Implications for after-school ministry?

The NYT review of Susan Jacoby's new book “The Age of American Unreason" caught my eye this morning, and made me think about what - in addition to spiritual formation, of course - we could offer kids in the Winship neighborhood at an afterschool program.

Ms. Jacoby, dressed in a bright red turtleneck with lipstick to match, was sitting, appropriately, in that temple of knowledge, the New York Public Library's majestic Beaux Arts building on Fifth Avenue. The author of seven other books, she was a fellow at the library when she first got the idea for this book back in 2001, on 9/11.

Walking home to her Upper East Side apartment, she said, overwhelmed and confused, she stopped at a bar. As she sipped her bloody mary, she quietly listened to two men, neatly dressed in suits. For a second she thought they were going to compare that day’s horrifying attack to the Japanese bombing in 1941 that blew America into World War II:

“This is just like Pearl Harbor,” one of the men said.

The other asked, “What is Pearl Harbor?”

“That was when the Vietnamese dropped bombs in a harbor, and it started the Vietnam War,” the first man replied.

At that moment, Ms. Jacoby said, “I decided to write this book.”

Seriously, I think I need to read this book, and I look forward to conversations about what kind of afterschool program we might start up this fall at Westminster.

It surprised me - but should it have?

At the Presbytery's leadership training day (actually quite a nice idea: lots of workshops offered in one location for a low cost, an especially great resource for smaller churches) I attended one workshop on children's ministry.

The workshop leader asked the 30 or so of us in the room to supply words that described "the world we see around us." Other than "technology" which is pretty neutral, literally every other word people suggested was negative: chaotic, violence, lack of sleep, stress, and many others.

Do we really live in that much fear? Is the world around us really that frightening?

An addendum to last Sunday

I heard a story from another pastor along the same lines.

A woman came up to a friend of his right before the service, visibly angry over some particular issues in the life of the congregation.

"If Jesus knew what was going on here in this church," she thundered, wagging her finger at the pastor, "he'd be rolling in his grave right now."

You have to wonder what exactly she thought Easter was about, don't you?