Important Meeting Tomorrow Night

As many of you know, we've been working in collaboration with the EARN group and one of the Menlo Park City Councilmen to implement an innovative approach toward saving local homeowners in foreclosure. This approach effectively de-leverages local homeowners through an innovative investment of city redevelopment funds coupled with mortgage write down by local banks. We believe this approach is exceedingly fair to both the city and the homeowner and could end up saving 10 to 13 homeowners. Additionally, we're hoping this will serve as a pilot program to other cities. Tomorrow night the city council will host a study session for the plan. If passed, the city will allocate $1 million to this project, to be paid back to city coffers over time.

If all goes well it will go to a vote on October 6th. We have had positive feedback from the council and staff members to this point.

There are a few ways you can help:

1) You can attend the council session tomorrow night (Tuesday) at 7:00 pm at the Onetta Harris Community Center and hear about the proposal. The community center address is: 100 Terminal Ave Menlo Park, CA 94025

2) You can tell others about the session, and ask them to also attend

3) You can email, call or write the council members to express your support. You can find their contact information here: http://www.menlopark.org/council/city_council.html

4) Pray that God will guide the council as they consider this proposal

I have attached an early draft of the city proposal for your review. The final should be available at the meeting (as we have suggested some changes). Please let me know if you have any questions. Thank you for your support.

Regards.

- John

Another Useless Homicide in EPA

Another homicide in EPA this weekend. Another young life cut short. This one was closer to home, since it was the son of one of the other tenants in our building. I'm tired of the violence. You can read the news report here. Pastor Bains knew this young man well.

I found strength in the U2 song 'Drowning Man' this morning. I'll take it as words from God and a prayer for the family.

Take my hand
You know I'll be there
If you can
I'll cross the sky for your love

For I have promised
Oh, to be with you tonight
And for the time that will come

Take my hand
You know I'll be there
If you can
I'll cross the sky for your love
And I understand
These winds and tides
This change of times
Won't drag you away
Hold on, and hold on tightly
Hold on, and don't let go
Of my love

The storms will pass...the storm will pass...
It won't be long now...it won't be long now...
His love will last
His love will last...forever

Take my hand
You know I'll be there
If you can
I'll cross the sky for your love
Give you what I hold dear

Hold on, hold on tightly
Hold on, hold on tightly
Rise up, rise up
With wings like eagles
You run, you run
You run and not grow weary

...Take my hand, take my hand...
Hold on, and hold on tightly
Hold on, hold on tightly
To this love...last forever
To this love...last forever

Take my hand

Author of 'Dead Aid' on Colbert

Thanks for the head's up, Rudy.

The Colbert Report	Mon - Thurs 11:30pm / 10:30c
Dambisa Moyo
www.colbertnation.com
Colbert Report Full Episodes Political Humor Health Care Protests

What say you? Does the traditional models of relief and aid work? What is the alternative?

Book: White Man's Burden - thoughts for Labor Day Weekend

I'm reading a fascinating book that has some of the same themes that run through Bob Lupton's recent writing. It's called 'White Man's Burden" by William Easterly. (I get the feeling some of you have read this already.) You can find it here. The title of the book is somewhat unfortunate, it's meant to be sarcastic.

There are some amazing points here, stuff NCUD and others at CCDA have been talking about for years. I encourage you to check it out - here's a couple of great excepts from the first chapter:

"But I and many other like-minded people keep trying, not to abandon aid to the poor, but to make sure it reaches them. Rich countries have to address the second tragedy if they are going to make any progress on the first tragedy. Otherwise, the current wave of enthusiasm for addressing world poverty will repeat the cycle of its predecessors: idealism, high expectations, disappointing results, cynical backlash."

"Let’s call the advocates of the traditional approach the Planners, while we call the agents for change in the alternative approach the Searchers."

"The Planners have the rhetorical advantage of promising great things: the end of poverty. The only thing the Planners have against them is that they gave us the second tragedy of the world’s poor. Poor people die not only because of the world’s indifference to their poverty, but also because of ineffective efforts by those who do care. To escape the cycle of tragedy, we have to be tough on the ideas of the Planners, even while we salute their goodwill."

"Yet helping the poor today requires learning from past efforts. Unfortunately, the West already has a bad track record of previous beautiful goals. A UN summit in 1990, for example, set as a goal for the year 2000 universal primary-school enrollment. (That is now planned for 2015.) A previous summit, in 1977, set 1990 as the deadline for realizing the goal of universal access to water and sanitation. (Under the Millennium Development Goals, that target is now 2015.15 Nobody was held accountable for these missed goals."

"As for the actions of the West, asking the aid agencies and development workers to attain utopian ideals makes them much worse at achieving the doable things called for by the Searchers. It also makes them much less accountable for making specific things work, as the focus on the Big Goals of the Big Plan distracts everyone’s attention from whether more children are getting twelve-cent medicines. Acknowledging that development happens mainly through homegrown efforts would liberate the agencies of the West from utopian goals, freeing up development workers to concentrate on more modest, doable steps to make poor people’s lives better."

"Idealists, activists, development workers of the world, you have nothing to lose but your utopian chains. Let’s give more power and funds to the many Searchers who are already working in development. You don’t have to immediately eliminate world poverty, bring world peace, or save the environment. You just have to do whatever you discover works with your modest resources to make a difference in the lives of poor people."

Interesting and provocative thoughts on a weekend we celebrate the working person! To me, it fits well into the CCDA redefinition of 'Redistribution' into 'giving the poor the necessary skills and resources to work their way out of poverty'.

What do you think?

Pagmill May Still Get What's Coming

Many have been following the fight betweeen the City and EPA's largest landlord, Pagemill Properties. Here is a recent news article about their financial woes. You can't mistreat the poor and get away with it. God's justice will prevail.

The Daily News 09/01/2009, Page A01

EAST PALO ALTO Page Mill may lose 1,700 units nProperties spokesman says company didn’t make $50M payment to Wells Fargo BY JESSICA BERNSTEINWAX Daily News Staff Writer A Page Mill Properties spokesman said Monday that the ownership of more than 1,700 units in East Palo Alto is in question after the company failed to make a $50 million payment to Wells Fargo Bank last month. The company and its subsidiaries couldn’t make the onetime balloon payment on Aug. 4 because of financial problems due to the economy, spokesman Sam Singer said. “They have been successfully servicing the debt on the loans for the properties, but this balloon payment — they just didn’t have that amount on hand due to the declining economy,” Singer said. He added that Page Mill is in talks with Wells Fargo and hopes to reach some resolution in the next month or so. “It’s ironic that the bank would not want to renegotiate the loan in a flexible manner given the glut of foreclosed properties on the market,” Singer said. He added that the loan has nothing to do with a nearly $70 million investment the California Public Employees’ Retirement System, or CalPERS, made in the properties in 2006. Wells Fargo did not immediately respond to an e-mail requesting comment Monday. Tenants became alarmed after seeing employees of Woodland Park Management — Page Mill’s property management company — taking down signs Monday. However, Singer said the company took down one large sign advertising its properties only because the city ordered it to do so. East Palo Alto and Page Mill are involved in a bitter legal dispute over rent increases and other issues, with about 10 active lawsuits pending between them. It wasn’t clear Monday whether Page Mill’s financial problems are connected with the recent closure of a number of swimming pools at the properties. The pools remained closed Monday afternoon with signs indicating San Mateo County health officials shut them down Aug. 21 due to lack of chlorination. At least one of the pools was bright green with algae. Tenants should not experience any changes in management as the property owners negotiate with Wells Fargo, Singer said. “For the time being, Page Mill is in control of the property and will continue to assist the tenants with any life safety and any habitation issues, any livability issues,” Singer said. “They are in the same position as many regular people, husbands and wives, boyfriends and girlfriends, who given the declining economy don’t have enough money in the bank.” E-mail Jessica Bernstein-Wax at jbernstein@dailynewsgroup.com.

Lupton on Mission Trips vs. Kingom Tourism

Hee's some very insightful words from Bob Lupton calling for truth in advertising for a $2 billion 'missions' industry...

Cheerios just got a black eye. For as long as I can remember, those little round “O”s have been a breakfast favorite of both children and adults. Kids have spelled words with them in their cereal bowls, moms have carried baggies of them in their purses for snacks, dads have shoveled down spoonfuls as they hurried out the door on the way to work. In recent years these nutritious, fiber-rich, toasted 100% whole grain oat delights have boasted an amazing ability to lower bad cholesterol. I believed them. Who wouldn’t believe in Cheerios? Then some whistle-blower or competitor cried foul and the Federal Trade Commission took a close look at these health claims. Cheerios may be nutritious but no longer can they claim to lower cholesterol. They got caught doing false advertising.
Is it buyer beware or do we want government watchdogs checking the validity of our marketing practices? Frankly, I’m glad there is some ethical standard in our society that attempts to maintain a modicum of honesty. Can you imagine living in a culture where you could believe nothing that you read or heard? What chaos! I’m disappointed in Cheerios. I wish their advertising were as wholesome as their 100% whole grain oats. But I’ll keep eating the little “O”s for breakfast. And I’ll also keep taking my cholesterol pills.
The Federal Trade Commission, an independent agency of the U.S. government, is charged with keeping American business free and fair. Included in its many responsibilities is “to prevent the dissemination of false and deceptive advertising of goods, drugs, curative devices, and cosmetics.” False claims, whether by Cheerios, car dealers or snake oil peddlers, when detected are subject to public exposure, penalties and immediate corrective action. The FTC has jurisdiction over a broad spectrum of activities but there is one realm it cannot penetrate – the church. The church-state barrier offers protection against government intrusion into the practice of organized religion. Of course, one would expect that, since the Judeo-Christian traditions are foundational to the ethical and moral codes of American society, the church would be the last institution in need of ethical policing.
Certainly the church is not without its flaws. The moral failure of church leaders is legendary. The media feeds off such scandal. Yet, in spite of the damage caused by the occasional fall of religious leaders, the church as an institution strives to preserve and protect high standards of conduct. Though its members, and too often its leaders, fail to measure up to its high ideals, the church remains the primary guardian of moral and ethical values. It may wrestle with controversial issues of the day such as gay marriage and abortion, but it does so in pursuit of a moral high ground.
But there is one area that seems to have eluded the ethical scrutiny of the church. Churches from the left to the right, high and low, share the same blind spot. Perhaps it’s because the practice is so pervasive or because the claims seem so spiritual. But if the FTC were to shine the spotlight on the marketing of missions, the expose would be, well, perhaps not damning but certainly embarrassing. Take a look at most any promotional package for a mission trip and you will get the distinct impression that lost, starving, forsaken people have their last hope riding on the willingness of Christians from the US to come and rescue them. The pictures are heart-rending – a close-up of a child’s sad face, a tin-roof shack beside an open sewage ditch, an old woman struggling under a load of firewood sticks. The emotional call goes out for the “healed, trained, empowered and Spirit filled teens to be missionaries to the world.” Such experiences promise to touch lives, change the world, and have a dramatic, life-changing impact on those who will sacrifice their comfort to go. For a week!
Can we be honest? Mission trips and service projects are important. For lots of reasons. But the truth of the matter is that dropping into a strange culture for a week or even two creates far more work for the local leadership than it’s worth, except for the money and gifts we leave. And those gifts more often than not do more long-term harm than good. As one local leader told me: “They’re turning our people into beggars.” Much of the work we do is make-work – painting a church, digging a foundation, leading a summer Bible school – all work that could and should be done by locals. “Our men need the work,” a seminary president once told me as we discussed the impact of US mission trippers in her impoverished country.
But this treatise is not about the downstream impact of mission trips. Some ambitious young reporter seeking to make a name for himself will sooner or later handle that expose. This is about the dishonesty in our marketing of these trips. Our “people-are-dying-and-you-can-save-them” rhetoric may be effective spin to lure young people (and older as well) into signing up but we know that only on rare occasions is this actually true. Yes, there are Katrinas. But the overwhelming majority of our mission trips are to places where the needs for development are far greater than for emergency assistance. And development is about enabling indigenous people to help themselves, not doing the work for them. Development is much longer term, calls for professional expertise and planning, requires lending and investing – not the sort of things that lend themselves to a typical short-term mission trip.
I am not saying that mission trips don’t have value. They do. Great value. They open up new worlds, new perspectives, new insights. They expose us to fascinating cultures, connect us with new friends, allow us to experience God at work in surprising ways, inspire us, break our hearts, build camaraderie among traveling companions. Any one of these benefits might well justify the time and expense. But isn’t it time we admit to ourselves that mission trips are essentially for our benefit, not for the benefit of the ones our marketing material portray? Would it not be more forthright if we called our junkets “insight trips” or “exchange programs”? Or how about Kingdom adventures? Do we really need to justify our journeying to exotic lands under the pretense of missionary work? Religious tourism would have much more integrity if we simply admitted that we’re off to explore God’s amazing work in the world.
I know we have to have good reason to justify spending the kind of money we do on mission trips. US churches spent well over $2 billion (that’s with a “b”) on them last year. This is not at all inconsistent with our normative pattern of church spending, however. We typically spend upwards of 95% of church budgets on ourselves anyway. So to admit that mission trip expenditures are primarily for the spiritual benefit of our members would not be out of line, that is if we feel justified spending that percentage on ourselves. But that’s a discussion for another time. Our subject here is marketing with integrity.
So how do we capture the imagination, the compassion, of a younger generation if not by appealing to the tenderness of their hearts? Come to think of it, it was the story of fatherless children that drew me into urban work nearly 40 years ago. I wanted to make a difference. That was a powerful motivator. So maybe “touching lives” and “changing the world” is appropriate rhetoric after all. It certainly appealed to my compassionate side and it played at least some part in shaping my call into ministry. The idea of sacrifice was also appealing to me, to offer myself up to a cause of great importance. I wanted my life to count. That was important. But playing to those tender Spirit-sensitivities should be done with great care. Setting up unrealistic expectations can lead to discouragement. Portraying false representations can lead to cynicism. Is it not enough to simply say “come and see” and then allow the Spirit to do the touching and surprising?
Here’s my bottom line: the Kingdom doesn’t need our hype. The Kingdom needs people who speak the truth.

- Bob Lupton

off the grid

I'll be off the grid for the next couple of week on vacation, blogcation, twittercation, email-cation, work-phone-cation and facebook-cation. see you in August!