How long will it be before these spammers are given the recognition they deserve in surrealist circles? They are taking the English language into new shiny new terrioty.

I was talking about “people talking about their ideas” which is fairly nebulous and passive. This is something I tend to encounter.

Meanwhile, you were talking about “people acting out their ideas in extreme ways.” I have rarely-if ever-encountered this. This is probably a lack of experience on my part, and it seems yours is much different.

And, I think I get your point about hate speech being violent. I’ve never been trained as a mediator, so I lack in that area.

With regard to Jenkins’ books being “unabashedly espousing hate and violence,” I’m skeptical. I meant to respond to this earlier but ended up going a different direction in a previous comment. I read the first five Left Behind books and watched the first Left Behind movie. Granted, it’s been a few years, so my memory isn’t the clearest. What do you mean by hate? Hate towards whom? The hate I remember was directed toward the Antichrist figure and the others who had become “unredeemable” according to the chronology of the dispensationalist theolgoy. (Those who had taken the Mark of the Beast.) The main characters did not hate the character Harriet, who at one point was close with and slept with Nikolai, the Antichrist. Harriet wasn’t unredeemable. They loved, cared for and protected her.

If I agreed with the dispensationalist view of end times with the specific series of events as the books describe, that hate would be fine. Perhaps not the plotting to kill the Antichrist. I would agree that’s inexcusable. But the attitudes the main characters had toward the “unredeemables” seems pretty similar to the way most of us would view demons and evil spirits. Or perhaps the way you advocate standing up to oppressors, rapists and others who inflict violence on the innocents.

If those “end times” events don’t happen, no big deal. There’d be no object of that hatred. Maybe the readers would still hate the fictional character of the Antichrist. So? When I watched the Terminator movies, I felt a certain disgust toward the machines in the flash-forwards to the year 2030 (or whatever year it was.) Maybe you would call that hatred. I don’t carry that “hatred” into my everyday life to inflict on someone non-fictitious.

Have you seen Left Behind readers expending their emotions on hapless victims? I’ve heard rumors the books affected the way some readers viewed the U.S.’s foreign policy toward Israel, but maybe you have more information on that. Perhaps you could also cite portions of the books that would help me see where you’re coming from on this.

Skylark, I think your concept of the marketplace of ideas is all well and good - just as your freedom to act as you please is - until you get violent. Even a marketplace needs rules.

Language can be violent. Hate rhetoric is violent.

Sure, I can listen to a KKK member all day and learn something about the way they think, but I’m not the one they’re hating on. When is it my responsibility to make them stop treating other people like dirt? If I don’t, I’m allowing violence to happen. If you see a mob lynching someone do you stand back to learn about the situation? I think we are as responsible to get in the way of verbal violence as physical violence. I was taught that as a mediator. The fact that it is a more subtle violence makes it all the more important to recognize and confront. Therefor, just as I will not tolerate a lynch mob, I will not tolerate hate rhetoric. There is a limit to my tolerance.

Being of the white non-gay non-female persuasion makes it all the more my responsibility to confront racism, sexism and homophobia. As Carl said on another post, “if you’re not swimming upstream, I guarantee you’re being carried downstream.”

Intelligent adults or not has nothing to do with it, and is fairly insulting to anyone who has been on the other end of hate violence. Intelligent adults can be abused as well as anyone can. I’m not treating a rape victim like a gullible child if I try to stop the rape from happening. I am aiding the rapist if I do nothing.

I didn’t miss the part about what Jenkins did or didn’t say. It’s hardly relevant after the fact, when the conversation is about whether to invite him in the first place. You don’t know what he’s going to say, but you do know that he is famous for unabashedly espousing hate and violence.

I can see a few specific instances where you might create space for dialogue with Jenkins or the KKK in the church, but having them as the key note for an event is not one of those.

Arguably a church might not be the best place to allow controversial speakers to promulgate their views. However, there could be great benefit in hearing the words of someone as insidious as a KKK member. See, I grew up hearing pretty much one side of many controversial views. I rarely had the opportunity to hear from a wide variety of people what they thought, and so I developed a caricature in my mind of those views based off their opponants’ statements. It’s much better to decide what I think about a person’s views after I’ve heard it from their lips, rather than looking only at the “straw man” the opponants may construct. The definition of “evolution” that Answers in Genesis gives is quite different than the definition I’ve heard from intelligent people who believe evolution has a place in science. That’s one of many examples I could give.

Have you heard of the “marketplace of ideas”? Many of the founding statesmen of the U.S. believed if people had the right to say what they wanted, and all the ideas were out there, people would be able to discern what was true and what was false. They didn’t want to coddle people or spoon-feed only the nice bits to the public. I have my doubts about whether the majority can discern or even cares. Still, I wouldn’t want to take away from the thoughtful, rational thinkers the ability to learn and decide knowledgably. It’s where we get free press and free speech.

I guess it comes down to treating people as intelligent adults or gullible children.

Do I think we should only have guest speakers if we scour their background and make sure we agree with everything they’ve ever said? No, of course not. But if someone had written a high-profile book that, say, denied the Holocaust, was well known only because of that book, and had never publicly repented of that position, should they be invited to speak in my church? I would say, absolutely not.

Should we bar a person from speaking about other topics because we disagree with one part of his theology? I sure hope not! If so, no guest speakers could ever be allowed because we’ll never agree on everything.

I am also disturbed by the idea that open-mindedness should include an open-minded attitude to hate rhetoric. I don’t much need to condemn anyone to hell for anything, but I certainly wouldn’t bring a Nazi speaker to church just because they have something to say (at least, not without providing a counter-point from the church). Please read the “Left Behind” series. It is full of hate rhetoric and holy violence. That doesn’t need to be censored, but it certainly doesn’t need to be given equal respect by the church or by me.

And I really I don’t care much for heaven talk. Jenkins and Ghandi and Pol Pot might all be in heaven. There might not be a heaven. That’s not exactly how I decide what to do on a daily basis. I still think Pol Pot killed a lot of people and I don’t approve of the ideology that lead him to do it. I still think Jenkin’s ideology is scary in it’s similarities to fascism, and I don’t approve of fascism.

As for the church - there are many reasons to leave the Mennonite church. There are many problems with the Mennonite church. I have left the Mennonite church. It was not because the church was closed to hate rhetoric. People leave organizations for any number of reasons and that seems perfectly reasonable to me, and not nearly as scary as people make it out. The church should not be all things to all people. I don’t judge the success of a church by the number of members in the pew, but by the way a church embodies the Good News of the gospels. Mega-churches are bigger, but I’ve been in house-churches that I much prefer. The mission of the church should not change based on it’s growth or dwindling.

I also find it hard to view contention as a negative. I think avoiding polarizing issues has been a problem in the Mennonite church that leads to issues we would agree on. We let sleeping dogs lie, when we really ought to wake them up and do some contending. Thanks to John and Ann for avoiding that pit-fall. I still prefer John, who avoids hate rhetoric all together. It’s a fairly simple metric I use, but it works. Pacifism is not the metric, but it obviously ties in.

Also, thanks to Jesus for more than his fair share of polarization and contention. It’s a hard act for anyone to follow, seeing as the results can be deadly, and the debate around it can last for millenia.

For comparison purposes, I thought I’d look into how much money was spent on other building projects for related organizations. I’m guessing that material and labor costs are similar in Ohio and Indiana.

–In 2000, the Cathedral of Life opened a senior citizen home near Canton. The price tag? $9 million.
–In 2000, the nondenominational congregation House of the Lord built a $4 million building in Akron. The church averaged 3,000 people a Sunday, and the building was far more than a meeting room.
–In 2001, First Friends Church in Canton moved into its new $7 million digs. To this day, some people still call the building the “55th Street airport” because it can seem to go on for forever. http://www.cantonrep.com/old_repsearch_detail.php?ID=71934
Since I don’t have all night, I wasn’t able to quickly find any dollar amounts on expansions in other areas or in other denominations. Here are some secular examples of groups local to me:
–Wooster Community Hospital opened a new wing in 2006, which cost $19.1 million. The goal? Providing each patient with private rooms.
–The Wayne County Chapter of the American Red Cross hopes to raise $1.6 million to build its new headquarters.

Spending a lot of money on a building is common in the U.S. No doubt about that. I had a lengthy conversation last night with someone who had just returned from helping modify a church building in the Philippines. (This part is all according to him.) There, they don’t erect these massive structures with gyms and miles of parking spaces. Church too full? Double the size of the sanctuary and hinge the back walls of the building so they can swing out and allow more people to hear and see worship services. Granted, the weather’s warmer there, so that’s more practical. I wonder how many people in the U.S. would be turned off by a church lacking air conditioning. Most people express shock and horror that I’ve never lived in a house that DID have air conditioning.

Switching to business practices, no, I have not followed news of the Mennonite Publishing House. I knew the local Provident store was likely to close, and the chain had been sold to Berean. How sad to hear MPH ran itself into the ground. I’ll read up on that soon.

Regarding where the Church would be without the “church merch,” I can’t say. Some things we’re probably better off without. I think it was P. Graham Dunn’s CFO who said this week that as long as LeAnna Dunn is involved in the company, PGD will never make a plaque proclaiming “God loves blondes.” But certainly some would look at specific PGD products and wonder “Why?” What’s inspiring to one person is kitschy, cheesy and lame to another. Some would be offended by a shirt one of my friends wore, which said only “Christian T-shirt.” I thought it was hilarious and asked if he had ever worn it to the Alive Christian Music Festival.

Since we don’t have some kind of universal standard of what is acceptable that all companies must embrace, what’s to be done with those who go too far? Should we scorn the people who make “God loves blondes” merch? Is it similar to the argument that in order to have a free press, publications like the National Enquirer have to be allowed to exist?

I was thinking about the whole “Christian merch” thing most of today because I met some women from my church in Berlin, Ohio, to browse the shops and eat lunch. I didn’t plan it, and ordinarily it’s not my idea of fun. However, in the spirit of creating opportunities for vulnerability with women more mature than I in the faith, I went. I also didn’t want to avoid going because of the level of discomfort I have with “touristy Christian shoppes.” If I refuse to go, I thought, am I saying I’m better than them? That wouldn’t help open up honest discussions with the six other women who went. That doesn’t mean I liked everything I saw or I’m ready to rubber-stamp whatever “Christian” product a person can dream up.

It’s Saturday morning and I’m decompressing off of perhaps the most stimulating week in the history of our company. In the process of being written up in the Daily Record two times by the incomparable Skylark, having one of my pastors take me to task with a letter to the editor, pulling off our annual Dealer Conference with the entertaining Jerry Jenkins, no less, we signed papers to initiate the process of moving our entire business off the family farm to a track of land inside the village of Dalton. Thanks Al Gore for that. We’re all about “green” - planted 2000 trees a couple of years ago, and my sons and I intend to plant thousands more over the years to come.

So with endorphins running freely in my Scots-Irish blood, enhanced with a triple shot Starbucks soy latte, allow me to take a riff or two on the Jenkins issue.

The thing that amazes me the most is how this issue provided the flash point that caused normally dormant concerns to surface, and at times in an almost uncontrolled manner.
I don’t know about the church you attend – but our church manages to coexist with a number of healthy tensions without addressing those tensions. I refer to it as two ships passing each other in the dark. We cordially greet each other, contain little or no hard feelings towards the other, but we all appear to have figured out which ship each parishioner rides on and we let sleeping dogs lie – until Jerry Jenkins comes along. It appears as though Mr. Jenkins caused these two ships to momentarily collide – and no one was too happy about it. Things were said that shouldn’t have been said; e-mails were written and sent that should never have seen the light of day. People were aggrieved on both ships – but now that Mr. Jenkins has left town – both ships are assiduously working at repairing the damage to their ship – but not working at getting everyone into the same ship - heaven forbid.

Now let me ask you – does your home church function this way? Is it naïve to assume that one ship could carry us all? Is it possible to harmoniously coexist when there are such divergent opinions within the church? Are the differences that we struggle with today similar to the differences that our forefathers struggled with, or is the polarization that we now experience within the church a reflection of the polarization that exists in society?

I haven’t spent time on very many blog sites – and thus the gullible nature of my two cents worth – but the couple of sites that my friends have directed me too appear to be even more polarizing and contentious than the Jon Stewarts(albeit Jon combines a deprecating and alluring humor, the Ann Coulters, and the Rush Limbaughs of the world. Is the church incapable of not mimicking society at large and thus we come off as divisive as the political parties that strive to control our country? Has our church become “brain washed” through its immersion in the secular society of 2007 – but the effects are so insidious that we are not aware of it? I was talking to a fellow church member a couple of years back. This person was busily parroting Rush Limbaugh but I don’t even think he was aware of it until I asked him if he listened to Rush, and his response was “every day”. What John, Ann, and Rush do for shtick we tend to assimilate as truth – they sit on the sidelines laughing at the disingenuous listeners that hang on their every word while building mansions in Palm Beach off the advertising revenues their entertainment generates.

Back to Jerry – we are already working at our Dealer Conference for 2008. I don’t know if I mentioned that our keynote speaker will be the Dr. Joseph Stoll, the former president of Moody Bible Institute. I’ve had two people mention that Joni Erickson Tada would be an excellent choice – so we will be looking into that for a future speaker. Dr. Ravi Zachariah has also been mentioned. I’m open to suggestions from my fellow YARers (I just malaproped twice in those preceding two words – personally I like the sound of OAR better than YAR) as to speakers that they think we should bring in.

Having said that, I must respectfully disagree with those of you that feel it is impolitic or even unethical for me to bring in a speaker that my customers want versus a speaker that I want – my faith is large enough to embrace the ideology of the Joseph Stolls, the Jerry Jenkins, the Joni Erickson Tadas. I even happen to believe that they will be with me in heaven – such heresy. For those of you whose pacifism trumps redemption, I’m sure you’ll be surprised to see them in glory – but I’m not of the opinion that pacifism is the key to unlocking the pearly gates.

We have already taken steps to keep the 2008 Dealer Conference not only out of our church, but out of any church. That is a volatile mix that I will choose to avoid in the future. We have asked the board of a private Mennonite school in our community to consider hosting our event in their gym to 2008 – but I’m expecting that given the makeup of their board, I’ll be running into a buzz saw there as well. This is the same school that years ago would bring in exceptional evangelical speakers such as Allan Alford and L. E. Maxwell who did not embrace a pacifist stand, but were capable of challenging the students and faculty to a genuine faith. Why would our schools not consider doing that today? What is the connection between that and the fact that all of the Mennonite churches in our community in the past 42 years have seen a steady decline in their enrollment, while the back bone of most of the evangelical churches in our community is comprised of former Mennonites?

My wife and I leave on a two week mission trip with our church on Tuesday, after which I will be going to the country of my birth (not Scotland - China!!) for three weeks, so I’ll probably be out of touch for a while.

In the meantime here’s a great quote from Teddy Roosevelt that will inspire us all:

“It is not the critic who counts: not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles or where the doer of deeds could have done better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood, who strives valiantly, who errs and comes up short again and again, because there is no effort without error or shortcoming, but who knows the great enthusiasms, the great devotions, who spends himself for a worthy cause; who, at the best, knows, in the end, the triumph of high achievement, and who, at the worst, if he fails, at least he fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who knew neither victory nor defeat.”

“Citizenship in a Republic,”
Speech at the Sorbonne, Paris, April 23, 1910

Having said that, I would ask – where would Christendom and Mennoism be today without “Christian merch” that was supplied by a company that generated a profit? Would the church like to take on the responsibility of publishing Bibles, inspirational music, inspirational gifts, inspirational bumper stickers, and inspirational chewing gum? Would the church like to provide us with the Living Bible that was made available through Tyndale Publishing? Thomas Nelson is the largest publisher of Bibles in the world with a mission to reach the lost – but if they didn’t make a profit in doing so, would the church step in to this gap?

Have any of you followed the odyssey of the Mennonite Publishing House in Scotdale, PA? Did you see the hole they dug for themselves when good business principles were not applied to their day to day operations, and where generating a profit was considered unethical? As I understand it, thanks in large part to their fiscal irresponsibility the Mennonite Church was coerced into selling off our chain of profitable bookstores, Provident, to Berean (an organization totally outside of the Mennonite Church), and now we no longer have a retail channel to sell books and educational material that resonates with our faith. So much for the church producing “church merch”. I’ve now heard that Provident no longer sells our Mennonite curriculum, so that has been lost to our members, and to non-Menno consumers that shopped those stores.

I am intimately familiar with this chain, having first sold to Marilyn Heisy, who was the buyer back in 1974 when we started producing “christian merch” in the girls home in NYC that my wife and I were asked to found by the Eastern Mennonite Board of Missions and Charities. I am also intimately familiar with the Berean organization as well – the owner is a very close personal friend of mine who attended our recent banquet to listen to Jerry Jenkins – and if there is an organization outside of our church that I would approve purchasing the Provident chain of stores, it would be Berean.

I personally like the way the Goods in Intercourse, PA (Good Books) have combined ministry with business. As I understand it, they have had to learn that if one places ideology before business principles, one won’t be around too long to absorb the criticism for being successful – but they figured it out, and are doing an excellent job providing challenging and inspirational “christian merch” to the church and unchurched alike.

Getting back to the “volatile mix” – where do we draw the line on business and ministry and Simony?….i.e., should we be paying our pastors or should they be tent makers? Should we be building brick and mortar churches that consume millions of dollars, along with paved parking lots, air conditioning, organs and steeples, or should we be meeting in homes like the Amish? If we got back to the early church model, think of the millions of tithe dollars that would then go to those in need? But on the contrary – we have so bought into the mega church concept that we are now in the process of attempting to raise $9,800,000 (I’m not kidding folks – read the Mennonite Weekly Review) to build a headquarters for Mennonite Mission Network, and this was approved with a unanimous vote of 10 members of Mennonite USA board? Where did we lose our way?

Getting back to our family business – our mission statement is summarized in three words – Lift Him Up (John 12:32). Let me ask you – if we combined questionable ethics with our business would we be doing that? If we did not generate healthy profits to perpetuate our mission statement, would we be doing that? Profit is not a four letter word. Neither is success. But for some reason or other, if a business like ours is perceived as generating a profit folks come out of the wood work to take shots as us for doing so.

That’s where having a little Scots-Irish (it’s not Scotch-Irish ….that’s an alcoholic drink) comes in handy. Mix that in with a little of the stubborn Swiss Mennoism, and you’ve really got a volatile mix. We can take it, and dish it out with the best of them. We are somewhat analogous to Moses who wandered in the wilderness for 40 years and in the process developed the hide of a rhino – Deuteronomy 34:7 says that when the Lord took Moses up to the top of Pisgah to look into the promised land, the KJV says (this is the translation the apostle Paul used so it is also the one I prefer) his “eye was not dim, nor his natural force abated” – or as paraphrased in a watered down translation it says “his seed was not dry” – and thus we are still able to “bring it”.
Cheers.

Allow me to quote from my preview story of the event:

“Every year, the business invites its retail customers to a thank-you week of speakers and workshops, explained owner Peter Dunn, 60. This is the seventh annual dealers’ conference.
Because most of the customers are owners of Christian bookstores, P. Graham Dunn tries to bring in speakers who have written books these stores carry, Dunn continued.
Over time, he realized the local community might find the speakers interesting as well. Since his business brought into the area guests who might not otherwise come to Wayne County, the question became “Why not?” he said.
This became known as the “Spring Celebration.””

If it is exactly as Pete Dunn portrayed, a service to the community with no ulterior sales motives, then that seems legitimate. And why wouldn’t the church like to host that? Your repeated use of the word “customers” caused me to question if you think most of the people there on Tuesday were the dealers and people who have or will buy P. Graham Dunn products. The attendees I spoke with for comments were regular people who live in other parts of the county. Certainly it could be argued the business uses this for advertising itself, which brings me to my next paragraph.

I was not there last year or the previous years when Kidron Mennonite was the venue for the event. I don’t know how much this controvery forced P. Graham Dunn to play a more visible role in the event because the church objected to the speaker. I’d be interested in viewing videotapes of previous years’ “Spring Celebration” to find out if the business’ role was downplayed.

It’s a lot of sticky issues. I hope I’ve communicated that I’m not blindly defending one side or another.

The issue of whether or not you make money directly off the event is fairly unimportant to me. It would be silly to claim it is not done with profit in mind. Sure, it is a form of giving back to your customers, which is good business sense: it keeps your customers happy and loyal and coming back for more. Which you profit from as a business.

There’s nothing wrong with that. I’ve been doing some work towards starting a business of my own, and will absolutely hope to profit from it (after being able to eat and pay rent from it).

But as a business you have a different mission, a different bottom line, and a different set of concerns than a church does. In a case like this, the church should be interested in events with strong content and theology, while you are only interested in the profile of the speaker, and the number of customers you can reach. It’s a different set of priorities, and I don’t see any reason the church should host an event that so poorly fits it’s mission.

Mennonite has nothing to do with it - except in the sense that Mennonite churches may be more concerned about these issues than other churches are. I’m all for non-Mennonite speakers, and dissenting voices in our church events, but not because they are high profile or will bring in a larger customer base. That’s not what the church is for.

I could go into other concerns I have with explicitly Christian business to start with, or my own feelings about Christian merch, but suffice it to say I think the mix could be dangerous in both directions.

I think option number four (for me) is the same as three, but also includes thinking about the message you want to send. For me that would be as much a priority as the profile, so you try to find both. It wont be Mennonite, but as I said, that’s not the point. You argue for diverse voices, but then bring in the most popular white guy? There are plenty of high profile speakers out there who are women or minorities. Not AS high profile? Do something worth doing. Change the playing field. You’ll manage.

If you want your faith to be part of your business, then take a risk for it. And I’d suggest there are major problems if you want to sell Jesus merch without letting your faith speak to your business practices. Yes, you’ll be different. “Foolish” even. Sounds like true Christianity to me.

Whatever you do, don’t claim a free pass to ignore your faith whenever profit is on the line. That’s a poor excuse for any decision.

I suspect Pete Dunn and I were the only YARers there. However, I did run into a couple of people who said, “You’re Skylark?! I read you in the newspaper AND I read you on that blog, YAR.” That was definitely weird. I had no idea this blog is that popular with Kidron people over 50. Young Anabaptist Radicals, we have an audience.

Even weirder was meeting Pete Dunn for the first time, having never seen a picture of him, and knowing instantly as soon as he walked in the room who he was. I’m not ordinarily the sort of person who has a sixth sense about that.

Only Peter Dunn was willing to go on the record with me. Tom asked to stay out of it, and Herman Myers (another pastor at KMC) wouldn’t say anything beyond a short, crypic Letter to the Editor that ran in Saturday’s paper. Unfortunately, this may give the impression that KMC’s leadership cannot engage people who believe differently than them, which Tom has indicated on YAR isn’t so. I never intend to make people look bad. Unfortunately, I don’t control what the story is. I can’t make people talk. Given the info I had, I tried to present both sides with respect and fairness. I haven’t heard from the church yet.

I believe in representing both sides (or more if they exist) in all my stories. I was incredibly disappointed not to be able to share some of the intelligent and thoughtful comments Tom shared on YAR. See, the way I look at it, people’s words belong to them, especially when they are not public officials. Tom wrote what he did for the YAR audience, not for my newspaper’s audience. It would have been disrespectful of me to insist on using his words he posted on here.

There is another pastor at KMC, Terry. I could have contacted him to try to get him to talk—and I know he’s an insightful person—but by the time I got off the phone with Herman and finished collecting the last pieces of information I needed for my Christian Peace Witness stories, it was late. It was later than is socially acceptable to call people at home unless it’s pre-planned. That doesn’t give me much excuse not to try to track him down on Sunday afternoon when I was writing the story other than this: except in rare cases, intelligent pastors do not write Letters to the Editor without first consulting their co-pastors (ie Terry) about presenting a united front. The chances of Terry being willing to talk on-the-record when his co-pastor and youth pastor wouldn’t were slim. Not to mention Herman had already taken the spokesperson role by attaching his name to the letter.

I’m hopeful Herman and Terry will be at the event tomorrow. (Peter told me a little bit ago Tom won’t be because of a prior commitment.) With all this controversy, I’d think it silly of Terry and Herman not to show up. If nothing else, I would like to talk with them off-the-record to find out if they’re on the same page as Tom.

It’s tough. I don’t envy anyone in this situation.

Regular people have a high stake in the news. That’s a responsibility I don’t take lightly. I just wish more people understood how the news works. I encounter this frequently in business stories: owners are super-sensitive with all information on the fear their businesses will come out looking bad. Understandably so, because this is their livelihood and reputation at stake. The vast majority of business stories my newspaper runs are essentially positive pieces talking about new, interesting developments in local businesses. We’d only run something negative if we had a really good reason to do it, and we would expressly ask the company’s contacts for their side of the story.

Well, I’m not sure how I got off on that tangent. Tune in next time to hear me go off about the lack of public at public meetings… ;-)

Regardless, I’m not so pig headed that I won’t question the wisdom of mixing business and church, even if my primary objectives were to be magnanimous. As a business we attempt to stay under the radar and make this a church event, but end up causing just as much, if not more of a ruckus than if we would have said – “please attend our event so we can profit from your attending”. It would appear the battle we as a company have unintentionally joined with our church is one that neither side will win. So rather than turn this into a flame war, let me ask you and your colleagues (if I truly felt you were brain washed would I ask for your opinion?), what should we do in the future?

1. Obviously going back to KMC and attempting this in 2008 would seem fool hardy, regardless of the author – at least that is they way I would see it.
2. Would going to a mega church in Wooster that would welcome a non Mennonite nationally recognized speaker be acceptable? We would certainly pack out their sanctuary.
3. Would going to non-religious institution and leasing the facilities be an even more desirable option?
4. What would option #4 look like?

I welcome your responses.

From my (unaware, young, brainwashed) perspective, anyone who sees a need to “deprogram” their kid from anything is more likely a perpetrator of brainwashing than any college ever can or will be. So much for children having minds of their own - it’s obviously up to the college and the parents to fight over who will control the child’s mind.

You learn things from role models and peers anywhere you go - sometimes things your community or parents may not approve of - but to call that (even in quotations) “brainwashing” is fairly simplistic and closed-minded in itself. My music tastes adjust some based on the friends I spend most time with. They aren’t brainwashing me, and I don’t need to be deprogrammed from it. I hardly agree with the theology taught at most Christian colleges, but I would never call it “brainwashing” or imply that the poor victim students went in healthy and came out needing to be “deprogrammed”. Your argument uses exactly the sort of closed-minded and dismissive logic that you are complaining about.

Back to the original conversation, however, the theology of Jerry Jenkins only served to bring out some much more interesting questions about the place of business meetings in the church. After hearing you argue that you need to bring in the most well known Christian voices no matter what they happen to be saying, I’m even more convinced that it’s a question we need to be asking. It’s obvious to me that what you refer to as business common sense falls squarely outside the mission of the church which should be more interested in “the least of these”, the content of a message, and hearing new voices - anything but reinforcing the status quo with “whoever is at the top”. I’d rather not have “everyone is doing it” become a central tenet of church decision making.

I don’t agree with Jerry Jenkins on much. I also don’t think anyone should be censoring him. But I do think the church might be better off without you bringing in top Christian voices because that’s what your constituents want every year.