MOVIE NIGHT

The movie this month is Alfred Hitchcock’s Spellbound.  Come join us Friday, March 2nd at 6:30 for snacks and conversation.  The movie will begin at 7:30.  Contact Paula Spugnardi 452-9113 if you have any questions. CHildcare can be provided by contacting the church office in advance (no later than Wed. February 29th).

There's No Backing into Adulthood

I guess I realized I was an adult when I found myself in East Tennessee with a new wife and no job. I had graduated from college four weeks earlier, and then got married just two weeks prior to loading up my grandfather’s Chevy pickup and launching out into the great unknown of, what I took to be, adulthood. We moved to Tennessee so I could go to graduate school. There was a little money left over from the honeymoon, which I thought would last us a month or so, providing we could eat on fifty dollars a week. I figured a month would be plenty of time for us both to find jobs and start living like grown-ups.

It occurs to me now that foresight was not a virtue I possessed at twenty-two, because I did not, as I had anticipated, find a job. My wife, at nineteen, already much more readily employable than I, found a part time job as a hostess at the restaurant in the Holiday Inn. Her income, it will not surprise you to know, didn’t turn out to be enough to sustain us. And so, with a nearly empty refrigerator and no prospects for employment on the horizon, we packed up the truck and headed back to Detroit to live with my in-laws.

We didn’t stay too long—though her parents could not have been nicer. After four months we’d both found jobs making sufficient money to move to a small apartment—her working in a doctor’s office, and me in a Speedway.

One might reasonably inquire as to why a situation that resulted in me moving back in with my in-laws made me aware of my status as an adult. Generally speaking, such a move, at least psychologically, means a failure to live up to the standards set for grown-up living. However, it strikes me that though we had folks helping us take care of our basic needs, no one was going to parachute in to right our listing financial ship. A little assistance here and there to help us keep our heads above water, but nobody offered to buy us a boat. It felt lonely at first (and still does sometimes).

But what I finally realized about our predicament was that nobody was going to live our lives for us. Being an adult takes courage and some intentionality, a commitment to hanging on when hanging on seems impossible.

But lest this degenerate into some kind of morally edifying self-help anecdote, it also occurs to me that it’s critical to point out that we were kept afloat. We had people who loved us, who wouldn’t let us fall through the cracks. It is a hard thing to realize that not everyone is so fortunate—and that we could very easily, if just a few things were different, be the people we read about living under viaducts in cardboard boxes. So while living can’t be done by proxy, it can’t be done in isolation either.

Faith, it seems to me, works along the same lines. On the one hand, the spiritual lone wolf is a non-starter; on the other hand, walking through a crowd of people on a journey you happen not to be taking doesn’t make you a pilgrim either. You can neither go it alone nor rely entirely on others to do your work for you. Somewhere in the mysterious middle lies maturity—both as a human being and as a seeker of God.

True Colors Film Screening

Our friends at the True Colors Ministry of Highland Baptist Church are screening the film Brother Outsider: The Life of Bayard Rustin this Sunday, February 5th.  If the Super Bowl just isn't your cup of tea, or you're simply looking for an interesting and stimulating activity on Sunday, this is definitely the place to be!  For more information, contact Maurice Bojangles-Blanchard at truecolorsministry@gmail.com. 

Riding Dead Horses

I found the following list posted by Harry K. Jones on AchieveMax Blog.  It strikes me that churches in a post-denominational age need to make a practice of stopping to ask themselves: "Are we attempting to ride dead horses?"  That's a structural/organizational question that is increasingly important to consider in a culture in which Emerging generations have less and less commitment to traditional churches and denominations.

The tribal wisdom of the Dakota Indians, passed on from generation to generation, says that, “When you discover that you are riding a dead horse, the best strategy is to dismount.”

In contrast, here’s how many people respond when they find out their “horse” is dead:

1. Say things like, “This is the way we always have ridden the horse.”
2. Appoint a committee to study the horse.
3. Buy a stronger whip.
4. Change riders.
5. Arrange to visit other locations to see how they ride dead horses.
6. Raise the standards for riding dead horses.
7. Appoint a triage team to revive the dead horse.
8. Create a training session to increase our riding ability.
9. Compare the state of dead horses in today’s business environment.
10. Change your definitionsor rules by declaring, “This horse is not dead.”
11. Hire outside consultants to ride the dead horse.
12. Harness several dead horses together to increase speed and pulling power.
13. Declare that “No horse is too dead to beat.”
14. Provide additional incentive funding (more sticks – more carrots) to increase the horse’s performance.
15. Do a case-study to see if competitors can ride it cheaper.
16. Purchase a software package or institute a new program to make dead horses run faster.
17. Declare that the horse is “better, faster, and cheaper” dead.
18. Form a quality circle to find uses for dead horses.
19. Revisit the performance requirements for dead horses.
20. Downsize the dead horse.
21. Reassign fault to the dead horse’s last rider.
22. Promote the dead horse to a supervisory position.
23. Shorten the track.
24. Declare the dead horse was “one of the leading horses” in its day.
25. Establish benchmarks for industry dead horse leaders.
26. Gather other dead animals and announce a new diversity program.
27. Put together a spiffy PowerPoint presentation to get planners to double the dead horse R & D budget.
28. Get the dead horse a web site!

Youth: Saturday Night Movie Social

The DBCC Youth, as well as our friends, are invited to our first monthly Saturday Night Movie Social (official name pending).  Youth are encouraged to bring friends as we dine, play games, watch a movie, and just hang out together.  The event will be from 6-11PM this Saturday, Jan. 28th.  Bring friendly attitudes, empty stomachs, and lots of friends!