The news is a-buzz with the political maneuverings of the President, Congress and Senate as they wrestle with how to reform our health care system. I remember back in my Nursing school class days, grappling with some of the issues. We were struck by how much socialist nations didn't allow their citizens in access to health care! Their citizens how little choice. So, I worry - a lot.

I'm looking for the exact wordings and packages being proposed -- online. Shouldn't our representatives and senators be lobbying to the online community? I've found several pieces online from health care agencies like Kaiser health. I'm sure they are doing a good job of reporting but I'd like to hear from the sponsors of the bills themselves and why they believe in the plan they've proposed.

My reaction is similar to this family's reaction:

“The bottom line is there are so many unknowns,” said Ms. Brown, 35, who works part time at her church and cares for her young children. “What we do know is there is going to be more government control, and with more control you’re going to have fewer choices. It’s an innate part of being American to have those choices.”           - from New York Times, For Public, Obama Didn't Fill in Health Blanks, July 24

 For crying out loud, let's really do this carefully.

Here are a few "no-compromises" I want to see in any health care reform:

• Government Funding of Free Health Care for the working poor, and working poor determined by area of country's cost of living rather than a blanket income
• No over-riding of non-profit decisions on "moral types" of health care allowable under their own sponsored plans - i.e. abortion, care for minors, etc.
• Freedom of Choice in selecting doctors, plans, and institutions by the patient
• That patients are not barred from health care treatment because of age, prognosis, illness type, ethnicity, religion  - i.e. leaving the choice with the patient not an outside agency of government or health care plan administrator
• That no one be turned away from some level of appropriate, basic health care in the United States, including illegal immigrants - i.e. morally speaking the church must raise their voice for ALL people rather than some people and whether we like it or not, we are home to many. I know that's very controversial. I realize there would have to be limits upon this type of health care but for example I wouldn't be supportive of a plan which does not treat a child's pneumonia because the parent's were here illegally. I wouldn't refuse the parents antibiotics for their own needs.
• Prescription drug plans that allow sliding scales of cost according to ability to pay, and that are especially mindful of the older or chronically ill person's person's higher needs.
• That we not become socialist where competition is low, government dependency is high, and medical expertise (including R&D with new procedures used within experimental patient populations) is thwarted or cut-off.

If we all had our druthers, every person would be medically covered, at any expense.  However, we don't have our 'druthers,' and we have to make choices that are smart for people and with our economy (which also, in the end, affects people).

One part of the health care reform on the table is to require that all employers provide health care insurance. Although I think it's a great goal, I worry about businesses closing their doors because they can't manage the cost. Don't we then take away jobs from people who need a job just as much as they need health care? Do we then move some people from the 'dependent upon employment' pot to the 'dependent upon government' pot? I'm just saying  . . .

One approach moves several other decisions in play and the consequences adjust as the approaches change. I pray that we think carefully and explore all of the ramifications - before passing any bill or legislation for reform of health care.

Here are a few places I've read - from "both sides of the aisle":

Kaiser Health - a side by side comparison of different proposals

An Incoherent Truth - Op-Ed Article about "Blue Dogs" Fight, New York Times

Experts Dispute Some Points in Health Talk - New York Times - how doctors and hospitals view the implications of the proposals by Obama

A Look at the House Democrat's Health Bill, July 15, 2009 - AARP Fact Sheet worth your time

United Methodist 10/10 Challenge - an effort by the United Methodist Church to encourage health care reform - but not helpful in reviewing legislation before us

This was used in Northland's sermon on 'Intellectual Challenges.' When you stand in the mix of everyone wearing a "slogan" - politicians, beef-eaters, vegetarians, pro-life, pro-choice ... Breathe deep the breath of God. Enjoy!

In a world gone hostile to Christian faith and churches, it's going to get tougher. So far, there's been a 10% drop in self-identified Christians according to the recent Pew study. We are no longer considered the chaplain of this community, and in fact if we try to say anything in opposition to whatever anyone thinks - we are charged with being "intolerant, uncaring, judgmental, and not friendly." Have I thrown in enough words yet?

How about this? "We can't limit the freedom of someone's ideas - that's unfair."

How are we going to approach the deepening gap between what people believe in America and who Christ is actually?
Ed Stetzer gave a recent interview about that subject in "The State of the Church." Here's a summary of his insights for "reforms" needed in our churches - 'ala Ed Stetzer' (and because I agree):

* We must be Preaching scripture first - Preaching that talks about what Jesus says and is - because we are not to model ourselves after "Oprah"

* We must Become better at Christian community rather than Christian/cultural individualism

* We must Be Clear about how the identity of the church is different than 'spirituality' in the more eclectic sense. And we must get more serious about who Jesus called us to be - in church and personal life.

* We must Be Careful not to confuse context with gospel or of diluting the gospel - a tricky balancing act because as Ed says "when you're more afraid of the one [being too much like culture, or too unlike culture], you'll probably end up on the other side [too far]."


Easier said than done.

I've noticed something recently as I've listened to people online. They take immediate offense in the gospel. I wonder if they don't want to be left alone to their own belief systems? Or if it's assumed to be "unkind" if anyone challenges their belief systems? I wonder if the online world assumption is that "this is my personal playground, and it is not a thinking place, but a playing place"?

I'm trying to figure out how to dance between the worlds of "thinking clearly online" and "engaging culturally online." How about you?

Over the years I've experimented with three companies for joomla templates. Of these, I highly recommend any of these three companies, "Yootheme" - "Rockettheme" - "Shape5." They each do quite a bit of work in their templating at giving each template a nice trim look with great CSS coding, and joomla program overrides where needed.

These companies:

• offer subscription service at reasonable rates and at different lengths of time
• give great support that is timely and extremely helpful
• provide wikis or "how-to's"
• provide bulletin boards for customizing templates, and a place to ask questions
•  are committed to helping joomla get better

Recently, YOOtheme released it's July 2009 template and it's worth looking at: Phoenix. It's based upon a grid system:

"It provides a hybrid fluid-pixel grid and all the elaborate functionalities that make our templates easy to edit, nice to look at and super fast, in every browser. "

-- YOOtheme website on Warp5 System

It looks extremely flexible and very rich in design.

I'm working on an August project - using current movies and themes in worship. Rather than take the route of "Is that Christian or not?" I thought I'd take the thought "Is there a spiritual question being asked in the movie?" I think there are.

I'm going to take the summer movie along with the spiritual question and map out how the movie answers that question. But is that the way you've answered that question for your own life? What are some ways you've asked a similar question and how have you answered it for yourself? I'll provide a "script book" that includes each Sunday with guiding questions for people to write the "script of their spiritual journey" around these questions.

My hope? We will discover how God has been alive and evident in our lives and questions. Then recognizing the story God has given us that when friends are struggling with similar questions, we can help by sharing what we've been through.

Here are the summer movies I'm going to use with the real life spiritual questions:

Angels & Demons: Have you ever been suspicious that God is absent from the church? How do you make sense of the church's failings?

 Up!: Have you ever given up on a dream? What did you do about it?

Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince:  Have you ever felt the pressure of being a hero? How do you cope with that?

 Star Trek: Have you ever felt called to go where no man has gone before? How did that play out in your life?

Julie & Julia: Have you ever discovered a great mentor? In what ways did that change your life, hopes, attitudes or goals?

This year our hope was to do something special with worship following our always highly successful Vacation Bible School. How could we invite children to worship with us in an intentional and way cool way? And just to make matters even more interestingly complex, how could we really meet the parent's needs on a day when there would be lots of loudness in worship? Could they even hear anything at all??

Here's what we came up with and it was a lot of fun (and lots of work too!):

• Worshiping outside!! With activities around the perimeter for younger children. We invited families to bring lawn chairs and set-up folding chairs for those who forgot or didn't bring a chair. Citronella tiki-torches were very much necessary to keep the bugs down!!
• Our band played songs that children would be able to sing on some. VBS and our Music Camp kids sang for the congregation. And our worship leader, who is also a elementary ed. gym teacher by day, helped children and parents get involved in singing by "repeat after me" or "I need some volunteers to help with these hand motions."
• Topic - parenting  using the ancient Hebrew prayer, Deuteronomy 6:4-9;
  • You can hear that prayer here,
  • You can see the prayer in Hebrew here
• Ideas we used:
  • Tug of War! - Instead of greeting each other, the challenge of a competition between children/youth and adults; "Many times parenting from both the parent's angle and kid's angle feels like a tug of war! You've come to the right place this morning because we're going to talk about that tug of war and how to allow God to pull for us together."
  • Leave the tug of war rope at the front of the altar and used it in the worship time:
    •  as the place for children to line-up during their singing of VBS songs
    • as an illustration of a path - a journey we take our children along from birth until they leave our homes
    • as reminder of what it's like to struggle with helping our children learn to transfer their dependence from "me" to "God" - fully.
    • as reminder of what it takes to put your whole heart into
  • Acorns!
    • Invited children to come see an acorn at the altar area
    • an acorn doesn't look like much, but look at that tree over there - it came from one little acorn and it grew and grew and grew into a big tree
    • we can grow like that too - big and strong
    • "love the Lord with all of your strength" - be big and strong with God in our hearts
    • Offering time - invited children to find and pick up an acorn off the ground and bring it to put on the altar during our offering time - thanking God for allowing us to be "strong in Him"
• For good ideas on a parenting sermon, look online. Here's one I found very helpful with some illustrations to go with my own: Parenthood at lifechurch.tv.

I wonder if we could meld web 2.0 technology with a Fall theme for worship?

We've picked out the subject for a church wide "spiritual focus" and small group series using Erwin McManus's Uprising book. I'm dreaming of a website experience along with Uprising. One of our young adults asked me the other day if there was a way she could serve at church. When I asked her what kinds of things she liked to do, she said "I like to write." I asked her if she had ever done any blogging and she said she hadn't tried that before.

I proposed to her an idea I've been tossing around in my brain for our fall season - having intentional bloggers write for our website blog on what experiences were taking place in light of the messages and small groups. She loved the idea!

I've been wondering if we couldn't create twitter, facebook, and blogging opportunities? Perhaps create some graphics and give them away to use on people's web presence places? Perhaps give a "prize" for the best twitter storm or blogging piece by highlighting that person's blog or twitter on our website for a week?

Then, I believe we would need to set up some parameters for how the "storms" or "blogs" would be rated. Here's a few thoughts I've had:

• generates comments from readers
• leads "their fans" to a slice in the life of a Christian learning through "Uprising"
• shares their own thought about an experience with the book, small group or sermon
• if it's a blog, the piece is placed on a blog that doesn't promote teaching incompatible with Jesus' morality or character

Just when we think our technology has moved the human race ahead of time itself, we are humbled by feats of people from centuries before. Leonardo da Vinci was a great dreamer of his time - thinking outside the box and creating something that had never been seen before.

This piece could be used as part of a leadership motivation piece, worship illustration, or a question to ponder: What dreams will we dream for our world? What's 'never been done' by your church before?

"It lives. It lives! ... The monster in question is a friendly-looking, curly-maned, almost life-sized, mechanical lion, which can walk, and move its head and shake its tail and open its jaws. The original was designed in 1517 by a 16th-century special effects man, who later achieved fame as a painter . . ."

See the full article at: Pride of da Vinci's Genius Walks Again After 500 years at The Independent. 

This guy's sharing of his experience with a genuine, caring Christian will surprise and convict you. It has reminded me that in the midst of busyness and agendas, the medium IS the message too. God still connects with us in key moments. 

No matter what we do- digital, in person or otherwise - may we love others well. That is my prayer this morning.

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New Hope Church in Hawaii has 12,000 attenders on a weekend and is one of the fastest growing churches. They are fast growing in their adoption of using technology too.

This weekend, according to their press release, they will live stream their worship services to iphone and itouch users.

The live stream of New Hope's Services will be available on their website at http://www.enewhope.org beginning July 4th. The live stream requires an iPhone or iPod touch with the 3.0 software update and an active Internet connection.

Now, that's cool and I think I'll try to be a part of their first audience!