Wednesday Weirdness – What’s Going On With The World?

I really can’t believe I’m writing this tonight, but too many “weird” emails and stories crossed my email tonight that I’d swear there was a full moon (for the record, tonight is actually a “waning gibbous” moon with 62% illumination, according to my phone app :)).

Help Wanted – Shop Here!… Please!

First in my inbox was an email from a local Christian bookstore pleading for business.  I can’t say that I’ve ever seen any store send out an email of quite this type.  According to the email, the pre-Christmas ice-storm and the post-Christmas cold has left sales way down, and they’re looking for my help — to buy more stuff.

Now it may be true that sales are down, and that the weather has something to do with it, but it might also have something to do with a store that’s not meeting the needs of the customers and/or the prices of the competition.  I’ve ranted on this before, so I’m not going to do it again at this point, but the world of shopping has changed and it’s time the “Christian” retailers come to realize this and know they have to either compete or differentiate themselves in such as way to make we want to shop there.  Sending out emails guilting me into shopping there smacks of the January 1987 announcement from Oral Roberts which basically said “cough it up, or I die”.

Security for Clergy, but Not for Members

The second email came from a link list from a friend’s blog that cited an article on the CBC Website about United Church ministers wanting to unionize!  What?

The article wasn’t exactly clear (at least in my mind) about why the clergy wanted to unionize, but a quote from Nora Sanders, the general secretary of the United Church, said …

Church membership has declined by about 20 per cent since 2004 and that between 50 and 60 churches are closing every year. All of that is affecting job security for the clergy.

Ya think?

So let’s solve the problem by unionizing.  Never mind that churches are closing and people leaving in droves because the church isn’t meeting their needs!  Never mind that the church is more interested in socialist ideology than it is in people spiritual well-being!!  Never mind that the United Church is going through a “we don’t even believe in Christ” phase (at least I pray it’s a phase)!!!

At least the last part of the article said something I think is true…

Rev. Janet Walker doesn’t think a union is necessary, though.

“If our focus is only on ourselves, we’re missing what our ministry is,” she said. “I guess that’s why, for me, I haven’t had an interest in looking at what this union is about. I’m more focused on what we can do for others.”

At least someone is half thinking anyway.

What’s Next?

I spend all day watching people try to solve problems and am amazed that so many time people run around looking at completely the wrong areas when the reality is that the solution is much simpler if they’d just sit and work out the cause and effect more carefully.  I really didn’t expect to come home and see the same thing in my email inbox.  Oh well.  It’s just one of those days, I guess.

Anyway, when I started this, I’m sure I’d seen more weird stuff tonight, but I’m afraid I’m so upset about these first two things I can’t remember what else I was going to rant about.  Oh well.  Maybe next time.

TTFN

Squirrel?  Where?