The Beginning of BBQ Season
 
We call it Memorial Day, but in a lot of ways it’s just the official beginning of summer, barbecue season.  It used to be Memorial Day, May 30, a day to honor the war dead, but now it’s a three-day weekend, our welcome to summer. There are more news stories about gas prices than battlefields, more ads for beach chairs than for grave decorations.
 
Maybe the change began in 1971 when the Congress decided three day weekends were more important than days of commemoration. Or maybe it began fifty years earlier when the last generation of Civil War veterans and widows had just about faded away, and folks were no longer calling it Decoration Day. No longer did every town and village, every family, have a painful reminder of the toll taken by war. Continue reading →

Why We Prefer Our Heroes Fallen
One of them is liar. Floyd Landis or Lance Armstrong. And apparently Floyd Landis would be the leading contender for the title. No love lost on him in the sports world.  But it may be that both Floyd and Lance are less than honest with themselves and the world. We know for sure that Landis doped his blood and Armstrong has never been able fully to shake the charge. For sure he dumped his wife.
 
Of course lying and cheating is no respecter of sport or politics or profession. Think Tiger Woods, Mark McGwire, Kobe Bryant and, yes, Steelers fans, Ben Roethlisberger. Think John Edwards, Bill Clinton and Richard Nixon. Think Jimmy Swaggart and Ted Haggard.  Think you and me. Continue reading →

The Future and All that Jazz

Last night I attended the end of the year concert given by the jazz band at Pennsbury High School. Will Sarver, our praise team drummer, is a member of the Pennsbury Jazz Band, and it was great to see and hear Will and his compatriots as they made some really good music.  (Those of you who know much about me know that for me to say that some music was really good is pretty meaningless since I have virtually no ear for the stuff. That’s true, but I was sitting next to Marcos Ortega, our Contemporary Worship Leader, and Marcos knows music. In fact, Marcos’ enthusiasm for the Pennsbury jazz was just barely containable. Yeah, it was good music.) Continue reading →

Tasered: Should Being Dumb be Against the Law?

So who doesn’t know about the 17-year old Phillies fan who ran onto the field in bottom of the eighth inning of Monday night’s game? In case you don’t (where have you been?) here are the story and the video.
 
A Google search of the exact phrase “Philly fan tasered” shows 1,190,000 matches this morning.  It looks like I won’t be the first person to comment on the story.  And to cut to the proverbial chase, my late to the game, two cents worth is that the kid was really dumb, but, no, as much as there’s that part of me that cheers on the police officer, you don’t need to tase a really dumb fan about to be cornered by the security guys. Continue reading →

Lost or Let Go – It’s not about guitars and drums

The teaser on the news page first caught my attention, “The last generation to go to church on a regular basis…” The story (told just slightly differently here) reported an address given to a large gathering of Presbyterians by the vice-moderator of our General Assembly, Pastor Byron Wade.  I have been impressed with Byron since his election. He has been a winsome, candid and faithful voice during his almost completed two years of service; refreshingly honest and orthodox in situations often controlled by the bureaucratic spin doctors.
 
So Wade is talking to the assembled Presbyterians and asks for a show of hands for those born prior to 1970. That’s when he told them, “You are the last generation to go to church on a regular basis.” I wish the news stories, or Byron himself, had provided a reference or a footnote to offer some data or research to verify his contention, but we really don’t need it. It makes sense. It’s intuitively and experientially apparent. And if you’re wondering, here’s a good starting point: Mark Roberts at Beliefnet summarizes what we’ve been hearing increasingly clearly for the past decade or so. The church has lost the younger generation – and this is about much more than kids “taking a break from church” during college and for a few years afterwards.  “They’ll come back when they start having kids,” we try to kid ourselves into believing.  But they don’t and they won’t. And, by the way, it is not just those in the Millennial Generation – our own studies show that LPC people are almost exactly typical of those in a huge national survey, attending worship 23-28 times per year. Half-time is the new full-time. Continue reading →