needing your help

when tragedy hits, our faith is tested and measured. when "something goes wrong" we see how our faith is embedded in our lives. how we react to tragedy is a direct measure of how secure we are in our faith. this is real personally, and this is real collectively. when tragedy hits, we can either gather in support of the injured, or we can simply ignore their hurt and say "there but for the grace of God go i" - my prayer is that we react and we support.

i received an email from keith giles [you know, "keith's voice"] and he shared with me some news i would like to share with you - and see if you can help in some way; on june 20th, "the simple way" house, community center and neighborhood were the victims of a 7 alarm fire - destroying most of what was there. thank God no one seems to have been injured, but the emotional reality of a fire and the destruction that follows can be very traumatic.

if you, your church, your community, your family can help in any way possible - that would be great. our friend tony campolo has set up a donation page for those seeking to give, and the link to that will be at the bottom of this post. also, i have included a link to the simply way's website for those interested in knowing more - and contacting them directly with help offers.

if you desire, you can send checks directly to the simple way at:

The Simple Way
PO Box 14751
Philadelphia, PA 19134.

visit the the simple way website for more info: the simpleway
tony's donation page: click here


here is a 3.25 minute video of what happened:

never hearing our voices

it should not amaze me, but it does; it should not cause me to be concerned, but it does; it should not sadden me, but it does. what can do all that? the reality that the church is simply not hearing the voices of those who are calling for change - and what amazes me the most is how the church puts its collective head in the sand and never even notices that things have changed - and yea, i have to admit that it hurts a little.

recently a friend or mine, bob carlton, posted some very interesting information via my facebook account - he was quoting some recent barna research done on "non-church" people between the ages of 16-29. the servey asked, "what is your current perception of christianity?" here is how they responded:

91% said antihomosexual
87% said judgmental
85% said hypocritical
78% said old-fashioned
75% said too involved in politics
72% said out of touch with reality
70% said insensitive to others

think about this, churches are all that, and more, to those outside the church - man, do we need better pr.

think about this for a second, with the exception of the homosexual issue [and we can debate that at another time - even though some will only focus on that topic] none of those things are "doctrinal" - they are how christians treat others, how christians are seen treating others and how christians interact in the culture at large - with the exception of one thing, this has nothing to do with what christians believe, but how christians act - or does it have something to do with what christians believe? think about that. if you believed in love, how would you act? if you believed in forgiveness, how would you act? if you believed in grace, how would you act?

the idea that christians are seen as judgemental and hypocritical is amazing to me because as a follower of jesus i know he told us not to be either. we are boldly told to not be that way in scripture - jesus, you know the guy we claim to follow, tells us over and over to not judge others and to stop being so hypocritical - but those in the church simply ignore that call and say, "well, we are only human and not able to change" - if that is the case, if there is no change from what you were before you started to follow, why should anyone follow? what value is a faith that does not call us to change, and change us? what value is a faith that simply seems no different from the world around?

what the church fails to notice is that people see those who claim to be christian as "little christs" - when they treat people like crap, others think then that their god is telling them to treat people like crap - it's a reality. if you claim to follow the teachings of jesus, and you treat people like crap then the teachings of jesus must tell others to treat people like crap. how we act is how others define our God - christians do it all the time with muslims, and other faith traditions. even if you don't like the idea, if you call yourself a christian you are an ambassador of God, and people who see you and how you act define God in those terms - if you are judgemental, so is your God; if you are hypocritical, so is your God; if you are old fashion, so is your God; if you are anti-anything, so is your God; if you are out of touch with reality, so is your God; if you are insensitive to the needs of others, so is your God.

well, the stats are in and the church will do as it has done in the past - they will ignore them, deny them, and argue them as meaningless; they will take their collective heads out of the sand for just a moment and then they will close their eyes and pretend it never happened - and as they do, churches will close and the faith will become more and more irrelevant to those it is trying to reach.

what i believe will be the most amazing to me is that many in the church, many in the evangelcial church, will not read any of the stats and they will go about their day as if nothing changed - they will ignore the world around them and in their own way, in their own world, they will think they got it right - while those outside the church are laughing.

the fix is in

it took some time, and there still is some tweaking we need to do - but we overhauled ginkworld - and it was a a process. but we think it looks cool. we are playing with the idea that we desire an "evolution" - so we gave ginkworld a very "cccp" theme - very "1917 revolution" - tell us what you think.

some changes:
we got rid of the java menu - because it gives foxfire people a fit - and replaced our menu with a simple css menu - we think it helps a great deal

we removed many of the "not needed" code so the site loads faster - while the index is php, we kept the back end html - it was a hard decision but one we felt would give us the ability to maintain the feel we desired

we added feeds to our blog, and our community blog [if you are interested in writing for our community blog - let me know] and we added some achieve feeds so past stories and stuff will come up on a random [we like random] basis - ever time you reload ginkworld a bunch of new "more" articles will pop-up.

we have added a youtube play list - and we will be changing this weekly with new videos - either music or just some crazy thing we like - it's like a trip to candy mountain, without the scar :)

some tweaking
we will be tweaking the article area over the next few weeks - we are trying to get the code to do what we need - most of it is going fine - but we are missing some font colors and we are trying to figure out what the deal is :)

we hope you like the new look - we hope you spread the word and tell others about us and what we are striving to do - we are a place where "normal" and radical voices can be heard in the noise that is around us.