Ken and Deb Loyd, who pastor The Bridge and Home PDX, were at Off The Map Live with us recently. Ken was featured in The Oregonian a couple of days ago - here’s an excerpt from the article.
It’s 12:30 p.m. on a sunny summer Sunday, and Ken Loyd is supposed to serve lunch to 50 people. They gather at the western end of the Hawthorne Bridge awaiting his weekly church service. The food is the big draw, a hot meal on the one day when most soup kitchens shut down.
Loyd has had a rough morning. The Beaverton congregation providing lunch is late. The batteries on the toy microphone he preaches with just died. Athletes from the Portland Triathlon have nudged his audience of homeless men and women from their normal spot.
Less than 50 feet from where Loyd stands, athletes enjoy massages, organic pizza and microbrew. Though they just swam, biked and ran almost 32 miles, most look cleaner and better rested than the displaced.
Loyd has no time to note the incongruous setting. The minister, aging hippie and recovering drug addict, is too busy fretting. He rubs a hand through his silver Mohawk as if trying to summon a genie from a bottle. He’s losing his crowd. Where is the food?
He hands a volunteer two $20s and sends him for takeout. A triathlete bridges the divide, offering leftover pizza and bananas, just as the Beaverton church crew arrives with enough fried chicken, mac and cheese, and potato salad to feed twice this many people.
Those who drifted away hurry back. Loyd releases a deep breath, looks heavenward for a second and grins.
“That’s the way the Lord works, right? You don’t have anything, and then suddenly you have too much.”
Not Joel Osteen but Joel Klampert, music director, worship leader, marketing and design guy for St. Michael’s Charismatic Episcopal Church in Newport, RI.
Joel gives Jim and Casper go to Church just 2 stars out of 5. Here are his comments about the book
In Jim and Casper Go to church we see a Christian retired pastor and an athiest go from church to church talking about their opinions on it. This book has been getting rave reviews so I bet most of you are surprised Ive got 2 stars on it. As a matter of fact Brent sent me a message asking why. My issues with the book… First off this was suppose to be a completely unbiased approach to rating the churches and it wasn’t. The Christian waled in with his matter of fact beliefs on everything and was not very open to anything that didnt fit into his scope. The athiest wasn’t and unchurched one. He went to one churhc and said that it felt like home because he grew up in a church like that. Basically through the whole book you realize they have it in their heads what church should be like and they are weighing everything against that. Basically it came down to a few things for them. Outreach was key almost to the point that they didnt even think you needed “Church†you just needed a church body. I didn’t agree with most of the theology in the book and a few things took me aback. Casper mentions that the churches sing about the blood too much…and it is kinda freaky. Then Jim ends up agreeing with him. I think he needs to read dangerous act of worship. I was floored by this..we sing about the blood because that is what our faith is all about…We cant leave that out just to make people feel comfortable. Im not going to go into the rest of the book…I think you should read it, but understand it may tick you off.
Joel’s assumption the book was unbiased surprised me. I think someone must have misinformed him about the book because I’ve never heard Jim or Casper claim to be unbiased.
Elevation Church in south Charlotte — with no home of its own — funded $40,000 worth of kind acts around the city last week.
The church, celebrating services today as always on high school campuses, gave the equivalent of a typical Sunday collection back to its congregation last week.
When pastor Steven Furtick instructed members to pluck from the collection bowls, filled with envelopes containing $5, $10, $20, $50 or $100, some people didn’t believe it. One person at each of the five services even got an envelope with $1,000.
Members looked at Furtick like “What’s the punchline?” he recalled. “Then the creative wheels started turning.”
The money isn’t to keep, Furtick told them. Instead, members were to go out and do something random for someone else.
