NorCalUrban

Dr. Cheryl Sanders - 3rd St. Church of God Theme - The Urban Ministry of Jesus Mt: 9:35-38 Mission: - Teaching - Preachng - Healing If we are to follow Jesus model our urban ministry activites must come in one of these three activites. Method: - Observation. - Jesus saw the crowd. Sometimes we plan our ministries without seeing the people. - Compassion - Compassion focus our observation - Reflection - Critical thinking. - Intercession - How can we do any ministry without prayer. Jesus: YOU play to the Lord of the Harvest to send out workers into His field - Commission If you really wanted to see Jesus in DC, where would you go? The Ministry of Reconciliation - 2 Cor. 5:16-21 - We are seekign the manifistaion of the power of the word of God in our city. The church is called not to only care for the people who walk through the door, but the city in general - or we will render ourself irrelevan...

At CCDA Plenary Session: Mt 5:45 God "rains" on the just and unjust God can be good to sinners The Unjust recieve: Common grace Dispensed by Social institutions To people Supported by taxes The Just recieve Saving grace Church dispensed To people Supported by tithes However, the just must influence and impact the way that the unjust recieve grace. It's our role to monitor and control the dispensation of grace to the world. From Nyack College afterparty where Dr. Benard addressed college student's questions: How to build effective ministry Establish purpose Craft statment One word reason for sucess: persistence How did you recieve your call? Call is progressive - a process. "like a NYC block - see the end, walk towards it." Knew what he was not supposed to do. Other Great Comments: Spend your life increasing your value not looking to increase your influence. Integrity is a powerful thing. Be extra careful in your interactions. Hamilton federaist papers - bui...

Arrived at the annual CCDA conference on Wednesday night. It's been great seeing old friends and new like Jeremy Del Rio, Eric Iverson, Crissy Brooks, Noel Castellanos, Glen Peterson and many others. Each year is a homecoming. I was glad to say hello to Dr. John Perkins and update him on the credit union progress. CCDA is one of the only places where I feel truly comfortable. I'm around folks who have impacted my life and in many ways think and act the way I do or want to. It feels so much like the Kingdom of God. It's not black or white, democrat or republican, pentacostal or baptist - it's all that, and more. There are conversations I have here that I could never have in other places. Today I've talked to different people about topics such as racism, community development, board development, fund raising, a devotional life, weight loss and marriage. Last night I heard Dr. A.R. Benard from Christian Cultural Center in Brooklyn. He was excellent. Right now I'm...

The San Jose Mercury News reports on a recurring problem with East Palo Alto teens: Carlmont High School freshman Joshua Brass was kicked out of a morning advanced English class after walking in late or missing almost every class the first few weeks of school. But it's not because he skipped class or hit his alarm clock's "snooze" button too many times. It's because for the first month of school, buses to his school were as much as one hour late three-quarters of the time. Joshua and the hundreds of other East Palo Alto students who are bused 10 miles to Carlmont in Belmont have missed many hours of lectures and class work - time that's especially precious for East Palo Alto students, whose dropout rate is double the district average. "The worst part is that many kids are so conditioned that the bus comes late, they don't have a sense of urgency about getting to school," said Larry Moody, a board member of the Ravenswood City elementary school ...

Sam's playing fall ball right now for an East Palo Alto team. Here's some pics from his game last Saturday. Speaking of baseball. Good news: Yankees come back from a 14 1/2 game deficit to make it into to playoffs. Bad news: they are fighting for their lives against the Indians, who they dominated throughout the regular season. I can barely think straight right now! Facing elimination, the Yanks came back to win last night's game on a solid outing by rookie pitcher Phil Hughes after Clemens was booted. Johnny Damon came through. Whew - the Yanks finally looked like the Yanks! Redsox sweep the Angels to move on - man do I have great disdain for the Redsox. 4:30 today is another game...

Where have I been??? I'm not sure I really know! It's been a hectic few weeks of Samuel's baseball games, kicking off NCUD's youth financial literacy programs, impatiently awaiting building permits so we can open the credit union, board meetings, donor meetings, talking about Bay Area regional urban youth workers networks, dreaming about micro enterprise lending, going to Napa, battling a stubborn chest cold... All this to say I had to take a little haitais from the blogosphere. Next week I'm headed to the CCDA conference in St. Louis. I'm looking forward to seeing all my friends a collegues that I ususally see in person twice a year at CCDA and the UYWI conference. Anyway - I think I'm back to posting regularly... here are some photos from the last few weeks.