New York: Why People Stay.

I highly recommend listening to this short clip of people's reasons for staying in New York despite the difficulties. Its from the 'Only In New York' Feature of the NYTimes.

Observations on the Emerging Economic Landscape

Part of what's happening as a result of the economic downturn is a rethinking and reshaping of the financial industry landscape. Its been said that for years, the nation's top college graduates from it's top institutions have been funneling into jobs on Wall Street where they could relatively quickly expect to be making a six-figure salary working for one of the major banks or investment firms. But now, it seems that some Wall Street bankers are moving out of their high-paying jobs at the bailout banks and into positions at smaller upstart institutions.

Also, there are changing patterns visible within higher education. Students are starting to take education, government, and science careers seriously. It seems that for today's college and graduate students, the crisis has called into question the dominant career paths of the last decade. Finance appears to be on the way out. But in the new economy, which career will be king?

These are interesting issues to me first, because it has ramifications for our city. New York is the financial capital of the world. The kind of city it will be is largely determined by the kind of people who will live here, which is determined by the kind of jobs available. I'm also particularly interested in the second article as it relates to the shaping of young people's values and career paths. If our universities' top graduates (the "best and the brightest") are all ending up with jobs on Wall Street, what does it say about our collective value system as a country? How does it need to change?

A couple things...

Hey Team,
Let's keep Mark in prayer this week. He had surgery on his shoulder this past week.

Also, Newsweek's take on the great Christian decline in America. Read it here.

Easter Sunday is coming!

Ben

Public Art

Hey folks, I'm posting a link to an article on the Allelon website. I think I mentioned this as an example at our meeting. But check it out if you get the chance. This is an unimposing way of bringing Christianity into the public square, and we have all kinds of options with the size and location of our property.

Summer Outreach

Just want to put an idea "out there" for us to think about for summer ministry. I've done some preliminary investigation into church video licenses that allow us to show movie clips, full length movies, etc. For a church our size (I went up to 499 people for outreach purposes.), it looks like a license would cost us $200 for a year. With this license, we can show feature-length films on our property (i.e. the patio, parking lot, gym), from film production companies on the approved list. (Approved companies include Dreamworks, United Artists, Universal Studios, Disney, etc.) The restrictions would be that we could not charge admission and that we can't advertise the film names (or film characters or actors) to the general public.

What if we had a month of "family movie nights," once a week, on the patio, for instance? We could put up the big screen we used to use in church, against the fence, and have people sit on the patio and steps going up to the church. On the side by the park we could sell popcorn, candy and kool-aid or soda for just a little over what it costs us to buy it (we'd put any profits back into this ministry). We can use rented dvd's, per the license, and put them up on the screen with our projector. We could do this Friday nights or Saturday nights and simply advertise them as "family movie nights" and say that each week a family-friendly film will be shown on the patio at our address. We could put the film names in our bulletin (we can't post them to the general public) so people from church could invite friends or families in their neighborhood. I just talked to the CVLI license people on the phone. They said we can show movies on the patio as long as the screen doesn't face the street where just anyone can see it. The screen would have to face the church building. And $200 a year for the license isn't so bad.

Below is the link to the CVLI license page, and they have an 888 number to call with questions (don't press "2" - it's always busy - press "1" to talk to someone if you have questions about how we can use the license).

Let me know what you think!



http://www.cvli.com/main.cfm

Homeless Families/Children Increase with Economic Downturn

This is the link to a story on ABC, about Union Rescue Mission in L.A. having to set up tents inside its chapel to accommodate the many homeless families and children coming to them for help with a place to live. Unfortunately, we're seeing this across the Nation.

http://abcnews.go.com/video/playerIndex?id=7115114

Shantytowns appearing in our cities

Here's the article about the growing number of shantytown settlements in America's cities.