Channeling John Stossel

Rev. To NJ Church Leaders: Thou Shalt Not Facebook

Give me a break.

“I’ve been in extended counseling with couples with marital problems because of Facebook for the last year and a half,” the Rev. Cedric Miller said. BECAUSE of Facebook? As in "Facebook made me have an affair." There are roughly 17,000,000,000 sites on the internet offering free porn and instant local hookups, but this is the one that caused your marriage to end.

I wonder if these people are aware they aren't being forced to become friends with their exes. Or that they can hide, or block, anyone they should not be in contact with. Blaming a social networking site for the breakup of a marriage is sort of like blaming the car dealer for a traffic accident. If they wouldn't make this stuff available things like this wouldn't happen.

It's a total copout, and it's really pathetic. There are obviously underlying issues in these marriages that are simply manifesting themselves through this avenue.

On Sunday, [Miller] plans to "strongly suggest" that all married people stop using Facebook, lest they endanger their marriage. 

I have a better idea. Learn to use Facebook properly, and explore, maybe through counseling, but definitely through prayer, if there are any problems lying under the surface before you end up in someone else's arms. Don't pass the blame off to some website when it's your own failure to remain dead to sin (Rom. 6:6-7, 12) that's the real cause of the issue.

This life group stuff is kind of hard

So in all the initial excitement over being invited to start a life group at church (documented here) I seem to have missed the part where there is actual work involved. I mean, really, get a leader's guide, throw a PowerPoint together, and poof - instant successful group. I thought Heather was going to have the hard part cleaning the house and making snacks. Looks like I forgot rule number one - I'm an idiot.

This started to come home for me as I was preparing for the first meeting in my curriculum. I was merrily going through the leader portion, pulling out bullet points, and came across this gem in the instructions (I'm paraphrasing a bit):

• Here you will want to do a survey of each book in the Bible, including the major themes and characters, and show maps and timelines of where and when events occurred.

No...wait...YOU were supposed to give me that! That's why I bought the leader's book! The meeting is tomorrow, this will take weeks to prepare. All is lost! Panic! Danger, Will Robinson! Fortunately, the guide also said how much time I spent on this was up to me, so I ended up choosing zero. There's more than enough other material in explaining how we got the Bible and why we believe it to fill an hour, anyway. So, crisis averted.

Figuring that I was so much smarter now, I was going to start the prep work for the next meeting during the off week. That way I wouldn't be caught off guard when the guide told me to write a fifty page thesis to hand out to the group members. Topic two: how to study the Bible.

Are you kidding me? Does Grace to You understand that these meetings are only an hour long? This could take all year. In fact, I'm sure there are college and seminary classes that do take all year to cover this.

Three and a half hours later I had compressed this into twenty-four slides and two pages of presentation notes with questions for the group. And I realized at the end that step one of "How to study the Bible" also should have been step one in "How to facilitate life group" - prepare by praying and asking for help with what you're about to do. Yeah, whoopsie. See rule number one back in the first paragraph.

Then there's the attendance thing. Pastor Jim warned me that life groups are full of people, and people will inevitably disappoint you, as has been evidenced by the several fits and starts with people expressing interest, then suddenly finding schedule conflicts preventing them from coming. Seems that if someone can get twenty people to show up for a candle party at their house, I should be able to get more than two people to consistently attend this. I'm sure that Heather is getting tired of me threatening to shut the group down if we don't get more people. I need to keep reminding myself that the size of the group isn't up to me, it's as big as God wants it to be right now. Doesn't mean I have to like it, though. I should probably say at this point that Daryl and Kelly, I'm grateful for your commitment to the group, and I don't really mean all that about shutting down.

So is there a positive side to this? As a certain divisive political figure might say, you betcha. After all those hours of meeting prep, I know more about how to study the Bible than I ever did. I have two new friends who are teaching me what life in grad school is like. And I have one of my longer blog entries to show for it too.

Next group topic? God: His character and attributes. I think I could spend the rest of my life on this and not run out of material. How am I going to fit that into an hour?

The meeting is in five days. If you'll excuse me, I need to go work on my slides.

Pastor Appreciation Month, late late edition: Skip Fengfish

I know I'm late. I also don't care.

Skip is the choir director and also runs the homeless ministry at Avalon Church. He also facilitates the Friday morning men's study, Man Alive! and an additional home group/life group. So he's a pretty busy guy.

The primary purpose of Skip's life is to bring Christ to people, and bring people to Christ. This is evident in everything, and I do mean everything, he does. Let's run the checklist from Galatians 5:22-23 and I'll show you, just from my limited experience with him.

• Love: this one's pretty obvious. Would anyone voluntarily spend their days in homeless camps ministering to people without love?
• Joy: spend a couple of weeks at Man Alive and this one become pretty plain too. Just about every other verse that we cover, Skip will practically burst with joy and amazement at what God has done for us.
• Peace: this one might be a little more elusive, especially after the near death of his daughter earlier this year, but it's still there. Ask him how he's doing and the answer will be along the lines of "the knuckles are white but the grip is strong."
• Patience: again, spend some time at Man Alive. The reason it takes us six weeks to cover two verses is Skip stays with us until we get it.
• Kindness: got this one too. No matter what manner of stupidity you may have engaged in Skip is never judgmental, and never plays the "what were you thinking?" card. It's more along the lines of "OK, let's fix this."
• Goodness: every week Skip gets up before 5:00 and makes sure the coffee is brewed and breakfast is out for the Man Alive group. Goodness from him, goodness for us.
• Faithfulness: Skip has been married for thirty-three years. I think we can put this one to rest.
• Gentleness: Skip can be a little bit intimidating due to his size, and having served in combat we know he's at least capable of being less than gentle. But other than the occasional too-firm handshake that might leave you wondering how you're going to get through the day one-handed, there isn't even a hint of malice in him.
• Self-control: see patience. The fact that he isn't throwing things at us on Friday morning and screaming "Don't you get it? It's right there in front of you!" speaks volumes.

So there you go. 9 for 9, which is a better average than I can put up. Take Philippians 4:9, replace "me" with "Skip" and you'll be on the right track.