Kruse Kronicle

Why Our Poverty Measure Misleads

RealClearMarkets: Why Our Poverty Measure Misleads  Robert Samuelson

... Despite poverty's messiness, we've tended to measure progress against it by a single statistic, the federal poverty line. It was originally designed in the early 1960s by Mollie Orshansky, an analyst at the Social Security Administration, and became part of Lyndon Johnson's War on Poverty. She took the Agriculture Department's estimated cost for a bare-bones -- but adequate -- diet and multiplied it by three. That figure is adjusted annually for inflation. In 2008, the poverty threshold was $21,834 for a four-member family with two children under 18.

By this measure, we haven't made much progress. Except for recessions, when the poverty rate can rise to 15 percent, it has stayed in a narrow range for decades. In 2007 -- the peak of the last business cycle -- the poverty rate was 12.5 percent; one out of eight Americans was "poor." In 1969, another business cycle peak, the poverty rate was 12.1 percent. But the apparent lack of progress is misleading for two reasons.

First, it ignores immigration, which has increased reported poverty. Many immigrants are poor and low-skilled. From 1989 to 2007, about three-quarters of the increase in the poverty population occurred among Hispanics -- mostly immigrants, their children and grandchildren. The poverty rate for blacks fell during this period, though it was still much too high (24.5 percent in 2007). Poverty "experts" don't dwell on immigration, because it implies that more restrictive policies might reduce U.S. poverty.

Second, the poor's material well-being has improved. The official poverty measure obscures this by counting only pre-tax cash income and ignoring other sources of support. These include the earned-income tax credit (a rebate to low-income workers), food stamps, health insurance (Medicaid), and housing and energy subsidies. Spending by poor households from all sources may be double their reported income, reports a study by Nicholas Eberstadt of the American Enterprise Institute. Although many poor live hand-to-mouth, they've participated in rising living standards. In 2005, 91 percent had microwaves, 79 percent air conditioning and 48 percent cellphones. ...

... The "supplemental measure" ties the poverty threshold to what the poorest third of Americans spend on food, housing, clothes and utilities. The actual threshold -- not yet calculated -- will almost certainly be higher than today's poverty line. Moreover, the new definition has strange consequences. Suppose that all Americans doubled their incomes tomorrow, and suppose that their spending on food, clothing, housing and utilities also doubled. That would seem to signify less poverty -- but not by the new poverty measure. It wouldn't decline, because the poverty threshold would go up as spending went up. Many Americans would find this weird: People get richer but "poverty" stays stuck.

What produces this outcome is a different view of poverty. The present concept is an absolute one: The poverty threshold reflects the amount estimated to meet basic needs. By contrast, the supplemental measure embraces a relative notion of poverty: People are automatically poor if they're a given distance from the top, even if their incomes are increasing. The idea is that they suffer psychological deprivation by being far outside the mainstream. The math of this relative definition makes it hard for people at the bottom ever to escape "poverty."

The new indicator is a "propaganda device" to promote income redistribution by showing that poverty is stubborn or increasing, says the Heritage Foundation's Robert Rector. ...

Faith in the System

Time: Faith in the System

Three years ago, James Lansberry faced the kind of health care crisis that has become all too common in the U.S. Less than two weeks after his wife Theresa gave birth to their sixth child, she had to rush back to the hospital to have her appendix removed before it burst. Her medical bills eventually totaled more than $23,000. It would have been a stressful time for any family — but especially for those who, like the Lansberrys, do not have health insurance.

But James, the sole breadwinner for his Peoria, Ill., family, didn't lose sleep over the cost of his wife's procedure and hospital stay. The Lansberrys belong to what is called a health-sharing ministry, an organization whose Christian members pay one another's medical costs. Within a few weeks of Theresa's appendectomy, the family received checks (and get-well cards) from more than 100 people in 21 states, covering the medical costs and offering prayers for her recovery. "We didn't worry about the bills," says James. "God took care of us." (See the top 10 religion stories of 2009.)

Organized Christian health-sharing arrangements, which first cropped up in the early 1980s, have become an alternative to traditional health insurance for an estimated 100,000 Americans. The groups range from small, community-based collectives to large, multistate organizations like Samaritan Ministries International and Medi-Share, which each month direct the flow of millions of dollars from individuals to fellow members with eligible health care expenses. The bill-sharing premise is based on biblical principles in verses like Hebrews 13: 16: "Do not forget to do good and to share with others."

But there's also a significant financial appeal. Lansberry and his wife have seven children, but as Samaritan members, they pay just $320 a month in "shares," the ministry equivalent of premiums. At a time when the average monthly health-insurance cost for a family of four is slightly more than $1,500, the savings can be substantial.

Is there a catch? Yes, there are several. For starters, Samaritan and other health ministries will turn down applicants if they're too obese. (Samaritan's main rival, Medi-Share, accepts people with certain chronic health problems but only if they agree to work with a "health coach.") If accepted, members must attend church regularly — and have that attendance verified by a pastor — and abstain from tobacco use in order to maintain their status.

At Samaritan, members generally have to pay out of pocket for preventive care like wellness checkups for children and routine tests like mammograms. Other ministries pay only when a bill is more than $300 and only if it falls within guidelines voted on by the ministry's members. For members of Medi-Share, that means a second bout with breast cancer will be deemed ineligible if it occurs within 15 years of the first. Unwed women's maternity care is covered only in rape cases. ...

The Perfect Crime

This ad is two years old but I just recently saw it. I love it!

Climate Fears Turn to Doubts Among Britons

New York Times: Climate Fears Turn to Doubts Among Britons

LONDON — Last month hundreds of environmental activists crammed into an auditorium here to ponder an anguished question: If the scientific consensus on climate change has not changed, why have so many people turned away from the idea that human activity is warming the planet?

Nowhere has this shift in public opinion been more striking than in Britain, where climate change was until this year such a popular priority that in 2008 Parliament enshrined targets for emissions cuts as national law. But since then, the country has evolved into a home base for a thriving group of climate skeptics who have dominated news reports in recent months, apparently convincing many that the threat of warming is vastly exaggerated.

A survey in February by the BBC found that only 26 percent of Britons believed that “climate change is happening and is now established as largely manmade,” down from 41 percent in November 2009. A poll conducted for the German magazine Der Spiegel found that 42 percent of Germans feared global warming, down from 62 percent four years earlier.

And London’s Science Museum recently announced that a permanent exhibit scheduled to open later this year would be called the Climate Science Gallery — not the Climate Change Gallery as had previously been planned.

“Before, I thought, ‘Oh my God, this climate change problem is just dreadful,’ ” said Jillian Leddra, 50, a musician who was shopping in London on a recent lunch hour. “But now I have my doubts, and I’m wondering if it’s been overhyped.” ...

... Scientists have meanwhile awakened to the public’s misgivings and are increasingly fighting back. An editorial in the prestigious journal Nature said climate deniers were using “every means at their disposal to undermine science and scientists” and urged scientists to counterattack. Scientists in France, the Netherlands and the United States have signed open letters affirming their trust in climate change evidence, including one published on May 7 in the journal Science. ...

Two Theories of Change

New York Times:  Two Theories of Change  David Brooks

... What Descartes was doing for knowledge, others would do for politics: sweep away the old precedents and write new constitutions based on reason. This was the aim of the French Revolution.

But there wasn’t just one Enlightenment, headquartered in France. There was another, headquartered in Scotland and Britain and led by David Hume, Adam Smith and Edmund Burke. As Gertrude Himmelfarb wrote in her 2004 book, “The Roads to Modernity,” if the members of the French Enlightenment focused on the power of reason, members of the British Enlightenment emphasized its limits.

They put more emphasis on our sentiments. People are born with natural desires to be admired and to be worthy of admiration. They are born with moral emotions, a sense of fair play and benevolence. They are also born with darker passions, like self-love and tribalism, which mar rationalist enterprises. We are emotional creatures first and foremost, and politics should not forget that.

These two views of human nature produced different attitudes toward political change, articulated most brilliantly by Thomas Paine and Edmund Burke. Their views are the subject of a superb dissertation by Yuval Levin at the University of Chicago called “The Great Law of Change.”  ...

... We Americans have never figured out whether we are children of the French or the British Enlightenment. Was our founding a radical departure or an act of preservation? This was a bone of contention between Jefferson and Hamilton, and it’s a bone of contention today, both between parties and within each one.

Today, if you look around American politics you see self-described conservative radicals who seek to sweep away 100 years of history and return government to its preindustrial role. You see self-confident Democratic technocrats who have tremendous faith in the power of government officials to use reason to control and reorganize complex systems. You see polemicists of the left and right practicing a highly abstract and ideological Jacobin style of politics.

The children of the British Enlightenment are in retreat. Yet there is the stubborn fact of human nature. The Scots were right, and the French were wrong. And out of that truth grows a style of change, a style that emphasizes modesty, gradualism and balance.

Poor People Behaving Badly?

Aid Watch: Poor People Behaving Badly?

... A growing body of work, including the Duflo and Banerjee study and the recent book Portfolios of the Poor, contributes to understanding the complex economic lives of the poor and chips away at misconceptions about poor people having “nothing,” living hand-to mouth, and immediately spending every penny they receive on food and other absolute basic necessities.

Is it really such a big surprise that the poor also want recreation? That the poor have a life? Including some of the same vices that the rich have?

The larger issue is explaining the seeming irrationality of, for example, Mr. Obamza’s decision to spend his evenings in a bar while his children sleep without a mosquito net. Could it be that outsiders make simplistic assumptions about the perceived value of bed nets to people like Mr. Obamza?

For example, a chapter by Michael Kremer and Alaka Holla in the book What Works in Development shows that demand for bed nets (and other life saving technologies like de-worming drugs or water disinfectants) collapses once you change from giving them away for free to charging even a tiny amount. Does this show that some parents don’t think saving their child’s life is worth spending even a very small amount of money? Maybe, but more likely it indicates that there is something wrong with our assumptions, as Kremer and Holla explore.

Perhaps it is that parents do not really believe in the efficacy of nets, drugs, or water purification tablets. Going even further than Kremer and Holla, we speculate that belief in the scientific theories underlying all these products is not so easy to achieve in a poor society. Rich people believe in scientific medicine not only based on their education, but also because they see it working for themselves and everyone around them. Scientific medicine is a harder sell in a society that has never had a well-functioning health system to demonstrate its benefits.

Researchers are testing these and many other possible explanations (here the randomized controlled trials are actually more useful, compared to blanket statements like “nets work”). We are just as worried about stereotyping the poor as anyone else, but we’re also glad the previous taboo is falling. The efficacy of aid interventions depends very much on understanding the behavior of the poor.

Kansas City, KS, School Board Requires Biblical Armageddon Must be Taught Alongside Global Warming

Oh my. This one definitely got some chortles out of me. And to think it is happening right here in Kansas City, KS. Hysterical!
Christian Groups: Biblical Armageddon Must Be Taught Alongside Global Warming

The Second Creation Story and “Atrahasis”

Science and the Sacred: The Second Creation Story and “Atrahasis”  Peter Enns

Last week we looked at Genesis 1 and Enuma Elish. Another very important discovery in Ashurbanipal’s library is the story commonly referred to as the Atrahasis Epic. Though in the nineteenth century only fragments of the story were found, a more complete version was found in 1965, dated to the seventeenth century B.C.

Atrahasis is the name of the Noah-like figure in this story and it means “exceedingly wise.” The Atrahasis Epic and another ancient story called the Gilgamesh Epic overlap a lot with the biblical flood story. We will get to that issue in a future post. Atrahasis, however, is more than just a flood story. It is a story of the origins of the gods (theogony) and of the cosmos (cosmogony).

Atrahasis is important to biblical scholars because of it similarity to Genesis 2-9. Both stories share a similar storyline: creation, population growth and rebellion, flood. They also share some important details within that storyline.

The degree of overlap between the stories suggests to some scholars that Genesis 2-9 may be an Israelite version of Atrahasis, although it is best not to be dogmatic about that. It is very clear, however, that there is a lot of conceptual overlap between them. ...

... It goes without saying that there are clear differences between the stories (which we will see in more detail when we get to the flood story). But, just as we saw last week with Genesis 1 and Enuma Elish, (1) the differences only stand out because of the similarities, (2) the differences do not justify minimizing the similarities.

As we saw with Genesis 1 and Enuma Elish, Genesis 2-9 and Atrahasis breathe the same air. They share ancient Mesopotamian ways of talking about origins. This is a clear indication that the second creation story does not speak to contemporary science. Hence, (1) it cannot and should not be harmonized with contemporary science, (2) it should not control what can be concluded from scientific investigation. ...

What we teach our children about race

Miami Herald: What we teach our children about race  Leonard Pitts

Last week, Soledad O'Brien made a young mother cry.

It came in the midst of a special series, "Black Or White: Kids on Race'' on CNN's Anderson Cooper 360. The series was based on a new version of the famous "doll tests'' pioneered by husband and wife psychologists Kenneth and Mamie Clark in the 1930s and '40s, and recreated in 2005 by Kiri Davis, a teenage filmmaker.

In the tests administered by the Clarks and Davis, black children were presented two dolls, identical in appearance except that one was dark and the other, light.

Asked which doll was bad, stupid, or ugly, most of the black kids picked the black doll. Asked which was good, smart, or pretty, they chose the white one.

CNN's study was similar, except that children were presented with pictures, not actual dolls, and the images ran a color gamut from very light to very dark. One other difference: CNN tested white children along with black ones.

Which is how this little five-year-old white girl in Georgia came to be sitting at a table facing an unseen researcher as her mother sat with O'Brien and watched on video. Asked to point out the "good child," she touched one of the lighter skinned figures. Why is that the good child, she was asked. "Because I think she looks like me," the little girl said.

Asked to point out the "bad child," she touched the darkest image on the paper. And why is that the bad child? ‘‘Because she's a lot darker," the little girl said.

And watching, her mother softly wept.

Your heart broke for her, because you just knew she never saw that coming. Your heart broke because you just knew she had bought into the myth that children are not soiled by the prejudices that stain their elders. Your heart broke, because how many times have you heard it said that, since they are growing up in the era of Oprah and Obama, our children will live beyond the belief that character is a function of color.

But children are not idiots. They hear us and see us. ...

Why Johnny Can't Read the Bible

Christianity Today: Why Johnny Can't Read the Bible

Most Americans—including Scripture-loving evangelicals—cannot name the disciples, the Ten Commandments, or the first book of the Bible. But that's not our biggest biblical illiteracy problem.

 Americans love their Bibles. So much so that they keep them in pristine, unopened condition. Or, as George Gallup Jr. and Jim Castelli said in a widely quoted survey finding, "Americans revere the Bible but, by and large, they don't read it."

Anecdotes abound. Time magazine observed in a 2007 cover story that only half of U.S. adults could name one of the four Gospels. Fewer than half could identify Genesis as the Bible's first book. Jay Leno and Stephen Colbert have made sport of Americans' inability to name the Ten Commandments—even among members of Congress who have pushed to have them posted publicly.

Perhaps the first step toward improved Bible literacy is admitting we have a problem. A 2005 study by the Barna Group asked American Christians to rate their spiritual maturity based on activities such as worship, service, and evangelism. Christians offered the harshest evaluation of their Bible knowledge, with 25 percent calling themselves not too mature or not at all mature. ...

... But pastors, professors, and others committed to teaching the Bible have identified a problem far larger than fluency with basic characters and stories. It's one thing to recognize the reference to the Promised Land in a Martin Luther King Jr. speech. It's another to recognize biblical references within the Bible itself. Even weekly churchgoers who know the names and places struggle to put it all together and understand the Bible as a single story of redemption. ...

... The rise of historical criticism in the 19th century was largely responsible for downplaying the Bible's overarching metanarrative, says Thornbury, dean of the School of Christian Studies at Union University. But evangelicals have done their part as well. Scholars' narrow specialization in one aspect of the Old or New Testament can trickle down from seminaries to pastors, then to local churches.

As a result, sermons about King David often amount to little more than moral biography: David committed adultery and murder, and we shouldn't. Or pastors may search for allegorical meaning behind the Old Testament figures, matching a sermon point on courage to each of David's five smooth stones. In either case, churchgoers do not see how David contributes to the messianic pattern fulfilled in Christ. ...

The article goes on to discuss some ways Christians are trying to address the problem. I once enrolled ina  seminary class to learn more about the New Testament but frankly it was all Greek to me. :-)

Here is a quiz from the end of the article:

A Different Kind of Bible Literacy Quiz
So you can name the 12 disciples, the 10 Commandments, and the 7 days of Creation. But do you know how they fit together?

1. What lesson from the life of Jonah did Jesus talk about?
(a) Jonah learned to obey God, because disobedience is punished.
(b) God forgives the repentant as he forgave Nineveh.
(c) God rescues us as he rescued Jonah when he was cast overboard.
(d) Jonah spent three days in the fish as Jesus would spend three days in the tomb.
(e) People are as wicked today as they were in ancient Nineveh.

2. Melchizedek, king of Salem, met with which biblical figure? How is Jesus like Melchizedek?

3. Besides Jesus, name five biblical figures who rose from the dead.How were these incidents different from Jesus' resurrection?

4. Name four biblical instances where the number 40 is important.

5. Whose faithfulness is contrasted with the Israelites' grumbling in Exodus 16-18?

6. Name the four women besides Mary who are included in Jesus' genealogy (Matt. 1:1-17), and describe their circumstances.

7. "No prophet is accepted in his hometown," Jesus said after his inaugural sermon (Luke 4:14-30). He then gave examples from the lives of two other prophets. What were they?

See the end of the article for the answers.

Living in denial: Why sensible people reject the truth

New Scientist: Living in denial: Why sensible people reject the truth

HEARD the latest? The swine flu pandemic was a hoax: scientists, governments and the World Health Organization cooked it up in a vast conspiracy so that vaccine companies could make money.

Never mind that the flu fulfilled every scientific condition for a pandemic, that thousands died, or that declaring a pandemic didn't provide huge scope for profiteering. A group of obscure European politicians concocted this conspiracy theory, and it is now doing the rounds even in educated circles.

This depressing tale is the latest incarnation of denialism, the systematic rejection of a body of science in favour of make-believe. There's a lot of it about, attacking evolution, global warming, tobacco research, HIV, vaccines - and now, it seems, flu. But why does it happen? What motivates people to retreat from the real world into denial?

Here's a hypothesis: denial is largely a product of the way normal people think. Most denialists are simply ordinary people doing what they believe is right. If this seems discouraging, take heart. There are good reasons for thinking that denialism can be tackled by condemning it a little less and understanding it a little more. ...

... All denialisms appear to be attempts like this to regain a sense of agency over uncaring nature: blaming autism on vaccines rather than an unknown natural cause, insisting that humans were made by divine plan, rejecting the idea that actions we thought were okay, such as smoking and burning coal, have turned out to be dangerous.

This is not necessarily malicious, or even explicitly anti-science. Indeed, the alternative explanations are usually portrayed as scientific. Nor is it willfully dishonest. It only requires people to think the way most people do: in terms of anecdote, emotion and cognitive short cuts. Denialist explanations may be couched in sciency language, but they rest on anecdotal evidence and the emotional appeal of regaining control. ...

I think she over states her case in places but I think there is a lot of truth in the article.

The Net Worth of the U.S. Presidents: Washington to Obama

The Atlantic: The Net Worth of the U.S. Presidents: Washington to Obama

Having examined the finances of all 43 presidents (yes, 43; remember, Cleveland was president twice), we  calculated the net worth figures for each in 2010 dollars. Because a number of presidents, particularly in the early 19th Century, made and lost huge fortunes in a matter of a few years, the number for each man is based on his net worth at its peak. ...

... The fortunes of American presidents are tied to the economy in the eras in which they lived. For the first 75 years after Washington's election, presidents generally made money on land, crops, and commodity speculation. A president who owned hundreds or thousands of acres could lose most or all of his property after a few years of poor crop yields. Wealthy Americans occasionally lost all of their money through land speculation--leveraging the value of one piece of land to buy additional property. Since there was no reliable national banking system and almost no liquidity in the value of private companies, land was the asset likely to provide the greatest yield, if the property yielded enough to support the costs of operating the farm or plantation. ...

... The sharp fluctuations in the fortunes of the first 14 presidents were a result of the economic times.

Beginning with Millard Fillmore in 1850, the financial history of the presidency entered a new era. Most presidents were lawyers who spent years in public service. They rarely amassed large fortunes and their incomes were often almost entirely from their salaries. From Fillmore to Garfield, these American presidents were distinctly middle class. These men often retired without the money to support themselves in a fashion anywhere close to the one that they had as president. Buchanan, Lincoln, Johnson, Grant, Hayes, and Garfield had almost no net worth at all.

The rise of inherited wealth in the early 20th Century contributed to the fortunes of many presidents, including Theodore Roosevelt, Franklin D. Roosevelt, John F. Kennedy, and both of the Bushes. The other significant change to the economy was the advent of large professionally organized corporations. These corporations produced much of the oil, mining, financial, and railroad fortunes amassed at the end of the 19th Century and the beginning of the 20th. The Kennedys were wealthy because of the financial empire built by Joseph Kennedy. Herbert Hoover made millions of dollars as the owner of mining companies. ...

Do two rights make a wrong?

Greg Mankiw: Do two rights make a wrong?

Users of my favorite textbook know that it includes, in Chapter 7, a case study on whether kidneys should be traded in a market.  Today's NY Times has a related article.

The paper's so-called "Ethicist" is dealing with this situation:

1. Person A receives a kidney transplant as a donation from person B.
2. A short time later, person B is having financial troubles and her home may go into foreclosure.  Person A is considering her giving some money to help out.

So what does the "Ethicist" say about all this?  Apparently, both of these gifts are noble acts, worthy of the highest praise and admiration. Unless, that is, there is some reason to think they are linked together.  In that case, the reallocation of resources (kidney, cash) would be a despicable market transaction.

I suspect that few economists would concur.  Indeed, the essence of market transactions is a kind of reciprocal altruism, enforced by contract.  It might be nice if the world could work using pure altruism alone, but that seems highly unrealistic.  The sad truth is that under the Ethicist's code of conduct, we have more deaths and more foreclosures than necessary, all in the name of fairness.

What do you think?

And man made life

Economist: And man made life

Artificial life, the stuff of dreams and nightmares, has arrived.

TO CREATE life is the prerogative of gods. Deep in the human psyche, whatever the rational pleadings of physics and chemistry, there exists a sense that biology is different, is more than just the sum of atoms moving about and reacting with one another, is somehow infused with a divine spark, a vital essence. It may come as a shock, then, that mere mortals have now made artificial life.

Craig Venter and Hamilton Smith, the two American biologists who unravelled the first DNA sequence of a living organism (a bacterium) in 1995, have made a bacterium that has an artificial genome—creating a living creature with no ancestor (see article). Pedants may quibble that only the DNA of the new beast was actually manufactured in a laboratory; the researchers had to use the shell of an existing bug to get that DNA to do its stuff. Nevertheless, a Rubicon has been crossed. It is now possible to conceive of a world in which new bacteria (and eventually, new animals and plants) are designed on a computer and then grown to order.

That ability would prove mankind’s mastery over nature in a way more profound than even the detonation of the first atomic bomb. The bomb, however justified in the context of the second world war, was purely destructive. Biology is about nurturing and growth. Synthetic biology, as the technology that this and myriad less eye-catching advances are ushering in has been dubbed, promises much. In the short term it promises better drugs, less thirsty crops (see article), greener fuels and even a rejuvenated chemical industry. In the longer term who knows what marvels could be designed and grown?

On the face of it, then, artificial life looks like a wonderful thing. Yet that is not how many will view the announcement. For them, a better word than “creation” is “tampering”. Have scientists got too big for their boots? Will their hubris bring Nemesis in due course? What horrors will come creeping out of the flask on the laboratory bench? ...

Why Wal-Mart's sales should have everyone worried

CNN: Why Wal-Mart's sales should have everyone worried

(Fortune) -- It certainly looks like happy days are here again. Many of the nation's biggest retailers, including Saks, Hewlett-Packard, Home Depot, and Target have released cheery sales reports. April's jobs reports showing a slight increase in the workweek and pay for workers, and more hiring across the board.

And then there is Wal-Mart, whose happy yellow face switched to a grimace when it released first quarter sales on Tuesday. Although international growth helped push revenues up 6%, sales at U.S. stores fell 1.4% from the same period last year. And the company had no one to blame but its shoppers. "More than ever, our customers are living paycheck to paycheck," said Tom Schoewe, the chief financial officer.

So who are you supposed to believe? In this case, Bentonville. When Wal-Mart (WMT, Fortune 500), an economic bellwether, notes that customers can't afford the gas to get to the stores and that they're increasingly using food stamps when they get there, things are bad.

True, other consumer-dependent companies are doing better, but by how much? Hewlett-Packard (HPQ, Fortune 500) made its numbers by selling hardware to corporations, not consumers. Home Depot (HD, Fortune 500) was pulled forward by do-it-yourselfers buying small items and by homeowners making one-off summer purchases of new landscaping tools and grills; big ticket items are still sitting collecting dust, while the contractor business remains weak. Saks (SKS)' results were impressive, but it sells luxury goods to a sliver of the American demographic, one that benefitted most from the psychologically important stock market rise earlier this year.

The problem is that both the economy and consumer sentiment remain shaky. Even Target (TGT, Fortune 500), which reported better than expected results yesterday, was forced to concede that. While touting his company's success, Chief Executive Gregg Steinhafel, noted that "We believe that both are still somewhat unstable and fragile and will likely continue to experience occasional setbacks as the year progresses," he said. ...

24 Hours at Wal-Mart in 2 Minutes

For want of a drink

Economist: For want of a drink

Finite, vital, much wanted, little understood, water looks unmanageable. But it needn’t be, argues John Grimond (interviewed here)

WHEN the word water appears in print these days, crisis is rarely far behind. Water, it is said, is the new oil: a resource long squandered, now growing expensive and soon to be overwhelmed by insatiable demand. Aquifers are falling, glaciers vanishing, reservoirs drying up and rivers no longer flowing to the sea. Climate change threatens to make the problems worse. Everyone must use less water if famine, pestilence and mass migration are not to sweep the globe. As it is, wars are about to break out between countries squabbling over dams and rivers. If the apocalypse is still a little way off, it is only because the four horsemen and their steeds have stopped to search for something to drink.

The language is often overblown, and the remedies sometimes ill conceived, but the basic message is not wrong. Water is indeed scarce in many places, and will grow scarcer. Bringing supply and demand into equilibrium will be painful, and political disputes may increase in number and intensify in their capacity to cause trouble. To carry on with present practices would indeed be to invite disaster.

Why? The difficulties start with the sheer number of people using the stuff. When, 60 years ago, the world’s population was about 2.5 billion, worries about water supply affected relatively few people. Both drought and hunger existed, as they have throughout history, but most people could be fed without irrigated farming. Then the green revolution, in an inspired combination of new crop breeds, fertilisers and water, made possible a huge rise in the population. The number of people on Earth rose to 6 billion in 2000, nearly 7 billion today, and is heading for 9 billion in 2050. The area under irrigation has doubled and the amount of water drawn for farming has tripled. The proportion of people living in countries chronically short of water, which stood at 8% (500m) at the turn of the 21st century, is set to rise to 45% (4 billion) by 2050. And already 1 billion people go to bed hungry each night, partly for lack of water to grow food.

People in temperate climates where the rain falls moderately all the year round may not realise how much water is needed for farming. In Britain, for example, farming takes only 3% of all water withdrawals. In the United States, by contrast, 41% goes for agriculture, almost all of it for irrigation. In China farming takes nearly 70%, and in India nearer 90%. For the world as a whole, agriculture accounts for almost 70%.

Farmers’ increasing demand for water is caused not only by the growing number of mouths to be fed but also by people’s desire for better-tasting, more interesting food. Unfortunately, it takes nearly twice as much water to grow a kilo of peanuts as a kilo of soyabeans, nearly four times as much to produce a kilo of beef as a kilo of chicken, and nearly five times as much to produce a glass of orange juice as a cup of tea. With 2 billion people around the world about to enter the middle class, the agricultural demands on water would increase even if the population stood still.

Industry, too, needs water. It takes about 22% of the world’s withdrawals. Domestic activities take the other 8%. Together, the demands of these two categories quadrupled in the second half of the 20th century, growing twice as fast as those of farming, and forecasters see nothing but further increases in demand on all fronts.

That’s your lot

Meeting that demand is a different task from meeting the demand for almost any other commodity. One reason is that the supply of water is finite. The world will have no more of it in 2025, or 2050, or when the cows come home, than it has today, or when it lapped at the sides of Noah’s ark. ...

... Many of these conceptual difficulties arise from other unusual aspects of water. It is a commodity whose value varies according to locality, purpose and circumstance. Take locality first. Water is not evenly distributed—just nine countries account for 60% of all available fresh supplies—and among them only Brazil, Canada, Colombia, Congo, Indonesia and Russia have an abundance. America is relatively well off, but China and India, with over a third of the world’s population between them, have less than 10% of its water. ...

... Scarce or plentiful, water is above all local. It is heavy—one cubic metre weighs a tonne—so expensive to move. If you are trying to manage it, you must first divide your area of concern into drainage basins. ...

... The 20m inhabitants of Mexico City and its surrounding area, for example, draw over 70% of their water from an aquifer that will run dry, at current extraction rates, within 200 years, maybe much sooner. Already the city is sinking as a result. In Bangkok, Buenos Aires and Jakarta, the aquifers are similarly overdrawn, polluted or contaminated by salt. Just as serious is the depletion of the aquifers on which farmers depend. In the Hai river basin in China, for example, deep-groundwater tables have dropped by up to 90 metres. ...

... Industrial use takes about 60% of water in rich countries and 10% in the rest. The difference in domestic use is much smaller, 11% and 8% respectively. Some of the variation is explained by capacious baths, power showers and flush lavatories in the rich world. All humans, however, need a basic minimum of two litres of water in food or drink each day, and for this there is no substitute. ...

John Grimond Interview

The New Demography of American Motherhood

Pew Research: The New Demography of American Motherhood

Executive Summary

This report examines the changing demographic characteristics of U.S. mothers by comparing women who gave birth in 2008 with those who gave birth in 1990. It is based on data from the National Center for Health Statistics and the Census Bureau. It also presents results of a nationwide Pew Research Center survey that asked a range of questions about parenthood.

Among the key findings of this report:

• Age: Mothers of newborns are older now than their counterparts were two decades ago. In 1990, teens had a higher share of all births (13%) than did women ages 35 and older (9%). In 2008, the reverse was true -- 10% of births were to teens, compared with 14% to women ages 35 and older. Each race and ethnic group had a higher share of mothers of newborns in 2008 who are ages 35 and older, and a lower share who are teens, than in 1990.
• Marital Status: A record four-in-ten births (41%) were to unmarried women in 2008, including most births to women in their early 20s. In 1990, 28% of births were to unmarried women. The unmarried-mother share of births has increased most sharply for whites and Hispanics, although the highest share is for black women.
• Race and Ethnicity: White women made up 53% of mothers of newborns in 2008, down from 65% in 1990. The share of births to Hispanic women has grown dramatically, to one-in-four.
• Education: Most mothers of newborns (54%) had at least some college education in 2006, an increase from 41% in 1990. Among mothers of newborns who were ages 35 and older, 71% had at least some college education.
• Explaining the Trends: All the trends cited above reflect a complex mix of demographic and behavioral factors. For example, the higher share of college-educated mothers stems both from their rising birth rates and from women's increasing educational attainment. The rise in births to unmarried women reflects both their rising birth rates and the shrinking share of adults who are married.
• Attitudes about Parenthood: When asked why they decided to have their first (or only) child, the overwhelming majority of parents (87%) answer, "The joy of having children." But nearly half (47%) also say, "There wasn't a reason; it just happened."

Praying for Business: A Dream

Mark D. Roberts: Praying for Business: A Dream

... What I envision is simple: a time in a church worship service to offer public prayer of dedication and commitment for those who work in business. This prayer would be quite similar to what happened at Irvine Pres when we prayed for people going on a mission trip. Only, in this case, the mission field would be the workplace.

Here's an outline of what might happen in a worship service:

1. Ideally, the pastor would preach a sermon that explained how business can be a context for God's people to serve him and their fellow human beings. The sermon would provide a theological foundation for seeing business in a kingdom perspective as well as some practical examples. The sermon is not an essential part of this process, but it would be helpful and encouraging for many.

2. The pastor or other worship leader does a short interview of one (or two) people in the congregation who work in a business context. (I'd opt for two, with one in a major leadership role and the other an employee relatively low on the totem pole.) The interview would center around this question: How do you live out your faith in the context of your workplace? It would also include the question: How can we pray for you? (I would surely choose the people to interview in advance and help them to answer concisely and clearly.)

3. The leader asks everyone in the congregation who works in a business to stand, if they are comfortable doing so and if they would like God's wisdom for how they can live out their faith in the context of their business environment. I would explain that "business" means, in this case, "for profit enterprises, not public or non-profit sectors."

4. Once everyone who wished to receive prayer was standing, I would pray on behalf of the congregation (or have someone else lead in prayer). My prayer might go something like this:

Gracious God, thank you for creating the world and all that is in it. Thank you for creating us in your image, calling us to be fruitful and to be faithful stewards of your creation. Thank you for the opportunity to give us to serve you in the context of business, as we seek to fulfill our calling as human beings. Thank you for these who are standing today, for their desire to live out their faith in their workplace.

Give them wisdom, Lord, to know what it means to be your disciple at work. Help them as they face difficult decisions, sometimes wondering how to balance the priorities of business and your kingdom. Empower them in their relationships at work, so that they might treat all of their colleagues, including those they supervise and those who supervise them, with respect and love. Encourage them when they feel alone, when they struggle to serve you and be faithful in their jobs. Show these folks how they can bear witness to you at work, in both word and deed. Help them to do so in a way that is appropriate and respectful.

For those in leadership in their companies, may they know how best to implement your call to justice, for those they employ, for their customers, for their clients, and for the larger world. Help them to see how to be good stewards of all you have entrusted to them.

May this church, dear Lord, be a place of encouragement and support for these who seek to serve you at work. May we listen to them, bear their burdens, speak your truth in love, and continue to pray for them. Fill them now with your Spirit, so they might live for you in their workplaces.

We pray in the name of Jesus, Amen.

5. Then I would close this time of prayer with a song or hymn. "Take My Life and Let It Be" by Frances R. Havergal would be a good option.

    Take my life, and let it be consecrated, Lord, to Thee.
    Take my moments and my days; let them flow in ceaseless praise.
    Take my hands, and let them move at the impulse of Thy love.
    Take my feet, and let them be swift and beautiful for Thee.

    Take my voice, and let me sing always, only, for my King.
    Take my lips, and let them be filled with messages from Thee.
    Take my silver and my gold; not a mite would I withhold.
    Take my intellect, and use every power as Thou shalt choose.

    Take my will, and make it Thine; it shall be no longer mine.
    Take my heart, it is Thine own; it shall be Thy royal throne.
    Take my love, my Lord, I pour at Thy feet its treasure store.
    Take myself, and I will be ever, only, all for Thee.

Good stuff!

End of Communism Cheered but Now with More Reservations

Pew Research: End of Communism Cheered but Now with More Reservations

(I just discovered this report from six months ago. Interesting stuff.)

The Pulse of Europe 2009: 20 Years After the Fall of the Berlin Wall.

Nearly two decades after the fall of the Berlin Wall, publics of former Iron Curtain countries generally look back approvingly at the collapse of communism. Majorities of people in most former Soviet republics and Eastern European countries endorse the emergence of multiparty systems and a free market economy.

However, the initial widespread enthusiasm about these changes has dimmed in most of the countries surveyed; in some, support for democracy and capitalism has diminished markedly. In many nations, majorities or pluralities say that most people were better off under communism, and there is a widespread view that the business class and political leadership have benefited from the changes more than ordinary people. Nonetheless, self reported life satisfaction has risen significantly in these societies compared with nearly two decades ago when the Times Mirror Center1 first studied public opinion in the former Eastern bloc.

The acceptance of — and appetite for — democracy is much less evident today among the publics of the former Soviet republics of Russia and Ukraine, who lived the longest under communism. In contrast, Eastern Europeans, especially the Czechs and those in the former East Germany, are more accepting of the economic and societal upheavals of the past two decades. East Germans, in particular, overwhelmingly approve of the reunification of Germany, as do those living in what was West Germany. However, fewer east Germans now have very positive views of reunification than in mid-1991, when the benchmark surveys were conducted by the Times Mirror Center for the People & the Press. And now, as then, many of those living in east Germany believe that unification happened too quickly.

One of the most positive trends in Europe since the fall of the Wall is a decline in ethnic hostilities among the people of former communist countries. In a number of nations, fewer citizens say they hold unfavorable views of ethnic minorities than did so in 1991. Nonetheless, sizable percentages of people in former communist countries continue to have unfavorable views of minority groups and neighboring nationalities. The new poll also finds Western Europeans in a number of cases are at least as hostile toward minorities as are Eastern Europeans. In particular, many in the West, especially in Italy and Spain, hold unfavorable views of Muslims.

Concern about Russia is another sentiment shared by both Eastern and Western Europeans. A majority of the French (57%) and 46% of Germans say Russia is having a bad influence on their countries; this view is shared by most Poles (59%) and sizable minorities in most other Eastern European countries. The exceptions are Bulgaria and Ukraine, where on balance Russia’s influence is seen as more positive than negative. ...

Lots of interesting tables:

Genesis 1 and a Babylonian Creation Story

Science and the Sacred: Genesis 1 and a Babylonian Creation Story  Peter Enns

... Scholars have termed Enuma Elish the “Babylonian Genesis.” The reason is that both stories share some concepts that were immediately apparent.

• In both stories, matter exists when creation begins. Similar to Enuma Elish, Genesis 1 describes God ordering chaos, not creating something out of nothing.
• Darkness precedes the creative acts.
• In Enuma Elish the symbol of chaos is the goddess Tiamat who personifies the sea. Genesis refers to the “deep.” The Hebrew word is tehom, which is linguistically related to Tiamat.
• In both stories, light exists before the creation of the sun, moon, and stars.
• In both stories, there is a division of the waters above and below, with a barrier holding back the upper waters.
• The sequence of creation is similar, including the division of waters, dry land, luminaries, and humanity, all followed by rest.

Scholars knew they were on to something and it led to some predictable questions in both academic and popular circles. Maybe Genesis isn’t history at all, they thought, but just another story like Enuma Elish. In fact, maybe Genesis is just a later Hebrew version of this older Babylonian story.

One can’t really blame people for asking these questions, given the bombshell that just fell on them. Up to this point, Genesis 1 was unique. Now, we have a previously unknown Babylonian myth that is strikingly similar to Scripture.

At the time, many scholars thought that the author of Genesis 1 borrowed material from Enuma Elish. This led to the “Bible and Babel” controversy (“Babel” is Hebrew for Babylon). In fact, scholars commonly thought that Babylonian culture was the source for all ancient religions, including Christianity (i.e., “pan-Babylonianism”).

But with subsequent discoveries from other cultures (Sumerian, Egyptian, Canaanite) and other time periods, scholars came to a more sober conclusion: Babylonian culture did not have such a widespread influence, and Genesis 1 was not directly dependent on Enuma Elish.

Instead, these texts are two examples of the kinds of theological themes that pervaded numerous cultures over many centuries. The stories are not directly connected, but they share common ways of thinking about beginnings. They “breathe the same air.”

Scholars also came to appreciate the differences between Genesis 1 and Enuma Elish. A central difference is that Israel’s God creates on his own, with no divine melodrama or lengthy plot. Israel’s God works solo and in the space of a mere 31 verses (not 900 lines as in Enuma Elish). Genesis 1 is not just a lightly touched-up version of older creation stories. It is a unique piece of Israelite theology. ...

... Genesis 1 cries out to be understood in its ancient context, not separated from it. Stories like Enuma Elish give us a brief but important glimpse at how ancient Near Eastern people thought of beginnings. As I discussed in an earlier post, ancient texts like Enuma Elish help us calibrate the genre of Genesis. That way we can learn to ask the questions Genesis 1 was written to address rather than intruding with our own questions.

One of the main questions Israelites asked was how their God ranked among the dozens of gods in the ancient world—namely, what made him worthy of devotion rather than the gods of the superpowers like Babylon and Egypt. Reading Genesis as ancient literature highlights this polemical dimension.

Genesis 1 is a bold declaration that the God of a tiny nation with a troubled past is the one responsible for what you see. The gods of the superpowers didn’t do it, Yahweh did. In the ancient world, those are fighting words. ...

England will win World Cup 2010: J.P. Morgan

Christian Science Monitor: England will win World Cup 2010: J.P. Morgan

Financial wizards at J.P. Morgan have used 'Quant Models' to determine that serial underperformers England will win World Cup 2010, taking out Spain in the final match. Could it be?

Move over, Brazil.

Step aside, Italy.

England will win World Cup 2010.

IN PICTURES: Ready for the World Cup

Stop snickering, you. The financial wizards at J.P. Morgan have used "Quant Models" to determine that the Three Lions will sink their teeth into Spain in the World Cup final. The world will hear them roar.

J.P. Morgan describes Quant Models as "mathematical methods built to efficiently screen and identify stocks" and says it has applied that method to soccer data such as FIFA rankings and historical match scores to come up with its result.

Still, England?

Although every Englishman seems to fancy the national team's chances in every World Cup, few outside Old Blighty see them as favorites when the cup rolls around every four years. ...

Keep in mind this prediction was brought to you be the same people who presided over the 2008 finance collapse. :-)

First Large-Scale Formal Quantitative Test Confirms Darwin's Theory of Universal Common Ancestry

Science Daily: First Large-Scale Formal Quantitative Test Confirms Darwin's Theory of Universal Common Ancestry

ScienceDaily (May 17, 2010) — More than 150 years ago, Darwin proposed the theory of universal common ancestry (UCA), linking all forms of life by a shared genetic heritage from single-celled microorganisms to humans. Until now, the theory that makes ladybugs, oak trees, champagne yeast and humans distant relatives has remained beyond the scope of a formal test. Now, a Brandeis biochemist reports in Nature the results of the first large scale, quantitative test of the famous theory that underpins modern evolutionary biology. ...

... Harnessing powerful computational tools and applying Bayesian statistics, Theobald found that the evidence overwhelmingly supports UCA, regardless of horizontal gene transfer or multiple origins of life. Theobald said UCA is millions of times more probable than any theory of multiple independent ancestries.

"There have been major advances in biology over the last decade, with our ability to test Darwin's theory in a way never before possible," said Theobald. "The number of genetic sequences of individual organisms doubles every three years, and our computational power is much stronger now than it was even a few years ago."

While other scientists have previously examined common ancestry more narrowly, for example, among only vertebrates, Theobald is the first to formally test Darwin's theory across all three domains of life. The three domains include diverse life forms such as the Eukarya (organisms, including humans, yeast, and plants, whose cells have a DNA-containing nucleus) as well as Bacteria and Archaea (two distinct groups of unicellular microorganisms whose DNA floats around in the cell instead of in a nucleus). ...

Praying for Business: Practical Suggestions (Part 2)

Mark D. Roberts: Praying for Business: Practical Suggestions (Part 2)

... I recognize that these two starting points are not easy ones for many pastors and churches. The first seems to require a considerable investment of time, while the second might push the edge of the envelope too far, too fast. Isn't there an easier starting point?

Indeed, there is. It involves one of the most obvious and basic of ministry strategies. Let me begin with an illustrative analogy. A new youth worker is hired by a church to serve the high school age students in the church and local community. What is job one for that youth minister? Get to know the students personally! Visit them in their world on campus (if possible), at ballgames, and at school plays. Meet with them one-on-one or in small groups. Don't preach to them in these personal meetings. Rather, ask questions and listen! Find out their thoughts, dreams, feelings, and fears. Get to know them!

This is exactly what pastors can and should do with the business people in their churches. Visit them in their worlds, their workplaces. Meet them for lunch or coffee, if at all possible on their turf. And then ask lots of questions and listen. Ask things like: What do you do in your work? How do you like it? What do you find rewarding about your work? Challenging? Frustrating? Exciting? What would you like me, as your pastor, to know about your professional life? How does your faith impact your work? How does your work impact your faith? Can you think of any ways I might be able to help and support you in your work? Can you think of any ways our church might be able to help and support you in your work? And, last but not least, how can I pray for you in your business?

If pastors were to have conversations with their members that involved questions like these, soon the pastors would be equipped to pray in worship for the marketplace and its workers. They would understand the challenges and opportunities faced by their members. But this would be only one sweet fruit of such pastoral visits. Other benefits would include: members feeling understood and valued by their pastors, pastors actually "getting" the real, day-to-day experiences of their members, members feeling freer to share their lives with their pastors, pastors knowing what issues to address in preaching, and so on and so forth.

There's one other benefit I would mention here. Pastors would have fun! I'm not kidding. ...

New population study redefines ‘heartland’

Kansas City Star: New population study redefines ‘heartland’

... Social changes over the last decade — especially the increase in racial and ethnic minorities — are scrambling regional stereotypes and dramatically altering the traditional portrait of America.

“Our metropolitan areas are on the front lines of demographic transformation,” said Bruce Katz, director of the Metropolitan Policy Program at Brookings. “Every trend that is affecting the nation — growth, diversity, aging, education disparities, income inequities — is affecting our major metropolitan areas first at a speed, scale and complexity that are truly historic.”

The “New Heartland” is one of seven divisions that Brookings developed in its study, “State of Metropolitan America,” to reflect the changing economic, demographic and social climate since 2000.

The Kansas City area is one of 19 “fast-growing, highly educated locales” in this redefined heartland, with diversity levels below the national average.

“We are right there in the middle of these trends, not experiencing their extremes,” said Frank Lenk, director of research at the Mid-America Regional Council in Kansas City. “As a result, the negative changes, like more income inequality, didn’t hit us here.”

Indeed, wages for middle-class workers in the Kansas City area actually went up slightly as of 2008, compared with the national average, according to Brookings. The median income was higher, too. The percentage of children in poverty locally also was lower than it was nationally.

The region had one of the highest percentages of commuters who drive alone. It also had some the highest numbers of commuters who switched to public transit since 2000.

The percentage of the population older than 25 with college degrees ranks in the top third of the leading metro areas. But it hugs the bottom as far as 18- to 24-year-olds enrolled in higher education. ...

Origins Event in Los Angeles, CA July 23-24

Origins Event in Los Angeles, CA July 23-24

Why Origins? by Margaret Feinberg from Origins Project on Vimeo.

Invitation to Origins Event by Eric Bryant from Origins Project on Vimeo.

I'm signed up for this event. Any Kronicle readers planning on being there?

GAMC approves re-organization of PC(USA)’s mission enterprise

Presbyterian News Service: GAMC approves re-organization of PC(USA)’s mission enterprise

Valentine says plan is combination of strategic planning and cost-cutting measures.

LOUISVILLE — The General Assembly Mission Council (GAMC) approved reorganization of the mission program of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) that its executive director, Linda Valentine, said "reflects healthy change that is adaptive to trends in the church and the world, and that is consistent with projected resources."

As part of the reorganization — which has been in development for 10 months — the GAMC approved General Assembly Mission Budgets that reduce spending by 12.2 percent in 2011 and an additional 2 percent in 2012. The cuts resulted in the net reduction of the staff at the Presbyterian Center here by 49 positions. Affected employees were notified Friday afternoon (May 14). Fifteen incumbents were offered new positions in the revamped organization.

In all 73.5 positions were eliminated. Twelve were vacant and 12 employees accepted voluntary separation offers in recent weeks. The staff reduction amounts to 13 percent, from roughly 390 employees to 340. Staff cuts occurred across the GAMC — 24.5 in Mission, 11.5 in Shared Services, 8 in Communications and Funds Development and five in the Executive Director’s office.

The proposed 2011 mission budget totals $82,097,234 — down 12.2 percent from the revised 2010 budget of $93,841,273. The 2012 budget totals $80,550,613, a further reduction of 2 percent. Both budgets will be forwarded to the upcoming 219th General Assembly in Minneapolis, July 3-10 for adoption.

"Role is changing"

"The role of the mission agency is changing from doing mission on the church's behalf to inspiring, equipping, and connecting the church for mission and ministry," Valentine told the council as she outlined the reorganization plan. "Even as we make this shift, we know that God continues to provide all that is necessary for the church's mission."

She noted that "congregations and groups are engaging more directly in mission of all sorts” and “we as a church are re-committing ourselves to expanding partnership in God’s mission and in the process expanding our witness to Christ in this country and around the world in ever more profound and impactful ways."

Statistics show that Presbyterians are giving more overall to mission than ever before. Funding for denominational mission continues to decline. Chief financial officer Joey Bailey told the council that unrestricted income declined 44 percent between 1999 and 2009. During the same period restricted income declined 29 percent. Roughly two-thirds of the mission budget is restricted and one-third unrestricted.

Research: "lack of consensus"

Development of the reorganization began with research, described by Valentine as "both quantitative and qualitative input from a broad swath of Presbyterian leaders." It included "paired weightings" in which church leaders were asked to rate mission activities comparatively, interviews with a variety of PC(USA) leaders and a Presbyterian Panel survey conducted by the denominations Research Services office.

The research "found passion among Presbyterians for a wide variety of mission activities," Valentine said. "At the same time, it found a lack of consensus around any of them as being the most important.  Instead, we are called to balance numerous functions on which the church has asked us to lead."

With the church asking for such a wide variety of ministries and programs, Valentine said, "it was clear that we could not prioritize what we do and narrow our focus to just a few areas. We can and have, though, prioritized how we do our work."

Strategic directions:

At an earlier meeting, the GAMC adopted five strategic directions to guide the reorganization effort:

• The GAMC role is to inspire, equip and connect — to "broker, connect and facilitate" mission among Presbyterians rather than initiate mission programs;
• We engage in communities of mission practice — focusing on "multi-party" partnerships to advance mission;
• We will focus on the health of congregations and other communities of faith — focusing time and effort "to bring the most impact to the health and vibrancy of the local congregation";
• We will focus on leadership development — helping all church leaders develop "core competencies";
• We will embrace a global perspective — focusing on "global discipleship with local, national, and international components" and "working to reduce distance between the different spaces of mission."

Valentine said the strategic directions and accompanying guiding principles — focus on the whole church, fiscal sustainability, avoiding duplication, "sunset rules" and regular evaluation of all programs, focus on ministries that can only be done at the national level — enabled GAMC staff and elected members "to plan a hopeful future in a world where new giving patterns lead to decline of traditional funding sources and where new demands compete with established programs ..."

Major changes

Valentine said the reorganization "will affect every ministry area of the GAMC." Some of the highlights:

• Congregational Ministries Publishing Congregational Ministries Publishing will be re-organized in order to be financially self-supporting in all English language curriculum and educational resources beginning in 2011. The GAMC will support the net cost of Korean, Spanish, Portuguese, and Braille curriculum.
• Mission Resources (the Mission Yearbook for Prayer and Study, the Presbyterian Planning Calendar, Presbyterians Today magazine) will be reorganized within Communications and Funds Development to become self-sustaining. The Children’s Mission Yearbook will be discontinued.
• World Mission will be revamped — in line with its recently completed strategy process — to focus on "communities of mission practice" that include staff, mission networks and other mission organizations and the PC(USA)'s global partners. The ministry area will engage in mission only in places where global partners and mission "constituents" both have an interest in working with World Mission. No mission workers will be recalled and the GAMC has committed to increase mission worker support from 11 percent of the current mission budget to 13 percent.
• Vocation will reduce its support for the Presbyterian Council for Chaplains and Military Personnel and will discontinue continuing education grants in 2012. It will also reduce or end the National Presbyterian Scholarship Program and develop a new program to include loan forgiveness provisions to its theological student loans for seminary graduates who agree to serve "hard to call" congregations.
• Evangelism and Church Growth will reduce funding for Mission Program Grants and will shift the focus of its Youth and Young Adult Ministries office to equipping congregations to develop youth and young adult ministries locally.
• Racial Ethnic Ministries will shift its focus from working directly with racial ethnic congregations to working cross-culturally, partnering with European-American churches, middle governing bodies and others to promote diversity throughout the PC(USA).
• Women's Ministries will shift its focus from policy development around women's issues to program and ministry development and implementation at all levels of the church.
• Shared Services will shift and streamline accounting functions to take advantage of new technology and eliminate redundancies. Service levels will be reduced in the mail room and distribution warehouse.

Several programs are moving in the revamped organization:

• Research Services will move from the Executive Director's office to the Deputy Executive Director for Mission office;
• The Asian American Leadership office is being closed and a portion of its funding and program is being combined with the Korean Congregational Support office in Racial Ethnic and Women’s Ministries/Presbyterian Women;
• Interfaith Relations will move from World Mission to Theology Worship and Education;
• Human Resources will move from Shared Services to the Executive Director’s office and will now include Cultural Proficiency. The Cultural Proficiency office will expand to include a " persons of color recruiting network."

'Best interest of the church'

"The changes ... won't all be easy, but we believe that they are in the best interest of the church, and will continue to move us in the right direction for meeting the church's core needs and offering the world a visible witness of Jesus Christ," Valentine concluded.

"We're reminded in the Book of Order, she added, “that 'Christ calls the Church into being, giving it all that is necessary for its mission in the world." Even in a time that feels like it is 'cut, cut, cut,' Christ provides all that is necessary."

Cellphones Now Used More for Data Than for Calls

New York Times: Cellphones Now Used More for Data Than for Calls

... For many Americans, cellphones have become irreplaceable tools to manage their lives and stay connected to the outside world, their families and networks of friends online. But increasingly, by several measures, that does not mean talking on them very much.

For example, although almost 90 percent of households in the United States now have a cellphone, the growth in voice minutes used by consumers has stagnated, according to government and industry data.

This is true even though more households each year are disconnecting their landlines in favor of cellphones.

Instead of talking on their cellphones, people are making use of all the extras that iPhones, BlackBerrys and other smartphones were also designed to do — browse the Web, listen to music, watch television, play games and send e-mail and text messages. ...

... “Handset design has become far less cheek-friendly,” Mr. Rubin said. Mr. Hesse of Sprint said he expected that within the next couple of years, cellphone users would be charged by the data they used, not by their voice minutes, a prediction echoed by other industry executives.

When people do talk on their phones, their conversations are shorter; the average length of a local call was 1.81 minutes in 2009, compared with 2.27 minutes in 2008, according to CTIA. For some, the unused voice minutes mount up. ...

... Mrs. Colburn, from Massachusetts, said she caved to the pleading of her 12-year-old daughter Abigail for a cellphone to send text messages with her friends after she and her husband discovered it was hindering her from developing bonds with her classmates.

“We realized she was being excluded from party invitations and being in the know with her peers,” she said.

Mrs. Colburn said texting had also become a much easier way to stay in touch with her daughter and receive quick updates about after-school plans.

“The other night she texted me from upstairs to ask a vocabulary question,” she said with a laugh. “But I drew the line there. I went upstairs to answer it.”

Praying for Business: Some Practical Suggestions

Mark D. Roberts: Praying for Business: Some Practical Suggestions

... If pastors want to pray for the marketplace and its workers, where should they start? One starting place would be the Bible. We need to return to Scripture for a fresh understanding of God's creation, of the call to man and woman to be fruitful and multiply, of the breadth of divine calling, of the ministry of all of God's people, and of the concern of God for every facet of life The more we grasp the scope of God's business in the world, the more we will begin to discover how to pray for human business.

Another starting point if one wishes to pray for business is such an obvious one that it scarcely needs mentioning. But, as you might expect, I'll bring it up anyway. Let me approach this starting point with an analogous example. One of the classic "pray-for "scenarios in a worship service involves missionaries (or, better, mission partners). In churches throughout the world, mission partners take two or three minutes in a service to share with the congregation a snapshot of their ministry. Then, as if following a divine scripts, the pastor asks: "And how can we pray for you?"

Now there's a fine starting point if you want to pray for business: Ask! Ask business people the same question asked of mission partners: "And how can we pray for you?" Suppose a pastor knew of a church member who owned a business and sought to honor God in that business. Almost every church has at least one such person. Many churches have several. Suppose further that the pastor took two or three minutes in a worship service to allow this business owner to explain how she integrated her faith in her business. What more natural way to conclude this mini-interview than with the standard question: "And how can we pray for you?" Of course I recognize that what this second starting point assumes may be a bit too radical for some churches and pastors. We may not be quite ready to begin thinking about our business leaders and workers as missionaries. So, is there a less threatening way to begin?

You betcha, to borrow a phrase from my Midwestern friends. In tomorrow's post I'll suggest another way pastors can learn how to pray for business and for the business lives of their church members.

Video Message About GAMC's New Budget

PC(USA) General Assembly Mission Council approves 2011-12 plan and budget, announces staffing changes

PCUSA Press Release

Strategic planning positions church’s mission agency for long-term sustainability.

LOUISVILLE, Ky. (May 14, 2010) – Today, the General Assembly Mission Council (GAMC) of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) approved budgets of $82,097,234 for 2011, and $80,550,613 for 2012. These are in contrast to a 2010 budget of about $93.8 million.

“Our role is changing from doing mission on behalf of the church to inspiring, equipping and connecting the church for mission and ministry,” said Linda Valentine, GAMC executive director. “At the same time, God calls us to look at our resources honestly. We must be sure we live within our means to sustain ministry into the future.”

A year-long strategic discernment initiative and budget realities were identified as the primary drivers for the development of the new plan. "The 2011-12 GAMC Plan and Budget answers a bold call -- to discern and live into the future God intends for the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.)," Valentine said. "This plan reflects healthy change that is adaptive to trends in the church and the world, and that is consistent with projected resources."

 “We have lower budgets because of shifts in giving patterns – while Presbyterians are giving more to mission than ever before, they are supporting many organizations, both within and outside the church,” said Joey Bailey, chief financial officer. “Sustainability is our goal. To that end we’ve projected lower revenues for 2011 and 2012, and have also given consideration to 2013 and beyond.”

The budget and plan approved by the council includes a number of measures based on recommendations from GAMC leadership. Among them:

• World Mission has completed a comprehensive strategy process and will be dramatically reshaped as a result. No mission personnel are being recalled, though, and the percentage of the GAMC budget dedicated to mission sending increases from 11% to 13%.
• Congregational Ministries Publishing will be re-organized in order to be financially self-supporting in all English language curriculum and educational resources beginning in 2011. Self-support is achieved through a continuation of increased sales coupled with decreased costs that bring CMP into alignment with religious publishing standards. The GAMC will support the net cost of Korean, Spanish, Portuguese, and Braille curriculum.
• We will no longer maintain separate offices for Korean ministry in the Evangelism and Church Growth and Racial Ethnic and Women's Ministries areas. Some functions and funding will be combined, while other functions will conclude. Evangelism and Church Growth will continue its focus on the health and vibrancy of congregations. An associate for theology will be refocused on issues of "ministry from the margins," with particular focus on second generation new immigrant ministries. Curriculum will continue to be published in Korean.
• Staffing levels are being reduced in Shared Services and Communications and Funds Development to reduce costs and eliminate duplication of functions.
• Support to synods and presbyteries through national mission partnership funds was not reduced.

There will be a net reduction of 49 positions within the GAMC. 73.5 incumbent positions were eliminated. Among these are 12 staff members who accepted voluntary separation packages offered in April, and 12 additional positions that were vacant. Because of the strategic reshaping of the GAMC and positions left vacant by acceptance of voluntary separation packages, 24.5 new positions have been added. Fifteen of the impacted employees will be offered new positions. Following these changes, the staff of the GAMC will total 341. Most of the reductions are concentrated in Congregational Ministries Publishing, and in the areas of Shared Services, and Communications and Funds Development.

 “While it is crucial for us to change how we do ministry and how we use our resources, we never forget that behind the decisions are the lives and livelihoods of colleagues and friends,” said Valentine. “I am grateful for the dedicated work of all of our employees. In particular, I want to personally thank those who are leaving us for their faithful service to the church.”

All employees whose positions were eliminated will be offered separation packages that include notice pay, severance, and outplacement service.

In other business, the GAMC confirmed the call of Rev. Roger Dermody as deputy executive director for mission, and were introduced to Rev. J. Herbert Nelson, the new director of public witness for the Washington office. The GAMC also heard an update on the work of the Presbyterian Disaster Assistance in Haiti.

The Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) serves more than 2 million members in mission and ministry in approximately 10,000 congregations throughout the United States and around the world. National offices are located in Louisville, Ky.

Presbyterian/Christian media contact:  Rob Bullock, 502-569-5101, rob.bullock@pcusa.org

Secular media contact: Barry Creech, 502-569-5127, barry.creech@pcusa.org

Why Don't We Pray for Business? Part 5

Mark D. Roberts: Why Don't We Pray for Business? Part 5

... But first, to review, so far I've suggested five reasons why, I believe, we don't pray for business in the context of corporate Christian gatherings:

•     Reason #1: We don't pray for business because we don't pray for business.
•     Reason #2: We don't pray for business because those who lead us in prayer have not been trained to do so.
•     Reason #3: We don't pray for business because our worship leaders have been trained in settings that are indifferent or negative to business.
•     Reason #4: We don't pray for business because Scripture does not command us to do so.
•     Reason #5: We don't pray for business because we don't have a vision for how business could be part of God's business in the world.

Today I want to consider the following:

Reason #6: We don't pray for business because we divide reality into the sacred and the secular, with prayer falling on the sacred side, and business on the secular side, and never the twain shall meet.

According to Reason #5, we don't pray for business because we don't have a vision for how business could be part of God's business in the world. This lack of vision substantially reflects a lack of a biblically-informed understanding of the world and God's mission in the world. But it also derives from a pervasive tendency in out culture and in the church to divide reality into two, distinct spheres, the sacred and the secular. For most people, including most Christians, these separate spheres of life do not overlap or influence each other. In the classic phrase of Rudyard Kipling, "never the twain shall meet."  ...

... I believe that the church is called to an essential task in our time of history: proclaiming that all of life matters to God, and that the division of reality into sacred and secular is biblically mistaken and practically unfruitful. Increasing numbers of people, indeed, business people, are sensing the inadequacy of a life divided into sacred and secular. They are yearning for a way to integrate their lives, to find genuine meaning in their work. This is true of Boomers like me, but even more so of folks 30 and under. According to the recently released book, The M-Factor: How the Millennial Generation Is Rocking the Workplace, the most distinctive feature of Millenials in the workplace is their desire for meaningful work. Biblical theology provides a rock solid basis for finding meaning in every part of life, since it is all part of God's creation and ultimately embraced in his redemption.

Before I wrap up this series, I want to suggest some practical ways we might begin to do pray for business in a way that is theologically sound and relevant to the marketplace and its people. I'll get into this on Monday. Meanwhile, have a great weekend. Remember, even weekends matter to God!

I think this sixth reason as at the core of it all: Sacred vs. Secular.

Why Amish businesses don't fail

CNN: Why Amish businesses don't fail

(CNNMoney.com) -- Want to find America's most successful entrepreneurs? Skip Silicon Valley and Manhattan; head to the rural Amish enclaves.

Amish businesses have an eye-popping 95% success rate at staying open at least five years, according to author Erik Wesner's new book, Success Made Simple: An Inside Look at Why Amish Businesses Thrive.

It's a statistic he backs up with a variety of academic surveys, drawing particularly on a 2009 report by Elizabethtown College sociology professor Donald Kraybill. Studying several Amish settlements, Kraybill found failure rates ranging from 2.6% and 4.2%; interviews with loan officers, accountants and industry professions in other Amish regions yielded additional anecdotal evidence of closure rates significantly south of 10%.

Compare that to the average five-year survival rate for new businesses across the United States, which hovers just under 50%. So what's the secret?

Wesner, who worked in business management and sales before immersing himself in all things Amish, thinks it lies in the culture, which emphasizes "qualities like hard work and cooperation." Networking through Facebook doesn't exactly have the same community-building pull as teaming up with neighbors to build a barn, and few Americans these days can point to a childhood where they awoke regularly at dawn to milk the cows.

Another key advantage is that Amish business owners tend to stick with what they know. ...

Why Don't We Pray for Business? Part 4

Mark D. Roberts: Why Don't We Pray for Business? Part 4

Reason #4: We don't pray for business because Scripture does not command us to do so. ...

Reason # 5: We don't pray for business because we don't have a vision for how business could be part of God's business in the world. ...

Cell Phone Only Use Hits New High of 24.5% in U.S.

Carpe Diem: Cell Phone Only Use Hits New High of 24.5% in U.S.

Technology linked to happiness, study claims

BBC: Technology linked to happiness, study claims

HT: Cameron

There are positive links between access to technology and feelings of well-being, a study claims.

BCS, the Chartered Institute for IT, analysed the results of a survey of 35,000 people around the world.

Access to communication devices was found to be the most valued.

It found that women in developing countries, and people of both sexes with low incomes or poor education, were most influenced emotionally by their access to technology.

It is partly because women tend to have a more central role in family and other social networks, said researcher Paul Flatters of Trajectory Partnership, which conducted the research on behalf of the BCS.

"Our hypothesis is that women in developing countries benefit more because they are more socially constrained in society," he added. ...

"The next phase of our research is to test that." ...

GAMC Meeting Underway.

I'm in Louisville this week. We just kicked off the General Assembly Council Meeting. There are lots of good things happening but the issue weighing on most folks' minds is more staff cuts. We are trimming millions of dollars once again. Prayers for the board would be appreciated as difficult decisions are made. But most of all prayers for the staff as the endure yet another round of reductions.

Why Don't We Pray for Business? Part 3 (Mark D. Roberts)

Mark D. Roberts: Why Don't We Pray for Business? Part 3

In the last two days I have begun to consider why it is that Christians do not pray for business, at least not very often in the context of corporate worship. So far I have suggested two reasons:

Reason #1: We don't pray for business because we don't pray for business.

Reason #2: We don't pray for business because those who lead us in prayer have not been trained to do so.

Today I offer a third reason, one that helps to explain Reason #2:

Reason #3: We don't pray for business because our worship leaders have been trained in settings that are indifferent or negative to business.

For the most part, seminaries, divinity schools, and pastor-training churches do not teach students to pray for the marketplace and its people. This seems odd for many reasons, including one of the most obvious: Churches are filled with people who invest a major proportion of their lives in business. Sure, our sanctuaries include plenty of people who work in the public or non-profit sectors of the economy. But a high percentage of church members work in business. If churches are seeking to help people be disciples of Jesus in their daily lives, and most churches would say this is central to their mission, then it seems only natural for churches to address marketplace concerns, in teaching, preaching, and prayer. ...

Read the whole thing. Good stuff!

Shale Gas Will Rock the World

Wall Street Journal: Shale Gas Will Rock the World

Huge discoveries of natural gas promise to shake up the energy markets and geopolitics. And that's just for starters.

There's an energy revolution brewing right under our feet.

Over the past decade, a wave of drilling around the world has uncovered giant supplies of natural gas in shale rock. By some estimates, there's 1,000 trillion cubic feet recoverable in North America alone—enough to supply the nation's natural-gas needs for the next 45 years. Europe may have nearly 200 trillion cubic feet of its own.

We've always known the potential of shale; we just didn't have the technology to get to it at a low enough cost. Now new techniques have driven down the price tag—and set the stage for shale gas to become what will be the game-changing resource of the decade.

I have been studying the energy markets for 30 years, and I am convinced that shale gas will revolutionize the industry—and change the world—in the coming decades. It will prevent the rise of any new cartels. It will alter geopolitics. And it will slow the transition to renewable energy.

To understand why, you have to consider that even before the shale discoveries, natural gas was destined to play a big role in our future. As environmental concerns have grown, nations have leaned more heavily on the fuel, which gives off just half the carbon dioxide of coal. But the rise of gas power seemed likely to doom the world's consumers to a repeat of OPEC, with gas producers like Russia, Iran and Venezuela coming together in a cartel and dictating terms to the rest of the world.

The advent of abundant, low-cost gas will throw all that out the window—so long as the recent drilling catastrophe doesn't curtail offshore oil and gas activity and push up the price of oil and eventually other forms of energy. Not only will the shale discoveries prevent a cartel from forming, but the petro-states will lose lots of the muscle they now have in world affairs, as customers over time cut them loose and turn to cheap fuel produced closer to home.

The shale boom also is likely to upend the economics of renewable energy. It may be a lot harder to persuade people to adopt green power that needs heavy subsidies when there's a cheap, plentiful fuel out there that's a lot cleaner than coal, even if gas isn't as politically popular as wind or solar.

But that's not the end of the story: I also believe this offers a tremendous new longer-term opportunity for alternative fuels. Since there's no longer an urgent need to make them competitive immediately through subsidies, since we can use natural gas now, we can pour that money into R&D—so renewables will be ready to compete without lots of help when shale supplies run low, decades from now.

To be sure, plenty of people (including Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin and many Wall Street energy analysts) aren't convinced that shale gas has the potential to be such a game changer. Their arguments revolve around two main points: that shale-gas exploration is too expensive and that it carries environmental risks.

I'd argue they are wrong on both counts.

Take costs first. Over the past decade, new techniques have been developed that drastically cut the price tag of production. The Haynesville shale, which extends from Texas into Louisiana, is seeing costs as low as $3 per million British thermal units, down from $5 or more in the Barnett shale in the 1990s. And more cost-cutting developments are likely on the way as major oil companies get into the game. If they need to do shale for $2, I am willing to bet they can, in the next five years.

When it comes to environmental risks, critics do have a point: They say drilling for shale gas runs a risk to ground water, even though shale is generally found thousands of feet below the water table. If a well casing fails, they argue, drilling fluids can seep into aquifers.

They're overplaying the danger of such a failure. For drilling on land, where most shale-gas deposits are, the casings have been around for decades with a good track record. But water pollution can occur if drilling fluids are disposed of improperly. So, regulations and enforcement must be tightened to ensure safety. More rules will raise costs—but, given the abundance of supply, producers can likely absorb the hit. Already, some are moving to nontoxic drilling fluids, even without imposed bans.

But the skeptics aren't just overstating the obstacles. They're missing two much bigger points. For one thing, they're ignoring history: The reserves and production of new energy resources tend to increase  over time, not decrease. They're also not taking into account how quickly public opinion can change. The country can  turn on a dime and embrace a cheaper energy source, casting aside political or environmental reservations. This has happened before, with the rapid spread of liquefied-natural-gas terminals over the past few years.

In short, the skeptics are missing the bigger picture—the picture I think is the much more likely one. Here's a closer look at what I'm talking about, and how I believe the boom in shale gas will shake up the world. ...

Why Don't We Pray for Business? Part 2

Mark D. Roberts: Why Don't We Pray for Business? Part 2

Yesterday I suggested one reason for this curious omission:

    1. We don't pray for business because we don't pray for business. Our prayers are shaped by our experience of praying, so if we don't pray for certain needs, chances are we won't pray for those needs.

Today I'll offer a second reason.

2. We don't pray for business because those who lead us in prayer have not been trained to do so. ...

...If praying for business is worth doing, then seminaries and churches should train pastors and all who lead in worship to pray in this vein. David Miller offers a number of recommendations for churches so that they might encourage people who work in business settings to live out their faith in the workplace. Among these suggestions we read:

    A logical starting place for change is the place where clergy are trained. Seminaries and divinity schools should recognize anew the theological, practical, and pastoral importance of the workplace with a view toward training pastors to minister more intentionally and effectively to their parishioners in the business world and other workplaces. (p. 144)

This training would include prayer:

    Clergy who wish to equip their people to integrate faith and work will also need to develop a ministry of public preaching and prayer that intentionally and constructively addresses all dimensions of [faith at work]. Sermons and pastoral prayers play a vital theological role as part of a ministry of integration to those in the business world, helping people to discover their vocational identity, resist splitting the sacred from the secular, navigate difficult ethical questions, and gain comfort for personal needs and hurts. (p. 147)

Of course the lack of previous training doesn't exempt those of us who lead in worship from learning to pray for business and business people. If we believe that we should be praying in this way, then we can surely teach ourselves to do so. Better yet, we can work with others, including the business people of our churches, so as to pray in ways that connect to the real-life challenges of those who work in business. I can imagine pastors sitting down with people who work in business and asking, "How might we as a church pray for you in our worship services? What are the concerns, needs, and challenges you face in your professional life?" Not only would the answers to these questions be helpful, but also the conversations would be encouraging to those who have often felt as if their work really didn't count for much in church. 

The Welfare State's Death Spiral

RealClearPolitics: The Welfare State's Death Spiral

WASHINGTON -- What we're seeing in Greece is the death spiral of the welfare state. This isn't Greece's problem alone, and that's why its crisis has rattled global stock markets and threatens economic recovery. Virtually every advanced nation, including the United States, faces the same prospect. Aging populations have been promised huge health and retirement benefits, which countries haven't fully covered with taxes. The reckoning has arrived in Greece, but it awaits most wealthy societies. ...

...The welfare state's death spiral is this: Almost anything governments might do with their budgets threatens to make matters worse by slowing the economy or triggering a recession. By allowing deficits to balloon, they risk a financial crisis as investors one day -- no one knows when -- doubt governments' ability to service their debts and, as with Greece, refuse to lend except at exorbitant rates. Cutting welfare benefits or raising taxes all would, at least temporarily, weaken the economy. Perversely, that would make paying the remaining benefits harder.

Greece illustrates the bind. To gain loans from other European countries and the International Monetary Fund, it embraced budget austerity. Average pension benefits will be cut 11 percent; wages for government workers will be cut 14 percent; the basic rate for the value added tax will rise from 21 percent to 23 percent. These measures will plunge Greece into a deep recession. In 2009, unemployment was about 9 percent; some economists expect it to peak near 19 percent.

If only a few countries faced these problems, the solution would be easy. Unlucky countries would trim budgets and resume growth by exporting to healthier nations. But developed countries represent about half the world economy; most have overcommitted welfare states. They might defuse the dangers by gradually trimming future benefits in a way that reassured financial markets. In practice, they haven't done that; indeed, President Obama's health program expands benefits. What happens if all these countries are thrust into Greece's situation? One answer -- another worldwide economic collapse -- explains why dawdling is so risky.

Why Don't We Pray for Business? Part 1

Mark D. Roberts: Why Don't We Pray for Business? Part 1

A few days ago, I commented on a feature of the National Day of Prayer that was mostly overlooked by the mainstream media: an encouragement for churches to pray on the Sunday prior to the official National Day of Prayer. Churches were urged by the National Day of Prayer Task Force, an evangelical group, to pray for seven centers of influence: government, military, media, business, education, church, and family.

As I reflected on this request, it occurred to me that Christians often pray for most of these centers. At least that has been true of my experience in church. When I was pastor of Irvine Presbyterian Church, for example, we regularly prayed in worship services for government, military, education, church, and family. But we rarely, if ever, prayed for media and business.

That got me thinking. Why had we - had I - been so selective in praying for certain institutions but not others? I particular, I began to wonder why we neglected to pray for business?

New York Stock ExchangeI've been participating in church worship services for fifty years. I've heard or offered thousands of prayers in the context of congregational worship. Yet I cannot remember either hearing or offering a prayer that focused on - or even mentioned - business. In my pastoral prayers at Irvine Pres, I would regularly intercede on behalf of government officials, members of the military, teachers, police officers, firefighters, parents, grandparents, pastors, churches, and mission partners. But I cannot remember offering prayers for bankers, lawyers, realtors, salespeople, and the like. Nor can I recall praying for business institutions: banks, law firms, corporations, small business, brokerage firms, etc. This seems especially odd to me now, given the fact that the majority of working people in my church were in business settings such as those I just mentioned. Why didn't I pray for them in the activity that took up so much of their time and meant so much to their lives? Why didn't I pray for the companies they worked for or, in many cases, owned? (Photo: The New York Stock Exchange. Now there's a business institution that could use a little prayer, don't you think?) ...

Here is a comment I posted in response to the post:

"I think a major reason is that most pastors, the people who write the prayers, have no education in economics/business and what education they do have tends to be highly distorted.

Up until the past couple of centuries, ethical reflection on economics has largely been about consumption and distribution. Production was perceived as an unalterable reality. Each person had the same number of hours in a day. The only way to alter production was to have more people. A very limited amount of goods and services could be produced. As a result economic life was perceived as a zero-sum game … it was about cutting portions from a pie. If my cut gets larger than someone elses must get smaller. Consequently, justice was about reduced consumption and generosity. This was the world of the Bible and the world of all humanity until very recently.

But over the past two or three centuries three things converged that allow us to radically alter productivity: Specialization of labor, expanded trade, and technological innovation. Individuals are many times more productive (and continue to be become more so) than people in the past could ever have dreamed. Production is no longer a fixed value. The pie can be grown much bigger. This doesn’t eliminate concerns about consumption and generosity but the ability to improve people’s lives through productivity becomes enormously important.

Business people appreciate this. They see their participation in the economy as additive. Their work produces useful goods and services, it provides employment, expands opportunities, gives outlets for God given gifts, and creates resources for other purposes including generosity toward others. The market place of is generally a place of win-win exchanges, with each party to a transaction exchanging something the value for something they value more.

Pastors generally do not appreciate this. Their mindset is the zero-sum game of the biblical world. They believe capitalism and the market economy is based on greed, selfishness, and hoarding. They are ambivalent toward business people because they see the market place as unseemly. Thus, when business is mentioned in corporate prayers it is almost exclusively in the sense of restraint, circumscribing bad behavior, and repentance. We are all called to repent from greed and be generous. The enormous additive contribution of business is not in view.

It is ironic to me that pastors who can so readily appreciate how recent experience has reshaped our ethical understanding to embrace inclusion of women in leadership or biological evolution, continue to hold to pre-Nineteenth Century views on business and economics."

Saw Cuts Through Wood, Not Through Fingers

Cool!

"Sunday Morning" (Satire)

This is just hysterical. I love it. How would you classify this movie: Horror or Comedy?

"Sunday's Coming" Movie Trailer from North Point Media on Vimeo.

part 2: from attractional programs to attractive people

Presbyterian Global Fellowship: part 2: from attractional programs to attractive people

Over fifteen years ago when I was busily buried in the basement of the Fuller Seminary Library working on my Ph.D. studies I stumbled across a quote that changed my life. It was in a book review by Martin Lloyd-Jones of G.C. Berkouwer’s Faith and Sanctification. Lloyd Jones wrote,

“If Christianity is what it claims to be, then it should be producing a type and order of life which is quite exceptional. If therefore, we are to meet the challenge of the modern world we must be living the Christian life; and the question arises how we are to do so.”

An insightful reader will immediately pick up on the phrase “modern world”. That quote was written over a half-century ago. But I think most of us would agree that if Dr. Lloyd-Jones’ statement was true then, it is only more so today in our “post-modern” world.

Study after study demonstrates that the greatest hindrances to the gospel of Christ are the lives of Christians whose lives are anything but “exceptional.” And while we missional folks criticize churches for being “attractional”, it’s clear that we don’t live lives that are nearly as “attractive” as they should be.

Indeed, as Dr. Craig Williams, the Associate for the Western Office of New Church Development in the PCUSA says, “A key to the missional church conversation is for us to realize that we are not so much called to reject ‘attractional churches’ as to be an ‘attractional people. The goal isn’t churches filled with programs to bring people to us, but our churches to be communities of who live with our neighbors in such a way that we can elicit the kinds of questions that Jesus himself and his earliest followers did.” (“Rabbi, where do you live?” they asked Jesus as if seeking an invitation to spend more time with him.) ...

The New Demography of American Motherhood

Pew Research: The New Demography of American Motherhood

Executive Summary

This report examines the changing demographic characteristics of U.S. mothers by comparing women who gave birth in 2008 with those who gave birth in 1990. It is based on data from the National Center for Health Statistics and the Census Bureau. It also presents results of a nationwide Pew Research Center survey that asked a range of questions about parenthood.

Among the key findings of this report:

• Age: Mothers of newborns are older now than their counterparts were two decades ago. In 1990, teens had a higher share of all births (13%) than did women ages 35 and older (9%). In 2008, the reverse was true -- 10% of births were to teens, compared with 14% to women ages 35 and older. Each race and ethnic group had a higher share of mothers of newborns in 2008 who are ages 35 and older, and a lower share who are teens, than in 1990.
• Marital Status: A record four-in-ten births (41%) were to unmarried women in 2008, including most births to women in their early 20s. In 1990, 28% of births were to unmarried women. The unmarried-mother share of births has increased most sharply for whites and Hispanics, although the highest share is for black women.
• Race and Ethnicity: White women made up 53% of mothers of newborns in 2008, down from 65% in 1990. The share of births to Hispanic women has grown dramatically, to one-in-four.
• Education: Most mothers of newborns (54%) had at least some college education in 2006, an increase from 41% in 1990. Among mothers of newborns who were ages 35 and older, 71% had at least some college education.
• Explaining the Trends: All the trends cited above reflect a complex mix of demographic and behavioral factors. For example, the higher share of college-educated mothers stems both from their rising birth rates and from women's increasing educational attainment. The rise in births to unmarried women reflects both their rising birth rates and the shrinking share of adults who are married.
• Attitudes about Parenthood: When asked why they decided to have their first (or only) child, the overwhelming majority of parents (87%) answer, "The joy of having children." But nearly half (47%) also say, "There wasn't a reason; it just happened." ...

From clergy shortage to clergy glut

RNS: From clergy shortage to clergy glut

(RNS) After a decade-long clergy shortage in America's pulpits, Christian denominations are now experiencing a clergy glut -- with some denominations reporting two ministers for every vacant pulpit.

"We have a serious surplus of ministers and candidates seeking calls," said Marcia Myers, director of the vocation office for the Presbyterian Church (USA), which has four ministers for every opening.

The cause of the sudden turnaround: blame the bad economy.

According to PC(USA) data, there are 532 vacancies for 2,271 ministers seeking positions. The Assemblies of God, United Methodist Church, Church of the Nazarene and other Protestant denominations also report significant surpluses.

Cash-strapped parishioners -- who were already aging and shrinking in number -- have given less to their churches, resulting in staff cuts.

Meanwhile, older clergy who saw their retirement funds evaporate are delaying retirement, leaving fewer positions available to younger ministers.

"With the employment prospects both in and out of the church being slim, those who are employed are not likely to leave" -- at least not voluntarily, Myers said.

All that adds up to a clergy glut -- a dramatic shift for denominations and seminaries that had once recruited young ministers to combat the "clergy shortage." Now seminary graduates struggle to find ministerial employment.  ...

Jon Meachem on the Future of Newsweek and Print Media

Jon Meachem, editor of Newsweek, discusses the future of reporting and print media on the Daily Show. Interesting stuff.

The Daily Show With Jon Stewart	Mon - Thurs 11p / 10c
Exclusive - Jon Meacham Extended Interview Pt. 1
www.thedailyshow.com
Daily Show Full Episodes Political Humor Tea Party

The Daily Show With Jon Stewart	Mon - Thurs 11p / 10c
Exclusive - Jon Meacham Extended Interview Pt. 2
www.thedailyshow.com
Daily Show Full Episodes Political Humor Tea Party

Black Hopefuls Pick This Year in G.O.P. Races

New York Times: Black Hopefuls Pick This Year in G.O.P. Races

Among the many reverberations of President Obama’s election, here is one he probably never anticipated: at least 32 African-Americans are running for Congress this year as Republicans, the biggest surge since Reconstruction, according to party officials.

he House has not had a black Republican since 2003, when J. C. Watts of Oklahoma left after eight years.

But now black Republicans are running across the country — from a largely white swath of beach communities in Florida to the suburbs of Phoenix, where an African-American candidate has raised more money than all but two of his nine (white) Republican competitors in the primary.

Party officials and the candidates themselves acknowledge that they still have uphill fights in both the primaries and the general elections, but they say that black Republicans are running with a confidence they have never had before. They credit the marriage of two factors: dissatisfaction with the Obama administration, and the proof, as provided by Mr. Obama, that blacks can get elected. ...

Allocation of Limited Resources - Part 8 (Government Limitations of Ignorance and Vested Interest)

I began this series with the analogy that presented various modes of allocating limited resources. It concluded that auction … markets … is the most efficient and just system we have. In the following post I explained that we deal with two types of community: Face-to-face and commercial society. Face-to-face communities can often efficiently and justly allocate resources based on non-market criteria. Because people know each other and their circumstances well-enough, they can make informed decisions. That is not possible for commercial society. Markets are therefore the most efficient and just in coordinating mass society. We then looked at Paul Heynes analogy of an urban traffic system to illustrate that a “market economy” is not anarchy and it is not an air traffic control system. It is a complex dynamic system where people act on decisions about their own contexts but interact with the larger community according to agreed upon rules and mores.

With that foundation I explained that markets have limitations. They need intervention in various ways. We examined the problem of negative externalities where some escape the costs of their actions and others must absorb them. We explored positive externalities, cases where the broad application of a good or service is beneficial to the common good but some or all of society will not avail themselves of those goods and services unless the costs are minimized by spreading them across many people. We saw that government regulation is necessary in some cases to facilitate the transparency and the flow of information. We saw that government is needed in the case of natural monopolies like. We looked at the role of government in stabilizing the economy thorough monetary and fiscal policies. We noted that some believe there are cases where it may be necessary for government to intervene in businesses or industries for the sake of the public … for instance responding to tariff’s placed on imports by other countries. We noted the role that non-profit firms play in addressing many societal needs.

Finally, we looked at the issue of redistribution. In our market economy, instead of trying to manage the economy so everyone gets a “fair” outcome … however “fair” is defined … we have generally opted to let the market do its work and then address inequities through progressive taxation and a variety of aid programs. Of course the big question is how much of which kinds of aid? But there is an underlying belief by most that society, through government, has some responsibility to the poor.

So, two things need to be said here about markets. First, markets are the most efficient and just means of allocating limited resources across millions of people that humanity has yet devised. The benefits of the market system are nothing short of astonishing by historical standards. Combined with the division labor and technological innovation over the past two centuries, I can think of no other development that has led to such widespread (and rapidly spreading) physical health and material well-being for so many people.

Second, markets do not constitute a quasi-deity, mystically guiding everything to its highest use. They simply do a far better job of guiding things to their highest use than anything else we know. I’ve identified several ways in which markets, left to their own devices, would not create the most efficient and just outcome. Markets need intervention.

So maybe we can let markets do their magic while using government to resolve issues like externalities, stabilizing the economies, dealing with natural monopolies, and providing an appropriate social safety net. Will this lead to a more just and efficient society? Not necessarily. There two very significant constraints on government.

The first limitation is ignorance. While markets require intervention there is frequently insufficient information to know just how to intervene. Sociologist Anthony Giddens, in Runaway World, looks at the Mad Cow scare in England a few years ago. Government officials were slow to sound a warning. It is believed the delay caused greater harm. Outcries arose about incompetence and conspiracy. And yet, if government over reacts, sounding the alarm too quickly or too forcefully, the same cries of incompetence and conspiracy arise if evidence of their warnings is not forthcoming. Ironically, sounding the appropriate level of warning that generates just the right amount of response to confront a problem can actually reflect negatively on officials because many citizens will view the failure of a disaster to materialize as evidence of alarmism rather than successful aversion. Giddens’ primary point is that what we are confronting in so many of these situations is risk management, not certain choices between right and wrong.

Product recalls and epidemic warnings are tricky enough but when we move to issues like climate change the calculations become enormously complex. We saw earlier that two ways to combat the problem of are to tax carbon or implement a cap and trade scheme. But how much tax? How much CO2 should be allowed by cap and trade? The problem is more akin to handicapping horse races than precise economic calculation.

But ignorance bedevils us in other arenas as well. It has long been believed that homeownership makes for better citizens. It was viewed as positive spillover which government should subsidize. While hardly the only contributing factor, the rising pressure from both Democrat and Republican administrations to take more financial risks in the mortgage lending market was a contributing factor in the markets recent collapse. We can point back to the 1960s when government concentrated the poor in high-rise housing projects in order to more effectively centralize services to the poor. The concentration was one of the worst disasters of aid to the poor in U.S. history. Predicting how people will respond to various incentives that are interjected into the market is often quite difficult. There is no great oracle who knows all the facts and can give us the policy direction we need.

The second big issue is vested interests. In democratic societies, politicians must get re-elected. That means every decision has a combination of considerations. I’m not as cynical as some in that I believe that many politicians do have noble public service a part of their vision. But every politician also has to weigh the impact his or her decisions with the support of campaign donors and voters. Virtually no political decision is the optimal decision that would be made in a perfect world and some are downright destructive. Most are somewhere in between.

Right now it is popular to decry the influence of large corporations in the political process. It is believed that large corporations resist regulation. In some instances this is true, but large corporations in many industries actually embrace regulation. Regulation creates what business analysts call a barrier to entry. Large established corporations are usually more adept at managing regulation than smaller firms. Potential new companies to a regulated industry have to go through a learning curve on handling regulatory requirements. The more daunting the regulation is the more of a deterrent it is to the would-be new competitors. A partnership develops between the corporations and politicians. Supportive politicians get sizeable support in their campaigns. Corporations get the ear of politicians in tailoring regulations that benefit the perpetuation of their firms while discouraging competition. Populist efforts to control large corporations frequently have the unintended effect of consolidating corporate power and stifling small business innovation.

Churchill remarked that democracy is the worst form of government except for all the others. We can also say that market economies are the worst economic systems except for all the others. And the two of them together will not yield us the optimal world as seen through the eye of an all knowing deity … but neither will any other system!

We seem to have a strong need to perceive that someone is in charge … that our world is predictable and safe. When something unpredictable or threatening emerges, that means our “someone” wasn’t doing his job, otherwise these things would not have happened. In our case, that “someone” is usually perceived to be the national government because it is the centralized entity that is “running” the country.”

But let’s return again to traffic analogies. If you let millions of people drive around in their cars at speeds up to 70 mph, there are going to be accidents. Some people are going to get killed. Many others will be injured. Still others will suffer financial setbacks from car repairs. In any given accident we can study events and determine what roles driver error, mechanical failure, or other factors played. We can learn from such studies to minimize contributing variables but we can’t eliminate all collisions if we are going to allow this kind of mobility. We could universally reduce the speed limit to 5 mph and that would likely dramatically reduce the accident statistics. It would also make the transportation system useless from any practical standpoint and a load of other miseries would befall us (Think of increased death due to heart attacks from people unable to get to the hospital in a timely way or firefighters getting to fires, much less the way it would end trade.) To paraphrase a popular bumper sticker, “Stuff Happens!” If there is going to be a meaningful transportation system, people are going to get hurt.

Similarly, people are going to get hurt in a market economy. People making seemingly wise investment decisions and lose money. Unscrupulous people do unethical things with their business and others get hurt. Industry dynamics means some businesses rise while others fall. The volatile evolutionary nature of the market means there times of retraction and loss for the overall economy. And just as with auto accidents, each case can be studied to understand the variables that led to the negative outcome and we can learn from those variables. But if we are going to have economic freedom, people will get hurt! Stuff happens! There categorically is not a “great mind” or a system somewhere that can make our lives completely predictable and safe.

Where does that leave us? Markets are a remarkable system for the just and effective distribution of limited resources. Government intervention is critical to both to the functioning of markets and to addressing a number of limitations markets possess. The deification of the markets as the master of providence, and the deification of the state as an all knowing benevolent mind guiding the economy with enlightened reason, are fantasies. Some combination of the two will not free us from harm and acting as though changing the system in some direction would free us is delusion.

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