has been asked to share 5-7 minutes during the delegate session on the topic, “What are hopes and dreams of young adults for the future church.” While we’ve conversed with young adults all across the country, finding an answer to that question is a rather daunting task since it sometimes feels like we are all over the board on that question.

So I pose the question to the YAR readers out there:

What is your visions and hopes for the future church?

If you are uncomfortable with the word “church” because of baggage associated with that word, substitute church for a community of people seeking to follow Christ in our 21st century context.

Second question:

Do you think the majority of young adults (who are seeking to follow Christ in our North American context) share this same vision? What would you put as overarching dreams of young adults?

While it’s an impossible task to speak for all young adults, here are a couple of scattered themes we have heard to get you thinking:

• All community members valued regardless of age/race/sex.
• Real – community that meets people where they are, and addresses real issues in our lives.
• Vulnerability – to be real there needs to be a mutual sharing of who we really are, and real struggles and to support each other in that fashion
• Accountability – a community of believers to hold us to our values
• Church is a safe place – We do not have everything figured, and we can be vulnerable and receive grace. It should also be safe to ask hard questions even if they challenge traditional beliefs held by the community
• Emphasize buildings and Sunday morning worship less and work at focus more on touching every aspect of our lives.
• Less divisions between denominations and in churches – focus on common values and beliefs and a respect for differences
• Reaching others – I’ll avoid the word evangelism because of the baggage associated with that word, but a way to respectfully share Christ’s love with others. I’ve seen the most diversity of opinion on this topic, some young adults are fairly passionate that we need to share our faith, while others, perhaps uncomfortable with the imposing way we’ve historically done this, seek to emphasis more of a mutual learning process where the “Christian” should be just as willing to learn from and respect the beliefs of someone who believes differently.
• IS THIS THE WRONG QUESTION? A friend of mine challenged me to ask “Shouldn’t we be trying to figure out Christ’s hopes and dreams for the church instead of ours?” Shouldn’t we be willing to scrape our plans and instead follow God’s?

So this is a quick list of points that I’ve heard. What would you add what would subtract? Why?

This post is to the guys out there to say, it is OKAY to be male. Because of our historic power imbalance in our culture with our female counterparts, we have a huge responsibility to figure out what it means to be radical Anabaptist men seeking after what God intends for us while rebuking harmful stereotypes.

This is a day set aside to honor fathers. But we at Dayspring want to extend this honor to all men. Today, we want to celebrate your masculinity…your manliness that was patterned after the divine image of our Heavenly Father.

We rebuke stereotypes that hurt and hinder you…. that seek to destroy your competence and question your value.

We celebrate with you instead the Christ-centered model of manhood that embraces your sense of adventure, your love of nature and the wild, your need to do battle for justice and your call to protect. We celebrate by echoing the voice from Heaven that Jesus heard at his baptism:
“This is my Son whom I love; with him I am well pleased.”

If you’ve seldom heard those words from your earthly father, we ask that you hear them with your heart now:
“This is my Son, chosen and marked by my love, delight of my life.”

A quick background on where I’m coming from. I’m a white straight male who has grown up in a church that’s always taught marriage is between a male and female, and sex is to be reserved for marriage (which rules out sex with the same gender). The attempt of this post is not to defend this perspective, but an attempt to shed light on some of the complexities facing someone with my upbringing, who is attempting to figure out: what would Jesus do (sorry for the cliché) with a topic like homosexuality.

I have been in enough church circles and heard demeaning, hateful “rhetoric of bigotry” aimed at homosexuals. I’m extremely uncomfortable in these situations and have called people on using that language because it is contrary to how I understand the God of love, as I understand him/her.

On the other hand, I’m also uncomfortable, personally, endorsing sexual intercourse outside of marriage and am not sure about this same sex marriage thing. I recognize this discomfort has a lot to do with my upbringing, which affects my reading of scripture, how I value scripture, and understanding of God’s “intentions”. I think I am mature enough in my faith to recognize how much upbringing affects my approach to scripture and that I can’t comprehend God’s intentions, much less claim to speak for him/her.

As a straight male, I don’t claim to be able to understand homosexuality, but let me attempt to explain some of the complexities using experiences I do understand. The church body, as I understand it, is a group of broken individuals who are all attempting to follow the example of Jesus. As a group, we come together, and say, for example, “As followers of Jesus, we think it is best to reserve sex for marriage.” So as members of this group, we attempt to hold each other accountable to that standard. As a 25 year old dating non-married person, not having sex is a difficult standard, but I hold to that, because I think there is value to standard (which I won’t go into here).

Now it gets tricky how to deal with members who break that standard in our community, but there is this idea of to truly love this person, we must approach them in love about correcting what some would label “sin” and maintain that value that we hold as a community.

We should NOT attempt to force these standards on those who aren’t trying to follow this same Jesus guy, but it gets REALLY tricky when we run into people who are following this same Jesus, but do NOT hold the same standard that the group has valued.

As a community, we should NOT attempt to force these standards on those who aren’t trying to follow this same Jesus guy, but it gets REALLY tricky when we run into people who are following this same Jesus, but do NOT hold the same standard that the group has valued (name your issue: pre-marital sex, war, abortion, divinity of Jesus, alcohol, not oppressing people, rock music, women in ministry, and homosexuality). Our choice is either to say,” we agree to disagree, you can still be in this community.” Or “This standard is so fundamental to my understanding of what it means to follow this Jesus guy, that I can’t recognize you as a member of the same community I am part of.”

Premarital sex and same-sex marriage, for me, falls in the “agree to disagree category”. I think someone who is having sex outside of marriage or is in a same sex marriage can be just as good follower of Christ as me. The complexity therefore is that I am a part of a church community that discourages both. Unfortunately we have greatly erred in our approach to these issues and have attempted to IMPOSE these standards in way that is both hateful and discriminatory.

So here I stand, extremely uncomfortable at how church has hatefully approached homosexuality, but not willing to wholeheartedly endorse it. This may be the age old question but I’m curious to hear from others, what is the most effective way to relate with other followers of Christ on issues we don’t agree upon? Katie has done an excellent job of pointing out that the church has failed in this regard. Where do you draw the line on fundamental dogma or decide to agree to disagree on doctrine?