NorCalUrban

I mentioned about a young lady who was murdered last Monday. Seema Singh was a former student at BCM. The San Jose Merc reported further about her life: "Singh was driving alone in a Honda Accord about 7 p.m. Monday near Westminster Avenue at Alberni Street when she was shot once in the left temple, police said. The gunshot caused her to career into a power pole. No one knows much about the shooting, but Prasad said he spoke with a mutual friend the night Singh died and learned that she left home about 7 p.m. and was headed to the home of a friend named Ronald. She never made it. For Singh, it was a tragic ending to a difficult life. She had a history of family troubles and she had left high school early. But Prasad said Singh had begun to turn things around, studying at a college and working security at a San Mateo mall. Singh's father died several years ago and Singh lived with her mother and sister in a home in East Palo Alto, which Prasad said was in a ``scary-ish neighbo...

Doug Fort speaking about the rally.

The San Mateo County Times has a good article about some of the recent incidents in EPA, especially regarding the two young men who were killed last Sunday.

Blogger "The Conserative Christian" takes exception to my quoting Brian McLaren in an earlier post. However, I agree with him that I can be sometimes quite nutty. Although I'm flattered - if he would have read right he would have saw that I was quoting McLaren. Let's give credit when credit is due. In the end, I'm glad we're all talking about this issue. Right on, Mr. McLaren for stirring the pot.

Just found out that the young woman who was murdered was in a small group my wife led a few years ago at BCM. The BCM staff is dealing with the loss. A few years ago our summer team had an appropriate slogan, "Ministry is not a game!" How true that feels right now. The San Francisco Chronicle reported: "East Palo Alto police today were still trying to figure out why someone shot an 18-year-old woman in the head as she drove her car. Seema Singh, 18, of East Palo Alto, was found dead behind the wheel of her Honda Accord with a single gunshot wound to her left temple after the vehicle crashed into a utility pole Monday night, police said. Singh was about a half-mile from her home, Lt. Tom Alipio said. The woman was believed to have been alone in the car, and police have no suspects or motive in the killing, Alipio said. "To tell you the truth, I can't make heads or tails of it," Alipio said. "There was nothing to indicate that she would be involved in an...

At 8:00 pm I received another call last night. Chaplains were called out to the scene of another homicide, another young person killed. Pastor Bains and I responded, then called two other chaplains out. Honestly - we both needed a break from from telling parents about the death of their children. The Palo Alto Daily News reported on the incident: As police continued to search for the suspects who shot and killed two East Palo Alto teenagers over the weekend, a young woman was fatally shot while driving in that city Monday evening. East Palo Alto police Lt. Tom Alipio said that around 7 p.m. Monday, officers responded to a crash at Westminster Avenue and Alberni Street, the same intersection where a 16-year-old boy was fatally shot by police last month. The officers found an 18-year-old woman behind the wheel of a Honda Accord, who appeared to have been injured in the crash, Alipio said. However, when medical personnel began to administer first aid to the young woman, they discovered s...

As previously written, the new year has started off violent in our community. In the last four weeks we've had four homicides and about 30 shootings, many with casualties. One unique thing about the current wave, there is no real pattern. It's all our major groups fighting amongst themselves for various reasons. We've had feuds between the Tongans and Samoans, African American gangs and Latinos with the eternal feud between the Nortenos and Surenos. Our Chief of Police, Ron Davis, has been working on all fronts to stem the violence. Last Friday night he called together the community of faith to talk and pray about the violence. Our church hosted the event (I took a rather poor picture with my treo). I was 'Godly proud' of our church for hosting the event. It ended with us praying for the leaders of the youth ministry For Youth By Youth (FYBY) since they are on the front lines with the kids. Many of those who have lost their lives have been loosly associated with FYB...

- Showed up to our offices yesterday to find the electricity had been turned off. Turns out PG&E shut the wrong meter off. Had to juggle the property manager, PG&E and a job interview at the same time. I kept telling our candidate, "Well - this is what it can be like around here!" - Our pastor's wife, Cheryl, found an awesome donation for us. She, single handedly, got us about $30k in 'in-kind' donations for the credit union. Stuff included two teller stations, two loan officer cubicles and, for the coup de gras, two ATM machines! The ATMs alone are a HUGE find. Cheryl made contact with a local credit union branch that was closing. - EPA has been having a tough couple of months. In the last 9 days we've had 11 shootings making 25 in the last month with three homicides. All of this in a city that is only 2.5 square miles. The Chief of Police has called an emergency community meeting for tonight with the community of faith. Almost every day I talk to som...

VERY interesting article about storefront Pentecostal churches and youth ministry. The article is neither supportive or critical, but speaks to the traditional methods that small churches use to reach urban kids, namely good efforts like teaching values and encouraging kids and negative ones like focusing on emotionalism and legalism. Much here seems very familiar. As Pentecostalism advances across the world, winning converts faster than any other Christian denomination and siphoning believers from more established faiths, it is also suffering its own slow leak: young people who are falling away from the faith. Mainline Christian churches have grappled with the problem for years. And recently, evangelical leaders in the United States sounded an alarm over “an epidemic of young people leaving.” But the loss is doubly distressing for Pentecostals, evangelical Christians who can be especially zealous in seeking new members and rejecting the secular culture they feel is luring adolescents ...

Here is an excerpt from Guy Kawasaki's blog. It's a good post of an interview of a new book called "The Sticking Point". Ever wonder why some ideas 'stick' and others don't? Question: What separates ideas that stick from those that don’t? Answer: We spent lots of time researching sticky ideas—ideas that people understand, remember, and that change the way people think or behave. The ideas we studied ranged from the ludicrous to the profound, from urban legends (no, there is no kidney theft ring) to great scientific theories (yes, the land we walk around on does ride on giant tectonic plates and when they collide they cause mountain ranges and earthquakes). We found there were six principles (“SUCCES”) that link sticky ideas of all kinds. Sticky ideas won’t always have all six, but the more, the merrier. For example, JFK’s idea to “put a man on the moon in a decade” had all six of them: 1. Simple A single, clear mission. 2. Unexpected A man on the ...

What a week! It's been like drinking from a fire hose! Here's some updates: - We're really making a push to see our credit union started by the summer. There are some major hurdles to jump and lots of negotiation going on. Word on the street is that we may have competition from a major bank coming to the city by the end of the summer and my goal is to beat them here. They won't go after the same market as us, the working poor to working class, but competition is competition. Please pray that God will continue to guide our discussions. This is a critical time for us so we're pressing hard. - Locally, there has been a rash of homicides in the Pacific Islander community, starting with a police involved shooting of a young 16 year old man. For a number of reasons it's grown to be a Tongan / Samoan feud. It's been a tragic time with the murder of a young woman and retaliation on family member's houses. As a local pastor and police chaplain I've been bless...

Being from New Jersey I resent any implication that my home state farted. I don't want to hear anything from New Yorkers. Like your city never stinks???!! Who cut the cheese? New Jersey, apparently. Across the length and breadth of Manhattan, people were asking, "What's that smell?" after a pungent odor like natural gas or rotten eggs blanketed the borough and northern New Jersey for three hours yesterday morning. By evening, the answer seemed to be a stinky gas emitted by a New Jersey swamp or marsh. "That's where our noses and instruments tell us" the smell was coming from, said Charles Sturcken, a spokesman for the city Department of Environmental Protection. Find the entire article here.

The Raconteurs, Broken Boy Soldier (Can Jack White save rock and roll?) Neko Case, Fox Confessor Brings the Flood (Reincarnated Patsy Cline in Alt-Country clothes) Fred Hammond, Something Bout Love (Freshest gospel voice sine Andre Crouch) Bobby Bare Jr., The Longest Meow (Does his daddy proud.)

There is an excellant series of posts that Mclaren did on the how the church should deal with homosexuals. Being from the San Francisco area - this is a pressing issue. Even in the traditional African American church there are many who are on the 'down low. It's an important topic that we must consider. I'm glad Mclaren is willing to ask these questions. Now, to be sure, sin is sin. But why do we classify some sins as more evil than others? Frankly, many of us don't know what we should think about homosexuality. We've heard all sides but no position has yet won our confidence so that we can say "it seems good to the Holy Spirit and us." That alienates us from both the liberals and conservatives who seem to know exactly what we should think. Even if we are convinced that all homosexual behavior is always sinful, we still want to treat gay and lesbian people with more dignity, gentleness, and respect than our colleagues do. If we think that there may actuall...

(wrote on 1/3/07) Wow, 2007. As I write this I’m heading home from five days in Florida. Last Friday I returnedhome to preside over a funeral for a very close family friend, Fred Sielkop. Fred was a kind, gentle man who was my father’s closest friend and ministry partner for over 30 years. They first met in the renewal movement called ‘Catholic Charismatic’ when there was an openness to the Holy Spirit that grew in the Catholic church. Fred and my father served together in and out of the Catholic church since the early 1970’s. Our families grew close over the years. I have many memories of the Seilkop family and their old house on New York avenue in Deland. The time went well. My dad, being ‘old school’ isn’t showing much emotion - there is simply a anxiousness and restlessness that I can see in him (even more than ususal - no one would classify the Liotti’s as relaxed!) Being at home is always bittersweet. I love seeing my family and especially my sister and her kids. It was also goo...