It’s Good Friday so Jen Fulwiler is taking the week off of hosting Quick Takes. I need something for blog fodder so I’m still going to post mine. If you also post yours and want me (or others) to read them, leave a comment with the link to them.
Reece’s Rainbow. This is Kaia and this is Brett.
Kaia has a family coming for her but they need to raise the money to do so. Brett needs a family and that family will likely need help raising the funds. Click on their pictures to see more.
Lent Madness. My pick, Luke, made it into the final match but was thwarted by Frances Perkins, who served as FDR’s Labor secretary. Curses! Oh well… there is next year. It was definitely a fun thing to do during Lent and I thank the Episcopal clergy peeps who put it together.
Update on Little Bear. Little Bear made it through his surgery and is home recovering. He is wanting to lick his cast off which is not amusing his mama. His buddy, Luna, is wanting to guard him and misses playing with her little buddy. I should probably explain… Luna is a gigantic German Shepherd and adores this little black kitten. I’m glad LB has a good buddy in her and it has been fun to watch the videos of the two of them in LB’s community. I’m sure his mama would appreciate continued prayers that his healing goes well. Oh yes, please also vote for him in the AmazeCats contest.
Polling the Hive Mind. Metanoia (my parish) might be having a craft bazaar after Thanksgiving to raise money for the parish. Would you mind going to my Yarn Goodness board on Pinterest and tell me what you think you would buy? The link to the Pinterest board will open in a new tab/window so you don’t have to surf back and forth.
Meeting the parents. My sister-in-law Jeanette graduated with her B.S. in Criminal Justice from ITT-Tech last night and I carpooled with my parents to downtown Sacramento to meet up with my evil twin and Jeanette’s parents for dinner beforehand. I hadn’t met them before and had heard stories so I thought dinner would be interesting. It did not disappoint. Her mom is a lot like my mom… and our dads were apparently separated at birth. They’re alike other than being 180 degrees apart politically so I had a great time listening to all the hunting and gun stories from Jeanette’s dad. Having spent the first 6 years of Jon’s ministry in the rural Midwest, I could hold my own pretty well. 🙂 Seriously, he’s really a lovely person and gives my brother as much hell as my grief as my brother gives him.
Dealing with C & E Christians. Simcha Fisher has some interesting advice on how to deal with “C & E Christians”. I never thought I’d be thankful to be part of a small church — we don’t really have parking problems and the twice-a-year people who come know better than to play on their phones during the service. I’m usually on my feet but that’s because I have a toddler who insists on opening and closing the sanctuary doors and trying to escape out the narthex doors, causing a couple people to give me the evil eye.
NCIS this week. How many people enjoyed McGee’s dad on NCIS this week? It was good to see Gibbs and a few others standing up for McGee when his dad would criticize him. It was also good seeing a McGee-centric episode.
For more Quick Takes, visit Jen next week at ConversionDiary.Com or (hopefully) check my comments.
#4 – I really like those placemats.
#6 – One nice thing about attending the cathedral downtown is that yeah parking can be a nightmare but at the same time we can always park at the catholic school or the downtown parking garage(only costs $1 for locals) and walk to church and let’s face it we can use the exercise lol
#4. I’d buy the stockings in Chanukah colours. Except Chanukah begins before Thanksgiving this year. Of course whether you could really sell stockings not in Chanukah colours depends how much after Thanksgiving you plan to have your sale.
#6 I really didn’t like Simcha’s article. It is absolutely selfish, focusing on what’s good for the faithful Catholics. Seriously, this is the attitude that ensures that those people will not want to set foot in the church on other days. I like that her commenters have more of a welcoming spirit, mentioning talking to people they know, but what about all the people who don’t know anyone? Will they feel welcomed in the church, especially if “regulars” flee to masses that are less attended to avoid them? Because really, her suggestions all have to do with avoiding those awful, awful people. Saying a prayer for them is empty words unless Catholics (or Christians) actually reach out to those people, who only come twice a year! In my congregation we consider the high holy days the best time to reach those people, who don’t belong to a synagogue: that’s the time when they actually come to us! By being welcoming and accomodating, each year we increase the numbers of members and the number of active members as well.
Of course there is a reason why we have pews set aside for those members and visitors who register ahead of time, making sure that the regular members get a seat. And we have lots of camping chairs pop up in synagogue during the high holy days.We have to make an effort to accomodate everyone, We are talking about a congregation that has about 50 people each Shabbat, that struggles to have weekday minyans, and seated 400 people for Yom Kippur.
I agree with your point (being welcoming) but I should also let you know that she is incredibly sarcastic. I don’t take her seriously… most of the time.
Yes, I got a good portion of the sarcasm, but her two practical solutions didn’t sound sarcastic at all. Yet, they were the suggestions that would help to avoid those strange people. Not cool.