Just 31 days until National Write a Whole Honkin' Novel (Or At Least Try to Blog Every Day) Month. Me, I don't think I'll wait that long. I've felt the blog muse stirring in the depths of my... well, not soul, really. Maybe more like a pancreas. Anyway, I thought I might make an attempt to blog every day in October--just to see if I still can. I'll probably cheat and count posts to the book review blog as sufficient fulfillments to the daily requirement, but I do promise that I won't start counting Twitter tweets, even if they are funny.

So anyway, what to write? Over the past few weeks, I've noticed items that I might have been able to stretch into blog posts. Tonight, however, the only thoughts that fill my mind are things I should be doing besides frittering away free time blogging. I should be doing my October tithing. I could also get some work done towards preparing the next Bible study. (I'm going with Jonah this time around, since I already have a commentary on the shelf.) I should finish clearing the junk off the typewriter table, so I can get rid of it. I could enter some genealogy info into Gene. And then there's all the book reviews that are outstanding--at least eight. But there's plenty of time for that... I mean, October's a long month.

Labels: blogging, church, life, rambling

Hmmm. If--I'm speaking hypothetically here--if I were actually posting every day in November, which, of course, is pretty far fetched, what would I write about today? Election Day delivered its usual mixed bag of results. The results of some races were welcome news, others were rather disappointing. So I didn't spend last night dancing in the streets or anything. (We did go dancing, but that was mainly because I want to go to the InDesign Users Group meeting next Tuesday.) Today was pretty uneventful as well. I did have a Deacons meeting at church, which in its own way was as unsettling as the election results that disappointed. I find myself feeling quite out of place at church these days. Not when we're actually "doing church". When it's time to worship, I feel just fine. It's when it comes time to socialize or do the various and sundry tasks of maintaining the organization that I get out of kilter. When did I get out of sync with the flock? Or was I only deluded when I thought I was fitting in before? Ah, well. 'Tis a mystery. One I can probably ignore until the next church function on Saturday morning.

Labels: church, life, relationships, whining

(Actually, I wrote this yesterday, but am posting it today so I don't have a June '08 archive with one puny post.)
Okay, I'm back. I doubt if I'll be much more prolific than I was a few months ago, but I think it might be good to keep up the writing skills, such as they are.

Yesterday I became a full fledged deacon of my church. For those unfamiliar with the term, a deacon is simply... well, actually that term is used for quite a variety of roles. In the Bible, the original deacons were seven fellows who the apostles appointed to "wait tables" when the management of the church's food bank began cutting into the twelve's preaching and teaching time. We then immediately get to hear the tale about how one of those seven, Stephen, ended up getting into a theological argument and getting stoned to death. Of course, modern day "deacons" don't quite match that example. In some congregations, the deacons are really just the pastor's henchmen, keeping the congregation in line and taking care of all the messy jobs that need doing. In other congregations, the deacons are the true power of the church, the mighty personages to whom the pastor must either submit or struggle against. What sort of deacon I'll be, I don't know. Generally at Dry Bones we haven't got into those big power struggles. We tend to be like a bunch of cats, doing our own thing. We all gather together when there's food, of course, but then it's off to our own little areas of service. On the other hand, if you take that last sentence as a metaphor, we could be headed towards trouble. There's a potential worship war on the horizon--disagreement about one area that affects the entire membership. So I may end up being a pastoral flunky after all. I wonder if I can get a shirt with a cool nickname on it, just like the henchmen on Batman.

Labels: church, life

I spent the other evening playing catch up--reading the minutes from our church's council meetings for the past three years. I don't know what possessed me. Well, I do, actually. While we were overseas, we had heard about some friction between the pastor and some of the lay leaders of the group. Now that I've volunteered to be on a committee at church, I wanted to see if the minutes would shed any light upon the supposed controversies. They didn't, of course. In polite American society we can't just come out and say that so and so is bugging the heck out of me. It's just not done. So I'll guess I'll just have to live without knowing the gossip.

The fact that I've agreed to serve on a committee is another act of weirdness on my part. The plan is to survey some members of the congregation, send the surveys up the ecclesiastical hierarchy and get a dandy report as to how we compare to the profile of a healthy congregation. The problem is, I think the whole idea is foolish. We've had a number of surveys in the past ten years or so--all of them trying to find our "vision", to seek a direction for the congregation. The problem is, our direction is right in front of us, but we don't want to see it. Ol' Dry Bones church is headed towards the proverbial grave. Our numbers are dwindling along with our finances and we really can't function like we did back in our glory days. If we were rational about it all, our vision would be to efficiently close down the congregation. Our mission would be to hook up our remaining members with new church homes, dispose of our corporate property and make sure the pastor gets a nice severance package. That's what we should be meeting about, some would say.

The problem is, our faith gets in the way. We follow a God who works miracles, a God who uses the weak and insignificant to humble the mighty. Heck, every Sunday we declare that we believe in the resurrection of the dead. So if it looks like the congregation is dying, do we start making funeral arrangements? Heck, no. Instead we'll start talking about getting new stoves for the kitchen or repainting the Sunday School rooms. I wonder what the good Lord will say, when we're at the Pearly Gates. Will He say to us stubborn church members, "Well done, my good and faithful servants?" Or will he sigh and shake His head and welcome us in His infinite mercy? Beats me. So I suppose that's why I have a meeting this Sunday....

Labels: church, commentary, community, life, relationships, religion, whining