A couple more housecleaning things. I know how you readers love posts about the inner workings of my blog!
First, I updated the link to Cerulean Sanctum. Dan’s ditched Blogger for WordPress and got a new address in the process. Update your links, if you’ve got ’em.
Second, I’d like a little help form any Javascript gurus who are reading. I understand that my EasyComments script that provides the comment formatting and live preview on the entry page doesn’t work in FireFox. If you use FireFox, hold your breath, say a prayer, double check your virus software (I know how you FF guys are. 🙂 ) and launch IE to see what you’ve been missing. Cool, eh? Anyway, I’d like to know why it breaks in FireFox. If you understand Javascript, take a look at the code and let me know what you think. I don’t know beans about this and only cobbled this together by wild guess and trial and error. I suspect it’s a real mess.
That’s all for now, thanks.
[EDIT:I guess it would be good to give you the actual address for Dan’s new site. The old is http://www.dedelen.com/cerulean.html the new is http://ceruleansanctum.com]
Month: May 2006
Parable in Practice
From The Week magazine in the “It wasn’t all bad” section, just inside the cover [My comments in brackets]:
Six months ago, Rev. Michael Eden of the St. Peter and St. Mary’s Church in Stowmarket, England, decided to raise money to repair the 14th-century structure. Invoking the biblical story of the talents, Eden distributed about $18 apiece to 90 parishioners [That’s about $1,620 – salguod], hoping they would “go forth and multiply.” They did just that, returning with more than $9,200 [That’s about $102 each – salguod]. One congregant used the money to buy baking ingredients, and made more than $750 selling cakes and scones. Another earned $138 by selling scarfs made from wool she bought. “God gives us all sorts of things,” observed Eden, “but does not expect us to waste them and do nothing.”
Pretty cool, eh? I would have loved to hear his charge when handing out the money.
Oh, and I wonder, did anyone come back with only $18 after hiding it in a hole in the ground?
Bye Bye Dilbert
I’ve pulled Scott Adam’s Dilbert Blog from the blogroll. I’ve been close to doing it for several weeks since he started running ads for a dating service that touted sex as a selling point, but this week I noticed my pop up blocker going nuts whenever I visited. That was the proverbial staw, and he’s gone.
Scott’s funny and all, but I’m tired of trying not to look at the right side of the screen and I don’t need the hassle of pop up ads. And I’m certainly not going to promote or endorse either.
It’s Decided
Well, it is decided. After over a month of deliberate, open dialog, the Columbus Church of Christ will sign the unity proposal. While I am sad and disappointed in that decision, the process that lead to it tempers my emotions quite a lot.
We began with a discussion at our leaders meeting back on April 2nd. Nearly all of the family group leaders and others present had read the proposal and we simply went around the room expressing our thoughts. I was surprised that most people at that meeting had some level of reservation or concern with it. The reasons for concern and the level of it varied, but based on what I heard at that first meeting, it seemed that there was not a majority of support for the agreement.
Next, we asked the membership to read it and we had a discussion at our house church midweeks on the 12th. Then, the leaders came back together on the 23rd for a little more discussion and a ‘vote’. It was not a simple yes or no vote, but what’s called a Likert Scale question. The question was:
Are you in favor of signing the Unity Proposal?
+2 -Strongly in favor
+1 – In favor
0 – neither in favor or not in favor
-1 – Not in favor
-2 – Strongly not in favor
The idea was to capture the strength of opinion as well as the simple yes or no. This process was then repeated at our congregational midweek on the 26th.
The results were that more people wanted to sign than did not. For the leadership group, close to 2/3 were in favor, about 1/4 not and the rest neutral. Those not in favor had a stronger feeling than those in favor, but the result was an average of about +.54.
For the congregation (without leadership), about half were in favor, slightly under a third neutral and the rest not in favor. Again, those not in favor tended to feel slightly more strongly about it, with a resulting average of +.41. The goal of polling the congregation was note to have a democratic vote on what to do, but to get the pulse of the church, to give everyone a chance to be heard (2 chances, actually) and to make sure that the leadership’s consensus & decision was not out of line from the church as a whole.
Combined then it was a little more than half for, a little more than a fourth neutral and the rest against. The overall average was +.45.
And so we sign, I think the email went out today. Am I disappointed? Yes and no. Yes, because I had hoped for more, I had wished that we could somehow rise above this. It seems that we aren’t there yet and that makes me sad. Perhaps I should instead be sad that we as people continue to fail to rise above these sort of things.
But I am not sad about how we went about this. Everyone who wanted to be heard was heard. We stopped the process when just one of us needed to pause to collect his emotions (You’ll never guess who. More on that later). We did not find agreement, but we reached a consensus. I know ther are ways that we could have perhaps done better, but not much.
As our minister has said this is not the end of our striving for unity. It wasn’t really the beginning either, just a step on the road. It was potentially a perilous one, and even if I don’t like the result, I think we handled it well.
Scheming Swindlers
A shameless rip off of another’s shameless rip off:
The matter is quite simple. The Bible is very easy to understand. But we Christians are a bunch of scheming swindlers. We pretend to be unable to understand it because we know very well that the minute we understand we are obliged to act accordingly. Take any words in the New Testament and forget everything except pledging yourself to act accordingly. My God, you will say, if I do that my whole life will be ruined. Herein lies the real place of Christian scholarship. Christian scholarship is the Church’s prodigious invention to defend itself against the Bible, to ensure that we can continue to be good Christians without the Bible coming too close. Dreadful it is to fall into the hands of the living God. Yes, it is even dreadful to be alone with the New Testament.
Soren Kierkegaard
So, do you study to conform yourself to God’s way or defend your position?
Thanks to Greg for the quote.
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