From Bits to Bites &
Windshields to Worship

No one deserves tragedy. Regardless of whether you’re a sinner or a saint, a prince or a pauper, tragic events never occur on the basis of merit.

Sunday, February 14, when I was 6 years old, we were sitting in worship when one of the ushers came forward and told my family we needed to step outside for a moment. He told my parents that our house was on fire. A neighbor had called the fire department and, knowing where we went to church, called the church. (Ah, the days before cell phones.) We returned home to find that the fire had mostly been extinguished, but one end of our house was a burned-out shell and much of the rest of the house suffered smoke damage.

Sunday, November 30, 20 years, 9 months, and 16I days later, as my parents were driving home to Virginia after visiting my wife Becky and me in Indiana for Thanksgiving, it happened again.

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Today is Blog Action Day, an annual nonprofit event that aims to unite the world’s bloggers, podcasters and videocasters, to post about the same issue on the same day. The idea is to raise awareness and trigger a global discussion. Last year the topic was the environment, this year it’s poverty.

As a missional-minded Christian I find myself thinking about how to reach out to and help those who experience poverty on a daily basis. Over and over again the bible speaks out against systemic poverty. There’s recognition that poverty is a part of the ongoing brokenness of humanity, but there’s also the promise that in God’s Kingdom injustices such as poverty will be overcome. Still, poverty remains a pervasive problem in the world today.
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Those of you who are regular readers know that I have some doubts about the actual environmental benefits of both hybrids and flex-fuel / ethanol powered cars.

However, it seems the rest of our country is sold on the idea, including the automakers that sell to our market. In the past few weeks quite a few announcements have been made about more hybrids that are getting ready to roll down the assembly line: the Chevy Volt, the (new) Honda Insight, and the Mercedes-Benz S400 Hybrid. Call me skeptical, but I’m still not convinced …

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In the interest of full and complete disclosure, this post is what some might call “shameless self promotion.” However I’d like to think that since I’m not promoting myself per se’ and rather the church I am a pastor of then it’s OK.

This past Sunday after worship, the Richmond Church of the Brethren (CoB) celebrated the launch of its new website! This site has been months in the making, as it was in progress for quite some time before I became pastor in June.  You can check out the site to see all its exciting bells and whistles, including online calendars, a “conversations” blog, and online newsletter distribution. Since I did quite a bit of work getting the site finalized and ready for launch, I’ll talk about some of the more technical details of the site in the rest of this post.

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It came up recently in a conversation with a friend that it seems everyone is jumping on the environmental bandwagon these days. While as recently as a few years ago things like organic gardening, energy conservation, and sustainable living were relegated to the fringes of society, today they have gone mainstream. This is true not only in secular culture, but also within the Christian community.

Serve God, Save the Planet is written by J. Matthew Sleeth, a former emergency room doctor, ER director, and chief of medical staff. He writes primarily out of his experience in evangelical Christianity, which is reflected by many of the theological assertions in the book. While I don’t necessarily agree with all of the theology he espouses, I do think that his core tenets of tying the care of creation with our love and service of God and fellow humans and are sound.

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