Mark Byron

Tuesday Catch-Ups

Yes, I'm still alive and kicking, albeit with a snootful of allergies due to a warm Kentucky spring. I've also been absorbed with a semi-new (I got it with Christmas gift cards but didn't crack it open until a few weeks ago) Tiger Woods '08 golf game, which has a career mode where you work your way from fleecing your bosses for $200 Nassaus to the amateur circuit to second-tier tour to PGA.

Anyways, lots of interesting things in the news.

Swine Flu-Mexico is all but going to ground, closing schools, tourist sites and restricting restaurants to take-out only to keep stuff from spreading. We have a number of cases in the US, but no deaths as of yet. The deaths seem to be from young adults, not the very young or the elderly, which reminds folks of some other nasty viruses.

What happens after pigs fly? Swine flew.

From RINO to DINO-Arlen Specter crossed the aisle, giving the Democrats 59 votes if you count two left-of-center independents. If and when Al Franken finally snags the MN Senate seat, that will bring that coalation to a cloture-inducing 60 votes.

However, that only changes things on party-line votes; Specter had been voting with the Democrats on a number of key issues, and merely becomes a moderate Democrat like, say, Ben Nelson. He's still in play on non-party-line issues, so there hasn't been a major shift in power.

What this does is buy Specter another term if he can win a Democratic primary in 2010. A GOP primary rematch with Pat Toomey may well have gone to Toomey, given that it was a very close call in 2004 and conservatives are even more ticked at Specter than they were in 2004. If the Democrats can count to 10 and not pull a Lieberman on Specter, Specter should win in a walk-over in a general election over Toomey, 60-40, or maybe 55-40 with a 5% hard-left protest vote.

Draft-Matthew Stafford wound up going #1 to the Lions. He seems to be a solid pick, maybe not worth the first pick overall, but since Detroit needs a QB and he's the best guy on the board, you pick him #1. They also got a big TE, Brandon Pettigrew, for him to throw to.

Some interesting meanderings

• Mark Sanchez gets to become the next Joe Namath with the Jets.
• Beanie Wells goes to Arizona, where he'll take over for Edderin James
• Here's a second rounder that got me excited; WV QB Pat White, being marketed as a WR, goes to Miami. One word-WILDCAT! The Fins have been running a variant of the WV spread offense with Ronnie Brown playing single-wing tailback. White would be perfect in that role. If the Dolphins are smart, they might do something akin to 2006 Florida, where they let White play Tebow to Pennington's Chris Leak.

Freddie's (Boss is) Dead

Here's a sobering story. Mortgage market-maker Freddie Mac's CFO, David Kellermann, apparently did himself in yesterday. Are you happy now, Senator Grassley?

To be fair to the senator, he was joking when he suggested that the AIG honchos commit hari kari, but a lot of people feel that way towards the financial big-shots. A lot of ill will is flowing towards folks who are often doing the best they can in a bad situation.

If you listen to talkers on both the right and left, there is little but bile pointed towards our financial system's leaders; it's not saying that the chattering classes caused Mr. Kellermann to commit suicide, but it surely didn't help. I know it wouldn't help my mood if I were getting ripped left and right in the media on a daily basis.

Now pundits will wonder if there is some massive problem that is about to hit the fan; what's just as likely is that he cracked under some exceedingly intense pressue.

Pray for his family, the Freddie Mac folks who will get extra scrutiny, and our financial system in general.

Not the Worst

One of the things that was running through my mind is the large number of the reality/contest shows that work on the format of getting rid of the least-popular or least-successful person each round, round by round, until the final two square off.

I think Survivor was the first of that modern breed, but almost all the multi-week contest shows work on that format, like American Idol and Dancing With the Stars, where one person gets visited by The Turk each week. Or, The Apprentice, where someone gets to hear The Donald say "You're fired" each week.

The Weakest Link does that in game-showdom, and it's a Food Network staple format, with competitions to get new hosts and a new Iron Chef running that ditch-the-weakest format. A new half-hour show Chopped gets four chefs presenting appetizers; the weakest app gets to go home, then the weakest of the three entrees gets the cleaver, and then the weakest of the two deserts gets their bags packed.

Do we blame Survivor for this? No, try Jack Welch; he makes Trump look like a softie.

Each year, Welch would fire the bottom 10% of his managers. He earned a reputation for brutal candor in his meetings with executives. He would push his managers to perform, but he would reward those in the top 20% with bonuses and stock options. He also expanded the broadness of the stock options program at GE from just top executives to nearly one third of all employees. Welch is also known for destroying the nine-layer management hierarchy and bringing a sense of informality to the company.

During the early 1980s he was dubbed "Neutron Jack" (in reference to the neutron bomb) for eliminating employees while leaving buildings intact.

What the contest shows do is to adopt the first half of the platform, ditching the bottom-rung employee.

In corporate America, many managers have a good cadre that they don't want to break up; if everyone is doing their job well, a boss shouldn't have to select one to offer up as sacrifice to the pink-slip god. One friends of ours left a job as a manager when his workplace had him implement the fire-the-bottom strategy when he really didn't have a bottom to fire; he had a bunch of good workers, none of which deserved to be fired. However, if you're playing the game of Corporate Survivor, someone has to get voted off the island each year.

What we might be seeing in places that have this strategy is a bit of risk-avoidance, both on a personal and business level. If the goal is to not be the weakest link, one should avoid standing out and be part of the pack. If you can aim to be in the 50% percentile, you won't get fired.

Aiming high can also make you stand out, which might put you in line for Welchian bonuses, but might also put you in the unemployment line if your efforts are not appreciated by your boss or your co-workers. You might be hustling and doing a great job, but you might be earning the enmity of the semi-slacking middle who you make look bad; they might make your life miserable and make you negatively stand out.

I even see a bit of this in Christian circles, where we tend to focus on a bottom 10% of capital-s Sinners who do all those things that Paul rails against; the rest of us can get into some spiritual Welchism and see us well above that 10% that will get us voted off Heaven Island. We all have our low-grade vices that are often well hidden, but we can get a false sense of security if we feel better than the real reprobates. That was what Jesus ripped the Pharasees for, seeing themselves better than the spiritual riff-raff.

Jesus was more about reaching the lost sheep, the 1% that weren't with the program. We need to be working at bringing people onto the island (a.k.a. the Kingdom of God) rather than voting them off.

Commander Check-Off

It's Tax Day, which creates the proper hissing sound from the right side of the Peanut Gallery and groans in the rest. Hey, at least we have income to tax. I filed my forms yesterday, having my biggest tax bill ever thanks to my best income year of my life.

Kentucky has an interesting check-off system for political funding; unlike the federal system, which sends money into a kitty that presidential candidates of various parties (IIRC, third parties get funding if they pass a threshold percentage), the Kentucky system lets you designate $2 to either the Democrats or Republicans or neither.

I never saw that before, but a few other states have that system. Idaho, Iowa and New Mexico also allow taxpayers to designate a party rather than put the cash in a generic pot for state campaigns.

I had an interesting dilemma. Would I rather have Frankfort have an extra $2 to run whatever programs they might need help with (yes, $2 won't go to far, but you have to think you have company elsewhere in the Commonwealth to make a dent) or an extra $2 in the Kentucky GOP coffers to run attack ads against whoever is running against Jim Bunning next year? It may sound odd, but I think two bucks of government spending will do more good than two bucks worth of attack ads (or other political expenditure, but the attack ad is where the marginal dollars are likely to go), even if I support the side running the attack ads.

Here's a question for the Democrats (or center-left folks among my international readers); would you rather have $2 for your party to spend or $2 for the government to spend? Since you generally would like government to be able to do more, would diverting some of that cash into political campaigning be counterproductive?

For the Republicans in the crowd-if you disagree with me, why would you want to raise taxes (or cut spending) in order to fund GOP campaigns?

Trained SEALs

Well trained at that. It seems more like a denouement of a JAG episode than real life, but the Navy freed the captive captain of the Maersk Alabama, Richard Phillips. They had the lifeboat that had the captain and four pirates within 30 yards, and when the pirates were looking like they were about to us an AK-47 on Phillips, SEAL snipers got off three head shots and three kills on the pirates.  The fourth pirate became compliant and will get tried somewhere, while Phillips is in Navy hands and safe and sound.

SEALs are the Navy's commando bad-asses (excuse the French, but nothing else quite fits) and they earned their keep today-here's Central Command's Admiral Gortney's take

“We pay a lot for their training,” Gortney said of the snipers. “We got a good return on their investment tonight.”

These are trained SEALs that don't go HARP, HARP, HARP; a good Boo-Yah is what we get to hear today; I may be off on military branch jingo, but they deserve some hearty hooray. It isn't the kind of news you want to see on Easter, but it is good news.

Library Musings

Eileen had a long batch of unemployment this winter, but she got back to work last week, which means we had the radio on the alarm clock go off at 5:45 for the first time in a while. While K-LOVE may be a bit commercialized and a touch materialistic, it's still the best thing on a limited alarm clock reciever; I'm debating about springing for an Internet alarm clock where you can get simulcasted stations and free-stadning Internet channels, but for now, we're stuck with K-LOVE.

Anyways, we're used to the Rivers doing that "morning drive" show and they were conspicious by their absence. Turns out they stepped away-

Two of Christian radio's biggest personalities have decided to end their popular morning show.

The California-based radio group K-LOVE announced, Monday, that it will no longer air its program featuring Jon and Sherry Rivers.

The Rivers have hosted the morning show for seven years.

Actually, the gal that is now doing that gig seems to be doing a better job, with a big more earnestness and a bit less sarcasm than the Rivers. However, it was an interesting change.

 

The Church and an Antinomian Culture

We're dealing with a post-Christian culture, especially in our academic quarters. One interesting scuffle that I've seen is to watch UK fight a more conservative Kentucky culture on things like same-sex partner benefits; college hiring at UK's level is a national market, and the national academic culture is one that is antinomian, wanting to give their peers the flexibility to pursue their personal lives in whatever way they choose rather than be forced to bow to traditional morality.

That seems to extend to our law school grads. Even in Iowa, we now have legal same-sex marriage thanks to their Supreme Court. You'd think that such middle-American folks would be not on that antinomian bandwagon, but seven of the nine were Democratic nominees (Iowa appoints judges, then they get retention elections); even so, the two Republican members voted for it as well.

Here are a number of thoughts on this front

(1) The world does go on, God's still on the throne, and the Gospel will still be preached. We are seeing a sociatal normalization of homosexuality, but that's only a symptom of a ignoring traditional teaching on sexual issues. The 40% out-of-wedlock birth rate should be of more concern than same-sex marriage; the latter directly affects a minority that have same-sex or bisexual leanings, while the latter is showing where a broad swath of couples are "getting the cart before the horse."

(2) The problem isn't as much with particular state Supreme Courts or state legislatures (Vermont became the first state to vote in same-sex marriage this week; the other three were court-imposed); the problem is with a culture that creates those judges and legislators. You need to change the culture before you change the government, for our officials will in general reflect public opinion.

(3) People can be faithful Christians and have blind spots on some issues. For instance, quite a few of us didn't say enough about torture in the last administration, forgetting that the Golden Rule applies to Islamic militants as well as our next-door neighbor.

Some folks in Christian circles want to cut our same-sex attracted brothers and sisters some slack. I find it easy to see them as brothers in Christ but also find it hard to justify acting upon those urges as godly activity.

It's often a moot point, since gay folks will be more likely to go to gay-friendly churches than the sexually old-school churches that I tend to go to. However, there is a place for understanding their dilemmas, where they give into urges that they find to avoid and either say that the Bible writers were wrong or that this is one sin that they can't fight.

Ray Boltz comes to mind; he's an otherwise godly guy who was miserable trying to be "straight." I've had enough battles with depression myself to be comfortable saying "well, be miserable, you'll have to tough it out."

How do we "hate the sin, love the sinner" without the sinner feeling rejected? We likely will have a few folks in our church who may be struggling with that and not feel like they have an outlet where they will be loved despite what their going through. Even a 2% rate leaves us with 4 folks in a church of 200 who may be struggling with those issues; I'd rather help them deal with them and keep them striving to draw close to God rather than see them turn their back on the church and go secular or go towards a more Diest view of God.

(4) There are also some folks who aren't dealing with that issue personally but want to cut people some theological slack on the issue- "a loving God couldn't let people have that strong of an urge and not give them an honorable outlet for it?" I'm not sure if I'll go there. I can see understanding people giving into such urges but I'm not ready to sign off on saying that acting on them is OK.

Quite a few of my blog friends are in this camp and I imagine that I'll get some feedback on this. You can be a good, saved Christian and be wrong on a theological issue; for instance, lots of godly folks in the South got sucked into a racist world view for a good hunk of the US' history and some haven't quite got it past them yet.

Another example is the materialism that can inflict the church; we have too many luxury cars in the church parking lot and not enough donations of time and treasure. People may be able to quote you all the right verses and themes that they learned from their 100-CD collection of CCM, but not thought about the $1500 that went into that collection and whether it could have been better spent on something else in God's kingdom.

Likewise, in my somewhat humble opinion, we have some people who have been sucked into our culture and its antinomian sexual paradigm and go along with accepting extramarital sex, including gay sex, as an acceptable part of modern culture. Or am I a bit too much of a legalist and need to let God's grace flow looser?

I'll argue the former, but I'm willing to be a bit generous if you think the latter.

Serving the Customer or the State?

It's been almost two week since GM CEO Rick Wagoner got forced out by the Obama administration and I haven't put in my $0.02 yet. One meme that has made the rounds is to compare what Obama's doing to the early days of Mussolini; Fascism (the actual ideology, not the all-purpose slur on anyone more authoritarian than you'd like) has a private sector but has it subservient to the needs of the state. Peter Sean Bradley kicks it around here and Glenn Beck has been on the theme heavy on his TV show.

This is the first time that I can think of that a president has forced out a corporate CEO. That's moving in some very heady territory that should make everyone a bit nervous. My general view of government in the marketplace is that it is an good referee, a mediocre coach and a poor player. Here, Obama is playing uberCEO, a dangerous spot.

I think it is the right move, albeit one that has ramifications galore. GM needs a serious overhaul if it is going to survive, and a GM lifer like Wagoner is not the person to dispassionately amputate the unsavable sections; you'd not be in a great position as a doctor to saw off your mom's legs even if you knew it medically needed to be done. Obama at least realizes that some sort of GM 2.0 needs to be created that will create more cutting that Wagoner can easily deliver.

Is this getting GM to serve the state? Not quite yet; a government-shepherded Chapter 11 trip should actually help GM to meet it's goals as a business.

I remember the basic mantra of my undergraduate Marketing class; the company needs to serve the customer and make a profit. If you don't do both, you're not going to stay in business long. If you don't serve the customer, you won't get any business, and if you don't make a profit, you won't stay in business for too long.

GM is making a decent stab at serving the customer; they might not be the most innovative bunch, but they do make solid cars. For instance I have very few complaints about the Pontiac Vibe I bought two years ago except that the Pontiac nameplate might not make the cut in the overhaul of GM.

What they aren't doing is making a profit. They have a truckload of fixed costs that only either a bankruptcy filing or Soviet-era level government support of money-losing businesses can fix; the latter is out of the question even for the flotilla-of-drunken-sailors in charge of spending at present.

Once the bond market takes its lumps and the UAW gets a sustainable contract, a GM 2.0 can emerge that can make a profit and continue to, in their somewhat homely way, of serving the customer.

Business can serve the public at large best by serving their customers. That's how they roll best. Government is well advised to place as few of barriers as possible in their way of doing so, regulating only where the red tape and disruption is worth the hassle of protecting the customer or the public at large. Yes, they will make money, but that's how we know they're doing a good job; if they aren't doing a good job, they go under and the economy moves the people and resources to other things.

In general, business serves the public by serving the customer. They're ill-equipped to help the government or take orders from Washington; doing what Washington wants isn't a good business model. By providing good products at fair prices, they help their customers and the public at large.

Even the Obama people likely understand that. Our scuffle is most likely over which regulations and laws are worth the hassle; they're going to place a higher value on intervention that most of the Peanut Gallery will.

In the case of GM, it seems that they are heading on the right path of a tough-love restructuring that will get multiple pounds of flesh from workers, bond-holders and other stakeholders, getting GM back to a point where it can "serve the customer and make a profit."

"Let his blood be on us."

It's Good Friday morning as I hang out at my Plus Friday classroom. I was looking at the Holy Week passages in Matthew and this part of chapter 27 (NIV) stood out-

²⁴When Pilate saw that he was getting nowhere, but that instead an uproar was starting, he took water and washed his hands in front of the crowd. "I am innocent of this man's blood," he said. "It is your responsibility!"

²⁵All the people answered, "Let his blood be on us and on our children!"

They were right in more ways that one. The more literal version of that was applied by a number of churchmen over the years to blame the Jews of their day for Jesus' death.

However, in a spiritual since, Jesus' blood is on all those folks and their descendants, cleansing their sins, not marking their actions. That is what the day means, that Jesus became the sacrifice to end all sacrifices, that His blood paid our debts.

That's why it's Good Friday.

Blowing up the SBC Dawg Pound

I remember a quote from Mike Hargrove back when he was the Human Rain Delay (he'd take forever getting ready to hit) playing for Cleveland back when they played in old Municipal Stadium; for football, it was well suited, with the center-field bleachers morphing into the Dawg Pound where the rowdiest Browns fans would sit in one end-zone when in football mode.

However, it was a big barn for baseball. I'm struggling to get Google to cough up the quote, but I recall Hargrove saying that there wasn't anything wrong with the stadium that a case of dynamite wouldn't fix. Cleveland would have to wait at least a decade after that before they built Progressive (ne Jacobs) Field.

I think the Southern Baptists could use that treatment. Not that I want to wipe out Baptists, no, no,no. What could be helpful is to dismantle the name and national apparat and revert to local and state organizations, for there seems to be more badwill than goodwill with the brand name.

The group seems to be more known for its theology wars and stances on the culture wars than the Gospel. Part of the problem is that it is the largest evangelical denomination in the US and that with the distinction comes power and attention, attention that other smaller evangelical denominations don't get; if you did Family Feud survey on Evangelical Denominations, Southern Baptist would probably be the only one in double-digits.

The other problem seems to be that the national body seems to be struggling to figure out what it is, often by stating what it isn't. It isn't Pentecostal, even if the Baptist Faith and Message statement is silent on how the Holy Spirit operates in the present day. It isn't Calvinist, even though a small-r reformed theology would fit into the BFM and quite a few high-powered Baptist thinkers like Al Mohler are in the reformed camp; a Baptist joke at the PCA is that they're Baptists who are too cheap to spring for a dunk tank.

By trying to go beyond the BFM without amending it winds up creating an awkward theological war that has people sniping at each other when they should be working towards disciplining their members and reaching out to the unsaved and/or unchurched. At best, it takes effort away from what needs to be done and at worst it runs off good people and good churches who don't quite fit that undefined Baptist Normal.

Since the SBC apparat seems unlikely to call a truce in those theology scuffles and let anyone who can sign off on that generically evangelical BFM call themselves a good Baptist, it might be better to blow the SBC up and not have a national organization. Missionaries in the various national programs could be supported by state agencies, which would give more of a one-to-one relationship between a missionary and the average churchman.

Lifeway could be spun off as a free-standing non-profit, or even IPOed as a for-profit publisher, with the proceeds going to pay off any standing liabilities (pensions, etc) of the national organizations.

Without the SBC title to give yearly headache and bad national press, each church would be able to establish an identity that would have more freedom of movement and less baggage to the unchurched. Folks who were looking for a SBC church could do it with a little research; if you saw the Baptist Faith and Message on the website, you know it is a SBC church or was before the denouement.

However, it would free up state and regional groupings to spend less energy on national scuffles and focus on evangelism and discipleship. They could use Lifeway stuff if they liked but would't be honor-bound to do so. They could hang on to the BFM if they liked and would have to hue to that Baptist Normal if it didn't quite fit them.

At least that how I'm seeing things; I don't see a whole lot of plusses on the national organization. Things need to be more decentralized, for the centralization is creating problems that hurt the whole. It's different from the mainline churches in that they are creating a more "conservative" (or at least particular) theology rather than a more broad theology, but the result is to run off a lot of people who don't quite fit into that narrow definition and to get into theological food fights that are best left alone if those fights get in the way of the Gospel being preached vigorously.

BBQ and Politics

One of the leaders of that congressional Cuba visit is Barbara Lee, a Bay-area congresswoman who was born in Texas.

With those Texas roots, her dad would make a mean barbecue. The secret was in a special rub that was passed down from the Knights of Ni made famous by Monty Python. The secret order had fallen onto hard times and had begun to finance their order by selling their line of BBQ rubs. Good members of the Commonwealth, they added a Jamaican rub to their line when Caribbean food became popular.

Papa Lee would use some of the new Ni jerk in his BBQ, but did so sparingly. Barbara... well, she would lay it on thick. That's how she came to be known as a Ni jerk liberal.

Make the Prints a Bit Less Gaudy

"Fidel Castro asks US lawmakers how to improve ties." However, I'm not sure if a group of congressmen is the best test market; they often have funky tastes in neckware.

You in the back right.... "Dye"... if it covered up that ut-bugly parrot, that might work... Oh, "Die". That wasn't nice. It would improve relations, but it still isn't nice.

March MADness

I was fortunate as a MSU alum to having to be busy with professorial duties last night and didn't get to see North Carolina's dismantling of the Spartans in the finals. By the time I got home about 10PM, UNC was already up 20 and things were all but over for MSU.

However, it's another dismantling that is on my mind, it's President Obama's U2 remix of How to Dismantle an Atomic Arsenal.

Mr. Obama specifically outlined U.S. plans to support treaties banning the production of weapons-grade materials, as well as the testing of atomic weapons, efforts backed by President Bill Clinton but largely ignored by Mr. Bush.

Speaking at Prague's Castle Square, Mr. Obama told the audience his administration was committed "to seek the peace and security of a world without nuclear weapons."

"We have to insist: 'Yes, we can,'" he said, reprising a campaign theme recognizable to a crowd a continent away from his election victory.

Is that a goal that we should shoot for? If I can borrow from NRA rhetoric, if nukes are outlawed, only outlaws will have nukes.

Let's play Obama's dream out, and all the major and minor nuclear players sign off to destroy all their nukes by say 2030; contrary to conservative fears, the rogue states honestly play along and allow all their nukes to be destroyed.

Two problems with that scenario.

(1) Did they get all the nukes? It is hard to prove a negative, and a secretive state might have a few contraband nukes kicking around in a very secure and very undisclosed location. Worse yet, the contraband might be in non-governmental hands, ready to be used or sold to the highest bidder who's willing to go outlaw.

(2) Once the nukes are gone, the first country or interested party to get back in the nuclear game is king. A 2050 Dr. Evil or Osama 3.0 might have the money, the security and the nuclear engineering savvy to have their own nuke factory. Couple that with some homemade inexpensive rocketry (at least much more affordable than today) that might be off the shelf in 40 years, and we're one mad scientist (or madman with a scientist on his payroll) from some serious terrorism.

If that madman is a country, they can cow whole countries into submission who have no good response to a nuclear attack. Even a well-armed US might be hard-pressed to take on a foe that might have stashes of well-hidden baby-ICBMs in unfriendly territory. Once the madman shows that they are willing to use their nukes, they rule all but the most gutsy countries.

The old Cold War meme of Mutual Assured Destruction or MAD still has some impact on national actors. If you parking lot us, we'll parking lot you; as Joshua in War Games put it, "the only winning move is not to play."

MAD doesn't deter folks who don't mind dying or terrorists who might count on something other than a nuclear reply from a one-off nuke attack. However, a small tactical nuke might be one way to take out a Dr. Evil base if he's nuke-packin' and well fortified.

I don't see the US replying in kind to a terrorist nuke with one of their own; we have enough conventional weapons to rain hellfire down upon any party deemed responsible without going nuclear ourselves, baring the nuclear bunker-buster scenario above.

However, there are enough bad actors in the world and would be tyrants who would like to rule the world with a batch of nuclear ICBMs. Being able to tell such a would be emperor to think again might well be worth passing on Obama's dream.

Hampster Dance Remix

I saw the short form of this Kia ad during the Pistons game on Saturday and just about coughed up a lung laughing.



Because their alien hamsters, and that's how they roll.

If you don't get the title reference, read this and  check this out.

[Update 4-6. I had to get a new YouTube link. This one should work]

Mainline Disease and the Southern Baptists.

Thinking of the future of the Southern Baptists isn't pleasant at times. The demographics show an aging church with two problems in my mind.

One is that many Baptists, especially in the south, are rather nominal. They may be able to cite you the right phrases out of the Bible, but may have stopped going to church and stay members out of custom more than interest. Bene was blogging on a nasty fight at First Baptist in Jacksonville, but what interested me as much as their knee-jerk viciousness towards a dissident church blogger (the fight was over the church budget) as the discrepancy between membership and attendance. They have 28,000 members but only 7500 attendees per the Hartford Institute's megachurch database.

First Baptist might have a solid theology (their long time pastor Jerry Vines was one of the key conservative warriors in the SBC theology battles of the 90s) but the member-to-attender ratio seems to look very mainline, not unlike First United Methodist in Midland where I grew up. I think we had about 2000 members but only 600 or so would show up on a given Sunday. Things were SRO on Easter, but it would be roll-and-elephant-through time most Sundays.

If you have 7500 attenders, let's say we have 10K of active members who go most every Sunday. That leaves 18,000 folks who are affiliated with First Baptist but don't go on a regular basis. What will the faith of those folks' kids look like? Chances are they won't be members themselves when they grow up, if church isn't an active part of their lives as kids, not in a culture that places no stigma of not being associated with a church or a religion.

Other old-brick Baptist churches may see their numbers dwindle as nominal members die off and their children don't affiliate at all with them. A shrinking First Baptist of 3500 might function just fine, but the 400 member-120 show up church in a smaller town might become a 200 member- 60 show up in a generation that will struggle to pay a pastor or run a decent children's program, especially if 40 of the 60 regulars are retirees.

Mainline churches are having this problem now; I'd expect the SBC to start getting that problem in the next decade or two, having churches that are so AARP-centric that they can't attract younger people. If you're a single adult of child-bearing age, you'd likely not stick around, and if you only see two or three kids in a one-room Sunday school, families might not be all that interested if it isn't the only game in town.

Eileen and I aren't ethnic Baptists; we're more charismatic in nature and have Methodist and Presbyterian roots as kids. We're choosing to be there. In a lot of places, people will leave the churches of their forefathers if they have no stake in it. Some will move to other churches, but many will not have a significant faith at all.

Not that going to church guarantees a personal, saving faith; a bad church with a warped gospel can be worse than none at all, for it might inoculate folks from the real Good News. However, we can't expect the next generation to support a church if their parents don't bother to show up.

Pick-Up Jesus

I was working with the 2-year-olds on Palm Sunday today. Eileen and I run herd over the group; she does most of the logistical stuff, but I have a decent gift for telling stories in little-people terms.

How to explain the significance of the palms and the donkey? The palm branches were the loose equivalent of a red-carpet treatment, paving the path of their hero.

The donkey... well, that was a sign of humility and peace; you have lots of war horses but few war donkeys (you in the back right, no Democratic hermeneutics on that one, please). The analogy I gave is that your big shots of today would come in on a limo or other fancy car, whereas a donkey is more of a simple beast of burden, more of a pick-up truck than a limo.

Pick-up truck Jesus? Yes. He wasn't ministering to the fat cats,  but the average joes. The Beatitudes wasn't a country club lecture, but instead was aimed at comforting and encouraging the masses.

Pick-up Jesus sounds like a country-song looking to happen or a morph off of Lift Him Up or We Want to See Jesus Lifted High, but it fits His message. Some other folks have played with this analogy-here's a book "Jesus Is Coming to Get Me in a White Pickup Truck" and a poem, Jesus Drives a Red Pickup Truck.

We have the lyrics, all we need is the music.

Not My Cup of Tea

There are times where I feel like a man without a party right now. I have little interest in the Democratic party as presently constituted, for I agree with them on very few issues; the death penalty and immigration reform are about the only areas that I'm center-left on.

However, I don't quite fit in with the anger of the activist right, either. I don't do anger well; when I do get angry, I'm a 11 on a 1-10 scale and it isn't pretty. Thankfully, I calm down really quick and don't take it out on people. However, a steady diet of radio or TV anger is not good for my system.

I'm not a good Republican soldier in opposition.

Firstly, as the son of a public-school teacher growing up, and the grandson of a public junior high principal, I don't have that vitriolic hostility to government that seems to pervade a lot of conservative-to-libertarian thought. Leviathan was paying my dad's paycheck growing up and helped finance (with a lot of sweat equity) my grandpa's cottage that we hung out at during the summer. That combined with a recovering neoliberal's compassion for the little guy and I'm somewhat center-right rather than hard right on economics.

Secondly, the anger part seems a bit overblown. Case in point-the Tea Party movement on the right, having anti-big government and anti-Obama excesses protests around the country.

Not that anyone in the Peanut Gallery will need a history lesson on this (I think), but the Boston Tea Party was a terrorist act, dumping tea into Boston Harbor rather than have the revenue from it go to London. We don't look at it that way in history, since they were the "good guys", but there was not a lot of difference, outside of the righteousness of the cause, between those militant Bostonians and a Iraqi hard case blowing up a pipeline.

Is that the rhetorical level we are shooting for? Obama as King George? Washington as a colonial overlord? "Good conservatives" renting The Patriot as a refresher with a side serving of 1776 for some PG humor?

I live in Lexington; I'm not ready to relive 1775 right now and take up arms against Washington excesses. For now, count me in the Tory camp on that front, although I'm more than happy to vote for thoughtful politicians who know the limits of government; there are times where Bunning comes up well short on the thoughtful front, but he'd likely beat the alternative.

There's not much I can do other than possibly politely lobby Rep. Chandler, our Democratic rep in Congress. However, most of the marginal action seems to be in the Senate, where our two Republican senators are solidly in the No camp, almost regardless of what is coming down the pike. So, there isn't a lot of agitating that I can do from my Kentucky perch.

No Guiding Light Right Behind Us?

I remember listening to an old Bob Newhart comedy album as a kid. His stock in trade on those stand-up routines was to take one half of a phone/walkie-talkie conversation; my favorite was No One Will Ever Play Baseball, where Abner Doubleday is pitching the game to Newhart as a game company manager looking for the next party game.

One of the skits was the Kruschchev Landing Rehearsal (the title alone dates the skit) where he was doing a TV director walking though the shots. Towards the end of the skit, he ask them to speed things up, "I've got Guiding Light right behind me." This interview had a Googlewhack on that phrase until now.

Growing up, an inside phrase in the Byron household to speed things up has been "I've got Guiding Light right behind me." The phrase could also be invoked to describe a tailgater in traffic.

The namesake soap opera has been on so long, it got started on radio.

Created by Irna Phillips, the show debuted on NBC radio on January 25, 1937 as the 15-minute radio serial "The Guiding Light." It made the switch to 15-minute episodes on CBS Television on June 30, 1952, although it continued to air concurrently on radio with the actors playing parts on both shows until 1956, when the radio show ended. In 1967, the series first started being broadcast in color, and a year later, the show expanded from 15 minutes to 30 minutes. In November 1977, the show expanded to a full hour.

Soap operas seem to have legs that prime-time shows don't have. Many of the shows my mom would have to drag herself away from in the late 60s to give me a ride back to school after lunch are still on. Even there, 72 years is staggering to be running on the same network.

The producers are looking for an alternative outlet. Syndication might be an option, or one of many cable networks might want to bring it on.

The Grand Poobah of the Bluegrass

I'm hoping to get back to normal blogging, but the opening week of Spring term has me hopping.

We have a new Grand Poobah of Kentucky. The UK brass moved quickly to bring John Calipari on board. He has three things going for him

(1) He's taken two schools to the Final Four, UMass and Memphis

(2) He's a very good recuriter

(3) He's not adverse to the PR stuff that Billy Clyde didn't do well.

There are some less-than-savory aspects to Calipari's resume, like having to officialy wipe the UMass Final Four run due to stud center Marcus Camby's getting money from an agent, and having William "Worldwide Wes" Wesley as his birddog-on-steroids feeding him big-ticket recruits.

Calipari hasn't been personally caught doing anything to get him into NCAA trouble, but he seems to have pushed the envelope in some areas. Hopefully, if he can set up shop at one of the creme-de-la-creme programs in basketball, he won't have to hustle as much as he did at just-under-major-conference programs in the Atlantic 10 and Conference USA.

If Calipari can bring his recruits and the recruits already in the pipline who will stay in place and meld them with a competitive club that has all their rotation back, we'll have an interesting 09-10; their only senior was a garbage-time-only player and Meeks and Patterson, who will draw down NBA paychecks in the near future, look like they will stay put.

If I were Governor Beshear, I'd have an APB out for Worldwide Wes and keep him well away from Lexington. He smells quite a bit like Ed Martin, the Michigan booster who got that program into serious doo-doo.

Calapari should be able to do it clean and away from the boundries at UK. Let's hope he does so.

Revisiting Charismatic Origami

What's Charismatic Origami? That's what you call a five-fold ministry ;-).

Someone from Detroit Googled (or Comcasted) in for that post with the query "can one person posses all of the 5 fold ministry gifts?"

I might be a bit late to answer, but I'm not sure what the gift of apostleship would look like. I can picture what gifts of teaching, pastoring and evangelizing would look like; many good missionaries and capital P Pastors will have all three. ]

Some may have operate in a gift of prophecy. Some may have an spiritual ear that might be given knowledge that the person has no earthly reason to know.

If that's a bit too out their for you, such a gift can also be seen in the ability to deliver existing scripture in such a way that it speaks loudly and clearly to the age; Pastor Davd has it, in my opinion, in this post on our bunker mentality in the church. He's not a Pentecostal (I might add "yet" after this other post on a Blackaby book on the Holy Spirit), but when he's on, he has a speaking-truth-to-power vibe that feels prophetic.

However, I'm really not sure how to look at having a gift of apostleship. In modern charismatic circles (not so much in capital P Pentecostals), a spiritually strong preacher can get the title as an honorific. Unlike the guidelines for elders/deacons listed in the NT, we don't have a good definition of what is and isn't an modern apostle. Here's one Pentecostal guy who's made a stab at it; it would seem to be indicative of some sort of super-preacher who has the ability to lead and advise other pastors and to operate boldly in the Spirit, working miracles.

I'm not sure I'd trust folks who would look to be given the title of apostle, since the NT folks are a very hard act to follow. Self-proclaimed apostles, or ones christened such by other modern apostles, tend to be loose theological cannons; in charismatic circles, apostles seem a dime a dozen, a bit like a Kentucky Colonel.

You may have a loosely-defined office of apostle, but it seems to be something other than a gift per se. The other four ministries can be both office and giftings, but I don't think apostle would be a gift; if we have it, it would be a recognition of who the person is rather than what they do in particular. However, given the problems revolving around self-styled apostles in the modern day, I'd rather leave that honorific back in the first century.