Page 1371 – Christianity Today (2024)

For the past 14 years, my full-time vocation has been "mom." I have spent a lot of time making decisions about what's best for my three children: which preschools they should go to, which sports teams they should join, which instruments they should play. Eight years ago, I was well on my way to figuring out the life I wanted for them.

Then God stepped in.

In 2005, at the height of the housing boom, my husband's job took us to Charlottesville, Virginia. We left our suburban (lawnboy- and maid-included), 4,000-square-foot parsonage in search of a house just as lovely in the city deemed the "best place to live in America." As we looked at houses, we didn't think much about the school systems for which they were zoned. We called the private Christian school tied to our new church, assuming we would educate our kids just like we did in our old city. But $10,000 a kid wasn't going to work on a campus minister's budget.

That's how we ended up at the poorest public school in the city. Our kids are white; 79 percent of their classmates weren't. Our kids speak English only; 45 percent of their classmates didn't speak English at home. Our kids can live comfortably above the poverty line; 82 percent of their classmates couldn't. The PTO had three members and an $800 annual budget. The teachers seemed burnt out, and new refugee children were being dropped off weekly, sometimes in pajamas, never having seen a school building or indoor plumbing.

One of the first people I met in Charlottesville was an older teacher at the school. I told her I was worried about sending our oldest into first grade. She asked, "What would make you stop him from going here?" I thought about it for a minute. "I guess if he got beat up by another student." Her follow-up question to this young and fearful mother: "How many times?"

That first year I wept and worried. There were kids starting kindergarten who didn't know that an alphabet existed; kids without books at home; kids without parents at home, babysitting each other while their parents worked two and three jobs. I spent a lot of time that year asking God, "Why me?" as in: "Why did I have to be exposed to so much poverty?"

Almost everyone said, "Leave. Your children will suffer." And then someone gave me an essay by John Perkins, and he said, "Stay."

And then I spent a lot of time repenting. I could change my situation if I wanted to. Most of the other families couldn't. I asked people at our church and in other cities what we should do. Almost everyone said, "Leave." "Your children will suffer," they added. And then someone gave me an essay by John Perkins, the wonderful Christian community developer, and he said, "Stay."

God Was Already Present

So we stayed. We met the Christian teachers at the school. One of my son's "brown" classmates asked him if he would pray for his dad, and they began praying and playing together, and eight years later remain best friends. We met the staff of a ministry providing tutoring and mentors for these kids. God showed us that he had been there long before we arrived.

But I still wept and worried and wondered what I could do. Almost simultaneously I had two pastors, including my husband, say, "Trust God with your children." I was mad. I didn't want to trust God. I just wanted things to change.

So I partnered with another mom in the neighborhood. We spoke at school board meetings. We pushed to hire a new principal and a full-time ESL coordinator. We figured out a way to raise $3,000 for the PTO through bake sales, grantwriting, local business donations, and the best darn bingo night you've ever seen.

Just as I was getting a handle on the school setting, beginning to trust and to join what was being done to fight the achievement gap, God opened my eyes to something called the opportunity gap.

Because teams were formed around schools, our kids fell headfirst into a soccer team of African refugees. We now had race, class, language, culture, and religious barriers to navigate. Imagine a phone conversation something like this: "Hi. Mr. Mohammed? This is Jennifer Slate. William's mom? Yes, I'm white. Well, anyway, I'm calling because you'll need to sign up your son online for the fall season by Monday. Do you have a computer? The registration is $100, but we can probably get him a scholarship. But he needs to wear cleats instead of tennis shoes. And will you be able to give him a ride every Saturday? Oh, you work every Saturday. Well . . . I can pick him up and keep him for lunch after the game. We'll just pack some ham sandwiches. Oh, he can't eat pork."

And this was one child in a community of dozens. One of dozens who wore jeans to games because they did not have cool Adidas soccer shorts. One of many who used cardboard from cereal boxes in their socks as shin guards. One of several who asked if they could have chicken nuggets when the team went out for ice cream because it would fill their tummies better that night.

But God was already working in these places too. He had sent two families ahead of us. They had met these African families a few years prior. They had coached their teams, coordinated rides, and found grants for swimming lessons. And swim team scholarships. And extra swimsuits, goggles, caps, and beach towels. They took kids camping, and tubing, and to University of Virginia games. They became family, having kids stay with them when parents had to leave town. And they graciously let me tiptoe behind them, filling in where I could, slowly learning African geography and history, slowly remembering to buy all-beef hot dogs and pizza without pepperoni. Slowly learning how to think about children other than my own.

Is All This Worth It?

I was still crying all the time—and realizing that charity wasn't enough. I had to return to what the pastors had told me to do: Trust. Could I trust God with my children? Could I trust God with my resources? Could I trust that God himself was working for the common good?

Along the way, I met a few of the African parents. I began to hear stories of what they saw before they made it to the refugee camps: friends and relatives murdered, children and siblings left behind. Stories of coming to a place, knowing nothing about the future. I thought about what they had to teach me about trusting that there was something good ahead for my children.

I began to make decisions about my children's lives in a different way. What if I didn't only think about the fabulous life I could make for my three? What if I stood up for not only what was good for mine, but was good for all? What size car would be big enough to carpool other kids? What sports league should we play in so that everyone could participate? Could my husband and I set aside time to coach teams that they could join? Could we pick up extra granola bars every week? Could we make sacrifices for others to have a childhood experience equal to our own?

It would be fairly easy to take my children back to an all-white, all-Christian, all-moneyed, educated world. And in times of doubt, I think about doing it. Like when my children miss out on amazing class field trips. And when our son's basketball team has to wear uniforms that are two sizes too big, and one player wears duct tape around his shorts to hold them up. Or when I am tired of spending money and sharing with others. When I am tired of having my comfort interrupted and confronted. When I doubt that any of this is worth doing at all.

But it is worth it. Not only for the other children to have experiences of dignity and hope and joy, not only for my children who are learning that everyone is not just like them, and that the world doesn't revolve around them either. It is worth it also for me. I am trusting God, and trusting that the "best life" is this one that he has given us. Trusting that he is the One ultimately working for common good, trusting that he is inviting me to work with him, and with all the other families, teachers, coaches, and neighbors here.

It takes more than a village to raise a child. It takes a kingdom.

Jennifer Slate is a wife, mom, and writer living in Virginia. She hosts as many themed-costumed parties as her family can stand.

It is one of the most improbable and incredible stories in sports history.

February 2012. Jeremy Lin is sitting at the end of the bench for the NBA's New York Knicks. Lin, a wiry 6-3 guard, rarely played. And the Knicks, one of the league's worst teams, were ready to let him go.

But within a matter of just a few days, Lin suddenly, surprisingly, stunningly became the Best Basketball Player on Earth. Seriously. For two weeks, nobody could stop him, as he led the Knicks to seven straight wins while averaging 25 points per game.

It was jaw-dropping. Few people had ever even heard of Lin, the NBA's first ever Asian-American. When you're a benchwarmer, nobody knows your name.

And then, boom, everybody knew his name. Knicks fans went knuts. Asian-Americans celebrated. Christian Americans joined the party, because Lin was vocal about his faith.

The media went crazy. Headlines every morning. The lead highlights on ESPN's SportsCenter every night. The big topic on talk radio. YouTube galore.

"Linsanity" had exploded.

It's a too-good-to-be-true story that's almost impossible to mess up.

Alas, the new documentary Linsanity falls far short of the wonder that captivated the world almost two years ago.

And that's part of the problem. While it was an amazing story, it wasn't long before it faded into the background, especially as Lin's productivity slowed down and he became just another average player. Within months, it already seemed like another "15-minutes-of-fame" thing. When the season ended, the Knicks decided to let him go. He ultimately ended up in Houston, where he's now the Rockets' starting point guard. But almost two years have passed since his story mesmerized everyone.

There's no statute of limitations on re-telling a great story in film. But some just don't hold up well over time. In the case of Linsanity, the documentary is nowhere near as interesting as its source material. It feels like a series of home movies edited and patched together by a competent team of high school A/V nerds.

Director Evan Jackson Leong didn't bring much experience to the project, which was made for $125,000 from a Kickstarter campaign. Leong's brief resume included a 2009 short film called Manivore, in which a young woman invites men for dinner, and then has them for dinner (its website was, no kidding, EatAMan.com). He'd also done a documentary in 2010 called 1040: Christianity in the New Asia.

You didn't need the credentials of Werner Herzog or Ken Burns to make a good documentary out of this story. But sloppy editing, a lack of detail and explanation, and a frequently over-the-top dramatic score ("This is a sad scene!" "This is a challenging stretch that our protagonist will have to overcome!" "This is one of those big exciting moments that borders on linsanity!") prevent the film from reaching anything near its full potential.

And then there's the banal narration, which begins with these lines: "Every kid has a dream. Some want to be a fireman, others an astronaut. Most of the time, dreams are just dreams."

And then there's this, and one can hardly blame the director for it: while it's a thrill to watch Lin on the basketball court, he's just not a terribly interesting person off it. He seems like a sweet guy who loves God and family, and he's certainly a dedicated young man who has worked hard to make it to the Big Time. He's clearly a role model for millions of Asians (and others) around the world.

But frankly, Lin is a boring interviewee who speaks mostly in clichés, and his off-court life is something of a yawner. It's ironic that his Fifteen Minutes came in the bright lights and big-city media glare of New York. It's safe to say he won't be joining Charles Barkley, Kenny Smith, and Shaquille O'Neal on TNT's enjoyable Inside the NBA after his playing days are over. Lin might have a heckuva jump shot and a wicked crossover dribble, but he just doesn't have the charisma to keep up with those big personalities. (Two minutes of this, you'll see what I mean.)

What's most interesting about Linsanity—and I wish this had been mined deeper from a journalistic standpoint—is an ongoing subplot about race and ethnic issues. He was often taunted with racial slurs—from his childhood till today—and even the media made some gaffes when telling his story during those wild two weeks with the Knicks. (After Lin had one bad game with a bunch of turnovers, ESPN posted an online headline saying that the Knicks may have "a chink in their armor." Ouch.)

The film also implies that racism was a factor in Lin a) not getting any college scholarship offers, even as one of California's top high school players, and b) not being drafted by the NBA, though many analysts believed he was good enough.

After leading his high school to the state title, Lin was sure he'd get plenty of offers; he really wanted to play at Stanford. But the phone never rang. Lin's high school coach surmised that most college coaches didn't believe an Asian could play at the Division I level—mostly because it had never (or very rarely) been done before.

Lin's assessment is even more blunt: "I've always said that if I was black, I would've gotten a scholarship."

He ended up at Harvard, which offers no athletic scholarships but was thrilled to have him on the team. Lin says he heard taunts—including "chink"—when they played on the road. He was surprised to hear such things at other Ivy League schools, since most of them had large populations of Asian students. Lin learned to deal with it, and soon became one of the best players in the conference. By the time he was a senior, unbiased experts—judging Lin solely on his ability, not his ethnicity—believed he could play in the NBA. But the draft came and went, and his name was not called.

By the time the 2010-11 season began, his hometown team, the Golden State Warriors, had signed Lin as a free agent. They believed he could help the team, but there was also speculation that he was signed partly as a publicity stunt—local kid comes home to a market that just happened to have a large Asian population. Lin only played sparingly throughout the season, and three times was "demoted" to the NBA's minor leagues. Just before the following season (2011-12) began, the Warriors cut him. Houston picked him up, but cut him two weeks later, on Christmas Eve. Three days later, the Knicks signed him, but he was relegated to the bench, playing only 55 minutes in 23 games.

The Knicks were losing lots of games, but Lin saw the writing on the wall: they were going to cut him. But he wanted to know for sure, so he approached Coach Mike D'Antoni with a question: Would it make sense to have his car shipped from California to New York, so he wouldn't have to keep hailing cabs? D'Antoni advised against it, and Lin vividly remembers how he felt at that moment: "I was like, 'Oh, hell, I'm going to get waived.'"

It may have been just what Lin needed. Figuring he had nothing to lose, he went out and played for the sheer joy of it, rather than stressing over every move. And he played the game of his life. And boom, "Linsanity" had launched.

During that two-week stretch, when Lin was virtually unstoppable, the mighty Los Angeles Lakers visited New York. A reporter had asked L.A. star Kobe Bryant about Lin, and Bryant basically said, "Who? I don't know anything about him." Hard to tell if Bryant was feigning ignorance, but Lin took it personally—and went out and torched the Lakers for 38 points (many with Bryant defending him) to lead the Knicks to victory.

At the post-game press conference, Lin knew that some reporter would ask, "Do you think Kobe knows who you are now?"

In one of the film's best moments, Lin recalls how he wanted to answer that question—by saying, "Who the hell is Kobe?" But he adds, "Then I prayed about it and wondered, What would Jesus do? And I decided that Jesus wouldn't say that." So when the question came, Lin smiled and said, "You'll have to ask him."

Another point for Lin. Too bad the film doesn't score any more points after that. The closing narration is as trite as it comes:

"As Jeremy ends one chapter and begins another, the road ahead will test his perseverance, but his faith will forever guide him."

I was half expecting the narrator to say "happily ever after," but, mercifully, he did not.

And then I went on YouTube and watched this 12-and-a-half minute highlight reel of "Linsanity"—which I enjoyed much more than the documentary of the same name.

Linsanity is showing in limited theatrical release and video on demand.

Caveat Spectator

Linsanity is rated PG for some thematic elements and language.

Mark Moring, a former film and music editor at CT, is a writer at Grizzard Communications in Atlanta.

When Rich and Tina came to my office, their marriage was in shards. Like most desperate couples that come to me for pastoral counsel, their story was a quagmire of failed expectations, self-doubt, old wounds, immaturity, and misunderstanding. As we spoke, it was clear that Tina was willing to do anything to save the relationship. Rich on the other hand was accustomed to flight. The abandonment he suffered as a child had now become his primary tool for coping.

After an hour together, it became clear that if this couple did not have some space and time to reflect, their vows and newly born daughter would soon also be abandoned. I suggested a redemptive separation for the sake of redeeming their marriage.

Chris and Margaret were another couple on the cliff of divorce. The serial adulterous affairs Chris had made common place in his work life had recently broken the boundaries of their personal friend group and come to light within the church. Our pastoral team suggested a directed redemptive separation.

Unlike the situation with Rich and Tina, Margaret had adequate biblical grounds for divorce. Few would have faulted Margaret for ending the marriage. But instead, after the space of a redemptive separation, Margaret opted for hope.

The qualifications given for divorce in the Bible can be grace sometimes in a truly horrific marriage. But I believe in the grace to stay, the grace to forgive.

Relational Chemotherapy

Redemptive separation is a pretty simple concept. A couple, on the edge of divorce, opt for a constructive and directed separation in lieu of ending the marriage outright.

Redemptive separation is always a last resort. It’s like relational chemotherapy—meant to bring health back to a marriage by giving adequate space to destroy that which ails it. But also not medicine to be prescribed lightly.

I would be lying if I said that I was comfortable with the concept of encouraging couples to separate for any purpose other than physical or emotional abuse. I was raised in an evangelical church that believed that if you had God’s Word and Jesus, you could overcome any obstacle. I still believe that. I also believe that the church is losing the battle for the family and this generation of believing couples needs new tools to reconstruct strong Christian marriages from the rubble of our failure.

In the war to save marriages, space is grace.

In 2008 The Barna Group released a report stating that the number of Christian marriages that end in divorce is equal to that of atheist and agnostics. Today’s church is ill equipped to offer hope or to lead when it comes to family issues.

Convincing couples or more importantly their friends and family that directed separation is neither anti-biblical nor the fast track to divorce is often the most difficult element of implementing it. We in the church have been trained to believe that anything resembling retreat is unbiblical. But any combat veteran will tell you that retreating is often the only other option besides dying with your boots on.

The same is true when a couple’s marriage becomes a battlefield. Sometimes the best tactical option is to retreat for the purpose of regrouping—together. This creates space for couples to reflect, heal, and grow. In the war to save marriages, space is grace.

While there is no direct biblical template for redemptive separation, it is steeped in the biblical principles of forgiveness, wise counsel, prayer, and repentance. What redemptive separation does is give couples adequate margin for these biblical necessities to grow.

In the years since beginning to implement this tool in the adult ministry I oversee, none of the over half dozen redemptive separations I have been a part of ended in divorce. But obviously there’s more to it than just pushing a couple to live apart for a little while and hoping for the best. It takes care and strategy. With that in mind, here are my 5 principles for doing it well.

1. Redemptive separation needs structure

For redemptive separation to have any chance of success it needs to be deliberately shepherded by an outside mediator who maintains structure in the separation. This can be a pastor or Christian counselor, but without a consistent, outside, and unbiased professional third party helping the couple keep their commitments, this form of marriage restoration has little chance of succeeding.

Dr. David Stoops, a leading marriage and family therapist, says this in an August, 2011 article for The Journal of Marriage and Family. “I’ve seen it in my practice, that a carefully planned separation brings to the couple the seriousness of the issues, and due to the planning, the hope contained in the separation. But it must be clearly planned.”

The best tool I have found to shepherd this process is The Center for Relationship Enrichment’s “Growth-Focused Redemptive Separation Contract” created by Dr. Gary Oliver and his team (see also “Promoting Change Through Growth-Focused Brief Therapy” handout). This contract provides a mental, emotional, and physical first step back in the right direction.

The contract allows the person shepherding the process to hold both parties accountable to the agreed upon stipulations. These can include, but are not limited to, praying for the relationship daily, regularly seeing a common marriage counselor, attending church, and spending quality time together at least twice per month. These boundaries provide a crucial roadmap for couples who might default to following their emotions instead of wisdom or become paralyzed due to the relational trauma they are experiencing.

The contract also provides spouses a compass by which to measure their progress. This is important. Emotions like despair, anger, and resentment cloud one’s ability to see relational positives and progress.

2. Separations are never indefinite

While the length differs from couple to couple, it’s never indefinite. Often they start with a period of 14 days to one month, with an initial maximum of 3 months. The goal is always to maintain the balance between the least amount of time apart and the necessary space needed for recuperation. For Chris and Margaret this ended up being close to three years and Rich and Tina were apart less than six months.

After the agreed upon initial separation, the couple and their counselor or pastor meet to decide next steps. Is the couple ready to reengage their cohabitation immediately, add a few days per week of being under the same roof again, or commit to another extended time of separation?

Set mandates for a relational sabbatical act as an intensive care unit for failing relationships. Each individual is cloistered in a stable environment where they can have complete rest and care while recovering. These times are crucial because struggling marriages have the ability to become so toxic that the amount of space and structure necessary to begin to heal is virtually impossible to create. Something as small as, “Why does he always leave his keys on the dining room table?” can spiral the relationship out of control again and minimize any relational progress that might have been created. Through separation, many of the small annoyances that become big deals are removed so the couple can focus on the key issues at hand.

3. Contain the counsel

Other than the couples own issues, the greatest obstacle to seeing a marriage restored are the well-intentioned friends and family surrounding the marriage. To borrow from Marshall Shelley’s classic book of the same title, these Well-Intentioned Dragons or “concerned” friends can cause more harm than good.

One particular “dragon” in their life almost single handedly destroyed Rich and Tina’s chances of renewal through the relentless sending of “text bombs.” These group texts to family and friends poured fuel on an already hot fire. Some of these were controlling Scripture references, some were unsolicited counsel, but more often than not they were careless emotional venting.

When working with couples, I encourage them to have no more than three trusted confidants with which they share. Like battling a wildfire, containment is key. When too many people are involved in helping couples process decisions, the counsel, which is often conflicting, causes spouses to become even more confused. Add to this the careless gossip that often surrounds struggling relationships as well as the majority of people who do not know how to separate their emotions from their advice and what you have is a toxic co*cktail of confusion and discord.

Containment of counsel is also crucial in regard to the professional therapist a couple sees. It is of vital importance that both spouses see the same professional counselor. This not only allows for both sides of the conflict to be understood by one person, but also protects the marriage from conflicting counsel.

4. Keep couples praying for each other

This is a challenge. It is hard enough having them speak to each other, let alone join together in prayer. There are a couple obstacles to this. First, prayer is a form of intimacy—and intimacy is the last thing couples are looking for when dealing with deep resentments. Strange though it sounds, prayer has a way of igniting the fires of romance.

Another obstacle to praying together effectively as a couple is the prayers themselves. In the early stages of a redemptive separation, the partners tend to assume a defensive posture. This was true for Rich. A prayer by Tina as simple as, “Lord, allow my husband to walk in truth” was seen as implying that he was somehow not walking in truth. This would then spiral into an argument.

Praying individually through a book is one of many options couples can choose when praying in agreement for each other but not with one another. An agreed upon fast day, praying the Scriptures, or creating a top 20 prayer list for the restoration of the marriage are just a few keys to help couples discover the restorative effects of prayer.

5. Keeping a date night

The art of courtship is often left at the altar on a couples wedding day. Many flailing marriages have not only lost the ability to be platonically intimate, but also maintain a simple quality friendship.

Today both of the couples mentioned in this piece are living and thriving on the other side of redemptive separation, putting a small—but powerful—dent in Barna’s statistics.

Both Rich and Tina and Chris and Margaret needed to rebuild their dating lives from scratch, as their previous premarital dating relationship was built upon the foundations of infatuation and sexual chemistry, rather than the mandates of 1 Corinthians 13.

I encourage my couples to always focus on relationship over romance as they begin to rebuild the dating life. Romance is fickle and misunderstood in our culture, but a quality relationship has a way of creating intense romance.

Assuring the couple that romance is not the key to their dating usually puts the partner who feels most distant at ease, as in most instances sexual intimacy has already ceased.When retraining separated married couples to date effectively, I offer the same advice as I do to my singles. Have an afternoon coffee as opposed to a candlelit dinner, plan dates where conversation is king, and use wisdom in regard to sexual intimacy.

Grace—the common denominator

Today both of the couples mentioned in this piece are living and thriving on the other side of redemptive separation, putting a small—but powerful—dent in Barna’s statistics. Things are not perfect, but what marriages are? In the end, the common denominator in the preservation of the relationship was grace, an eternal ingredient every marriage needs to survive. It’s just that every now and again grace needs space to come to its fruition.

Adam Stadtmiller is associate pastor at North Coast Calvary Chapel in Carlsbad, California.

Copyright © 2013 by the author or Christianity Today/Leadership Journal.Click here for reprint information on Leadership Journal.

I flew into Orlando on a night of wild rain. My first glimpses of Florida were through the thick mesh screen of an exposed walkway four stories up an airport parking garage. The whipping palms and the ankle-deep water awash in the roadways below were surreal to my Northern eyes. I couldn't stop thinking of Jurassic Park. In theme-park mad Orlando, they'd named the garage's floors after cartoon animals. As the elevator opened, I noted that my destination was "elephant."

I had questions about the nature of ministry success and was curious what the two conferences would show me about it. I was in for a full week.

I was in town for the Exponential church planting conference—the first of two conferences I was slated for in a single week. The second was a local Epic Fail event near Chicago. My goals were to promote Leadership Journal, make friends, and find stories worth telling.

A busy week, to be sure—and one that plumbed the heights and depths of ministry. You'd be hard pressed to find two more wildly different ministry conferences. Exponential, the "largest gathering of church planters in the world," is a thousands-strong ministry conference with A-list speakers, flawless production, and tremendous energy. Epic Fail is intentionally the "anti-conference," small, rough around the edges, and focused, well, on dealing with failure in life and ministry.

I had questions about the nature of ministry success and was curious what the two conferences would show me about it. I was in for a full week.

Exponentially successful

First Baptist Church in Orlando looks like a well-manicured government compound. It's a huge scattering of concrete buildings and outdoor staircases sprawling over 130 acres. The property includes a pond, a historic chapel, lots of palm trees, and lots of parking. It's a tribute to any ministry conference that it could fill such a space, and Exponential filled it, with over 5,000 attendees (plus an estimated 40,000 tuning in via webcast—in 93 countries).

The scale and execution of the conference were impressive from the speakers list (Alan Hirsch, Francis Chan, Craig Groeschel just to pick three, plus solid "up-and-comers" like 3D's Jo Saxton) right down to the details of production and multimedia. It was all polished to a bright sheen.

Sitting in the auditorium taking notes for this piece during a plenary talk, I typed this description of how it all felt: Slick, polished, state-of-the-art, heartfelt. Exponential is the popular kid in the youth group, handsome, athletic, with clear skin, a good singing voice, and just enough 'struggles' to highlight how spiritually awesome they are.

That comes across more sarcastic on paper than I meant it to. I don't mean to make light of excellence—and Exponential is excellent—but it was tuned to such a fever pitch of perfection that the (literally) one time that I saw something go minorly awry during those three days—it was a brief microphone problem I think—the speaker pointed to it as an encouraging example that Exponential's organizers were, after all, human. Everyone laughed.

The conference is a big draw. I met people from Africa, Asia, and Europe, entire pastoral teams and planting core groups, ministers past, present, and future. There were seminarians of all ages, hip urban missionaries with "Macklemore" haircuts and blue-collar boutique work boots, burned-out past planters who hovered with ragged eyes among the booths, all collecting free pens and entering giveaways. There were people looking for questions. People looking for answers. People hawking answers in the form of books at $17.99. It was a din of overheard conversations. Buzzwords like "mission-minded," "strategic," "incarnational," "disciple-makers," and "embedded ministry," hummed about the stage and in the foyers.

"I love these people, but this feels wrong," my companion said. "It feels 'us and them.' It's all backwards. Like a celebrity cult."

Off the path that led from the main auditorium to the exhibit space, there was a small outbuilding—the speaker's lounge. Inside, you were gently scrutinized for an appropriate pass, and then able to mingle with the conference elite. Speakers mostly, plus spouses, friends, and media, milling around in the purple mood lighting near white modern furniture. A side table was deliciously catered with southwestern-style wraps and sandwiches. A barista in the far corner ground out shots of fair trade espresso.

I'd been kindly welcomed by one of Exponential's organizers, who went out of her way to give me introductions, space to record conversations, and a brief interview. Meetings with speakers took place in a "holy of holies" of sorts—a cleverly camouflaged interview space hidden at the back of the lounge. We had lovely conversations, encouraging snapshots of big trends and important ideas.

That first day, I met one fashionably dressed missiologist in the main building after a promotional video shoot. As we walked back through the crowd to chat in the inner sanctum, he sighed. Looking down the sidewalk, we saw the speaker's lounge surrounded by the "normal" people. They ate and talked on the grass or at scattered picnic tables, occasionally pointing at a well known face that came or went from the auditorium.

"I love these people, but this feels wrong," my companion said. "It feels 'us and them.' It's all backwards. Like a celebrity cult."

We stood for a moment, and then picked our way through the crowd. Several necks craned after us. We climbed the stairs into the dim-lit, murmuring lounge, then ducked still further beyond that into the interview space. It was quiet in there. We talked for a long time.

Epic Failings

Two days after I flew out of Orlando, I stepped onto our apartment's second-story back porch and looked out at the tail end of another rainstorm. It watered the bowed remains of last year's garden. The dead leaves were saturated.

I was tired after three days in Florida, and the thought of another conference irked me a little. But I zipped my coat against the downpour, walked down the slick steps, and drove a few miles through Chicagoland to the campus of Northern Seminary in Lombard, Illinois.

I didn't know what to expect from the Epic Fail event that I'd signed up for. We'd published a piece on Epic Fail before—a wonderful, honest article by founder J.R. Briggs. "How can pastors be encouraged to embrace their failures and redefine ministry success?" the deck asked. Briggs's own story includes no small measure of "success," especially in his early ministry years.

His story also includes what many would consider downward mobility. He left a church that wanted him to be "the next Andy Stanley," in favor of a ministry far less glamorous but true to his own spirit. And out of his disenchantment with the glitter-bomb dream of big-church "success," he started a conference to talk honestly about the bitter sides of ministry. Borrowing a name from the "Epic Fail" memes, it got strong online attention from pastors desperate for community to share hard questions, fears, and frustrations.

Briggs had opened his piece like this:

I've attended many pastors' conferences—and seen hundreds of advertisem*nts promoting others. All of these events were geared around a definition of success that assumed that "bigger" and "more" were a pastor's goals. I pushed back from my desk after reading an ad for one such conference thinking, That's a lot of pressure for a pastor … I wondered if the ad's assumed definition of pastoral success was even accurate.

I was excited to see what was in store. The key points I remembered in the article were a confessional tone, a small gathering of struggling ministers in a non-prime location, and honesty. Lots of honesty. Even though I was going to a smaller local event than the slightly larger national conference, I expected something unusual.

And to be honest myself, I was nervous. I was going in a press capacity, but I had decided to engage the conference personally. I'm not currently in formal church ministry, but I consider myself a "grassroots pastor"—someone for whom pastoral work is a calling that finds expressions outside of a pulpit or a day job. I've also experienced disappointment and ministry failure, and have some shame associated with that. Familiar with the superficial "accountability groups" of many church cultures, I was wary about being asked to share "deepest and darkest" with strangers at a "failure" conference.

As I drove there, an imaginary scene played out in my mind. A spotlight focused on me in a crowded room while a speaker on stage smiled reassuringly. Tell us all how you've failed in your life, Paul, he says, motioning someone to give me a microphone. And make it … epic. I shuddered a little. Seeing the conference center, I flipped on my turn signal.

Never completely comfortable with either clocks or calendars, I had accidentally showed up an hour before registration. A minor failure to get me in the mood, I thought. Even when all the attendees had arrived, the parking lot looked empty. When the conference kicked off, there were around 20 people in the room, gathered at a few round tables. When you took out staff and a couple book editors there as flies on the wall, the number whittled down to somewhere around lucky 13. To call it intimate would be an understatement. But in spite of the intimate setting, the spotlight of my unpleasant daydream never materialized. I would have had to have worked to feel uncomfortable at all.

The agenda was simple. J.R. set the tone, we got to know one another, we heard stories from pastors struggling with failure in their personal lives, their faith, their ministries. The simplicity was striking and intentional. Though there were a couple "big names" present in the tiny group, the voices that we heard were one another's. One seminarian said he was there because he'd seen ministry burnouts, and feared that unless something changed, that career-defining failure would be his future too. We prayed, shared, talked. We heard stories of failures big and small. We contemplated art from Mandy, a pastor who had been profoundly impacted by an earlier Epic Fail event, and had ridden the bus from Ohio (paintings in tow) to join us and share her story.

It was tiny and rough around the edges. When we broke for lunch, we all piled into three cars and drove to eat burritos at the mall nearby. And seemingly without exception, it impacted every one of us. At the very end of our time, we shared the body and blood in large helpings. At no point did it feel manipulative or contrived. It was honest, cathartic, and powerful.

As I drove away after the event, I had the quiet inner exhaustion that comes after one has felt something deeply. The roads were still wet as I pulled from the campus onto Butterfield road, but the rain seemed like it was over.

What hath Orlando to do with Lombard?

So far as I know, my experience of attending two so different conferences in such close proximity is unique. They were about as far apart on the spectrum of ministry life as you can get. Heights and depths. Success and failure. The palms of Orlando, Florida, and the drooped lilacs of Lombard, Illinois.

One was exhausting in its exhilarating energy, the other so low key as to be occasionally awkward in the periodic silences. One was surrounded by world-class pleasure destinations, the other by the incessant Midwestern roadwork and shopping malls.

So, a voice in my mind prompts, which one was better?

The temptation for me here is to assign "rightness;" to say that Epic Fail was right in its simplicity, honesty, and unassuming rejection of celebrity. To unfairly dismiss Exponential's philosophy and execution by reason of its focus on ministry success and effectiveness. It's not that easy, though. There is a place for success. A place for polish, for high production value, for using an impressive stage to lever hearts and minds in Godward ways. After all, who wouldn't tune their instrument well when playing to please the Lord?

St. Paul famously wrote to the Philippians:

I know how to be brought low, and I know how to abound. In any and every circ*mstance, I have learned the secret of facing plenty and hunger, abundance, and need. I can do all things through him who strengthens me (ESV).

Some of us are natural successes at failure; others succeed at success. But perhaps what Paul is expressing is the need for Christ's under-shepherds to be facile at both. Without both experiences the secret strength of Christ in us remains hidden. I think this principle is as true for us in our corporate church life as it is for our individual spirituality. There's a place for exponential success and for epic failings.

But I suspect that we, like Paul, need to learn. To contemplate Christ the failure, Christ the abased one, the crushed, cold, defeated Christ of the tomb. To also contemplate the Christ who feasted, who was not above a triumphant entry.

I don't feel the need to unpack this too much—you're there already. Maybe in some past class or conversation you considered what factors make a ministry (or a life) "successful." You've probably wrestled with it too, torn between the realities that both the metrics you can see (size, polish, splash, the 40,000 clicks on a webcast) and the ones that you can't (faithfulness, honesty, deep relationship with God) can be taken as signs of life.

Some of us are natural successes at failure; others succeed at success. But perhaps what Paul is expressing is the need for Christ's under-shepherds to be facile at both.

My conference-heavy week showed me that the truth is tension. In the course of ministry there will be moments of success and failure—sometimes back to back.

In the end, I am disturbed when we value large and beautiful things too highly. I am fully convinced that we can nail successful church strategies and completely fail to see Christ in his weakness—the one who "has no beauty that we should consider him."

But with that said, there's not a one-size-fits-all philosophy of ministry. I had conversations at Exponential—by virtue of its size—that impacted me. I met far-flung people that I'm still in contact with. I was deeply encouraged by my conversations in that odd interview space. But I note one thing; the words that impacted me were not the ones under the bright lights or that everyone hashtagged furiously during the plenary sessions. They were the ones in quieter corners. Some of them came from big names and some did not, but I noticed one thing eerily Christlike: the people I felt were most worthy of the spotlight were the ones most obviously disenchanted with it.

Perhaps that—the hesitancy to be recognized, the desire to be merely another disciple at the feet of our teacher—is its own definition of success. If so, then the context may change, from spotlight to shadow and back again. Christ can speak in either, in the voices of those learning to humble themselves whether they abound or whether they are abased.

Briggs went on to write this in his article for us:

I need regular reminders of my call to faithfulness, not to success. How easily I forget what's important. I still have some major unlearning to do about identity, results, and ministry. I am not defined by what I do, but by who I am. Or, more importantly, to whom I belong.

And to whom do we belong? To one whose ministry included both the glory of the transfiguration and the desolation of Gethsemane. Both the fawning of Galilee and the angry mob at the Nazareth precipice. Both "success" and "failure."

Why would our own ministries look any different?

Paul Pastor is associate editor of Leadership Journal, a writer and grassroots pastor from Portland, Oregon.

Copyright © 2013 by the author or Christianity Today/Leadership Journal.Click here for reprint information on Leadership Journal.

Streaming

It's a new month—and that means new flicks on Netflix! The classic Ghostbusters is out just in time for Halloween, as is The Italian Job. Terrence Malick's latest, To the Wonder, is available, if you're looking for a meditative drama (read our review here). And the five seasons of the small-town government mocumentary Parks and Recreation are available (much to the joy of those of us trying to catch up).

Critic Roundup

Sandra Bullock and George Clooney don spacesuits for Gravity, and a lot of critics are falling for it. This haunting odyssey is a New York Times Critics' Pick; A.O. Scott says that "in a little more than 90 minutes (it) rewrites the rules of cinema as we have known them." Keith Phillips of The Dissolve gave it four and a half stars, proclaiming, "As a piece of craftsmanship, it's remarkable, even making 3-D feel like an essential component of the imagery." And Kate Erbland of Film School Rejects called it "a marvel of technical filmmaking" and praising its "jaw-dropping, eye-popping appeal." (Read our review here.)

At the other end of the spectrum is Runner Runner, a crime thriller starring Justin Timberlake and Ben Affleck, which is barely getting critics to come along for the ride. The Huffington Post's Todd McCarthy calls it tawdry: "There's no undercurrent, no intoxicating hook used to snare the audience," which is necessary for a film trying to hold its own in the action genre. According to McCarthy, director Brad Furman "stuffs" the screen with fluff: "luxurious digs, fancy cars, cool boats, private jets and parties loaded with scantily clad women." And Timberlake isn't enough to keep it afloat, "surprisingly bland in a role he's a little too old to occupy" (A.A. Dowd of The A.V. Club).

At long last, Breaking Bad has come to an end, with a conclusion more sad than bad. At Vulture, Matt Zoller Seitz declared the season finale "a Dickensian reckoning, with closure galore but minus any real sense of hope." For more details and a few spoilers, read more.

Movie News

Phillip Noyce (Salt, 2010) will be directing the upcoming The Giver, based on Lois Lowry's 1993 novel. Among the cast is Meryl Streep, Jeff Bridges, and Taylor Swift, and the film is set to begin shooting in South Africa. Read more here (and then Google extensively to find links not related to Swift joining the cast).

This summer's blockbuster zombie apocalypse movie World War Z is getting a sequel, but Marc Forster won't be directing it. Brad Pitt will have to come up with a plan B. Read more here.

Narnia fans can rejoice, but with mixed emotions: The Silver Chair is going to be a movie, while the originally planned Magician's Nephew is no longer on the immediate horizon. Read more here.

Taylor Lindsay is a fall intern with Christianity Today Movies and an undergraduate at The King's College in New York City.

Hobby Lobby is heading toward D.C. this year—but it won't be to set up shop for craft-staved Washingtonians. Rather, the evangelical-owned retail craft chain aims to appear before the Supreme Court in 2014.

Days before the Affordable Care Act's health insurance exchanges opened enrollment October 1, the craft-chain giant got an unexpected boost . The government itself appealed to the high court and asked it to hear the case regarding the ACA employer-provided contraception mandate.

That's good news for Hobby Lobby, as well as the plaintiffs in 71 other lawsuits pending against the ACA, says Mark Rienzi, senior legal counsel for The Becket Fund for Religious Liberty.

"When the solicitor general asks a court to take a court in which some federal law has been found invalid, as in the Hobby Lobby case, the court usually takes that," he said. "If they take the case, they're going to have to resolve the religious liberty claim."

According to the government's Hobby Lobby petition, the Supreme Court must decide whether or not a for-profit corporation can "deny its employees the health coverage of contraceptives … based on the religious objections of the corporation's owners."

The move was unusual for the government, which hasn't pushed back in the majority of cases when judges granted injunctions, says Kim Colby, senior counsel for the Christian Legal Society (CLS).

Until the Hobby Lobby case, the government had pushed back only in one particular case, Gilardi v. Sebellius, in order for it to become the "test case for the D.C. Circuit," Religion Clause's Howard Friedman noted earlier this summer.

The government's hopes for Gilardi could be moot now, because Hobby Lobby isn't the only religiously owned company waiting to hear back from the Supreme Court. Conestoga Wood Specialties also petitioned the Supreme Court against the mandate, asking the court to review a separate ruling that failed to grant the Mennonite-owned company relief from the mandate.

And with two open appeals before the Supreme Court, supporters of both sides will be quick to throw their weight behind either case if only one is accepted for review.

Hobby Lobby's owners—as well nearly 40 other for-profit plaintiffs who have filed suit—believe the ACA's requirement to cover the cost abortifacient contraceptives violates their religious freedom. That's an argument also being made by CLS, the National Association of Evangelicals (NAE), and the Southern Baptist Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission (ERLC), all of which have jointly filed friend-of-the-court brief supporting both Hobby Lobby and Conestoga.

"We want the courts to know that this is not an area in which the administration has taken care of the religious organizations," said Kim Colby, legal counsel for CLS. "We're saying … the whole mandate is an unprecedented assault on religious liberty in this country. We want the courts to know that this alleged accommodation is not adequate."

The amicus brief argues that the cases before the Supreme Court are not "about which religious viewpoints regarding contraceptives or abortion are theologically correct, but whether America will remain a pluralistic society that sustains a robust religious liberty for Americans of all faiths."

So far, judges mainly are lining up in favor of religious freedom. According to the Becket Fund for Religious Liberty, which represents Hobby Lobby, "To date, of the 32 for-profit plaintiffs that have obtained rulings touching on the merits of their claims against the mandate, 29 have secured injunctive relief against it."

But most of these judges have declined to tackle the key question of corporate personhood—that is, whether or not a for-profit employer can exercise religious conscience on behalf of its owners. That reticence could benefit the plaintiffs like Hobby Lobby: Given the number of lawsuits—and possibly more on the way—it would be foolish not to address them once and for all, Colby said.

Colby suspects the Supreme Court will accept both cases. "If they take Hobby Lobby … that would mean they'd have to address the whole issue of substantial burden and compelling government interest," she said.

A Supreme Court ruling could offer the authoritative voice that the companies seek—and relatively soon. If justices grant review to either case, it is "highly likely that the Supreme Court will decide the issue in the upcoming term," Becket stated in a press release. That means a final decision on the contraception mandate could come as soon as June 2014.

"Whatever the answer is, it's probably good if we hear from the Supreme Court soon rather than suffer through 70-plus lawsuits over the next years," Rienzi said.

Such a ruling would come nearly one year after HHS issued what it said was its final rule on the mandate in June 2013. The rule released at that time defined a "religious employer" and didn't provide a religious liberty exemption to for-profit companies like Hobby Lobby and Conestoga. (The 6th Circuit Court of Appeals upheld that definition last month when it ruled against Autocam, a Michigan-based auto manufacturing company with religious owners.)

But the government's definition also failed to placate some non-profit plaintiffs who still don't qualify because they are not direct ministries of a church. One such ministry is Little Sisters of the Poor, an order of Catholic nuns, who filed a class-action lawsuit on Tuesday.

"Their claims are asserted not just on behalf of Little Sisters but all other catholic organizations that get insurance through Christian Brothers Services," Rienzi said. "There's the possibility of getting relief for hundreds of organizations all at once."

Little Sisters of the Poor is exempt at the moment under an existing "safe harbor" clause, but those protections end on Jan. 1, 2014. Once that safe harbor clause runs out, nonprofits will face the same, steep fines as their for-profit counterparts.

As a result, non-profit plaintiffs, including Ave Maria University, Westminster Theological Seminary, and the Washington Catholic Archdiocese, are beginning to re-file their complaints. Southern Nazarene, Oklahoma Wesleyan, Oklahoma Baptist, and Mid-America Christian Universities filed a similar case last weekend.

All of these plaintiffs allege that the government's "compromise for religious non-profit organizations that object to furnishing contraceptive coverage is insufficient," Religion Clause states.

CT previously has reported extensively on the battles over the ACA's contraception mandate, including running coverage of the Hobby Lobby case as it moved through the courts. Notably, CT explored the question of corporate personhood and religious rights in both February and May.

CT also rounded up the wave of contradictory court rulings released as fines over the contraceptive mandate were scheduled to begin. Hobby Lobby, among the many surprising Christian organizations suing the government, previously lost its bid for an injunction before the Tenth Circuit Court of Appeals, as well as its subsequent request for a temporary restraining order before the United States Supreme Court.

A host at the screening of Grace Unplugged I attended pleaded with the audience to buy out a movie theater auditorium for the film's opening night. We were chastised for going to see The Hunger Games, which, we were told, evangelical Christians frequented at a higher rate than any other demographic. Wouldn't we rather have more movies like Grace than more movies like Hunger? Better reach for our wallets. Otherwise, we had only ourselves to blame when our daughters started emulating Katniss Everdeen.

I've always found this kind of cause marketing puzzling. It seems to tacitly admit that the product is not good enough to sell tickets on its own. I'm not against niche marketing; there is actually something a little refreshing about seeing a Christian film stop worrying about crossover appeal and just making the faith content explicit. But doesn't it still have to be a good movie?

Grace Trey has just turned eighteen. She sings in the praise band at church under the direction of her father, Johnny Trey, a former professional singer who prefers the down-on-the-suburban-farm life to touring. Dad and daughter fight about all sorts of generic family stuff, but mostly about her not following his direction during the praise numbers.

When a talent show cover of Johnny's biggest hit renews interest, Johnny's friend and former manager, Frank "Mossy" Mostin, comes knocking. He has what Grace thinks is the opportunity of a lifetime: resume recording, resume touring, and resume being a star. Dad's not interested, but the lure of bright lights and big cities is too much for Grace. She steals Johnny's song and sends a copy to Mossy. Pretty soon she's on her prodigal daughter journey to Hollywood Gomorrah. Will her upbringing, conscience, and the intervention of a faithful Christian intern help get her back on the right track before she does anything with deeper consequences than shame and regret?

I can't really imagine anyone in Grace Unplugged going to see a movie like Grace Unplugged. Grace and her friends would be downloading videos of her hero, Renae Taylor. Dad and Mom would be too busy going to church and keeping their movie-set home immaculately spotless. Plus, you know, Johnny (James Denton) is just not interested in pop culture. The entertainment industry is a cauldron of sin, and the less we all have to do with it the better. Maybe Johnny would be the kind of parent to buy out a theater and tell his daughter she has to go or he will punish her by kicking her out of the praise band. And maybe Grace would go out of obedience. But more likely, she would tell Dad she was going, and then sneak into Katy Perry: Part of Me instead.

It's not that Grace Unplugged has a bad message: it just doesn't happen to be a great movie. Because of that, it tries to sell its message, rather than integrate it into a dramatic or entertaining story. And that's a shame, given how few contemporary family films there are about and for girls. Since Grace is eighteen, I feel like I should cross out "girls" and insert "young women" there, but Grace Unplugged thinks of and treats its heroine as a girl. Grace Trey in the city is treated more like Kevin McCallister in Home Alone 2 than Mary Richards in The Mary Tyler Moore Show.

In American culture, eighteen is old enough for someone to go to Hollywood and make her way alone, but the plot, not just dad, thinks of her as an adolescent. Once Grace is out of the house, Dad worries about sex (which the film calls all the "stuff" she might be "getting into"). But while she is at home, it's all about filling the car up with gas when asked and doing your musical number the way you rehearsed it. I can't imagine any teen who wouldn't roll her eyes at this as some representation of the secret life of the American Christian teenager.

Johnny's past apparently contains a few skeleton-filled closets, but they're all kept safely vague. They give him a reason to not want to be a star and—more importantly—to lend weight to his "do as I say, not as I did" concerns for his daughter. (Personally, I thought the backstory seemed more about justifying his controlling behavior than about providing him with actual life experience that might temper his judgmental attitude. But I've always found the whole father-daughter purity ring thing to be more than a little creepy.)

Grace Unplugged is supposed to be a prodigal daughter story. But it is so committed to its PG rating that it can't really let Grace slide into any serious moral decline in her adventure. She must realize that she made a bad decision, of course. But once she does, it is easy enough to correct. A prodigal story is about humbling oneself, but without any genuine debasem*nt in the second act, the third act return plays more like ritual shaming than genuine reconciliation.

The film's script needs the prodigal story framework, however, because it can't make the broad themes of rebellion and obedience concrete. I counted at least five different montage scenes—usually an indication that the story is conceived in terms of a handful of dramatic scenes with little thought given to what happens before or after them. Michalka is pleasant as a performer, but were she as good as the script says Grace is, I don't think the script would have to keep telling us how good she is.

In one scene, dad watches her online video and has some sort of epiphany. He finally accepts that Grace is grown up and has talent. Still, Grace needs to come home because … God wants her to, and running away from God is bad.

Why God wants Grace to return home isn't really explored. It works better if you don't question its assertions and just take them as gospel truth. If you are young and passionate about something (particularly art or music), then that passion is a danger through which the devil will tempt you. So of course God wants you to give it up, or accept the church version of it.

In that sense, the film is somewhat metafictive, in the sense that it's about the industry in which it exists. Grace has to choose church music over professional performance. But it's equally important that it is clear that she is every bit as talented as her secular counterparts. She has to come home, humbled—but only after succeeding. If Christian music (or film?) is less prestigious than its secular counterparts, at worst this is a love offering that talented Christians make because hiding your light under a bushel is always preferable to being a light in a dark place. If Hollywood weren't such a sinful place, we'd all be raking in Grammy awards faster than Taylor Swift can drink a co*ke.

So what's good about it? Well, though I've been crotchety here, I can tell you that the audience I saw the film with adored it. The performers make the most of some thin material; Denton and co-star Shawnee Smith project a mutually loving and supportive marriage. Kevin Pollak sidesteps the film's biggest potential landmine by making Frank a grown up, rather than a predator. Michael Welch performs altar call duties with a soft touch and the requisite earnestness, pointing Grace (and us) to the film's devotional tie-in, Own It, rather than trying to walk her through the four spiritual laws. That devotional tie in is yet another clue that the film wants young Christian viewers not to bring and evangelize their friends, but to consider their own faith. Grace Unplugged may be a film that only a Christian could love, but there seemed to be plenty of Christians loving on it in the audience.

Caveat Spectator

Grace Unplugged shows some drinking and some family arguments. Grace gets a present of some lingerie, and she overhears a date talking in generic terms about his plans for having sexual intercourse.

I was prepared to be stressed out by Gravity: you've seen the trailers, so you know what I mean. George Clooney and Sandra Bullock are in space, and then disaster strikes, and they get spun away from their craft. Owing to a recurring nightmare I've had since I was a child in which roughly the same thing happens to me (sans, sadly, Clooney), I was wary.

And it was stressful. I gasped. I bit my nails. I even felt a little seasick once in a while. But what I hadn't expected was this: watching Gravity, especially in the quiet moments, I felt an overwhelming sense of . . . wonder.

Sitting there, wearing silly-looking 3D glasses, I felt awe—and not at mankind or its "indomitable spirit." It is admittedly cool that we figured out how to make suits that let us float above the surface of the planet, and that we can talk to people in Texas from outer space. It's also super cool that we made movie technology that lets us feel like we're doing all those things from the safety of a movie theater. But that wasn't what left me in the throes of wonder.

Pardon the pun: I felt my center of gravity shift. I was made uncomfortable.

One reason is simply its wow factor: Gravity is enormous, and gorgeous. It is a technical achievement, but doesn't flaunt its technical achievement-ness (unlike, say, Avatar), and it must—must—be seen on the biggest screen you can find. Even to viewers numbed by myriad space operas and superhero epics and whatnot, the sunrise over the planet's curve can provoke wonder of the "what is man that you are mindful of him?" variety.

But the movie isn't all wide, epic shots: the camera sneaks inside Bullock's helmet and forces us to feel her disorientation and panic. It's not just Bullock who's vulnerable and fallible—it's everyone in the audience, too. Along with her, I found myself thinking about life and death, and the planet we inhabit, and its dangerous beauty. And I thought about how weird and wonderful it is that we matter at all.

This is a good thing for me to feel, because too often, my center of gravity is myself. It's easy for me to imagine that my world should bend to my will. I want to be an irreplaceable, singular Person Of Influence. And I can pull off that illusion by casting a penumbra around me with Twitter and Facebook and all the rest.

Sometimes I find that my movie and television watching can feed this fantasy. To be sure, movies don't create the illusion in me: it's there whether or not I feed it. But the very nature of screens and most entertainment (what some media theorists call the "flattery of representation") can just make it worse. Here I am! I chose to watch this thing. I paid my money. Give me something I'll like.

So it was good, if a bit jarring, to feel myself shrink at the film's beginning, when I found myself floating above the surface of the earth for a little while in absolute silence. (Absolute silence: as if of one accord, everyone in the huge theater stopped their popcorn-munching and soda-slurping and, I think, stopped breathing entirely for that minute before the spacecraft came into view.)

This is why, if you're not seeing Gravity in IMAX 3D, you're definitely doing it wrong. Not because it's a thrill ride (nobody's having even a little bit of fun here: this story is a tragedy, not a triumph), but because without it I don't think you can get a sense of the bigness and smallness, something that's vital for Bullock's small but significant personal transformation. She has to learn that—though she's a celebrated scientist who's nursing her own personal tragedy—she, too, has lived with a misplaced center of gravity. (Nobody ever taught me to pray, she repeats, over and over: would that have helped reorient her?)

Gravity is not perfect. Director Alfonso Cuaron (who made the nearly-perfect Children of Men as well as Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban and Y Tu Mama Tambien) misses his target here and there. It's trying for some visual metaphors—certainly birth and rebirth—that come off a bit too heavy-handed. Some of its script choices are either overly dramatic or stilted. (Then again, if I were Sandra Bullock, newbie space traveler, attempting to navigate some kind of supra-atmospheric obstacle course to get back down to my home planet, multiply oxygen-deprived and grieving and traumatized, I'd probably be muttering dramatic monologues, too, myself.)

And so here is the other way that Gravity might knock us around a bit: it shows, against type, a heroine who isn't a heroine at all. She's just a messed up person who might or might not make it out of this nightmare alive. She is no Ellen Ripley-like lone ranger superwoman. She won't show up on any lists of "best female characters." All she really has to cling to is the help of someone else. And that is what I tend to forget, too, when I get too inside myself: without others to yell at me and care for me and challenge me and pull me along, I'd turn narcissistic, inward-focused to a dangerous degree. If I'm centered in me, I spin into oblivion.

The chances of me ever going into outer space are basically zero (though if someone really needs a film critic up there for some reason, I'm all ears). But my center of gravity gets shifted into myself all too easily. And I both am discomfited and quieted by Gravity's attempts to disorient me, which is what art ought to do to us. May we find ourselves, falteringly, looking outward, again and again.

Caveat Spectator

The characters in Gravity, being locked in a rather tense and stressful fight for survival, do swear; I counted only one f-bomb, but I might have missed something in the commotion. Another character sustains a rather gruesome head injury and dies (though there's not really any blood). One character speaks of losing a child. The rest of the PG-13 rating is on account of the intense scenes, and if you're watching it in IMAX 3D—and again, you should—then it could be a bit much, especially for young viewers. Also, people prone to motion sickness should bring along supplies, just in case.

Alissa Wilkinson is Christianity Today's chief film critic and an assistant professor of English and humanities at The King's College in New York City. She tweets at @alissamarie.

I've been carrying a secret. It is a heavy, invisible secret that moves drunkenly around my mind. It's a secret that is hard to talk about with anybody but my husband. It's a secret that has become the conversation of my prayers.

It's the miscarriage secret.

And as soon as somebody finds out about my secret, they tell me theirs. Never have I traded secrets with so many near-strangers. "I had two of my own," the older nurse putting an IV in my arm tells me. Then she gently moves the hair from my forehead like I'm her daughter.

When my husband leaves work for a doctor's appointment and doesn't come back that afternoon, he has to explain to one of his colleagues. His colleague understands the miscarriage secret. He tells my husband his own and says to treat me kindly because this secret is something I will never completely forget.

I was 11 weeks along when my husband and I saw the ultrasound tech's face tense up. I read the news in her body language before I could comprehend the silence that reverberated throughout the room in the absence of a heartbeat. The sadness met us forcefully. We wondered at the pain we felt for the loss of someone we never knew.

As I experience the grief of miscarriage, I am struck by the hush-hush method with which our culture treats an extremely widespread women's issue. In some ways, I'm grateful for the privacy granted me. In the first few months, it was an extraordinarily painful thing to talk about–even with my closest friends.

Paradoxically, the quietness associated with miscarriage has opened up an unforeseen community of support and love as people gently step forward to share their experiences with me. There's dignity in the confidentiality, and there's the freedom to mourn in this newly found private community.

As I see it, however, a few problems arise when we keep miscarriage private, away from the larger community. When statistics stop matching experience, our concept of reality becomes disjointed at best. I'm a 28-year-old, educated woman, and I knew the statistical chances of having a miscarriage were significant—one in five known pregnancies for my age group end in miscarriage, and a far higher percentage exists for women in their 30s and 40s. But the truth of cold numbers often fails to dislodge long-held beliefs based on personal experience. Because I knew of only two women who had miscarriages, I still thought of miscarriage as a rather exceptional case, like the chances you have of breaking your femur if you decide to go skiing. They exist –but you only know a few people in your lifetime to whom it happens, and it certainly would never make you think twice about getting on the chairlift.

Miscarriage, it so happens, is nothing like a freak skiing accident. It touches many more women than we realize. I think that if we girls and women and boys and men grew up with a more open sharing of the grief of miscarriage, then the loss, when it happens, would not seem quite so alienating. That loss might feel for women more like a natural part of life, the sharing of a common grief that is held by a large population of women, rather than a shameful, clandestine breaking down of your body that must be hidden from your healthy counterparts. Miscarriage might seem more expected, a bit more like a sorrowful version of your first period, that tremendous and poignant initiation into the mystery and community of womanhood.

It's difficult to say that women should be more open about miscarriage. I feel hypocritical and determined at the same moment. I still have not shared my miscarriage with very many people—nor do I think it was appropriate or necessary for me to do so during my time of mourning. There is grace and mercy for periods of grief. But with time, I want to organically share my experience with the people I know. I want to push past the uncomfortable looks of the uninitiated and not take personally the awkward subject-shifts of well-meaning people when I bring up the topic of my miscarriage.

Whenever I do try to talk candidly about it, I feel certain people around me freeze. It's okay that they don't know quite how to respond. Looking on someone else's grief always feels intrusive, especially if you haven't experienced that particular brand. I want to start to view that discomfort as a reflection of strong cultural norms rather than as a cue about the inappropriateness of my desire to share my experience.

Imagine if we moved to the same comfort level with talking about miscarriage that we feel when someone talks about a really bad car accident they once had or the death of a grandparent. What if we accepted miscarriage as an open topic for discussion? Isn't it odd that we haven't? Think of the many important women's topics we make an effort to discuss more openly: breast cancer, sexual harassment, abuse, and infertility, to name a few.

As I write this, I acknowledge that women's experiences with miscarriage vary greatly. I was still in my first trimester when I miscarried, and it was my first pregnancy. But the grief was significant for a time and church worship was difficult. Something about so many pregnant women gathered in one place and so many happy children trooping forward as the church prayed for them, and something about the rawness I felt as I watched the Lord's body break for my broken body, something about all of these elements overwhelmed me. In the first weeks I had to walk out of church early on a consistent basis trying to hold it together until I breached the front doors. My husband followed with my coat, and his comforting words, but the feeling of shame that I couldn't keep from crying and my panicked pride that someone may have seen my emotion embarrassed me.

Imagine if, as Christians and as women, we could more openly acknowledge the burden of miscarriage. We could at least talk about the guilt a woman feels when a beautiful newborn baby causes her to weep, and perhaps through the dialogue of a community, that guilt would lessen as it revealed more candidly the processes of grief women who miscarry walk through. Worship isn't just for those who rejoice. It is also for those who mourn –both secretly and openly. Perhaps this secret grief, though, needs a bit more air and light. Perhaps it needs the freedom of expression that we assign to other forms of grief, so that after sharing and receiving our stories of miscarriage, we can see clearly enough to reach out and tenderly remove the tendrils of pain that grow on each other's hearts.

Caitlin Lubinski holds a master's in English literature. A freelance writer and adjunct writing instructor, she lives in Beverly, Massachusetts, with her husband. They are expecting a baby on October 15.

For today’s entry in the Friday Five interview series, we catch up with Caleb Breakey.

Caleb Breakey is author of Called to Stay: An Uncompromising Mission to Save Your Church. You can follow him on Twitter. Caleb also has a forthcoming book to be published in January 2014 titled, Dating Like Airplanes: Why Just Fall in Love When You Can Fly?

Today we chat with Caleb about Millennials, authenticity, and listening.

In your book, Called to Stay, you voice some of the generational tensions that Millennials have voiced and yet you don’t counsel them to give up on the church, but to stay, why?

There’s a vibe circulating among Millennials that Jesus would turn over tables in most churches. I totally get that. Some churches are really unlovely. But you know what Jesus would do in those churches? He would speak the truth. He would say, “He who has ears to hear, let him hear” (Matthew 11:15). He would love the unlovely people inside them the same way he loves sinners and tax collectors. He would commend the churches for what they’re doing right, then call them to overcome the things they’re doing wrong (Revelation 2-3). He would set a new tone of love, truth, and unity—regardless of what the congregation thought of him. We should too.

What is a myth about Millennials that are prevalent in leadership circles?

That their passion to do bigger things for Jesus is more of an idealistic phase than a Spirit-lit fire. I think Francis Chan touched on this when he wrote, “As a church, we tend to do this to people who are passionate and bold. We mellow them out. Institutionalize them. Deaden them to the work that the spirit is doing in them.”

How would you encourage older pastors and church leaders to engage the Millennials in their church, particularly on issues where they may disagree?

Sit down and get real with them in a setting that’s more comfortable to them than you. Trade in your suit for some jeans and a T-shirt. Don’t be someone you’re not, but be a shepherd who’s not ashamed of lounging in smelliness with his sheep. Ping-Pong with them conversationally. Don’t simply look for opportunities to say what you want. Listen to what they’re saying and respond in a way that’s authentic, loving, and thought provoking. Start there and you’re ready to engage them about anything.

How would you counsel Millennials to listen to their older brothers and sisters in the Lord?

Let your older brothers and sisters speak seventy percent of the time to your thirty percent. Honor them as you would a parent or grandparent. Not just with your body language and closed mouth, but with ears eager to listen. Take in what they say and ask good questions. Also be observant. If your brothers and sisters reflect Jesus in what they do and how they speak, seek them out regularly to learn from them. If they don’t, accept them where they are and ask God how he might use you in their journey.

How would you encourage the established church to mentor, encourage, and equip Millennials to lead?

Pursue us. Get real with us. Ask us how our hearts are. Ask us how God’s been showing up in our lives and where he’s seemed absent. Challenge us to immerse ourselves in Jesus. To not only know about him, but to truly know him as our King. To do justice, love mercy, walk humbly—and to passionately pour our lives and gifts into doing everything he’s created us for.