Reaffirmation of Welcome

I wanted to share this awesome Reaffirmation of Welcome recently passed by Lake Street Church of Evanston, one of the great churches in the Chicago area that is a member of the Association of Welcoming and Affirming Baptists. I think all welcoming churches might want to consider doing something like this periodically, as the Spirit leads them.

Statement follows:

At this time in the life of our nation –

• as the suicides of gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgendered youth capture

headlines across the country

• as campaigning politicians pronounce that they don’t want children “brainwashed

into thinking that homosexuality is an equally valid and successful option” as

heterosexuality,

• and as fear of the “other” and a spirit of hatred threatens to consume our public

and religious discourse:

Lake Street Church of Evanston, a congregation affiliated with the American Baptist

Churches, USA, reaffirms our public commitment of more than fifteen years to be a

place of welcome and support for all of God’s children.

Our welcome knows no boundaries of age, race, ethnicity, culture, gender, sexual

orientation, economic condition, or physical or mental abilities. We affirm that gay,

lesbian, bisexual, and transgender lives are fully compatible with Christian teaching.

LGBT individuals and families are fully included in all aspects of our congregational life,

from birth through the celebration of the lives of those who have passed. In a spirit of

radical inclusion, we long for the day when full civil rights are extended to all Americans,

and pledge to be a place of spiritual renewal and encouragement until that day arrives.

Reflecting God’s bold embrace, we proclaim a world with freedom and justice for all,

where we can all honor and celebrate the many faces of love.

---
Cool, huh?

Go Lake Street!

birth pangs (angry baby jesus)

Hello Internet,

Sorry for the long-ish radio silence while I got started at my new gig. It continues to be awesome. Here's a response I posted to a colleague's request for advent stuff:

Funny you should mention it:
We had our annual art and poetry show from our homeless and formerly-homeless group last night, and it was (and this is high praise) as awesome as I was expecting it to be. Inspired, on the train home, I wrote ...a little ditty that Tom Ryberg had assigned to me: (I think he's gonna set it to music, and I've got the germ of a melody myself.) Not sure if it's length-or-language-wise appropriate, but I pay attention when things happen at similar times.

Angry Baby Jesus, or Birth Pangs, from an idea from Tom Ryberg
(to be sung lilting, almost calypso, but with an edge)

Everybody loves a baby
or so they claim until
she's howling and needs a changing
she's teething and never still

I want an angry Jesus
lifted wailing from the straw
the Jesus I know is angry
before he can even crawl

Please throw out your hallmark Jesus
cherubic and clean and white
that Jesus won't ever save you
that Jesus won't make you right

I want a dirty Jesus
who smells like sheep and blood and shit
if you want the incarnation,
you're gonna have to handle it

I want a bloody Jesus
because he's just been born
how long can you ignore him?
He's screaming outside your door

The New Creation trembles
the Holy Wind fills Her sails
and with the Newborn Savior
in hope and anger all Creation wails

(repeat previous verse of your choice, depending)

The Night Ministry

Many of you know I just started working with The Night Ministry as their Community and Congregational Relations Coordinator. Here's an embedded youtube video about their work.



Unrelatedly, somefolks just hit three hundred posts(!). Go team.

Acres of dental floss

Okay, I should probably say something to put the foregoing in context. The two statements are tangentially related (I am currently not at liberty to provide further details on that statement nor to confirm nor to deny any speculation on how).

Something that has been bothering me an awful lot lately is the statement that keeps cropping up, in one way or another, that various occurrences are "God's will". (To avoid overcomplicating things, we won't go into detail about describing or defining God). As often as not, though, I hear a lot of talk in the circles of Christians with which I am most familiar, that being my family and their churches, of "God sightings", which ultimately are best described as fortunate coincidences. One of my favorite examples of a "God sighting" came when two carloads of parishoners from my parents' church were driving to some church event--possibly a concert or a convention--in Pittsburgh, neither driver being familiar with the locale, got separated on the Interstate and were suddenly reunited immediately before arriving at their destination: the reunion was a "God sighting" because it assured both drivers that they'd arrived at the right place. Never mind that nothing remotely miraculous occurred, nor that it was only to be expected that they should arrive more or less together having traveled under the same directions and left at the same time. The real wall-banger in this to me, though, is that attributing this happy happenstance to divine intervention necessarily implies that these individuals truly believe that in a world of disease, disaster, war, and injustice, God somehow made a priority of sparing them the inconvenience of having to find each other after arriving.

That doesn't really answer the latter and more provocative of my statements from yesterday, though, at least not yet. The connection is here: the first time I heard that particular story, or any of the dozens like it that were given the same honorific designation, I was still disposed, if not to believe it entirely (the latter of my two objections had already become quite apparent), at least to want to believe it. At the same time, I was all too eager to comply with the prescriptions of the leaders of my--relatively conservative--church, including the recommendations of reactionary Christian philosophers, the consumption of whose doctrines and publications was heavily encouraged by the church and my parents. Hence the association with Dr. James C. Dobson, whose organization was instrumental in my voluntary subscription to a variety of the popular fundamentalist morality crusades, and even a few of my own for good measure: someone we all know here will remember all too well my zealous concern for his spiritual safety upon finding out that he liked to play Dungeons & Dragons, and how when given to see that this was not much different from my having played the villain of my middle school class play, I was much more ready to condemn myself along with him than admit that I might just be overreacting to things a bit. And I wondered why I didn't have many friends in middle school.

I wonder if the inevitable kickback from Rev. Jones' upcoming Qur'an barbecue can be attenuated at all if some volunteers organize a competing Bible burning alongside it.

A yard strewn with yogurt containers

It occurred to me today, by far not for the first time, that baby dolls disturb me somehow. I find them depressing and sad, just to see them in a store or on TV.

I also said to myself today, also not for the first time, that it's too bad Hell doesn't exist, just because it would be satisfying to see characters like Jerry Falwell and James Dobson end up there.

Podcast fyi

The second part of our zombie theology conversation is now available at geektheology.podbean.com.

David

Zombie Theology Podcast

Heya,

Tom Ryberg and I recorded the pilot episode for our new Geek Theology Podcast, and now we found a way to put it up on the internet. Our first episode, "Take and Eat" is about zombies.
It's available at:

geektheology.podbean.com.

David Weasley