My experience at EmergingUMC2: Thursday Night and Friday Morning

I hope to blog out my thoughts about EmeringUmc2: Restoring Missional Methodism over the next several days.  Here is my first attempt to summarize my experience at the conference.

EmergingUMC2 has come and gone. You can see the twitter conversation (#emergingumc2)  here.

 It was an event that my congregation, Lockerbie Central United Methodist, had lobbied hard to get.  We were a small congregation that had been left for dead but had found new life in the emergent/missonal way.   We wanted to show and tell our story. 

I went into the conference feeling a little bit out of it though.  In this season of the H1N1, I woke up Thursday morning–12 hours before the conference started–puking my guts out.  Lucky for me, it wasn’t the flu and I made it through the weekend. 

Thursday Night:

We screened the movie The Ordinary Radicals to start the conference  and as part of our normal Thursday night film series. We had about 1o0 people in attendance.  Director Jamie Moffett was in town and it was exciting to see Lockerbie Central’s brief appearance in the movie.  The film tells the story of “Ordinary Radicals”– everyday people whose faith and commitment to community have begun to provide an alternative to what it means to be a North American Christian.   Imagine a Christianity that actually took Jesus seriously–that is what the Ordinary Radicals are. The film follows Shane Claiborne and his merry band of Christian troublemakers (in the best of that word) and jesters (in the best sense of that word) across the country  in a grease powered bus during the summer of 2008 as part of  the Jesus For President (book] tour.

The movie was inspiring but I could tell that for many conference attendees, the Ordinary Radicals’ movement wouldn’t quite translate to the county seat churches.  Well, lets just say it wouldn’t happen over night. 

Friday Morning:  

After a worship gathering, we took a three hour walk across downtown Indianapolis.  We wanted to give conference goers a sense of our missional context. 

We headed from the church, across Lockerbie Square, and over to Mass. Ave. , where we met Pauline Moffett at the Indy Fringe Building.  Pauline is executive director of the Indianapolis Fringe Festival, a 10 day uncensored and unjuried theater and arts festival, where all ticket sales go to the performers.  Our church has worked with Indy Fringe for the last four years and last year hosted the festival’s dance performances.  I’ll talk about it more in a later post, but it was quite amazing how much the mission of Indy Fringe met up with the ideal of the conference. 

From there, we walked towards downtown, talking about Indianapolis history—the good, the bad, and the ugly– and then met with the Justice For Janitors campaign on the steps of  Monument Circle.  A half decade into the struggle, janitors won their first union contact last year with the help of clergy leaders.  If the campaign continues to succeed, 2,000 lowpaying  jobs will be tranformed into living wage jobs that can support a family.  From there, we walked a few more blocks, saw the state house, and then met with Stuart Mora, a hotel worker and Lockerbie Central member, who is working with his coworkers to organize a union at downtown hotels.  Like the janitors, if the hotel workers suceed thousands of jobs will become living wage jobs.  If clergy and the church get involved in real and meaningful ways in these types of struggles, our economy will be transformed and perhaps the church might have a future.

Having walked three miles or so, the group headed back to Lockerbie Central UMC and had lunch.  We read this qoute off of our church sign:    

It may be that the day of judgment will dawn tomorrow; in that case we will gladly stop working toward a better future. But not before. Dietrich Bonhoeffer

 

Filed under: Christians, Earth House, Lockerbie Central United Methodist Church, Thursday Night Film Festival, church, community, community organizing, economy, flu pandemic, united methodist , bonhoeffer, community organzing, contract, county seat, day of judgement, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Earth House, emergent, emergingumc2, friday, Fringe, fringe festival, H1N1, history, hotel workers, indianapolis fringe festival, jamie moffett, janitors, judgement day, Justice for jANITORS, living wage, living wage jobs, local history, lockerbie central united methodist, Lockerbie square, Mass. Ave, methodist, missional, ordinary radicals, shane claiborne, stuart mora, thursday, unions, united methodist

Swine Flu and factory farms and the corporate media

Time Magazine tells us “Swine Flu: Don’t Blame the Pigs.”   The article is interesting and gives a brief history of the influenza virus and its relation to livestock.  

All of this made the flu virus a tenacious foe from the outset, but once humans invented farming and learned to cultivate animals, we made a bad situation much worse. All at once, chickens, ducks and pigs — which never had much to do with one another — began living cheek to jowl in high numbers and often unsanitary conditions. Farm families and people working in live markets then began mingling with the critters. That’s a pathogenic speed blender, and the viruses have taken full advantage of it. “It’s really an ecological issue,” says Daszak.

The problem is that the article never mentions the rise of factory farming as an incubator of some scary disease.   Wow, our corporate media doesn’t really want to go there.  Though no clear links have been established yet, but circumstantial evidence points to a strong possibility that the roots of this pandemic can be found in giant U.S. operated factory farms in Mexico.  Here is one blogger’s take:  

The cause is not yet known, but many speculate that this deadly virus could be linked to factory farming. When the CDC and the USDA conduct their investigation in Mexico, they will most likely start with the industrial scale pig farms (“confined animal feeding operations” or CAFOs) that have been growing in numbers over the last decade. With the draw of cheap labor and land, American pig conglomerates have been opening up giant swine CAFOs in Mexico, including dozens around Mexico City, Puebla and Veracruz (where the outbreak is believed to have started).

Filed under: Mexico, agriculture, environment, farming, flu pandemic, swine flu , CDC, confined animal feeding operations, corporation, disease, environment, factory farm, factory farmin, farming, flu, hogs, influenza, Mexico, pandemic, pigs, Smithfield, swine flu, Time magazine, United States