Reblogged from NPR:
“Poverty has grown everywhere in the U.S. in recent years, but mostly in the suburbs. During the 2000s, it grew twice as fast in suburban areas as in cities, with more than 16 million poor people now living in the nation’s suburbs — more than in urban or rural areas.”
Reblogged from the Stillspeaking Devotional
Astounded onlookers chalk it up to drunkenness, forgetting that alcohol tends to make one less intelligible, not more. Besides, if drunkenness produced multi-lingual fluency, a good many college graduates today would be eligible for a job at the U.N. Likewise, Peter dismisses the charge and says “It’s a God thing,” exactly what the prophet Joel meant when he said, “In those days I will pour out my Spirit on all flesh: old people, young people, folk from every place and every walk of life!”
This article makes a good and true point, although the empathetic part of me suspects that evangelical candidates for ordination face a similar fear of rejection by their committees.
I’m becoming more and more convinced that mainline Protestant denominations are neither conservative/evangelical nor liberal/progressive in their theological orientation (much to the chagrin of conspiracy theorists on both sides), but are trying to hold both perspectives together under the umbrella of their true agenda: maintaining the survival of the institution.
Theologically, this means trying to occupy the Barthian-Niebuhrian middle ground that dissatisfies evangelicals and liberals alike. Evangelicals fear that the denomination is pandering to political correctness at the expense of gospel truth. Liberals fear that the denomination’s appeasement of cantankerous reactionaries is blunting the edge of prophetic witness.
My experience of the process left me with the sense that my committee and examiners just wanted to know that I was able to articulate that middle-ground perspective using the language of our denomination’s polity and historical confessions.
I think the main thrust of this article is true, but it could equally apply to our sisters and brothers on the evangelical end of the spectrum.
Reblogged from Crystal St. Marie Lewis:
“Many denominations require candidates to obtain a graduate degree involving work in the areas of theology and philosophy. In those graduate programs, professors spend countless hours training students to think outside the theological box, only for their ordination committees to demand that they put God (and their capacity for exploration) back inside the box. Seminaries are often free and open spaces where people are encouraged to draw their own conclusions about sacred matters. Yet, students endure rejection after the academic stage of their ordination processes–ironically for drawing unapproved conclusions.”
Touching Bill Murray story on how comedians say goodbye forever.
Reblogged from Old Love:
We kept carrying her around, but like upside down, every which way—over your shoulder and under your arm, carrying her like luggage. And that went on for more than an hour—maybe an hour and a half—just carrying her around and saying, “She’s leaving! This could be it! Now come on, this could be the last time we see her. Gilda’s leaving, and remember that she was very sick—hello?”
This comes from the Office of Public Witness, part of the denomination I serve: the Presbyterian Church (USA). I found this article on Facebook when it was shared by Bruce Reyes-Chow, former Moderator of our General Assembly.
From the article by J. Herbert Nelson:
“Our mission is not to make the poor become rich; nor is it to demonize the rich. Our mission is to ensure that the playing field is leveled. Every human being deserves to have enough.”
Last year, Pastor Alois Bell of Truth in the World Deliverance Ministries in St. Louis, MO famously stiffed her server at Applebee’s of her tip. This event made headlines as Chelsea, the server in question, was later fired for publicizing the event with a photo of the receipt:
The icing on the proverbial cake was the arrogant note Pastor Bell scrawled on the paper before signing it with her name and title: “I give God 10% why do you get 18”.
Why? I tell you why. First of all, because it’s company policy for parties that large. If you don’t like it, don’t eat there. Second, and far more important, is because your server is a fellow human being, made in the image of God, worthy of respect and dignity for that fact alone.
The role of server is one that Jesus blessed and took upon himself when he washed his disciples’ feet at the Last Supper. Jesus, of all people, had the right to lord his status over others, but he didn’t. He came to give and serve. After voluntarily completing this act of degrading service, he commanded his followers to do the same, saying, “Just as I have loved you, so you also must love one another.” Who are we to then treat our servers as anything less than the very presence of Christ in our midst? Jesus also said, “Truly I tell you, just as you did it to one of the least of these who are members of my family, you did it to me.”
Finally, professional clergy who act in this way absolutely ruin our collective witness to the power of the gospel. Like it or not, people see us as representatives of the tradition we follow. If we want to encourage others to love and follow Jesus, we must demonstrate that same love in our words and deeds.
Pastors, priests, ministers, and other clergy, hear me loud and clear: The way we conduct ourselves in public and the tips we leave our servers preach more than a thousand sermons ever could. And don’t stop with your dollars either. Make an effort to remember their names, especially if you are a frequent customer. These people are treated like machines all day long, imagine the effect it will have on them when you make an effort to build community, nurture relationships, and love like Jesus!
As an act of collective repentance for what Alois Bell did in the name of pastors, I would like to share the following photo from a recent visit to Applebee’s in Rome, NY, where many of the staff members, including Alison, Lester, Matt, Amanda, Heather, Michelle, Natalie, Liz, Destiny, and Tristan, have become precious friends to our family, even though we only see each other in this one context.
Many thanks to our beloved server, Alison, for posting this photo and helping us redeem the world a little from the stain of hypocrisy left by Pastor Bell.
Alison posted the photo to Facebook with this comment:
J. Barrett Lee I put it up finally!!!!!! Thank you for being an amazing customer and more importantly an amazing person and friend! To everyone else: I didn’t know Barrett before I worked at Applebee’s. He came in one night (a particularly rough one) with his daughter and sat in my section. He treated me like a person( a concept that we have talked about many times since) an they made my night 1000 x better. They have now become friends of mine and I love seeing them. It doesn’t hurt that Barrett and his wife Sarah produce amazingly beautiful childrenAnyway, my point is that servers are people too, along with the cashier who rang up your groceries wrong or who couldn’t let you use your coupon. Everyone has a story and sometimes they just need someone to listen to it! Spread the love!!!!!!
As a man who began his career as a “preacher’s wife” in a small, rural congregation in upstate NY, I can so related to this article. While my wife and I were in seminary and engaged to be married, but before I realized I was called to pastoral ministry, I went to the seminary library to look up books on being a clergy spouse. I found those books on the shelf, right between “Sexual Abuse” and “Burnout”, and they were all geared toward clergy wives. There was NOTHING about being the husband of a pastor. And, as far as I could tell, my job was just to be Donna Reed.
The low point came when one person learned that I was starting a street chaplaincy program in inner-city Utica. That person’s comment: “Oh! I thought you were just a house husband!“
Yup… nope.
Reblogged from Sojourners
By Christian Piatt
I get my share of “preacher’s wife” jokes, to which I have a handful of rote responses. No, I don’t knit or make casseroles. No, I don’t play in the bell choir. Generally, the jokes are pretty gentle, but they all point to the reality that few of us will actually talk about: We see the traditional roles of women as less important than those of their male counterparts. And so, to see a man who works from home most of the time and takes the kids to school while his wife has the “high power” job brings everything from the man’s masculinity to his ambition into question.
“Prayer is our nearest approach to absolute action; it means the closest association of which any soul is at any time capable with the living and everywhere present God who is the true initiator of all that we really do. Progress in it is really a surrender of the conditioned creature to that unconditioned yet richly personal Reality, who is the only source, teacher, and object of prayer. Its whole wonder and mystery abide in this: that here, our tiny souls are being invited and incited to communion with God, the Eternal Spirit of the Universe.”
–Evelyn Underhill, Man and the Supernatural, p.196
Reblogged from The Guardian (UK):
Dr. West on President Obama:
“He talked about Martin Luther King over and over again as he ran. King died fighting not just against poverty but against carpet-bombing in Vietnam; the war crimes under Nixon and Kissinger. You can’t just invoke Martin Luther King like that and not follow through on his priorities in some way. I knew he would have rightwing opposition, but he hasn’t tried. When he came in, he brought in Wall Street-friendly people – Tim Geithner, Larry Summers – and made it clear he had no intention of bailing out homeowners, supporting trade unions. And he hasn’t said a mumbling word about the institutions that have destroyed two generations of young black and brown youth, the new Jim Crow, the prison industrial complex. It’s not about race. It is about commitment to justice. He should be able to say that in the last few years, with the shift from 300,000 inmates to 2.5 million today, there have been unjust polices and I intend to do all I can. Maybe he couldn’t do that much. But at least tell the truth. I would rather have a white president fundamentally dedicated to eradicating poverty and enhancing the plight of working people than a black president tied to Wall Street and drones.”
Reblogged from KoreaBANG:
The Center for the Study of Ministry and Society recently published a report based on extensive interviews with Congregants, finding that while the reasons vary widely, the primary issue was disappointment with the behavior of the pastor and the congregation. ‘I didn’t like the way the congregation just did the same thing over and over again, getting swept up in emotion and sobbing out loud,’ said one thirty-year-old office-worker. Another respondent said, ‘it was hard to endure the sermons filled with allegories that didn’t make any sense in our lives.’ Other interview subjects criticised the naked pursuit of material benefits within the church. ‘If you talk about how it is better for the church to make more money, to have a bigger building and fancy facilities, then what is the difference between a church and a business?’
Hopping Hadrian's Wall 