UCC launches new blog

The United Church of Christ announced on Sept. 26 the launch of a new blog to highlight congregational news and to facilitate discussion of social justice issues.

The Rev. Chuck Currie, a longtime UCC blogger and progressive writer, is maintaining the new blog. Currie, a UCC pastor and advocate for the homeless, has been blogging for a while now.  We look forward to this addition to the UCC’s news coverage.

One post of note — a young woman from Chicago who went missing recently is a member of Trinity United Church of Christ, one of the UCC’s largest congregations. Trinity is asking for prayers as police search for clues in the disappearance of 28-year-old Nailah Franklin, whose car was found abandoned in Hammond, Indiana earlier this week.

From the editors, re DHM article

A couple of weeks ago, DisciplesWorld was given information that led to an article about Disciples Home Missions, which we posted on our website yesterday.  The editors of the magazine would like to share some of our thoughts behind this story.

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This has been an extremely difficult story to write.  It involves church leaders with whom we work and worship on a regular basis. We love the church and the individual people who together comprise the church. This story has raised the hard questions of what it means to live a Christian life acutely aware of the ways in which we fail God and one another, and the ways in which we are reconciled to God and one another. It raises questions of accountability and transparency, and questions of mercy and care. This story will not be the last in this saga. 

The story began when long-time DHM employee Jane Lawrence was asked by Interim President Dan Clark to clear out her desk and leave the building on the same day she announced her retirement, August 27. This was also Clark’s first day on the job.  That’s unusual.

We’ve reported on other abrupt departures of DHM employees over the years, but those were often dictated by a decrease in funding. Lawrence’s work was pivotal to a number of programs that serve congregations, young leaders, and regions; why wouldn’t she be retained for some continuity in an interim period? General ministries serve the whole church and DHM board members are elected by the church. What happened here?

Clark would not give an explanation other than to say that Lawrence’s retirement was effective on August 27. 

Lawrence’s explanation is that she was treated disrespectfully after 17 years of service at DHM in reprisal for bringing concerns about former president Arnold Nelson’s judgment and leadership to the attention of the DHM board. 

Is this credible? Were Lawrence’s prior actions something that could bring about a reprisal? Those questions led us back to the resignation of Nelson which was announced May 21. DisciplesWorld reported on Nelson’s resignation then, and wrote a longer article in the July/August issue. We reported what we now recognize to be only part of the truth because we were not aware of the events and charges that preceded his resignation.

Understandably, DHM board members and staff alike have been cautious about publicly discussing confidential personnel matters such as Nelson’s resignation and the handling of Lawrence’s retirement. However, we have confirmed the brunt of Lawrence’s claim about what led to Nelson’s resignation. And we have confirmed that several DHM board members were very unhappy with staff about it.   

So, here we have a general ministry of the church about which rumors have circulated for years, rumors of poor judgment and dysfunction, rumors about a close-knit board of directors that likes to operate in secrecy, complaints about a lack of vision and lack of responsiveness. But rumors alone are not news.

And a window on that system has opened up, albeit one opened by a woman who served the church for her entire career and is now relegated to the role of “disgruntled employee.” But it has opened, nevertheless. As a result, questions arise about the operations of the DHM board of directors, many questions that remain unanswered. Questions concerning accountability and transparency, decision-making, and oversight.

DisciplesWorld made attempts to find out answers. Not surprisingly, several people in positions of leadership were unwilling to speak with us. Late last week, we made some headway and are working on a follow-up article that gives DHM leadership’s perspective on its operations and systems of accountability.

Not all of the answers to questions will reveal scandal, of course. The motives of the DHM board may well be good and honorable, but without some transparency before the people who elected them and the congregations they serve, the actions of the DHM board become suspect. They become suspect even if they don’t deserve to be suspect. Understand here that we are not accusing the DHM board of wrong doing; we are asking questions that if go unanswered leave the mind open to wonder and worry. And they are not unreasonable questions for church folks to ask of their elected leaders.

The irony is that if Clark had not so abruptly dismissed Lawrence from the building and declined to explain it, the questions about Nelson’s resignation and the operations of the DHM board may have never seen the light of day.

Reverend Fun - pizza in Eden

Rape of women and girls in the Congo

Blogger and Disciples minister Thomas Kleinert of Vine Street Christian Church in Nashville shares his concern over the plight of women and girls in the Congo, where brutal rape has become a widespread weapon in the ongoing war there.

Kleinert links to a Glamour magazine article by Eve Ensler (of Vagina Monologues fame) who traveled to Congo to interview women and girls who have survived this unimaginable violence, thanks in part to the work of a doctor who has opened a hospital to care for them.  Ensler’s in-depth article is stunning. It’s not for the faint of heart, or stomach, and I admire the bravery of these women who shared their stories with her, and her ability to take them in and write about them.

Clicking around from there, I came across links to something called V-Day - an initiative by Ensler and others to help these women and girls. There is a lot of info on the site, but especially compelling is the photo gallery, I’m including a link here because it puts a human face on the story.

Let’s keep these women and girls in our prayers. And thanks, Rev. Kleinert, for sharing this.

Disciples help bring Anne Lamott to Omaha

Even though she was uninvited to speak at Creighton University Medical Center, author Anne Lamott will be coming to Omaha after all. As soon as Creighton announced it was cancelling Lamott’s speech, Disciples pastor Nancy Brink was on the phone. She and her congregation, North Side Christian Church, along with five other congregations who are part of a group called Connections, convinced Lamott’s agent and Lamott herself that she would be warmly welcomed in Omaha despite her views on abortion and assisted suicide. Read more about it here.

I know that not everyone appreciates Lamott’s writing, but personally, if it weren’t for Traveling Mercies, I might not be a Christian. (God gets a little of that credit too, of course.)

My own son is just a couple of weeks older than Lamott’s son, Sam. It’s funny how much I’ve been able to relate to her Sam stories. I feel like they’ve grown up together, going from curious little boys to sulky adolescents to rebellious (and sometimes thoughtful) young men.

I don’t live close to Omaha and will be at the beach in South Carolina next week; otherwise I’d be there to listen. And to say “thanks” to Lamott for her writing, and to the group who invited her back after her uninvitation.

Reverend Fun - Joseph’s Coat of Many Colas

Recently I had reason to go back and read the Joseph stories on the Old Testament. It’s kind of amazing that we teach kids in Sunday School and Vacation Bible School to admire the guy. Resourceful - yes. Ethical - maybe not so much. Even back then, Joseph secretly reminded me of that annoying kid in school who was always bragging about how much better he was, and then would run and tattle on you. 

Anyway, let’s lighten it up. Here is a Joseph cartoon from the Reverend Fun website for your Monday evening enjoyment:

Do video games teach ethics?

(Disclaimer: I came of age at a time when Pac-man and Space Invaders were still cool. I played Pong with my brother on our basement TV before it was “retro.” Today I couldn’t operate a Playstation controller to save my life, and my only contact with X-Box is when I accidentally trip over the one the kids leave in the middle of the living room floor. Having said all that, I’d love to hear from gamers out there but please resist the temptation to just respond with “Duh!” OK?!?)

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Video games mostly get a bad rap in the mainstream press. Every time there’s a high school shooting, it has become standard practice for journalists and investigators to want to know if the perpetrators played violent video games. Frankly, I tend to lean toward the view (in regular arguments with my teenage son) that first person shooter games desensitize players to violence (along with TV, movies, music, blah blah blah). What kind  of role they play in prompting someone to take action, who knows?

 About the only positive stories that circulate (again, in the mainstream press) make the argument that video games teach eye-hand coordination or other motor skills. But after reading about the game “Bioshock” in the latest issue of Wired, and then following my son’s progress over the course of a week as he freed little orphan girls, hacked robots’ programming to get them to help him fight, raided corpses and collected objects and followed the bidding of “Atlas” in Bioshock’s creepy, Art Deco underwater world, I became convinced that Bioshock is a virtual ethics lesson.

Modeled somewhat on the objectivist philosophy of Ayn Rand, Bioshock presents players with many opportunities to choose between helping oneself (survive, get stronger, evolve) or helping others. There’s no real clue along the way as to how these choices may help a player “win” or “succeed.” But that’s not to say that they don’t matter.  The choices have consequences.  

According to my son, several video game designers have gone well beyond the notion that personal power at the expense of ethics and morals will triumph in the virtual world. Characters evolve. The options are almost infinite, it would seem.

An interesting aside - my son also said that Japanese video games tend to have more character evolution and less of a “life or death” theme. His rationale — that death is not as feared in Japanese culture, so in video games, players aren’t as motivated to do anything just to survive.

For more on Bioshock, read Kieron Gillon’s review in Wired and click thru the screenshots from the game to get a feel for it. (Note: Bioshock is rated “M” for Mature.)

To blog…or not to blog

That is the question. Yes, the News Muse blog has been absent of any new posts for a while now. Partly because of the difficulty of finding the time to post (many of you bloggers can relate). But also because we/I at DisciplesWorld have been noodling around with the question - what do we want this blog to be? How can it be interesting and useful to those who would read it (y’all haven’t given up on us have you?)

The other dilemma is finding something to say. Frankly, there are things it’s best not to write about, thoughts that, if expressed, will surely come back to deliver a karmic bite at some inopportune time. And then, most days, there’s the dilemma of having nothing much to say. I marvel at the time and energy some people put into posting original and well-developed thoughts every day, or at least a couple of times a week. For me at least, I can’t even recall the punch line to a knock-knock joke by the end of the day, most days.

 So I’ve worked out something that, I hope, will appeal to readers while being sustainable on our end. All this is to say, look for a revived “News Muse” starting today.

 Now….to deliver on what I’ve promised….(stay tuned).

New Disciples Blog: Open Hearts - Affirming Pages

Disciples pastor Steve Kindle has recently launched the Open Hearts - Affirming Pages blog.

Blog description: “This blog is intended to be a spirited conversation with the church regarding our reluctance and our need to affirm gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender Christians.”

Check it out!