It's sort of funny, I used to think that church boards were the way they were because they were church boards. However, having spent about 6 months on the board of Capitol Hill United Neighborhoods (CHUN), a community organization here in Denver, I've come to the conclusion that the way boards operate has nothing to do with the church, but has everything to do with the nature of boards. After all, organizationally speaking, it's really difficult to get any farther from a conservative Lutheran church than CHUN.

And yet, as I sit in a board meeting, if I wasn't paying attention to the issues, I really couldn't tell the difference. The reasoning behind the arguments is the same, there's lots of talk with little action, an general contentment with the status quo, and a desire to squelch change agents.

Now, there are some obvious exceptions and John Carver has devoted his life to developing a model for boards that don't do these things, but for the most part, when left to their own doing, boards will be boards, no matter what the organizational context might be.

With all that in mind, some prayers as I head to a "special board meeting" to deal with an "important personnel issue" would be appreciated.

I never realized how accurate this ad is until the past couple days when I had to do some tech support on a Vista machine in a church office. It's ridiculous how often you get asked to do, well, just about anything in Vista. Of course, it's all because the base operating system has so many security holes that make it an easy target for a third-source that might want to damage your files. All of this reminded me of a quote I heard a while back, "Mac OSX, because making UNIX user friendly, was easier than fixing Windows."

All of this got me to thinking about how we address various issues in our life, be it a personal struggle, relationships, a group we're a part of, or whatever else. When an issue comes, are we like Microsoft folks who focus on eliminating the symptom (there's a risk for a security breech so we'll put something in place to guard the gaping hole), or do we take a Mac approach and address the actual problem (getting rid of the hole)?

I'm thinking, more often than not, when confronted by something, we look at what's right in front of us, the symptom, and try and deal with that, rather they trying to diagnose what's behind the symptom (the actual problem). The problem is, we address one symptom and another appears ... and then another ... and then another ... and then another.

However, if we operate diagnostically and use the symptoms to lead us to the actual problem, we can actually find a viable solution.

Thoughts? Are you a symptom or disease kind of person? Have any examples to share?

Since my upcoming thoughts are rooted entirely in my theology of worship, I should start by providing some background on what I believe is going on in worship. Trying to keep it brief, when we gather as a community, we gather so God can act graciously and we can respond.

So, God acts by showing up, we respond. God acts by announcing forgiveness, we respond. God acts by speaking to us in his Word, we respond. God acts by giving us the body and blood, we respond. God acts by blessing us in the benediction (and hopefully we respond in our lives when we leave the church building).

Now, as I've planned various alternative worship of services with this general understanding of worship, I've always leaned towards having a single narrative that was aimed at telling this story of God's action and our response ... although, most of the time, that also demands a pre-story to point out why God has to act. So, when I plan, the music, the Scripture readings, the preaching, and everything else all weave together into a single story, so, when I saw this approach, I freaked a bit, because there is no way for the music to faithfully point into our out of the preaching portion of the worship narrative because they've been divided and the story is now broken up.

However, then I began to think about the traditional Lutheran liturgical setting where this pattern of acting and responding happens repeatedly, or, in the case of this unconventional idea, it could happen twice, once in preaching and once in music. What do you think, given my theology of worship, could that be a functional approach to something like this?

Thanks in part to the Internet, we now live in a flat world. In other words, we live in a time and place where everybody has, in many ways, an equal voice. For example, people value the opinions of other readers over critics on Amazon, and, if you know what you're doing, anybody can develop a blog or website that can be easily found and appear as authoritative (for example, if you Google "grandpa's eulogy", my blog is the 5th entry you find).

But it's not just in the realm of the Internet where things are getting flat, the same thing is happening in the world of publishing. Be it online services where you upload and they print, or groups like Lifevest Publishing who did the elemental life, anybody can now, for the right price, publish anything and have it appear and equally authoritative to any other book.

So, the question becomes, how do we know which of these voices we should listen to? Which are actually authoritative?

In my case, I tried to do two things when writing the elemental life. First, my goal wasn't to share my own thoughts, feelings, or ideas, rather, I wanted to communicate the Bible in a way that was accessible to people and gave them an opportunity to view it from a different angle.

Second, the work was done in community. With my direct work, it was done in community with the people who gather in our home each Monday. We'd read what I'd written, talk about it, ask questions, and challenge the thoughts expressed. This played an incredible role in the formation of the book. But I also worked with another community of people indirectly, namely theologians from throughout history who have studied the same Bible and sought to communicate what it is saying to others.

What other steps can be taken to help firm up voices of authority in our world? How do you discern who you should and shouldn't listen to?

As everyone who reads this blog knows by now, Anita and Robbie were in an accident a couple weeks ago and our car was totaled. Over the past couple weeks our insurance agent has had all kinds of issues with the other guy and his insurance company. Yesterday, we found out why. He hadn't been paying his premiums and, ten days before he hit us, his insurance was revoked. So now we have an uninsured driver case on our hands.

Thankfully, our insurance covers things like this so, with the exception of our deductible, everything else will be paid for (we've already received the money for both our new car seat and the old car, and all of our medical expenses have been billed straight to the insurance company with no copay).

During this time, Anita and I have been wrestling with how to best handle the situation. We've addressed the issue some over on the fshbwl, both in this article and on this podcast, but this whole uninsured motorist gig puts a new wrinkle in the situation.

So, what are we going to do? We're going to let our government, which, like all government, God established, in part, to punish the wicked (Romans 13), take care of things ... and we'll help them out in the process.

I just happen to know our district police commander, so, last night I sent her an email, explained the situation, and asked what we could to do to add to the existing charges, after all, the guy didn't have insurance and yet presented invalid insurance at the scene of the accident. This morning I received a message from her and she's going to follow up on it with the DA.

I'm not a vengeful person, and there's no gain for us in this course of action, but I do believe that God has given us government for a reason. When we break the laws, we deserve the full punishment we receive (which is why we pay all of our parking tickets, took a trip to court a couple years ago, and was shocked when this happened).

Hopefully a swift kick in the rear from Uncle Sam will prompt the other driver to, if nothing else, be a better member of society who works to serve his neighbors (although it would be great if, somehow in all this, there would be a great Law smackdown that would prepare the way for the Gospel).