For my sister-in-law Heather

VERY powerful

The images at this sight are VERY powerful. You don't want to be in an "off" mood before clicking to the site. Horrible realities of our world - resolve to live the kingdom.

James Natchwey

Hmmmm.

Way cool

Flags of the world revisited with the truth of the stories they tell

Fundumbmental

This was 23 seconds of fun:

Elastic Enthusiastic

Give thanks for your mind

I cdnuolt blveiee taht I cluod aulaclty uesdnatnrd waht I was rdgnieg. The phaonmneal pweor of the hmuan mnid aoccdrnig to rscheearch at Cmabrigde Uinervtisy, it deosn't mttaer in waht oredr the ltteers in a wrod are, the olny iprmoatnt tihng is taht the frist and lsat ltteer be in the rghit pclae. The rset can be a taotl mses and you can sitll raed it wouthit a porbelm Tihs is bcuseae the huamn mnid deos not raed ervey lteter by istlef, but the wrod as a wlohe.

I hpoe yuor Avdnet is ginog wlel.

Kteih

Merry Debtmas - Madonna and Card

In the face of our North American seasonal consumerist orgy - I offer this:

Spend time not money on your family.
They need you more than your gifts.
Give to the poor not the credit card companies, resist spending shun over spending.

Riches is not money, nor luxury excess.

God bless us every one!

OK

I just erased this post.

It was intended to be about my thoughts on the last post. Something of a retrospective.
(H tells me it reads a smidge "angry")

I guess it might be - but probably because I am angry. I'm angry about a lot of this stuff. Still.

You don't need that - but I had to write something - so here it is.


SOMETHING.


(Mine is a comic heart - I didn't just "want to" I "had to.")

a scary and curious thing

A field guide to blending in at Church

page 17: What to do when your parents drag you to church

First of all - don’t panic.

You’ll probably only need to attend a one hour weekly meeting. You can handle an hour. Assume that your experience will be the same as many others. In many of these places the understanding of God is firmly held with a commercial capitalist world view - as if God is somehow like that blue genie in "Alladin."

The good news is you’ve probably been to the mall before - just look at this experience as a “Jesus store at a Spiritual Mall.” Here they mostly offer spiritual or motivational speeches aimed at the listeners’ personal growth and development. They seem to feel that the best motivation they can offer is to explain how listening to their speeches will make life “better for you.” (If it’s not about “YOU” why would you possibly be interested?)

But not to worry the challenge toward change is seldom so serious that you are expected to actually demonstrate any of the stuff they talk about. Just listen to the speech politely, the writers often throw in a few corn-ball jokes to keep things moving. Sometimes they are genuinely funny.

Anyway, the challenge to change will mostly be stuff to just think about. The audience is just as afraid of being vulnerable as the rest of the world and they are usually too busy with their own lives to be close to others anyway. It's rare that you would be asked about your true self by any of the other people there.

The good news on this front is that anonymity within the larger whole seems to be a pattern. Many of those in the audience with you, find they are able to just listen to the speech without doing much else. The two key things seem to be showing up regularly while “looking the part” and nodding your head at the right times.

Be aware that some of these places have a group of self appointed inspectors that decide who “measures up.” It’s an especially good idea to figure out who these people are and put your best foot forward.

To help you stay motivated,closely watch how people who are "rough around the edges" are treated by this group. (Pay special attention to women who have become pregnant before they got married.) Seeing their collective, quiet, public, disapproval in action is really scary. You don't need that in your life - shame sucks.

It's weird, the speeches are so often about how important it is for us all to love - but watching them make people outsiders for being human, will make sure your personal life is never too well known....




May YHWH help us all!

Evangel-ramblin'

I was going through some notes from a lesson I'd sat in a little while back. The topic was "Evangelism."

I compared some of those thoughts with Donald Miller's teaching at the NYWC Cincinnati. Mr. Miller commented (as he has at various other times and places) about the commodification of the gospel of Jesus Christ. The sense that evangelism has become for many churches a "Buy into Jesus" sales pitch that promises "everything is better with Jesus" by people who know it's not that simple. It reminds me of that tired old Blue Bonnet Margarine commercial ("Everything is better with Blue Bonnet on it!")

*shudder*

Anyway the notes I'd taken were based on a comment Peter Fitch had made - He mentioned that often when evangelism efforts fail a predictable pattern emerges:

For some if a person can't be converted they are to be either ignored or worse resented. Worse still, if that fails there can be a promotion of an environment that moves them somewhere else - creates enough awkwardness and tension that they disappear from the setting. It's sort of a "His way (as WE see it) or the Highway" policy. (shut them up or shut them out)

I thought back to how the people on the margins were treated in pre-war Germany.

*shudder*

Even if that's hyperbole - it gives me pause.

Jesus can't be sold to anyone, even those who have nodded, said "the prayer" and caved to the sales pitch. Many started that way and have been loved beyond that less than perfect beginning into real life.

My point is we must not tolerate "eliminate objections and hang in there to get the sale/conversion evangelism" programs. Evangelism isn't a methodology, an explosive device, or a belt notching system toward getting your "Extra especially approved by Jesus" badge.

People are loved to God, by people who are living the love of God. Love one another as He has Loved us - that will be more than enough evangelism for all.

STAND UP!

PLEASE RALLY YOUR CIRCLE OF FRIENDS AT CHURCH!

The STAND UP AGAINST POVERTY campaign is slated for October 15 & 16. Let your friends know - poverty is intolerable!

The "Stand Up" Campaign is a challenge to raise awareness for the eight Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) which all 191 UN nations signed onto in the year 2000.

The purpose of the action is to raise awareness of the MDGs and to publicly demonstrate to policy makers the growing global support for the eradication of poverty.

When you STAND UP up on October 15/16, you will be joining people around the world reminding our leaders of their promises, including the promise to cut world poverty in half by 2015. (And set an official Guinness World Record for the greatest number of people ever to Stand Up Against Poverty!)

I am asking you to join in to reject poverty as "normal," and moreso, to speak out for those who have no voice.

Ask your Pastor to lead the congregation in a Stand Up Moment just a short introduction of the campaign with a moment of reflection on what it means to take a stand against injustice and poverty, followed by a prayer.
If your set up for it use the 30 second PROMO then say a word or two before the prayer. (Be willing to lead it!)

Here's the link to the STAND UP campaign.

Here's the Dave Matthews Band promo.

Yes! My Exlax endorsement came through!

  

I'm liking the graphic creation and the few thousand words these comics provide me. I'd love to know what you all think of them.

Penn Ave. (Yes he really did say this...)

Megachurch #354

More Comics

At the potluck
and
Filler Footage

A comic or two

A comic.
and another

140 government bucks a week

I sat today with some of the people I work with. We sat at the park near the border and watched the maxi-SUV's pulling three bedroom 5th wheel trailers, and uber RV's roll by. Boats, ATVs, you name it - they all joined the parade.

My friends faced the cavalcade bravely. They told me it's hard to watch when you live on less than 140 government bucks a week. We watched and chatted, one borrowed a dollar from another to buy a used book from the sale the library was hosting nearby.

The afternoon waned.

It was a surreal experience. Watching the advantaged, (or at least the "credit worthy") cruise on, while sitting quietly and speaking with these who have so very little. They all bear their hardships with nobility when they can, and with grit when they cannot.

They all need our help - my help and your help. Look about - they are there; the fractured, the forgotten, the forbidden. Give them first the regard and dignity we all should give one another. Then as you are able, (and sometimes when you think you are not) give them what advantage you can - money, time, equality, deference, whatever you can give they have so little otherwise.

We would do well to remember that for some people, a chance for a coffee and a donut are reason enough to change a day's schedule and a little of the milk of human kindness a very welcome surprise.

We are the forgiven - they are ours to heal, remember, and liberate - ours to love.

Express Lane

Ok here's a new rule:

The person in the grocery store express lane immediately behind the guy with more than 10 items, gets to pick which items DON'T go home with him.

I will always choose toilet paper, tylenol and desserts first - so you've been warned!

I hate that! We were in the "express lane" however the management wasn't insightful enough to assign an express cashier. So we all smoldered while we waited. She methodically took each item and slowly scanned it. (Sometimes too slow for even the reader - so she had to do it twice!) The express lane turned into the "express your frustration quietly" lane.

Arrrgh!

Time

So I've not blogged in a LONG time. Time is a problem for me - a sort of dsychronia I suffer from. I too easily loose track. I am aware of time in a way that is different than most. I'm not sure if this is a gift or a burden.

Anyhow, I just seem to be doing other things. Work, life etc. and then it's time for bed. With the kids home on Summer VAC we are very often doing family stuff during my "not working time."

It hasn't helped that I have not set up my studio yet - all in due time.

So, Thanks for tuning in and stopping by, I'll try and write again (with more pith) soon.

K

Insight at the roadside

I was walking home today after fighting with a lawn mower and over grown grass at our new place for an hour. I had to go and do it since it was the last day before three soild days of rain. On the way home I was really tired, since I had already put in a full day at the office before mowing.

Anyway on the way home, a car pulled over and I soon realized that I had been "picked" as a possible prospect by our local Mormon Summer Missionaries. Through the car window one of them offered me a card which I politely declined.

He shrugged when I said "no thanks" - it was no biggie, they drove off - I walked on.
That's because I don't think they cared about me. I thinn they cared about their quota. I was just another "try" to them. When I said "no thanks" it was no biggie, they drove off - I walked on. There's plenty of fish in the sea.

When the priority is the process - and not the person, you can forget the person and just start the process with another.

How much can we learn from this when it comes to our own hopes to communicate Christ's desire to connect with others? When will we look at other's eyes and not our own agendas?

This is bound to PO somebody

The blog Antidote wrote a piece based on an open letter by Pam Slim

Some may take offense at the rules named but, nomenclature aside, it's on target. We in the church like to shine up our junk and make it look pretty for our showcase Sunday morning spectacles. It rubs our fur the wrong way when someone suggests that we are human, and so have a tendency at times, to behave as an ass. That's just not polite.

The sooner we drop that, the better. John Doe knows that our flesh and his are the same. Plainly said, he just doesn't believe the suits and ties, dresses and shiny shoes are the way the people wearing them really are. Our pretense and posturing just creates an interpersonal distance between us and him. (And if you just read that and think I was ranting about clothing - you missed it.)

So, here are the 10 points Pam makes, bent for my purposes of talking about church. For each point she provides a paragraph in her open letter, you may wish to read that too.

1. Don't spend tons of money to try and change your church culture.

Our culture will always be defined by what is truly valued by the decision-makers. (I think I read somewhere that it's supposed to be something about loving God and others.) SO insist the leaders are outrageously loving!

Flat out abandon any plan or action that doesn't fit that mode. If it's well intentioned, and committee approved, but won't be understood as love - go back to the drawing board. People, not money, change culture.

2. Stop running your church like the Mafia

Ahh the tyranny, the complete control, the decision makers, the ability to crush opposition, the unspoken codes of conduct and the rewards of being a "made" member - it's all there. Stop.

3. Spend time with the people in your church in their context - not the church's

So often it's about the church's agenda getting moved forward. After all, that's what we are there to do - God's work. But that just lends itself to perpetuating the artificial. It is in the vulnerability of shared human experience that we forge and temper the bonds that permit this extravagant love we are called to live out. You cannot love someone you don't know. You cannot know someone you don't spend any time with.

4. Teach people how to love God.

This could be it's own blog post, but I have to be brief. Let's admit that the "read your bible & pray more" solution we've been prescribing for decades as "the solution to life's problem's" is a mythical panacea that needs to be contextualized. Those two elemental Christian exercises aren't enough for what life throws at us.

We need silence, and the fierce courage of true vulnerable friendship, liturgy, ceremony, songs new and old, art, laughter, tears and so much more - all marshaled in concrete spiritual disciplines that help us and teach us to better love God. A truism I often repeat is "In order to see - we must look, in order to hear - we must listen, in order to create, we must persist. (it seems fitting for this too.)

5. Don't ask for your peoples' input if you are not going to listen to it

It's the height of arrogance to form a consensus, then ignore it, so don't.

6. Don't train people until you know what problem you are solving

Training? What is this training you speak of? Why do we run a special school here for the children every Sunday, just to teach them to be life long Christ followers, and we've never trained any of our teachers? (I think it's so the teachers remain humble. It's real hard to get full of pride if your not sure about what your doing.)

7. Ditch the spectacles.

The sermon just isn't that important. I love to speak to a crowd, so that's hard for me to write, but if I'm being honest.... A sermon (the fancy "church word" for a lecture) is the most efficient way of getting a lot of information to a large group of people all at the same time - but it's the least effective way of learning.

Besides, even if the sermon "goes over" every week it's less than 4 tenths of one percent of the week. So even if your focused and intent on learning during the presentation (and everyone always is) it's just not enough. Teaching is monumentally important - but sermons aren't.

8. Focus on the "what" that people do, not the "how" or "when" they do it

Lots of people in the church serve tirelessly, and never get so much as a nod from the pulpit or anywhere else. We chalk it up to "reasonable service" when the truth is that most pastors would do well to put away their sermon notes for the next week and just spend their time celebrating the men and women who make this thing we call church "go" every week.

9. Watch the burnout

Yours and theirs. Face it the church is the black hole of need. That's the point. "Come to me all you who are heavy laden..." is what the Master said. So it's not surprising that even with a fully developed "I am weak but but He is strong' mentality people will over do it. We take church so very seriously, but often for all the wrong reasons. After you stop working/volunteering/doing for this church there will be someone else to take your place.

You're just not that important to it all. But the "YOU" part of you is vitally important to God. So stop, drop, and roll. Stop believing your own hype about the deadlines and the fact that the sky will fall if that thing doesn't happen, drop the idea that you are the only Jesus some people will every see. (You aren't, and I have verses to prove it.) and roll with the punches.

Will somebody get PO'ed if you drop the ball? Maybe. If they love you and you own your crap - it will be fine. If they love their program more than you, you'll at least learn where their allegiances are.

10. Forbid people to work while they are on vacation

PERIOD. Refuse to allow programs to use people up. Set volunteer service term limits for everyone. Close the church at least one Sunday a year and go do something together that expresses your love for each other and the reason Christ died for us all.