The things you learn about the Great State Fair of Oklahoma when reading your cousin’s blog. (Hint: My cousin didn’t do it.)

Church work can be a tough business. It’s never done. The needs—as I’ve heard so many people put it—are endless and nonnegotiable. It follows you home. It goes to bed with you.

Lots of folks’ work follows them home. Lots of folks do work that encounters endless human needs. So I’ve put off writing this post for days trying to find a way to write it that didn’t feel whiny or ungrateful or self-serving.

Here’s the deal: Church work changes you. Once you’ve committed to it, it shapes your life. It works itself into every nook and cranny.

Keeping it from changing parts of your life that you don’t want it to transform becomes more and more challenging. A tug of war goes on. What will your life center around? Church work or something else? (Like friends and family.) And if it’s not church work, should you even be in church work? Click to continue reading “Is ministry a …?”

Another quick shout out to a good blog, this one by a good friend. It’s the blog for the Interfaith Disability Connection, a nonprofit that provides a wealth of resources for congregational leaders. Or check out these success stories of ministries with persons with disabilities.

Introducing Brad. For starters, check out this cartoon—it has dinosaurs! Or look at this post about the conflict between the disability and mental health advocacy movements:

They need unity! And a logo. I suggest a tasteful depiction of Virginia Woolf in a wheelchair. That’s funny because mad people always make lists of awesome mad people that typically feature Virginia Woolf, and the disabled often use wheelchairs.

Not that polls at this stage mean a whole lot, but it’s interesting to see that Dems are beating the GOP on just about everything in an Ohio poll.

What’s really curious to me is that Clinton is beating Guiliani by seven points in spite of having a much higher unfavorable numbers—43% versus Guiliani’s 30% unfavorable rating. (Hat tip to my fundy plant.)