Join us tonight Wednesday Jan 31st at the Mucky Duck at 7pm for Pub Theology
Please join Rev. Hannah at Mucky Duck Wednesday Jan 31st at 7 pm., for Pub Theology! Please share this invitation with others. Mucky Duck is located at 2425 Norfolk St., about 10 minutes from Trinity!
Here are this week’s discussion topics: Tough losses, being sued for helping homeless, social media shifts, and church splits
- ICE BREAKER: How do you get up off the mat after a big disappointment? (hint hint: a devastating loss that prevented your team from going to the Superbowl, or fill in the blank)
- A pastor in Ohio faces criminal prosecution after he continued to allow unhoused people to sleep at his church without the city's permission. The city of Bryan, OH said police began to receive an influx of calls last spring regarding Dad's Place. Those calls were about concerns such as larceny, harassment and disturbing the peace.
That fall, the city learned that the church was allowing people to live inside the building. But the church is located in a district that prohibits residential use on the first floor of any building. The church felt compelled to serve the homeless in a larger way because of the severe housing shortage in the city. The pastor's lawyer says, "It's really tragic that the city is not more complimentary of this church doing church things. Instead, they have used every means of their power to go after this church." Discuss your response to this situation. Are you more sympathetic with the city or with the church?
- Zechariah 1:4 says, “Do not be like your ancestors, to whom the earlier prophets proclaimed: This is what the Lord Almighty says: ‘Turn from your evil ways and your evil practices.’ But they would not listen or pay attention to me, declares the Lord.” What, for you, are the top things our collective human forebears did that apply to this sentiment?
- Ethan Zuckerman, in his column, “Social Media Is Getting Smaller—and More Treacherous”, says that “Fragmented and focused social platforms might be good for helping you find a knitting community. But extremist groups are also using them to normalize darker content.” How have your own social media habits changed over the years? Are there platforms you have migrated away from, or migrated toward, and why? What guardrails can prevent ‘darker content,’ if any?
- Five years after allowing churches to leave with their properties if they disagreed with the direction the United Methodist Church was heading on human sexuality, the results of the split are in, and they reflect larger political patterns to a substantial degree. A new study by the Lewis Center for Church Leadership at Wesley Theological Seminary finds that the nation’s second-largest Protestant denomination lost a quarter of its total churches between 2019 and 2023. Leading the way were churches in the South — the same area of the country that tends to be the most politically conservative and Republican-leaning. Does this surprise you? Do you feel unity in the church should prevail in a situation like this? Or is it better in the long run for these churches to separate who disagree on human sexuality?