Author: MASadmin

For those of you who didn’t know, I grew up in Colorado. I loved it there and still miss it even though I have been on the East Coast for about as long as I lived in the Centennial State. But I’ll always be a Western kid at heart. It’s been heart breaking seeing all the fires that are raging across my home state. Not only are they destroying places and trees, but homes have been destroyed as well. The fire that is bulldozing through the outskirts of Colorado Springs is just the most frightening one out of several so far this month. I spent all day refreshing Denver Post and reading all the twitter feeds I could. The picture above was taken this afternoon by Alli Smith and shared via twitter. It shows the chapel at the Air Force Academy lit up by a background of fire and smoke. You can even see the fire from space. As I hear about friends of friends and the family members of friends being evacuated and not sure if their homes are still around, my heart aches for them. My prayers go out to everyone there – to those who have lost their homes and to those who are fighting the fires in the face of high temperatures, high winds, and bone dry climate conditions. It brings to mind the valley of the dry bones. And I pray that, like that valley, that God’s mercy, grace, and love will bless all those affected by these fires and the fires that are to come.

Update: Even the Denver Broncos are getting in on the relief act.

side note: the title of this post reminds me of Party in the USA by Miley Cyrus or Party in the ELCA.

The ELCA might not be the best when it comes to Social Media but some of us are trying. Augsburg Fortress recently posted two blog entries about who tweets for the ELCA. I count 31 synods (less than half) and a number ELCA social organizations that I follow. One problem is, sadly, that a number of those organizations are a little too…quiet. I’m being ironic, of course, because I am involved in a few church facebook pages that I rarely update – it is something I need to get better at. But there is something positive and effect about using social media to broadcast what it is that the synods, organizations, and the churches are doing. It does not mean, of course, that everyone will get your message or that it might be the most efficient way for our presence to make a difference in the world. But twitter and other social media tools can serve as a method of showing to people that church, as we define it, is being done. I’m going to follow up this post with another one about the joy of arriving late to church (and what that can teach us) but I’ve been mulling over a question: on Sunday morning, do the people who drive or walk by your building know that church is being done inside? In a city like New York, that’s a hard question to answer because we are use to not noticing things. I don’t think we, who are inside the walls, can assume that people will KNOW that we’re actually gathering together in worship. It might seem like a strange idea (can’t people read the sign?) but I think if we’re not able to effectively outreach that we are actually doing church when we are doing it, then how can we expect ourselves to be effective at doing outreach during the 98% of the week when we’re not gathered together?