Dirty Words and Squealer

Squealer: “Dad, is butt lick a bad word?”

I sat frozen as I considered my six year old’s query. We’re pretty old school (read “legalistic”) with profanity in our household. The word “butt” is verboten (verbutten?) in our home, even moreso if you append it to the term “lick” (or any other verb for that matter).

Me: “Son, where did you hear that word?”

Squealer: “I don’t know.”

Me: “Did you hear it at school?” (“Objection, your honor. The prosecution is leading the witness!”)

Squealer: “I don’t know. I think I heard it at school.”

I think he affirmed school as the origin because it’s the middle of summer and that’s a pretty safe place for the blame to rest. I was puzzling this through when he repeated his question.

“Daaaaad! IS BUTTLICK A BAD WORD?!” he slowly, and forcefully repeated.

Me: “Yes, son, you know it is. We don’t say the word butt, we certainly don’t say it as a combination with another word. Butt is a bad word, so we don’t say words that have butt in them.”

Squeaer: (after thinking for a few seconds) “We can’t say the word butler?” he asked incredulously.

FPU Explosion

We’ve had a bit of an explosion at Pecan Grove, and I couldn’t be happier.

In one of our listening groups from a couple of months ago, A church member mentioned a quote often associated with Dave Ramsey. (As you may recall, our family has benefitted from following his financial program). This church member indicated that Ramsey’s Financial Peace University (FPU) had greatly blessed their family and he had been interested in getting it started at the church. In fact, he had received a bonus recently and would be happy to purchase the Leader’s Kit and donate it to the church.

I asked him if he would like to teach it and he replied that he’d never taught anything in the church before. But after a few weeks of thought and prayer, he consented. In the overall scheme of things, I thought that this would be another Bible study that might reach a dozen people or so. I brought it up with the church council and suggested that the church pay a scholarship of $50 to help defray the $100 charge for those who wished to participate in the study. They quickly agreed and we set a day for Financial Peace University to start.

And then it exploded.

We moved the study to Sunday evening because not many could participate on Wednesday nights. First 10 couples signed up, then 20, then 30. And now we’re ordering more kits to get us up to 40. Each kit represents a family unit; that is, either a couple or a single. So we have about 70 people in the church going through it. In addition, we’ve had a half dozen families from the community choose to participate. Almost three fourths of our Sunday School attendance will be taking the class. We were going to run it concurrent to our evening worship service, but only 2 people who normally attend were NOT going to be taking FPU. So were are running it during the evening service and the two agreed to help with child care.

The credit crisis and general anxiety about the economy are no doubt factors in its popularity. We’ve had a couple of business plants in our community shut down and several church members are jobless. The chance to pay off debt and to establish an emergency fund looks pretty attractive right now. All in all, the church is excited about this opportunity to be engaged in a common task, and to offer something for the community.

Our transition team discussed the FPU class this past Sunday and think that it could be an important opportunity for the church to work together on a focused financial goal without conflict. That would be an important accomplishment and something that the church has struggled with achieving before.

(photo above was taken last night during FPU)

Facebook

As a four week old newbie in the area of Facebook, I’ve enjoyed exploring the new medium. PC World creates an amusing (and accurate) taxonomy for the basic 12 types of FB status updates. (And don’t you like my subtle display of street cred to use the abbreviation FB instead of writing out Facebook?) My only addition to the taxonomy would be one distinct to the Christian subculture: Prayer Requests.

Christians are definitely into Facebooking (more street cred) prayer requests. Are there others out there I'm missing?

Transition Team Agenda

Working with Pecan Grove, we’ve identified disunity as one of the key points we need to address. While there are always several issues pertaining to disunity in the church, we are going to focus initially on one. In several of the listening groups, I heard about a fairly unhealthy process that has developed in various church committees at Pecan Grove. In some instances, before committees would meet, several members would get together and caucus about what the group should decide. Then when the entire committee met, the group would push through its agenda.

When the committee would present this to the church as a recommendation, some members would disavow this proposal and it became an issue of contention. I had several people express concern that certain members of the Transition Team would coordinate their activities to place the process in jeopardy.

Frankly, I possess neither the necessary skill, nor the time, to investigate each of these claims. But I can encourage the Transition Team (and the church) to try a few different things to address the underlying problem of disunity.

First, as a Transition Team we will talk about this concern. My hope is that by putting the issue on the table, it will lead the group to police itself and hold itself accountable. I shared that we can certainly adopt that method of decision making if everyone is comfortable with the process of caucusing as small groups before we meet. Needless to say, the committee rejected that conclusion.

Second, we’re going to focus on Transparency. The group will share freely with one another of course, but also with the church as a whole. We will keep the entire church informed as to our deliberations. We’ve opted to use a variety of settings (deacons meetings, Sunday school classes, business meetings, Sunday morning services) and a variety of individuals on the committee to make frequent reports to the church.

Third, we will attempt to model trust. With each person on the committee reporting to the groups that they represent ,my hope is that this will give members in the church confidence in the process.

Transparency --> Trust --> Unity

Selcting the Transition Team (II)

And he was not alone. I had feedback from other members concerned that some folks who sought to undermine the previous pastor were now on the Transition Team. This meant that some of the “troublemakers” were now in a position to be involved in leading the church through the interim process. In addition, they feared that some in these different Transition Team members would get together before our meetings and then lead the process according to their own whims. The end result is that there would be no changes in the church.

I responded to these concerns in a couple of ways:

First, in the process of organizing the Transition Team and making sure that all groups were represented, I could’ve made some mistakes. Perhaps there were some people on the Team who should not be. With prayers and numerous requests for divine wisdom, I’ve tried to make sure that every member of the Transition Team was appropriate.

Second, I noted that the people about whom they were most concerned had each received overwhelming support from the congregation through their vote totals. They might be manipulative so and so’s, but they still represented a significant portion of the church.

Third, I would ask the concerned member if they felt that they had representation on the committee. In every case, the answer was affirmative. I’ve then reiterated that my number one goal in assembling the committee was to ensure fair representation.

Fourth, I’ve tried to encourage them that if there is anyone seeking to undermine the process, I’d rather have them close by. I want to stay in dialogue with those who have been a source of trouble in the past.

Lastly, whenever a small group is intensely focused on accomplishing a task, and is open to the Lord’s direction, I think that there is a possibility that God will transform them through his work. It is my hope that the experience of participating on the Transition Team will change each of us in this process.

I finished each of the conversations by summarizing my underlying optimism about the process by saying: “If the entrenched powers in the church didn’t see the need for change, then I wouldn’t be standing here today.” That’s exactly why I’m optimistic about the church’s desire for change.

SBC Impact

SBC Impact has foolishly allowed me another post on their site. Go their to read about the four tiers.