I came across a couple interesting posts recently relating to the Church.
Curtis Honeycutt shares a great open-letter to those who have been burned and hurt by the church.
After reading his post, it reminded of a line from Shane Claiborne’s book and found some great thoughts from St. Augustine of Hippo and Tony Campolo as well.
“The Church is a whore, but she’s my mother”
I’m amazed by this week’s This American Life (as always).
In Act 1, they tell the story of Geoffrey Canada and the Harlem Children’s Zone.
From the show…
Paul Tough reports on the Harlem Children’s Zone, and its CEO and president, Geoffrey Canada. Among the project’s many facets is Baby College, an 8-week program where young parents and parents-to-be learn how to help their children get the education they need to be successful. Tough’s just-published book about Geoffrey Canada and the Harlem’s Children Zone is called Whatever It Takes.
After he started raising his second son and saw all the science showing the best practices for raising and developing a child in their early years, Geoffrey decided to go big and make a huge impact on the streets of Harlem. As he learned the best practices, he went looking for people putting the ideas into practice in Harlem — and found none.
Continue reading Harlem Renaissance
Saw this video over on Jonathan Brink’s site…
Social media continues to have a HUGE impact on the world around us — but I’m not sure it’s having the same impact on the Church. It seems that most people are still reluctant to share their online lives with their church body. There may be some folks within our faith communities with whom we’ll share things with — but overall I haven’t seen folks sharing their lives with everyone within the community.
In other words, folks may be willing to share their thoughts, pictures etc with me (which is great) but they don’t seem willing to do the same with pages that are more public and available to the community as a whole.
I wonder if our community is simply asking the wrong questions, not educating our peeps, or if people are just scared to share their lives and experiences with their church community in general.
When folks are open and sharing — I’ve seen relationships improve and grow tremendously. But when we remain behind walls (online or offline) its hard to imagine any relationship growing as it should.
No matter what, I don’t think any community should be solely dependent upon online sharing. The online must go offline as well. But I think the online world can truly expand and improve the offline.
But what are you seeing? Are you seeing your faith community really growing online? Are your peeps taking part in Twitter, Facebook pages, Flickr etc.?
Share some insight.
I shared this on Twitter/Facebook Monday night:
RT @emergentvillage @jeannemstevens: Churches hold $28B in mortgage debt. That amt could provide clean H20 to 1.4 billion ppl for 20 yrs.
I received a couple questions and comments so I thought I’d share my response and comments here as well. I hope you keep in mind that these are my thoughts and I don’t expect you to relate to God in the same way I do. For some, church buildings hold deep value and worth and are literal sanctuaries where they can come and meet with God – however for me… well you can read my thoughts below :-).
Continue reading My thoughts on church buildings
Questions of the day…
Why do you go to church where you do?
Or why don’t you go to church?
Derek Webb’s new song is getting a lot of talk around the Interwebs these days.
I think the song is great. And I could care less about who his “target audience is.” I think it’s got a great challenging message.
Continue reading What Matters More?