When Christ Gets Bigger Our Preferences Are Smaller

I remember getting the flyer in the mail, a postcard, really. The advertisement began with a question, “Fun at church?” and the question was answered, right there, on the card: “Yup.” On the back the card read like the church’s liturgy, err, I mean, what the “new church” offered:

• Free coffee,
• Free rockin’ music,
• Free fun for kids.

This new church was “church done differently” followed by a list of adjectives to describe its worship and fellowship: “casual,” “contemporary,” “biblical” (apparently this ranked third in importance!), “friendly,” and “meaningful.” Featured on the card were pictures of young, attractive, white, middle-American people smiling from ear to ear. 

I wasn’t persuaded to attend. (For one, I didn’t think I had the wardrobe or the model good looks to pull it off). But, the postcard did reveal to me the extent to which consumerism has infiltrated the mindset of the church. This church had a specific demographic: young, white, affluent families who happen to be interested in coffee, rockin’ music, and fun for their kids. These consumers of religion want to make sure that the church will serve them, and this church was more than happy to oblige. 

Consumerism is an ideology - an ideology that believes personal happiness is advanced through the acquisition, consumption, and enjoyment of material possessions. Consumerism is an ideology that now takes up 70 percent of our economy! Consumerism is an ideology that has become idolatry. 

Consumerism as an idol has spawned a new type of false gospel. (No, I’m not talking about the health-and-wealth gospel, although that is clearly one false gospel consumerism has spawned. But, no, I’m talking about another, more insidious false gospel). Consumerism as an idol has produced a “Christian” culture of selfishness.

D.A. Carson in his book, The Gagging of God, wrote: “The truth of the matter is that the consumer mentality authorizes people to judge all matters religious and theological by the simple criterion of whether or not they have been ‘helped’--and the only people equipped to assess whether or not they have truly been helped are the people who claim to have been helped. Questions of truth, long-range effects, and purpose are all shunted aside,” (p. 465).

The church is called to preach, teach, administer the Lord’s Supper, to baptize and discipline disciples, and, most of all, glorify God in all that it does. The church is not called to meet the felt needs of every imaginable demographic group or to offer its customers (note: I did not say “Christians”) hot cappuccino and a scone on Sunday morning. 

We Christians need to remind ourselves that the church does not exist to serve us, but rather we exist to serve her. If we were to adopt such a mind-set, we would begin to see the true prosperity promised in the gospel. And we will also become true Christians and real churches when we put our idols of consumerism away.

I was reminded of this recently with the words of NPR commentator and writer Heather King, a recovering alcoholic who has come to faith in Christ. This is her reflection on her initial experience with the church:

“My first impulse was to think, My God, I don't want to get sober (or in the case of the church, worship) with THESE nutcases! (or boring people, or people with different politics, taste in music, food, books, or whatever). Nothing shatters our egos like worshipping with people we did not hand-pick …. The humiliation of discovering that we are thrown in with extremely unpromising people!—people who are broken, misguided, wishy-washy, out for themselves. People who are … us.

“But we don't come to church to be with people who are like us in the way we want them to be. We come because we have staked our souls on the fact that Christ is the Way, the Truth, and the Life, and the church is the best place, the only place, to be while we all struggle to figure out what that means. We come because we'd be hard pressed to say which is the bigger of the two scandals of God: that he loves us—or that he loves everyone else.”

There you have it: It’s about Christ; it’s not about me. 

We will never be free of the idol of consumerism, manifested in contemporary Christianity with the vulgar and sinful notions of “church-hopping” and “church-shopping” until we seek Christ. When Christ is bigger our Preferences are smaller. We will never know life -- real life, eternal life -- until we repent and rid ourselves of such idols.

Oh, and, by the way, if you want to stop by Santa Clara Church, and check us out, we are offering free coffee, free rockin’ music, and free fun for the kids! . . . (Sorry, just trying to drum up some “business”!)

Wes

Youth on Point

What happens when a church refuses to offer "youth ministry as usual"? . . . What happens when a church gets serious about discipling its youth? . . . What happens when a church trades in dodge-ball and gross-out games, and teenage babysitting, and instead opts to teach theology and ministry and real world discipleship? . . .

I'll tell you what happens. You get kids living like Christ, for Christ, on mission for making a real difference in their world for Christ's sake. You get kids, like the ones here at Santa Clara Church who take their faith seriously, realize they are the church now, and expect (and will) change the world.

Check this out: http://vimeo.com/31551993

The youth are hosting this city-wide event to get informed, trained, and make real difference. This is the effort to move against sex trafficking in our area. As it happens, the I-5 corridor is one of the most trafficked highways in the U.S.

I am so proud and amazed by the way our youth are working to make a difference. They are a real credit to the ongoing ministry of Santa Clara, and they lead the rest of us (adults) and challenge us in so many ways.

Great job, kids! You ARE the church today!

Is it possible to love Jesus and not be committed to the local church?

A really important video about why commitment to the local church matters.

In a world of church-hoppers, consumerism, and pseudo-Christianity, commitment still matters.

Check it out: http://www.9marks.org/blog/new-videos-mark-dever-local-church

We All Want the Good Life . . . But at What Cost?

We all want the good life, but at what cost? . . . In preparation for a preachers’ study group, I’ve been working my way through Luke 16:19-31, commonly known as the parable of “The Rich Man and Lazarus.” 

It is an intriguing, humbling, and convicting story on a number of levels. As I was thinking through the parable, I remembered Robert Farrar Capon’s book, The Parables of Grace, in which he works through this parable. Before I get to a quote from Capon’s book, consider this.

The thing that strikes me first is that this parable is about the attitude of the rich and successful toward their own lifestyle and their view that they are life’s “winners.” The larger context of Luke 16 begins with another of Jesus’ parables - the parable of “The Unrighteous Steward.” It begins much the same way as that of the “Rich Man and Lazarus,” to wit, Luke 16:1 reads: Now He [Jesus] was also saying to the disciples [and to the Pharisees who were listening in -- check out Luke 15:1], “There was a certain rich man . . .” The parable at hand begins the same way: “Now there was a certain rich man . . .” (Luke 16:19). 

The reality is that I am a rich man. . . . No, I’m no Bill Gates or Warren Buffett. But I am an American and by my standard of living, I am one of the richest people on earth. . . . And, so are you, by the way. . . . The poorest among us (as Americans) are among the richest people on the planet. There is no getting around that. 

This gets to the Capon quote. He writes:

As I have observed a number of times now, if the world could have been saved by successful living, ti would have been tidied up long ago. Certainly, the successful livers of this world have always been ready enough to stuff life’s losers into the garbage can of history. Their program for turning earth back into Eden has consistently been to shun the sick, to lock the poor in ghettos, to disenfranchise those whose skin was the wrong color, and to exterminate those whose religion is inconvenient. Nor have they been laggard in furthering that program. On the whole, they have been not only zealous but efficient: witness, to name only a handful of instances, the AIDS crisis, the South Bronx, the apartheid policy in South Arica, and the death camps under Hitler. (Robert Farrar Capon, The Parables of Grace, Eerdmans, 1988, 154).

Stunning words, I think. And, I stand convicted. Oh, it’s not that I’m a Hitler (and I’m sure we could think of more recent examples). It’s that, like these powerful, successful, rich examples, I can completely ignore Lazarus outside my door. I sadly confess that I am really good at it. . . . Oh, how I stand in need of the mercy and grace of God! . . . 

Just a few days ago I had a truth pointed out to me that has haunted me, and I confess, I have been mentally deliberating how I might ignore the truth of the issue. Over at the blog: rageagainsttheminivan.com, a blog I was completely oblivious to, there was this October 6, 2011 post entitled, “Here, Let Me Ruin Halloween for You.” (I strongly recommend that you read it. Find it at: http://www.rageagainsttheminivan.com/2011/09/here-let-me-ruin-halloween-for-you.html. 

The blog raised my awareness to the fact that along the Ivory Coast and other African countries there are an estimated 284,000 children working -- many if not most as slaves -- in dangerous conditions, to provide rich Americans like me with our need for chocolate! . . . For chocolate, for goodness sake! . . . 

In the words of the blogger: “Many of them have been taken from their families, or sold as servants.  U.S. chocolate manufacturers have claimed they are not responsible for the conditions on cocoa plantations since they don't own them.  This includes Hershey, Mars, Nestle, and the US division of Cadbury . . . who collectively represent pretty much every snack-size candy bar that will be available in stores this Halloween.” (Emphasis hers). 

I shall now assume the name “Dives,” (the name given to the rich man in the parable). 

Ok, Dives, do you see that poor child outside your door? . . . Look carefully, she is the one who was sold as a little girl. She is the girl,  younger than your daughter who is consigned to carry bags of cocoa weighing more than she does. She will never go to school. She works for nothing but what food she can get. She’s a slave. She’s a slave being worked to death to provide . . . Hershey’s kisses for you. 

The blogger goes on: 

“The connection between most major candy bar manufacturers and child slavery is one of the world’s best kept secrets. It has been going on for years, but I only learned about it last year.  The US government is currently being sued by the International Labor Rights Fund for failing to enforce laws prohibiting the import of products made with child labor, and the chocolate industry has blown by numerous deadlines set by Congress for regulating.  A few major chocolate companies have done a great job in the last year with some smoke-and-mirror campaigns . . . either offering an obscure fair-trade chocolate bar or making a show of giving to charities that support farmers. But these actions do not change the fact that they don’t want to be accountable for human rights abuses of children.” (Emphasis mine).

Ok, so I just found out about it myself. . . . So, . . . now what? . . . We all want the “chocolate covered” good life, . . . but at what cost? . . . It cost Dives his soul. . . . I’m just pointing that out. 

Mind Over Matter

Good stuff here, at the To the Source blog.

https://mail.google.com/mail/#inbox/132d769221ae3cf4

A Call to Clarity

Some are given to the idea that “Life is a journey, not a destination.” Which, if you think about it carefully, is both true and false. It is true that life is a journey, however, to use Laurence J. Peter’s words, “If you don’t know where you are going, you will probably end up somewhere else.” . . . And that means, of course, that the destination is every bit as important, and ultimately more important than the journey itself. . . . But, most in our culture have lost sight of this. Few begin with the end in mind. And they wander off to mindless ends! . . . And that is a real tragedy. That is a wasted life.

This could also describe a church, whether local or catholic, if it has lost its sense of the Transcendent, its sense of the consummation, its sense of what its purpose in the world is. To wit, I strongly encourage everyone to read Dr. Timothy Tennent’s Convocation address to the faculty and student body of Asbury Theological Seminary. 

You can find it here: http://www.patheos.com/community/bibleandculture/2011/09/25/the-clarion-call-to-watered-down-evangelicalism/

A Painful Depressing Read

The following represents the too often sad and wounded spirit of a preacher's wife. My friend and preacher Aaron Earlywine passed this on to the members of our preacher's study group. It's a humbling thing to think about what the church in America sometimes is -- even a "cool" church like Courageous Church Atlanta. But it does give fuel for thought so I thought I would pass it on. But be warned, as Aaron wrote: This is a painful, depressing read.



The article below is located at:  http://raiking.com/this-is-probably-a-manifesto-leaving-courageous-church/

Warning it is painful, depressing read....

Leaving Courageous Church
I told myself I’d give myself until today, and then I will be detaching myself from all things Courageous Church.  For the sake of my family and my own sanity, we’re going on hiatus.  But first, I have to release the tension of these last few months.  I’m afraid I’m full of frustration. If you don’t want to hear that, you should stop reading now:::::::

I’ve tried to write this several times already, and am really struggling with finding the words to say.  I always shoot for clarity and a level of elegance in my writing, but I’m thinking I’m going to miss the mark on this one no matter how hard I try, so I’m instead going to shoot straight from the hip.

This past week,-as Shaun has gone back and forth in considering his resignation-has been emotionally trying on so many levels.  I have been hurt for him, hurt for us, but mostly, I’ve been hurt for the people of Courageous Church.  I think I’ve known for a while now that he needed to resign.  But the reality of it has been way more difficult that I ever anticipated.  Here’s why:

I have never loved leading this church.  Ever.  I didn’t want to plant it and have had just a hand full of days since planting it that I felt like it was worth it.  Shaun, however, has loved this church with his whole heart from the moment he conceived it. Before one person set foot in anything called Courageous Church, he dreamed about it, prayed for it, and worked around the clock for monthsgetting it off the ground.  He contacted church planting organizations and sought their financial support. He went through their assessment centers, filled out their paperwork, went to their meetings, emailed their leaders.

**I will never forget laying in the bed of our little townhouse dog sick and pregnant with Savannah while Shaun sat on the floor of our room and built the very first Courageous Church website.  I remember when he held a contest for a designer to create the Courageous Church logo.  I remember him asking my opinion and me telling him that I liked the one with the simple cross in the middle-the church’s logo today.  

**I’ll never forget when he first started using facebook and twitter to reach out to hurting people.  One of his first acts as the “facebook pastor” was mobilizing people to lend their support to a man who had decided not to commit suicide just because he had been ministered to by Shaun through facebook that day.  Our church as a social media church, was born right then- and we hadn’t even held one service.

**And I remember me, Sophie, and Jason ordering, collecting, and wrapping Christmas toys for the kids of Stanton Elementary.  I remember us scouring the Internet looking for just the right toys to meet each kids wish list.  I remember the news was there.  I remember Willis performing a Christmas rap for the kids.  I remember Avril filming a beautiful video of it that went really viral on the net.  I remember being so proud of my kids because their excitement at watching the kids of Stanton open their gifts was palpable- even though they would be receiving nothing for themselves.  We did all of this before ONE service was held.

**I’ll also never forget our first launch team meetings.  They were really sparse.  They basically consisted of me, Shaun, Jason, Sophie, our kids, their kids, Willis, and Jinean.  I remember Adam Beane even came randomly to one and I thought ‘he is never coming back because there are only like 3 other people here.’  But 2 1/2 years later, he’s still here.  That’s so funny to me.

**And I will always smile at the memory of Antwon dressed up as a super hero along with one of my co-workers at the Morehouse/Spelman homecoming.  We gave out HUNDREDS of free buffalo wings to any student who gave us their contact information.  I’ll NEVER forget that!

Shaun had a very distinct vision for the church God wanted him to plant.  It would be a church that did more than provide weekly lip service to people who already knew God and were content with just that- they knew Him.  They’d heard about Him all their lives.  Couldn’t say they’d ever done anything bold in His service, and couldn’t say their lives resembled anything Christ-like (unless Christ to you is the blond haired, blue-eyed picture of meek Jesus holding a lamb…because Christianity is about being nice, right?).  Shaun thought that if people witnessed courageous leadership, and listened to edgy, courageous teaching, they’d be inspired to get out and be the hands and feet of Christ themselves and provide life changing power and solutions to a dieing and hurting world….Um, FAIL!

Instead, you know what we quickly became?  We became the COOL church.  We were the hip city church that was predominately African-American, but with some sprinklings of white folks, and even 1 Asian.  Our pastor was ethnically ambiguous, so that provided a little mystery.  We often rapped during worship, and our leaders wore jeans and collared shirts with the funky crosses on them.  We even had a dj who scratched tracks instead of a band.  We were so damn cool! We had former drug dealers attending our church, and rappers who still talked about getting high showing up every Sunday morning because they liked Shaun’s preaching.  Does it get any cooler?

Truth is, we liked being this church.  We had t-shirts made, created a twitter handle, ran advertisements on facebook.  We even started serving a free breakfast to get folks out to this cool church.  And guess what, it worked!  People actually came.  Our kids ministry went from 2 adults in a room with their own kids to having 2 directors and teachers in individual classrooms for kids of every age.  By the end of our first year we were up to 2 services.  Shaun preached, Dorothy sang, Willis rapped, I taught, Jason set up chairs, Sophie sang, Shaun preached, I taught, and then we all sang some more.  And some more.  And some more.

And then at some point we looked up and realized, hey, you know, we haven’t done any outreach in a long time.  People are here.  They come and listen every Sunday, but we haven’t done anything outside of these walls in a while.  So then we started an initiative called Choose Your Own Adventure.  We dedicated several services filled with funny skits and quirky videos getting people to sign up for an outreach program of their choice.  And yes, people signed up, but a couple of months into it the outreach consisted of little more than offering water to folks who didn’t want it and wrapping peanut butter and jelly sandwiches and passing them out to homeless people who could do better than that by themselves...Fail!

At the time I thought it was just poor leadership of the programs.  I thought we probably weren’t organized enough and strategic enough in our efforts, and that’s why people didn’t support these outreach initiatives.  So, we tried harder.  The ATL floods came and Shaun and Jinean and Jason mobilized a huge effort to get people to the church to volunteer.  They collected donations, helped clean out houses, provide meals, etc, etc.  They created schedules, and work teams.  We were on the news for it.  Shaun used his handy flip camera to film a video about it.  We really made a difference.  But you want to know the hard truth about that?  Most of the volunteers were random, unsaved people who didn’t even go to our church.  For the most part, Courageous Church folk were nowhere to be found.

Still, Shaun preached, Dorothy sang, Jinean prepared service scripts, I taught, Shaun preached, Dorothy sang, I taught some more. And some more.  And some more.

Then came the Haiti earthquake.  A Home in Haiti was created.  We collected tents.  We raised and sent money to Haiti.  Actually, WE meant Shaun, Jinean, Jason Woody, and 2 or 3 other consistent volunteers.  By this time church attendance was at an all time high. We were packing it out.  But volunteers for A Home in Haiti could be counted on one hand.

So 2 years into it, after 300+ sermons, who knows how many songs, people coming, people going, stressful lead team meetings, raising money from outside sources because the people who attended the church didn’t actually give enough to support the church, Shaun got frustrated, a few leaders got tired and left, and Jinean got sick of being the only “crazy” person in the room and started serving God on her own in Mexico.

Thus Shaun had a vision for “the shift”…as it has come to be known.  After searching the scriptures and seeing Christ’s ministry for what it really was we decided we no longer wanted to participate in the spectator sport we Christians call CHURCH.  So we said, let’s stop meeting every Sunday.  Let’s instead, meet in small groups in each other’s homes.  Let’s share a meal and learn how to be true disciples of Christ.  Let’s all serve together.  Let’s have each small group belong to a cause group that addresses a need in our city. We talked about it, met about it, argued about it, preached about it, sang about it, and read books about it for months.  And for the most part, people were buying it.  As a matter of fact, the month before the shift, when Shaun was preaching the hows and whys of what were about to do was our highest attendance and our highest offering in all of 2011.  We thought that meant people were actually ready to be radical and courageous.  4 months later, it’s clear that what that meant was that people love HEARING about being radical and courageous.  It gets our juices flowing and makes us feel all powerful.  Then we leave the service, get in our cars, pick up some chicken for lunch, go home, and watch Basketball Wives until the T.O. Show comes on, and then the Falcons game.  Then there’s work, and depression about our sucky job, and disdain for our sucky marriage, and then Sunday comes, and we get to be happy again-even if for just a few hours.  And then……..you know the routine.

So we said, let’s do less of that so that we can create time to serve God instead of serving ourselves by getting high off of church services.  If people aren’t in church every Sunday, maybe they’ll serve instead.…FAIL!  What most people did after “the shift” is go to another church on the Sundays we didn’t meet.

I thought the problem was that we weren’t organized enough.  Maybe people weren’t serving because we’re not organized.  So this summer we went into super churchy, extra responsible, grown-up church mode.  But after months of church meetings, and the ridiculous antics of electing a board, and forming ministry teams, we’re the most organized we’ve ever been, and STILL, no one shows up to the cause group meetings and outreach initiatives.

Here’s what we’ve learned this summer: It’s not organizations with boards and secretaries who record the minutes that change the world.  It’s not even dynamic leadership that successfully leads the board with the secretary who records minutes.  It’s PEOPLE WITH HEARTS BROKEN FOR CHIRST and His people. Before we had 1 service we stopped a man from committing suicide and bought 500 toys and uniforms for school kids in the inner-city.  We didn’t need dynamic leadership, by-laws, and committees to do that.  We just needed to care.


Am I frustrated?  CLEARLY!  Am I overstating the irrelevance of the Sunday morning song and dance?  Probably.  Did people come to Christ and renew their relationship with God because of what Courageous Church did for so long on Sunday mornings?  Absolutely!  But, then what?  Glad we baptized you, glad we helped you believe in church again and feel all warm and fuzzy about your creator, but I’m sorry we failed to actually make the vast majority of you into disciples.

We’re leaving because we will not go back to the stress and relative lack of actual disciple making of the every Sunday model. Sunday morning has its place.  I too missed the gatherings, but I will never again participate in a model that replaces the real work of Christ with the mundanity of 2 songs and a feel good sermon.

I actually feel I owe Shaun and apology.  For so long I have put all of the church’s problems off on him as a leader.  I complained that he wasn’t organized enough.  So time and time again he devised and implemented strategies to make the church better organized.  Then I complained that he didn’t spend enough time on his sermons.  So he’d hunker down and study more and preach more well thought out sermons.

Time and time again you shape shifted, made adjustments, bent, folded, and worked yourself crazy into the leader I and everyone else told you you needed to be.  I’m sooo sorry for this!  My heart aches when I think on this.  The truth is, there are churches with pastors who preach like TD Jakes and are as organized as all the Andy Stanley ministries, but are still making disciples out of a good 1% of their attendees (just using those preachers as examples…don’t really know a thing about who does what in their churches).  It’s not about any of that!  It should not be this hard to motivate people to serve Christ.  It’s not about you, Shaun.  For me to have pointed the finger at you and say you and all of your flaws is the reason we didn’t catch the vision takes away people’s own responsibility in their faith walk.

The truth of the matter is, Shaun is simply exhausted.  Pastoring people has been 10 times better than my best hopes and 100 times worse than my worst nightmares.  Unless you’ve done it, you will NEVER understand it.  It looks one way from the outside looking in, but trust me, you don’t know the half.  Pastors are the sickest, loneliest, most depressed people in church.  That’s why they have affairs, that’s why they die at the age of 42 from heart attacks and drug over doses.  That’s why every time you turn on the TV there’s a new scandal, and a fresh news story about the latest greatest to fall from grace.  Taking criticism day in and day out from people who swear up and down they know better is exhausting.  Having people leave for stupid, selfish reasons is exhausting.  The divorce rate for pastors is among the highest of any other group in the country.  Shaun and I have decided we’d like that to not be our story. 

For those in Courageous Church that are hurt and blind-sided by our decision to leave, I’ll say I’m truly sorry.  You are the reason I haven’t slept well in several weeks.  I’ve thought about everyone who truly believed in our ability to see you through this transition, and I’m sorry we either couldn’t or are simply too exhausted to make it work.  It’s so hard to fight against cultural norms and what’s comfortable, but some of you have really tried.  You’ve lead the cause group, hosted the small group, and shown up to do “outreach.” You’ve given your tithe, and attended the meetings.  A handful of you have done all of these things, and I’m sorry if you now feel abandoned and hurt by us leaving.  I’ve cried many times over the last few days thinking about how our decision would affect you.

And if you’ve found yourself angry about us stepping down (which very few people have expressed, actually) I can tell you to kick rocks.  Your anger is rooted in selfish self-righteousness.  You’re mad because you “stuck around” and now we aren’t.  But truthfully,your sticking around meant next to nothing.  Most people who are angry can’t name one thing they did to be active in their cause group or support their discipleship group.  You were content to take and take and take, and never give, and now you’re mad that we’ve decided not to play that game anymore.  Your anger is misguided and you’ve diluted yourself into thinking that you care more about this church than we do because we’re leaving and you haven’t.  If you’ve stayed, but never really bought into the principles, you’re hurting the church, not helping.  And you should repent right now for being unable to muster one ounce of compassion and concern for the man that has put all he has on the line to lead you closer to God over these last few years!!  This paragraph is only for a select few. YOU know who you are.

I hope you don’t receive this as me putting all the blame for the failure of Courageous on everyone else.  Shaun and I and our team of leaders have made enough mistakes to write a “church planting for dummies” novel.  If I could turn back time, oh, the things we would do differently!  We were just a few really crazy people trying desperately to follow God’s heart.  We got lost in the shuffle of being cool, and by the time we realized that the church was watching 3 or 4 people be courageous instead of joining them, it was too late to fix it.

It looks like the church will go on.  And at first that was my hope- which is why we asked our best friends to remain and help lead it.  But now, I’m actually very sad.  What the board has decided the church will become bears little resemblance to the church we intended and now wish we had planted.

To close, I want to be clear that Shaun and I haven’t given up on “church.”  We’re just finished with church as usual.  There must be churches out there getting it right.  Evidenced not by how big and cool they are, but by the fact that they’re actually making discipleswho are recapturing the world for Christ.

As I stated at the beginning of this, I never really wanted to plant this church.  I’ve been in church my entire life, and had an idea of the stress that would come with it.  But even though I didn’t want to lead you, I actually found it very easy to love you (well, most of you anyway).  This whole thing probably sounds angrier than I mean it to, and I’m sorry for that.  What I actually feel when I think of most of you is love and appreciation.  We’re all just flawed vessels trying to see our way through. I’m going off the grid for a while.  I hope Shaun plans to do the same.  We both need a time of refreshing.  I will be praying for each of you in the days and weeks to come.