John Wesley Club

Civility. That is the topic of the week following the tragic and very disturbing senseless public shootings and murders in Tucson this week.

What you are about to read, unfortunately, is not just my story. This is the story of more than one pastor and dignified church members around the country.

Civility and dignity are both born and nurtured in the church or sometimes the church itself, in the name of religion, becomes the source of great hatred and vitriolic moments…all in the Name of Love.

Monday night in Phoenix much of the world (at least the world I operate within!) was glued to the Auburn/Oregon Ducks game. I was. My daughter and her fiancé from Auburn were at that game. My daughter, in the nose bleed seats at one end of the field behind a goal post, said that an Oregon Ducks fan sitting and standing by her the entire game cried after the game which Auburn won 22-19 on a field goal with the clock expired. The girl cried for several reasons including 1) her Ducks lost a great game 2) she then realized she could have sold her $300 ticket for $4000 prior to the game but instead she forfeited the $3600 profit just to see her team lose!

Civility. Yeah, it really is easier for me to talk and write about the Auburn game then it is to talk or write about civility or the lack of it in our lives.

People have asked me to write a book about the lack of civility in our society and I have refused to do it. I tell people “If I wrote a book on the lack of civility in some Christian churches and the presence of very angry and vitriolic tones in some Christian churches that NO ONE would believe me. They would think I was writing fiction if I told my story and the story of so many others in Christian churches in the United States.”

You see, I am a pastor. A shepherd of the Flock. Leader of the Gentle lambs.

After serving 31 years in the Air Force (20 years as a chaplain), I retired from the chaplain service to accept the call to serve a church in Texas.

Lynchings still happen in churches. I do not use that word lynching lightly. Mob mentality. The point at which the targeted people become less than human. The targeted person or persons becomes a non-human which the mob can then hit, smack, target, taunt, attack, and eventually just throw the rope over the largest limb and raise him or her up as the crowd laughs.

You see, I told you that people would not believe this. This is the horrible stuff that fiction stems from in life. But it was 2003 and a public lynching took place on February 14, 2003. In a church. A church in a university town with university professors helping to lead the mob. Continue reading Civility in Churches