No joy in Uzbekistan

Some American Christians claim government oppression because they are no allowed to use public schools or courthouses as means to propagate their particular understanding of faith. I occasionally get Facebook invitations to "Put God back in our schools" or something similar.

Such places must remain non-sectarian, of course, because it's part of our constitutional DNA. Both freedom of religion -- and freedom from religion -- are guaranteed in the Bill of Rights. And for every complaint about officials prohibiting Bible verse banners on the field at football games or monuments to the Ten Commandments in courthouses, there ought to be three cheers for a country where citizens are free to follow their own convictions and not impose them on others.

That is not the case in the Central Asian Republic of Uzbekistan, where three Baptist leaders were recently convicted of running a summer camp -- called Camp Joy -- where activities included Bible study. The case has been publicized regularly by Forum 18, an international religious freedom watchdog, but Uzbek authorities seem not to care about international condemnation.

The three men, including Pavel Peichev, president of the Baptist Union of Uzbekistan, were arrested last July and charged with teaching children about religion without their parents' permission, and of tax evasion, since the government doesn't recognize the camp as a religious non-profit. The men were recently convicted, fined about nine times the average annual income of Uzbeks, and barred from administrative or financial activity.

The accused insist that parents know the camp is operated by Baptists, and that the government is mainly trying to disrupt Baptist activity in the country by handcuffing its leaders.

The Uzbek constitution contains provisions guaranteeing religious freedom and separation of church and state, but a separate law restricts religious expression to groups that are registered with the government. In a thinly veiled Catch 22, groups not in favor with the government are not allowed to register, rendering their activities "illegal" despite the official stance of religious freedom. Reportedly, no Baptist groups have been permitted to register since 1999.

Although the population of Uzbekistan is predominantly Muslim, there are many different Muslim groups, and thousands of Muslims who disagree with the governmental restrictions have also been imprisoned. Groups that are not in favor with the government are routinely portrayed as extremists who are dangerous to the public welfare.

A government that gives special privileges to the favored religious group while restricting others is not upholding religious liberty. I hope the U.S. can find a way to pressure Uzbek leaders to allow more religious freedom in their country -- and that we'll be wise enough to maintain true liberty of conscience in our own.

Bad news about news

I found two items of particular interest in Tuesday's News & Observer. Both were distressing.

The first was a front page story, along with several sidebars, regarding shenanigans carried on by former governor Mike Easley. Previous articles had revealed shady real estate deals that got the guv a big discount on a waterfront lot, and too much behind-the-scenes involvement in getting his wife a cushy job planning lectures at North Carolina State University. In hearings before the state board of elections on Monday, Easley's good friend and former chair of the N.C. State board of trustees McQueen Campbell admitted not only that he had provided nearly $100,000 in free but unreported airplane flights for Easley, but that Easley had asked Campbell to arrange $11,000 in repairs and upgrades to his personal home, then had him reimbursed from campaign funds that pretended to be for "unbilled flights." Doubtless, there is more scum to come.

The second story, less prominent at the bottom of a page in the B section, reported that newspaper circulation for April-September 2009 was down 10.6 percent from the same period in 2008, suggesting that the long term decline in newspaper circulation is accelerating. It has already gotten so bad that award-winning newspapers like the Rocky Mountain News and the Seattle Post-Intelligencer have shut down their print editions this year, and others are under intense stress as readers migrate to free news on the Internet or display news apathy altogether.

Here's the problem with that: as disquieting as news about the former governor's misbehavior is -- along with previous stories about other officials -- it's something the public needs to know. Public officials need to be held accountable, no one does that better than good journalists. It's likely, however, that none of those stories would have come to light if not for the faithful digging of newspaper reporters. With advertising down even more than subscribers, news budgets are shrinking and so are newspaper staffs: not only are there fewer pages in the paper, but fewer reporters digging for important stories.

Sadly, many Americans still don't appreciate what newspapers do for them: a Pew Trust study published in March 2009 showed that only 43 percent of Americans said the loss of their local paper would be a detriment to the community, and just 33 percent said they would personally miss the local paper if it ceased to exist.

Something's rotten in the state of American minds. Dependable, investigative, community-oriented journalism is essential for an accountable and truly democratic society. If Americans want to maintain real freedom, they ought to be willing to pay the price -- including the minor cost of a quality newspaper.

Old friends

I drove to my hometown of Lincolnton, Ga. this past weekend to visit with old friends and acquaintances at a 40 year reunion of my high school graduating class. It was quite an experience. We've done some changing.

Of the 61 people listed in the program, six are dead, two by their own hand. The rest of us are, for the most part, showing significant signs of aging. Some of us, I thought, looked a bit worse for wear, while others are better preserved.

I was thankful for name tags. Some class members still bear a close resemblance to their high school appearance, but others were harder to recognize, especially if they'd radically changed their hair color -- or lost it altogether.

We are generally 58-59 years old, and while many of us will be working for a while yet, at least a fourth of the class has retired already, most from state or federal jobs that pay full retirement benefits after 30 years. One is retired from several years in prison, and not as a guard or administrator. Locals believe he still has barrels of drug money buried somewhere. He was also the only person there who appeared to be under the influence of something other than the sweet tea and barbecue prepared by a classmate who runs a dairy farm and caters barbecue on the weekends.

That, I found, was a nice change: as we've grown older and perhaps more self-confident, fewer folk felt the need for excess alcohol as a social lubricant. Most of us were quite able to eat and converse and dance a little to music from the sixties, and find in that all the enjoyment we needed.

I was surprised to learn how many of my classmates still live in town, or have moved back after a time away. I was even more surprised, and a bit saddened, by how many of the local folk chose not to attend the gathering, including the three brave African-Americans who integrated our class back in the ninth grade. The way we treated them then remains one of my life's greatest regrets.

I enjoyed catching up with old friends and learning how they have spent the past 40 years. Some have known a lot of heartbreak. Some have surprised their parents by turning out good after all. Some have made a difference close to home, some in the wider world.

I was grateful for the experience, and especially for the small group of "girls" who formed a committee and put the evening together, and who spent many hours trying to locate everyone and invite them to attend. It wouldn't have happened if not for the women.

Some things don't change.

West Side Wishes

Last night I took Samuel to see West Side Story at North Carolina Theater in Raleigh. He'll get school credit (once he writes a report about it); I got to see (and hear) a classic musical with several iconic songs and impressive choreography. The lead actors had terrific voices and played their parts with skill and feeling.

I wish the play left me feeling better. I'd seen West Side Story before, but had forgotten how dark it is and how sad the ending. Essentially, it's Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet reset in a New York ghetto neighborhood of the 1950s, with the Montagues and Capulets replaced with two street gangs, one of white kids (the Jets) who think they are the true Americans, and the other made of first generation Puerto Rican immigrants (the Sharks). Both gangs want control of the same neighborhood and neither wants to share; prejudice runs deep and the inter-ethnic hatred is visceral.

When Tony (who founded the Jets with friend Riff) falls head over heels in love with Maria (whose brother Bernardo leads the Sharks), the stage is set for trouble, and trouble happens. Tony's eyes are opened and he tries to persuade the gangs to get along, but before the play is over Riff is dead, Bernardo is dead, and in the closing scene, Tony is dead.

There are hints of growing acceptance between gang members here and there, or at least of a growing awareness that prejudice is wrong, but the nascent hope of a better day isn't enough to stop the violence.

More than 50 years after West Side Story first debuted, ethnic divides are largely unabated. There continues to be mutual and suspicion and rejection among the various ethnic groups that are predominant not only in America, but in the world. People die every day because of it.

There are hints, here and there, of greater understanding or acceptance, but true harmony remains a distant hope, visible only in the full manifestation of the Kingdom of God.

Christians -- who have all-too-often been major contributors to the problem -- have a lot of work to do if we're to take seriously the prayer Jesus taught us to pray: "Thy kingdom come, thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven."

Gambling making more inroads

The lottery's no longer the only game in town, at least in many towns across North Carolina. Recent challenges to laws regulating video poker and sneaky ways of skirting the law have led to a boom in "Sweepstakes" outlets that often masquerade as Internet cafes. Unlike the typical Internet cafe where most users check email, do research, or update their Facebook pages, visitors to the sweepstakes parlors spend most of their time playing games that they hope will win money.

The new gambling houses skirt the law by selling what is technically a legitimate product -- prepaid phone cards or Internet time cards -- but the cards are then used to buy time on video gambling machines where the user can win prizes ranging from more Internet time to wads of cash. My understanding is that the payouts are random rather than based on whatever skill it takes to play poker with a software program, thus sidestepping laws governing video poker.

Proponents of the practice say it's no different than buying a Coke that has a code printed under the bottle cap, allowing the purchaser to visit Coke's website, punch in the code, and see if he or she has won a prize. Or, they cite games offered by fast-food franchises like McDonalds, where the purchase of food comes with a Monopoly token that could be worth real money.

I see the point, but I also see a difference. I don't know anyone who buys soft drinks, one after the other, for the express purpose of trying to win a rare cash prize. And, while some people may visit McDonald's more often in hopes of collecting all the Monopoly pieces (that's the idea, after all), they still get a tangible food item along with the game piece.

With the new sweepstakes gaming parlors, one might practically be able to use the prepaid Internet card to check e-mail, and operators tout the entertainment value of the games, but the obvious truth is that most purchasers plunk their money down in hopes of winning a jackpot.

In essence, the games are no different than buying a lottery scratch-off card, except that users have to go online to see if they win, and the state doesn't get a cut of the profits.

An added danger is that, in a room full of "legal" gaming machines, it would be easy for unscrupulous operators to sneak in a few machines that go over the legal line and rob users of even more grocery money.

I personally wish authorities could find a way to shut down all gambling outlets, including the lottery, because they take advantage of the poor and sell hope to desperate people who aren't good at math.

If they can't shut them down, they should at least find ways to regulate them closely and tax them heavily so operators wouldn't make such fat profits, and would be less inclined to get into the business.

If something isn't done, the state will soon be swamped with tacky gambling houses that not only pollute the landscape, but exploit human frailty. Our residents deserve better than that.

[Photo from the Laurinburg Exchange.]

Two messages to renounce

When I read of fringe folks making fanatical comments, my first response is usually to try ignoring them, and hope others do the same. They're usually out for publicity, and I don't like contributing to their notoriety. Sometimes, however, their inanity gets enough traction to go viral, and there's no chance of it being ignored, so I figure it's better to say something than to let misinformation go unchallenged.

Two relatively recent things come to mind: one is an independent Baptist preacher in Canton, N.C. whose recently-started 14-member church (which appears to consist mainly of his family and one other) is sponsoring a book burning for Hallowe'en, and the books to be burned include Bibles. News reports including this video have taken delight in the story for its weirdness factor. Sadly the story has made news sources as far away as the United Kingdom and India.

Marc Grizzard is a true believer in the King James Version of the Bible, and labels all modern translations of the Bible as "Satanic" and "perverse." Thus, he's collecting other Bible translations to throw on the bonfire, along with books by Billy Graham, Rick Warren, Mother Theresa, and a long list of other authors that he considers to be heretics.

Grizzard, who preaches a hell-laced gospel of intolerance for anyone who disagrees with his views, gave his congregation the ironic name of "Amazing Grace Baptist Church." On the fairly elaborate website he had set up -- which has since been taken down by the webhost -- he set out a doctrinal statement that says more about allegiance to the KJV than to Christ. In a faux-academic note on the website, he pointed out that copies of the Geneva Bible would not be burned, or any others based on the Textus Receptus, a 16th century compilation of six Greek New Testament manuscripts. The combination text, put together by Desiderius Erasmus in 1516, was used as the basis for the New Testament of the KJV and some other Reformation-era translations.

Of course, very few people have a 400-year-old Geneva Bible laying around, so his caveat matters little. KJV-only folk believe as a statement of faith that the Textus Receptus is inspired by God, even though the most reputable scholars of the Greek manuscript tradition demonstrated long ago that manuscripts belonging to the Western Tradition (which formed the basis of the Textus Receptus) are demonstrably inferior to other manuscripts.

Grizzard is welcome to believe the KJV is the preferable translation, but making a spectacle of burning other translations and books is an act of violence against hundreds of translators and authors who love God deeply. I suspect that Grizzard truly believes that his attention-drawing witch hunt honors God, but the truth is that it makes him and his church -- and other churches by association -- look like narrow-minded bumpkins. Such publicity stunts work in direct opposition to the call of Christ to transform our world through compassion and care.

The second thing has been hanging around for the past three months or so, but only recently got enough momentum to find its way into millions of email in-boxes. It is an anonymous anti-Obama video that uses pseudo-scholarship and scare tactics to suggest that Jesus spoke the name of the antiChrist, and it would have sounded like "Barack Obama."

The video is wrong on so many fronts that they don't all bear discussion. Mark McEntire has done a nice job of debunking the claptrap at EthicsDaily.com, as have articles at Salon.com and at Snopes.com. I'm sure there have been others, but the video hasn't gone away and the author, rather than admitting his errors, inexplicably took some of the criticism as confirmation of his argument, and posted a "new and improved" version on YouTube.

McEntire identifies the video's producer as Carl Gallups, pastor of the Southern Baptist-affiliated Hickory Hammock Baptist Church in Milton, Florida. The church's website is chock-full of similar sensationalist videos, though I couldn't find this one posted among them, and I wouldn't expect to. A website called WorldnetDaily reported that the video originated with an "American Christian" who contributes to YouTube as "ppsimmons" and who agreed to be interviewed only on condition of anonymity "out of concern for members of his local church."

Whoever did put that piece of digital garbage together ought to be ashamed to admit it, because it's filled with half-truths, mis-truths, and an obvious effort to bear false witness against another. The sad thing is that his fake scholarship sounds just convincing enough that many uniformed viewers will be gullible enough to believe it, or to wonder if it could be true.

In short, the narrator says that Jesus' statement in Luke 10:18 ("I saw Satan fall like lightning from the heavens") could be Jesus' prediction that Barack Obama is the anti-Christ, claiming that in Hebrew "lightning from the heavens" would be "barak 0(u)bamah."

That's just wrong. The narrator starts by saying that Jesus would have spoken in Aramaic (probably true), then says Aramaic is the oldest form of Hebrew (not true -- they're both dialects of a common Northwest Semitic predecessor). Using Strong's numbering system (which reveals that he has no personal knowledge of Hebrew), he says that the Hebrew word for "lightning" is barak (that's one of several optional ways "lightning" can be expressed) and that the word for "the heavens" is bamah (false -- bamah means "high place," normally used for the top of a hill: the narrator uses some proof-texting sleight of hand to claim that it could just as well refer to the sky or the heavens). He then says that the Hebrew word for "and" is the letter waw, which can be pronounced as either "u" or "o" (that's true, except that it's never pronounced as "o" at the beginning of a word, and when it occurs before a "b" sound it changes it to "v").

Using this mis-represented Hebrew hodge-podge, he claims that "lightning from heaven" would sound like "barak 0(u)bamah." Nonsense. Not only would bamah never be used in that way, the preposition "from" (min) would have been used instead of the article. The video's claims to have grammatically "revealed" the sound of Barack Obama's name in Hebrew are nothing more than balderdash, blarney, or baloney -- take your choice. If you don't like those, try bilge, bunk, or bull.

Beyond his linguistic conjuring with Hebrew flash cards, the narrator appears to confuse Satan with the antichrist (clearly two different characters in the New Testament), and makes the common error of thinking that the so-called "Lucifer" (based on a Greek mis-translation carried on in the KJV) of Isa. 14:12 -- clearly addressed to a Babylonian king -- has anything to do with the Satan character of the New Testament.

The video, viral as it has become, is not only wrong, it is a mean-spirited attempt to deceive people who are uninformed and to undermine and discredit a fairly elected president that the producer apparently doesn't like. Despite the video's closing disclaimer, its intention is clear: it is a dirty trick, a low blow, a foul play. It is an open offense not only against the president, but against the one who said "I am the way, the truth, and the life."

With witnesses like these, is it any wonder so many people look askance at the church?

Life's Reward

While on a writing retreat earlier this week, I took a walk around the Northwest Creek Marina near New Bern. I don't know a sloop from a ketch, but I enjoy taking note of the various names boat owners give to their yachts.

I saw one named "Stressless," which I thought was interesting, given that two years of owning a little runabout had brought me far more stress than relaxation. I can't imagine the trouble that a yacht would bring, unless you were rich enough to pay someone else to keep it up for you, and I can't imagine that, either.

One boat had a statue of Buddha on the back, perhaps an aid to peaceful meditation when the boat breaks down three miles offshore.

Other craft had playful names like "Skinny Dippin'" and "Killin' Time," drinking names like "Absolut," fanciful names like "Starship" and "Kizmet."

I saw a sailboat named "Hananiah," a Hebrew name that means something like "Yahweh is gracious to me." Whether it's a family name or reflects a belief that someone got the boat by the grace of God, I don't know.

Speaking of which, I couldn't help being taken aback by a floating oxymoron. On the back of a big cabin cruiser was the name "Life's Reward." Attached to the back window was a sign: "For Sale by Owner."

I paused. Can life's reward be bought and sold?

I couldn't help but recall the words of someone I admire greatly: "Do not store up for yourselves treasures on earth ..."

Knuckling down

I've been holed up this week, while the divinity school is on fall break, working on a book. Jan was kind enough to let me sneak off to a condo near New Bern for several days, where I've been getting up at dawn and plugging away until my shoulders, neck, or brain (not always in the same order) can't take any more.

I eat, of course, though I haven't been out even once: leftovers from home, a pot of split pea soup, a bunch of bananas and an occasional pack of Ramen noodles have kept me going. I take breaks every now and then, and it's nice to step onto the deck for a minute, or walk around the pond, or climb on a bike for a bit of exercise. I jumped a deer while riding one day, a young buck that kept his distance, but didn't run away, apparently curious about the strange creature than ran on wheels.

Guys (and gals) like these I could see from the window, or within a few feet of the condo. Ducks and geese are plentiful, along with herons and crows. Seagulls, not so many.

Mostly, however, what I saw was this: a stack of books and a laptop, scribbled notes on a pad, a rough draft on the screen. I've managed to knock out about 60 pages so far. If my Old Testament students accomplish a quarter as much, they'll be nearly through with their exegesis papers.

It's tempting to leave my study space and drive down to Morehead City for some seafood, but I remind myself that I need to do what I came to do. More than once, I've found myself humming the inimitable words of the great Roger Miller, whose classic "You can't roller skate in a buffalo herd" includes this chorus:

"All you got to do, is put your mind to it,
knuckle down, buckle down, do it, do it, do it..."

Sometimes you just have to do it, or it won't get done.

BSCNC budget shrinking, SBC ties growing

When messengers gather at Greensboro’s Koury Convention Center for the annual meeting of the Baptist State Convention of North Carolina (BSCNC) Nov. 9-11, they’ll be presented with a proposed budget for 2010 that’s 12 percent smaller than the current one. The current budget, optimistically approved back in 2007, calls for annual income of $39.2 million; the new one contracts to $34.8 million.

That should come at no surprise, because through the first eight months of the year, income for the BSCNC was already $4.26 million (16.6 percent) below budget, and 4.6 percent behind the previous year’s giving.

There’s no doubt that the troubled economy has played a role in the convention’s sliding income, but it’s certainly not the only factor – 2009 is the fifth year out of the past seven in which BSCNC income has fallen from the previous year.

That trend matches up with the accelerated exodus of moderates and even borderline folk from active roles in the BSCNC as the convention has adopted an increasingly harder line in relating to churches that are more comfortable supporting the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship (CBF) than the Southern Baptist Convention (SBC).

Next year’s budget, which continues a five-year trend of increasing the SBC’s take of BSCNC income by half a percent each year, will be the first in nearly two decades to offer no option for supporting CBF instead of the SBC.

According to reporting by the Biblical Recorder, budget chair Steve Hardy explained the committee’s priorites to the BSCNC’s Board of Directors this way: “When people ask you about the budget I want you to say we are prioritizing three things: more money to our Southern Baptist ministry partners; evangelism and church planting.”

During the same meeting, BSCNC executive director Milton Hollifield reflected on ministry plans for 2010 by saying “This state convention could function without a relationship with the SBC. But we connect with, partner with the SBC entities because we are Southern Baptist churches. I’m pleased and proud of that relationship.”

Those statements should answer any and all questions about why churches who no longer feel at home in the SBC are also finding less reason to support the new BSCNC. It’s no wonder that BSCNC revenue is falling and church contributions through the missions resource plan of CBFNC have increased dramatically during the past year: the SBC-ification of the Baptist State Convention is complete.

Going the wrong direction

My wife and I went to see the national touring company of "Grease" at the Durham Performing Arts Center, and we both came away a bit disappointed. The show's marketing efforts are built around having former American Idol winner Taylor Hicks play "Teen Angel," but you may recall that his character appears only once (to sing "Beauty School Dropout"). Aside from a hot harmonica riff, Hicks' performance wasn't memorable, and his one-song-from-his-latest-album encore tacked on to the end of the show was, well, obviously tacked on.

The touring cast seemed more like the "B Team" than what one would expect of a first-rate touring company, and few of the actors -- who portray high-schoolers -- appeared to be less than 30 years old. An understudy who played sleazy radio disc jockey Vince Fontaine was the most convincing of the lot.

No matter who's acting, however, I confess that my biggest gripe about Grease has always been the ending, in which formerly wholesome Sandy primps and pimps herself into a beer-drinking, cigarette-smoking vamp in order to win over her jerky heartthrob, Danny Zuko. I suppose it would have been harder to get a rollicking musical finale out of having Danny get a job or hit the books, but even so ...

I wonder if the show hit a nerve because there seems to be an increasing shift toward the acceptance of cussing and quaffing as normative aspects of a Christian lifestyle, and I'm too straight-laced to be comfortable with it.

I resonate with many aspects of postmodernism, and I understand the importance of trying to be relevant to society, but I'm just old-fashioned enough to think finding the lowest common denominator should remain in the domain of junior high math.

[Photos from www.greaseonbroadway.com]

Do-it-yourself religion

Americans' proclivity for do-it-yourself projects appears to be extending more and more into the religious arena, a tendency that has serious implications for the church. Parade Magazine recently reported on a survey of "Spirituality in America," and some of the results were striking.

Forty-five percent of 1,051 respondents said they considered themselves to be religious, but 24 percent described themselves as "spiritual but not religious." Just 12 percent of respondents consider their religion to be "the" faith that has all the answers, while 59 percent preferred a belief that "all religions have validity." Thirty-eight percent of poll-takers consider themselves to be less religious than their parents, while 19 percent said they were more religious, and 43 percent said they and their parents has similar inclinations toward religion.

Church-goers who note declining attendance would not be surprised that just 30 percent of the respondents indicated that they attend church daily (three percent) or weekly (27 percent), and those who count noses might wonder if even those numbers are high.

When asked who they would turn to first when needing counsel, most respondents said they rely on family members (55 percent) or friends (24 percent). Just 17 percent indicated a preference for consulting spiritual leaders.

I found it interesting that the same percentage of people believe they've had contact with the dead (17 percent), and 12 percent say they believe in astrology and check their horoscopes regularly. A total of 13 percent of respondents said they have consulted a psychic in person (nine percent) or by phone (four percent). An additional nine percent said they have discovered their own psychic powers.

While some of these results were quite enlightening, other results meant little, because they were based on what I consider to be poorly designed questions. For example, a question asking "What do you typically pray for?" allowed respondents to check multiple options, but limited the options to these: "personal success," "money or other material things," "good health," "to get through a crisis," "for the well-being of others," "for forgiveness," and "none of the above." Jesus' teaching and example suggest that we should pray first for God's will to be done, but the question offered only self-serving responses. Does that tell us more about the respondents, or those who designed the survey?

Another question had a different problem: pollsters reported that 59 percent of respondents believe "Religion can help solve the world's problems and offer hope to the suffering," while 41 percent believe "Religion has too often led to war and suffering." The problem is, those were the only options given to a question asking "Which of the following statements do you agree with more?"

While one's response might indicate his or her general feelings about religion as a force for good in the world, both statements are completely true: religious beliefs at their best can motivate people to aid and bless humankind in incredible ways -- but distorted versions of religion can also inspire bloody war and horrific crimes against humanity.

Given the extent to which the mis-use of religion makes the news these days, it's not hard to understand why some people choose to give up on religion altogether, or to design their own do-it-yourself version of the faith.

[Editor's Note: No horoscopes or psychics were consulted in reaching these conclusions.]

All vines and no potatoes

I spent most of this past Saturday morning digging sweet potatoes at the Covenant Community Garden in Fuquay-Varina. We raise organic crops in a nice plot behind Fuquay-Varina United Methodist Church. Gardeners share some of the harvest and the garden donates any leftover produce (often lots of it) to a local food bank.

Growing in a rich mix of compost, many of the sweet potatoes, both burgundy Beauregards and orange Jewels, were huge: I pulled one from the ground that had to have been 18 inches long and four inches or more in diameter; another was more than three feet long and ranged from an inch to an inch-and-a-half in diameter. They'll be a challenge for someone to cook, but delicious, I'm sure.

Then there's my own attempt at growing sweet potatoes. I had good success with squash and bell peppers this year, but while the picture above reflects just a small sample of my peppers, but also includes my entire sweet potato harvest.

Not that I had expected much -- I wasn't planning to plant any sweet potatoes this year, but last May I found an old one in the pantry that had sprouted, and instead of throwing it in the compost pile, I decided to stick it in the ground in a corner where I rarely plant anything.

The thing grew vines like crazy: they crept through the tomatoes and insinuated themselves throughout the volunteer cantaloupes I had planted nearby. Sadly, when I pulled up the vines and started grubbing around with my potato fork, the ground had hardened considerably, and one tiny tuber was the only reward for the gallons of water I'd put on it during the summer.

Alas, my offhand experiment turned out to be all vines and no potatoes.

Remembering that Jesus called on his disciples to bear the fruits of repentance -- and his parable about the fruitless fig tree -- I'm sure it grieves him when followers turn out to be all vines and no potatoes.

Smoke what you're selling

Brian McLaren delivered the Reavis lectures at Campbell University Divinity School this week, and he said lots of good things that were well worth hearing and ruminating upon. I may do a little of that in this space over the next few posts (or I may not). Interestingly enough, the first thing I want to mention is something outside of his usual field.

McLaren is best known for his work in communicating an understanding of postmodernism and its challenges for Christianity. He's also a major advocate for social justice and a sought-after consultant on things like evangelism and church planting.

He talked about many of those things over the course of two lectures and some time spent responding to questions. It was in response to one of those questions that McLaren painted a mental image that I think many people -- especially ministers who care about their mental and emotional health -- would do well to hear.

Outlining an imaginary whiteboard, he suggested that we think of a circle surrounded by a larger shape, and both of those within an even bigger space. Think of the smallest circle as your job, he said, and the next largest circle as your ministry. "It's not good for the soul to do good only when we're paid for it," he said. The largest space, he said, represents our life, the place where spouses and children and exercise and personal interests come in (his imaginary picture looked much better than my lame graphical effort).

I've heard similar ideas before, and McLaren didn't claim that his advice was original, but it was a helpful word to hear. Every minister needs to keep a healthy perspective on life, ministry, and work. It's easy to be consumed by one's job, miss out on life, and compromise one's health -- setting a poor example in the process.

"You've got to smoke what you're selling," McLaren said. "We don't just purvey abundant life if we can't enjoy it. It's in your life that you interact with the world."

This advice came during a week when I learned of a successful pastor's apparent suicide, and saw multiple students really struggling to find balance. I knew that some of the pastors and other ministers in attendance were also facing heavy stress. It was a good word, and I was glad the 300 or so folks who attended could hear it.

I hope we'll all -- ministers or members -- give that advice some thought, and practice what we preach.


[Note: I was able to interview McLaren while he was on campus. Watch for it in the November issue of Baptists Today.]