steve-o
Introduction To The House of Carr
Introduction To The House of Carr

It's Back

After an almost three year hiatus the Holy Observer crew is back with all the fake Christian news worthy to print. If you're unfamiliar with the type of satire, notice such articles as "Mom achieves 100% VBS Coverage" and a news blurb about a Christian dating site shut down because a guy listed "Song of Solomon man seeks Ezekiel 23 woman" [funny considering you know the texts and that the guy confesses "I thought using Scripture was sure to get me a good woman"]. I thinks it funny.

Two

[UPDATE: the podcast of the entire service is now available at iTunes]

Last night we celebrated the completion of the second year of year of ministry here in Walnut Hills. Our actual start date was October 16 in 2005, but it was in September that we started our core gatherings. There was a good crowd of our "regulars" in addition to guests who came to celebrate with us. I was excited that Kelly's parents were able to come up and my parents even took a night off from their church to come and worship with us.

The worship gathering was pretty cool as we had a lot of people involved. Daesik, a native of Korea and a PhD student at UC's Conservatory of Music, opened up by playing the organ. It was rather cool to hear pieces of music over 500 years old as a prelude to our worship. Then Tye led worship assisted by his wife Andrea, along with Derek and Rachel. Derek, too is a student at the conservatory and played a jazz sax that was phenomenal. The four of them humbly led is in praising God.

One of the goals of Echo from our inception was to be a church that started churches in the city. While we haven't met that goal yet, we want to contribute as much as possible to urban churches in Cincinnati. This past year Abe and Joni Brandyberry started Covenant Church in Northside and they've been doing some amazing work there. Last night we had them with us to discuss their ministry and gave them a love offering so they can continue to make a difference in their community. I can't wait to see what God is going to do in this city because of Covenant Church.

But I guess the part I enjoyed the most was seeing all the people God has blessed us with. Echo was started when Aaron and Dorota Burgess joined Kelly and I to embark on this journey. And only Tim and Dale remain from our week one attendees [well, maybe Emily will come back from London someday to join us again]. But God has continued to bring us some incredibly talented people who share our passion for this city and His kingdom.

This is a good place to be.

Ouch

Up to this point I've withheld any thoughts about Taser-gate. The plight of rambunctious Andrew Meyer, the University of Florida student who was tased by campus police during a John Kerry speech has been viewed by 2million+ on the interwebs. Apparently the phrase, "Don't Tase Me, Bro" is now sweeping the nation, destined to be a catch phrase that could soon rival "That's hot" and "Deal or No Deal."

There are a lot of first amendment questions being raised here but what blurs the line is that Meyer was a jerk. He felt that he was entitled to publicly insult a US senator while using some questionable language towards him. That in itself is more than reason for him to be escorted out. He refuses to leave, then forcibly resists, while acting erratic [stop and think about this for a second: this is done with a few yards of a former Presidential candidate and still very public figure. If this was 2004, Secret Service would've beat the living crap out of him and no one says a word]. As he's being ushered out he begins to cry like a baby, still physically resisting security which, eventually, leads to the tasing, apparently distributed by Meyer's bro.

There are probably very legitimate concerns as to when and how tasers should be used but human rights officials would do well to avoid this case as an opportunity to convince the country. There's no way they can make a martyr out of this kid, especially when a majority of the country would've tased him sooner.

I'm Smiling As I Type This

So check out this resume:

Ph.D. in Artificial Intelligence, Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

Research Expert in Artificial Intelligence, specifically problem solving, knowledge representation, image processing, natural language, document classification, artificial neural network.

Research Professor in Carnegie Mellon's School of Computer Science.

Pretty impressive. I guess it's kinda unfortunate that when Dr. Scott Fahlman dies the only thing he'll be noted for is inventing this: :-)

, ,

Weekend Recap

, ,

Wednesday night is a little late to get this up, but we went non-stop last weekend enjoying two really cool events. The first was the Walnut Hills Festival. It resumed this year after a 15 year hiatus. It took place in the "rough part" of Walnut Hills but that didn't deter people from attending. Larry [good friend and our children's guy] and I helped out with odds and ends, running errands and managing the main stage. We received incredibly too much credit for little work. Talking with the lady who organized it, I think Echo will have a strong presence in helping out with it next year.

The second was my home church's 50-year anniversary. It was cool to reconnect with people that haven't seen me since I was a teenager [I think some were astonished that I found someone gullible enough to marry me]. I kept thinking what it will be like when Echo turns 50 but, then again, I might not be alive then.

This week isn't going to slow down, either. We have the Rett fundraiser Saturday and Echo's anniversary on Sunday.

We don't stop.

Sucks To Be Roger Goodell

So Bill Belichick and the Patriots cheated and everyone waited for the commissioner to come down hard. He had to because he dropped the hammer all throughout the off-season. Just this month an assistant coach was suspended for five games for buying performance enhancing drugs [curious as the coach doesn't actually play the game]. In addition to all the other suspensions levied [Chris Henry gets eight games for a traffic violation?] Belichick's staff videotaping opposing coaches was previously caught, they were warned not to do it again, and yet they did it anyway. And there's still been no discussion about whether or not they were messing with the radio frequencies in the visiting quarterback's headsets.

The hammer had to fall. And yesterday it did.

But it was more like a toy hammer.

So there's a monetary fine and the lost of a first round draft pick. No suspension for the coach. About the cash, the Patriots are the 3rd most valuable NFL franchise worth about $1.2 BILLION. They made over $250 MILLION in revenue last year. It makes the combined fines of $750,000 look pretty weak. And as for the draft, the Pats traded with San Francisco last year and got their first round pick, meaning they'll likely get an even better position than what they normally had.

The new commissioner is looking pretty inconsistent right now. If you want to be the hard-dog, you gotta play the role even when it seems silly. I'm sure we're going to hear about this decision throughout the rest of the season. With this tumultuous first year, you gotta think that the Goodell era will be a relatively short one.

And who would've thunk this would be the year of the cheater?

Smackdown

People fearful of city life usually cite the urban hooligans as a reason to steer clear. We woke up this morning at 2:30am to the sounds of loud voices spewing profanities. But instead of ghetto jargon it sounded more like suburban America trying to be hardcore. Sure enough it was the guests of some of the people in the condo complex who were verbally sparring. These girls (yep) apparently had too much to drink out at the bars and felt it was the perfect time/location to make their true feelings known to each other.

Still unsure as to what female dogs and the actions of their mothers had to do with their gripes but the subject kept coming up repeatedly.

I was thinking of calling the police but I didn't want to deal with the hassle. Eventually they shut up.

It was more like an episode of MTV's The Real World than Boyz n The Hood.

But that's life in the dangerous city for you.

Learnt

So the professor of my Thursday night class is in India. So he wasn't there tonight. So we were supposed to have a sub. Sounds like junior high, huh? Shoutout: Melissa Hill.

So we watched a movie for class.

Again, sounds like junior high, huh? Shoutout: Cool Hand Luke [still not sure why we watched that in junior high].

The sub didn't show up, meaning there was no attendance taken, meaning I could've skipped altogether. But that's why you pay tuition, eh?

Why I really wrote all this: I had to walk an extra half mile to class tonight. Why? Because the campus was jammed-packed full of people. Why? There was a special event at the Cintas Center. Who were they there to see?

Dave Ramsey: financial guru. He tells you how to work your money and get rich.

I'm not a big Dave guy, and I know some of you are so I won't go on a diatribe, but it just fascinates that so many people are into hearing him (of course, people still go to see Loverboy so what's that mean?).

Apparently tickets for the event cost anywhere between $31 and $67. Here's a way to work your money: don't spend all the cash on tickets to the event and listen to him on the radio for free.

On second thought, here's a good way to get rich: become a financial guru and charge a ridiculous amount of money for people to come hear you speak. Shot fired.

Sports For Geeks

Just thought I'd make it public knowledge that my fantasy football team is 1-0. Not sure how long that will last. I did make the play-offs in my fantasy baseball league. That's 3 out of 4 years now, the blemish was the year we started Echo I pretty much mailed it in. But for all that moxie my guys are screwing it up this week. Looks like Brian's team is going to clobber me and I'll be lamenting my surplus of closers throughout the off-season.

I know, no one cares.

Owning It

I just got to say that I love being a dad. Kelly had her day in the office today so it was me and Kaelyn all day long. Sometimes there are days when Kaelyn's fussy or just wanting her mother so I'm constantly checking the clock, waiting for Kel to get back. Lately Kelly has had a lot of changes with her job and deadlines and such and this afternoon was the latest she's ever gotten back from work. But the time just flew by and I didn't even notice.

Everyday there are new things I can teach her. Her vocabulary is getting much better [actually, she still says only a couple of actual words, but "mon-mon" means "monkey" and that's all that matters].

There have been plenty of people telling me to enjoy her at this age and I'm definitely following that advice.

,

Future Hall of Famer

,

I'm still glad I was able to pick up good neighbor Chad Johnson on my fantasy team. Last night we were coming home from church, like most ministry couples, in separate cars. We usually talk on on the phone en route to catch up on our evenings. Coming up the hill I noticed a Rolls Royce ready to pull out from Chad's street. He pulled out between Kelly and me and then headed up Gilbert Avenue.

I wasn't 100% sure it was Chad until I came across this photo online. Yeah, Ocho-Cinco is travelin' in style. Next time I see him, I'll pull up and ask for Grey Poupon. As long as he keeps racking up those fantasy points, he can drive whatever he wants.

Hoping he can put up a couple more TDs in the second half.

,

The Church And The Poor

,

Let's talk about something that people are uncomfortable talking about. This nature of this snippet in the Enquirer bothers me. The title of the article is "Panhandler Arrested In Church" which is sure to capture attention. Apparently this guy had done this a few times before, disrupting the service so he could hit-up parishioners. Since you can't forcibly remove someone without crossing some legal lines, the police was the last resort. Already there are people willing to jump on this church as being heartless and I'm sure there are more to come. It seems counterintuitive that a church would be so heartless as to call the authorities because a homeless guy wanted some money but some people have no idea what it's like being a church in the city.

Think about a similar situation: where else could an individual disrupt a gathering on multiple occasions and face no consequences? Most likely, if he had done so during a meeting at a government building or a place of business, the person interrupting would be arrested on the spot. But when it comes to the church, we're supposed to suspend a worship gathering to pacify this request. Why? Because churches are supposed to "be like Jesus" and care for the poor. And when they're biligerant we should turn the other cheek and let the disruptive person have their way in our gatherings.

That sounds about right. And maybe they can dance naked in the aisles too. As we approach the completion of our second year of ministry in Walnut Hills I've can attest that virtually everyone that wants a handout feels it's the most important thing happening in the world at the time; many times they're insistent that their need should be resolved immediately, regardless of what you're doing. We've had people on multiple occasions try to interrupt our service, wanting to speak with me in the middle of preaching, so they could make their plea. We ask them to sit through our worship and we'll get to them when we're done. Granted, some are patient enough to wait but others get pissed because they want what they want now. So if someone in need will not respect this one stipulation we have, why do we have to succumb to them? Oh, because we're a church, and that's what Jesus would do.

I would argue that the primary purpose of a church is to worship the living God. One of the main expressions of this is our worship gathering. While we can also do this by ministering to the poor, that is not our only directive*. In fact, despite the theological positions of some, Scripture does not list the eradication of poverty as the primary purpose of the body of Christ. While we continually do our part to serve our community we still hold that we're to teach the embodiement of Jesus as the true release that people need. We have our priorities and those requesting assistance can at least respect them.

People outside the church are constantly wanting to expose the apparent hypocricies within it. And since there are always the needy among us this is an easy target. But those on the outside have no idea how volitile these situations are.

We had this guy who was constantly looking for handouts come to our church. We did our best to help him out but sometimes said no because we knew he was an addict. A two separate occasions we caught him attempting to steal from the church we rent yet didn't call the police. One night he was particularly insistent when we told him he wouldn't get any money and he decided to steal money from the offering box. Again, we didn't call the police and tried to "restore him Biblically" but we really didn't see him much more. Apparently he got caught stealing [for the umteenth time] and is still in the county lock-up.

In the long run, did we help him out or not? Tough call but it's not ours to make. We'll use our best judgement to help when and where we can but there's no hard/fast rule. But we will not allow someone to manipulate us into making themselves priority number one. We will always reserve the right to say no. And if you've never said no, then you really have no room to criticize.

This is a part of life living in the city. We do our best but understand that an unlimited supply of handouts still would not solve the problems that people face and/or create.

Until you're ministering in the city and experience the week-to-week struggle, you should probably reserve judgement on the matter.

*There are plenty of social service agencies whose main purpose is assist the poor; there are hundreds in Walnut Hills alone. Despite this fact, there is still a problem with people in need. One of the driving reasons in our community is that there are people manipulating the system. They can get government assistance on which to make it by and anything they can panhandle can go to purchase of non-government subsidized purchases [i.e., alcohol]. We do not use this as an excuse not to help, but it's a situation that needs to be recognized. At Echo we try to be deliberate between situations because constantly giving hand-outs to people who are disingenuous is actually more harmful than helpful.