How the actions of this poor widow challenges a slightly irreverant, Linux-using, business school educated Christian. And his money.
Some towns may call them “Food Banks” — charities that give away groceries to those in need. But in my fair city, where the SF Food Bank is a government-funded entity, us little guys are known as “Food Pantries”.
My food pantry is known as the Excelsior Community Food Pantry or ECFP for short. When I [...]
Posted on October 21st, 2009 by Ryan
Filed under: Christian tradition, charitable, chasing happiness, church, diary worthy | No Comments »
Money can make people feel a lot of things. But according to a recent study, the mere act of counting money makes experiences less painful. University students who participated in this psychology study were separated into two groups. One group counted cash, while the other counted sheets of plain paper. Afterwards, both groups were instructed [...]
Posted on August 9th, 2009 by Ryan
Filed under: church, relationships (and money), societal concerns | 1 Comment »
This Sunday, I saw something quite surprising at church. In the middle of church service during communion, a bunch of the grade-school children from Sunday school bounded into the sanctuary. They cheerfully danced up to the communion table. The church elder offered them the bread. The children grabbed a piece, drenched it grape juice, and [...]
Posted on May 4th, 2009 by Ryan
Filed under: Christian tradition, chasing happiness, church, diary worthy | 1 Comment »
I have a time-honored tradition* of responding to some of Hayley’s blog posts. Our friend Rahul calls it “competing blogs”. I like to think of it as complementary blogs. But I digress…
Hayley’s recent post expressed some of the busyness that we’ve experienced recently. Like Hayley, I’m a bit tired, stressed, [...]
Posted on March 21st, 2009 by Ryan
Filed under: charitable, chasing happiness, church, diary worthy | 1 Comment »
Remember that age-old Aesops fable, The Ant and The Grasshopper? The version I was told as a child depicted the Grasshopper singing and dancing during the lazy summer months, while the Ant fastidiously worked and stored away food. When winter came around, the Ant had food but the Grasshopper went hungry. Moral [...]
Posted on February 20th, 2009 by Ryan
Filed under: church, economic theory, societal concerns | No Comments »
I got a homework assignment from church today. I need to write a personal Statement of Faith.
Typically, homework assignments from churches tend to be things like “do something nice” or “forgive someone you’re mad at”. I, in response, would perform some cursory deed like put the toilet seat down for my wife and [...]
Posted on December 1st, 2008 by Ryan
Filed under: Christian tradition, church, diary worthy | 4 Comments »
I’ve become desensitized to the all-too-common headlines of Bay Area homicides. When I hear about them, I usually shake my head, think “how unfortunate”, and continue on. Most shootings and killings are gang-related. That fact seems to put comfortable mental distance between me and these violent crimes.
But Friday’s triple homicide was really [...]
Posted on November 15th, 2008 by Ryan
Filed under: Christian tradition, church | No Comments »
The Wall Street Journal published a fascinating article last week, titled “The Mystery Worshipper“. Of course, you’ll need to flip past the doom-and-gloom headlines of the stock market free fall and the collapse Iceland’s financial system (the Icelandic krona ceased trading on the global currency market). This WSJ article takes us away from this global [...]
Posted on October 15th, 2008 by Ryan
Filed under: Christian tradition, church, economic theory, societal concerns | 3 Comments »
There’s a movement among church consultants to treat churches as a business. Personally, I disagree. But, who knows? I might be wrong. What if God intended churches to rival multinational corporations? Who’s to say that that my humble 60-attendee community church, MBCC, shouldn’t be vying for global notoriety like Microsoft, Starbucks, or AIG?
Since I’m not [...]
Posted on October 14th, 2008 by Ryan
Filed under: church, economic theory, societal concerns | 2 Comments »
I’ve taught church Sunday school for years. For the most part, Sunday school teachers are glorified babysitters. Our job is to keep the kids entertained, so their parents can have an hour of peace and quiet during church. Still, I feel obligated to teach them a little bit about God or morals or something Christian-like [...]
Posted on September 10th, 2008 by Ryan
Filed under: Christian tradition, church, diary worthy, economic theory, societal concerns | 4 Comments »