“Some of my deepest rooted religious ideas come from my childhood. I bet this is true of most of us. It’s why I’ve had experienced ministry mentors tell me that if a church has a strong children program, those kids will likely come back to church later in life because of those warm feelings brought on by cotton ball sheep, fuzzy shepherds, and tender safety. I think my mentors have partly been right – the lessons about faith that we receive from our family, neighbors, mentors, and tradition help set the stage for how many of us come to understand and realize the importance of the spiritual journey, for better and for worse.”
Read more please.
God of Life,
We seek You in this time of grief. In the midst of tears, laughter, and sorrow, our hearts are heavy. So we gather in this place to find comfort together and treasure the memory of this person, who we called mom, sister, wife, grandmother, neighbor, and friend.
We are thankful for the ways you blessed her and worked through her. For the encouragement others received through her. For babysitting in times of need. For her delicious desserts. For her funny stories. For warm gatherings and big feasts on Thanksgiving and Christmas. For her home decorating flair. For her letters and notes. For her fascination and love of genealogy. For her creative discipline on rambunctious grandkids. For her feistiness and directness. For her faith in You.
We know Norma wasn’t perfect, and yet You surrounded her with family and companions, with opportunity, and with love. You richly blessed her indeed.
We trust then that You, our Creator, who is with us in our birth, will continue to guide us beyond this life… Just like you have done with Norma.
Give us strength to endure this time of grief with patience. May this be an opportunity to draw closer together as family. Grant us peace to trust in Your perfect love and know that even now, Norma rests in your eternal care.
Thank You for being present with us and receiving our prayers this day. In the name of Jesus Christ, we pray, amen.
The Observer has a killer piece up on Romney’s leadership with Bain Capital back in the day. Ruthless, cold-hearted, goofball stuff like:
In the midst of that 1994 campaign, one of Romney’s companies, American Pad & Paper, bought a plant in Marion, Indiana. At the time, it was prosperous enough to be running three shifts.
Bain’s first move was to fire all 258 workers, then invite them to reapply for their jobs at lower wages and a 50-percent cut in health care benefits.
“They came in and said, ‘You’re all fired,’” employee Randy Johnson told the Los Angeles Times. “‘If you want to work for us, here’s an application.’ We had insurance until the end of the week. That was it. It was brutal.”
Granted, I’m sure it’s a slanted article, but read it and weep.
Here is the text of the Palm Sunday Prayer of Confession that I wrote for use today. It could work at other settings, I suppose.
Lord of Creation,
You seem to be one that likes to make curious entrances into the world -
burning bushes, wild dreams, booming questions, cryptic prophecies, a child born of a virgin, even a low budget parade.
We confess that we don’t always see or understand the way You move in the world.
We are not always on the look out or ready to join up in your cosmic procession.
On this day then, receive these prayers of confession and renewal.
March into our midst today.
Come, O Come, Emmanuel.
March in and disrupt our everyday routine that we can live lives that are filled with justice and compassion.
Come, O Come, Emmanuel.
March in to our situations when we sin against You and our neighbors.
Come, O Come, Emmanuel.
March into our heads when we think we are not good enough.
Come, O Come, Emmanuel.
March into out hearts when we think we don’t deserve to be loved or have love to share.
Come, O Come, Emmanuel.
March into our silence when we feel deserted or abandoned.
Come, O Come, Emmanuel.
March into our grief and weep with us.
Come, O Come, Emmanuel.
March into this world that Your kingdom, heaven on earth, may reign forever.
Come, O Come, Emmanuel.
March against empires built on violence and war. March for youth and children abused and killed, for peoples oppressed and enslaved.
Come, O Come, Emmanuel.
Hear this good news:
There is room in God’s parade for saints and sinners,
for idealists and pessimists,
for young and old.
God invites us to join the celebration - forgiveness and reconciliation abound!
Thanks be to God. Amen.
Emily is silly.
First FC Dallas game of the year was fun. FCD with the win, excited but cranky kids (Emily does not like the noise and fireworks of live games), sweet weather. Looking forward to more.
I haven’t finished the Hyphenateds, edited by DoC pastor/extraordinaire Phil Snider, but the first essay alone felt like the price of admission was dearly worth it. Nadia Bolz-Weber delivers a beautiful, moving case for the need for contextual, missional faith communities in our culture. But this quick section just felt like a little light bulb went off in my head, like finally she is putting words to what I often try to speak about our community, the Table.
The point is this: Both the idea for the icon and the idea for the Blessing of the Bicycles came from the freedom we have to try crazy stuff. This freedom is a result of being safely tethered to the big ship of the Lutheran Church while having lots of room to play. If we had to make sure that everything we undertook as a community would be understandable and inoffensive to folks from a traditional church, then we would never create things that speak to us and those in our own cultural setting.
She goes on to point out how these crazy ideas often bear fruit beyond their own faith community - they end up being useful to other people and in other communities.
(I remember hearing more than one minister speak about campus ministry in these terms - campus ministries can often do wild, crazy things that local churches cannot.)
The point is not that every church needs to try to be cutting edge and different, but we need to support and have communities within our tradition that can. If nothing else, let one group within your church have the freedom to experiment and “play” as they follow and serve God. Maybe that’s the youth. Maybe that’s a young adult group. Maybe it’s an artist group. And see what happens, see how your whole church’s life together becomes a little… saltier.
Thanks to Nadia for this piece!
My Spiritual Direction Final Paper -
Hop on over to the above url, grab some coffee or tea, and curl up with a splendidly, delicious read about Spiritual Direction & the Lord’s Supper.
Okay, so this may not be the most intriguing read of all time, but it was my final paper as part of my three year spiritual direction training program out of HeartPaths. It’s a good thing. I have learned a lot, and so I decided to pick a sort of practical intersection of spiritual direction and a ritual dear to my heart, communion. The paper turned out alright. I’ll link to it on my theology page eventually.
I’ve been thinking and reflecting a lot on the language I use as a vocational church guy. It’s often way too “churchy” for my tastes. But it is tough to step away from seminary trained-ness and speak simply. I am practicing however. Last night at a memorial service, I shared this prayer, which I attempted to make simpler and more focused.
God, Our Creator,
In this sacred, still space, we trust that You are here.
We believe that You meet us in our need, our loneliness, our pain, and our grief.
Though our hearts may ache and our world seems turned upside down, strengthen us. Hold us. Fill us with Your peace.
Give us courage to weep, to laugh, to remember, and to hope.
As you have been faithful to us, we respond faithfully to You, and share now ancient words of our faith that give us rhythm in the midst of the turmoil and trials of this life.
Our Father… (Lord’s Prayer)
There are lots of companies out there that offer exciting packages to churches or non-profits, and some of them are good for what they provide, especially if you want to hand over some of the things to an outside team. But, you can build your own setup for around $20 a year if you are up for it.
How?
Go get a free wordpress.com account. Wordpress is pretty much the standard blogging engine out there. It’s popular, has a lot of support, and is pretty solid. Like anything, it has its limitations. Wordpress.com actually limits a bunch of things you can do with it compared to the self-hosted version (which can be had pretty cheaply too), but for starting out, it’s easy to begin there.
You’ll need a domain name ($10/year from GoDaddy or NameCheap) and $12 so that your new Wordpress.com site is hooked up to that domain name. It’s an easy process - they’ll walk you through it.
You then pick a theme for your site - there’s a growing selection, from simple to more complex. Then, start creating your pages and posts. For the most part, you are on your way to having a solid functional website.
Bonus: Twitter and Facebook are integrated, so you can ping those social networking sites instantly with updates when you post.
By the way, another alternative is Tumblr, which I use to host nathanjhill.com, and as I recall, you don’t even have to pay to point your domain to it. Tumblr is a great option with its own set of strengths and limitations too.
What about media and stuff?
Setup a Youtube channel for free, and post your videos there. Not only does Google then handle all of your bandwidth, anybody on Youtube can also discover your organization with a search. Vimeo is an alternative too.
Use a free MailChimp account as your email marketing tool, if you want. It’s a great setup and is just plain fun to use.
Sign up for Scribd and upload documents that you might need to embed and share, like a PDF or Word doc and so on. Alternately, sign up for Dropbox, and share files you need through its online or desktop interface.
Get your Facebook page going, and give your clients/members the power to post pictures of your organization at work instead of building elaborate photo galleries that no one will care to browse.
If you want to host a podcast, you might look into something like Podbean, which has a limited but free account that can get you started. OurMedia also will host your files for free as long as they Creative Commons designated. BuzzSprout also has a decent free plan depending on your usage.
For a shared church calendar, use Google Calendar. It’s simple and can be shared in a bunch of different ways, even via collaboration.
Speaking of that, I think Google still offers a free/non-profit version of its Google Apps for organizations. Everyone gets email at your domain (i.e. minister@mychurch.org) and access to Google Docs/Calendar/Voice/etc. Go for it.
Finally, for e-commerce stuff, you can make some donation buttons with Paypal for nothing, or use a nice site like WePay as a giving portal. WePay also lets you setup simple stores to sell physical goods.
Is this going to be as nice as an integrated solution? Almost. You will have to work to setup all these pieces and figure out their own individual kinks. Your site won’t have as many options as building something by hand or self-hosting a Wordpress install. But on the other hand, it’s super cheap… and super cheap is awesome.
And if you do go for a paid webhosting account, I recommend BounceWeb or NearlyFreeSpeech (only pay for as you much as you use each month, often just a couple of bucks).
If you have questions about this or need a little more one-on-one advice, ask away.