A worthwhile time away

I just got back early on Saturday morning from almost a week away at the Brengle Institute at Jackson’s Point Conference Centre. It was very different from what I expected, in a good way. It is, and probably will remain to be, one of the highlights of my 10 years or so of full-time ministry so far. It was good reconnecting with a few of my best friends from college days and just hanging out with them, catching up with all that’s been going on in the past few years, and remembering some good times. We were also able to catch up with one of our session-mates from college days who is not in full-time ministry now. It’s the first time we had seen him since his resignation, but we all had a great, but short, time together and were pleased to see him in great spirits.

The Brengle experience was quite stretching in ways I never expected. I especially enjoyed the sessions that focussed on the practical aspects of holiness. Holiness is not some kind of abstract thing, it is a life lived.

General Tillsley was the keynote speaker at the welcome meeting. He is still an awesome speaker in ‘retirement’. His best quote was “When it comes down to it there are only two types of churches – loving churches and unloving churches.”

Some of the best times were in the sharing of stories and experiences. It was good to be in an environment where there was no wariness about sharing openly and honestly. As well as renewing some old friendships, I was able to begin some new ones.

The only kind of negative thing about the whole experience was the crammed schedule. There was little time for reflection or times of quietness. Sometimes the changing of gears was very difficult. I did manage some times of reflecting and journalling. I even managed a little poetry writing, which I wish I was better at.

The chapel services, which were led each day by the Smartt’s, were also challenging and inspiring. One day we were challenged to answer the question ‘Who do I reflect?’ Whilst pondering this I was inspired to write the following:

When you look at me

Who do you see?

An angry, bitter guy?

One whose soul is dry?

 

When you look at me

Whom would I have you see?

Am I showing any love

That reflects the one above?

 

When you look at me

I wish that you would see

A life so full of joy

Nothing that would annoy.

 

When God looks at me

I pray that He would see

The real me that He made

Devoid of all charade.

A Waste of Time and Money – time for a real change

Well, yesterday’s general election was certainly a waste of time and money for the Canadian people. Basically, it was an election that just shouldn’t have happened. It was called by Stephen Harper, against his own fixed elections bill, because he believed that he had the opportunity to get the majority needed to be the party in full power. He also claimed he called the election because the present government just wasn’t working. He made some gains and there were some surprising shifts in power in some ridings, but the real losers are the Canadian people, because the big picture is still a minority govenrment that, unless there is willing participation for cooperaton from the other parties, will end up being just as dysfunctional as before.

One thing the final results from yesterday show is that it is time for a real change in the area of electoral reform. Some form of proportional representation really needs to be looked at. There is something wrong when a party that gets just less than 10% of the vote ends up with 50 seats, whilst a party with close to 7% of the vote ends up with none. With proportional representation the former would have had about 30 seats, whilst the latter would have had 20.

The shame of the whole thing, not counting the waste of taxpayers money, is that we could be back at this within a couple of years again, which also means that I really need to get on with processing my Canadian citizenship.

Blog Action Day 2008

Thanks to some of my friends on plurk.com I discovered that today is Blog Action Day 2008. It is a day when we are called to do something about poverty, then to blog about it. There are 88 suggestions of how to do this on the blog action website. Here they are, choose one or more and get on with it (I have already done #52 as it was easy and cost me nothing):

1. Eat meatless meals 2x a week. Donate that grocery money to a local food bank. – TarotByArwen
2. Be homeless for a day/night. – Lex
3. Stop putting off adopting a child through an organization like Compassion International (or adopt another one). – Lex
4. Make a loan on Kiva, or buy a couple gift certificates and give them away to friends. – Lex
5. Get a group together to go door-to-door collecting canned foods for your local soup kitchen/shelter. – Lex
6. Take a homeless person to dinner and actually sit/talk with him. – Lex
7. Stop being lazy. Find a way to do your job better so that you can save an hour a day, or be that much more productive. – Alex Shalman
8. Stop buying junk to make yourself look pretty and donate it to homeless people and hungry people. – Craigsnede
9. Make flyers to stick in the local library. – Craigsnede
10. If you have a musical instrument you no longer use, donate to the still-struggling musicians and students in New Orleans, who are still recovering from Hurricane Katrina. A few great organizations that will accepts musical instruments are Tipitina’s Foundation (www.tipitinasfoundation.org) and The New Orleans Musicians Relief Fund (www.nomrf.org/donations.html).
11. I’m interviewing a Capuchin monk vowed to Poverty about his work with Detroit’s poor for my blog, and I’m trying to arrange a fund raiser with my author and PIVTR radio station friends.
12. Find a gripping picture or video having to do with poverty and publish it on the Web.
13. Stop drinking Coke and bottled water for a day and save on plastic. Will save a lot of plastic if each of us does it for only one day.
14. Share your skill or knowledge, so they can improve their knowledge to increase their life/prosperity.
15. Visit an orphanage.
16. Stop being lazy.
17. Give comfort to the poor.
18. Donate.
19. Check your closet and make sure that anything you have not used last winter is taken to a charitable organization. Ask your friends and neighbors and volunteer to pick up the clothes, launder them and deliver them to those organizations. They will do no good in your closet and a world of good to someone in need.
20. On one day only eat food that you have asked someone for directly or for the money you need to buy it. Pay attention to the feelings.
21. Have a “sponsor me” day. Donate money to a poverty relief cause for everyone who leaves a comment on your blog that day.
22. Designers for Blog Action Day group on Flickr. Submit your designs: http://www.flickr.com/groups/bad2008design/
23. Organize a Hunger 101 Program for a local youth group. Our Girl Scout community learned about what they could do to help the working poor in our community. http://spedr.com/da5f This inspired them to organize several Take Action events: http://spedr.com/krfw
24. Add the “Women Rock” badge to your website or Facebook page.
25. if any of us knew or aware about any organisation which can help educate them, like, skills centre, entrepeneurship centre..u know, stuffs they do to help these pople actually do something to improve their life, we might try to collect name carsd from these organisations (NGOs or ministries), and walk around and passed these cards to them, with of couse, maybe some donations of any supplies.
26. Skip a weekly trip to the grocery store and donate the money saved to a food bank. I do this once a year for my family of 5. For that week we only eat what is left in the pantry or fridge. By the end of the week, pickings are slim and we get a sense of what it feels like to not have the luxury of tasty, well balanced meals every night.
27. Make a personal fundraising page in 5 minutes on Firstgiving.com. Raise money securely online for any US-based nonprofit committed to ending poverty in the US or around the world. Here’s an example page: http://www.firstgiving.com/bapbwm.
28. Have dinner on the floor and make it a very small meal (like chicken broth, watered down milk, and maybe a small piece of bread?) Talk about the blessings you have and that the meal represents those who don’t get to eat “big” on a daily basis.
29. Volunteer at a soup kitchen!
30. Play freerice.com!
31. If you have take out coffee, skip it for an entire week, donate the savings!
32. Give 5 bucks to a homeless person who looks hungry!
33. Talk with your children about poverty and who it affects.
34. Save your old stuff and sold it for charity
35. Support charity organization in your country. Reducing poverty may start in your nearest region.
36. Do something to touch 3 people or to reach out to 3 people and get them to pay it forward.
37. Give a gallon of water to each of 3 people who need it?
38. Give a $10 gift certificate to each of 3 homeless, single mothers so that she and her children can have one hot meal at a fast food restaurant?
39. Ask 3 entrepreneurs to each make a donation to 3 people or causes?
40. Holding perhaps daily or weekly community classes for imparting knowledge from our side and educating the local masses is something we all can do by coming together at grass root level.
41. Avoiding overconsumption.
42. Contributing to relief funds which can assist this cause.
43. Host a 1 day famine and collect donations. With the donations, pass it to a Welfare/Poverty Organisation.
44. Plan a pot luck/BBQ or a get together inviting close friends and neighbours, to bring awareness and also to raise funds for a shelter home. Funds can be used to purchase the necessary groceries for the home.
45. Pray for the comfort and safety of the world’s poor. Pray for the strength, wisdom and courage to help each of them find prosperity.
46. Combat corruption!
47. Don’t just talk to your kids about poverty – get them involved by having them go through their toys and clothes to find concrete things to pass along. The next time they want you to buy something for them – talk about what that money could buy for someone who had no food… then follow through and donate the money you didn’t spend.
48. Donate your time and expertise to teach a class to those trying to find a new way to earn a living.
49. To add to the previous suggestions, rather than just donate money to homeless people, why not use the money you would use on yourself for a coffee to buy one for someone else. If you get coupons for free beverages or meals, keep them with you and give them to someone in need.
50. As you find organizations to which you like to donate food, clothing, etc., spend some time volunteering for that organization. Contribute to the organizations you are already supporting in other ways.
51. Educate others. If you are a teacher, talk to your students about poverty. Get their opinions. Inspire them. If you work in other areas, strike up a conversation with your colleagues in the lunchroom or lounge. Get educated so you can answer questions and provide information that might spur others into action.
52. Visit The Hunger Site every day and click the link to feed the hungry. It’s fast and it’s free and there’s absolutely NO excuse not to do it every day you’re online!
53. Be compassionate.
54. Invite friends to watch documentaries how poverty destroyed ones life,family and their future.
55. Do not waste water on that day.
56. Express your love and compassion for one street child by having an enrollment conversation with her.
57. Ask your child to share her food with the child of your maid on that day.
58. Make a list of five items you haven’t used for long and have no plans to use them in future either. And distribute them among local poors with all humility.
59. Compose a poem on the theme ‘Making Poverty A History’ and get it published in a local magazine or paper. Also, ask your baby to recite the poem in her school.
60. Talk to your five relatives about the poverty issue and invite them to come up with their suggestions to eradicate poverty.
61. Organize a drawing competition for kids on the poverty theme and exhibit their works in a local school or community centre.
62. Do not overeat on that day.
63. Save electricity on that day and contribute the equivalent savings to a local charity.
64. Contribute your one day salary to a child rehabilitation centre.
65. Get a few friends, gather all your unused items, sell it and buy something a meal for the poor in your neighborhood.
66. Si tan solo los gobiernos hicieran mucho mas por este flagelo, la pobreza se reduciría en un 70% por no decir 100%. Observo como a algunos gobiernos que han prometido en sus campañas electorales que acabarían con este mal, luego de llegar al poder y por motivo del oro negro les entran grandes cantidades de dinero, ¿y que es lo que han hecho con el, en vez de ayudar al pais? Financiar con ese dinero (que se supone es del pueblo), proyectos políticos solo para sus intereses personales… da tanta tristeza ver cuanta gente tirada por la calle, sin tener que comer, o donde dormir, mientras estos señores se gastan el dinero de tantos ciudadanos, comprando poder para satisfacer su ego.
67. Travel to a poor country or area. Look for ways to make a difference on the ground there.
68. On your next off day from work, go to a homeless shealter and help serve food to those who are there, talk with them, listen to their stories, you will find that they were at one time, alot like yourself.
69. Let’s learn to love and respect one another, and to give to those who have less.
70. Pictures. It’s one thing to say that the milk my son spilled at lunch this afternoon was more than some kids get. But some people don’t see how real that is unless they’re looking at a picture.So, I’m looking for them.
71. Talk about poverty.
72. To most Americans, it’s not real unless we see it. I’m going to be revamping my blog so that poverty is prominent, and I’m talking about it more often.
73. Don’t stop at the generalities. War, famine, corruption, etc. all happen, and should be resisted. However, let’s dig deeper and go into the specifics. Not just talking about thousands of people dying of thirst … let’s talk about a real person.
74. Pull out the hearts of the readers, and make them confront what they know is right and wrong.
75. Instead of video games and other toys, give your neighbors and friends gift certificates for classical music lessons. For every $1 spent on music education, by my calculations, you get a $4.57 return on your investment from age 4-22 and that investment can never be taken away from you. Throughout one’s lifetime it pays much, much more. Take the money you save and give it in music lessons to the next person.
76. Go to your school board meetings and demand better music education. The arts are part of the core curriculum of “No Child Left Behind” and as I’ve been telling people for a few months now, the less we have to pay for health care and crime, the more we have to spend on food and shelter and doing good for our neighbors.
77. The more intelligent we are and the more productive we are, the more fruitfully we can spend our time, and the more we can produce to give away.
78. The reason why poverty still exist in Indonesia is because people is giving cash money to the poor at the streets and those money usually being used for things that usually destructive/not good (buying drugs, etc.) In order to stop poverty, the government already got their program to fight it but it didn’t go successfully for people still think that they are better off at the streets and there’s this what-so-called ‘mafia’ that organize these poor people at the streets.
79. In order to fight this, the people started to give food/meal/clothes to the poor instead of cash money so it would stop the process.
80. I think in order to stop poverty is to give what the people really need, not just giving it away for the sake of ‘being kind’
81. Fund educational programs for women.
82. Ensure that women have legal protections.
83. Educate people about the plight of women around the world.
84. Educate yourself on one aspect of poverty that affects women, whether it’s educating yourself on what’s going on with rape or abortion legislation in your own local area, or finding out what you can do to help women in other countries attain the basic human rights they deserve, by doing research on organisations that help women and contributing to those organisations in some way.
85. Do a campaign of creative advertisements for public awareness and a call to action. Do a poster, do an ambient campaign, write a radio or TV spot.
86. Breadline Africa is launching a Blogger Bake Off to help raise awareness and funds. If you want to do something on Blog Action Day, you should turn your talking (which is very worthwhile) into action: donate to a charity. Organisations that use funds directly in poor communities will be using your money where it can do the most good: at the grass roots level.
87. Educate yourself.
88. Prepare a space in your home for the poor to stay as needed.

Some of these may be harder to achieve than others, but there is no excuse for doing nothing. Number 71 is something I’ll be involved in later today as I will be at a meeting of pastors and leaders from our community who are coming together to work out an action plan for meeting with the Mayor and city hall to tackle some of the social ills faced by our community, including poverty, employment, housing, and so on.

So, pick a few numbers and get on with it!

Thanksgiving

We watched this video in church today as a conversation starter and tied it in with Luke 17:11-19 and Deuteronomy 8:7-18. The conversation went well and it seems that more and more people are open to sharing. For our time of prayer/reflection I invited people to write things they are thankful for on a large whiteboard I placed at the front of the church.

Whilst we were sharing in a prayer time after church, the real estate guy showed another prospective buyer around the building. Things are moving slowly and we got the plans for our new place from the architect last week which are now 99% completed. We have a meeting soon to finalise these. The contractor anticipates getting the work started late November/early December. It seems to be taking a long time, but that’s life sometimes.

Re-ignition required

Over the past few years I have been getting more and more disheartened with the direction of the church/organization that I work for. We are told time and time again about the ‘branding’ or image being important and how this needs to be at the forefront of all that we do. Pretentious slogans come and go, yet there are so many times that we don’t live up to the image or slogans that are portrayed. I feel strongly that the marketing of the church or Christianity is very offensive. It’s not some product that needs to be sold. In my opinion it is a sell-out.

What has happened that we are being taken over by marketeers? Why has image taken precedence over substance? We have reached a point where passion of conviction seems to have been sent to the back of the line. It is vey worrying. We seem more obsessed with looking good than actually being willing to step up and do something, no matter how controversial, about the ills of our society. We seem worried about speaking up against many of the things that affect people in their daily lives. How can that passion be re-ignited?

I’m off to a holiness seminar in a couple of weeks time and have started into some required reading for this. This reading consists of reading a collection of essays on the historical background of holiness teaching from the late 1970’s. One of the essays I read today, ‘References to Holiness Teaching in the Patristic Writings’, by Roger J. Green, contained the following quote, which I believe can give us a starting off point towards a re-ignition of our passion:

“The Salvation Army has too long been silent about events which would have enraged the holy, moral indignation of Polycarp and Booth, of Ignatius and Railton…

“We pay for our silence by attrition. We pay for our silence by passing the moral and ethical leadership of nations to deceivers, and to evil men. It is time once again to step within our tradition properly, as historical perspective gives us warrant…We must become the moral and ethical leaders of our political and social order. We have followed too long.”

Re-ignition anyone?

A different kind of gathering (for us, anyway)!

The above is a view from my music stand a few minutes before we commenced our worship time this morning. At the moment we are in a kind of transition period. As I mentioned in a previous post, we decide to start working with the area of space that will be available to us after we move into our new premises after Christmas (or when they are ready!). Today’s set-up probably won’t be the final one, as we are looking at some alternative furniture. Also our new space will have a lower ceiling and won’t have the ‘churchy’ feel that we still have now even with the different usage of space. Off to my right we had set a table up with coffee, tea, juice and cakes, which we normally go downstairs for after worship, but which was available as people came in today.

There was a mixture of reaction as people entered today, but nothing too negative. Only one person questioned the need for the sofas and coffee tables. Some of the older people found the presence of the refreshments a little hard to take. There was positive reaction to not having to go downstairs afterwards as the stairs into the basement are rather hard for a number of our seniors.

Today was also the start of our children’s ministry. It’s always hard to do something for the children, but we neglect them at our peril. So they went out halfway through and are doing a VeggieTales curriculum from now until Christmas. It sounded like they had a blast and they all came back quite excited.

We had some good discussion around the ‘Today’ DVD from the Nooma series, which fit in quite well with the changes made since last week. It talks about living in the past and always harking back to the good old days and how when we do this we miss out on so much of what today has to offer.

Most people stayed afterwards and had more refreshments. I tried to mix and mingle as much as I could and get the reaction of the people. All in all it was a good day and it’s encouraging to see some barriers coming down. We’ll wait and see what God has in store for us next week!

A Busy Day

It seems like we hardly stopped today. In the morning we were getting ready for our final building fundraiser of the year, which was our almost annual chili luncheon. We went through 7 pots of regular chili as well as one pot of vegetarian, plus lots of coffee, tea, juice, buns, and cakes. At the end of it all we had enough left over for one bowl of chili! We also made about $350.00 for the building fund.

We then spent the afternoon setting up our worship space for tomorrow. It’s probably going to be a shock for some people, but the rearrangement has been long overdue.

Tonight we had a soundcheck, as we had to move most of the sound equipment to new locations. We also tried out the DVD and set up the projector. I’m looking forward to what tomorrow brings and I’ll try and share some thoughts later in the day.

Ch-ch-ch-changes

Our worship service last Sunday was rather difficult. There were a number of dynamics and other things which left us kind of fried at the end of it all. We have been trying a kind of gentle approach to transitioning to some major changes that we are heading towards as a congregation. Last night, after staying up until after midnight with some other people from the church discussing what exactly happened on Sunday, we decided that perhaps the gentle approach is what is causing some of the recent roller-coaster rides. So we decided on a less gentle approach starting this Sunday.

The new space that we are moving into once it is renovated (which won’t be this side of Christmas) is a bit smaller than the cavernous room/sanctuary that we use at present. So today we worked out the measurements of the new space and measured it out on our old space. We removed all the huge wooden pews and put them outside of the measured space so close together that they won’t be usable this Sunday, or from this moment forward. On Saturday we wil set up the furniture (tables, chairs, couches, coffee tables, etc) and try a few diferent configurations. It may jolt some of those living in the past awake to the fact that we can never go back there.

Added to this we will be showing ‘Today’ from the Nooma series, which talks about living for today and not dwelling on the past. Exciting times ahead…