Tres Rios Church Update

We’ve been asking you for your prayers concerning where the church has been meeting since April 2007. To review, the city closed the establishment (an old restaurant) because the neighbors complained about a lot of loud parties there (not our parties!). Two developments have taken place just recently. One is that a meeting is to take place between the church, the mayor, and the owner of the property, who is favorable to the church. The hope is that the place will be reopened for church use, and we’ll be able to move out of the circus tent and off the (rainy!) basketball court and back into the building. The other possibility that is still pending is the purchase of a former church building for sale in the downtown Tres Rios district. It is a bargain at $136,000, and would be the best long-term solution. But of course, the folks in the church would need to come up with some initial funding and financing. You can all pray about that, without a doubt, and for wisdom in these times. And please know that we so depend on your intercession and interest in this project. If we deceive ourselves into trusting in our own understanding and then pretend that God has led us, we are deceived indeed! Thanks for your prayers!

Will My Self-Interest Assure Your Well-Being?

Many of you will remember a few weeks ago, back before the recent election, when it seemed that suddenly our nation’s economic health was headed over the precipice unless some major legislation was immediately passed. Oh yeah, the bailout thing! Does that seem like distant history now? It’s funny how quickly the next news item displaces the spectacle that preceded it. It’s also interesting how normal all this can seem to us who live in this world, but are hopefully not of it. How different is the world in its general outlook on the future, anyway? I found an interesting article in USA Today (http://usatoday.com/money/economy/2008-10-23-greenspan-congress_N.htm) reporting on former Federal Reserve Board Chairman Alan Greenspan's testimony before Congress. You'll find the usual economic news and predictions, which of course seem to be the basic fuel of the economic fire in the world. But more importantly, you'll find in this article some telling statements regarding basic worldview. Consider these:

• "the crisis has exposed flaws in his thinking and in the workings of the free-market system."
• Greenspan had a "belief that banks would be more prudent in their lending practices because of the need to protect their stockholders..."
• Greenspan said he had made a mistake in "believing that banks in operating in their self-interest would be sufficient to protect their shareholders..." (emphasis mine)
• Greenspan called this "a flaw in the model that I perceived is the critical functioning structure that defines how the world works." (emphasis mine)

People do not make decisions in their personal lives or create policy for nations in a worldview vacuum. There are assumptions (e.g. that self-interest will naturally translate into interest and care for others?) that we consciously or sub-consciously refer to in all that we do. Alan Greenspan is not the only individual with influence and power in our society that actually does have a carefully considered "model...that defines how the world works." Without knowing Mr. Greenspan personally, one has very little with which to question the sincerity of those worldviews or models. But sincerity is not the most fundamental question, since sincerity is not analogous to truth. (And there is a hint about my own model, i.e. that truth exists and is of the highest value.) We do have the freedom and capacity to compare other models with truth to determine their veracity (correspondence to ultimate reality) and justness (consequences for others). We are currently privileged to be looking upon some of the real-time logical conclusions and consequences to a model like Alan Greenspan's.