8 Keep falsehood and lies far from me;
give me neither poverty nor riches,
but give me only my daily bread.

9 Otherwise, I may have too much and disown you
and say, ‘Who is the LORD ?’
Or I may become poor and steal,
and so dishonor the name of my God.

These three verses have intrigued me for a number of reasons. It jumped out at me because of the statement that is so counter cultural to us, “give me neither poverty nor riches.” The myth needs to be debunked that wealth is something good Christians should aspire to.

As I read this further, I noticed that there are three things that Agur (the person this passage is credited to) saw as very dangerous to his walk with the Lord: poverty, riches, and a lack of personal integrity. It seems that these three things are seldom put on the same level, but all three have the same destructive potential.

Prayer:
Re-read these verses, and make them your prayer.

Nine months ago (before I was a YP) music was not an issue at all in my life. I listened to whatever I wanted to, and on occasion I would censor some “bad stuff” from myself. For instance, if the song blatantly objectified women (i.e. anything on MTV), promoted violence, sex, drugs etc. I would try to avoid it. That being said, my personal “censoring filter” was pretty generous. By and large, if I liked the way it sounded I listened to it.

That was nine months ago. When I became a YP, it hit me like a ton of bricks that I was looked to as an example, and, among other things, I needed to reconsider what I was listening too. So, for a while I decided to cut myself off from all secular music, thinking, “whatever is right, whatever is pure……[listen] to such things.” (Phil. 4:8)

That didn’t work for two reasons. One, I could not find much Christian music that I really liked, and I wanted to be listening to something. I found myself longing for the foo fighters, coldplay, lynard skynard, CCR, and the list could go on….and don’t judge me for my taste in music. That’s the stuff I like. The other reason, I found that I don’t completely agree with everything that Christian artists are playing either, and Christian radio just isn’t that good.

There a still a number of questions that I deal with. Is it alright for me to listen to the music that I like, yet advice my youth group otherwise? I don’t feel real good about suggesting they listen to Christian music, because I don’t want anyone telling me that. On the other hand, I would not be very comfortable with my youth group listening to whatever they want….like I used to. Maybe what it comes down to is music is something that I need to give up. Christ never split any hairs about what it would cost to follow him, yet I am dragging my feet on giving up a form of entertainment for myself. If I can’t give up music, then I’m not sure how I can give up my life. This would be a perfect example of making a mountain out of an ant hill, but as JUnrau says here, this is what YAR is for. I think I agree with him, so I would like to hear your opinions.

Another thing to think about with all this is money and legal stuff. As a Christian, can I justify spending x amount of dollars on music for my own entertainment when we have been charged to look after the poor, orphans, widows, marginalized etc. On the other hand, can we justify getting our music by illegal means? How many of you have music on your computer/ipod/cds that you copied from somewhere or someone and have not paid for it? By definition that is illegal, and I hardly doubt you can call it civil disobedience.

I fully agree with the premise of Swatzendruber’s article; that Anabaptists have a distinct theology that is based on the Christo-centric interpretation of the Bible. Based on this interpretation, we cannot really align ourselves with the political ideologies that are offered to us in America. Swatzendruber seemed to lament that this is not the case (many Mennonites are aligning themselves to political parties), and the solution to this problem was to get more Anabaptist young adults into Anabaptist institutions of higher education. Sounds like a good sales pitch coming from a president of a Mennonite college.

As I mentioned above, I just graduated from a Mennonite college, and during my time there my peers and I were continually frustrated with the way that the college was run. Where as Swatzendruber contends that “we’re[Mennonite colleges] different from other colleges,” my experience was that the only difference came from the theology department and some history profs. Yes, our theology and biblical interpretation are distinctly Anabaptist, but that is all.

I remember in one of my classes we got into a discussion of whether of not Mennonite Colleges function any differently from non-Mennonite, or secular institutions. We couldn’t come up with anything. Everything, and I mean everything, revolves around the precious dollar. From food service, to maintenance, it is all about making money. Admissions counselors are not recruiting good qualified students, they are chasing after 20+ thousand dollar chunks of change that happened to be attached to high school seniors. I have a friend who is an admissions counselor that often times vents to me about this.

If I had a dollar for every time that I heard, “young adults want authenticity” I would be a couple hundred dollars richer than I am now. Our colleges now are a far cry from displaying “authentic” Anabaptist values outside the theology departments. Mr. Swatzendruber, my challenge to you is find a new way to do college, a college that is holistically based on Anabaptist values, and you will find a more effective way to propagate our perspective to the next generation.

To start off with, lets oversimplify things. Do you consider yourself to be a Christian, follower of Christ, Mennonite, or whatever label you are comfortable with that fits you within Christ’s Kingdom. If you answered yes, then you need church. Alright, now I am speaking to all of you that answered yes (sorry for being inclusive, if you want to included you are more than welcome…just like church right?) We have established that there is a need for church in the lives of believers, so all believers, young adults or old adults should be plugged into a church body. Yet for some reason this does not seem to be happening.

In my many conversations I have heard this idea that, “young adults want authenticity.” Something real etc., but it seems to me it is the reality of church that seems to be the biggest problem. What is authentic, what is real? The church is broken, that is what makes it real. The church is not, and should not be a place of perfect Christians, always happy and lubby-dubby. I would guess that most young adults would agree and say, “that’s not authentic.” In my opinion, brokenness is authenticity. When a body of believers struggle over issues such as women in ministry, homosexuality, peace and nonviolence, social justice, evangelism, church politics and the list could go on and on, that is a church being authentic. That is real people dealing with real issues (authenticity), but somehow, when these issues are dealt with people turn up their noses, or shudder and say, “I can’t stand church politics.” Maybe its because of fear of the outcome, maybe you disagree with what it is decided, maybe it’s a fear of conflict, maybe you don’t really want authenticity.

I ran across this poem the other day by Carlo Carretto:

How baffling you are, O church,
and yet how I love you!
How you have made me suffer,
and yet how much I owe you!
I should like to see you destroyed,
and yet I need your presence.
You have given me so much scandal—
yet you have made me understand sanctity.
I have seen nothing in the world more
devoted to obscurity, more compromised, more false,
and I have touched nothing more pure, more generous, more beautiful.
How often I have wanted to shut the doors of my soul in your face
and how often I have prayed to die in the safety of your arms.
No, I cannot free myself from you,
because I am you, although not completely.
And where should I go?

It seems that the way I have heard many young adults describe the church is like the beginning part of Carretto’s stanzas. Where are the latter sentiments that Carretto expressed? Authenticity encompasses both sides of the coin, so if you want authenticity, join a church and be a part of the “joyful agony” that it is.

As my first biographical entry said, I am a youth pastor in a Mennonite church. Being a staff member I get to sit in on the elders (the power-players of the church) meetings and occasionally throw my two cents into the discussion. In our last meeting, we had a decision to make, that was somewhat exciting and completely uncomfortable. This is what we had to work with: There is a member of our church (who happens to be my dad) that owns a large Christian giftware manufacturing business that distributes product nationally and globally. Every March this man has a “Dealer’s Conference” where he invites every retailer who sells his product to come and see the manufacturing plant, buy more of his product, see the local Amish population, and overall does his best to express his gratitude and keep his customers happy. A big part of this conference is bringing in a big name speaker to inspire those who come to the conference and the speech is given in our church. This year, the speaker coming to give the inspirational message is Jerry Jenkins, co-author of the Left Behind series.

This is the decision that the elders and pastoral staff of the church had to make. Do we allow, and in so doing endorse, Jerry Jenkins to give a message from our church. Or do we say no, and in so doing, send the message that we Mennonites are theologically superior and we will close our doors to a fellow brother in Christ. We want to do neither. Want to have Jenkins come, but let everyone know that we don’t endorse the Left Behind series. We also want him to not come, and not send the message that we are too good for all the people that enjoyed the Left Behind series. Both of the latter two options, I think, are impossible.

I am a graduate of Bluffton University, where people like Jerry Jenkins are easy to bash on. In some religion classes we would role our eyes and make less than uplifting remarks about the people we thought were distorting the true gospel of Jesus Christ. “Those dispensationalists….” we would retort with some theological arrogance, and finish that sentence with comments along the lines of, “too violent,” “don’t know what they are talking about,” or “look how many times they’ve been wrong in their predictions.”

It was becuase of this background, the my very first reaction, which I told my dad, was that there is no way we can let Jenkins into our church. But when I began to think about and process this more, I began to soften up a bit. What am I implying by saying that Jenkins cannot come to our church? Don’t we want to be inclusive, or are we inclusive to people that agree to agree with us?

I do not want to defend Jenkins, or the theology he (and Lahaye) has popularized, but this unique opportunity has made me think more about my own theological bearing. Have we as Mennonites, or just me in particular, come to the point where I can’t learn or dialogue with people of a different theological way of thinking?

Here is the scenario: I am a youth pastor, and not too long ago I was at a youth pastor peer meeting with about five other youth pastors. It was a good meeting, refreshing to hear other people’s joys and frustrations that I can relate to. We ended the meeting with a homemade lunch which was really good, but over the lunch the conversation turned towards everyone’s family. One of the younger married youth pastors began telling of how he was just finishing up the adoption process and he and his wife were about to get their first child: a cute little Guatemalan baby, they had pictures, a name and everything. Then one of the other youth pastors chimed in that her sister (or other close relative, I forget exactly) just recently adopted a Guatemalan baby, so needless to say, the table conversation was about Guatemalan adopted babies for at least fifteen minutes. For these fifteen minutes I kept my head down, and didn’t speak.

Now, rewind a number of months backwards to July of 06. I went to Guatemala with the youth of my church (I was an intern at the time) and helped lead an “MCC Learning Tour” as I think these trips are called now. We spent some time in Guatemala city and some time in the country with some tenured MCC missionaries down there. On the very last day, just hours before we went to the airport to leave, we went to a touristy market. At the market there were numerous North Americans with Guatemalan babies that they had freshly adopted. The tenured missionary looked at the happy couples with the new additions to their families and said something along the lines of, “look at those happy couples, supporting one of the worst kinds of human rights violations.”

Guatemala is second only to China in its number of babies adopted to foreign couples. It is understandable that China is number one, but Guatemala number two? This is because Guatemala has a thriving infant market. Guatemalan babies are stolen from their mothers and sold to adoption agencies, or young women get pregnant and sell their infants as a form of revenue. Then whoever can afford all the adoption fees (North Americans) adopt the infants. This isn’t the case with all of Guatemalan adopted babies, but it happens enough that Guatemala’s adoption numbers are disproportionately higher then they should be.

The question remains, what would you do? I chose to look at my plate and feel sick to my stomach. I said nothing. Would you have spoke up and let these joyously expectant parents know that there is a good chance they are supporting an atrocious human rights violation? Would you have congratulated them on their new child? Would you have stared at your food?

As I said earlier, I am still wary about posting things on the internet. I’m not sure if it is just me being old fashioned, or the fear of becoming addicted to this and then getting a my space page, a face book page (I actually do have a facebook page, but my room mate from college set it up), and spend all my time blogging and networking over the web. But even deeper than this, I think I have a fear of my virtual self—who will I be on the pages of YAR? Will I still be Tom Dunn or will I become something I’m not. Will I get caught up in projecting myself as an intellectual, intelligent, educated, open-minded, globally aware young anabaptist radical, or can I just be myself? Is it possible to be yourself on the internet? Well, as you may have gathered since you are currently reading all this over the internet, I have decided to post here on YAR, and spark the beginning of my virtual self.