On the other hand . . .

. . . status updates can be helpful. When you see that someone is having a particularly awful/tragic/stressful time, you know that this is actually NOT the week to approach that person about taking on a tedious but necessary committee assignment . . .

Facebook Dilemma

So say you're on Facebook and a few congregation members find you and ask to be "friends".

A few weeks later, one of these women posts on her status that she is having a very difficult day. Do you:

a)respond pastorally somehow because otherwise she might think, "Gee--I put it out there that I was struggling and my pastor didn't reach out or call or ANYTHING!"

b)not respond because then she might think, "Sheesh, now I can't put anything personal on Facebook without my pastor being all in my face about it."

c)go off Facebook yourself so you won't be in these dilemmas.

November 3, 2038

Laramie,WY--Today an emotional Logan Shepherd spoke to reporters about the election last night of the country's first openly gay president.
"Coming forty years after my brother Matthew's murder, this is a moment many of us thought could never be. If he were alive today, he would be prouder than ever to be an American."

Elsewhere, some have likened this election to the election of 2008 when Barak Obama broke the color barrier to become the nation's first African-American president. Others see contrasts.

Retired Bishop Gene Robinson, now 91, said from his home in New Hampshire, "The Obama victory in 2008 was exhilarating. But that election also brought painful results in the passage of many anti-gay ballot initiatives in states around the country. Although most of those laws were eventually ruled unconstitutional, the days after that election were full of anger and grief for many of us."

The President and her husband today invited the president-elect, his spouse, and their teenage son to the White House next week to begin planning for the transition.

November 4, 2008

"Now faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen . . .

Illustration

We just finished up our last week of "stewardship preaching' at our place. More's the pity because my sister sent me a wonderful stewardship sermon illustration today.

Next week our parents are moving from the house they have been living in for over 30 years into a retirement community. In the course of sorting and tossing, my Mom found the following letter my sister wrote when she was about nine and had broken something important, incurring Mom's wrath:

Dear Jesus,
Please help me. Help me find the money to pay Mom back. Only not out of the allowance Dad owes me. Just please, please help me and anyone else who is in trouble. Amen.

I e-mailed back and asked if she remembered how Jesus responded. I'll keep you posted.

Calvin Year

Here in Presbyland, we are gearing up for the 500th anniversary of the birth of John Calvin in 2009. Our Worship Comm has discussed several thing we might do to observe this liturgically. One idea was to take Calvin's emphasis on scripture and his perfered method of preaching "lectio continua" and attempt to preach through the bible during the course of the year.

One article I read on this notes that since Calvin preached daily and usually for an hour or more at a time, it was easier for him to make steady progress through books of scripture than it would be for us "twenty minutes once a week" contemporary preachers.

Have any of you done something like this? How did it work? How did your congregation respond? Would you recommend it?

Our other thought was a Calvin Lazer Tag Birthday Party.

A Modest Proposal for STewardship Season

The most interesting bit of info I gleaned from the media coverage of the Sarah Palin clothing budget controversy was this: the average American household spends about $1900/year on apparel. So perhaps a "discernment" question we could pose to ourselves and members of our congregations during Stewardship season is this: Does our pledge to our faith community AT LEAST equal our annual clothing budget?

As a Thief in the Night

Our No on 8 sign was stolen from our front yard yesterday afternoon while no one was home. I ran into the Pastor from the United Methodist church last night and she said the same thing happened to her.

Stealing to protect "biblical morality"?

Nice.

Update: Add to that extortion and blackmail

My son the mind-reader

Yesterday when I picked up my fifth grade son after soccer practice I greeted him with the words:

"Hey! There's my boy!"

"DON'T call me little boy!" he growled.

"I didn't say little!" I protested.

"But you were THINKING it." he said.

He's right. I was.

Anything to add?

So yesterday I asked one of the "elder statesmen" of our Presbytery if he had any wisdom on doing Stewardship Season while the economy is in total meltdown.

He just smiled and said, "The most important thing is not to lose your sense of humor."

I get that. But I'm still struggling with what to preach.

What are YOU doing?

Bitchty Soccer Mom Moment

Standing in line for team pictures for daughter's soccer team.

Me: Oh look. The girls on the team in line ahead of us all have color-coordinated hair ribbons that match their uniforms.

Beat

Teammate's Mom: Hmmm. Somewhere, someone has WAY too much time on her hands.

Snarky giggle.

Scene

Criminal Background Checks: Here's the thing

Does running criminal background checks on church volunteers who work with kids really make kids safer?

Here's the thing. Predators are slippery. Chances are, they will not call attention to themselves by doing something as obvious as volunteering to teach Sunday School or lead youth group.

Instead, they will befriend the families at the church. The will throw pool parties and barbecues at their house. They will join a small group along with their spouse. They'll join the buildings and grounds team and get a reputation as being able to fix anything. They'll help church members out when a lawn mower breaks or a dryer goes on the fritz or a sprinkler system implodes. The kids in the church will be used to seeing this person in and around their homes.

So when one of these predators overhears Mr. and Mrs. Smith fretting at small group about how are they going to get their kids to all their activities next week when Mr. Smith is out of town on business, he will readily offer to pick up 11-year-old Suzie Smith from band practice. After all, it's right on his way home from work, no trouble at all. And Mr. and Mrs. Smith will gratefully accept. And when he shows up at band practice half an hour early because, "he got the times mixed up" Suzie will leave with him anyway because how else is she going to get home? And when they get to her house and he suggests that he pop in for just a minute to check on that ceiling fan that her Dad says isn't working, well--it won't seem THAT odd that he come in when her parents aren't there because he has fixed stuff in her house before and the ceiling fan really isn't working. . . .

Where, in this chilling but too common scenario, does a criminal background check of volunteers help? In fact, it might hurt by lulling church families into thinking that all possible diligence is being exercised on their behalf and they can rest easy. The freak-out scary truth is that the biggest threat to kids is that predators will use the network of relationships they develop at church to facilitate access to kids at times and places where they are vulnerable--mostly NOT at church or during church sponsored events.

What might help would be empowering parents and kids to be aware,to recognize red flags, and trust their guts if they sense something "off". Then maybe Suzie might say, "Actually, I think it would be better if you check that fan when my parents are home."

Criminal Background Checks

Does your church do criminal background checks on all volunteers? All volunteers who might work with children or youth?

Several years before I arrived here, our C.E. Committee passed a policy requiring this. It did not happen. In fact, neither I nor my colleague were aware that there was a policy like this until someone who had been on the committee back in the day asked why we weren't doing it anymore. As far as we can tell, we never actually did this. It did not move from policy to implementation.

There has been a fair amount of turn-over in pastoral and lay staff in those years, so part of what happened was probably that the ball was dropped early on in terms of who was actually going to make the recommendations in the policy happen in real life. However, based on my experience with other churches, I'm betting some other things happened too.

1. The policy was passed without anyone doing the math on how much it would actually cost to run a $75 background check on several dozen volunteers each year. Once the realization dawned, implementation bogged down on the question of "who pays for this?"

2. The background check rule proved unsustainable in the midst of the chaos of congregational life. When it's one week before VBS and you are still scrambling to fill all the volunteer spots, the idea that you have to wait thirty days before that new volunteer's paperwork could possibly go through causes you to cut corners rather than cancel an event that has been publicized city-wide for a month.

I'm just not convinced that running background checks is the best way to make the church safer. The check we run on employees tells you only if a person has been convicted of a crime in this state. Okay. But what about other states? What about arrests that did not result in convictions? What about convictions that had nothing to do with child abuse? Is a thirty year old marijuana possession a deal-breaker? So far the only "conviction" that a background check has uncovered at a church I've served was for welfare fraud. The individual had, as a young single mom, failed to navigate the welfare bureacracy succesfully, filled out her paperwork improperly and for a few months received more benefits than she was entitled to. Do we cross her off our list of potential Sunday school teachers forever and ever?

I'm not suggesting that churches do nothing in this regard. But I wonder if implementing safe practices such as open doors, rooms and offices with windows, raising awareness among volunteers and parents and the kids themselves would do as much, if not more, than relying on expensive and potentially intrusive background checks.

What has been your experience with this?

Direct from the WTF Department

So I get this e-mail from someone in my church:

Great sermon last week. Next week you have to tell us how to DO it. I have a bet with someone who doubts you have the nerve. You have to help me win.


Umm--betting on sermons?? All righty then.

And speaking of fundraisers . . .

If the government can shell out 700 billion dollars to bail out the banking system, couldn't they give the schools enough money that we wouldn't have to sell f***ing Wrapping Paper every fall???

Just sayin . . .

Thin Mints and Pledge Cards

I hated selling Girl Scout cookies as a kid. Hated it. I really think that if a team of experts worked for a year to come up with the most effective method to torture shy little girls, making them go door to door selling cookies would be the method they would recommend.

I was a loyal Scout and a bright child. I "got" that the cookie selling was directly connected to our troop having the funds to do cool things later on. And since my Mom was Cookie Chairman for our troop at least once, I also got educated about how our cookie sales helped support the work of Girl Scouting nationwide. (Early training for interpreting per captia maybe?)

Still, I hated it. Even at that young age, this idea had somehow implanted itself deep in my psyche: If you ask for help you will appear lazy, stupid and incompetent. People won't like you. Better to go on the offensive and be as helpful as possible. Then you will appear kind, industrious and wise and people will love you. Asking people to buy my girl scout cookies, to my mind, equalled asking them to help me out. Yes, of course they weren't really helping ME but my organization--but I had a hard time making that distinction emotionally.

Fast forward 35 years. For me, the annual Stewardship Campaign feels EXACTLY like the annual cookie drives of yore. When I get up to address the pseudo-festive Stewardship Breakfast I might as well be wearing my old green uniform and knee socks, holding a box of Thin Mints in my trembling hand.

Would you like to buy some cookies?

Overheard on the Church Patio

Retired Professor to still-working Biblical Scholar,

"Hi Jim! How's the Old Testament?"

Still-working Bible Scholar to retired guy,

"It's doing well, thank you."

Good to know.

Attractional Blogs vs. Missional Blogs

In the years I've been blogging, I have encountered more than a few people who, upon learning that I have a blog, tell me, "I tried blogging. But I dropped it because no one ever seemed to read it."

When I probe a bit, it almost always turns out that what these former bloggers did was put up a blog, write posts, and wait for readers to appear. Of course those of us who are--for want of a better word--"successful" bloggers, know that this is not how it works. You have to go visiting. You have to read other blogs and leave comments. You have to read and comment on the blogs of those who read and comment on your blog. You have to join blog rings. If you want your blog to generate really interesting conversations, you have to read and comment on blogs written by people outside your own usual circle of friends and colleagues. In short, you have to put yourself out there.

I'll freely admit that there are times I don't do this. I get busy, tired, etc. and post infrequently and inanely. I stop visiting unfamiliar blogs and stick with my dozen or so favorites. Without fail, when I go through a spell like this, traffic to my own blog slows down.

I think I see a parallel between this reality and church. Most churches--my own included--would much rather just put stuff up and wait for the world to arrive at our doorstep. The time-consuming and more complicated process of putting ourselves out there and really engaging is harder, unfamiliar, more unquantifiable. So we just don't do it.

But we knew this already, right?

Joel Stein comments in his L.A. Times column today:

"In the last few years . . women in their 40s and 50s have gotten truly, deeply hot."

Glad someone finally noticed.

Nicknames

Yesterdays news brought a story about how the 70's band Heart is officially not happy that the Republican party is using its biggest hit "Barracuda" at rallies where VP candidate Sarah Palin appears. They do this because Ms. Palin's high school nickname was Sarah Barracuda because of her fierceness on the basketball court.

I had to smile. This brought to mind a nickname I had in high school, at least for a while. It was . . .




Wait for it . . . .




WONDER WOMAN!!

It came about like this. I was co-teacher of the Little Fishes group at my parish church in England. (Little Fishes=Sunday School-like gathering of young elementary kids that happens mid-week.) One evening, I had to pick one of the group to be "it" in a game we were going to play. To do this I stood in the middle of the circle of children, closed my eyes, and spun around rapidly. I pointed at the kid who happened to be in front of me when I stopped spinning.

"Okay! You're it!" I cried, opening my eyes. But the kids were all pointing at ME and chanting "It's Wonder Woman!" Apparently my spinning around reminded them of how the Linda Carter character transformed herself from mild-mannered school teacher(?) to super-hero--by spinning around and around. I didn't really look anything like Linda Carter, (still don't), but I WAS American and I DID have long, dark hair, and with the spinning and all, I guess it was an easy connection for them to make.

They got such a kick out of it, that this became a regular feature of Little Fishes night. I would spin around to pick kids for games, speaking parts in skits, etc. Soon, the kids from this group stopped calling me by name and started calling me Wonder Woman--even when meeting me in the shops or at football matches.

It was fun, but of course it could not last. The wheels of time spun rapidly and I soon left that village to return to the U.S. to attend college. My secret identity as Wonder Woman faded into history.

Still--if I were ever to run for high office and this story were unearthed, I think it would be an asset, politically. And I would hope whoever wrote the theme song for Wonder Woman wouldn't mind it being played as I strode onto the stage at the National Convention.

What about YOU? What was YOUR high school nickname? Would it be an asset should you decide to seek elected office? What song would be associated with it?