Wanted to make sure you heard about this: Shane’s posted an article on Jim Wallis’s Sojourners Blog about the recent escalating gun violence in our Kensington, Philadelphia neighborhood and what can be done about it.

***

One More Gun Death Too Many–and Three Things You Can Do About It

“At about midnight we heard the shots ring out.   My friend ran to the door and I heard him yell, “Shane, a kid has been shot, come down.”  As we looked down the street we could see a young man staggering as he walked down our block.  Then his knees gave out and he fell to the ground.  We called for an ambulance, and ran outside to be with the boy.  My friend talked to him tenderly, looking into his eyes as they struggled to stay alert.  We could see the wounds in his chest, torn by bullets.  I grabbed his hand and held it as we prayed… and as we hoped.  The ambulance came and drove him off.  The next morning we heard that 19-year old Papito died that night from the gunshot wounds, on February 5, 2010.  Papito was the fourth shooting in the last few months within walking distance from our house.”

Read the full article here:

Folks, this is why Christianity in the US has little credibility amongst the 6 billion of the rest of us.  One giant step backwards. ~jamie

********
Flock Is Now a Fight Team in Some Ministries – NYTimes

MEMPHIS — In the back room of a theater on Beale Street, John Renken, 42, a pastor, recently led a group of young men in prayer.

“Father, we thank you for tonight,” he said. “We pray that we will be a representation of you.”

An hour later, a member of his flock who had bowed his head was now unleashing a torrent of blows on an opponent, and Mr. Renken was offering guidance that was not exactly prayerful.

“Hard punches!” he shouted from the sidelines of a martial arts event called Cage Assault. “Finish the fight! To the head! To the head!”

The young man was a member of a fight team at Xtreme Ministries, a small church near Nashville that doubles as a mixed martial arts academy. Mr. Renken, who founded the church and academy, doubles as the team’s coach. The school’s motto is “Where Feet, Fist and Faith Collide.”

Mr. Renken’s ministry is one of a small but growing number of evangelical churches that have embraced mixed martial arts — a sport with a reputation for violence and blood that combines kickboxing, wrestling and other fighting styles — to reach and convert young men, whose church attendance has been persistently low. Mixed martial arts events have drawn millions of television viewers, and one was the top pay-per-view event in 2009.

Recruitment efforts at the churches, which are predominantly white, involve fight night television viewing parties and lecture series that use ultimate fighting to explain how Christ fought for what he believed in. Other ministers go further, hosting or participating in live events.

The goal, these pastors say, is to inject some machismo into their ministries — and into the image of Jesus — in the hope of making Christianity more appealing. “Compassion and love — we agree with all that stuff, too,” said Brandon Beals, 37, the lead pastor at Canyon Creek Church outside of Seattle. “But what led me to find Christ was that Jesus was a fighter.”

The outreach is part of a larger and more longstanding effort on the part of some ministers who fear that their churches have become too feminized, promoting kindness and compassion at the expense of strength and responsibility.

“The man should be the overall leader of the household,” said Ryan Dobson, 39, a pastor and fan of mixed martial arts who is the son of James C. Dobson, the founder of Focus on the Family, a prominent evangelical group.

Read the whole article here.