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liberti easter outreach: matching donation running out of time!

/ Paul Burkhart / 1 Comment

1,000 meals + 3 wells in celebration of the resurrection

I have the privilege of being a part of an amazing movement of churches in Philadelphia, seeking to “live, speak, and serve as the very presence of Christ” for the city (I go to the Center City one).

Last year, the churches gave away 1,000 Easter meals to familes in need. This year we’re trying to raise money to give away another 1,000 and to build 3 water wells in Africa

This week (until the end of Saturday), a donor is offering to match any donations up to $5,000.

There’s still a lot more to go to meet that goal. We need people to donate money to help us serve our neighbors in this city. So please donate if you can. Any amount will help. Remember, through church history Lent has been a time the church has given much to these sorts of efforts.

If you can’t give money, and still want to serve, we not only need money for the meals and wells (we’re trying to raise $35,000), we also need people to call families that would like the meals, as well as people to pack the meals and drive them. You can volunteer (and request a basket) at the website.

For more information or to sign up for any part of this initiative, please visit:

http://www.LibertiEasterOutreach.com/

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some gospel encouragement sitting in a coffee shop…

/ Paul Burkhart / 2 Comments

I’m sitting in this coffee shop, and across the room there’s this college-aged girl walking one of her friends (apparently from another country) through the story of the Bible and the gospel.

She seems like a pro. She’s teaching her friend the structure of the Bible, answering her questions, and having her read the Scripture. She’s talking about who wrote the different books and each of their stories. They’re even hanging out in the Old Testament a bunch.

She’s not over-anxious or pushy; she’s just hanging out. The friend seems engaged and they keep laughing, sharing stories, and engaging the Scriptures.

I can’t help but feel I’m watching the Kingdom of God breaking all the more into this world–the future flooding the present.
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Please help me give my money away! [UPDATED]

/ Paul Burkhart / 28 Comments

As I said the other day while introducing Lent this year, the Lenten season has historically been marked by three practices of those that participate in it. Prayer and fasting tend to get most of the attention, but almsgiving is another component of a Lent-historically-done-well. Almsgiving is the ancient term for giving materially of your resources for the purpose of charity, love, and grace.

I have never been good at giving my money away. Tithing has always been difficult for me to practice; giving to the homeless has been hard; and I always have a good excuse why I’m not able to give to some cause greater than myself. Sure, I’ll talk about the organization or even write a blog post in support of it, but it’s hard for me to part ways with my money.

This season, however, I wanted to try an experiment to fight against this and hope and pray that God meets me in it and grows me in deep, lasting ways.

This Lent, I want to give away some of my money everyday. For Monday through Saturday (the Church considers Sundays Lent “mini-breaks”), I want to give some amount of money to a non-profit or charity that can use it to help others.

But I need help.

If you have a non-profit or charity or social justice organization that you particularly like, could you leave a comment below telling me what it is?
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Ash Wednesday & Lent 2012: how are you observing?

/ Paul Burkhart / 17 Comments

[For those in Philadelphia: the liberti church that meets in the Fishtown neighborhood is having an Ash Wednesday service tonight at 7:30. For those in Center City, I will be going to a 6pm service at the Church of the Holy Trinity right on Rittenhouse park. I hope to see you there.]

It’s Ash Wednesday!

(Here’s the prayer for this Holy Day that millions of Christians around the world are praying today–feel free to join them.)

Lent really is my favorite time of year. And Ash Wednesday is particularly special. We spend these weeks meditating on those ways in which we need God the most, and he meets us in it. As we lead up to the celebration of God dying and rising again, we meditate upon those reasons why he needed to come and do it in the first place–namely, that this world is not what it will be, and God took it in his hands to accomplish what was needed to get us there.
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I’m a one issue voter: some responses & clarifications {Pt.2}

/ Paul Burkhart / 7 Comments

“Free people, remember this maxim: We may acquire liberty, but it is never recovered if it is once lost.” –Jean-Jacques Rousseau

[UPDATE: Part 3, “specific abuses of Executive Power” is up]

Yesterday, I wrote a post about how I’ve become so burdened by the abuse of civil liberties by the Executive branch, that I have decided that this is a big enough of a deal–and the time is crucial enough–to warrant this being the one issue I use to determine who I’m voting for this Presidential election.

I knew I was brief yesterday, but wow. That post ended up causing a lot of emails, texts, comments and Facebook posts from people really cautious about what I had said, and had a lot of clarifying questions for me. Some issues will become clearer as I continue to write about this, but I wanted to address some crucial things up front.

First, some definition

As Wikipedia puts it: “Civil liberties are simply defined as individual legal and constitutional protections from entities more powerful than an individual, for example, parts of the government, other individuals, or corporations.” To put it another way, our “civil liberties” are what is clearly laid out in the Bill of Rights.
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For now, I’m a one issue voter: a President’s Day lament {Pt.1}

/ Paul Burkhart / 19 Comments

“The preservation of the sacred fire of liberty…is finally staked, on the experiment entrusted to the hands of the American people” — George Washington

[UPDATE: Part 2, “some responses & clarifications” is now posted.]

[UPDATE II: Part 3, “specific abuses of Executive Power” is up]

America’s Founding Fathers consistently referred to our country as a  “grand experiment”, and on this President’s Day–and good ol’ George’s birthday–I want to meditate on this for a little bit. What was (is?) so “experimental” about America?

There seems to be a repeated  “life-cycle” to nearly every great power in the entire history of the world. In the beginning of most of these nations, the “power” and authority is more or less decentralized (perhaps in a localized, tribal, or feudal system–or in our case, States).

Over the course of time, though, this “power” becomes increasingly centralized: first, into one part of society (usually to the wealthy and their businesses), then it gathers into one part of the government, and then it continues onward until it is ultimately centralized in one person.
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a little blog update… (on “Paul breaks” and guilt-burdens)

/ Paul Burkhart / 2 Comments

I have a really good friend, David, who loves me a lot. I’ve often considered him my “best friend” (as awkward as that strangely feels for me to say–as a guy). I’ve known him since I was in college in Richmond, Virginia. We would spend hours upon hours at our favorite Richmond coffee-shop talking theology, life, and books. We’ve been through a lot together (we even tried to keep a fledgling online magazine running for a time).

But through the course of our friendship, every once and a while, he’s had to take what he calls “Paul breaks”. These are periods ranging from a couple of weeks to a couple of months where I won’t see him or talk to him. They usually follow a season of intense hanging out where we saw each other for many hours for many days in a row.

I’m an intense guy. He’s a laid-back guy. And so, after a time like this, he’s needed a break from me.

But this wasn’t because he didn’t love me or didn’t care about our friendship, it was precisely because he loved me and wanted our friendship to continue.

And so it has been with this blog.

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This is why coffee-shops hate college students…

/ Paul Burkhart / 5 Comments

image I’m sitting in this coffee-shop, Lovers & Madmen (pictured above, on a previous day), doing paperwork. Here’s the scene:

There are these five college-aged girls that have walked in separately, all of whom know each other. They have come to study/write a paper for the same class, it seems. Their faces are currently buried in their respective laptops.

They have each taken up a table by themselves (one has taken residence at a four-person table). Two have have purchased nothing, one has brought in their own lunch (the shop tries to be very strict about their no outside food policy).

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10 Random Thoughts on the State of the Union

/ Paul Burkhart / 1 Comment

1- I really wish the entire idea of teleprompters would die a quick, painful death. I would much rather get back to the days when Presidents wrote out their speeches and had sheets in front of them during the speech that they were speaking from, rather than reading from.

2- I’ve got to admit it, Mitch Daniels did pretty darn good in his response. It was a very refreshing change in style from Paul Ryan and (oh my god) Michele Bachmann last year. It still had a definite ideological twinge, and still sounded more like a stockholders meeting where the executive must, under any circumstance, talk about how good their company is and how weak their competition is, no matter the results or numbers. But in the end, it was far more thoughtful and intelligent than anything else the Republicans have put out in the past few years, even if it was completely devoid of real, genuine suggestions on moving forward on anything.

3- The media is already painting this as a speech primarily about wealth disparity. First, he talked about a lot more than just that, and secondly, he proposed nothing more radical than letting temporary tax cuts expire for them. Wow.

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Please Oppose SOPA & PIPA in Congress. Here’s why & how.

/ Paul Burkhart / 2 Comments

UPDATE: I wrote a follow-up piece to this protest that might be worth your time if you care about this issue.

As many people know (especially in the circles that read this blog), today is the official “blackout day” for many sites in protest of two proposed bills before Congress: the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) and the Protect IP Act (PIPA). They are each supposed to be attempts to address the problems of piracy and copyright infringement on the web.

First, let’s be clear. Most of the people opposing these bills are not trying to protect piracy and illegal activities. These are problems, to be sure. Those opposing these bills are merely saying that there are much better and much more specific ways to do this. The bills, as currently written are so broad in their scope and definitions, that most any website, and most every individual who currently casually uses the internet will at some point be guilty of the felonies spoken to in this bill. I am not exaggerating. I am not talking in extremes to scare people. (It almost makes one think the bills were intentionally written that way. They are also weighed down with a lot of political corruption.)

This is serious. Why?

Supporters of the bill are painting those that oppose it as merely reacting to the general idea of the bills rather than the “substance” of them. This is false. You may have heard that that the sponsors of the bill recently struck the “DNS blocking” provisions from the bills. This is not even close to the scariest part of the legislation. It is the very substance of it that is the scariest. I would really beg each of you to read the following few articles to get educated on the specifics of these bills, what’s wrong with them, and what to do something about it.

What to do?

Sign Petitions

Write your Representatives in Congress

If you go to the Wikipedia (English) homepage, for just today, you’ll see it’s blacked out in protest of the bills. If you input your zip code, you can find your representatives in Congress and convenient links to email or call them. Below, you will find the email I wrote to my Representatives and Senators (my senators’ emails are currently down due to heavy traffic. I’m hoping that’s a good sign). Feel free to use it as a template if you like. If you get this when Wikipedia’s tool is not available, you can also find your representatives at the House website and the Senate website. Please act!
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the political animal in me is stirring…

/ Paul Burkhart / 6 Comments

Here we go again. This usually happens every four years in the summer after the major Party Conventions, and the full-blown presidential campaign is in full swing. This time, though, it’s happening about six-months early in January (I wrote about this quadrennial event back in ’08).

And so, I just wanted to give everyone a quick heads-up that my political self is rousing from his hibernation, and I tell you what–he’s more passionate and (this is new!) clear-headed about what he thinks and why.

(Attached to this post, you can see a picture of my inner “political animal”. He’s been around for a while now. Thanks, Dad.)

So expect a shift in the content of this blog. Yes, there will still be plenty of pastoral and theological musings, but you’ll also see an increasing number of political posts on this site in the coming weeks and months (hey, maybe I can try and start writing for Patrol Magazine again!).

I feel like I’m  finally settling into a cohesive and articulate (and defensible) set of beliefs concerning politics-influenced-by-faith: where we’re off the mark, we’re we need to be, and how to get there. So, expect some ideological posts on that stuff, but also expect some commentary on the unfolding politics as they move forward toward November.
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The blog in review: 2011

/ Paul Burkhart / 1 Comment

This is a little set of statistics that WordPress sent me concerning this blog (you can see last year’s here). I want to thank all of you for a great year of writing, engaging, and exploring. I look forward to seeing what 2012 brings.

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The stats helper monkeys at WordPress.com mulled over how this blog did in 2011, and here’s a high level summary of its overall blog health:

Crunchy numbers

The concert hall at the Sydney Opera House holds 2,700 people. This blog was viewed about 21,000 times in 2011. If it were a concert at Sydney Opera House, it would take about 8 sold-out performances for that many people to see it.

In 2011, there were 88 new posts, growing the total archive of this blog to 388 posts. There were 129 pictures uploaded, taking up a total of 58mb. That’s about 2 pictures per week.

The busiest day of the year was March 8th with 240 views. The most popular post that day was Welcome to the new blog design!.
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A Shout-Out to My Mennonite Pacifists Out There…

/ Paul Burkhart / 12 Comments

Being in Pennsylvania, I meet lots of people that either consider themselves Mennonite, or at least were raised that way. One of the most well-known aspects of Mennonite belief is their unwavering commitment to pacifism (or, as a commenter corrected me below, the Mennonite “doctrine of nonresistance”). Hanging out with one of my new raised-Mennonite friends the other evening, she showed me (with pride) the above picture that has hung in one of their family’s houses for a long time. It struck me as beautiful as well, especially the second quote. Here it is, nicely typed out for optimal readability and convenience:

“It is our fixed principle rather than take up Arms to defend our King, our Country, or our Selves, to suffer all that is dear to be rent from us, even Life itself, and this we think not out of Contempt to Authority, but that herein we act agreeable to what we think is the Mind and Will of our Lord Jesus.”

–Thirteen Mennonite Ministers of Pennsylvania, May 15, 1755

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