I WILL TALK NEXT ABOUT THE RIOT AND PROTESTS IN BALTIMORE.
OPUS DEI KEMOSABE ----THIS IS WHY WE HAD THE SEPERATION OF CHURCH AND STATE LOBBY!
I will end for now the talk of K-12 education policy with a goal of reinstating child labor that is especially strong in Baltimore because of Johns Hopkins and Baltimore Development Corporations and their pols. My discussion will segue nicely into the protests and riots in Baltimore over the police brutality and lack of justice.
The people made rich by this VISIGOTH raiding of our government treasuries and people's pockets are now trying to install these neo-liberal policies that make human capital of American citizens just as they have these decades in developing nations. These Race to the Top education reforms are all about replacing Democratic education for all with this K-12 vocational apprenticeship for all. This is hitting people of color hardest first---but it is coming to all US public schools.
We know the politicians are behind this but we need also to look at the church in America to see how they are being staffed with leadership making religion more and more conservative and connected to the rich. This is what happens in autocratic societies. I stopped listening to National Public Radio after decades of faithful listening because they promoted Obama as very progressive---the next FDR knowing all of Obama's attachments would place him right of center with George Bush as he has served. So, NPR was used as a propaganda tool to misinform the public. Then, I listened to NPR sell Pope Francis as the people's pope----he would take the Catholic Church to a champion of people. I knew he hailed from Argentina----where neo-liberal economics has decades of the worst of abuse and exploitation and wealth inequity and a very conservative Catholic Church and citizens in Argentina living very fearful lives......as is what neo-liberalism does----it is autocratic and exploitative with people as human capital.
Criticism of Opus Dei has centered on allegations of secretiveness, controversial recruiting methods, strict rules governing members, elitism and misogyny, and support of or participation in authoritarian or right-wing governments, especially the Francoist Government of Spain until 1978
Ke-mo sah-bee (/ˌkiːmoʊˈsɑːbiː/; often spelled kemo sabe or kemosabe) Ultimately derived from gimoozaabi, an Ojibwe and Potawatomi word that may mean "he/she looks out in secret",[1] it is sometimes translated as "trusty scout" or "faithful friend". Its use has become so widespread that it was entered into Webster's New Millennium Dictionary in 2002.
If you have noticed from nuns being given the sack and told to keep silent to the child abuse cases from the cases in Ireland and Australia of the church using children as child labor et al----the Catholic Church is becoming more and more severe and they have allowed themselves to align with the people made wealthy. Pope Benedict was made to leave his post partly because of the Vatican's involvement in laundering the Wall Street fraud out of the country and into offshore accounts. This doesn't mean the Catholic Church is bad----it means the wrong people are in charge. The black church is having the same crisis as ministers seem to become ordained to become part of pay-to-play profiteering used by these corrupt politicians. In Baltimore I have a very reliable source that says Mayor Rawlings-Blake has relatives that run a church having received a million dollars in social service funds that has not gone to the community. I BELIEVE THIS. IT IS PAY-TO-PLAY. Again, it is not the black church that is bad---it is the people who have taken leadership that are bad.
Below you see a good article that was too long to post----check it out. It talks of this deliberate attempt by Clinton neo-liberals and Bush neo-cons to capture the churches in this march towards autocracy and third world rich vs the masses of poor in the US. My concern is with the movement of religion to the far-right and as a result building the environment that does not value US Constitutional rights and liberties. As Obama and Clinton neo-liberals work with Bush neo-cons to install Trans Pacific Trade Pact to end our national sovereignty and Constitutional rights as citizens----they are deliberately placing people in leadership positions to make this 21st Century society.
The Corruption of Our Churches
Religion Is Leading Us Down The One
World Road To Slavery
I have studiously avoided the subject of religion in past articles, preferring to concentrate on political aspects of our situation. The time has come to discuss it. This will be difficult reading to some Christian patriots out there. But if you have reached the level where you can accept that our government is not, nor has been, acting in our favor; that those in power lie; that "those who would enslave us" will use any means, any vehicle to achieve that enslavement; then you must examine the evidence without the rose colored glasses.
If we are indeed in a spiritual battle, then you must be able to recognize the devil in his many guises. Next to "government", his favorite must surely be "organized religion". What better way to lead the sheeple, his captured "flock", into slavery.
I come from a long line of preachers. My father and grandfather were both Methodist preachers. Both were fine men, but I, on the other hand, was kicked out of Sun-day school for asking the teacher where Cain and Abel's wives came from? Seemed like a good question at the time.
In my youth and as an adult, I found myself being very uncomfortable with organized religion. At that time in my life I was, like most Americans, totally ignorant in regards to the New World Order agenda and the plot to destroy, or override our Constitution. Intuitively, I refused to allow government or religion to exercise much of a hold on me. For many years I struggled with
what appeared to me to be an unsolvable paradox; How could I love my country and believe in a God yet be fearful of my government and apprehensive of the church or organized religion?
Certain aspects of Christianity have always disturbed me. The Crusades, the Inquisition, the burning of so-called witches and the distant look in a fanatic's eye when they realize you aren't going to fall for their particular interpretation of the Bible. Yet Christianity and the pursuit of the freedom to practice it, is directly responsible for the founding of this country I love so dear.
Christians account for less than 30% of the world's population. Are we supposed to believe that the other 70% of the world and all of the great men who were not Christians were wrong? For us to believe that any one denomination, or religion for that matter, is the only way, is to deny the omnipotence of God.
____________________________________________
It is the partnership of the Catholic Church with the rich in Europe and all of the repression of the people that lead to the revolutions and the installation of SEPARATION OF CHURCH AND STATE. When the rich can simply install their own family to head institutions with a mission of controlling the 'masses'....you get third world autocracy.
THAT IS WHAT THE VISIGOTHS MADE INTO OLIGARCHS IN THE US ARE INSTALLING THROUGH CLINTON WALL STREET NEO-LIBERALS AND BUSH NEO-CONSERVATIVES AND MARYLAND POLS ARE ALL GLOBAL CORPORATE POLS.
PLEASE MAKE SURE LEADERSHIP IN YOUR CHURCHES----JUST AS WITH LEADERSHIP IN ALL LABOR AND JUSTICE ORGANIZATIONS ARE NOT TIED TO CLINTON NEO-LIBERALISM!
If you look below you will see when this movement started----just after Clinton's terms in office. Indeed, that was Clinton's primary focus. When the election of 2008 called Obama a community organizer----this is what they meant. The black church as developing community becomes tied to Baltimore Development Corporation and gentrification of city communities. Again, gentrification of cities are not bad----it is how it is being done that is bad. At the same time Clinton neo-liberalism becomes a good thing and VOILA----the new civil rights of individuals having the right to become fabulously rich replaces the US Constitutional civil rights of Equal Protection and equal opportunity and access for all. This is what we have seen since the end of Clinton's terms in office.
THIS IS ALSO WHY CIVIL RIGHTS AND LIBERTIES ARE DISAPPEARING AND WHY CITIZENS IN BALTIMORE ARE BEING OPENLY KILLED WITH NO JUSTICE.
Operationalizing of Key Term: Church's level of Community Participation
The response to Question 26 was a primary indicator of the church’s level of community participation: "In thinking about your responses to local community problems, in which of the following actions did you engage during the last year (2000-2001)?" Responses to this question enabled the researcher to examine and categorize the types of community participation (e.g., indirect or direct) in which the churches were or had been involved.
Essentially, indirect participation by churches was defined as passive actions of interest and/or concern, such as speaking publicly about community issues, informal visits with civic or community leaders, etc. Direct participation was defined as assertive, faith-based community participation; that is, programs and activities developed and implemented by churches to address community problems. Examples of such activities might include forming a community development corporation or implementing a job training, housing development, or educational program. It was important that the church leaders who were sampled understood that the indirect and direct actions to be reported were to be community oriented, as opposed to being self-serving activities conducted for the sole benefit of members of their respective churches.
Findings
Pastors were asked a general question regarding their evaluations of various socio-political community organizations. Using Ralph Johnstone’s typology of black pastors: militants, moderates, and traditionalists,42 it was expected that most pastors would be more supportive of traditional organizations (particularly those that are Christian in mission), than they were of those that are deemed more radical in nature. Table 1 indicates the pastors’ favorable evaluations of various organizations that attempt to deal with urban problems. Their responses ranged from 76% favoring the traditional approach of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference and the Concerned Black Clergy, to 68% percent in favor of the moderate integrationist approach of the NAACP and the Atlanta Urban League, to 24% in favor of the more militant approach of the Nation of Islam’s Black Muslims. Moreover, in their evaluations of the effectiveness of these groups on a local basis, about one-third considered none of these groups to be effective, another one-third considered local community organizations to be most effective, while 20% considered their own congregations to be most effective
_________________________________________
Entrepreneur and Apprenticeships hit the churches.
Below you see the extent this drive by neo-liberalism to install the corporate mentality into our religious institutions making them about funding churches with corporate structures. We have the mega-churches that have pastors always the ones exposed as corrupt and working against the interests of their congregations and communities.
This is not what we want our religious leaders to look like. Please, stop allowing Clinton neo-liberalism and Bush neo-conservativism to take church to state at this time of autocracy.
We are seeing churches tied to Wall Street stocks and money markets....they are creating church health systems knowing these pols are killing our public health programs....churches replacing our public schools----replacing the Veterans Administration----all while corporate non-profits are making this system filled with fraud losing trillions of dollars of public sector revenue to fraud and government corruption. Church leaders would recognize this slide and not participate in it.
March 24, 2014
Why We Need More Entrepreneurial Church Leaders, Not More Shepherds
Carey Nieuwhof is lead pastor of Connexus Church
I realize I might be opening up a controversial conversation. But I think it has to be said.
And I hope you’ll hear me out.
If the church is going to reverse some trends and maximize potential, we need more entrepreneurial pastors, not more shepherds.
There’s too much at stake to ignore this conversation.
We’re (Quite Literally) Missing the Boat If you’re a Christian, for certain the reason you have the faith you have is because Jesus died and rose again. That’s the absolute foundation of our faith.
But would you ever have heard about Jesus if a rabbi named Saul hadn’t sailed all over the known world telling every Jewish and non-Jewish person he could find about Jesus, planting churches almost everywhere he went?
The Apostle Paul, as he became known, left a huge impact not just on the church, but on millions of lives (and on human history) because he possessed the spiritual gift of apostleship.
What’s an apostle? To put it into today’s idiom, an apostle is a spiritual entrepreneur. (Here’s a great article from Leadership Journal about apostleship in the church today.)
A shepherd cares for a (usually) small group. An apostle launches dozens, hundreds or thousands of new communities of Christ-followers.
The church today is flooded with leaders who fit the shepherd model, caring for people who are already assembled, managing what’s been built and helping to meet people’s needs. (This is also a spiritual gift.)
But we have far too few leaders who have the spiritual gift of apostleship.
I believe this helps explain the malaise in much of the Western church in which the vast majority of churches are plateaued or declining.
We quite literally need people to get in a boat (or a car or a plane) and start new things, shake up the old and lead into a better tomorrow.
Is This Just Another Slam of Small Churches….? Is this another slam against small churches?
Well…yes and no.
I love what Karl Vaters has said about small churches. Karl pastors in Orange County California, where everyone has a megachurch it seems. He leads a smaller church.
According to Karl,
90% of the churches in the world have less than 200 people.
80% have less than 100 people.
And he asks a great question. What if [having a lot of small churches] is not a problem; what if that’s a strategy God wants to use?”
Interesting. You could hear this as a justification for keeping churches small (a justification I’ve heard far too many times).
But hear him out. He adds a crucial caveat:
I’m not interested in someone who says “We have these few. That’s all we ever want. That’s all we ever need.” If that’s your attitude, God bless you (I don’t think he will.)
I want people who want to innovate…who realize that maybe because of their gifting it works better in a small setting. But it’s not about settling. Never settle. Never settle.
Couldn’t agree more. Thank you Karl! (Here’s his whole interview.)
I just wonder if part of that innovation is going to come from people (even in small churches) with the gift of apostleship. If the church as a whole is going to grow, this has to become an all-skate.
5 Things Entrepreneurial Leaders Bring There are at least gifts crucial skills (gifts) entrepreneurial leaders bring to the table:
1. The willingness to risk The early church took incredible risks. People risked their health, safety, financial security and their very lives for the sake of the Gospel.
In a time when too many churches are trying to figure out how to survive, we need leaders who will change the question to how the church is going to thrive.
You can’t do that without risk. Being willing to risk what you have today is the best way to get to a different tomorrow.
2. Experimentation Have you ever asked yourself what it would have been like to be in the New Testament church?
It was an audacious experiment that God was completely behind. Everything changed in a generation; the place of worship, who worshipped, where people worshipped, how they worshipped, how they connected to each other, how they gave and how they forgave.
There isn’t a single element of everyday life that looked the same after a decade of life in the church.
If the church is going to grow, it’s going to have to change. (I wrote about 11 characteristics of future churches here.)
3. A restless discontent with the status quo Entrepreneurs and apostles are never satisfied. While it can be frustrating to work with someone who is never satisfied, it’s an essential gift in birthing what’s new and expanding a current mission.
Entrepreneurs are not only discontent with what others have created; they’re soon discontent with what they’ve helped create.
Paul died in prison longing to do more. Why do we make fun of church leaders today who have the same sense of urgency?
4. Boldness If you search the New Testament, you’ll see boldness as a hallmark of early church leaders.
You can hardly describe the church culture of many churches today as bold. Anemic, maybe. Bold, no.
And when people become bold, people criticize them for being arrogant or in it for themselves. Well, sometimes yes. But often no. They’re just exercising a God-given gift. Paul, after all, was no stranger to that criticism.
After all, boldness moved the cause of Christ forward in a remarkable way, changing millions of lives.
5. A bias for action We have plenty of thinkers in the church and not nearly enough doers.
Entrepreneurs bring a bias for action that is often astonishing. Spiritual entrepreneurs accomplish things nobody else accomplishes because they do things nobody else is willing to do.
If you think about the (much criticized) innovations in today’s church (video venues, multisite churches, online campuses etc.) you realize that you open yourself to a world of criticism when you start bold new things. So what?
Not the Only Thing, But a Missing Thing I’m not saying the gift of apostleship is the only thing, but it is a missing thing.
Conventional seminaries are mostly addicted to producing shepherds. If all we get have is shepherds stepping into leadership, then what you get is people who will (mostly) care for small groups of people.
Organizationally, it makes some sense to hire leaders and have shepherd volunteer. That’s what we’ve done at Connexus. You can care for hundreds, or thousands, of people through volunteer shepherd (we call them small group leaders) and let the leaders lead.
Do we need the gift of shepherding? Absolutely.
But we’re desperately missing the gift of spiritual entrepreneurship in the church today.
Don’t Just Leave a Comment, Tap Someone on the Shoulder Feel free to leave a comment, but please don’t stop there.
The church has plenty of opinions but not nearly enough capable leaders.
So here’s my challenge…why don’t you tap an entrepreneur you know on the shoulder today and ask him or her, ‘have you ever considered ministry’?
Think about it.
Who do you know who might be in business today who could be in ministry tomorrow? My guess is that there are people who are running businesses and leading in organizations who have the gifts for ministry but have never thought about ministry.
And maybe they’ve never thought about ministry because they’ve never seen anyone with their gift set use it for ministry. (You know that’s one way calls often happen, right? God uses human conversations to stir massive redirections of people’s lives.)
The church has plenty of opinions but not nearly enough capable leaders. Click To Tweet
So while I am very interested in what you think (please comment), seriously, don’t just leave a comment, tap someone on the shoulder.
_____________________________________________________
So, how does all of this talk of the church, especially the black church being brought into control of the rich tie to the riots and protests in Baltimore?
The 15 black ministers in Baltimore are identified as the ones telling Baltimore citizens for whom to vote every election and they always support the pols tied to Baltimore Development Corporation and Johns Hopkins. They work as hard as they can to keep community members in line even through the worst of injustice. They are silent until forced to come forward because behavior threatens the Baltimore Development plans and the city's revenue. THAT IS THEIR SOLE FOCUS.
It is that duplicity with the oppressive development policies that kept Baltimore citizens from having any voice through growing and growing police harassment and brutality. Again, these 15 black ministers are only tied to and profit from thee development plans. Gentrification can occur with justice-----it occurs in Baltimore with systemic fraud, corruption, and unjustice. These 15 black ministers are the ones supporting Hopkins' education reforms that are some of the most private and corporate in the nation----and having a goal of being most abusive and exploitative.
THIS IS WHY BALTIMORE HAD TO GO TO RIOT AND PROTEST----ECONOMIC DISRUPTION----FOR JUSTICE.
Baltimore's Mayor Rawlings-Blake having family with a church having received a million dollars in social sevice funding neve reaching the community----I BELIEVE IT!
The Role The Police Played In Sparking The Baltimore Violence
AP Photo / David Goldman ByLawrence BrownPublishedApril 29, 2015, 11:37 AM EDT
The mainstream media is getting the story wrong with regards to the Baltimore Uprising taking place. Journalists are lazily positing a direct connection between the Freddie Gray protests and the riot that broke out after Freddie Gray’s funeral.
But that’s not the full story.
Most of the media are ignoring the fact that the Baltimore Police Department escalated the situation by releasing a press release during Freddie Gray’s funeral that claimed that Baltimore’s most notorious gangs—the Bloods, Crips, and Black Guerrilla Family—were forming a dark alliance to “take out” police.
Gang members went on television to dispute this press release, saying they “did not make that truce to harm cops.” Still, the Baltimore Police Department decided to do what George W. Bush did when he attacked Iraq: engage in a preemptive attack. The rumors of a lawless purge among local black high schoolers were also swirling. The youth in that area leave school to take public transportation buses to go home, as Baltimore City Public Schools doesn't have a fleet of buses like most school districts to take children back and forth to school.
Therefore, two misleading narratives collided to produce a potent recipe for violence. The police assumed that black youth in local gangs were targeting them and that some sort of violent purge was imminent, so they began painting a picture of imminent threat. Convinced that they were under attack and having sufficiently defined the enemy (i.e. black youth) to the press, the police decided to strike first.
Therefore, police deployed cops in riot gear to Mondawmin Mall to cut off the buses that the children from local schools use to take home before the children got out of school. From there, things descended into violence as frustrated children, trapped on city streets by armored police and cut off from their mode of transportation home, began hurling rocks and bricks at the police.
The police responded with rubber bullets and tear gas, turning West Baltimore into the scene of a revolt. The community, already reeling from grief following the funeral of Freddie Gray, decided they had nothing to lose. As the group of children were pushed south (see map), they were joined by the residents of Freddie Gray’s community, Sandtown-Winchester—already demonized and terrorized by police on a daily basis—in the revolt.
Therefore, the same elements of apartheid policing that have been brought up around the death of Freddie Gray—racial profiling, making a preemptive strike, using disproportionate force, occupation—are there in the roots of the Baltimore uprising. I say apartheid policing because as I've written before on this site, when city leaders bring white cops from suburbs into disinvested black communities in urban areas, many cops are bringing longstanding racial biases with them from living and growing up in disproportionately white suburbs.
Researcher Phillip Goff and his colleagues have shown that white authority figures usually overestimate the ages of black children, viewing them as older than they are and imputing to them less presumed innocence. Their research also shows that white cops also view young black men as animals, specifically gorillas. This dehumanizing view proliferates policing, harking back to specific crude racial stereotypes that posit the innate criminality of black people.
This is the danger of allowing segregation to continue unchecked. This is the danger of America's ongoing betrayal of the 1968 Fair Housing Act as Nikole Hannah-Jones has written. The irrational fear of an unholy gang alliance and a “black purge” helped the Baltimore Police Department to incite a riot, when they made their preemptive strike just two hours after Freddie Gray was laid to rest.
OPUS DEI KEMOSABE ----THIS IS WHY WE HAD THE SEPERATION OF CHURCH AND STATE LOBBY!
I will end for now the talk of K-12 education policy with a goal of reinstating child labor that is especially strong in Baltimore because of Johns Hopkins and Baltimore Development Corporations and their pols. My discussion will segue nicely into the protests and riots in Baltimore over the police brutality and lack of justice.
The people made rich by this VISIGOTH raiding of our government treasuries and people's pockets are now trying to install these neo-liberal policies that make human capital of American citizens just as they have these decades in developing nations. These Race to the Top education reforms are all about replacing Democratic education for all with this K-12 vocational apprenticeship for all. This is hitting people of color hardest first---but it is coming to all US public schools.
We know the politicians are behind this but we need also to look at the church in America to see how they are being staffed with leadership making religion more and more conservative and connected to the rich. This is what happens in autocratic societies. I stopped listening to National Public Radio after decades of faithful listening because they promoted Obama as very progressive---the next FDR knowing all of Obama's attachments would place him right of center with George Bush as he has served. So, NPR was used as a propaganda tool to misinform the public. Then, I listened to NPR sell Pope Francis as the people's pope----he would take the Catholic Church to a champion of people. I knew he hailed from Argentina----where neo-liberal economics has decades of the worst of abuse and exploitation and wealth inequity and a very conservative Catholic Church and citizens in Argentina living very fearful lives......as is what neo-liberalism does----it is autocratic and exploitative with people as human capital.
Criticism of Opus Dei has centered on allegations of secretiveness, controversial recruiting methods, strict rules governing members, elitism and misogyny, and support of or participation in authoritarian or right-wing governments, especially the Francoist Government of Spain until 1978
Ke-mo sah-bee (/ˌkiːmoʊˈsɑːbiː/; often spelled kemo sabe or kemosabe) Ultimately derived from gimoozaabi, an Ojibwe and Potawatomi word that may mean "he/she looks out in secret",[1] it is sometimes translated as "trusty scout" or "faithful friend". Its use has become so widespread that it was entered into Webster's New Millennium Dictionary in 2002.
If you have noticed from nuns being given the sack and told to keep silent to the child abuse cases from the cases in Ireland and Australia of the church using children as child labor et al----the Catholic Church is becoming more and more severe and they have allowed themselves to align with the people made wealthy. Pope Benedict was made to leave his post partly because of the Vatican's involvement in laundering the Wall Street fraud out of the country and into offshore accounts. This doesn't mean the Catholic Church is bad----it means the wrong people are in charge. The black church is having the same crisis as ministers seem to become ordained to become part of pay-to-play profiteering used by these corrupt politicians. In Baltimore I have a very reliable source that says Mayor Rawlings-Blake has relatives that run a church having received a million dollars in social service funds that has not gone to the community. I BELIEVE THIS. IT IS PAY-TO-PLAY. Again, it is not the black church that is bad---it is the people who have taken leadership that are bad.
Below you see a good article that was too long to post----check it out. It talks of this deliberate attempt by Clinton neo-liberals and Bush neo-cons to capture the churches in this march towards autocracy and third world rich vs the masses of poor in the US. My concern is with the movement of religion to the far-right and as a result building the environment that does not value US Constitutional rights and liberties. As Obama and Clinton neo-liberals work with Bush neo-cons to install Trans Pacific Trade Pact to end our national sovereignty and Constitutional rights as citizens----they are deliberately placing people in leadership positions to make this 21st Century society.
The Corruption of Our Churches
Religion Is Leading Us Down The One
World Road To Slavery
I have studiously avoided the subject of religion in past articles, preferring to concentrate on political aspects of our situation. The time has come to discuss it. This will be difficult reading to some Christian patriots out there. But if you have reached the level where you can accept that our government is not, nor has been, acting in our favor; that those in power lie; that "those who would enslave us" will use any means, any vehicle to achieve that enslavement; then you must examine the evidence without the rose colored glasses.
If we are indeed in a spiritual battle, then you must be able to recognize the devil in his many guises. Next to "government", his favorite must surely be "organized religion". What better way to lead the sheeple, his captured "flock", into slavery.
I come from a long line of preachers. My father and grandfather were both Methodist preachers. Both were fine men, but I, on the other hand, was kicked out of Sun-day school for asking the teacher where Cain and Abel's wives came from? Seemed like a good question at the time.
In my youth and as an adult, I found myself being very uncomfortable with organized religion. At that time in my life I was, like most Americans, totally ignorant in regards to the New World Order agenda and the plot to destroy, or override our Constitution. Intuitively, I refused to allow government or religion to exercise much of a hold on me. For many years I struggled with
what appeared to me to be an unsolvable paradox; How could I love my country and believe in a God yet be fearful of my government and apprehensive of the church or organized religion?
Certain aspects of Christianity have always disturbed me. The Crusades, the Inquisition, the burning of so-called witches and the distant look in a fanatic's eye when they realize you aren't going to fall for their particular interpretation of the Bible. Yet Christianity and the pursuit of the freedom to practice it, is directly responsible for the founding of this country I love so dear.
Christians account for less than 30% of the world's population. Are we supposed to believe that the other 70% of the world and all of the great men who were not Christians were wrong? For us to believe that any one denomination, or religion for that matter, is the only way, is to deny the omnipotence of God.
____________________________________________
It is the partnership of the Catholic Church with the rich in Europe and all of the repression of the people that lead to the revolutions and the installation of SEPARATION OF CHURCH AND STATE. When the rich can simply install their own family to head institutions with a mission of controlling the 'masses'....you get third world autocracy.
THAT IS WHAT THE VISIGOTHS MADE INTO OLIGARCHS IN THE US ARE INSTALLING THROUGH CLINTON WALL STREET NEO-LIBERALS AND BUSH NEO-CONSERVATIVES AND MARYLAND POLS ARE ALL GLOBAL CORPORATE POLS.
PLEASE MAKE SURE LEADERSHIP IN YOUR CHURCHES----JUST AS WITH LEADERSHIP IN ALL LABOR AND JUSTICE ORGANIZATIONS ARE NOT TIED TO CLINTON NEO-LIBERALISM!
If you look below you will see when this movement started----just after Clinton's terms in office. Indeed, that was Clinton's primary focus. When the election of 2008 called Obama a community organizer----this is what they meant. The black church as developing community becomes tied to Baltimore Development Corporation and gentrification of city communities. Again, gentrification of cities are not bad----it is how it is being done that is bad. At the same time Clinton neo-liberalism becomes a good thing and VOILA----the new civil rights of individuals having the right to become fabulously rich replaces the US Constitutional civil rights of Equal Protection and equal opportunity and access for all. This is what we have seen since the end of Clinton's terms in office.
THIS IS ALSO WHY CIVIL RIGHTS AND LIBERTIES ARE DISAPPEARING AND WHY CITIZENS IN BALTIMORE ARE BEING OPENLY KILLED WITH NO JUSTICE.
Operationalizing of Key Term: Church's level of Community Participation
The response to Question 26 was a primary indicator of the church’s level of community participation: "In thinking about your responses to local community problems, in which of the following actions did you engage during the last year (2000-2001)?" Responses to this question enabled the researcher to examine and categorize the types of community participation (e.g., indirect or direct) in which the churches were or had been involved.
Essentially, indirect participation by churches was defined as passive actions of interest and/or concern, such as speaking publicly about community issues, informal visits with civic or community leaders, etc. Direct participation was defined as assertive, faith-based community participation; that is, programs and activities developed and implemented by churches to address community problems. Examples of such activities might include forming a community development corporation or implementing a job training, housing development, or educational program. It was important that the church leaders who were sampled understood that the indirect and direct actions to be reported were to be community oriented, as opposed to being self-serving activities conducted for the sole benefit of members of their respective churches.
Findings
Pastors were asked a general question regarding their evaluations of various socio-political community organizations. Using Ralph Johnstone’s typology of black pastors: militants, moderates, and traditionalists,42 it was expected that most pastors would be more supportive of traditional organizations (particularly those that are Christian in mission), than they were of those that are deemed more radical in nature. Table 1 indicates the pastors’ favorable evaluations of various organizations that attempt to deal with urban problems. Their responses ranged from 76% favoring the traditional approach of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference and the Concerned Black Clergy, to 68% percent in favor of the moderate integrationist approach of the NAACP and the Atlanta Urban League, to 24% in favor of the more militant approach of the Nation of Islam’s Black Muslims. Moreover, in their evaluations of the effectiveness of these groups on a local basis, about one-third considered none of these groups to be effective, another one-third considered local community organizations to be most effective, while 20% considered their own congregations to be most effective
_________________________________________
Entrepreneur and Apprenticeships hit the churches.
Below you see the extent this drive by neo-liberalism to install the corporate mentality into our religious institutions making them about funding churches with corporate structures. We have the mega-churches that have pastors always the ones exposed as corrupt and working against the interests of their congregations and communities.
This is not what we want our religious leaders to look like. Please, stop allowing Clinton neo-liberalism and Bush neo-conservativism to take church to state at this time of autocracy.
We are seeing churches tied to Wall Street stocks and money markets....they are creating church health systems knowing these pols are killing our public health programs....churches replacing our public schools----replacing the Veterans Administration----all while corporate non-profits are making this system filled with fraud losing trillions of dollars of public sector revenue to fraud and government corruption. Church leaders would recognize this slide and not participate in it.
March 24, 2014
Why We Need More Entrepreneurial Church Leaders, Not More Shepherds
Carey Nieuwhof is lead pastor of Connexus Church
I realize I might be opening up a controversial conversation. But I think it has to be said.
And I hope you’ll hear me out.
If the church is going to reverse some trends and maximize potential, we need more entrepreneurial pastors, not more shepherds.
There’s too much at stake to ignore this conversation.
We’re (Quite Literally) Missing the Boat If you’re a Christian, for certain the reason you have the faith you have is because Jesus died and rose again. That’s the absolute foundation of our faith.
But would you ever have heard about Jesus if a rabbi named Saul hadn’t sailed all over the known world telling every Jewish and non-Jewish person he could find about Jesus, planting churches almost everywhere he went?
The Apostle Paul, as he became known, left a huge impact not just on the church, but on millions of lives (and on human history) because he possessed the spiritual gift of apostleship.
What’s an apostle? To put it into today’s idiom, an apostle is a spiritual entrepreneur. (Here’s a great article from Leadership Journal about apostleship in the church today.)
A shepherd cares for a (usually) small group. An apostle launches dozens, hundreds or thousands of new communities of Christ-followers.
The church today is flooded with leaders who fit the shepherd model, caring for people who are already assembled, managing what’s been built and helping to meet people’s needs. (This is also a spiritual gift.)
But we have far too few leaders who have the spiritual gift of apostleship.
I believe this helps explain the malaise in much of the Western church in which the vast majority of churches are plateaued or declining.
We quite literally need people to get in a boat (or a car or a plane) and start new things, shake up the old and lead into a better tomorrow.
Is This Just Another Slam of Small Churches….? Is this another slam against small churches?
Well…yes and no.
I love what Karl Vaters has said about small churches. Karl pastors in Orange County California, where everyone has a megachurch it seems. He leads a smaller church.
According to Karl,
90% of the churches in the world have less than 200 people.
80% have less than 100 people.
And he asks a great question. What if [having a lot of small churches] is not a problem; what if that’s a strategy God wants to use?”
Interesting. You could hear this as a justification for keeping churches small (a justification I’ve heard far too many times).
But hear him out. He adds a crucial caveat:
I’m not interested in someone who says “We have these few. That’s all we ever want. That’s all we ever need.” If that’s your attitude, God bless you (I don’t think he will.)
I want people who want to innovate…who realize that maybe because of their gifting it works better in a small setting. But it’s not about settling. Never settle. Never settle.
Couldn’t agree more. Thank you Karl! (Here’s his whole interview.)
I just wonder if part of that innovation is going to come from people (even in small churches) with the gift of apostleship. If the church as a whole is going to grow, this has to become an all-skate.
5 Things Entrepreneurial Leaders Bring There are at least gifts crucial skills (gifts) entrepreneurial leaders bring to the table:
1. The willingness to risk The early church took incredible risks. People risked their health, safety, financial security and their very lives for the sake of the Gospel.
In a time when too many churches are trying to figure out how to survive, we need leaders who will change the question to how the church is going to thrive.
You can’t do that without risk. Being willing to risk what you have today is the best way to get to a different tomorrow.
2. Experimentation Have you ever asked yourself what it would have been like to be in the New Testament church?
It was an audacious experiment that God was completely behind. Everything changed in a generation; the place of worship, who worshipped, where people worshipped, how they worshipped, how they connected to each other, how they gave and how they forgave.
There isn’t a single element of everyday life that looked the same after a decade of life in the church.
If the church is going to grow, it’s going to have to change. (I wrote about 11 characteristics of future churches here.)
3. A restless discontent with the status quo Entrepreneurs and apostles are never satisfied. While it can be frustrating to work with someone who is never satisfied, it’s an essential gift in birthing what’s new and expanding a current mission.
Entrepreneurs are not only discontent with what others have created; they’re soon discontent with what they’ve helped create.
Paul died in prison longing to do more. Why do we make fun of church leaders today who have the same sense of urgency?
4. Boldness If you search the New Testament, you’ll see boldness as a hallmark of early church leaders.
You can hardly describe the church culture of many churches today as bold. Anemic, maybe. Bold, no.
And when people become bold, people criticize them for being arrogant or in it for themselves. Well, sometimes yes. But often no. They’re just exercising a God-given gift. Paul, after all, was no stranger to that criticism.
After all, boldness moved the cause of Christ forward in a remarkable way, changing millions of lives.
5. A bias for action We have plenty of thinkers in the church and not nearly enough doers.
Entrepreneurs bring a bias for action that is often astonishing. Spiritual entrepreneurs accomplish things nobody else accomplishes because they do things nobody else is willing to do.
If you think about the (much criticized) innovations in today’s church (video venues, multisite churches, online campuses etc.) you realize that you open yourself to a world of criticism when you start bold new things. So what?
Not the Only Thing, But a Missing Thing I’m not saying the gift of apostleship is the only thing, but it is a missing thing.
Conventional seminaries are mostly addicted to producing shepherds. If all we get have is shepherds stepping into leadership, then what you get is people who will (mostly) care for small groups of people.
Organizationally, it makes some sense to hire leaders and have shepherd volunteer. That’s what we’ve done at Connexus. You can care for hundreds, or thousands, of people through volunteer shepherd (we call them small group leaders) and let the leaders lead.
Do we need the gift of shepherding? Absolutely.
But we’re desperately missing the gift of spiritual entrepreneurship in the church today.
Don’t Just Leave a Comment, Tap Someone on the Shoulder Feel free to leave a comment, but please don’t stop there.
The church has plenty of opinions but not nearly enough capable leaders.
So here’s my challenge…why don’t you tap an entrepreneur you know on the shoulder today and ask him or her, ‘have you ever considered ministry’?
Think about it.
Who do you know who might be in business today who could be in ministry tomorrow? My guess is that there are people who are running businesses and leading in organizations who have the gifts for ministry but have never thought about ministry.
And maybe they’ve never thought about ministry because they’ve never seen anyone with their gift set use it for ministry. (You know that’s one way calls often happen, right? God uses human conversations to stir massive redirections of people’s lives.)
The church has plenty of opinions but not nearly enough capable leaders. Click To Tweet
So while I am very interested in what you think (please comment), seriously, don’t just leave a comment, tap someone on the shoulder.
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So, how does all of this talk of the church, especially the black church being brought into control of the rich tie to the riots and protests in Baltimore?
The 15 black ministers in Baltimore are identified as the ones telling Baltimore citizens for whom to vote every election and they always support the pols tied to Baltimore Development Corporation and Johns Hopkins. They work as hard as they can to keep community members in line even through the worst of injustice. They are silent until forced to come forward because behavior threatens the Baltimore Development plans and the city's revenue. THAT IS THEIR SOLE FOCUS.
It is that duplicity with the oppressive development policies that kept Baltimore citizens from having any voice through growing and growing police harassment and brutality. Again, these 15 black ministers are only tied to and profit from thee development plans. Gentrification can occur with justice-----it occurs in Baltimore with systemic fraud, corruption, and unjustice. These 15 black ministers are the ones supporting Hopkins' education reforms that are some of the most private and corporate in the nation----and having a goal of being most abusive and exploitative.
THIS IS WHY BALTIMORE HAD TO GO TO RIOT AND PROTEST----ECONOMIC DISRUPTION----FOR JUSTICE.
Baltimore's Mayor Rawlings-Blake having family with a church having received a million dollars in social sevice funding neve reaching the community----I BELIEVE IT!
The Role The Police Played In Sparking The Baltimore Violence
AP Photo / David Goldman ByLawrence BrownPublishedApril 29, 2015, 11:37 AM EDT
The mainstream media is getting the story wrong with regards to the Baltimore Uprising taking place. Journalists are lazily positing a direct connection between the Freddie Gray protests and the riot that broke out after Freddie Gray’s funeral.
But that’s not the full story.
Most of the media are ignoring the fact that the Baltimore Police Department escalated the situation by releasing a press release during Freddie Gray’s funeral that claimed that Baltimore’s most notorious gangs—the Bloods, Crips, and Black Guerrilla Family—were forming a dark alliance to “take out” police.
Gang members went on television to dispute this press release, saying they “did not make that truce to harm cops.” Still, the Baltimore Police Department decided to do what George W. Bush did when he attacked Iraq: engage in a preemptive attack. The rumors of a lawless purge among local black high schoolers were also swirling. The youth in that area leave school to take public transportation buses to go home, as Baltimore City Public Schools doesn't have a fleet of buses like most school districts to take children back and forth to school.
Therefore, two misleading narratives collided to produce a potent recipe for violence. The police assumed that black youth in local gangs were targeting them and that some sort of violent purge was imminent, so they began painting a picture of imminent threat. Convinced that they were under attack and having sufficiently defined the enemy (i.e. black youth) to the press, the police decided to strike first.
Therefore, police deployed cops in riot gear to Mondawmin Mall to cut off the buses that the children from local schools use to take home before the children got out of school. From there, things descended into violence as frustrated children, trapped on city streets by armored police and cut off from their mode of transportation home, began hurling rocks and bricks at the police.
The police responded with rubber bullets and tear gas, turning West Baltimore into the scene of a revolt. The community, already reeling from grief following the funeral of Freddie Gray, decided they had nothing to lose. As the group of children were pushed south (see map), they were joined by the residents of Freddie Gray’s community, Sandtown-Winchester—already demonized and terrorized by police on a daily basis—in the revolt.
Therefore, the same elements of apartheid policing that have been brought up around the death of Freddie Gray—racial profiling, making a preemptive strike, using disproportionate force, occupation—are there in the roots of the Baltimore uprising. I say apartheid policing because as I've written before on this site, when city leaders bring white cops from suburbs into disinvested black communities in urban areas, many cops are bringing longstanding racial biases with them from living and growing up in disproportionately white suburbs.
Researcher Phillip Goff and his colleagues have shown that white authority figures usually overestimate the ages of black children, viewing them as older than they are and imputing to them less presumed innocence. Their research also shows that white cops also view young black men as animals, specifically gorillas. This dehumanizing view proliferates policing, harking back to specific crude racial stereotypes that posit the innate criminality of black people.
This is the danger of allowing segregation to continue unchecked. This is the danger of America's ongoing betrayal of the 1968 Fair Housing Act as Nikole Hannah-Jones has written. The irrational fear of an unholy gang alliance and a “black purge” helped the Baltimore Police Department to incite a riot, when they made their preemptive strike just two hours after Freddie Gray was laid to rest.
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