miletwo::network

So, as many of you may have noticed lately I’ve been on somewhat of an environmentalist tear, ranting and raving about waste, consumerism, and green issues. The reason of course is because I love where I live, the earth. It’s awesome! God made it. It’s awesome. Did I mention it’s awesome? So anyway, when I read things that make sense from a “hey let’s use less and preserve God’s artwork for our kid’s kids to see” I like to point them out and if possible relate it to how we function as a church and how this makes use more relevant and credible to the rest of the world.

Church Marketing Sucks made an excellent point today that just because you’re a small church and light on cash doesn’t mean you shouldn’t be able to use technology to your advantage.  There are a ton of free tools out there to help you run your web site and online marketing campaigns.  I think though, that the question should also be asked; do big churches use expensive technology just because they have the money, or do the pay-for software tools actually work better than their open source counterparts?  I’m not convinced.

In a recent post by Brian Jones titled “Should An Openly Homosexual Person Be Baptized? – Questions About Homosexuality (Part 3)
” he poses some difficult questions that the church has struggled with and continues to struggle with for some time.  It amazes me how we respond to various types of sin and implement our own punishment on people, and then return home to our own well cared for basket of filth, acting like we’re so much better.  He speaks of pastors who will refuse to baptize an openly gay person and compares that to refusing to baptize a smoker, drunk, obese, or otherwise enslaved person who although they feel their behavior is wrong, they still fall into regular patterns of misbehavior. Do we treat them the same way?

I’ve been pondering a greener lifestyle these days.  I’m not sure if it’s a result of making the jump to hippyspace (we just moved to Oregon) or if it’s merely a growing consideration for my pocketbook, but I’ve really started caring more about the environment.  Christians have for so long been fatcat consumers, exhibiting an elite sense of entitlement syndrome.  We rant about “those tree huggers” as if they’re the ones messing up our lives by opposing the legislation we care about when in fact we’re probably more guilty of carelessness than they are.  Sure, care about unborn babies and the protection of family, but don’t do it at the expense of everything else in the world.