What is the fierce urgency of bombing now?

As you surely know, President Obama has all but pledged that he will order American armed forces to attack Syria soon. Media reports say that the strikes will begin as soon as tomorrow (Thursday, Aug. 29) or slightly later. 

According to a Wall Street Journal report, administration officials, speaking both by name and with indirect attribution, say the strikes will be "brief and limited" with no more than 50 targets inside Syria to be struck. 

White House spokesman Jay Carney said, "I want to make clear that the options that we are considering are not about regime change." That means that Syrian dictator Bashir Assad, who presumably ordered last week's chemical attacks against insurgent-held territory, is deliberately excluded from threat. 

So far no one in the administration has defined, therefore, exactly what is the reason for the upcoming strikes except to say in fairly vague language that Assad's regime must be punished for violating "international norms" against using chemical weapons. 

Terry Newell, founder of Leadership for a Responsible Society, has excellent questions about the impending Syria strike that have not been answered by the administration. The first question is to the point:

What justifies intervention in this particular case? The answer would seem obvious, but the United States does not intervene in all nations which commit atrocities against their own people. Why is this case different?

Indeed. The war has already claimed 100,000 lives. Why does the manner of death of the 350 or so killed last week make it imperative for America to go to war? So far, no one has explained just exactly what makes this attack fundamentally different except for the violation of "international norms." But as Mr. Newell points out, that happens, often with more lethality, all around the world (North Korea anyone?) and we do nothing. 

Why Syria, why now, and especially, to modify slightly a phrase of one of the president's own campaign speeches: What exactly is the fierce urgency of bombing now?

The UK's Guardian newspaper says that the justification is humanitarian. (Understand that in Britain, the legal authority for war is different than for the United States.) Nonetheless, I will, for argument's sake, stipulate that  bombing Assad's forces might be justified under humanitarian concerns. However, what the Guardian is conflating is the difference between moral justification of war and legal basis for it. They are not the same. 

Under just war theory, both just cause and rightful authority are required (among other elements). In Syria today there may be just cause for Western intervention, but so far there has been no rightful authority for it. 

Under US law this is drawn more sharply than under most European law. Since the dawn of the American republic, the Congress and the presidents have generally agreed that the president may order US forces into combat against another nation, solely on his own authority, if and only if there is: 

1. Imminent danger of attack from the other power, so imminent that time taken for Congressional deliberations would hinder defense against it, or, 

2. To protect actual threat against US citizens abroad, or to rescue them from actual danger.  

The Obama administration has not asserted that either of these conditions pertain in the case of Syria. 

Therefore, if Obama orders US strikes against Syria, no matter the moral justification of them, the United States will have failed the test of rightful authority, which rests in Congress alone. The war will be unjust because it will be illegal. 

If the cause is humanitarian for violations of "international norms," then the president is obligated to state what are the norms. There is in fact no international "norm" against chemical warfare. The revulsion western nations have had against chemical weapons since World War One has never resulted in treaties binding on non-signatory nations. 

Syria is not a party to either the Biological Weapons Convention of 1972 or the Chemical Weapons Convention of 1993. Neither of these treaties have ever been considered binding on non-signatories, unlike, say, conventions against piracy or slavery, which are acknowledged to be universally binding whether a country signed them or not. This is neither to defend Assad nor excuse the chemical attack. It is to point out that "violating norms" is an invention for going to war that has no precedent in US law or custom. 

Syria flatly poses no threat to the United States that justifies making war upon it. Furthermore, there is no threat to the Syrian people that is so imminent that no time dare be spent in Congressional deliberation to authorize the strikes, if strikes there should be. If there is such a threat, the president should explain why, with 100,000 already dead, a few more days of deliberation is unwarranted. After all, under the Constitution, the president can order the Congress back into session. If Obama wanted, he could have the Congress deliberating within 36 hours. 

There is, by the way, no UN Security Council resolution on this issue, nor any justification for the strikes to be found under the UN Charter. In fact, the UN Charter admonishes nations not to interfere or intervene in the domestic affairs of other nations, which is what the Syrian civil war is. If there is any international norm at play here, that is it. And that is the norm that the United States is about to violate.

We'd do well to remember the ancient proverb. "Decide in haste, repent in leisure." This is by any measure a true rush to war. Why all of a sudden the "fierce urgency of now" and not after Congressional authority?  

Well, perhaps here is a clue. According to the Wall Street Journal report, a "senior White House official" told CNN that, "Factors weighing into the timing of any action include a desire to get it done before the president leaves for Russia next week."

Draw your own conclusions about what that means.

Where is the United Methodist Church on this? The church's General Board of Church and Society already has multiple entries about today's commemoration of Dr. Martin Luther King's "I Have a Dream" speech, but only two entries total on Syria, neither since Aug. 5, long before this issue arose.

It used to be that the United Methodist Church stood against illegal, aggressive wars no matter who started them. Now, not so much. Silence from the board, silence from the bishops. And, I suppose, silence from the pulpits.

If US forces are to attack Syria, it cannot rightfully be done absent Congressional authorization. That would not make an attack wise by any means, but it would make it legal, and at the minimum that should be the starting point.

Update, Aug. 29: The ranking Democrat member of the House Judiciary Committee agrees.

What about the working poor?

Written in 2003 and posted elsewhere, links were good at the time

There is a page called the Global Rich List that lets you enter your annual income, click a button, and learn where you sit on the global pile of dough. I learned that I am the "44,982,565 richest person in the world."

The explains its methodology via a link at the bottom of the page; its results page is a plea for contributions to CARE International.

In 1999 a local paper profiled a family in Nashville, the family of Tommy Slush. He lived with his wife and two daughters in a mobile home in a trailer park. Tommy has had a steady job for thirty years. His employer praised Tommy's work ethic as one of the strongest he has ever seen. Tommy often worked double shifts as an assistant pressman at Ambrose Printing and Office Supply. He makes four hundred and twenty-five dollars per week. His wife and oldest daughter work also.

The Slush family is part of the "working poor," people who are one step away from poverty. The working poor don't ever sit in fifty dollar seats at Titans games or take weekend trips down to Destin. For Tommy Slush and his family, a dinner at Ponderosa is a major excursion that they can afford maybe three or four times per year.

They are not on welfare. They just don't have a savings account because they have to spend all they make to pay for their home, their food, their clothing and their transportation.

If you input Tommy's $22,100 (1999) annual income on the Global Rich List page you discover that he is in the top 6.8% richest people in the world and his income ranks 408,329,049 in the world.

Here is a profile of American "working poor," defined "by scholars as families earning between 100 and 200% of the federal poverty levels." Understand that in 2001, the percentage of Americans living at or below the poverty level was 11.7 percent, “lower than in most of the last two decades” when "the rate exceeded 12 percent. “A family of four was classified as poor if it had cash income less than $18,104 last year.”

That means that analysts classify a family of four as "working poor" if they make between $18,000 - $36,000 per year. In some parts of the country, $36K would not be a lot, of course, but in most places a family of four can live okay on that amount if they practice good budgeting and wise spending. The linked report names some barriers that keep the working poor from moving to self-sufficiency. Three of them are key:

1. Their income does not increase from year to year, or barely keeps up with inflation

2. Babysitting is a major problem because many of the jobs they work have irregular or odd hours. And child care is expensive.

3. Reliable transportation is a problem.

To which I would add another important one: As a rule, the working poor are lousy personal financial managers with high consumer debt (so are a lot of higher income folks!) because they use credit cards to bridge cash-flow gaps. But that deepens their hole.

I'd like to introduce you to "Rhonda," a woman I spotted yesterday walking along a state road in the country, 50 yards from her flat-tired car. I pulled up, displayed my sheriff's department badge and credentials (I am a department chaplain) and asked whether I could give her a ride. She accepted.

She was en route from Murfreesboro, 30 miles distant, to my town of Franklin to appear in court appearance for a non-traffic misdemeanor charge. She was late, so I took her to the court and went in to verify her reason for lateness to the judge if necessary. It wasn't, but I hung around anyway.

Rhonda was in her mid-thirties, a single, welfare mom with a four-year-old daughter. She had no family in Tennessee, nor any real friends, being a fairly new resident to the area. She had lost her job last week (she had been a restaurant hostess) because no child care was available for her evening shift. She had been taking her daughter to work but management had let her go for that reason.

I had called the sheriff's dispatch and asked them not to tow her car if possible, but when thunderstorm moved in the deputy on patrol decided it had to go. Knowing the road, I can't blame him. But the tow charge would cost Rhonda $75, which she didn't have, and she'd still have to fix her tire.

The judge threw out the legal charge. Her public defender wrangled a deal with the tow operator and the sheriff's department that if the department called that tow company for the next tow, they'd not charge Rhonda. Everyone agreed, so that was a relief. The tow lot hosed enough air into her tire to get up the road a stretch to a a Marathon gas station that had a garage.

Marathon patched the puncture enough to get Rhonda to the Franklin Wal-Mart. She'd bought her tires at another Wal-Mart and said she had the hazard warranty. Wal-Mart replaced her tire free under warranty. While they did I drove Rhonda to Murfreesboro to pick up her daughter at Kindercare, who had told Rhonda on the phone that the girl could not stay late, period, even at extra cost. When we got back to Franklin her car was ready. She took her daughter and drove home. (Yes, I gave her some money.)

Rhonda wants to work. She named a long list of places she had applied to no avail. She has a paralegal degree, office-management skills and computer skills. She presents herself well, has a good vocabulary and was remarkably even tempered throughout the long day.

And there are thousands of women just like her. I don't have a solution, either.

The devil of it is that if she accepts a full-time job she will lose her welfare benefits. (If you think about it, it makes sense.) State-run welfare is paying her tuition at trade school plus a stipend, but only during the two semesters. The idea is that once she gets a trade certification, she can get a decnt job and stay off welfare permanently. I can't argue with the concept. But it's difficult to do.

That's the nutshell problem: babysitting or child care, low wages and generally unreliable transportation. But those are almost uniquely the problem of the American poor.
I know from personal experience overseas what non-US poverty really means - try visiting a Honduran family, as I have, who has a single-room sapling cabin (not a log cabin, a sapling cabin) with a dirt floor, no electricity, no medical care, two sets of homemade clothing, and whose total net worth consists of one cow and three chickens, which they bring into the cabin each night to keep the animals safe.

Spend some time in the Third World, away from the airport and cities, and you'll learn what poverty means to about a billion people.

Yet as a whole, the world's population is not really poor, especially by historical standards. According to economist Richard A. Esterlin in "The Worldwide Standard of Living Since 1800 (p. 23), published inJournal of Economic Perspectives, Winter 2000,

By most measures here, the rates of change in the less developed countries in the last half century have substantially exceeded those in the historical experience of western Europe. If there are limits to growth in the standard of living—an imminent stationary state—it is not evident in the historical record.

Indeed, Berkeley scholar J. Bradford DeLong writes that 25 years ago you could assert that the world's economic structure was not working. 

The difference in living standards, productivity levels, and life chances between rich and poor parts of the world was greater in 1975 than it had been in 1925, and vastly greater in 1975 than it had been in 1800.

Since 1975, however, we have turned a very important corner. As Yale economist T. Paul Schultz was the first (to my knowledge) to point out, since 1975 global inequality in personal incomes has not been rising but falling. Since 1975 the world has not only become a richer place, but the world's poor have seen their incomes grow faster than the world's rich.

And he asks excellent questions:

Why, then, has no one noticed? Why are our newspapers full of reports of growing economic gulfs between rich and poor in our world? And why are they full of reports of the crisis of a model of economic development that does not serve the interests of the world's poor?

The answer, he thinks, is because most of the improvement has taken place among the 2.5 billion people who live in only two countries, India and China, which have both freed their economies substantially from statist suffocation since 1975. Says DeLong, "Centrally-planned states have managed to invest more and grow faster for short periods only, and at immense and unacceptable human cost."

How can the remaining billion people of the world climb to higher standards? Well, this is a start, the work of pioneering Peruvian economist Hernando de Soto, who says that the world's poor people actually have trillions of dollars of assets, but lack personal property rights that are protected by law and preserved in systems of records.

It seems clear to me that the main causes of poverty in the world today are political, not material.

Endnote: The greatest engine of economic well-being in the West was the drive toward universal literacy, according to Esterlin. And the drive toward literacy was religious:

What one can say with some assurance is that the early 19th century differences cited above [in his paper - DS] are the product of trends that reach as far back as the 16th century, well before the onset of modern economic growth, trends that are connected in part to the  Protestant Reformation with its emphasis on the need for each individual to be able to read the Bible himself (Cippola, 1969; Easterlin, 1981; Melton, 1988; UNESCO, 1957).

This drive for every adherent of Christian faith to be able to read the Bible really began with Humanism in the 15th century. Erasmus, who strongly influenced Martin Luther, thought that the Scriptures should be accessible to all, rather than the property of the priesthood. Luther strongly agreed, and translated the Latin Catholic Bible into German for that reason. The printing press, recently invented then, made widespread literacy possible, but theology gave literacy its raison d'etre.

The Case for the Historicity and Deity of Jesus | Cold Case Christianity

The Case for the Historicity and Deity of Jesus | Cold Case Christianity

What do you put in church visitor packets or new welcome folders?

What do you put in your church visitor packet or new welcome folder?:

Justin – When we create Welcome Packets for churches we recommend including information about your beliefs, a list of ministries/opportunities your schedule of services, and pictures of your pastor/staff.

Deborah – Hi Chris, We ask for info such as: Are you just visiting or looking for a new home church, or have a prayer request.  Basic info, address, phone number etc. Would you like to be contacted by the pastor or home visit. Office hours, service and Sunday School times. Phone numbers etc.

Lawrence - The gospel of John, welcome notes with the pastor’s and church leader’s address and phone numbers to contact in case of needs, the church activities and motto.  A gift token and hope to see you again note with Jesus love you.

Matthew - When I was at one church we made a DVD that had people if church talking about the missions vision and values of the church. We also showed pictures and videos of other things we did in the community.

Christopher - Tracts, a contact information sheet, and a church events schedule for the current month.

Nodela  – We give our first time visitors gift bags that contain: visitors card to fill out and return, ministry brochure, church administrator business card, pen, pad, candy, monthly calendar, a thank you and invitation note card, prayer card written by my Bishop, a sermon CD and one of my Bishop’s books.  On the outside of the bag I place a portion of our mission statement. I then follow up with more information about our ministry and then a “hello” note card for those that do not have a church home. Many have been receptive of this method and pleasantly surprised to receive it. Some have come back and purchased additional CDs or DVDs.

Richard - I’m partial to the Pocket Testament League’s Gospels of John which have the plan of salvation on the first few pages. They’re especially good for New believers Packets.

John - We used to put in a magnet with the church’s name and address and church times for the fridge. Some good candies (Wurthers), a $5 gift card to Tim Horton’s ( or Starbucks for some of you), and a church pen (only use good quality), and a simple short relevant tract.

Nick - I wish churches would include the pastor’s theological positions so you can determine at the front end if you’re a good fit.

Tom - Our packet includes the Folded Cover with Welcome on front, Church Name & Location, Inside: Information card for visitor to fill out and a Thank you card is mailed later for visit.  Also, card inviting them to a Daily Telephone Scripture Message, A Bic Clic Stic pen.  Many churches give imprinted pens to their visitors.

Lisa - From the perspective of someone who has visited many churches, I appreciate when the packet includes a current church newsletter (so I’m aware of events), a statement of the policies of the church, a bulletin, a name tag, and a snack (one church I went to, Sts. Martha and Mary Episcopal Church in Eagan, MN, offered a snack of M & M’s, perhaps a play on its initials).

Michael - Besides the usual items describing the church, CD of the message and some fun things like coffee mugs and pens with the church logo and some goodies one church includes a $5.00 visa card so the visitor could buy gas for a return visit. This church also hand delivered the welcome packet to the home the next day after the first visit

The myth of Gettysburg's Little Round Top

Monument to the 20th Maine near the summit of 
Little Round Top, Gettysburg battlefield

On July 2, 150 years ago, one of the most heralded combat actions in US Army history took place. It was the second day of the battle of Gettysburg when the volunteers of the 20th Maine Regiment defended a hill known as Little Round Top (LRT henceforth) against the determined attacks of the 15th and 47th Alabama regiments. Other CSA regiments attacked elsewhere along the Union line.

LRT was key terrain because it sat just south of the end of the Union line which was entrenched along Cemetery Ridge, running northward from LRT to the small town of Gettysburg. "Key terrain" in military parlance is that terrain which, when occupied by a military force, affords a distinct advantage to the force possessing it. In this case, LRT afforded a comprehensive observation point over most of the battlefield, especially of Union positions, and a location from which enfilading fire could be placed upon much of the Union line along Cemetery Ridge. "Enfilading" fire is when the long axis of the beaten zone (where the rounds fall) corresponds to the long axis of the target, as opposed to defilade, when most or all of the target is outside the beaten zone.

Statue of Maj Gen. Warren atop Little Round Top. 
The general was called the "Savior of the Union" by 
the northern press for recognizing the hazard if 
CSA troops had gained possession of the hill.

On July 2, the second day of the battle, Maj. Gen. Governeur Warren, chief engineer of the Army of the Potomac, went to the peak of LRT to observe the battlefield and was shocked to discover that the hill was unoccupied. Spotting CSA formations maneuvering to occupy it, Warren sent an urgent notice to Col. Vincent Strong of the 1st Division, V Corps, who immediately sent a brigade to the area.

The 20th Maine wound up gaining the summit of LRT, arriving only 15-20 minutes before the Confederate regiments, who promptly attacked. The Maine troops were commanded by one of the most remarkable military figures America has ever produced. Colonel Joshua Chamberlain, the 20th Maine's commander, had no military experience or training before the war, spending his life in the bookish realm of Bowdoin College, where he taught classical studies and was an ordained minister.

Maj. Gen. Joshua Chamberlain

The battle of Little Round Top began his reputation but there was much more to come in the war for him. By war's end, he had been wounded six times. He was the only man in the Union army promoted to a higher rank (brigadier general) while a battle literally raged around him, this by Gen. Ulysses Grant at Petersburg. President Lincoln later brevetted Chamberlain to major general.

At Appomattox, Grant appointed Chamberlain to command the Union troops receiving the surrender of arms and colors from the various Confederate formations, probably the highest honor Grant could have conferred on any officer. Chamberlain went on to serve as governor of Maine and president of Bowdoin College. He was somewhat belatedly awarded the Medal of Honor for his command at LRT, receiving the decoration in 1893. He died in 1914 at age 85, the last Civil War soldier of either side to be counted as dying of wounds, having never fully recovered from his grievous battle wounds.

On July 2, 1863, Col. Chamberlain took 386 soldiers to the top of LRT. Within about an hour, 29 were dead, 91 wounded, and 5 missing, losses of one-third of their strength. The two CSA regiments had been repulsed with heavy losses themselves. The 20th Maine held the hill through the next day, although by then the center of the battle had shifted to the center of the Union line, where three divisions of CSA infantry attacked and were repulsed with very heavy loss. Since that day, the 20th Maine has been credited with, minimally, preventing the Union line from being turned by the Confederate troops which, it has been said for 150 years, would have meant the rout of the Union army at Gettysburg.

Had the Union lost LRT, it is universally acknowledged, none of the events of July 3 would have transpired as they actually did. The heavy losses the Army of Northern Virginia suffered on that day would not have occurred. The way instead would have been free for Gen. Robert E. Lee to advance the army toward Washington, D.C., with the battered Army of the Potomac offering only ineffectual resistance. Hence, the popular imagination holds that Chamberlain and the 20th Maine actually saved the Union itself from defeat.

Sorry, no.

In fact, a compelling case can be made that the battle for Little Round Top, for all its incredible bravery and lethality, was nothing more than a local action with little actual effect upon the battle of Gettysburg as a whole, much less upon the fate of the whole Union.

When I was finishing my military career in the 1990s, I worked for Maj. Gen. Peter Berry, a Maine native and devoted Chamberlain fan. He even had a bust of Chamberlain in his office and owned some of Chamberlain's original papers. Maj. Gen. Berry was also a close friend of one Brig. Gen. Nelson, who was the chief of military history for the whole Army. (He was a real historian, too, with a Ph.D. in the field from Princeton and published books and monographs.)

So the two generals got all us staff officers on an Army bus one day (we were stationed in Washington) and off we went to tour the Gettysburg battlefield, conducted at every point by the US Army's chief of military history, which would seem to me to be as about an authoritative docent as you could get. Brig. Gen. Nelson explained early on that as a Nebraska native, he had no apologist position for either side.

As we stood near the Warren statue at Little Round Top, Brig. Gen. Nelson explained the course of the action there and then why it didn't matter much in the outcome of the battle. The terrain at the time was  wooded. The summit of the hill was mostly cleared, but there was no road up the hill and the ground was still timbered in many places and generally very rough. Nelson pointed out that although LRT enfiladed the southern half of the Union line, small arms fire against the Union lines would have been wholly ineffective because of the engagement distances. Had the Confederates taken LRT, Nelson said, they would have had excellent observation of the disposition of Union formations, which would have been a real advantage.

But the Union commander, Gen. George Meade, would have adjusted his tactics and lines accordingly and almost certainly would have sent troops to attack LRT. A larger hill nearby, called Round Top (later, Big Round Top) was already in Union hands (though fighting for its possession continued until the next day). Artillery atop that hill could have effectively bombarded CSA troops on LRT, also.

No, said Nelson, the only way LRT could have afforded the CSA a location from which to inflict actual damage upon Union forces was artillery fire upon the Union line. But that would have required the Confederates to clear perhaps hundreds of yards of wooded terrain, irregular and rough, all uphill, then drag the cannon and ammunition up. This would have been no easy task as an exercise, but in actual combat, under fire or attack, probably could not have been accomplished at all and would have taken well into July 3 to get done at in any event. And Lee could not have afforded to wait on it.

Bottom Line: the battle of LRT has remained in the public imagination as a decisive action of the whole war. But in fact, its outcome more likely than not did not affect even the outcome of the battle. Here is an interactive, chronological map of the Gettysburg battle. A clip from the movie, "Gettysburg," which shows the 20th Maine's final, desperate and successful attempt to stave off defeat, is below.

.

And finally, speaking of things Civil War, there is the fabled "rebel yell." The largest Civil War veterans reunion ever held was at Gettysburg on the battle's 50th anniversary in 1913. More than 50,000 Civil War veterans of both armies attended, though not all had fought at Gettysburg, of course.

One story of the 1913 reunion I read said that when thousands of the Southern veterans lined up before Cemetery Ridge and together wailed out the rebel yell, a loud moan of despair arose from the Union veterans on the ridge. PTSD?

The elderly Confederate line advanced at a walk while the Union veterans crouched behind the stone wall of The Angle and other places along the old defensive line. No one else made a sound. When the two formations were only a dozen feet apart, suddenly all semblance of old military discipline was broken and the former enemies embraced and shook hands and slapped each others' backs.

There is a recording, purportedly of an elderly Confederate veteran giving the rebel yell. His name was Thomas Alexander of the 35th North Carolina Regiment, who made the recording in 1935 for a radio station at a regimental reunion. Here is the recording, followed by a contemporary digital special-effects manipulation of Alexander's yell to emulate that of a whole infantry company.



 

The "right of the people peaceably to assemble" doesn't mean Christians

Delaware 105.9, Lewes, DE - News Talk:

Rehoboth Denies Free Speech and Freedom Rally
When asked in writing for a permit to hold a beach service in Rehoboth, Pastor Robert Dekker recieved this reply: 

"I am so sorry to inform you that I cannot grant your request to have church services on the public beach in Rehoboth. I cannot mix Church and State. I trust you understand. Wishing you the very best." 

The church is saying "Regardless of your faith, all people should be hightly concerned over this civil rights violation" - what are your thoughts?

After being denied a "permit" for a church service on Rehoboth Beach a few weeks ago, Pastor Robert Dekker of New Covenant Presbyterian will be preaching a public sermon on July 4 at 930am entitled "A line in the sand". This sermon will be preached on the beach at the end of Rehoboth Avenue. The public is invited to assemble peacefully.

What are your thoughts?
http://www.delaware1059.com/features/062813-ncp.mp3
Here's the church flier
http://www.delaware1059.com/features/Church.pdf

So this does not mean anything any more, I guess:

AMENDMENT I

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances.

That the First Amendment's restrictions are directed at the US Congress does not matter. Because of the doctrine of "incorporation," the Bill of Rights applies to state law as well as federal law.

Where is the ACLU when you need it?

Are we first in the universe?

Enrico Fermi was one of the leading lights of physics in the 20th century. About mid-century he pondered the possibility of life on other worlds and calculated that once a species achieved rudimentary space travel technology, it should be able to reach the farthest points of the Milky Way galaxy in only five million years.

Since the galaxy is billions of years old, he expressed what became known as Fermi's Paradox by asking a simple question, "Where is everybody?"

The belief that the universe must be teeming with life, and much of it must be highly intelligent, has come to be known as the "theory of mediocrity" of the Earth and its inhabitants. It is the idea that there is nothing exceptional about our planet, its life forms and especially homo sapiens, that we are all merely average examples of that found across the galaxy.

That belief (which has no actual scientific data to back it up) gave rise to the still-ongoing SETI project (Search for Extraterrestial Intelligence). However, SETI continues to come up empty and some of its researchers are starting, perhaps, to ponder a shocking possibility - that homo sapiens is one of the first, maybe even the only, highly-intelligent life form to have developed in the galaxy.

Science writer Mark Thompson explains that even a 14-billion-year-old universe may not be old enough to result in planets teeming with life, especially intelligent life.

It seems that the evolution of stars precluded the formation of rocky planets much before the appearance of Population I stars. If that is the case, and adding a generous margin for error, it looks like the first planets like Earth would have formed no earlier than 8 billion years ago. 

If that is true, then it may well be that we are not necessarily the first life, but perhaps amongst the first intelligent life (as we know it) to evolve.

Furthermore, there is no teleology in evolution theory. No outcome is inevitable, there are no such things as "higher" life forms. There is only survival, or not. Hence, technological, inventive beings are not a rational or inevitable development of evolution at all. There is no "rational" development of life in the first place and no evolutionary outcome is inevitable in any way.

Harvard biologist Ernst Mayr has pointed out that since life first appeared on Earth, there have been an estimated 50 billion species. And yet only one, us, has developed high intelligence. Mayr says that such intelligence does not obviously offer a species survival advantage and hence may be so rare that homo sapiens may be a "one off" in the universe.

In 2011 I put together a slide presentation for the topic to discuss Fermi's Paradox at church. You will probably be surprised at the conclusion. Here 'tis:

 

But for argument's sake, let us stipulate that in the known universe there are at least 200 billion species that are at least as intelligent as homo sapiens. Sound like a lot? It averages only one per galaxy.

Syrian "rebels" slaughter Catholic priest

Christian martyrdom is not only an ancient phenomenon.

On Sunday, June 23 the Syrian priest François Murad was killed in Gassanieh, in northern Syria, in the convent of the Custody of the Holy Land where he had taken refuge. This is confirmed by a statement of the Custos of the Holy Land sent to Fides Agency. The circumstances of the death are not fully understood. According to local sources, the monastery where Fr. Murad was staying was attacked by militants linked to the jihadi group Jabhat al-Nusra.

Father Francois Murad,
martyred in Syria

This  was a deliberate attack and targeted murder. The jihadists (read: al Qaeda) brutally beheaded Fr. Murad and posted  an explicit video of the killing. More info: Syrian Jihadists behead Catholic priest

This will not deter the Obama administration from pushing ahead to supply military assistance and materiel to the Syrian "resistance," which is completely dominated by al Qaeda. In fact, Secretary of State John Kerry has already pushed for the United States to directly bomb Syrian government targets.

 Helping the Syrian rebels would be like helping Frank fight Jesse over who would run the James gang. The murder of this priest is a tiny harbinger of the kind of bloodbath to come if the Assad regime falls.

What we need to unlearn

Some thought-provoking stuff from the Paducah district of the Memphis Conference of the UMC, one essay by the district superintendent and the other by the district's lay leader.

First to be published was the Rev. Sky Sky Lowe McCracken's essay, "Things for United Methodist preachers to unlearn..."

Then Susan Sadler Engle's essay, "Things for United Methodist laity to unlearn — from a layperson’s POV"

Supreme Court and same-sex "marriage"

Opinions are abounding on the consequences of the Supreme Court's rulings issued yesterday on the federal Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA) and its dismissal of a defense of California's Proposition 8 (a ballot initiative that banned same-sex marriage (SSM) in California).

In the DOMA case, the Court struck down Section 3 of the law but left the rest of the law intact. The struck section forbade federal recognition of same-sex couples as married, reserving it for only male-female married couples.

In the Prop 8 case, the Court ruled that the challenge to a lower court's ruling invalidating Prop 8 had no standing before the Court because the plaintiffs were private citizens who had no standing to mount the challenge. This left the lower court's ruling unaffected and Prop 8 remains therefore overturned by the lower court.

So what is the potential effect on the United Methodist Church? According to our Book of Discipline, which is our canon law, UM clergy will not perform any type of ceremony validating same-sex "marriage," no matter where performed or under what name they may be called. Furthermore, such ceremonies may not be performed on any UM Church property, no matter who officiates, Methodist or not.

I hope to post a thorough response soon, but for now, here are some links that I commend to you.

UM Reporter: "US Court rulings impact same-sex couples"

My own relevant post, "State should do weddings, Church marriages"

"A secular argument against same-sex marriage"

"IRS could revoke non-profit status for religious institutions over same-sex marriage"

"The Supreme Court’s Marriage Decisions by the Numbers," by the conservative Heritage Foundation, which says nothing much has changed as the result of either ruling.

"Justice Anthony Kennedy's contempt" at Politico

"Marriage Is Dead And The Church Is Next," at National Catholic Register

"The Impact of Today’s Gay Marriage Decisions," by Constitutional Law Prof. Ilya Somin.

And don't overlook, "The Case for Polygamy" at Daily Caller

"Gay lobby’s next target: Benefits in all 50 states" at The Hill

Git yer tinfoil hat on, folks

Ok, this is going to be a very unusual post for me because the topic is UFOs. So get your tinfoil hat on and take a ride.

This all started when I was searching YouTube for national-security related vids when a search result caught my eye, entitled, UFO Alien Disclosure by Canadian Minister of Defense May 2013. (Apparently this video is not embeddable.)

The former Canadian defense minister in question is Paul Hellyer, who served in that role (equivalent to the US secretary of defense) in the 1960s. In this and other videos, he states unambiguously that UFOs are non-terrestrial craft, directed by extra-terrestrial, highly intelligent beings. That makes Mr. Hellyer the most senior person I have ever heard of who claimed this.

(I personally lean toward the side of the scientists who say that the odds of human beings having come into existence are so incredibly remote that concluding homo sapiens is alone in the universe is quite reasonable.)

Without offering here any opinion of whether Hellyer's claims have merit, in a different interview he gave he made reference to a book written by someone named Corso, an American colonel. Hellyer said that an American Air Force general told him that every word of the book was true. Hellyer said he had no way to assess the veracity of the book's claims personally, except that being a defense insider the language of the book rang true and that the contexts of the book were convincing.

It was easy to find the book on Amazon, especially since it is the only book that the late Lt. Col. Phillip Corso wrote. It's called The Day After Roswell. Since it was only $6 on Kindle, I downloaded it.

Again, I am not here affirming or debunking Corso's claims (he died in 1998 at age 83). But I kept  Hellyer's observations in mind about how the book read like it was written from an "inside baseball" perspective. And Hellyer is right.

Corso served as a White House member of the National Security Council in the 1950s and as deputy of the US Army's Foreign Technology Office in the Pentagon from 1960-1963. He claims in the book that his personal office in the Pentagon held the cabinet in which was stored the Army's files of what really happened at Roswell and some actual artifacts from the UFO that crashed there. Exploiting alien technology for mass production for military and later civilian use was his main job there.

At any rate, Corso says that all the services distrusted the CIA (Corso says that as an intelligence officer he knew the CIA was well penetrated by the Soviet KGB). But the part that stuck me as absolutely authentic and from someone who had truly "been there" was this passage:

This is so cogent, so authentic that it is what makes me think that whether Corso's UFO claims are objectively true, Corso was relating what he believed to be true. Accounts I have read by former Soviet spies confirm what Corso says about the deep suspicion the KGB and the Communist Party had of each other. (In fact, the Party, the Soviet army and the KGB were all highly suspicious and extremely competitive of each other.) Corso spends a lot of time explaining the politics of the multiple duchies inside the Pentagon and the strategies they all employed to "steal the bacon" from one another - much like their Soviet counterparts except without the Soviet's level of hostility. It was no different in Corso's years at the Pentagon than it was during mine there, 30 years later.

Final point. Here is what Corso says are the main exploitations the United States gained from the Roswell crash.

Project Horizon was the Army's plan for a permanent moon base that never got farther than the drawing board. HARP, despite its tinfoil-hat status today, was nothing more than a concept to send base materials to the moon cheaply. It did move from drawing board to testing, but no farther.

Not all these technologies were derived directly from alien technology. Depleted uranium was no alien invention, it was (and is) produced by nuclear-power plants as spent fuel. Army R&D realized that because of its extremely high density, solid projectiles made of DU, traveling at hypervelocity, would be devastatingly powerful at impact. This was ultimately affirmed during the Gulf War of 1991 and again in Iraq and Afghanistan by US tanks firing such rounds at a mile per second. But the reason DU was developed as a weapon, Corso says, was to shoot down UFOs.

Same with particle-beam weapons that work by focusing beams of electrons against a target. It was not a technology found on the Roswell craft. Hypothesizing that the craft was likely brought down by a lightning strike, which is a high-energy electron beam, research was oriented toward, basically, generating our own lightning. The whole point of President Reagan's Strategic Defense Initiative, in fact was to develop anti-UFO weapons for which defense against Soviet ICBMs was a happy bonus.

Whether you consider Corso credible or not, it is fascinating reading, especially if you already have some familiarity with the military or political subcultures of Washington, D.C.

Constitutional amendment would strip churches of rights under law

They are at it again, this time in the US Senate.

I wrote at length in 2011 of US Rep. Jim McGovern's (D.-3rd District, Mass.) proposed "People's Rights Amendment" to the US Constitution that would define "person" or any part of "the people," as the Constitution uses the term, to mean only human beings. 

That means, as McGovern stated explicitly, that any kind of corporation, including incorporated churches (which almost all are), would have no standing in courts as possessing rights under the law. So if, for example, your city government wanted 30 feet of your church's property to widen a road, the city can just show up one morning and start bulldozing. As the church is a legal non-entity regarding property rights, the legal doctrine of eminent domain would not apply. 

And your church would not be able to contest the taking in court since, as a Constitutionally-defined non-person, the church would have no legal standing to file a suit, anymore than could a bird whose nest was destroyed by the bulldozers.

Before you say I am going overboard, go to the 2011 post and read the analyses of Constitutional scholars I quoted at length, especially UCLA Law School Prof. Eugene Volokh, one of the most-frequently cited legal scholars in America (including by US Supreme Court justices). 

Well, as we used to say in the Army, "BOHICA!" - Bend Over, Here It Comes Again. U.S. Sen. Jon Tester (D.-Mont.), is sponsoring essentially the same amendment in the US Senate, though without the Leninist title McGovern gave his version. Senator Chris Murphy (D-Conn.), is co-sponsor.

Tester's web page about the amendment is here.

The full text of the resolution to Congress proposing the amendment is here: Tester's Constitutional Amendment.

Here is Prof. Volokh's commentary on the Tester amendment, with a key phrase boldfaced and super-sized.

The proposed amendment would authorize Congress, states, and local governments to, for instance, (1) restrict what most newspapers publish, (2) restrict what most advocacy groups, such as the ACLU, the Sierra Club, and the NRA, say, (3) restrict what is said and done by most churches, and (4) seize the property of corporations without just compensation. (It might also allow restrictions on the speech of unions, depending on whether they are seen as “corporate entities.”) 

Nearly all major newspapers and magazines are owned by corporations; the same is true of book publishers, movie studios, record labels, and broadcasters. Indeed, if you want such entities to be able to raise money for their operations through the stock market, you have to have them be organized as corporations. Likewise, most nonprofit organizations are organized as corporations — that, too, makes sense, since it makes sense to have the ACLU run as a corporate entity rather than as a sole proprietorship owned by one person, or a partnership owned by a few people. Churches are likewise often organized as corporations, sometimes with a special sort of corporate status. 

Under the proposed amendment, all these groups — as well as ordinary businesses — would lose all their constitutional rights. Instead of “strict scrutiny” for content-based regulations of the press or of nonprofit advocacy groups, Congress and state and local governments would be free to impose any restrictions they “deem reasonable.” 

And section 3 will do nothing to reinstate any such rights, because it protects only “the people’s” rights, and “the people” is defined in section 2 to expressly exclude corporations. Nor would section 3 protect corporate-run newspapers or advocacy groups on the theory that restriction those organizations’ speech would deny the constitutional rights of individual reporters or organization leaders. The government would still be freed to restrict those reporters and leaders from speaking using corporate resources, which is to say speaking in the pages of the newspaper or using the offices or assets of the organization. (After all, when corporations speak about elections — the thing that the Senators are, I assume, trying to stop — it is also individual managers who speak using the corporate form; but the argument for restricting such speech is that the managers should speak only using their own resources, not corporate funds.) 

So goodbye, First Amendment protection for the New York Times, CNN, the ACLU, the NRA, and the Catholic Church. Goodbye, any right to just compensation when a corporation’s property is taken — whether the corporation is a large business or a small mom-and-pop company. Goodbye, any rights to due process when a corporation’s property is seized. Goodbye, any protection for corporations (again, even small family-run businesses) from unreasonable searches and seizures, or excessive fines. That’s what Senators Tester and Murphy’s amendment calls for.

So: am I too paranoid, or not paranoid enough?

Here is Tester's own explanation:

Say No to Syria Intervention!

Secretary of State John Kerry leads the war faction in the Obama administration, insisting that American warplanes should begin bombing Syria right away.

In the past few days, the White house announced that it will begin sending military materiel to Syrian rebels. This decision comes in the wake of the administration's determination that Syria's ruling Assad regime had used chemical weapons, including the nerve agent sarin, on the insurgents. This use constituted Assad crossing one of the Obama administration's "red lines," so named because crossing them would be seen as an intolerable act that could not be passively encountered by the United States.

International agencies estimate that the chemical attacks killed 100-150 people. As IBD puts it, "That's in addition to the more than 90,000 Syrians killed by conventional weapons that didn't seem to prompt any action."

Government Executive reports that Secretary of State John Kerry pushed hard for the United States to bomb key Syrian targets after the chemical use was confirmed.

On Thursday, President Obama confirmed what reports had been speculating for a few weeks: Syrian President Bashar al-Assad had used chemical weapons, notably sarin gas, on his own people, and tripping the president's "red line" that would rouse the United States to greater action. The response includes arming and training the rebels. It turns out that Secretary of State John Kerry also wanted the response to include an air strike on Syrian airfields, according to Jeffery Goldberg at Bloomberg View. 

According to Goldberg, Kerry's "vociferous" thoughts on the matter were not received well by Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Martin Dempsey during a meeting in the situation room last Wednesday.

(My own experience of working in the Pentagon from 1990-1993 is that the state department is considerably quicker to reach for the sword than the defense department.) The reason Kerry's push did not prevail is that Joint Chiefs Chairman Gen. Martin Dempsey made it clear that a few runs on target would do no good, that if the bombing was not be be merely symbolic, it would require a sustained, large effort of no short duration.

Secretary Kerry lost the debate that day, but the desire is out in the open: there is a powerful faction within the Obama administration that wants direct military action by the United States against the Assad regime.

My position is that no just rationale can be proffered for American intervention in the civil war, whether by supply, air campaign or boots on the ground. Such action fails to meet the standards of the two major influences that have shaped American military action since the country's founding: Just War theory and Realpolitik, or foreign-affairs Realism.

Realpolitik and the national interests

Realpolitik is the easier of the two to deal with, so I'll start with it. Realpolitik "refers to politics or diplomacy based primarily on power and on practical and material factors and considerations, rather than ideological notions or moralistic or ethical premises." The United States has (let us be thankful) not been skilled in its practice - both the Bay of Pigs and Vietnam War come to mind as two prominent, recent examples.

In Syria, however, even if the Obama administration was inclined toward Realpolitik it would find there is no upside for American power interests in intervention. Simply put, the outcome of the  civil war there is wholly immaterial to the national-security interests of the United States. The fight is not a fight between repressed Jeffersonian democrats and their cruel oppressors. It is a fight between what we may understand as a Stalinist regime in power and a fascist movement that wants to replace it.

There are no good guys in this war. It is not a war about repression vs. liberty. It is a war about who will do the repressing. As Atlantic Council managing editor James Joyner puts it, "Syrian Rebels Today, Syrian Taliban Tomorrow."

Radical Islamists now dominate the Syrian opposition. And you’re arming them. Reuters (“Syria’s Islamists seize control as moderates dither“):

During a 10-day journey through rebel-held territory in Syria, Reuters journalists found that radical Islamist units are sidelining more moderate groups that do not share the Islamists’ goal of establishing a supreme religious leadership in the country. 

The moderates, often underfunded, fragmented and chaotic, appear no match for Islamist units, which include fighters from organizations designated “terrorist” by the United States.

The Syrian resistance, such as it is, is dominated by foreign al Qaeda elements. If the resistance loses, Assad's Syria will become even more of an Iranian client than it already is. If the resistance wins, Syria will be a a Muslim Brotherhood client with a strong share of Saudi Salfism thrown in for good measure.

So what is the Syrian civil war really about? It is another round in the centuries-old conflict between Sunni and Shia Muslims (in which Assad is ironically neither). Understand, the conflict between Sunnis and Shias is not a religious conflict, it is political. The Islamic-theological differences are actually rather minor. They dispute who should be authoritative in setting doctrinal standards for Muslims, but this springs from a centuries-old schism over Mohammed's successors as leaders of Islam. Islam itself is basically identical for both.

The center of Shia Islam is Iran, which named the United States the Great Satan in 1979 (Israel, by contrast, was only named the Little Satan). Al Qaeda began as a Sunni movement arising from the local jihad against the Soviet army declared by a Palestinian Sunni cleric living in Saudi Arabia. The occasion was the USSR's invasion of Afghanistan in December 1979. Out of the Islamic resistance to the USSR, led by Saudi Arabia and Pakistan, was born the organization that Osama bin Laden would use to form al Qaeda, whose hatred of all things American need not be explained further.

This history helps illuminate why both sides in Syria can each hate the United States as much (or more) as they hate one another. Whether the rebels prevail or Assad, neither outcome is inherently more desirable for the United States than the other. So simply from a Realpolitik point of view, there is no upside for the United States to intervene in any fashion.

There is, however, considerable downside, not least would be the expenditure of American blood and treasure to achieve goals that are unclear, mostly undefined, in a campaign of of indefinite duration, for no possible outcome that benefits the security of the country.

Syria Intervention and Just War theory

The failure of Realpolitik being understood, we may confront the moral issue with greater probity. The issue is simply stated: Does the violence and deaths of non-combatants in Syria justify the United States to kill Syrian soldiers (an inevitably civilians) and raise the level of violence there to even greater heights (there being no more violent or destructive military on the face of the earth than America's)?

That is really the central question of the use of force within the framework of Just War theory, devised by the Roman Catholic Church over the centuries between St. Augustine and St. Thomas Aquinas, who gave the theory its final polish. JWT, as I will short-type it henceforth, holds that there are only two circumstances in which war may be justly fought:

• Actual self defense against aggression
• To defend the innocent and otherwise defenseless against aggression

Catholic author Nicholas G. Hahn III says that Syria meets the latter criterion. In trying to rebut Senator Rand Paul's speech against intervention, Hahn writes,

Should Paul know anything about Augustine or Aquinas, he would know that war is sometimes necessary and a moral obligation. 

Aquinas quotes Augustine approvingly that a just war is "one that avenges wrongs, when a nation or state has to be punished, for refusing to make amends for the wrongs inflicted by its subjects, or to restore what it has seized unjustly." Even the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops, in its 1993 statement, defined casus belli where force may be employed to "correct a grave, public evil." 

Perhaps Paul should also read George Weigel's First Things primer on how pre-emption is simply another word for defense -- and defense, after all, fits perfectly within the just war tradition.

Now, I have been reading George Weigel's tomes on JWT and related issues for many years and I join Mr. Hahn in my admiration for his insights. But Hahn and his ideological allies simply fail to make a case here. Here is why.

JWT conceptually exists in three parts:

1. Just cause for starting the war.
2. Just conduct of the war.
3. Just ending of the war.

Criterion 1 simply means a nation may not justly go to war for selfish gain hiding behind a smokescreen of moral language. That Mr. Hahn injected the word "pre-emption" into a discussion of moral necessity sort of gives the game away. Preemption (hit them before they can hit you) is not wholly without moral content but it is mainly a tactic of Realpolitik. Just whom would the United States be pre-empting? Assad? Al Qaeda? Iran? Russia?

Criterion 2 usually understood to mean that conducting the war may not be done more unjustly than the injustice sought to be remedied. This is not a matter of counting corpses killed by one side or the other and saying (as American critics of our entry into Afghanistan post-9/11 did) that we may not take more lives protecting the innocent than the number of innocent lives lost at the hands of the aggressors.

As my friend, Catholic cleric (and US Army War College graduate) John Krenson explained to me, if the cause is just and the objectives are just, then just conduct is the minimum violence necessary to attain the just objective. And that minimum violence might be very great, indeed.

This is known as the problem of the "Sanguinary Calculus," meaning how much suffering and death we may justly inflict in order to bring about the objective we desire. I would appeal to my readers to consider the years of American fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan and ponder whether they give us any cause for confidence. Would we still be in Syria eight to 10 years from now?

Let us remember Douglas MacArthur's warning that, "Prolonged indecision is never a just aim of war."

The sanguinary calculus must also include American lives. I would like to hear advocates of intervention tell me the plea they give to their own children why they should join the Marines to go fight Assad in Syria and what they will say when their children are killed or maimed. (For the record, I thought that invading Iraq was clearly justified by JWT and my eldest son did fight in Iraq as a Marine. My second son is today an officer in the Air Force Reserve.)

Or is this moral crusade only to be fought by children of others? As there is no American national-security interest at stake at all, I believe I am justified in insisting that intervention advocates put their own blood on the line and not simply outsource their morality.

I have not yet encountered an intervention advocate explain exactly why Syria is a special case. If Syria is a "yes," why would North Korea be a no? After all, the Kims' successive regimes have literally starved to death millions of their own subjects. Does not that call more strongly for American direct action to rescue?

In fact, the list of places in the world where the US would be morally justified in mounting military action to defend the innocent is very long. But it would be impossible for us to do so. And that requires exercising another principle of war, distinction or discrimination. If not everyone, then who and why? If there is an especially compelling reason we should intervene in Syria and not Lower Zambezi, then let advocates make it. But they do not even attempt.

There is neither a strong moral nor national security case to be made for US intervention. Intervention fails both just war theory and Realpolitik.

Endnote: On the other hand, Foreign Policy's Daniel Drezner says that in fact the Obama administration has been engaged in Realpolitik in Syria and that the recently-announced plan to send arms to the rebels is the logical extension of it.

[T]his is simply the next iteration of the unspoken, brutally realpolitik policy towards Syria that’s been going on for the past two years.  To recap, the goal of that policy is to ensnare Iran and Hezbollah into a protracted, resource-draining civil war, with as minimal costs as possible.  This is exactly what the last two years have accomplished…. at an appalling toll in lives lost. 

This policy doesn’t require any course correction… so long as rebels are holding their own or winning. A faltering Assad simply forces Iran et al into doubling down and committing even more resources.  A faltering rebel movement, on the other hand, does require some external support, lest the Iranians actually win the conflict.  In a related matter, arming the rebels also prevents relations with U.S. allies in the region from fraying any further.

Unlike Mr. Drezner, I don't think the administration is clever enough for this.

Update: David Goldman in an Asia Times op-ed points out that there is no good end in Syria no matter what the Western powers do.

Father's Day

"Men at their best"

Returning a church to biblical sanity

The Church Doctor site offers an excellent perspective on how and why churches get off track and their vitality dribbles away. Read the whole thing, but the heart is his 10-step program:

Ten Ways to Return Church to a Biblical Form of Sanity

1. Take inventory annually.  Have a rummage sale of programs/activities. Offload 10%-20% per year. 
2. Clearly articulate your purpose:  look closely at the New Testament. Ask, "According to God, what is the primary purpose of the church?"  Make sure all staff and leadership are on the same page.     
3. Having defined your purpose, look at everything through the lens of focus.  (1) What contributes to the objectives of purpose?  (2) What supports objectives that contribute to the focus of purpose?  (3) What does not contribute to the objectives of focus?  (4) Which issues of category three need repair, redesign, or strengthening?  (5) Which issues of category three should be discarded?    
4. Reflect on how intentional you are.  Take inventory, using a trusted and brutally honest accountability partner.  Equip your accountability partner to ask you, regularly, "What have you said 'no' to recently?"   
5. If you add a program or activity to your church routine, ask the hard question:  "Is this the time to drop another program or activity?"    
6. Ask your accountability partner to challenge your level of proactivity, as opposed to reactivity.  You can't avoid being reactive all the time in ministry.  Shoot for 80% proactive, 20% reactive.     
7. Continually run the operation of church through the grid of light-weight/low-maintenance.  Develop a culture of asking, "Is this the simplest way to do this?  Or is it too complicated?  Too cluttered?  Too slow and inefficient?"   
8. As a leader, what is the one thing you must do every week, no matter what else is going on in the church?  If you answered by describing some ministry you do (prepare a sermon, attend a meeting, teach a class), repent!  If you answered by describing a way you will multiply yourself (equipping and empowering others - as in making disciples), rejoice!    
9. Review your church government - your decision-making process - through the lens of low-control/high-accountability.  How long, how much effort, does it take to come to conclusions and move to action?    
10. Consider intervention - an outside consultant - to help redesign your church government to a biblical form of low-control/high-accountability.

The best German restaurant in Epcot

Well, it's the only one:

I ripped this shot off my son's FB page. He took it last night.

Many years ago when my family and I visited Epcot we had lunch here. Having lived in Germany from 1983-1986, my wife and I enjoy German cuisine.

The restaurant was a buffet. After we sat at our table an attractive, blonde young fraulein approached to ask what we wanted to drink. As you may know, the workers at Epcot's national areas are all from their respective countries. They enter the US on a work visa, work a year and then go home. Our Serviererin was therefore German and looked the part, German-style dress and all.

As she was bringing our beverages I still remembered enough German to tell her that my wife and I had lived in her country from '83-'86. Her response was polite but perfunctory; she had doubtless heard hundreds of times from guests who told her they had visited Germany or had lived there.

"Where did you live?" she replied in English.

"We lived in a small farming town not far from Giessen called Dorf-Guell."

Her mouth dropped open and her eyes grew wide as saucers. "My brother plays soccer for Dorf-Guell!" she exclaimed.

Before long she was sitting down with us and we had a kind of "old home week" and we swapped reminiscences of the very small town and the local area. Finally, she had to get back to work, so we  said goodbye as she rose from the table.

"I am so glad to have met you!" she gushed. "It was so good to talk with someone from home!"

Of course, we were not from her home, but I knew what she meant and thought so, too.

What are the odds?