A Church That Spent Nothing On Itself Last Year

Catalogues of church supplies are full of things house churches can do without.

Family of Hope, a Harrisonburg-based, living-room-size house church, has only nine official members and six associate members. After thirty years of meeting, many of us are past retirement age, and our total 2018 giving toward our official church budget was only a modest $13,510.59, although most of our group contribute generously to many other causes as well.

So Family of Hope is far from being some major success story.

But one heartening thing at our annual business meeting last evening was to learn that we managed to get through the entire 2018 fiscal year without spending anything on ourselves, a gratifying first for our little congregation.

We are blessed with more members willing to lead our 4 pm weekly worship and Bible study gatherings than there are Sundays in a month, so we have no salaries or stipends to provide for. And since we meet in homes we have no real estate to maintain and no utility expenses to cover. Ours is an experience of church stripped to its most basic elements, a gathering for prayer, fellowship, the study of scripture--and for enjoying a simple carry-in meal--all a kind of "carry-in" in preparation for our "carrying out" God's mission for us throughout another week, as described in a blog post "Is This For Here Or To Go?"

Our church budget does provide for things like printing and postage costs, and for any study material we might choose (though we mostly just use the lectionary texts found in the Bible). The church also offers each member up to $50 a year for taking in a retreat or seminar of their choice. But last year our members just covered such costs on their own and didn't bother asking our good treasurer, Susan Campbell, for reimbursement.

We do also have a $2000 annual Congregational Aid Fund to draw from to help with any special needs among us, but were fortunate enough not to have to use any of that in the past year.

Meanwhile, the amounts distributed to over 20 church wide Mennonite and other agencies aren't very large, the exception being Mennonite Central Committee, a relief and development organization for which we allocate $2000 a year for world hunger and relief needs. We also provide modest support to local groups like New Bridges, People Helping People, Summit House, Our Community Place, Faith in Action and a half dozen other local agencies.

We certainly don't deserve any accolades for any of this, and house churches like ours are not for everyone, and are far from being the only right way to do church. But after so many years, it's gratifying to see any trend toward congregations spending less on themselves and investing more in other mission, education and relief needs.

Some Sound Advice For Aspiring Leaders

"If only..." can be the saddest words we ever utter.

Blessed are those who find wisdom,

those who gain understanding,

for she is more profitable than silver

and yields better returns than gold.

- Proverbs 3:13-14 (NIV)

Recent developments in my home state remind us of how people's foolish past behaviors can result in some truly disastrous consequences.

Wise decisions, by definition, are those we can look back on later and feel great about, the results being positive and gratifying. Foolish ones are those we look back on with regret and ask, "What were we thinking?"

Some of us have learned that while experience can be a great teacher, we certainly don't want to have to learn everything from experience, i.e., the hard way.

Here are some examples of imprudent past actions on the part of public officials that have resulted in major regrettable consequences. Each could and should have been wisely avoided:

• Wearing blackface or donning Klan outfits

• Making racially insensitive comments

• Excessive drinking and partying

• Exploitive and demeaning sexual behavior

• Abuses of power

• Exploitation of undocumented workers for financial gain

• Being unfaithful to ones spouse

• Engaging in shady business deals

• Lying, exaggerating, misrepresenting

• Groping and disrespecting women

•Adulterous affairs, promiscuity

Lesson to be learned?  The wise may sometimes be judged as prudes, but there's simply no downside to being consistently prudent.

Why Our Divorce Numbers Remain Flat

This just in, the latest data from our Circuit Court
on local marriages and divorces.

As you can see from the list below, both marriage and divorce numbers have remained fairly stable in our community since 1996, when I began keeping record. So in spite of a significant increase in our local population during that time period we haven't seen any comparable increase in the number of marriage licenses issued. 

Does this mean there are fewer people in intimate and exclusive relationships? No. It only means fewer of them are documenting them, some perhaps assuming it will be easier for them to break up if they aren't officially 'married'. But when these unregistered couples (who have 'left father and mother' and begun an intimate and exclusive relationship just like their married counterparts), do break up, as they frequently do, they experience the same distresses divorced partners go through, or worse. They just aren't counted in the divorce numbers below:

Year         Marriages     Divorces

1996           873                 387

1997           950                 405

1998           964                 396

1999           932                 405

2000           947                 365

2001          1003                438     (most annual marriages)

2002           976                 421

2003           961                 399

2004           959                 437

2005           889                 381

2006           929                 389

2007           925                 434

2008           950                 405

2009           903                 347     (fewest annual divorces)

2010           879                 358     (fewest annual marriages since 1996)

2011           933                 433

2012           995                 445

2013           924                 484     

2014           972                 427

2015           955                 474

2016           985                 612     (most annual divorces)
2017           983                 426

2018           935                 476

Clarification 1: Marriage numbers are based on the number of marriage licenses issued, and include those who come here from other localities to marry, whereas divorce numbers include only the breakups of people who live in the City or County. However, it seems logical to assume that a roughly equal number of residents from here marry in other jurisdictions as marry here from other communities, so the numbers above should be reasonably valid for comparison purposes.

Clarification 2: One cannot assume a rate of divorce based on any one year's numbers, as in "45% of first time marriages in our community will end in divorce." Many of the above couples are marrying or divorcing for a second, third or fourth time). But with numbers like these over a period of this many years, one might safely conclude that the odds of a given marriage surviving are not nearly as good as we would like.

Brethren Mill Owner Bought And Freed Slaves

Bowman and business partner Frederick Miller were the third 
owners of what became known as Bowman's Mill, rebuilt after
the Civil War as the Silver Lake Mill near Dayton,

Myron Augsburger recently told me about an ancestor of his, Daniel L. Bowman, who was reputed to have purchased African-American slaves prior to the Civil War in order to free them.

My frequent attempts to verify this from written sources were unsuccessful until yesterday, when a retired pastor friend, Paul Roth, sent me a link to a Church of the Brethren history site that included the following statement:

"Family traditions tell that Daniel Bowman, prior to the Civil War, would purchase slaves and free them. Once freed, the slaves would work in his mill and on his farm. At the present, evidence seems to support the tradition. There were free blacks living near the Mill in pre-Civil War censuses."

I'm not sure how unusual it was to have a respected citizen of a slave holding state like Virginia dare do this, but I'm sure it must have been considered scandalous by many of his neighbors. And like most Valley Brethren and Mennonites, Bowman was also adamantly opposed to war and to all forms of sedition or violence, an equally unpopular position as the clamor for secession grew to a fever pitch.

For example:

"Daniel Bowman absolutely refused to give any aid or support to the cause of the Rebellion or to contribute anything to the Southern cause unless compelled to by military force, except when a lone soldier would call at his door for something to eat; he gave alike to the northern or southern soldier."

Bowman is an example of someone who was clearly ahead of his time, and who dared live out his convictions in spite of the cost.

Here's a link to the article on the history of Daniel Bowman that was made available to me by Cheryl Lyon, current owner of the historic Silver Lake Mill: https://drive.google.com/file/d/0BxFT5M50X6ixYngwZ0pJY0thd2loZ1VPZWxBOU5iSlFiVTZJ/view?usp=sharing

Here is the link to the gift and craft shop currently renting the space from Ms. Lyon:
http://www.silverlakemill.com/

HARD TIME VIRGINIA Vol. 4, No. 2 (an occasional newsletter by and for inmates)

2018 Parole Release Numbers Still Disappointing

Regular Parole

January: 20 grants and only 6 were first time grants (No Female grants, 4 Geriatric grants)

February: 13 grants and only 3 were first time grants (No Female grants, 1 Geriatric grant) 1 committed a new crime while incarcerated.

March: 39 grants and only 18 were first time grants (2 Female grants,   5 Geriatric grants) 2 committed a new crime while incarcerated.

April: 48 grants and only 23 were first time grants (No Female grants, 10 Geriatric grants) 8 committed a new crime while incarcerated.

May: 40 grants and only 20 were first time grants ( No Female grants,   6 Geriatric grants) 2 committed a new crime while incarcerated.

June: 43 grants and only 16 were first time grants (No Females, 6 Geriatric grants) 4 committed a new crime while incarcerated.

July: 28 grants and only 2 were first time grants (No Female grants,      9 Geriatric grants) 2 committed a new crime while incarcerated.

August: 27 grants and only 4 were first time grants (2 Females, 4 Geriatric grants) 1 committed a new crime while incarcerated.

September: 14 grants and only 5 were first time grants (1 Female grant, 2 Geriatric grants) 2 committed a new crime while incarcerated.

October: 47 grants and only 19 were first time grants (1 Female grant,  4 Geriatric grants) 4 committed a new crime while incarcerated.

November: 21 grants and only 6 were first time grants (2 Female grants, 3 Geriatric grants) 3 committed a new crime while incarcerated.

December: 20 grants and only 3 were first time grants (No Female grants, 2 Geriatric grants) 1 committed a new crime while incarcerated.

Cramped Quarters

Inmate John Nissley reports that the size of Cell N3-301 that he shares with his roommate at Buckingham Correctional Center (BKCC) is as follows:.

Actual Cell Size: 75 Square Feet (600 cubic feet) 

Usable Cell Size: 26.5 Square Feet (208.36 cubic feet)

Censorship of inmate's writings challenged
By Tyler Hammel - The (Charlottesville) Daily Progress
Saturday, November 24, 2018

A Charlottesville attorney has filed a lawsuit on behalf of a Virginia inmate who says officials censored his writings, violating his First and Fourteenth Amendment rights.
    According to the complaint filed by attorney Jeff Fogel in federal court in Richmond, Uhuru Baraka Rowe had two essays he wrote about poor prison conditions censored prior to their release.
    Neither essay contained anything that could be considered a security risk, the suit alleges, but they do contain information critical of both the Sussex II State Prison and its staff.
    The suit names five defendants.... All are being sued in their individual capacities.
    As a politically conscious prisoner, Rowe was targeted for the political content of his essays, the suit claims.
    Fogel said that in his time as an attorney, he's been a part of more than a dozen similar cases and in every case the suits have worked out in favor of the inmates. Censorship in federal and state prisons is widespread, Fogel said, and even his own writings teaching inmates how to file their own lawsuits have been blocked before.
    Given the limited literacy seen among inmates, Fogel said he finds it frustrating that prisons would try to censor both incoming literature and letters sent by inmates.
    "One of the best things that can happen to inmates during their incarceration is access to literacy and education," he said. "The fact that so many prisons try and block this access is ludicrous."
    According to Fogel, prison staff is only allowed to censor or prevent the release of inmate writings that contain directions for criminal activity, escape plans, coded information or other obvious security risks.
    In one of the essays, Rowe describes Sussex II as a "Potemkin village," a reference to fake portable villages built by Russian nobleman Grigory Potemkin in 1787 to fool and impress his former lover, Empress Catherine II.
    Much like the Potemkin villages, Rowe said the prison is made to look put together and functional all while hiding the cruelties and injustices found within from inspectors representing the American Correctional Association.
    "When the inspectors leave, however the facade is removed, the show comes to an end, and it's back to business as usual; back to treating us prisoners in a degrading and dehumanizing manner and subjecting us to conditions that are harsh, cruel and overly oppressive," he wrote in one of the two essays in question.
    Unable to do much out of fear of retaliation from prison authorities, Rowe writes on his blog that writing letters to those on the outside is one of the few things he can do.
    "Amidst the groans, the agony, the sighs and teary eyes, incarcerated Freedom Fighters bow our heads, pick up our pens, and write; hoping that you, The People, will see and hear the truth," he writes in the closing paragraph of the other essay in question.
    Among other criticisms highlighted in Rowe's essays are: poor-quality water, substandard medical care, overcrowding, misconduct from prison staff and understaffing. The understaffing has caused the prison to go on lockdown due to insufficient security, forcing prisoners to stay in their cells for longer periods of time than usual, one essay states.
    Rowe has been imprisoned for more than 20 years on a 93-year sentence. According to VDOC's website, Rowe will not be released until 2076. He is not eligible for parole.
    In an earlier essay Rowe wrote that was critical of Virginia's parole system, he said he accepted a blind plea agreement in a case involving robbery and the murder of two innocent people. Barely 18 years old at the time, Rowe said the sentencing guidelines suggested a maximum prison term of 13 years. So far, his requests for clemency have not been approved.

Letter From Inmate Jonathan White

Happy Sabbath Harvey, 

We are having a "Kairos Weekend" this week for the brothers who signed up to participate and there is a joyful reunion scheduled in the evening for everyone who has participated in a Karios weekend here since it began. It is a very joyful time when brothers come together from all different walks of faith in fellowship and worship of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. Brothers express unbridled exchanges of faith and self. It is more than just the homebaked cookies and coffee. It is a time that hearts are really touched by the messages and testimonies shared. To see some of the hardheartedest convicts in prison break down and cry out for repentance... and for their first time accept the love of Christ.

    In 1982, I walked into the prison chapel at Southampton on a Saturday evening Sabbath Day Service sponsored by the Campostella Heights Seventh-Day Adventist Church out of Norfolk, and on March 10, 1984, I fully accepted Christ Jesus in my life and took my first baptism ever on March 1, 1986, as a "believer." That moment changed my heart and soul from then on. 

    As the years passed by at Southampton, I became the Inside Inmate Coordinator for the Seventh-Day Adventist worship services and Bible studies. Now mind you...I am not one to feed into denominations or traditional systems. If the teaching is not from the pure Word of God... then it is not food for my plate, and to this day I remain a nondenominational believer in Christ Jesus. 

    Yes, prior to coming to prison, I was dipping and dapping into seeking a church home. My family were Pentecostal, Baptist, Catholic, and my grandmother's sister was a Seventh-Day Adventist. She invited me to come to a youth meeting one Sabbath evening and two of my schoolmates who were also SDA went along with me. That evening was remarkable because after the evening worship service (sundown) we all jumped into a church van and went to the bowling alley for the remainder of the evening. Hot dogs, cheese burgers, pizza and just good joyful teenage fun on the bowling lanes. 

   I met my first Christian girl friend that evening too. Life was different and I ended up singing in the youth choir with my two schoolmates on a dare. Today's youth don't gather together like we did then and just have down home clean fun without the drugs, alcohol and violence. Hey, young people today can't even have a birthday party without some mayhem occurring. 

    Those were the good old days!

A Song For Valentines Day

by my Pittsburgh-based singer/songwriter son Brad Yoder

love is all I have for you,

           it will have to do, 

           if you were looking for a miracle,

           the fact that we’re still here, 

           well that’s miraculous as anything

           that I have seen magicians pull,

           but I forgot the tricks I knew, 

           love is all I have for you..

love is all I have for you,

love is all that’s left after the wind has blown the chaff away,

I laugh at what I tried to save,

and disappointment’s just a lens to magnify what might have been,

but none of that was ever true,

love is all I have for you,

I close my eyes, I’m a child by the water,

casting stones so circles spread,

then blink twice, and we’re old on a park bench,

watching birds eat scattered bread,

in between we lost track of time,

but she is kind enough to remind us..

the little space between goodbyes is really only pocket-sized,

I carry you around with me in case I need some sympathy,

this fear that we’re not good enough will disappear when morning comes,

‘cause none of that was ever true,

love is all I have for you..

miraculous as anything that I have seen magicians do,

but I forgot the tricks I knew,

love is all I have for you…

The '67 MLK Speech We Should Heed The Most

King delivered his speech on Vietnam exactly a year before
his assassination. (photo by John C. Goodwin)

In the last issue of TIME magazine, Pulitzer Prize-winning writer Viet Thanh Nguyen, in a piece called "King's Other Legacy", makes the case that MLK's 1967 "Beyond Vietnam" speech has even more implications for today than does his better known "I Have A Dream" one delivered four years earlier.

In 1967, Nguyen reminds us, the Vietnam war was at its peak, and American forces were using more firepower (much of it against civilians) than the U.S. deployed in all of World War II. King rightfully called it a "war against the poor" that young black men were compelled to wage, along with their fellow draftees, to "guarantee liberties in Southeast Asia which they had not found in southwest Georgia and East Harlem."

Here's an excerpt from Nguyen's article:

"King's prophecy connects the war in Vietnam with our forever wars today, spread across multiple countries and continents, waged without end from global military bases numbering around 800. Some of the strategy for our forever war comes directly from lessons the American military learned in Vietnam: drone strikes instead of mass bombing; volunteer soldiers instead of draftees, censorship of gruesome images from the battlefronts, and encouraging the reverence of soldiers.

"You can draw a direct line from the mantra of 'thank you for your service' and 'support our troops' to American civilian regret about not having supported American troops during the war in Vietnam. This sentimental hero worship serves civilians as much as the military. If our soldiers can be absolved of any unjust taint, then the public who support them can be absolved, too."

Read the entire TIME article here: http://time.com/5505453/martin-luther-king-beyond-vietnam/

Try This Test For Ethnic And Ideological Bias

Check out more of the story of what happened near the Lincoln
Memorial last week in order to get a fairer picture.

Like many who learned about the controversial incident involving  some high school students and a native American elder last Saturday, I found myself quick to judge the young men with the 'Make America Great Again' hats. They were all being rude and racist, period.

And while there is evidence of some of their comments and gestures being inappropriate, one of the things I learned about myself was that I'm often too quick to rush to judgment before hearing all of the story.

For example, I realized my biases against the hyper-nationalism represented by the MAGA slogan, along with my bias in favor of native Americans, led me to some unfair conclusions. When I saw more video recordings of what preceded and followed the segment I first saw on social media, I realized the story was more complex than it appeared, and that the taunts of a few members of a nearby radical fringe group, the Black Hebrew Israelites, were a major part of the problem.

So some recent Facebook responses on this have led me to post the photo above and invite readers to imagine their reaction if any of the following had been a part of the story:

1. What if instead of a native American with a drum there had been a Roman Catholic nun with a rosary, and what if the youth in the confrontation had been young Muslim women wearing hijabs?

2. Or what if the 'elder' had been a burley white nationalist wearing a MAGA cap and chanting pro Trump slogans, and the youth were wearing Black Lives Matter shirts?

You get the picture. If you're like me, even if other details of the event had been similar, your visceral responses would not be the same.

Maybe we should all take time to apply these kinds of Rorschach tests of our objectivity and fairness.