Penn State Stuff

Jess: Andrew specifically requested that I elaborate my view on stewardship from my reflection blog for my field education. Next time, buddy. Today, I’m going to fulfill Allison’s request for us to do something topical.

I’m sure most of you have heard about the “Penn State Scandal” by now. If you haven’t, you can read a quick synopsis of it here:http://espn.go.com/ncf/topics/_/page/penn-state-scandal.

Moving beyond the obvious issue of sexual abuse of children, this is one of those stories that just makes me deeply sad. How can we keep letting things like this happen to children? What will happen to the children (now youth) who were abused? More importantly, why did it take ten years for someone to speak up about this atrocity?

The whole issue just makes me wonder what we’re teaching people in the US. Most likely, the children were ashamed and terrified of telling someone. They didn’t feel safe telling the truth—is there any way to make this better? Worse than that, there were adults who witnessed all of these events. Where did they learn that silence was the correct response? When did permitting helpless children be abused become okay? Why are our children not safe anymore?

Another problem with this whole thing has been the news coverage. Not only do those poor families have to revisit all of the pain and shame, but they have to do it publicly. What a horrifying experience. At the same time, the media has spent so much time talking about the “Penn State Community ,” the football team, the effects on sports nationwide, and everyone else who might be affected by the scandal. Everyone, that is, except the victims and their families. Why do we care so little about the people most affected by this scandal? Who cares about football when the children of our nation are being forced into terrible situations?

And how do we as Christians respond to this atrocity? And how do we prevent things like this happening in the future? Jesus calls us to care for the “least of these.” He clearly includes children in this classification. Yet it is so difficult for us to intervene in situations like this. How are we supposed to know? Obviously, if we see something happening that is so wrong, we should work to stop it. But we’re not always there in the moment that something happens. We can pray. We can hope. We can advocate for the rights of children, and for punishments for those who betray the trust between adults and children. And we can weep and mourn with those who have been so abused.

There’s no easy way to fix the problems of the world, which is something I have a hard time dealing with. I want to make everybody better, solve all the issues, and make the world a better place. Yet I can’t do that by myself, and I can’t do it with a snap of my fingers. All I can do is keep praying, loving, and striving. And together, maybe we can make a change.

Wes: So, ever since I started at these churches, I've realized just how little I pay attention to the goings on of the world around me. I have grown up in this oblivious little bubble, and I am completely happy in my ignorance most of the time. The problem with this is that the only things that are really able to break through and pop this bubble are the really horrible things that make me sad to be in a world where these things happen. Then, because I hear about these things, I go and spend a good number of hours over a few days searching through all of the horrors that occurred between the present and however long it has been since my previous bubble was popped. This saddens me even more, so I erect another bubble and leave the larger world to its own devices for a while... until my bubble is popped again. 

This isn't exactly the healthiest way to deal with things, and I've learned that especially now that I am a pastor situation, I really have to keep up on current events and goings on so that I can engage in discussion with my parishioners about all of it. 

The Penn State thing might be the last bubble popper. 

Like Jessica said, the whole thing just makes me sad. I don't like believing that people like me--regular people (or at least as regular as one can get)--could act like that and do those things. It's sad. And the thing that saddens me the most is honestly not that this child abuse happened. That is a horrible thing and I can't begin to truly speak on the depth of that. But what is even more horrible to me is that there were people that knew and didn't say anything to stop it. I know that Joe Paterno and so many others are said to be in this boat, and that saddens me deeply. 

It's like that scene from The Incredibles when Mr. Incredible sees a robbery happening during a meeting with his boss. His boss does brushes it off, as if it is nothing out of the ordinary and is too underneath his paygrade for him to care. 

But, as David Brooks of the New York Times writes, the sad truth is that this is the society in which we live right now. People will speak out against violence, abuse and injustice when they are distanced from it by either time or space, but when they encounter it personally, the average person is more likely to allow that injustice to happen than they are to stand up against it. 

To me, this is the systemic issue that must be dealt with immediately. We need to learn, especially those under the banner of Christ, that we are called to stand up against the evils of this world. For followers of Christ, this is part of the call and obligation of the faithful. When we pray during the Lord's Prayer, "Thy will be done on earth as it is in Heaven", we are telling God that we are willing to partner with God to see this come to fruition. If we as a people would work to not allow such atrocities to go unnoticed and unvoiced, we would be that much closer to realizing justice for those who need it most and need it now. 

My prayer is that as we sit in the aftermath of the Penn State Scandal and atrocities like it, we will use these times as much as a chance to re-evaluate ourselves and our own reactions to evil as we would as a chance for anything else. 

Sorry this is a little bit of a downer. I promise to have a joke in my part of the blog next week. 

You stay classy, World Wide Web!

-wes and jess

Floors and Young Adult Ministry

Jess: First of all— Allison, we’re going to write about something topical soon, I promise. We’re just trying to figure out what that’s going to be.

Over the last month or so, Wes and I have been working hard to make some improvements to our house. This summer, we worked a lot on the outside—we built the patio and put in the fire pit, cleaned up the flower gardens, etc. Now that it’s getting colder, we’re doing more inside in our path to make this house nicer for ourselves and for future pastors at Crosswicks.

The biggest project was ripping up carpet and fixing up the hardwood floors in the dining room, family room, and hallway. As many of you, especially those who have had the joy of visiting us, know, our carpet was a mess. It was stained, there were still indentations in it from the furniture the previous pastor’s family had. There were also several places where the carpet was coming apart. The vacuum has been further destroying these portions of the carpet. When we got the cats, they decided those sections were toys. Not a great situation. We talked to the church board, and they basically said, “Do whatever you want,” and we took on a task neither of us had done before.

As soon as we had word that we could do the carpet, I started ripping it up one Saturday. Although ripping the carpet up didn’t take a lot of effort, getting all of the edging out did. For those of you who don’t know, there are pieces of wood with nails sticking straight up nailed into the floor around the wall to keep the carpet in place. It’s a pain in the butt to get up. The mat under the carpet is stapled into the floor, so that was fun, too. After ripping up the carpet, we discovered that only the outside edges of each room had been stained before—clearly they had laid down rugs and stained around them. Then we waited two weeks until we had another day free.

Friday, we bought the stain we liked, got wood putty, and asked about renting a sander. Then we went home and I spent a LONG time filling the holes in the floor with the putty. The floor obviously hasn’t been exposed for awhile, and it needed a lot of work. The next morning, we headed out to Home Depot (our second home) and picked up the sander, a bunch of pads for the sander, and another can of stain. Wes, the awesome guy that he is, sanded our floor three separate times before we headed back to the store with the sander. Then it was time to stain…and stain again…and polyurthene…and polyurthene again. But now the floor looks awesome. This weekend, we’ll be putting in room dividing pieces, and over Thanksgiving we’ll be doing baseboards.

The reason we haven’t done these pieces yet is because a couple of weekends ago, I tiled our kitchen floor. This involved ripping up the horrible linoleum, ripping up the boards under the linoleum, pulling up a layer of tiles, and pounding hundreds of nails into the floor. At this point, we had an ugly, concrete floor. While Wes was out gallivanting in Texas, I put down tile and grouted the floor. It is probably my favorite floor in the house because it makes such a huge difference. Our house is finally coming into the 21^st century, and we’re really loving the pride that comes with all this work. And I think we’re done with the big projects for awhile…

Wes: So a couple week's ago, I went gallivanting around in Texas. That's a fun word. Let's take a second to say it a couple times. Gallivanting... Gallivanting... Gallivanting...

Ok. That's enough. Let's move on.

So I was ga.... I was in Texas for the Young Adult Ministries Summit that the General Board of Ordained Ministry hosted in Austin, TX. About 60 or so young adults from UMC's around the nation (and one Presbyterian who was spying on us) met together to talk about the future of young adult ministries within the United Methodist Church and how we can do a better job of reaching this almost altogether unreached group. It is a sad fact that something like 80% of all church-going 18 year-olds stop going to church after they graduate from high school. They are free for sometimes the first time to make their own decisions, and for many, not waking up early on Sunday to go to church is an easy decision to make. This becomes habit, and the majority of them do not come back to church (if they ever do) until they are married and have kids of their own. 

Now, in the UMC, a young adult is defined as anyone between the ages of 18 and 35 (sometimes through 40). This is a lot of ground to cover, and a lot of different types of people comprise this category. There are the single college students, the professional college-aged students, the married without kids, the married with kids, single without kids, single with kids, age groups, etc... So for those who have to try to work with them and bring the Gospel to them, these different groups have to be taken into account. 

So we had a lot of ground to cover. I went in expecting it to be a resourcing and equipping type of conference, but it was much more relationally-driven than that. I had a wonderful time talking with people from around the US and hearing about what has and hasn't worked for them as their churches try to reach out to the young adults around them. We talked about churches that are getting it right, that are thinking outside the box and are truly succeeding in bringing in this age group. We also talked about churches that are not doing it right.

So I thought I would share some of the things that we talked about, so that all of the millions who read our blog would be added into the conversation as well. 

Things TO Do:

-Try different kind of music

-Try new times for worship

-Be open to new forms of communication (like blogging, facebook, and twitter)

-Make sure childcare is provided

-Be willing to go to the people (this might even mean places like bars)

-Do more than just services (take of the last "s" on that last word for a good place to start)

-(If you didn't get the hint up above, it was "service")

-Don't enforce a dress code, enforce comfortability and welcoming for all

Things NOT TO Do:

-Expect what you're already doing to work--if it did, they would be there already

It's pretty much that simple, really. I hope this was helpful. 

:)

You stay classy, World Wide Web.

-Jess and Wes