Just got off the phone with Jerry from Compassion International‘s office in Colorado. Jerry is working hard to help pastors talk about poverty in their churches and let Christians in churches know what they can do (with Compassion) about child poverty. This is called ”church engagement.”
Jerry was a paid church staff guy for years himself so he knows about budgets and denominational politics and deacons and elders and the hassle that trying new things and talking about poverty and money and finding the time to start new stuff can be sometimes. So his empathy alone is quite appreciated by the pastors he talks to I’m sure. But beyond empathy, Jerry is able to offer something new as of late - he can customize a church’s partnership with Compassion these days.
For example, let’s say a church is really gung-ho about fighting AIDS in Africa. Jerry can come up with a plan for partnering with Compassion that involves stuff like fundraising for an AIDS orphan program, buying drugs for pregnant moms with HIV, sponsoring children in an AIDS afflicted area, taking church folks on trips to work on a church ministering in an AIDS affected area and on an on.
This hasn’t always been the case. In years past, if a church was interested in partnering with Compassion somehow, about all they could do was talk about COmpassion one Sunday and pass out sponsorship packets...which is GREAT! but a lot of churches want to do more.
And, sadly, there are a lot of churches that want to do nothing. One mega church comes to mind. It has tens of thousands of members (no joke) and NO GLOBAL MINISTRY OF ANY KIND I recently discovered. They don’t fund one missionary. They don’t give to a denomination that spends time and money overseas either. What is this church collectively doing for the rest of the world? Nothing. Nada. Zilch.*
Jerry’s job is tough in such a case - a job I couldn’t do, to be honest, having seen what I’ve seen. Jerry loves these pastors. He empathizes. He listens. He understands. He kindly, gently even, asks them to let Compassion be any part - even the smallest part - of their church’s ministry to the world. He provides them with information, theology, customized opportunities - whatever’s needed - and then waits.
I don’t wait well. I don’t wait on self-absorbed pastors spending millions to broadcast themselves to “video venues” while spending NOTHING (literally) on the those outside their slice of suburbia well. I call them things like self-absorbed pastors spending millions to broadcast themselves to “video venues” while spending NOTHING (literally) on the those outside their slice of suburbia. I’m not a good person. I’m working on it. It’s harder for me to love the rich sometimes than it is the poor - and I’m supposed to love them both.
Thank God for Jerry. Really. Thank God.
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BUTT COVERING: This paragraph - and this entire post - is all me. This is a mega ginormous church I KNOW, not Jerry. It’s info I GOT, not Jerry. This is MY opinion/criticism/judgmental attitude and not Jerry’s. Nothing in this post represents Compassion International or Jerry or Jesus or any other members of the Trinity. And thanks for reading.
Thanks to Ubermadchen, Welcome To Married Life, Andrew Barnes, T.S. Harrison, Poke It With A Stick, Supersimbo, and Diapers And Stilettos for the recent link.
‘Preciate it.
I’ve added some new links to the old blog roll as well (which rotates - perhaps I should explain why sometime?).
Our Mission is a blog I found through Skribit about the intersection of missions and technology. If you want to better understand TLA’s like SEO and RSS, you’ll want to bookmark this one.
Guy Kawasaki doesn’t blog often enough. But I’m interested in anything he has to say about marketing and the internet. He was at Apple in the early days - charged with creating the “cult” of Mac. Done. Now he writes books and starts companies and helps other company-starters succeed.
The Pioneer Woman is what you’d get if Martha Stewart and Ansel Adams produced a (slightly) agoraphobic dog-loving rancher/writer offspring with an freakishly long tongue. Her site’s incredibly well designed. I mostly go there to read her confessions but you should poke around in the rest of her site awhile. There’s recipes, photography lessons and even a serial romance novel (sort of).
Who’ve you recently discovered in the blogosphere? Who are your favorite reads?
Motherless Mother’s Day weekend is over.
Becky.
Is.
Home.
Excuse me while I answer 1500 e-mails, write an article for some people, finish a web site and pee in private.
Day four of Motherless Mother’s Day weekend in bullets:
1. A few too many of my fingers presently smell like poo on account of them recently being submerged in poo. The sink is too far away. I’m not getting up.
2. Penelope (age three) swam underwater for the first time today. I was there. I saw it.
3. Gabriella (age seven) says I cut apples better than mommy. Heck yes I do.
4. I read a book that did not rhyme and contained no pictures for half an hour while Redneck Neighbor’s kids played with mine in the cul-de-sac. I zoned out for a minute or two pondering what words rhyme with “corpse.”
5. Redneck Neighbor’s wife made us tortellini for dinner, with home made alfredo sauce so good I wanted to put it in my pants.
6. Spellchecker doesn’t know the word “tortellini” and underlined “put it in my pants” just because it might break a commandment. My computer’s periodically illiterate and often a bit self-righteousness like this.
7. McDonalds employees are bewildered when you play on their indoor glassed-in playground without eating their food. And, on topic, playing on their indoor glassed-in playground and breathing their indoor glassed-in playground air makes me long for an anti-bacterial wipe the size of a beach towel - or a bed sheet - and a replacement set of lungs. Perhaps something to consider in the next Happy Meal-toys-we-should-dispense-like-immediately meeting.
8. Ice cream is addictive for preschoolers after only two simultaneous days of consumption. “Cotton Candy” flavored is the worst offender. Withdrawals are ugly. Fruit leather - and anything else “edible” and unfortunately named after dried out animal parts - is not a recommended step-down substance.
9. “I’ve been in prison since I was three and my mommy put me here...” sung with much melancholy in the bathtub by Gresham (age five) while strumming an invisible “cooter” guitar. All country label A&R guys can contact me through this site.
10. Spellchecker doesn’t know the word “cooter.” Just added the definition to its dictionary: Gresham for “acoustic.”
11. Teleconference with Compassion folks about the new CompassionBloggers.com site launch (coming soon) while finding lost blankets for Penelope, turning an aerobics step and two folding chairs into a playable facsimile of an airplane’s cabin, passing out fruit leather (See #8), and putting a princess dress on a miniature flight attendant (like you do). Thank God and Panasonic for the mute button.
12. Going now to wash poo off my fingers and alfredo sauce out of my pants and then make my bed on the couch in the den. The princess/flight attendant, future country singer and apple-slicing-appreciator are asleep in my bed. And are possibly - at this moment right here - the cutest small people on the planet.
I don’t know how Sophie, Kat, Shannon, Melanie and Ree do it. I really don’t. How does a mother - sans servants - have time to blog?
Of course, I’ve never met these ladies’ kids. They may be the smelly kid in their class, subsist on a diet of Pop Tarts and Bagel Bites, wear shoes three sizes too small and speak only in quotes from Lost and The Office. It’s probable.
After I put the kids down at the end of Motherless Mother’s Day weekend day three, I spent an hour cleaning dishes and sweeping up cereal shrapnel and stray marker lids, talked for fifteen minutes to Becky on the phone about how it’s going in New York, resented her good time oh-so-slightly for another five, then spent the last hour of my evening returning e-mails. And then I rose from the couch, sighed deeply and actually said to an empty room, “Geez, I just need a minute of doing nothing alone.” And that sounded familiar.
And it’s not like I don’t help out when Becky’s in town. I do quite a bit I think. Because of my “work” I am able to choose to be around more than most dads. But I am quite spoiled, still, by the few hours I get to spend each day totally alone. “Working,” yes. But alone.
I miss alone. Peeing without having to cut things off mid-stream to play Jimmy Carter in the middle of America (wanting to eat all the cheese sticks right now and by himself) and Hezbollah (wanting to throw all the cheese sticks in the trash as retribution for something. Or just because she’s three and, therefore, temporarily bi-polar).
I miss peeing.
And me without my catheter.
But - and I know this’ll sound really cheesy - I envy Becky. I’m getting to see every little thing I usually miss. Miss because I’m not fully present when I’m “present” because I’m thinking of what I just did or what I’m about to do or what I won’t have time to do. Or missed because I’m off in my office doing doing doing. With Becky out of town, I’m done doing. I’m not missing a thing. I’m just here. Just taking a walk, flying a kite, eating ice cream, sitting in the grass, playing Candyland, pouring the millionth glass of water. And playing Jimmy Carter occasionally.
