NaBloPoMo 2010 Day 15 -- Thoughts from a recent meeting

We went to a meeting at our church on Sunday afternoon. Some friends of ours have taken the steps to be approved as foster parents and are doing so through a private agency called Faithbridge Foster Care. Faithbridge works with the state and county agencies who have the placement needs. When their foster families are not available, they call private agencies, like Faithbridge, to see if they can fill the gap with one of their Faithbridge families. Faithbridge's model centers around establishing relationships with churches. The goal is not only to find willing families in the churches but also for the members of those churches to help serve as support for their member families who decide to foster.

Faithbridge has the statistics, but if the Church stepped up, there would be no need for the state agencies who place foster children because there would be none without a family to take them in. The meeting that we attended was an introductory meeting into what it means to be a foster family or a respite care family and how Faithbridge operates. It was also a time for people to ask questions and hopefully, for the Faithbridge representative to dispel some myths about fostering.

When we jumped into the world of adoption, we went to a similar meeting where we heard an adoption consultant dispel many of the movie-of-the-week myths about the adoption process. That was a good exercise for us. (And the reality for us has been nothing like those myths that continue to circulate about adoption.)

But I digress.

I have two psychology degrees, so in meetings like this, I cannot stop myself from monitoring the comments of others (and a little commentary in my head about what is being said or asked). This meeting was no different.

The first question that got me thinking was "how can Faithbridge do this with the whole separation of church and state?" My first thought was that there's a need that has to be met, and if there is another group that will help with some of the heavy lifting, the county is not going to mind that a faith-based group is helping out. Second, the state isn't as interested as many think it is in the spiritual lives of the rest of us. Third, this is the Bible belt. There is a lot more openness to faith-based initiatives here than in other parts of the country, I am sure. But I would still think that similar agencies in whatever other "liberal" state would accept the help of a group like Faithbridge even there. Finally, if someone thinks that fostering through Faithbridge is a way to force religion on a child, then perhaps, they are missing the point of serving as a foster parent (and I am not saying that I think the questioner is of that mindset, but I can see something similar running through the minds of those who want to "rescue" these children from their situations.)

The other question that sticks out for me was asked in the context of bringing in a foster child who was older than your own child or children -- a teenager perhaps. The questions was "how do you know that there won't be any sexual issues that your own children will be exposed to?" My immediate thought was "you can't." Thankfully, that was the ultimate response from the Faithbridge rep as well. It reminded me of our adoption situation. We couldn't really "know" anything about the background of Kee's birth parents. The limited info we have is based on self-report for the most part. We trust that what we know is true. But we cannot know. We made the conscious decision -- even before we launched into the adoption process -- to trust that the Lord would walk alongside us regardless of how things turned out with Kee. We reiterated that statement of faith after K-Man was ours.

I think we would have to walk into a foster family situation the same way. We would certainly try to determine as much as we could about the child's background, but we would have to remain vigilant and pray that the Lord would protect our family and heal whatever scars and pain exist for the child we brought into our home.

We haven't decided how or if fostering is a part of our future. But we wanted to know more about the process if for no other reason than to help our friends who are working with Faithbridge. We'll see what the Lord has in store for us though.

Scotland Bound

I know it's been a while since I posted, and now I'm posting from the Newark airport to tell you that I am going out of town and that it may be a while before I can post again. I am headed over to Scotland on a mission trip with my church. We will be putting on a summer camp for about 40 middle- and high-school age kids for a church that we have developed a relationship with. Pray that I have the energy to keep up with the youngsters on our team and at the camp. I can remember being that age, but it feels like a really long time ago.

I will try to get on here -- wireless connection permitting -- to post some updates about my perspective of the trip. However, if you want to catch up with how the team is doing, you can go the Scotland Team blog throughout the next 2 weeks to see how we are getting along.

Trucker Butt

When I was a senior in high school -- more than 20 years ago -- I attended a Methodist church after an invite from Fritchman (he was always inviting people to church -- he has a gift for that sort of thing). Eventually, there was a whole group of us there. The pastor of my current church served as the youth minister of that Methodist church. For the sake of this story, we'll call him Tom. I don't want to speak for him, but it didn't take long for Tom to notice that the group of us had a certain energy -- especially together.

One day, Fritchman, Kooky and Sean decided to have some fun with a video camera. (I was working this particular day, so I missed out on the first videos.) Sean had the camera. Fritchman and Kooky decided to do a video on the differences between life in Christ and life without Him. There was a cigar involved. The hugging of a tree. And a banana. To this day, I still catch myself periodically uttering 2 phrases from that video: "The answer?" (in a high-pitched, nerdy voice) and "Want a banana?"

So we showed this video to Tom. For some reason, he thought it was hilarious. He said he was planning a talk on peer pressure and asked us to do a video on that theme. Simple enough, right?

So we met at my house, brainstormed a plot and found some props. There were jelly beans. A beach ball. A bucket hat. And an old Boy Scout shirt that my step-brother had in his closet. (I was never a Boy Scout. I was a Cub Scout for about 6 months but quit when we never went camping. I earned a Bobcat badge and a Wolf badge before hanging it up though.) It was decided that I would play the boy who was dealing with the peer pressure. So I wore the Boy Scout shirt. Of course, right? Who succumbs to peer pressure more than Boy Scouts? It's not all walking grannies across the street and archery demonstrations, you know. I also wore the bucket hat, which is not a part of the Boy Scout uniform. (Important distinction, we thought.)

The gist of the story was that I was enticed by the popular kids to try drugs -- hence the jelly beans. (They showed up better on our no-budget camera.) In time, I gave in to the pressure and tried the drugs. At the end of the video, Kooky runs into the room to find me OD-ed on the bed. He bends over my sprawled body and yells out something like "I told you not to try the green ones!" Bent over, we get the slightest glimpse of Kooky's crack. And then we hear him whisper "trucker butt." Fade to black.

This wasn't Sundance material. It may not have even been worth youtube had Gore invented the innernets earlier. But it delivered "a" message about peer pressure, which was our task. We showed it to Tom. Again, he thought it was hilarious. You'd think this is where the story ends, because I already gave you the "trucker butt" line and that is the title of the post. But you'd be wrong.

Tom decided to show the video at MYF on Sunday night. He decided that he'd show it at senior high and junior high. The senior high folks laughed hard, in part, because some of their own were in it. I was not present for the junior high showing, but I can imagine they -- for the most part -- thought it was funny too. It turns out though that one junior high kid was in the Boy Scouts, and when he saw the video, all he focused on was the shirt I was wearing. Uneasy about the implications of doped-up scouts run amok, he mentioned the video to his father when he arrived home. His father was a little more than "uneasy" about what his son told him he viewed that night. . . at junior high MYF . . . at church!

Now keep in mind, the father never actually watched the video. I am sure if he had viewed the piece, he would've been overwhelmed by the obvious parody captured on tape. That's neither here nor there, because the father decided to talk to the senior pastor of the church about the outlandish video that he thought disparaged (even unintentionally) the fine name of the Boy Scouts. This resulted in a meeting between the pastor and Tom. Correction is never fun. I'll just say that.

And thus began the age of censorship in youth ministry video snippets.

It was unfortunate too because a couple of months later, we were working on a man-on-the-street type video. We were walking through Kroger late one night. Tom was on the mic trying to ask people some questions. We look down one aisle. A mother is perusing cans of soup. Her daughter is sitting in the cart looking at us. Precious little angel of about 5 or 6. I point the camera at the girl. She gave me the finger. That's right. The one-finger salute. She told us we were #1. Unbelievable! You can't write this stuff. We decided not to show this at Youth Camp that year regardless of the comedic content. (See, we are teachable.)

These videos still exist because Fritchman's dad showed them at his rehearsal dinner. But I haven't seen them since that night. Hopefully, they remain in safekeeping because Keegan will need to learn about peer pressure one day too.

I don't go to Church anymore.

Recently, the Pope clarified the Catholic Church's position on the "Church." The papacy of John Paul II was peppered with certain gestures of Christian unity. But Pope Benedict has decided to quash any notions that the "Church" can exist outside of apostolic succession. He says:

Christ “established here on earth” only one Church and instituted it as a “visible and spiritual community,” that from its beginning and throughout the centuries has always existed and will always exist, and in which alone are found all the elements that Christ himself instituted. “This one Church of Christ, which we confess in the Creed as one, holy, catholic and apostolic […]. This Church, constituted and organised in this world as a society, subsists in the Catholic Church, governed by the successor of Peter and the Bishops in communion with him”.

Not wanting to completely alienate the world's Protestant churches (note the little "c"), the Pope threw an ecumenical bone noting that:

It is possible, according to Catholic doctrine, to affirm correctly that the Church of Christ is present and operative in the churches and ecclesial Communities not yet fully in communion with the Catholic Church, on account of the elements of sanctification and truth that are present in them.

I appreciate the acknowledgment that truth exists beyond the bounds of the Catholic Church, but don't think the Pope is reconsidering his position on the watered-down nature of the post-Reformation faiths.

Nevertheless, the word “subsists” can only be attributed to the Catholic Church alone precisely because it refers to the mark of unity that we profess in the symbols of the faith (I believe... in the “one” Church); and this “one” Church subsists in the Catholic Church.

So apparently, I don't go to Church anymore, I attend an ecclesial Community. So I can use a capital "C" just not in front of "church." Oh well.

As you can imagine, Protestants were not enamored with the Pope's reaffirmation of this Catholic doctrine. One Southern Baptist seminary president appreciates the Pope's candor on this issue. He cautioned against an emotional reaction to the Pope's statement though and encouraged a theological response. But his theological position -- to me -- is no less dogmatic:

Evangelicals should be equally candid in asserting that any church defined by the claims of the papacy is no true church. This is not a theological game for children, it is the honest recognition of the importance of the question.

In my mind the true Church is not represented by either of these extreme positions.

There is One at the head of the Church. He was; He is; and He is to come. He's not wearing a pointy hat in Rome. He's not running a seminary in Louisville. He's not on television asking you to send in money to get your prayers answered. He's not the latest Christian author on the NY Times bestseller list with the truck load of promotional gimmicks.

7 But to each one of us grace has been given as Christ apportioned it. 8 This is why it says: "When he ascended on high, he led captives in his train and gave gifts to men." 9 (What does "he ascended" mean except that he also descended to the lower, earthly regions? 10 He who descended is the very one who ascended higher than all the heavens, in order to fill the whole universe.) 11 It was he who gave some to be apostles, some to be prophets, some to be evangelists, and some to be pastors and teachers, 12 to prepare God's people for works of service, so that the body of Christ may be built up 13 until we all reach unity in the faith and in the knowledge of the Son of God and become mature, attaining to the whole measure of the fullness of Christ.

14 Then we will no longer be infants, tossed back and forth by the waves, and blown here and there by every wind of teaching and by the cunning and craftiness of men in their deceitful scheming. 15 Instead, speaking the truth in love, we will in all things grow up into him who is the Head, that is, Christ. 16 From him the whole body, joined and held together by every supporting ligament, grows and builds itself up in love, as each part does its work.

Ephesians 4:7-16.