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SPOTTING GOD…IN THE CROWD

Posted by Jim Dant on Mar 28, 2012 in Jim Dant, Team Blog | 0 comments

We stood in line for over an hour and finally reached the top. The roof was packed with camera toting, awe-inspired, loud people. Did I say packed?

I like the quiet. I have no problem being alone and, in fact, tend to seek out sanctuaries of solace. I’ve always resonated with Elijah’s mountain moment – a place where wind and fire and earthquake could not conjure what the quiet would provide. While I love the art of preaching and often feed on the well-crafted sermons of colleagues, I am typically more drawn to meditation rather than the mental meanderings of a fellow human being. I know everyone isn’t bent this way; I am. My bend has often lured me into less than perfect situations…

Several years ago, I led a mission team to New York City’s post-9/11 environment. We spent several days working with a local congregation – building a new playground, teaching children and repairing a building. Every minute of the mission experience was carefully crafted on my meticulously timed itinerary. Copies of such were distributed to all participants. And if I may say so, I had done a fabulous job of insuring that our team would have an experience they would remember for a lifetime. Our first evening in the Big Apple was to be spent in prayer. Before laying a hand on a hammer or sharing a word with a city citizen, I wanted us to pray. What better place than the top of the Empire State Building. Our group standing there…looking out over the electrically lit city…holding hands…in the quiet…all alone…praying. After all, I’d seen the 1993 cinematic tear-jerker Sleepless in Seattle. I watched as Tom Hanks and Meg Ryan held hands and gazed lovingly at each other. And I noted…there is no one else up there! Our group can have the top of the Empire State Building all to ourselves…

We stood in line for over an hour and finally reached the top. The roof was packed with camera toting, awe inspired, loud people. Did I say packed? (A month ago I was in Las Vegas. I went to watch the Bellagio fountains. I’m such a savvy traveler now. I knew there would be a crowd and I knew no one from the Oceans 11 cast would be standing there. You live and learn.)

We joined the crowd…and we got loud…and I think we all prayed – rubbing shoulders with the world and gazing through our camera lenses at the skyline of the city. And God was there. Sometimes I like it when God gets noisy…

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The Perfect Church

Posted by Jennifer Harris Dault on Mar 26, 2012 in Team Blog, Uncategorized | 0 comments

I once went to the perfect church. The people were warm and inviting.It was obvious that the people loved and cared for one another – but they didn’t just love and care for themselves, they cared for everyone who walked in the door. It was beautiful. And the building? It was simple, but attractive. The whole building seemed to express its purpose – paintings depicted the themes of the Bible, Sculptures and furniture stilled the mind, perfectly designed to bring church attenders into a state of calm reflection. When the service started, I noticed that all the musicians were professional-quality. The Scripture reader had a deep, resounding voice like a movie narrator. And the preacher was a master with words. Every person in the room was attentive, with the appearance of proper motivation. The service flowed seamlessly. It was absolutely perfect.

Sometime in the middle of the benediction, I awoke, sweat dripping from my forehead. I had to take a few deep breaths to recover from my nightmare.

They say you can find the perfect church, but that it is ruined the moment you walk in the door. A perfect church allows no room for humans—no room for our doubts, our fears, our distracted minds. It leaves no room for children’s innocent questions…or for their temper tantrums. The perfect church leaves no room for life.

The congregation that Jesus found himself in in Capernaum was not perfect. Capernaum was right on the Sea of Galilee and was a fishing village. This synagogue was likely made up of fishermen who pulled their boats to shore for the Sabbath. They may have been smelly…and a bit, well, rough around the edges.

So Jesus walks into the synagogue with his four newly recruited disciples – Simon, Andrew, James and John… all fishermen. All straight off the boat, the scent of saltwater and fish still on their clothes.

The Sabbath candles are lit, and Jesus begins to teach. Maybe we’ll try that next week – first visitor who walks in the door gets to preach! We’ll either have an empty room, or preaching hopefuls will be running toward the doors hoping to be first! But in a synagogue with lay-leadership and no system for ordaining rabbis, Jesus is able to read and share thoughts on the Scriptures. As we read the Scriptures now, it seems obvious that Jesus would be teaching in the Synagogue – but remember, no one knew him yet. The Book of Luke tells us that Jesus was about 30 when he started his ministry—he was about my age. Many in the room may have considered him just a boy . . . after all, he had no wife, no children—none of the regular signs of manhood.

Can’t you just picture the wives in the congregation elbowing their husbands—“who is this man? Do you know him? Is that Esther’s boy? No, I guess he’s taller.”

And then Jesus begins to speak, and perhaps to the surprise of everyone present, he’s good! He seems to have a good grasp of the Scripture, and he’s bringing new interpretations to the text that they have never heard before. And more people begin to ask “who is this man?”

And right there, in the middle of the Shabbat service, a man possessed with an evil spirit speaks up. Have you ever been to a service like that? No? I find it funny—and somewhat frightening—that the writer of Mark doesn’t seem surprised. He states it just as a matter of fact, a passing comment on the evening news: “just then, there was in their synagogue a man with an unclean spirit.” If I were the journalist on the story I’d have a lot of questions—where did he come from? Does he show up often? Are their regularly men possessed with unclean spirits present while you pray? How do you know? Do they look different? Do they always run around yelling things?

Mark assumes we know all of this and tells us nothing. We do know that all illness was seen as an “evil spirit.” In a time before medical science, disease was often thought to be punishment for sin. However, illness—even mental illness does not tend to make a person know what this possessed gentlemen knew. He cried out “What have you to do with us, Jesus of Nazareth? Have you come to destroy us? I know who you are, the Holy One of God.”

No one knew who Jesus was. No one knew, except this man with the unclean spirit. And Jesus rushes to silence him. He commands that the spirit come out—and it does. The man has some sort of seizure, and the spirit wails as it leaves the man’s body.

And then… the synagogue is quiet again. Except, of course, for the questions. “No, really, who IS this man? Did you see that? Who is he, that he has power over the spirits?”

Not your typical prayer service. People will be talking about this one for years! But what does this story say about Jesus?

The synagogue congregants pointed out his authority—and certainly that is an important piece of the story. This man knows something and has power over spirits. But I think it says more than that. Jesus pays attention to the interruptions.

I’ve heard several stories in recent months that make me cringe. A 12-year-old boy in North Carolina was escorted out of an Easter service. The child, Jackson, has cerebral palsy, and the way he voiced an “amen” after a prayer was apparently considered a distraction. When the mother sent an email offering to help the church start a ministry for special needs children, she received a response stating the church focuses on worship, not ministries. A church spokeswoman said “it is our goal . . . to offer a distraction-free environment for all our guests.”

I’ve seen story after story about children with autism being treated the same way—as distractions who need to be kept out of the sanctuary.

A man possessed with an evil spirit was certainly a distraction—but Jesus didn’t see it that way. He saw a man in need. The healing of this man is the first miracle that the writer of Mark tells us about. We don’t even learn his name. But Jesus takes notice of him and meets his need—right there in the middle of the service.

I preached my second sermon in a small Free Methodist church that has since closed. After the service a young woman named Jamie came over to talk to me. She had a military-cropped hair cut and had tattoos covering her arms. She told me that for years she had loved Jesus, but had no use for the church—until some friends had dragged her to the small congregation. She told me she had shown up that first week just waiting for everyone to mess up—waiting for someone to comment on the way she was dressed or critize her tattoos or her hair. Waiting for someone—anyone to look at her funny or fail to welcome her. And, well, no one reacted negatively at all. So she came back the next week and witnessed a drunk man stumble into the building. “Ah ha!” she thought, “I’ve got them.” But someone went back to the kitchen, made some coffee and found some bread to give to the man. That person then sat beside them and helped navigate him through the service—letting him know when it was appropriate to speak up and when it wasn’t.”

Jamie told me that she had been coming to church ever since—which had been over a year at that point.

That little church got it. The man who came in off the street wasn’t a distraction to ministry or worship—he was the reason the church gathers. As it turns out, the man who was drunk occasionally came back to the small church, too—sometimes sober. He was still battling with his demons, but the people of this church knew that being in a community of folks who were trying to love and worship the Lord was a far better place for him than the streets of St. Louis.

I think about that story often. I wonder what I would do if such a disturbance happened in the middle of worship. What would you do?

I’m pretty convinced what Jesus would do. The members of the Capernaum synagogue were asking “Who is this man?” My guess is that the gentlemen healed of his demons would respond—he’s the one who cared enough to bring me in and help me.”

Do we see people in need of help and care? Or are we so focused on our tasks that we push people out?

The perfect church? Jesus wouldn’t fit in there. Would he fit in here?

Editors note: This sermon was preached on the text, Mark 1:21-28.

Harriet Tubman, Escaped Slave, Abolitionist, Conductor on the Underground Railroad

Posted by Joshua Hearne on Mar 23, 2012 in Team Blog | 0 comments

Harriet Tubman’s grandmother had been brought over from Ghana to the United States of America as a slave. She had her freedom stripped from her and her children and children’s children were condemned to a life of degradation and inhumanity. Harriet was born Araminta Ross and both of her parents were slaves. By virtue of her birth, she too was a slave. Her earliest job was that of a nursemaid for her owner’s baby. At the age of five, Harriet was tasked with taking care of the child and insuring that it did not cry. When the baby cried–as all babies do–young Harriet was beaten and whipped. She carried these scars all her life as a silent reminder of humanity’s brokenness and sinful ways. When she was only a child, her mother’s owner came to take Harriet’s brother–Moses–away and sell him to a slaveholder in Georgia. At first Harriet’s mother hid Moses so that he might not be sold and taken away. When it was found out, though, that Moses was at home the men came with their whips and clubs to take him by force. Harriet’s mother called out from her quarters, “You can surely come and take the boy–I don’t doubt that–but the first one of you through the door will get his skull split in two.” The men backed down and decided not to tempt Harriet’s mother to follow through with her threat. In this moment, Harriet learned a lesson: even those who had been labeled things and not people could resist evil. This lesson served her well for years to come.

As Harriet grew in years and wisdom she became more and more connected to the Faith she had learned at her mother’s knee. Harriet couldn’t read and neither could her mother but the Biblical stories were told with regularity when the family would gather together. These stories informed her faith and she found great comfort in the stories of deliverance and liberation.She knew that her deliverer was with her even in the midst of slavery. As she grew yet more she began experiencing visions–perhaps partially linked to a traumatic head injury–that she insisted were a way that God communicated with her (even if they were a form of epilepsy, she was certain that God was speaking through them anyway).The stories she had heard as a child and adolescent continued to brew within her and began to form the way she thought about herself and the plight of her fellow slaves. When her owner began trying to sell her she started praying that God would convert the man and lead him to understand the error of his ways. She prayed with confidence that God could change the man but soon her confidence turned to frustration and she began praying that if God would not change the man then God should remove him as an obstacle. Shortly thereafter her owner died and Harriet felt great regret fearing that she had prayed for the man’s death. Soon, Harriet escaped slavery under the cover of night (after one failed attempt) by following the north star and alluding men hired to catch escaped slaves by any means necessary. Eventually, she arrived in Pennsylvania and was free.

Escaping wasn’t enough for Harriet because she was convinced that God was calling her to more than simple liberation. Rather, she felt God’s will leading her back into slave holding territory to bring others out of slavery. She utilized the extensive Underground Railroad network that Christians abolitionists had developed and became a “conductor” along the railroad.Enveloped in the stories of the Faith that gave meaning to her life and work, she was known as “Moses” because she returned to “Egypt” to lead her people out of slavery and death. She liberated her family and extended family first but then kept returning to free yet more slaves. She was continually risking her own life and freedom because she knew that God was directing her to do so. At one point, there was a sizable bounty on her head but she continued to risk her life for others. She was hated by those who loved slavery but loved by those who sought freedom and peace. She would later describe her astonishing success by writing, “I was conductor of the Underground Railroad for eight years, and I can say what most conductors can’t say – I never ran my train off the track and I never lost a passenger.” For the rest of her life she fought against slavery and oppression of a variety of types. She campaigned for women’s suffrage and took an active role as a spy in the American Civil War. She died on March 10, 1913, after uttering her final words to those around her death bed: “I go to prepare a place for you.”

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Standing Your Ground

Posted by David Adams on Mar 20, 2012 in Team Blog, Uncategorized | 0 comments

I just read the most interesting article today and it really gave me pause.

Apparently, in Florida, the handgun lobby has become so powerful that they were able to get a law passed that gives you the right to use deadly force if you think that someone is a serious threat to you or someone else, with no obligation to try to avoid the conflict. Add to that the already existing regulations that make it easy to carry a concealed handgun in that state, and it all starts sounding like the Wild West has come back to us again!

Of course, this brings up some serious questions. For instance, since the law specifically states that “a person is justified in the use of deadly force and does not have a duty to retreat if:… He or she reasonably believes that such force is necessary to prevent imminent death or great bodily harm to himself or herself or another,” does that mean that it is legal to set up a sniper station on a highway overpass in order to pick off drunk drivers? Is it legal to stalk and kill unarmed 17-year olds who are NOT black? Since you can also use deadly force to “prevent the imminent commission of a forcible felony,” should we not have the right to shoot creepy-looking people who we might see at a place that handles large sums of cash? How about capping a few parents whose children don’t want to come home from the mall or somewhere, so they are forcing them into a car? Can’t be too careful!

Okay, I admit that that could all sound a bit offensive or over the top, but that is also the nature of laws. Once you place them on the books, people will start pushing such boundaries and/or using them to justify their own unacceptable behaviors. We know all that because that is how our society has always worked.

And that begs another question: are we so far-gone in our fear and greed that it is now acceptable to place laws on the books that can be interpreted as a license to kill? We already live in the country that executes the most people, per capita, in the world. Do we really need to make it easy to execute the incompetent and defenseless or to find ways to justify our homicidal impulses in the name of “self-defense” and “castle laws?” If that’s so easy to do, why are we wasting time talking about Jesus? Just point me to the nearest armory.

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Remembering the Good, Part 2

Posted by Stephanie Little Coyne on Mar 19, 2012 in Team Blog | 0 comments

My elementary school was a very short distance from my house: down a great bicycle hill, (well, great one way—up), around a corner to the right, past the patch of bamboo shoots and sweet-smelling honeysuckle bushes, through a church yard, across Oglethorpe Avenue, and down another hill, directly into the schoolyard. Until recently, I thought that I walked home by myself every day until Dad confessed that this was not the case—somebody, either he, or one of his cronies, (the same cronies who reported to him my various locations through high school and college), made sure I entered my front door safely.

I’m not sure what experiences other elementary schools provide for their children, but mine offered some incredible ones. In kindergarten, my class spent the night with our two teachers; we made macaroni and cheese for dinner and picked up Dunkin’ Donuts for breakfast the next morning. In third grade, our teacher brought a barrel of horse bones to school for us to study and put together in a way that resembled a horse’s skeleton. In fifth grade, we were very involved in 4-H and therefore spent a lot of time putting together our projects for the county competition. I felt, and still feel confident that my presentation, “How to Wash a Dog,” would have won if I’d had a pointer stick to use as I showed off my posters. Janet had a pointer stick, she won—I was the runner-up.

Occasionally, all of a grade’s classes, or even the whole school, would get together for an activity like the school spelling bee. In third grade, I came in third, tripped up by the pesky word “doodling.” (Spell check just took care of the possibility of a repeat offense.) The weatherman from an Atlanta news station flew in on a helicopter, landing in the school’s immense backyard, and talked to us about meteorology. Well, I guess he talked to us about meteorology; we were all a little taken by the helicopter.

We gathered items from our school rooms, bedrooms, and toy boxes, and planted them in time capsules in one of the schoolyard’s clover patches. We learned how to use Apple computers, some of the first school computers, the ones with the true floppy disk drives. We “bought” stocks and followed their gains and losses daily in the newspaper. Some organization brought a large domed tent to the school, and when we went inside and lay down on its floor, we found ourselves stargazing and learning about constellations.

I am grateful for my public school education at Oglethorpe Avenue Elementary School. I think that our mascot was the fierce unicorn. As I write, the school’s song is playing in my head. O-g-l-e-t-h-o-r-p-e. . .

The whole 4th grade sat together for one lesson about the Civil Rights Movement. I distinctly remember sitting on the floor amongst my classmates, knees pulled up to my chest, listening to a teacher speak something to the effect of, “Many of the slaves held the last names of their owners. To show that no one held ownership over him, Malcom X ‘x-ed’ out his last name, Little.” She continued, but I heard nothing after “Little” because I felt like every set of my classmates eyes were now turned around to me. That’s Stephanie’s last name, whisper, whisper. . . My brain added to their whispers, her family must be some of the bad white people. She must be one of the bad white people.

Despite my fears, I don’t recall anything that occurred afterwards or in the next few days, though I don’t believe that anyone ever showed that they were mad at me, or that they laughed at me, or anything else. I guess everyone had good differentiation skills, thank goodness. I certainly remember those few moments though, and I don’t believe they will ever leave me. Not only did I feel singled out, a feeling that no child, especially a shy child, wants to feel, but I also felt a sense of responsibility, of belonging, of a connection to the past. Those feelings were not good feelings. Did my family own slaves? Could they have owned slaves? Could they have been bad people? I don’t think that I’m a bad person. The possibilities were terrifying to me; I wanted no part of that evil.

I have been watching the TV show, Who Do You Think You Are, where celebrities research their genealogical history. As I watched the other night, the thought struck me how many of their histories included slavery. That thought immediately brought me to the elementary school memory. Again, I felt those senses of responsibility and connection. I would love to think that neither side of my family owned slaves or supported the brokerage of humans. Unfortunately, the more realistic side of my brain knows that this is not likely the case. To believe that all members of my family, extended and long past, have been righteous and moral folk is unrealistic, and maybe a little egotistical. I want to feel connected to the slave, to the thought of liberation, to the thought of being oppressed—but those are odd desires. Is the desired association there just because the oppressed are seen as the “good” side? The truth is, I am connected to the “bad” side and the “good” side, regardless of whether I want to be or not. I have both the ability and the capability to be both good and evil, free or enslaved, oppressed or oppressive. Yikes.

Similarly, I think about the mind of a slave owner, perhaps related to me, and try to imagine her in her time and culture, and I wonder what must have been going on in her brain. How could she have thought that owning someone was okay or just? It is scary to think that some of those genes are some of my genes, just as physiologically binding as the red hair on my head.

I think to the mind of the slave and try to imagine her in her time, but away from her culture, and wonder what must have been going on in her brain. How could she have lived, how could she have made it, bound to laws and cruelty for which she had no vote and no control? It is scary to imagine her because I can hardly imagine her. Not only am I too removed, but I am also too privileged. Yikes again.

Though remembering that 4th grade moment, 20+ years ago, still hurts the child inside me, I am glad that I have the memory. While I did not directly have a role in that part of history, I am responsible for recognizing oppression in this age, the oppressive hands of those around me as well as my own oppressive hands. I am responsible for the recognition of oppression and the action that aids liberation. My childhood memory and my name serve as catalysts for me to be a better human.

I hope that I leave behind more valuable artifacts than the Happy Meal toys that lie underneath a patch of clover, my contribution to our class’s time capsule. I hope that one day, as my three-times great-grandchild breathes underneath the same stars as I breath under, she will start to read about her family and feel pride and not guilt, compelled—no, bound, by a nurtured instinct to be a good human and to care for all of humanity.

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Skip the PDF

Posted by David Cassady on Mar 16, 2012 in David Cassady, Team Blog | 0 comments

The next time you are tempted to post a PDF to your church website, pause for a moment to consider if that’s the best way to share the information it contains.

The trick is to think like someone using the website, rather than someone posting to it. If your PDF contains a newsletter, for example, you may think of posting it as a PDF because you originally created it to be printed and mailed. Creating a PDF is a quick and easy way to share the same information on the website, right? (Wrong). It is easy for you – the person posting the info – but it is not easy or convenient for the people using the website.

Remember that the purpose of the newsletter is to share information and promote involvement. There is significant planning and preparation being invested in providing the events and ministries promoted through the newsletter… So it makes sense to make it as easy as possible for people to learn about these things.

If you post the newsletter as a PDF, then the website visitor has to 1) find the newsletter link, 2) without knowing what it contains, choose to download it, then 3) open the PDF either in their browser or in a PDF reader. Only then can they begin to learn about the events, ministries and prayer needs. If they happen to be using a smartphone or iPad, the PDF may also be harder to read and navigate.

What’s the alternative? If our goal is to make getting to the info fast and easy… The best approach is to repost the info contained in the newsletter as web page content. In other words, each newsletter article is placed on your website as a new web article.

With this approach, a visitor to your website, regardless of the device, can quickly see the full list of announcements without extra steps or having to download and open anything… The content is right there.

There are additional advantages to this approach:
1. If your site has a built-in search engine, web page info is searchable.
2. If your site has a mobile view, the articles will also be formatted for easy viewing.
3. Because the articles are listed (much like a set of blog articles) on your site, people can quickly scan articles and announcements – some who would not take the time and effort to deal with a PDF. This is especially true for visitors who may just be checking out your site to see if they have interest in your church.

When are PDFs appropriate to use on a website? They can be good ways to share forms that need to be printed and signed, or for sharing more complex data such as full budget reports.

But for most information, it is a much better practice to post that content as a web article.

Shameless plug: Faithlab can provide your church or organization with a website that makes this approach fast and easy. Let us know if we can help.

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Fannie Lou Hamer, Civil Rights Activist, “the lady who sings the hymns,” “that illiterate woman”

Posted by Joshua Hearne on Mar 14, 2012 in Team Blog | 0 comments

Reverend James Bevel had preached several sermons just like the one he had just preached. In it he proclaimed the liberation and healing that Jesus promised to those who would take up the yoke of discipleship. He fearlessly identified the racism inherent in the system and the use of it by those in power to oppress and repress black Americans. James Bevel was a part of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee and was a friend and colleague of Martin Luther King, Jr. He was well aware that there were costs associated with activism because he had been involved in the activist life that led to pain and punishment at the hands of those who opposed them all. Yet at the end of his sermon he went ahead and asked if any of those who had heard it would volunteer to be a part of the solution–to register to vote even though it might cost them something significant. Fannie stood up and volunteered nearly immediately. She had already suffered at the hands of the powerful when she had been unknowingly sterilized a year before. The powers had decided that black citizens in Southern Mississippi could be controlled if they weren’t allowed to reproduce–so they took it upon themselves to perpetrate atrocities. Fannie volunteered to become a voter and have her voice heard.

Fannie lost her job as soon as her employer found out she had registered. She would later say of that night: “I guess if I’d had any sense, I’d have been a little scared – but what was the point of being scared? The only thing they [white people] could do was kill me, and it seemed they’d been trying to do that a little bit at a time since I could remember.” Fannie’s faith lent her a prophetic awareness of what was happening in the United States–people were giving up their lives piece by piece so that they might not lose it all at once. They were purchasing a degree of security by selling any hope of future security or equality. Given the lynchings and abuse suffered by those who did not agree to this Faustian bargain it is understandable but tragic. Fannie boarded a bus that was loaded with people like herself who were going to register. As they traveled and anticipated the vicious resistance that would meet them there, Fannie began singing hymns and inviting others to join her. As they sang “This Little Light of Mine,” Fannie must have considered how this bus ride represented a painful commitment not to “hider [her light] under a bushel.” Fannie’s use of the hymns underscored to those who joined her that this was a spiritual struggle and not simply a matter of politics and influence.

In the summer of 1963 she and others on a bus returning from a literacy class were arrested on a trumped up charge by police officers looking to punish black people for being unsatisfied with the status quo. They were taken to prison and were offered the opportunity to leave by the police officers. Though they were tempted to do so they refused because they knew what was down that path–the police officers would shoot them in the backs and later claimed that “those savage blacks” had attacked them and tried to escape. Instead, they were incarcerated, beaten savagely, and left unfed in their cells to defecate and urinate on themselves. Some nearly died from these abuses. They were eventually released when it was determined that their nonviolence could not be manipulated to defame or kill them.

A year later she became a leader in a new political group known as the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party. These “Freedom Democrats” insisted that Mississippi was unfairly represented at the Democratic National Convention–all of the delegates were white and there were active black voters in Mississippi. They insisted that changes be made and that Mississippi democrats needed to send black delegates. Lyndon Jo