Shouting into the vacuum has gotten me the attention I deserve.

If you don’t read Slate’s Dear Prudence column, you should. However, please take a minute to read this week’s, especially the second letter from “Church Newbies”.

Religious debate in America

First, check this out.

A little help from my friends.

Hey, all. I wrote this update of everyone’s favorite Covenant Prayer in the Wesleyan Tradition to use in worship Sunday. I thought I’d run it by you.

Howdy do?

Greetings, humans. I am finally settled in and feeling good. I’m hoping we’re here for a while. Things feel pretty good. I’ll be a little more attentive to my blog and Facebook and all that now, because we finally got internet. We had to go with satellite, but it’s not too bad.

Anyway, if there’s anyone who reads this and wants our new cell/address/what have you, send me a note. I think we covered just about everyone, but someone always gets missed. I’ll post something soon about the churches themselves, once I have a better feel for them, but, as I already said, it feels good here. That is all.

We’re moving to Pinkstaff! Wait, where?

Here it is, at long last, the details of the move. I will be appointed as the pastor of the Pinkstaff/Birds charge of the Illinois Great Rivers Conference of the United Methodist Church beginning July 1, 2008. Pinkstaff worships fifty or sixty on a Sunday, but they have a membership of fifty or sixty. They draw in people from a wide area, including Indiana, and they are, get this, an interracial congregation. Birds worships ten and is mostly made up of farmers. Pinkstaff is not a town; it is a clump of houses just a couple miles north of Lawrenceville on Rt. 1. This will put us a little further from family, but we can deal with that for a while.

Confuzzelpation

Anyone reading this is well appraised of my whining about, er, issues going on at church. After the ad council meeting I wrote about last week, the DS got a couple calls saying that there would be nine people leaving the church if he didn’t move me immediately. In prayer and discussion with me, he decided it would be best to give in on the big issue. He agreed with me that it would make future change harder because it would reinforce the negative behaviors we are facing, but it would make the rest of my time here more bearable. I swallowed my pride and did it.

A little part of me died today. So pathetic. Feel sorry for me.

I know that title was dramatic, but it’s apt. I guess it’s over. Today, after church, I was ambushed at an ad council meeting. The main concern was that I am refusing to allow the previous pastor come back to do a wedding. I stressed I would be happy to allow him to participate in the wedding, but that he was not the pastor covenental community yadda yadda yadda. The conversation became about how inflexible I am, but the only other example offered was something else I had met them half way on. The least healthy leader in the church (and that’s saying something) resigned from all his positions, but I doubt he meant it. He’ll probably come back next week and pretend nothing ever happened. I hope he was serious, but I’m pretty sure he wasn’t.

Joshua’s Pretty Good Day

What an awesome day!

It was international Secure your ID Day, and we spent the morning at Misty’s Better Business Bureau’s parking lot handing out goody bags and taking people’s personal documents to be shredded by a real pro who looked surprisingly like Meat Loaf. (The singer, not the food stuff.)

Linkies

I really don’t want this blog to just have a bunch of links to stuff I think is neat, but this is one of the cleverest contests I’ve seen in a while. I’ve even submitted an entry. Wish me luck!

Pushing my boundaries

I participated in something new last night.