05.03.07

A New Family Site

Posted in Blogging, Family at 11:06 pm by Anthony

The Parker family has a new family blog, The Journey Home, found at parkerfamily.wordpress.com. This will combine the previous version of Clay Pot Journal, as well as Maureen’s long-unused Maureen’s Musings, which have both been imported into the new site. (Hopefully she will post at our new site with a little encouragement from her friends!)

I’ll continue to post reflections here, and the new site will be more family related. So surf on over and follow our family’s journey!

By the way, if any of you in the church have personal sites that you’d like to have linked here, just let me know!

Permalink Comments

03.31.07

What is the Gospel — Really?

Posted in Blogging, Ministry, Mission at 2:19 pm by Anthony

If you’re new to the Clay Pot Journal, you may be wondering what all those links are over in the side bar.  Those are blogs of friends of mine, some of whom I’ve only met in cyberspace.  One of those that I deeply cherish is Dee Andrews.  Dee is a remarkable woman and you can read some great stories on her Finding Directions blog.  Recently she celebrated the birth of a new granddaughter, one born into a loving and secure family.  But not all children are so blessed.  Dee tells the story of one of those and challenges us to greater discipleship.  What she says about her little town in southern Mississippi could easily have been written about “the coolest little town in Texas.”

For instance - just a couple of weeks ago in our Sunday school class one of our young ladies who works for the county social services system said that she’d had a sad and needy case come in that week.  A black lady who is a grandmother had come in with her brand new infant granddaughter who had no name.  The baby was born beside the road up a ways from here to the lady’s daughter, who is a crack addict.  So is the baby.

The woman hadn’t had any contact with her daughter in some time and didn’t have any idea where she was or that she was pregnant.  The mother of the baby was hauled off to jail, the county sought out the grandmother and brought this tiny baby to her and left.

When the grandmother showed up seeking help where she could she just had the baby lying in the back floorboard of her car because she had no infant seat and no one she’d contacted as yet had been willing to help her out at all!  The young woman in our class quickly remedied that situation by making a couple of calls to fellow church members and found a used car seat in excellent condition that they brought to the grandmother.

This young woman helped the grandmother all she could with county and state and federal aid (WIC program, etc), but asked us to help out, too, as individuals in the class and as a church.  The grandmother had no clothes or diapers or anything.  I wrote out a check for a sizable amount of money and gave it to them to go shopping for the baby.  What less could I do?

That was last week.  This week she said that the grandmother now calls the baby Lily.  Baby Lily, she is.  Here’s the clincher - the state has now brought the grandmother the three other children by the daughter - all boys - ages 11, 8 and 4.  The four year old the grandmother had never seen.

She - the grandmother - is without means of support herself and how can she care for these four hungry kids, including a small infant?  She still has a 16 year old son of her own who lives with her.

These are the people the church needs to be reaching out to around here in this small Mississippi town.  This grandmother should be at the top of our list when it comes to “missional” thinking.  I mean, this is a very religious town, over all.  There are dozens and dozens and dozens of churches of all varieties and all full of good people. 

They don’t necessarily need “converting.”  What would we be converting them too?  Showing up at a different building every Sunday morning because we sing accepella and they don’t?  Are we going to proselytize from other churches who may not agree with us in 100% of our theology but who worship with great faith as well as we do?

It is the poor and hurting people of this community - the unchurched, the neediest of needy people we should reach out to in Christian love.

Let us not grow weary in well doing, nor lose sight of who it is we should be doing well for.  

I’m happy for my new granddaughter and the life she is being born into.  Exceedingly happy.  But how can I not want as much for any other baby born into either my family or a family near by?  

Permalink 2 Comments

03.24.07

Comment Confusion

Posted in Blogging at 7:25 am by Anthony

Thanks to Dee for letting me know about some problems with the comment feature–which either didn’t allow you to comment at all or gave you access to control everything on the site! I’ve now modified my settings so that you don’t have to register to comment. However, you do have to leave an email address which will not be published. The first time you comment using a particular email address, your comment won’t be published immediately. I’ll get a message asking me to approve the comment. Once you’ve been approved the first time, your comments will appear automatically. Of course, I can always delete them if I don’t feel they are edifying, but I’ve never had that kind of problem and don’t expect it here.

So, let the comments continue!

Maureen and I are looking forward to attending the Sacred Marriage seminar at the Southern Hills church in Abilene today. I’m especially excited because Southern Hills was much church home when I was in grad school and I haven’t had too many opportunities to return. Hopefully we’ll see some of you there.

Permalink Comments

03.19.07

A New Beginning

Posted in Blogging at 9:58 am by Anthony

April 30, 2007 Update:  I’ve learned recently that 2 people had just marked this post and have not been seeing my updates.  If you are not seeing any posts other than this one, check your bookmark.  It should be set to any one of these addresses:

http://journal.albanychurch.net or
http://blog.albanychurch.net or
http://albanychurch.net/blog

Welcome to the resurrected “Clay Pot Journal.”  If you’ve visited my old Blogger site, thanks for taking the trouble to find me here.  I’ve relocated because I want to use this journal as part of my ministry at the Albany (TX) Church of Christ.  I’ll be sharing news and reflections from my personal, family, and church life, as well as some of the things that I’m reading. 

Everyone who uses this Word Press blogging software seems to love it.  I think it will take me a while to get used to its features.  I think I have this set up so that anyone can read these posts, but you have to register in order to comment.  This is just to prevent spammed comments.  I hope that it’s not too much trouble and that you will take the time to comment, but feel free just to “lurk” as well. 

Again, welcome to the Clay Pot Journal’s new home.

Permalink 4 Comments