A Stone's Throw

** See this post to read about how the NFL has allowed churches to have Super Bowl Parties, just not allow us to call them “Super Bowl” Parties!

Well, this “Big Game That We Can’t Name” Sunday is going to be awesome at Forest Park Carthage! We have a great new series on marriage starting called, “Old Fashioned Home Remedies.” It is going to be great! I know several of our members are inviting their friends and family to church tomorrow to experience this teaching on how to make their marriages better. That is awesome! There are so many things that pull us apart–kids, work, finances, a bad economy, and the list goes on and on. But it is good to realize that God created marriage and wants our marriages to not just “get by,” but to “prevail!” Come and check out the new teaching tomorrow and bring a friend!

The Mac is back, baby! Ryan Hunter, our awesome IT guy at Forest Park saved my computer from having to be sent off to get a new hard drive! He did some sort of magic on this baby! He recovered all of my data, wiped the hard drive clean, and put it all back just like new! Thanks to this awesome application built into MacOS called Time Machine, I was able to get all of my documents and only missed about a weeks worth of work. . . pretty sweet.

Moral of the story. . . well two . . . 1. “You don’t know what you’ve got, til it’s gone” (sung in an 80s style Hair band kind of way!) and 2. Backup, Backup, and Backup again! Go ahead, spend the extra money to get an external hard drive and back up your data–often!

Thanks again Ryan! You are the man!

This post was scheduled for about a week ago . . . but my computer got sick. Better late than never, I suppose. . .

I read Earl Creps’ blog through my reader and always enjoy his take on life and church planting. He used to be the director of the D Min. program at the Assembly of God Seminary in Springfield, MO. He is currently living in Berkley, CA and planting a church aimed at university students–good stuff in itself for sure!! But all that aside. . . Earl wrote a post that really hit my heart this morning. He was honest enough to write what he truly thinks, and if I was honest. . . probably have some of the same experiences and thoughts.

You would do yourself a huge favor to read this post entitled “I Am A Racist–Ernie Graves and Barack Obama.” Some of the key thoughts that really resonated to me are . . .

The monstrous injustice of it all was clothed among whites with a sort of middle-class respectability. We did not consider ourselves racists because we did not burn crosses. Only fanatics did things like that. But our society was set up in a certain way and the marginalization of black people was assumed to be part of it. Overt slavery had been replaced by a sub-economy in which people unlike ourselves lived with invisible chains.

Just a month ago, Janet and I moved from Springfield, Missouri (94% Anglo) to very multi-cultural Berkeley, California to plant a university church. During the first few weeks after our move, I had to confess to my wife that I was reacting to people of different races in different ways.

Walking down the sidewalk, I felt fine if an Asian or Anglo person approached me, but experienced just a touch of elevated anxiety if that person were a black male.

This feeling disappeared in just a few days, but shocked me into recognition that racism is not someone else’s sin, it is mine. While abhorring the overt bigotry of others, my own mind can harbor the same sub-economy that my West Virginia town operated in the 1950’s.

At this point, I still think of race/ethnicity/etc. as a modifier. For instance, our friend next door is our “Anglo” neighbor and the people across the street are our “African American” neighbors. By God’s grace, I want to one day think of them as just neighbors and let them define themselves. When asked what kind of person constitutes a “neighbor,” Jesus depicted a good Samaritan rescuing a robbery victim without regard for the person’s background or circumstances.

The inauguration of Barak Obama put a face on what I am feeling. Watching his speech was a moment of healing, joy, and hope for someone who remembers segregation and was a part, even unwittingly, of the system that maintained it.

But my journey toward really loving people did not begin in the Berkeley move or the inauguration of a new President so much as it did in that junior high school stairwell.

Thanks, Ernie.

I hope I can return the favor.

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