While I’m not able to be in the peanut gallery in Tampa this time around, I’m participating as I can digitally. Thanks to the way social media is changing how live events are covered, Twitter (and a number of ‘secret agents’ on the scene) are keeping me fairly well informed.
As a child, I remember getting up while it was still dark out on Easter morning in order to trundle to church with my mom, dad, and grumpy but compliant older sister. I was usually chipper after shaking off the the sleepyheaded effects of whatever I’d been dreaming through the night. Easter sunrise service in Ft. Wayne, Indiana was usually a brief but joyous affair often including liturgical arts not featured on other Sundays.
I made a last minute snap decision to go to the noon service today at Foundry UMC for Good Friday services. I attend Foundry because they’re one of the few UMCs in the city area that provide ASL interpreters for just about anything that there’s a request for. But, since I made this decision at the last minute, it was beyond the time frame needed to arrange for an interpreter.
I know I’m quite late with this post. Although the ‘sync’ part of the syncblog idea launched by Jeremy over at Hacking Christianity unraveled, I’d hoped to keep as close of a schedule as I could in order to build some content to this blog as I get it kicked off and running. Jeremy was of course busy with his big announcements! Congrats to you and best wishes and prayers as you adjust to all the changes coming down the road! I was busy bringing some folks from the Poverty Initiative at Union Theological Seminary down to Gallaudet to promote their book Pedagogy of the Poor. More on that in another post!
This post is a day late in the ever increasingly unsynchronized syncblog sponsored by Jeremy Smith over at Hacking Christianity. Jeremy has found this Lenten season full of all sorts of busy and hasn’t really kept up with the discussion and sync posts thus far, but check out The Epistle of Jim for at least one other blogger covering these books!
Like Jim, I find this my favorite of the bunch thus far. I’ll admit that a portion of my liking this book is that it shares some of the same left-leaning theological pre-commitments I hold, but there’s a lot to like about this book aside from those things as well.
The third book in the “not so synched” syncblog plan led by Jeremy over at Hacking Christianity is Virginia Bassford’s Lord I Love the Church and We Need Help.
I’ll admit to being a bit concerned with this one after reading the introduction. Bassford starts out by describing her work as influenced by ethnography inasmuch as she lays out her analysis of The UMC’s current state and a way forward in a series of stories that illuminate her points. She merits ethnography with the following:
I have survived the grade-a-thon that is midterms weekend and will actually get this blog post up in time! While it is my fault for setting assignments that come due at midterms for all three of my classes at Gallaudet University, it’s also somewhat unavoidable to have this sort of crunch in the middle of the term. While students may procrastinate until the last minute then complain about having a rough week of writing papers for all their classes in one week, teachers are stuck with it. We can be lenient and have things due the last day the class meets in that week, but we have only until the next Monday at noon to get our grades in to the registrar! Students don’t always realize this as they often belabor under the notion that they’re doing all the work in the classroom and we’re cruising on easy street. It’s not quite as cushy of a job as a pastor who “only works half a day week” but it’s (mis)perceived in the same manner! So I tend to grouse about it and make sure my students know the troubles I see.
Ok Kirk, focus now…focus! Honestly, it was a hectic weekend and I just finished this book this morning. Hence why my syncblog is posting in the PM hours instead of earlier. But since Hacking Christianity hasn’t posted up their main snycblog either, I don’t feel terribly guilty.
Let me begin by saying I didn’t expect to like this book. However, that was based on the presumptive knowledge that this is the “death tsunami” book talked about in UMC circles.
I dislike the metaphorical use of tsunami to explain the inevitable effect of an ever aging denomination. Weems chooses this term because he’s looking for something that triggers alarm and horror. He states,
As I’ve been reading for the General Conference book study dialogue over at Hacking Christianity I got the usual United Methodist News Service daily email and decided to see what was the buzz in my denomination today.
I was immediately interested in this tidbit titled “African Students Reject Restructuring Proposal.” After reading the whole thing, I think it resonates with my concerns about how restructuring discussions could impact Deaf ministry as well. I’ll elaborate more on this in a future post when I address some concerns with the first General Conference book we’re reading in the study by Lovett Weems, but I do want to connect what I’m thinking with this bold statement by the African Student Movement.
I recently gave a lecture at The Pacific School of Religion in which I attempted to set up a discussion about the UMC Call To Action, the Methodist Federation for Social Action alternative, and the newly minted response of the Bishops of the Western Jurisdiction.
I referenced my good friend Rev. Jeremy Smith (of course!) but also reflected upon some areas where I might find some disagreement with him. We had an email exchange after I alerted him that he might be getting some traffic from PSR this weekend and Jeremy said, “you have to blog this.”