Vacation

April 16, 2007

I’m on vacation the next few weeks, so posts will be light. Keep checking back for more soon…

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Easter Community: Don’t Drop The Associate Pastor!

April 12, 2007

We were glad to have Sus back visiting with us Easter Sunday. She was a youth sponsor and Elder at Southminster before she moved to St. Louis this past winter. Here she and I are with a few of the youth:

Then they decided that they needed to do a “goofy shot”. I don’t know who suggested that they should try to lift me, but someone did. I think they were gonna drop me:

Our youth group was glad to see Susie back for a Sunday…

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Southminster’s very own funky mama…

April 11, 2007

Southminster’s lucky to have so many talented members! One of them is the Funky Mama (check her out at www.funkymamamusic.com), Krista Eyler. Nobody’s better at making yer youngster wiggle their tushy than the Funky Mama (and its likely you’ll shake your money maker too…)

Krista was invited to play at the White House last week as part of their Easter celebrations! Here’s video from that awesome day:

Keep on rockin’, Krista….

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Southminster Seekers: April Adult Ed

April 11, 2007

For the next three weeks, the Adult Education class that I lead (called Southminster Seekers) will be watching the satirical faux documentary CSA: The Confederate States of America. In light of the recent conversations about race in America that have been circulating this week, it should be a good discussion about what has been accomplished since the civil rights movement and what still has yet to be accomplished. If you can, join us at 9:30 in the fellowship hall…

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A view from the soundbooth: Easter at Southminster

April 9, 2007

Easter Sunday we were back in our newly renovated sanctuary. More than 390 people joined us for our 11am service, and another 100 for our 8:30 morning light worship. Here’s a picture Wayne took from the new sound booth…

What a wonderful Sunday to begin our use of the renovated sanctuary! Particularly because of that beautiful flowering-of-the-cross….

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Holy Week is here!

April 4, 2007

Wave your palms! Blessed is the One who comes in the name of the Lord!

Posted in Children's Ministry, Faith, Worship No Comments »

Giving up Facebook for Lent…

March 29, 2007

I had lunch with some pastor friends Wednesday, and one of them confessed to “giving up blogs for Lent.” He meant by this that he neither was reading blogs (including my own), nor was he contributing to his. It sparked interesting conversation over our lunch (along with, of course, prognosticating the upcoming Royals season.)

Turns out my friend isn’t the only one giving up various internet media for lent. Today CNN reports on students giving up social networking tools (such as myspace or facebook) for Lent:

(CNN) — For some, it’s chocolate. For others, it’s coffee or cigarettes. But as this Easter approaches, some young and devout Christians are anxious to return to what they gave up for Lent: Internet sites Facebook and MySpace.

Many users describe the popular social networking sites as addictive, which is why they say giving up these 21st-century temptations is a sincere sacrifice. Members on both sites create profiles and add each other as friends. They can also share messages, photos, videos and personal blogs.

“It’s been hard, especially in the beginning,” said Kerry Graham, who says she gave up Facebook for Lent. Her boyfriend challenged her to do so, describing her as a “Facebook fiend.”

During the first days of Lent, the 23-year-old graduate student admits she had to stop herself from typing the site’s Web address nearly every time she checked her e-mail.

Graham, who was raised Catholic, is studying theology at the University of Nottingham in England. She’s far from her hometown of Baltimore, Maryland, and said the distance has made the sacrifice more difficult.

“If I’m missing someone, there’s no real way to let them know,” she said.

…”Some of my friends think it’s silly, since people usually give up food,” said 16-year-old Emily Montgomery, who says she’s given up her access to MySpace. “I wanted to give up something that’s really hard for me.”

…Montgomery says she spent an average of two hours a day on MySpace, logging onto the site at least four times a day. She’s using Facebook as a substitute during the 40-day period.

“Not because Facebook is special — I think it’s boring,” she said, explaining that the site helps her to still “feel connected.”

“People try to be clever with Lent,” said the Rev. Michael J. Dolan, college chaplain at Trinity College and the University of Hartford in Connecticut. “It makes sense that students are giving up these things. By giving up something, you hope to gain something.”

Dolan himself has a Facebook account. He says he’s friends with more than 130 other members at Trinity and 80 in the Hartford network, and has spoken with many students who have given up social networking sites or online messaging for the Lenten season.

“It’s a form of spiritual awareness that allows you to reconnect with God,” said Jocelyn Chiu, an Emory University sophomore and active member of her Presbyterian church. “By giving up something that used up so much of my time, I realized that I had been leaving my spiritual life behind.”

Chiu gave up Facebook for Lent in 2006 and went one step further this year — vowing to avoid the Internet altogether. She has only allowed herself to check Emory’s internal e-mail for school-related messages.

“I realized how much time I was spending on the Internet,” said Chiu. “I needed to make myself focus on schoolwork more.”

…

Interesting story.

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Blog Recommendation: Church for Starving Artists

March 29, 2007

Jan Edmiston is a pastor in the Washington DC area. She blogs with a probing mind and a heart for doing authentic ministry in the 21st century. Her blog is called A Church for Starving Artists, and I find myself going there regularly to learn from her. She challenges me, and us, with posts (like this one) that wonder if the way we mainline Presbyterians “do church” is going to cut it or not. She reflects on national issues with compassion, grace, and fervor (like she does here). Anyway, she’s an interesting commenter that some of you might enjoy enough to put on your radar screens…

Posted in Religion and Culture, blogging Comments Off

Roeminations’ Look and Feel

March 21, 2007

This blog runs on software called Wordpress. Its installed on the internet service provider that I use to operate herringweb.net, and its being used to run thousands or millions of blogs worldwide. (People who don’t want to mess with having it run on their own isp can get a free wordpress blog at wordpress.com, or other free blogging sites such as google’s blogger.)

Independent of the software that runs this blog is the theme templates that define how the website looks and functions. To make a long story short: themes contain the colors that are on the page, the way the columns are laid out, and so on.

I wanted to mention that this current incarnation of Roeminations is running a theme developed by another Presbyterian blogger by the name of Adam Walker Cleaveland. Adam publishes a blog called pomomusings, which is widely known for its contemplation of what it means to be a Presbyterian and a progressive Christian in the post-modern age. He’s active in the emerging church movement and is currently a seminarian at Princeton Theological Seminary. You might find his blog interesting (and you’ll note that it looks an awful lot like this one, because he was the one who created the theme!). So, thanks to Adam for his good work, and for making it publicly available to folk like me.

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Los Angeles Times Op Ed: We Live in the Land of Biblical Idiots

March 20, 2007

Here’s something I found at the website of another Presbyterian blogger: Denis Hancock’s The Reformed Angler. The LA Times published an Op Ed a few days ago from Stephen Prothero, the chair of the Religious Studies department at Boston University. Its worth a read…
http://www.latimes.com/…/la-oe-prothero14mar14,1,3102398.story
(Free Registration required to read the article)

Here’s the key quote:

ALTHOUGH THE 110th Congress has brought to Capitol Hill 43 Jews, two Buddhists and a Muslim — Rep. Keith Ellison (D-Minn.), who took his oath of office on Thomas Jefferson’s Koran — Washington remains a disproportionately Christian town. More than 90% of federal legislators call themselves Christians, making Congress more Christian than the United States itself. The president is an evangelical Protestant. Catholics enjoy a majority on the Supreme Court. Biblical references — from the Jericho Road to the golden rule to the promised land — permeate political speech. Yet U.S. citizens know almost nothing about the Bible. Although most regard it as the word of God, few read it anymore. Even evangelicals from the Bible Belt seem more focused on loving Jesus than on learning what he had to say.

In a religious literacy quiz I have administered to undergraduates for the last two years, students tell me that Moses was blinded on the road to Damascus and that Paul led the Israelites on their exodus out of Egypt. Surveys that are more scientific have found that only one out of three U.S. citizens is able to name the four Gospels, and one out of 10 think that Joan of Arc was Noah’s wife. No wonder pollster George Gallup has concluded that the United States is “a nation of biblical illiterates.”

Biblical illiteracy is not just a religious problem. It is a civic problem with political consequences. How can citizens participate in biblically inflected debates on abortion, capital punishment or the environment without knowing something about the Bible? Because they lack biblical literacy, Americans are easily swayed by demagogues on the left or the right who claim — often incorrectly — that the Bible says this about war or that about homosexuality.

One solution to this civic problem is to teach Bible classes in public schools. By Bible classes I do not mean classes in which teachers tell students that Jesus loves them or that the Bible is the inerrant word of God, but academic courses that study the Bible’s characters and stories as well as the afterlife of the Bible in literature and history. Last week, the Georgia Board of Education gave preliminary approval to two elective Bible courses designed to teach religion rather than preach religion. As long as teachers stick to the curriculum, this is a big step in the right direction. …

Here’s my view: Religious subjects taught in in public schools is something that ought to be considered only with great care. Its not the school’s responsibility to teach faith; its the church’s. And public schools ought be safe places for all children, of every faith: Christian, Muslim, Jewish, Hindu, Buddhist, or even no faith at all. We Presbyterians believe in the importance of respecting the conscience of everyone, and we should respect the separation of church and state on this matter.

But there is a point here: knowledge of sacred texts can be very important, particularly for understanding other religions and for engaging in civic discourse on subjects that are heavily influenced by religious communities. For this reason, I support this proposal in general, and I’d expand it to offer a class on major sacred literature from the world religions: the Bible, the Koran, the Bhagavad Gita, etc. The goal would be towards some knowledge of how these “sacred” stories influence public discourse, and discussion on why that might be important to know. And I’d keep a close eye on it to ensure that communities didn’t see this as an extension of what the church is doing…

Oh, and don’t miss the indictment in the story about the church’s failure here: beyond the fact that there are fewer people attending churches these days, what else can we say about this claim about biblical illiteracy? Maybe we in the church should be doing better…

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