If you come to church, I'll punk it out for Christ

[Fenris]

http://www.stltoday.com/stltoday/news/stories.nsf/News/St.+Louis+City+/+County/92F14162111D26B686256E3500219EB0?OpenDocument&Headline=Preacher+sports+hairdo+from+.+.+.+heaven

Standing before his flock, poised to perform one of the most sacred rituals of the church, the Rev. Ron Shrum was the picture of solemnity - if you looked past the red and blue spikes of hair surrounding his head like a halo dunked in Kool-Aid.

<snip>

Shrum, 65, was keeping his word to the church's youngsters. He promised to turn over control of his diminishing locks if more than 400 people attended Sunday School last week.

The Lord provided 409.

<snip>

The message was even more uplifting for Nathan.

"It gives me hope for when I'm older," he said. "Because when I'm 70, I can still have cool hair."

[Kamika]

1. cool

Id love that

[Loonman]

2. Guy knows something about motivation

Good for him.

[afraid_of_the_dark]

3. That's awesome...

I wish I knew a man/woman of the cloth who was that cool.

[Rabrrrrrr]

4. That's so cool!

I love it! Nice to see something uplifting once in a while.'

Punk it!

[DenverDem]

5. Our United Methodist preacher made quite a stand last Sunday.

He preached on agape love and the point was that a constitutional amendment forbidding gay marriage was hate and bigotry inspired, unconstitutional and anti-Christian. He supported the Massachusetts court decision and then played a snippet from the Matthew Shepard movie. At the end of the service he instructed us to pray for our leaders and leave the sanctuary in silence. It was one of the most powerful experiences I've ever had in church. I hope he still has a job next Sunday. We are a liberal congregation who makes a point to welcome all colors and orientations, but, man, he pulled no theological punches. He even said that the Christian Bible does not prohibit gayness (differentiating between the Hebrew Old Testament and the Christian New Testament.) That's some preaching I can totally get behind.

[CanuckAmok]

6. Dig it, man!

Is there a considerable gay/lesbian/bi percentage of your parish's population, or is it mostly progressive "breeders"?

In any case, that's so cool!

[DenverDem]

9. Not considerable, unfortunately.

We are mainly upscale young and middle aged liberal families and the remaining elderly who have been attending our little neighborhood church for decades. We make a point of advertising our progressive theology so that no one comes in and is shocked, and that has kept the congregation relatively small for an urban church. Thank God, however, that the United Methodist Church, despite Bushler's claim to be a member, is mainly still liberal, still actually "Christian", and our congregation is not in danger of being disenfranchised. There is an insidious radical right wing fundamentalist movement, ironically called "Good News", in the national UMC that is trying to move the church toward Satanic evagelicalism. Luckily our democratic structure should prevent our becoming a rethuglican PAC like the Southern Baptists.

[rucky]

7. This is how we're going to win.

very - er - inspirational!

[Az]

8. Eh, you've never been to a Unitarian Universalist church

The minister at one of the UU Churches I went to would auction off a motorcycle ride to Hell. Her husband was an ole biker. It started off as just one bike and a chase car to Hell (real city in Michigan). Eventually it grew to be a fairly decent number of church bikers riding off to Hell. One of the early dates my fiancee and I had was a ride to Hell and back. Thus the reason we know our relationship works. Its been through Hell already.