Lord, Forgive Us For Starting Worship Late!
This began Pastor Gerald's closing prayer at our annual church business meeting yesterday! And the reason our meeting ranneth over was due to the dithering over how much to pay the person filling in a new staff position at Bethany, an education coordinator. Unlike Karn who I understand volunteered for the position decades ago, church council and other deciders figured we need to at least pay a salary commensurate with a first-year teacher in Minot Public Schools. And in order to raise the money for said salary, offerings and other incoming monies will have to go up. So essentially the budget was approved for a position beginning in July that we currently don't know whether we will have the monies that we've allocated for it along with all other church expenses, but we're going forward on faith. Faith that people already part of our fellowship will give more and faith that more people will come to Bethany and become regular givers.
It is a delicate balance.
Saturday morning the kids were with me at Breakfast with the Boys and we all ate pretty well. The kids played in what they still call "my" Sunday School classroom -- where Parable Playhouse was held. We use a different curriculum now, one that's ostensibly more in line with the Lutheran Church's liturgical calendar with a set ... set of fifty-two series of Scriptures you use within the year. I just have moments, and I've seen some of the curriculum even though I don't teach it, that I think we're trying to start confirmation earlier and earlier before our youth can be developmentally ready for it. And parents complain about public schools -- not all of them, but the ones the news bothers reporting about, typically in non-flyover states -- "teaching to the test" as opposed to encouraging individual inquiry once you have the tools to look into or live some of the lessons yourself. I know I'm making a judgment call here, but that's life.
Matthew 7:1, non-Christians' favorite Scripture.
"Judge not, lest ye be judged" should really be read today with the meaning "Condemn not, lest ye be condemned". The English language has changed in four hundred years since the King James Version of the Bible was written. I judge whether it's safe to make a right turn at a red light or whether something I eat will be healthy for me or not. I know I am powerless to pass a final sentence on anyone or anything, to condemn anyone or anything, except as far as it affects me. My right to swing my fist ends where your nose begins. Certainly you and I are able to speak and act when something is happening we believe is wrong, but being willing to wreak chaos on our surroundings is not the solution. However much we may disagree with one another in a meeting or in an election or in our families or even in our own households, there's no excuse to be violent or condemning because you and I are not the final authority on anything.
You can replace a broken window, but you can't undo it.
David
It is a delicate balance.
Saturday morning the kids were with me at Breakfast with the Boys and we all ate pretty well. The kids played in what they still call "my" Sunday School classroom -- where Parable Playhouse was held. We use a different curriculum now, one that's ostensibly more in line with the Lutheran Church's liturgical calendar with a set ... set of fifty-two series of Scriptures you use within the year. I just have moments, and I've seen some of the curriculum even though I don't teach it, that I think we're trying to start confirmation earlier and earlier before our youth can be developmentally ready for it. And parents complain about public schools -- not all of them, but the ones the news bothers reporting about, typically in non-flyover states -- "teaching to the test" as opposed to encouraging individual inquiry once you have the tools to look into or live some of the lessons yourself. I know I'm making a judgment call here, but that's life.
Matthew 7:1, non-Christians' favorite Scripture.
"Judge not, lest ye be judged" should really be read today with the meaning "Condemn not, lest ye be condemned". The English language has changed in four hundred years since the King James Version of the Bible was written. I judge whether it's safe to make a right turn at a red light or whether something I eat will be healthy for me or not. I know I am powerless to pass a final sentence on anyone or anything, to condemn anyone or anything, except as far as it affects me. My right to swing my fist ends where your nose begins. Certainly you and I are able to speak and act when something is happening we believe is wrong, but being willing to wreak chaos on our surroundings is not the solution. However much we may disagree with one another in a meeting or in an election or in our families or even in our own households, there's no excuse to be violent or condemning because you and I are not the final authority on anything.
You can replace a broken window, but you can't undo it.
David
Comments
Post a Comment