intersections

Off to Orlando

I'm leaving my apartment in about 30 minutes to head to LAX. I'm off to Orlando, Florida this morning to participate in the annual Adventist Forum/Spectrum Conference. We're going to be at this really swanky looking resort, so that should be awesome. This year the theme is "Christianity and the Public Square." We're hearing from Joel Hunter, Senior Pastor of Northland Church in the Orlando area, and Barry Lynn, Executive Director of Americans United for Separation of Church and State.

I'm part of a panel tomorrow afternoon responding to Barry Lynn and a panel discussion on Sunday morning about our work in the public square. Should be fun. Looking forward to catching up with a few of you there.

Adventists Against Prop 8

This is a little something a few friends and I have been working on for the past couple of weeks. Ever since the Seventh-day Adventist Church State Council announced its support for California State Proposition 8, which would amend the California State Constitution to say "only marriage between a man and a woman is valid or recognized in California", I have felt the need to offer another perspective. This ballot initiative is officially entitled, "Eliminates Right of Same-sex Couples to Marry."

That's what our website - www.adventistsagainstprop8.org - does. I invite you to visit the site and if you would like to support this effort, sign our petition.

Some have said that our position amounts to support for same-sex marriage. We disagree. Nothing on our site indicates our opinion for or against same-sex marriage. Some who have signed the petition do support same-sex marriage. Many do not. But that is not the issue at stake here. What is at stake here is the very real potential that the State will narrow its definition of marriage on a religious argument. This is what we object to.

As of this posting [2:45 pm] we have had 766 hits on the site, 114 signatures on our petition and 76 members who have joined our Facebook Group, all in less than 24 hours.

A different narrative

Some friends recently pointed me to a website entitled, Clergy for Obama. So, yesterday I visited the site and signed my name. It's no secret that I am supporting Barack Obama for President. This website has reminded me why I originally took that position way back before the Primary season began. One of the posts on the site is by my friend, Brian McLaren. He really captures one of the main reasons many of us are supporting Senator Obama. Read an excerpt after the jump, or click here to read the whole thing.

If you are clergy I would encourage you to visit the site and considering supporting Barack Obama. This is not an endorsement on behalf of the churches we lead. We are speaking as individual citizens of this country. I have never publicly endorsed a candidate for president in this way before, but I believe this election is different. Barack Obama is not the messiah. America is not the "last best hope of the world," "the greatest nation in the world" or any other nonsense like that. But those of us who call the United States of America our home have a responsibility to do the best we can by the people who are our neighbors, both domestically and around the world.

Here's Brian McLaren...

Who's reading?

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Here's a look at the diversity of Intersections readers out there. Below are the top 20 cities to visit this site out of a total of 11,700 visits so far this year.* And, we just passed the 40,000 mark for unique visits to this site since I started it in the Spring of 2005. That's not nearly as many as some of my friends, but I like to think of this as a boutique blog! :) Thanks, everyone!

No End in Sight

The 2007 Academy Award Nominated film, No End in Sight is airing in it entirety on YouTube from now until November 5th. Check it out here. Watch the trailer below.

September 11 - Seven years on

Seven years ago today I was on the New Jersey Turnpike on my way to Manhattan. Yep, no joke. I was the Pastor of the Bucks County Adventist Church, north of Philadelphia, and my family and I were on our way to visit my good friend, Samir Selmanovic, who at the time was the pastor of Church of the Advent Hope on Manhattan's Upper East Side. I had been there many times before but I was taking my wife and our 11 month old baby.

We were cruising peacefully up the NJ Turnpike when I got a call from Samir. He had given us directions through the Holland Tunnel and around Battery Park. He informed us that a plane had hit one of the World Trade Center towers and traffic would likely be crazy through Battery Park. "Better take the George Washington Bridge and come around the north," he said. No problem, I thought to myself. I was more familiar with that route anyway.

Just a few minutes later he called back. Two planes. Big planes. Both towers hit. All tunnels and bridges in and out of Manhattan closed. Turn around quick!

Of course, later that day the fourth plane plowed  into the ground in Western Pennsylvania. We were so unsure of what would happen next. We were surrounded by this chaos on the North, South and West.

The day after the tunnels and bridges opened, approximately one week after the attacks, I drove to Manhattan to be with Samir and support him in the crisis intervention he was doing. Those days are so vividly etched in my memory. I made at least three trips to NYC in those days immediately after 9/11.

It's hard to believe it's been 7 years since that surreal day. My sense of disappointment and disgust at missed opporutnities and poor decisions only heightens my sadness on the anniversary of this terrible day. And, it makes me more determined than ever to advocate for an end to wars.

Where were you on September 11, 2001?
How you are you feeling 7 years later?

Hollywood Adventist Church has a new website!

(click to enlarge, or better yet, just go to the actual website)

Today the Hollywood Adventist Church is unveiling it's brand new website. This is a day I've been waiting a long time for. About one year ago a small group of people gathered in my office to discuss how we would structure a new website for our congregation that focused on the things that make us unique and had distinct functionality that would strengthen our ministry. I'm sure it's not perfect, and I know I'm biased, but it's the best church website I've ever seen. I hope you take a few minutes and browse the site. Here are a few of my favorite features.

• The structure: God, Time, People, City, Arts.
• The web 2.0 features: Google Calendar automatically feeds directly into our site, Flickr images in the Hollywood SDA Pool do the same, our current Twitter status shows at the bottom of the right column automatically, and WordPress automatically generates a Tweet when we make a new post.
• The embedded videos: one of these is always featured on the right column. This is a way for our media ministry to continually feature what they're doing.
• Our Community Partners: Under the City tab, we have a list of the organizations we work with in the city and around the state and country. We also have a list of recommended local eateries and hangouts that our membership enjoys. This is both a way to bless our local businesses with a little advertising and share with our visitors in Hollywood some quality local haunts that probably won't be in their tour book!

I want to express my gratitude to two people who made this happen. The first is Scott Arany, a graduate student at Fuller Theological Seminary, one of our leadership team members and a new member of our church staff. Scott's design sense combined with his theological acumen, make this site sing. But it could not do what it does without technical skill of my friend Todd Hiestand (343design), who programmed and coded the entire site so that it actually works! I highly recommend both of these men if you are looking for help with your website. Todd also does design, and because the whole site it built in WordPress, it's amazingly simple to update and maintain.

Upcoming Travel

I'm entering a period of travel that has me a bit tired just thinking about it. However, it's all very exciting stuff. I hope I'll be able to interact with some of you on one or more of these trips.

• Spectrum/Adventist Forum Conference - September 26-28 - Orlando Florida
• Conference on Innovation - October 5-7 - Columbus, Ohio
• Moscow Urban Conference - October 13-15 - Moscow, Russia (we'll be in Moscow from Oct 10-19)
• Holy Land Tour - December 2-9

Elysabeth and I will be traveling together to both Moscow and Israel, which is a real blessing for us. It's been years since we've been able to travel together like that - 6 years, to be exact.

Post a comment below if you'll be at either the Spectrum Conference or the Innovation Conference. I'd love the chance to meet and catch up.

Explaining Community Organizing

My friend, and PICO National Staff member, Gordon Whitman, sent this statement to the network this morning. I found it so powerful and compelling I wanted to share it here. Here are a couple of excerpts. Read the entire statement after the jump.

Americans have been organizing to build community and hold government accountable since our nation was formed, but last week there was more talk in the national media about modern community organizing than at any time in recent history.

When speakers at the Republican National Convention repeatedly mocked Senator Obama's work as a community organizer many of us witnessed not just another political attack, but mean-spirited disrespect for people who give of themselves to improve communities and expand opportunities for families.

As Bishop Roy Dixon, former president of the PICO board of directors, said, "As a life-long Republican, the comments I heard last night about community organizing crossed the line. It is one thing to question someone's experience, another to demean the work of millions of hard working Americans who take time to get involved in their communities. When people come together in my church hall to improve our community, they're building the Kingdom of God in San Diego. We see the fruits of community organizing in safer streets, new parks, and new affordable housing. It's the spirit of democracy for people to have a say and we need more of it."

Fr. John Baumann, who founded PICO 35 years ago, said in an Associated Press story that ran in papers across the country that "If people in office were doing their jobs, perhaps we wouldn't need community organizers."

<snip>

For PICO, every aspect about the work of community organizing – from taking the time to listen to people, to researching solutions to problems, to bringing people together across race, religion and party affiliation – is engineered to develop the skills and leadership of ordinary people.  PICO teaches that devoting yourself to developing the leadership skills of others is what a true leader does.

In PICO we don't ask whether someone is a Republican or Democrat, but whether they are doing their job.  We reject any suggestion on the right or the left that community organizing belongs to any one political party.  All across the United States both Republican and Democratic elected officials have worked with PICO organizations and other organizing groups to reduce crime through community policing, build public will for schools reform, revitalize neighborhoods and create affordable housing.

There are always those in power who dismiss people who want to get involved. That arrogance is folly.  Those who understand the history of the United States, those who hear the call to witness God's love in the world, realize that mayors and governors and presidents alone cannot solve the problems we face as a nation.  Only when people get involved, only when people have the power to hold the powers that be accountable can we create a world that respects each of us in God's image.

WARNING: Adventist inside jokes below

A member of my church point out this amazing website selling T-shirts that poke fun at some unique characteristics of Adventism. Both the site and the T-shirts have an incredible design sense. I'm buying myself a couple of these! Check it out!

Eighteenfortyfour.com