a personal preview of hell


late last night, after an exhausting day at work and a meeting of the church, i retreated to our dirty denny's for a couple of cups of bad coffee, a pre-fabricated dessert and intimate conversation with an unexpected visitor.

and then, about five minutes in to our conversation 70 teenagers, including a number of overweight boys who were wearing pajama bottoms and sporting dramatic, depp-esque eyeliner as well as t-shirts emblazoned with the image posted above, bombarded the dining room.

at this, our server was scared shitless, we were never served another cup of coffee and we had to talk about important matters over screamed high school cheers and call and response snippets from high school musical.

f*cking shoot me. i think i would rather go to band camp.

ecclesiological musing

over the past two months i have been utterly overwhelmed by the number of resources that are available for low-income, disabled and otherwise challenged residents of boston. i've had a number of meetings with massachusetts rehabilitation counselors who will go to any length to help their clients find adequate employment, visited a brand-new head-start daycare that not only provides free early childhood education for their students (who speak 29 different primary languages!) but also have an on-site licensed social worker who helps the children's parents find rent assistance, sign up for venezuela/citgo's generous share the warmth heating oil program and pursue any number of additional forms of aid, and have been overwhelmed by the great lengths that personal friends are going to in other cities to ensure that homeless citizens that struggle with mental illness find permanent housing.

what does this have to do with the church? well, i would like to suggest that all churches of moderate to large size (say 500 +) in attendance, have a licensed and/or experienced social worker on staff. i suspect that many churches would be able to serve their communities more effectively if they focused on helping families and individuals connect with the wealth of social services that are already available, rather than needlessly replicating services that are already available within the community. i realize that there are undoubtedly exceptions to this rule, such as churches that are located in small towns or in less "developed" environs, but in general i think that both moderate to large churches and their communities would benefit greatly from such services.

anyway, that's what i'm thinking today. your opinion, as always, is welcome.

overheard

"I would accept schism," Bishop Steven Charleston, president of the Episcopal Divinity School, told The Washington Post. "I would be willing to accept being told I'm not in communion with places like Nigeria if it meant I could continue to be in a position of justice and morality. If the price I pay is that I'm not considered to be part of a flawed communion, then so be it." - as quoted on CT's most recent weblog

maybe i'm deaf or just another son of the south, but when i read this quote i was startled by something that sounds a lot like racism. what do you hear?

on another, entirely different note, this weekend CT posted an insightful article by gary haugen, the founder of the international justice mission, that ponders whether we can honor william wilberforce while ignoring the rampant slavery that continues to scar our societies.

oh, and one more thing, i for one am glad that christian music writers are finally writing HONEST reviews, like andree farias' review of the gifted: season 1 cd. in the olden days, reading worthless dreck in magazines like 7Ball, CCM and Relevant (if you're into the latter rag do me a favor, read an issue or two of paste magazine and ask yourself why relevant continues to exist) often made me want to punch someone in the face. good criticism begets better art. that's all i have to say about that.