The Organ of Meaning

Okay. I need to post in response to the responses on my post (they’re mostly on Facebook).

I should have made it clear that my beef was mostly with people who are Christians undercutting and slandering someone else who is also. The whole socialism is a peve of mine, but not that big of a deal. I apologise if anyone feels offended by how I presented the comments about socialism, but I will not be apologising about the ones about slandering a brother in Christ. Take it as rebuke or whatever you want to call it.

To summarize: dis your brother and I’ll get pissed, but dis politics all you want I’ll just debate it with you.

So I got this from a friend/student from Western PA today:

so im walking back from class with my old man floppy hat a coffee mug and a messanger bag…. i got this creepy feeling that im turning into you…

Ha! I love my life.

It is both fortunate and unfortunate; the occurrences of the past week.

I really feel that within the past week that Carrie and I really have started to connect with and develop some friends in the area that are totally outside of our team. It has been a bit depressing with all of the people that we usually hang out with gone (or at least we didn’t realize that they were still around – sorry Craig). But there were a few things that happened that have helped to maybe remedy that…

First off, honestly, is Twitter. In the past week or so I’ve connected on there with a good number of people that we attend church with or are in a small group with. I figured out the best explanation of its value also… when my wife’s family gets together for dinner or just to spend time they talk mostly about the every-day minutiae of their lives and that is wonderful because they are able to see each other every day because they all live within 15 minutes of each other and talk all the time. It’s very different in a city and especially when you work a job in which you don’t have normal and diverse coworkers (yeah, we interact with college students as well, but I’m really looking at peers) which really prevents you from developing a lot of friendships outside of a small team that you work with. Also, it’s just healthy to have friends who do something different than ministry when you’re in ministry – that’s just reality, but it can be hard to find those friends. Honestly, Twitter has helped. (If you’re on Twitter, find me. I’m at twitter.com/jaysonwhelpley.)

The other things that happened were just plain having fun with people from our small group. A couple had a small cookout and we went and had fun and met people and got to know those friends better. Then tonight small group was really small (including 4 people who were at the cookout) and we just hung out. In addition to all of that, we’re having the cookout couple over for dinner on Tuesday. It’s sad and funny that it’s taken us almost a year to get to this point, but I tell you the job makes it a little harder too… I promise.

The sad thing is that as of Thursday we’re pretty much out of town until about 3 days around the end of July and then gone again for a week or so. So we’re kinda cutting this off right as it’s starting.

On the whole I am socially encouraged. I really am glad to find some people that feel like real friends. I’m hoping the trend continues! The sermon today on community was very well timed.

Since we’ve been in Washington, DC we’ve landed in a pretty cool church…

National Community Church is a great emergent church (at least I think it is, I am still not sure what the definition is exactly) that started about 11 years ago in a school gym. When the school failed to pas fire codes they moved their Sunday meetings to a movie theater that they rented for the morning.

Last year they moved their office space to a newly constructed coffeeshop just block from Union Station. They now have 3 locations around the city with a new location opening a month from now in Georgetown. Right now, I am writing from the coffee shop where they are showing 5 different NFL games to draw people to the location to advertise the shop as well as the church.

I don’t want to come across like the only good thing about the church is the cool locations… they have been great at bringing the Word, too. The series that we’re in right now is called The Elephant in the Church, we’re talking about things that are prevalent in the (American) Church on the whole that just don’t get talked about. The first week was the grey elephant – legalism and relative morality; Pastor Mark came at it from both angles of the dangers of making things that are black and white in the Scriptures into gray areas and the other way around, taking things that God has not made specific proclamations about – like alcohol (or eating meat that has been sacrificed to idols). Last week was the fake elephant, hypocrisy. This week, the circus elephant in which we addressed the consumerism mentality in the church wherein many people come to church to get something out of it for themselves rather than contributing to the community.

The only thing that I wanted to say about the service was something that Heather Zempel said from the front – that originally the purpose of the church meeting was to celebrate communion as well as to gather as a community. Well, we are gathering as a community, but I still don’t understand why it is that so many churches neglect to celebrate communion, or the Lord’s Supper or whatever you want to call it. I always hear the, “well, it will start to mean less if we do it every week.” But, the thing is, Jesus wasn’t concerned about whether or not we’d forget to hold in in reverence what it was about… as a matter of fact it’s intended to be something that is done every time we gather, not just when we’re together on Sunday. I think every time I have a group of Christians together for a meal at my house I’m going to have a small loaf of bread to split and do that with; the more I ponder it, the more I think that’s as much if not more of an accurate/faithful taking of the meaning.

Anyhow, I like the church and I’m happy where we are!

By the way, the Steelers won!

…you will not join Quechup and spam me without realizing it.

Sneaky bastages!