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Just a quick link to an article I found interesting.

They Love The Church But Not The Institution: parts one and two:

I am not anti-institution. I am not one of those rabid fluid-organic-anti-linear-pomo-loosy goosey-anti-establishment church people. I believe structure is necessary. Structure is good and even God-ordained. We see organization and structure from the very foundation of the church in Acts. But these structures always existed to serve God’s people in the fulfillment of their mission. Today, it seems like God’s people exist to serve the institution in the fulfillment of its mission (which is usually to become a bigger institution). Most of the curricula available to pastors on spiritual gifts and service focus on getting people to serve within their institution. Rarely does a church recruit, equip, and release saints to serve the mission outside its own immediate structure. (Imago Dei Community in Portland, Oregon, is a refreshing exception.)

This is the heart of my dilemma. I sometimes feel the energies and time I pour into the institution doesn’t translate into God’s people being more equipped for the ministry of loving God and neighbor. Could my spiritual and personal resources bear more fruit if poured into real people (the church), rather than into the institutional trough they feed from on Sundays? I’m haunted by that question.

It’s worth a read.

From the Star Tribune today: Long Way Back To Normal

Sprawled on his stomach outside a gas station in Golden Valley, Al Hixon had a police officer’s boot planted on his neck and pepper spray shot deep into his nostrils, scorching his lungs. Moments earlier, Hixon had been pouring oil into his blue Jaguar — a quick stop on what was going to be an ordinary Saturday of shuttling his daughters to birthday parties

“I couldn’t breathe and was vomiting mucus and gasping for air,” he said. “I thought I was going to die, and asked: ‘What did I do? What did I do?’”

Police were responding to a report of a robbery at a bank outlet inside a supermarket near the gas station. And Hixon — civic-minded, well-educated and black — had suddenly become a suspect.

“If this is a black thing, you’ve got the wrong black man,” Hixon remembered telling the officers. He said that one of them told him to shut up, adding: “That’s what you all say.” Except the 911 dispatcher had told officers repeatedly that the robber, who took $7, was white.

This happened, in 2005 in Golden Valley, MN. About 20 minutes from St. Paul.