Much Too Pie-ous

     

     I was having a discussion with my friend Guy today.  Yes, he is also a guy friend, but he happens to be named Guy, in case there is any confusion. Anyway, we were talking about  models of evangelism and discipleship among ethnic/religious groups and how to help shape and equip an established church representing the dominant culture to adapt in being more hospitable and attractive to the minority cultures around her. Maybe you thought all guys talked about was sports, but we also talk about other subjects, like food.

     Guy used the analogy of a pie to illustrate how a primarily mono-cultural  church can create a slice from among its whole to serve as a concentrated focus on  a specific people group, such as Arabs.  That started me thinking about pies, which really had nothing to do with my appetite because at that moment we were enjoying a breakfast of cappuccinos with freshly baked baguettes and jam at McDonald's (Only  in France, people- only in France). As I thought about it, the analogy doesn't seem to hold up too well only because the room we carve out in the pie for them becomes what turns out to be a slice of something of an entirely different flavor and texture from the rest. And in the end, it's still exclusively our pie and we really don't understand what it feels like to be a little blackberry surrounded by a whole lot of rhubarb.   Cultural, religious, or historical barriers prevent us from helping invitees or new believers from minority or cultural sub-groups to feel welcome and to fully integrate into the life of the church. One problem is that we tend to think about the participation, power sharing and personality of our pie in terms of doling out rationed slices. It is as if  we're a pie divided, before we've even started.

      Keeping with the pie imagery, one could also envision just creating two entirely different pies. We see this all the time in more of  a "let them have their own pie" approach.  Often, it means ethnic churches that have their own culture and language, and exist quite independent from other mono-ethnic churches or who are loosely associated with a "mother" church, meeting for language-specific worship and fellowship at an alternative time and/or location. I get my pie and you get yours; everybody's happy, right? When the two pies do try to get together for a unified event, it can resemble more of a side-by-side dessert display rather than a true fusion of tastes and textures. 

     But what if there was a third model, and it wasn't a pie but a pizza. OK, I can hear the Italians objecting that pizza is pie.  I won't argue that, but I would like to argue the superiority of  thick crust over thin.  That's an argument worth fighting for. But on the subject of pizza and dessert pie.  They may possess the same shape, and maybe the same amount of slices, but I propose to you, they are constructed very differently. A pie's main ingredients are mixed together into a filling before baking. A pizza's ingredients are spread over the whole pizza a layer at a time.  Cheese, salami, olives, and more rarely, anchovies, are spread over the entire pizza, each with it's distinctive appearance and flavor, yet covering its entire surface to give it a unique array of colors, aroma, and taste. But should you want to concentrate a number of extra pepperonis over onto one quarter of the pie to give it a more dominant  taste of spicy goodness, you have not changed the nature of the pizza, which was always designed to be a "combination" from the beginning. Now you have a dominant flavor in a certain section, but one that still mixes with the other ingredients more organically.  Further, add a brand-new, untried ingredient to the pizza, and it should blend right in with the other varied, yet complimentary components.

     Isn't it typically the least mature in a given family who prefer not to branch out to order anything but the tried and true mozzarella pizza they have always eaten?  A combination pizza is more costly than a plain cheese. Of the two pizzas, one requires more work, more preparation of ingredients, and more investment than the other, not to mention a more diversified palate. But the result of richness in diversity of flavor is well worth the cost and the risk of ordering a large pizza with "the works".  In the church, we barely do OK at reproducing churches after our own kind. But we are pretty inept at reaching and integrating people different from us into our Christian communities.  In most cities, pizza restaurants outnumber pie shops. May it be so in the Kingdom of God as His Church and her rapid multiplication begin to reflect more accurately what God Himself destined to be an wonderfully diverse yet connected and globalized world.