We had some winter, then some spring, and now with 5 inches of snow on the ground, we’re back in winter. But Spring Training was set to begin and now put on hold, which makes winter longer. C’mon owners, make some compromises.
Photo by Andre Benz on Unsplash
Why are some pastors resilient during Covid? Our seminary president has done a study worth your reading:
Part one: characteristics of resilient pastors.
Part two: what resilient pastors want.
Part three: what seminaries, denominations, and churches can do.
JERUSALEM (AP) — Israel’s Nature and Parks Authority on Monday said it was backing down from a contentious plan to encompass Christian holy sites on Jerusalem’s Mount of Olives in a national park following vociferous outcry from major churches.
The Mount of Olives in east Jerusalem rises above Jerusalem’s Old City and its sites are holy to three monotheistic faiths. Its slopes to the east of the Old City are studded with churches of various sects that mark the traditional places of events in the life of Jesus.
The Armenian, Catholic and Greek Orthodox churches petitioned Israel’s environmental protection minister, whose department is in charge of the Parks Authority, in a letter last week.
The churches expressed the “gravest concern and unequivocal objection” to the plan, saying it would disrupt the longstanding state of affairs and aims to “confiscate and nationalize one of the holiest sites for Christianity and alter its nature.”
Farid Jubran, general counsel of the Catholic Church’s Custody of the Holy Land, said that by making an area that includes church property part of a national park it was “putting the control in the hands of people who have no other agenda but to wipe off any non-Jewish characteristic on this mountain.”
Environmental Protection Minister Tamar Zandberg did not respond to interview requests.
But shortly after the churches’ outcry, the Nature and Parks Authority said it was freezing the plan, which was to be approved on March 2 by Jerusalem’s planning committee.
Mike Bird’s got his eye again on a Southern Baptist lecture by a Jason Allen who drew some deep lines in his own sandbox and thought he was stiff arming the whole world:
Then, SWEET MOTHER OF MELCHIZEDEK, Allen uses the craziest America war metaphor I’ve ever heard (see 20:11 min). He said the SBC should not be like America in the first Gulf War. America led a broad coalition, but because it was a broad coalition with many voices, it restricted what America could do - and that’s a bad thing. Instead, Allen stated that the SBC should be like America in the second Gulf War (i.e., Iraq), where it acted unilaterally and focused on its mission and not on building a coalition. Oh man, I don’t know how he said that with a straight face. Okay, here’s the thing, America won the first Gulf War and looked like the good guy. Whereas the second Gulf War was a colossal cluster based on lies about weapons of mass destruction, it turned the whole world against America after 9/11, and its single greatest accomplishment was the creation of ISIS.
Just when I thought it couldn’t get worse, then, at 22:00 mins, he said: “If someone leaves the Southern Baptist convention church, a brother or sister, leaves to go to a similarly conservative Bible-believing fellowship of churches that may say something about us. If they leave our fellowship to go to a church or collection of churches that is clearly to the left of the Southern Baptist Convention that may say something about them.” I take that as a lament that Russell Moore was lost to the non-denoms, but a slam of the door and “Good riddance” to Beth Moore who went Anglican. Maybe, just maybe, some people get identified as “leftists” by staying still and standing firm when everyone else runs to the right in some weird race to be the most conservative guy in the room.
Okay, let me get back to Allen’s list of confessions. Now, what is grossly ironic, is that Allen decries accommodation to culture, and yet the majority of the documents he wishes to advocate for are parochially American cultural war documents. Danvers was precipitated by the Equal Rights Act and Nashville is a response to the Obergefell decision. That is not to say that the contents of all these documents is completely wrong, but they are largely in-house debates about intra-American issues.
Notice too what Allen did not include. He did not mention the Apostles’ Creed, he did not mention the Nicene Creed, he did not mention the 1689 London Baptist Confession, and he did not mention the Lausanne Covenant of 1974. He ignores catholic and consensual documents and focuses on statements that emerged from and for the American context. In other words, note this, it’s not a fight over Christianity versus culture, it is a fight over different types of American cultural Christianity.
CHICAGO —Dianne Hodges earned the respect and gratitude of her neighbors, her alderwoman and Chicago Police. Her unorthodox approach to crime reduction is a blueprint for others fighting to take back their block.
The area of Chicago’s South Shore neighborhood near South Merrill Avenue and 70th Street was for years known by the name of, “Murder Merrill.”
But Hodges, 73, proposed a radical response.
“We‘re going to bombard the block with unconditional love,” she said.
Hodges has been recognized nationally for her devotion to the community. She was featured in an Amazon – Ad Council public service announcement.
Hodges is an energy facilitator with decades of experience as a meditation and wellness coach. She mounted a “quality of life initiative” for South Shore.
“We need to create something for the children of the community so they can have a place to come in the summer months where they can feel safe,” she said.
That safe place is South Merrill Community Garden. The former empty lot is protected by land trust, “Neighbor Space.“
Natalie Perkins is the garden’s education director.
(WTRF) – When a Texas Starbucks employee noticed a man lingering around a customer, the employee passed the young woman a note to make sure she was OK.
Brandy Roberson posted on Facebook that her 18-year-old daughter was alone in a Corpus Christi, Texas, Starbucks store when a man approached her and started talking to her.
“She was sitting at her table alone studying and this man came by and noticed what she was studying and wanted to talk to her about it,” Roberson told WKYC. “He, I think, just kind of became really loud and animated about it.”
A barista noticed the man’s behavior, Roberson said, and handed her daughter “an extra hot chocolate someone forgot to pick up” with a note written on the side of the cup. The note said: “Are you okay? Do you want us to intervene? If you do, take the lid off the cup.”
Roberson said her daughter did feel safe and did not remove the lid, letting the baristas know she was OK. The teen said she appreciated the staff keeping an eye on her and taking the extra step to ensure she felt safe.
A Starbucks spokesperson confirmed the story to Nexstar Media Wire but didn’t offer any other details on the incident.
When a veteran beach clean-up expert noticed a bloom of yellow plastic tubing along Outer Cape strands, she began to ask questions.
"I had never seen it before," said Laura Ludwig, manager of the Center for Coastal Studies Marine Debris and Plastics Program. "Where was it coming from?"
Thus began a journey to unravel the stringy mystery. Ludwig first encountered the tubing in September 2021 at Long Point in Provincetown during a beach clean-up. During the days that followed, more of the plastic was picked off beaches in Outer Cape towns.
"It was mind-blowing how much of the stuff there was," she said in a recent phone interview.
The yellow tubing has a thin rope-like appearance, and continues to wash up on Cape Cod beaches in varying lengths, from very short (1 millimeter) to 90 feet. Ludwig said it has been found on beaches in Provincetown, Truro, Wellfleet, Orleans, Brewster and Yarmouth. It has also been found on beaches in Hull, Scituate and beyond.
"I found a piece in Newport, Rhode Island last week," said Ludwig.
So far, Ludwig's beach cleanups and other volunteer efforts have plucked more than 2,000 feet of the tubing from Cape beaches. …
The tubing on the beaches came from a Boston Harbor dredging project that began in June 2021 and concluded in January 2022.
Known as explosive shock tubing, the yellow plastic strand is used to transmit a signal to explosives. In this case, the explosives were underwater, placed to break up rocks as the harbor channel was deepened.
According to Ludwig, the contractor involved with the project did have a containment strategy, with vessels on the surface picking up the tubing as it floated to the surface, but some escaped, likely mixed in with rocky debris.
Scot, you noted that " It’s not a fight over Christianity versus culture, it is a fight over different types of American cultural Christianity." Contrary to what some folks might want to believe, that has been the real case throughout Church history. However, it reminded me that a hundred years ago within both the Presbyterian and Baptist denominations, we witnessed conservative shifts to the right that called for more conservative shifts to the right of the first move to the right, and astonishingly, those to the right of others to the right of their denomination, felt obliged to prove their "biblical" authenticity by moving even further to the right. It was downright crazy! It makes a charade of the Christian faith. Of course, every shifting-to-the-right group was sure that the group left behind could not possibly be "biblical." SIGH.