Web Links for Northeast Community Lutheran Church's 2013 Give to the Max! Day campaign and other online resources (donate any time between now and Thursday, November 14: Make sure the box is checked indicating "Make my donation count for Give to the Max Day 2013"):
Give to the Max! Little Kitchen Food Shelf 2013 Campaign - Donate directly from this page!
Please notice near the top right of this page are icons you can click to share this campaign on Facebook, Twitter, or Google Plus if you are a member of any of these social media sites, or to email a link to the campaign to your friends. These are all great ways to promote our campaign!
Little Kitchen Facebook Page: you can donate directly through the Facebook page as well, just look for the Button marked "Donate". Please remember to "Like" and "Share" the food shelf page and updates you'll see there about this campaign.
If you're on Facebook but not yet a member of the Northeast Community Lutheran Group, please visit that group page and join us today!
If you have any comments about the campaign, or would like input or an email script for promoting it online, feel free to send me an email at jonathan.hamlow@gmail.com
Saturday, November 9, 2013
Thursday, November 15, 2012
Help the Little Kitchen Food Shelf!
Please note this campaign will be open through the end of 2012.
Donate to the Little Kitchen NE Minneapolis Food Shelf 2012 Fund Drive
Donate to the Little Kitchen NE Minneapolis Food Shelf 2012 Fund Drive
Donate online to Little Kitchen Food Shelf Needs You! at Razoo
Monday, August 20, 2012
Formula for Profit: The High Cost of
Baby Formula
Why is the price of infant formula in
supermarkets so high? A one-week supply often costs upward of $25.00
per can of powdered formula, so it’s no surprise that Little
Kitchen Food Shelf rarely receives donations of formula. Nor is
infant formula generally available from the food banks where food
shelves typically purchase basic foods, indicating that formula
manufacturers rarely make donations. We receive calls each week from
mothers who need to visit the food shelf and are specifically looking
for formula of a certain brand. Often we are unable to meet these
requests.
And yet, more than
half the formula sold in the United States is actually given away for
free to mothers enrolled in the federal government’s Special
Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants and Children –
commonly known as WIC. Infants and children participating in WIC come
from families with limited resources. Only families with incomes at
or below 185% of federal poverty level are eligible for WIC services.
All children participating in WIC are considered at nutritional risk.
In 2010 Minnesota had over 192,000 children living in poverty. The
poverty rate for children under five years old is 17.2%. In 2011 an
average of 131,300 low-income women, infants and children
participated each month in MN WIC. National data indicates that (in
2005) only 43% infants were breastfeeding at 6 months of age. Parents
know how important access to baby formula often becomes, particularly
when mothers must work, and when children or mothers have difficulty
breastfeeding.
In
1990 the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) responded to complaints from
welfare officials and consumer groups that three formula
manufacturers had been engaging in substantial, parallel price
increases for more than a decade – an increase of more than 200%,
six times higher than increases in the price of cow’s milk,
formula’s basic ingredient. FTC
observed that the companies were dealing with a “captive market,”
women who chose not to or could not breastfeed their infants.
In 2008, three
manufacturers accounted for almost 98 percent of all U.S. formula
sales: Abbott Labs, the manufacturer of Similac, had a 43-percent
share of the market; Mead Johnson, maker of Enfamil, 40 percent; and
Nestlé (now Gerber), maker of Good Start, 15 percent. Since the
mid-1990s, these three firms (two of which were accused of
price-fixing) have been the sole infant formula manufacturers awarded
WIC contracts. Each state negotiates to determine what one
brand of formula will be distributed for free through WIC.
WIC is not an
entitlement program – any increase in formula prices decreases the
number of women any state WIC agency can serve. In the 1980’s WIC
administrators were required to pay retail prices for the formula
they gave away as part of the program. As formula prices rose they
began demanding a competitive bid system for formula purchases, in
order to serve more of the eligible women and infants. While formula
companies strongly resisted this effort, and lobbied legislators with
a variety of profit-related concerns, industry analysts felt the
“captive market” for formula would always remain strong. In 1996,
Abbott Labs paid $32.5 million to settle price-fixing lawsuits in 17
states, and shortly thereafter all states legislated competitive
bidding for WIC contracts. As a result, formula manufacturers began
actively competing for WIC contracts, trading lowest bid on net price
for exclusive WIC distribution rights state by state. (Each WIC State
agency, or group of agencies, awards a contract to the manufacturer
offering the lowest net wholesale price, defined as the difference
between the manufacturer’s wholesale price and the State agency’s
rebate.)
Mead Johnson, Abbott Labs and another
manufacturer, Wyeth, are pharmaceutical companies. Standard marketing
practice was (and is) to encourage physicians and hospitals to
recommend certain brands of formula, and to give away free samples to
new mothers. In other words, parents are generally encouraged to
choose a specific brand of formula for their child – either
tacitly, when they bring home the “gift bag” including formula
from the hospital where they birthed their child; or actively, either
by pediatrician recommendation or because they must use WIC services,
which only provide one brand of formula (without a doctor’s
prescription.) Further, parents are often strongly discouraged from
switching formula brands if their current brand causes no distress
for the infant. Once a brand is chosen, the “captive market” is
locked in.
WIC clients get the formula free. WIC, and thus the US Treasury, pays for it. WIC negotiates contracts with the formula companies under which WIC gets rebates from the manufacturers. The rebates are quite large: they vary across states and range from 85 to 98 percent of the manufacturer's wholesale price (in fiscal 2000.) As a result, the highest net price a manufacturer received for WIC-provided infant formula was only 15 percent of the wholesale price. Net prices in September 2000 ranged from 76.5 cents (per can of milk-based liquid concentrate) in Florida to 44.7 cents in Nebraska and South Dakota. For the US as a whole, net prices averaged 18 cents per can in fiscal 2000. As a result, with rebates from the formula manufacturers, the cost of the formula to taxpayers is a small fraction of its wholesale price. This sounds good. But then who pays for WIC's formula? If it’s not the clients who are paying, and the taxpayers cover only a small portion of the price (mainly distribution costs), who provides the profits?
In short, the difference between realized profits from WIC sales and the profit desired by the manufacturers is made up for by retail consumers. The retail price of formula is higher in states where WIC is more active. In Minnesota, Abbott Labs holds the sole distribution contract for Similac and Isomil formulas through the state’s WIC program. After adjusting for inflation, net wholesale prices increased nationwide by an average 73% for 26 fluid ounces of reconstituted formula between 2007 and 2008. New ingredients have made cans of infant formula cost roughly 1 cent per ounce more than they did in 2008, despite a resounding lack of medical evidence to support the claims of formula manufacturers that these new ingredients represent an improvement in infant nutrition. When Mead Johnson introduced its first probiotic infant formula (Enfamil Premium) in 2010, the product came in a can that was 0.4 ounces smaller than its non-probiotic formula and cost 29 cents more. Senior policy analysts at Center on Budget and Policy Priorities calculate that it now costs $95 more per year to feed the same amount of Enfamil Premium to a baby than it did prior to 2010.
Ironically, U.S. Dept. of Agriculture speculated in its 2010 report that WIC might have caused the demise of unsupplemented infant formula. In 2004, a legislative change enabled the companies to determine which of their infant formulas that they would provide if they won a WIC bid. Naturally, they all listed their more costly supplemented labels. Because so much of the infant formula that’s purchased in this country is purchased through WIC, grocery stores devote extra shelf space to the WIC-backed brand. By locking up the market for supplemented infant formulas, the big-three companies were able to quash demand for standard infant formulas, Agriculture speculated.
As a result of the increase in real net wholesale prices, WIC paid about $127 million more for infant formula over the course of a year, as of 2008. Seventy-two percent of the increase in real net wholesale price was due to an increase in the real wholesale price of infant formula.
The increasing participation of infants in the WIC program has resulted in a less “price sensitive” demand for formula. Consequently formula manufactures have been able to increase the real wholesale price, which drives up retail prices paid by non-WIC consumers. By itself, the effort to contain the formula costs of the WIC program has resulted in lower wholesale prices, not higher wholesale prices as was expected by policymakers in the early 1990s. The impact of the rebate should be welcomed news not only by taxpayers but also by those eligible for WIC whose participation is made possible by the savings in formula cost from the rebates -- but the “less price sensitive” consumers make up for unrealized profits out of pocket. The manufacturing costs of infant formula are proprietary and aren’t made public. But economist David Davis of South Dakota State University developed an economic model to infer production costs. Although his study hasn’t been published, he tells us that infant-formula-makers are selling to WIC at a price that’s above their manufacturing costs. That would mean that the mark-ups are, on average, more than enough to make up the amount that’s rebated.
In plain language, formula manufacturers compensate for a decrease in profits (based on WIC sales) by raising the wholesale price of infant formula, consistently and frequently. The “price sensitive market” is represented by state WIC programs; the “less price sensitive market” is represented by parents who do not seek WIC support or require it, who are obligated to pay the local retail cost of the formula. 1 At Little Kitchen Food Shelf, we frequently meet parents who are looking for formula, and we believe many of those consumers are in fact the working poor – families that do not meet federal poverty guidelines (and so would not qualify for WIC) but who are still struggling to make ends meet. Because formula manufacturers exert tremendous marketing-based influence, parents are afraid to try less expensive store-brand formulas, preferring instead to stick with brand-name products. Yet high retail prices effectively limit our ability to provide those brands at the food shelf.
While we encourage our supporters and partners to donate baby formula to meet a real need, we also encourage you to help us raise awareness of this incredible price inequity. Only substantial pressure from so-called “less price sensitive” consumers can attract the attention of pharmaceutical companies. Consider always the hungry children in our communities, and demand food justice.
WIC clients get the formula free. WIC, and thus the US Treasury, pays for it. WIC negotiates contracts with the formula companies under which WIC gets rebates from the manufacturers. The rebates are quite large: they vary across states and range from 85 to 98 percent of the manufacturer's wholesale price (in fiscal 2000.) As a result, the highest net price a manufacturer received for WIC-provided infant formula was only 15 percent of the wholesale price. Net prices in September 2000 ranged from 76.5 cents (per can of milk-based liquid concentrate) in Florida to 44.7 cents in Nebraska and South Dakota. For the US as a whole, net prices averaged 18 cents per can in fiscal 2000. As a result, with rebates from the formula manufacturers, the cost of the formula to taxpayers is a small fraction of its wholesale price. This sounds good. But then who pays for WIC's formula? If it’s not the clients who are paying, and the taxpayers cover only a small portion of the price (mainly distribution costs), who provides the profits?
In short, the difference between realized profits from WIC sales and the profit desired by the manufacturers is made up for by retail consumers. The retail price of formula is higher in states where WIC is more active. In Minnesota, Abbott Labs holds the sole distribution contract for Similac and Isomil formulas through the state’s WIC program. After adjusting for inflation, net wholesale prices increased nationwide by an average 73% for 26 fluid ounces of reconstituted formula between 2007 and 2008. New ingredients have made cans of infant formula cost roughly 1 cent per ounce more than they did in 2008, despite a resounding lack of medical evidence to support the claims of formula manufacturers that these new ingredients represent an improvement in infant nutrition. When Mead Johnson introduced its first probiotic infant formula (Enfamil Premium) in 2010, the product came in a can that was 0.4 ounces smaller than its non-probiotic formula and cost 29 cents more. Senior policy analysts at Center on Budget and Policy Priorities calculate that it now costs $95 more per year to feed the same amount of Enfamil Premium to a baby than it did prior to 2010.
Ironically, U.S. Dept. of Agriculture speculated in its 2010 report that WIC might have caused the demise of unsupplemented infant formula. In 2004, a legislative change enabled the companies to determine which of their infant formulas that they would provide if they won a WIC bid. Naturally, they all listed their more costly supplemented labels. Because so much of the infant formula that’s purchased in this country is purchased through WIC, grocery stores devote extra shelf space to the WIC-backed brand. By locking up the market for supplemented infant formulas, the big-three companies were able to quash demand for standard infant formulas, Agriculture speculated.
As a result of the increase in real net wholesale prices, WIC paid about $127 million more for infant formula over the course of a year, as of 2008. Seventy-two percent of the increase in real net wholesale price was due to an increase in the real wholesale price of infant formula.
The increasing participation of infants in the WIC program has resulted in a less “price sensitive” demand for formula. Consequently formula manufactures have been able to increase the real wholesale price, which drives up retail prices paid by non-WIC consumers. By itself, the effort to contain the formula costs of the WIC program has resulted in lower wholesale prices, not higher wholesale prices as was expected by policymakers in the early 1990s. The impact of the rebate should be welcomed news not only by taxpayers but also by those eligible for WIC whose participation is made possible by the savings in formula cost from the rebates -- but the “less price sensitive” consumers make up for unrealized profits out of pocket. The manufacturing costs of infant formula are proprietary and aren’t made public. But economist David Davis of South Dakota State University developed an economic model to infer production costs. Although his study hasn’t been published, he tells us that infant-formula-makers are selling to WIC at a price that’s above their manufacturing costs. That would mean that the mark-ups are, on average, more than enough to make up the amount that’s rebated.
In plain language, formula manufacturers compensate for a decrease in profits (based on WIC sales) by raising the wholesale price of infant formula, consistently and frequently. The “price sensitive market” is represented by state WIC programs; the “less price sensitive market” is represented by parents who do not seek WIC support or require it, who are obligated to pay the local retail cost of the formula. 1 At Little Kitchen Food Shelf, we frequently meet parents who are looking for formula, and we believe many of those consumers are in fact the working poor – families that do not meet federal poverty guidelines (and so would not qualify for WIC) but who are still struggling to make ends meet. Because formula manufacturers exert tremendous marketing-based influence, parents are afraid to try less expensive store-brand formulas, preferring instead to stick with brand-name products. Yet high retail prices effectively limit our ability to provide those brands at the food shelf.
While we encourage our supporters and partners to donate baby formula to meet a real need, we also encourage you to help us raise awareness of this incredible price inequity. Only substantial pressure from so-called “less price sensitive” consumers can attract the attention of pharmaceutical companies. Consider always the hungry children in our communities, and demand food justice.
1
Store-brand infant formulas cost 30 percent to 50 percent less than
do brand-name infant formulas, and they are required by law to
contain the same nutrients as do the brand-name products.
Bibliography:
Bibliography:
- Nestle, Marion. (2007) “Food
Politics: How the Food Industry Influences Nutrition and Health,”
University of California Press.
- Kent, George. (2006) “The high price
of infant formula in the United States,” University of Hawaii
Department of Political Science.
- Oliveira,
Victor; Frazao, Elizabeth; and Smallwood, David. (2010) “Rising
Infant Formula Costs to the WIC Program: Recent Trends in Rebates and
Wholesale Prices,” USDA Economic Research Service.
- Betson,
David. (2009) “Impact of WIC Program on the Infant Formula Market,”
University of Notre Dame, Department of Economics and Policy Studies.
- Child
Welfare League of America. (2012) “Minnesota's Children 2012,”
www.cwla.org
- Minnesota Department of Health. (2012)
“Minnesota WIC Facts,” WIC Program and CSFP, St. Paul MN.
- Elton, Catherine. (2011) “Hard to
Swallow: The Truth About Infant Formula,” Consumers Digest Special
Reports.
- Minnesota Department of Health. (2010) “Health Status: Minnesota
children enrolled in WIC 2000 to 2010.” - Oliveira, Victor. (2011) “Winner Takes (Almost) All: How WIC
Affects the Infant Formula Market” www.ers.usda.gov/amber-waves
Sunday, August 30, 2009
Gideon's One Percent
Gideon’s One Per Cent
by Dean J. Seal
For Nordeast Community Luteran Church, Aug. 30th, 2009
(Please read Judges Ch. 7)
God’s peace be with you on this last Sunday in August, and my last Sunday with this congregation.You have been through a lot in my time here, and you have further to go before you rest.
I’m sure you have considered your situation to be similar to the Hebrews, wandering through the desert. You had a home, then you were uprooted, and uprooted again. You are now getting ready to move once more, and for many of you it is an exciting prospect. A modern space, room to grow and experiment, a place to put down roots, grow into partnerships with other organizations, redesign and rebuild in a place where a new message can be heard in a new way.
I’ve been doing some research into modern trends in theology, and there is a thing called The Emergent Church. It seems that we are on the cusp of another huge turnover of ideas. It happens about every five hundred years or so. 500 years ago, Martin Luther kicked off his end of the Reformation. 500 years before that, in 1054, the Catholics broke with the Orthodox Church. 500 years before that, the Vandals destroyed Rome, and the Church was run from Constantinople. 500 years before that, Jesus was born. 500 years before that, the Babylonians destroyed the Temple and took the Hebrews into captivity.
Now we are engaged in a great reshuffling of how the Church operates. Phylis Tickle, editor of the religion section of Publisher’s Weekly, likens it to a giant garage sale that happens every 500 years, where everything is put out, and some stuff is reclaimed and the rest is thrown away.
The emergent church is one way that this is sorting itself out. There are young new Christians who don’t want to be called Christians, because of the baggage attached to it. You look around in here and you might say, Christians aren’t so bad. But when you are outside our circle, and you hear of a Christian preacher who says he goes home every night and prays that President Obama dies and goes to hell, when you understand that the Ku Klux Klan called themselves Christians, when you remember that the guards at Auschwitz took communion every Sunday, and went back to the extermination of the Jews the rest of the week, you might understand their reluctance to call themselves Christians.
These people call themselves Followers of Jesus, and there unofficial motto is, What if Jesus actually meant what he said? They don’t build churches, but meet in schools, or coffee houses, or theater spaces. Some of them meet at 5 p.m. on Sundays instead of in the morning. They focus on missions, like food shelves, or feeding the hungry, or housing the homeless, or visiting those in prison. They are mission-oriented, not theology oriented or building oriented or denominational.
They are having an influence on the denominations, though. There are Luthermergents, Presbymergents, Episcomergents. Those folks meet each other and bring ideas back to their churches. They have an ongoing conversation going on-line, on sites like The Ooze, and they use them to keep in touch.
What I think I am getting is that you folks here are doing all the right things. If you can pull off taking over that school building, you will be in an untraditional setting, with room to engage not just the feeding of the hungry, which you do now, but also partner with other people to make other things happen. You will be the kind of church that the young new Followers of Jesus are looking for.
A congregation that is only looking to preserve the past traditions of its own history is doomed. A congregation that can collect the essential elements of what is meaningful, and then move forward into the future, with the idea of creating something for that future, is going to have a future.
This congregation has traveled through the process of throwing out the excess, packing the essential, and moving to a new place. It has happened again and again. And again. And it will happen, again.
Some of you may feel tired down to your bones. That would not be unexpected. It’s kind of like what they say about the ninth month of pregnancy- it’s so unpleasant that you can’t wait to give birth. And some people have left the congregation because of what has been lost. They may have a stronger feeling about a building than they do about the faith. They may have a stronger feeling about what is in a service than they do about why there is a service. They may have a stronger feeling for the traditions of a church than they do about the future of a congregation.
That is why I love this story about Gideon. He has an army of 30,000 men, and God sends away 99% of it, because he wants them to understand something. When they achieve this victory, he wants them to know it is God’s victory. The traditional interpretation is that Gideon is too scared to go to battle until he hears the interpretation of the dream from the edge of the Midianite’s camp. It is a scared Gideon marching with 300 scared men, who don’t even have swords. Both hands are full- a jar with a torch, a trumpet and a yell is all they have to win the battle. And they do. The victory is not Gideon’s. The victory is not the Hebrew’s victory.
I don’t believe in trying to predict the future. But it is not unreasonable to try to perceive what will happen in a given course of events. I believe that this congregation will achieve a victory. It will not be a victory because of the work of your minister, although he is doing a very good job. It will not be the victory of the committees that have been meeting, although the work they are doing is thorough and fair and being done well. It will not be the victory of the people who are members of the congregation, though you have toughed it out through several setbacks. The victory will be God’s victory. It is God that inspired your minister to tackle this intense process of consolidation and resurrection. It is God that keeps the committees meeting and making painful but necessary decisions. It is God that renews your right spirit as a congregation, to keep moving forward, because you have something to offer to this community and this town and this world.
So I hope you take this message of Gideon, who was scared, and had 1% of what he already thought was not enough, who won the battle without losing a soldier. He won the battle because he was filled with the Holy Spirit of God, and went to where God told him to go, and he listened for what God would say to him. He was open to God’s victory, and God was victorious.
So let me leave you with a doxology that I’ve known my whole life, a text from the Hebrew Bible, Psalm 51. When we feel we need some energy, this is a prayer to remind us we are not doing this alone.
Create in me a clean heart, O God, and renew a right spirit within me. Cast me not, away from thy presence, and take not thy Holy Spirit from me. Restore unto me, the Joy of thy salvation, and uphold me with thy free spirit. Amen.
by Dean J. Seal
For Nordeast Community Luteran Church, Aug. 30th, 2009
(Please read Judges Ch. 7)
God’s peace be with you on this last Sunday in August, and my last Sunday with this congregation.You have been through a lot in my time here, and you have further to go before you rest.
I’m sure you have considered your situation to be similar to the Hebrews, wandering through the desert. You had a home, then you were uprooted, and uprooted again. You are now getting ready to move once more, and for many of you it is an exciting prospect. A modern space, room to grow and experiment, a place to put down roots, grow into partnerships with other organizations, redesign and rebuild in a place where a new message can be heard in a new way.
I’ve been doing some research into modern trends in theology, and there is a thing called The Emergent Church. It seems that we are on the cusp of another huge turnover of ideas. It happens about every five hundred years or so. 500 years ago, Martin Luther kicked off his end of the Reformation. 500 years before that, in 1054, the Catholics broke with the Orthodox Church. 500 years before that, the Vandals destroyed Rome, and the Church was run from Constantinople. 500 years before that, Jesus was born. 500 years before that, the Babylonians destroyed the Temple and took the Hebrews into captivity.
Now we are engaged in a great reshuffling of how the Church operates. Phylis Tickle, editor of the religion section of Publisher’s Weekly, likens it to a giant garage sale that happens every 500 years, where everything is put out, and some stuff is reclaimed and the rest is thrown away.
The emergent church is one way that this is sorting itself out. There are young new Christians who don’t want to be called Christians, because of the baggage attached to it. You look around in here and you might say, Christians aren’t so bad. But when you are outside our circle, and you hear of a Christian preacher who says he goes home every night and prays that President Obama dies and goes to hell, when you understand that the Ku Klux Klan called themselves Christians, when you remember that the guards at Auschwitz took communion every Sunday, and went back to the extermination of the Jews the rest of the week, you might understand their reluctance to call themselves Christians.
These people call themselves Followers of Jesus, and there unofficial motto is, What if Jesus actually meant what he said? They don’t build churches, but meet in schools, or coffee houses, or theater spaces. Some of them meet at 5 p.m. on Sundays instead of in the morning. They focus on missions, like food shelves, or feeding the hungry, or housing the homeless, or visiting those in prison. They are mission-oriented, not theology oriented or building oriented or denominational.
They are having an influence on the denominations, though. There are Luthermergents, Presbymergents, Episcomergents. Those folks meet each other and bring ideas back to their churches. They have an ongoing conversation going on-line, on sites like The Ooze, and they use them to keep in touch.
What I think I am getting is that you folks here are doing all the right things. If you can pull off taking over that school building, you will be in an untraditional setting, with room to engage not just the feeding of the hungry, which you do now, but also partner with other people to make other things happen. You will be the kind of church that the young new Followers of Jesus are looking for.
A congregation that is only looking to preserve the past traditions of its own history is doomed. A congregation that can collect the essential elements of what is meaningful, and then move forward into the future, with the idea of creating something for that future, is going to have a future.
This congregation has traveled through the process of throwing out the excess, packing the essential, and moving to a new place. It has happened again and again. And again. And it will happen, again.
Some of you may feel tired down to your bones. That would not be unexpected. It’s kind of like what they say about the ninth month of pregnancy- it’s so unpleasant that you can’t wait to give birth. And some people have left the congregation because of what has been lost. They may have a stronger feeling about a building than they do about the faith. They may have a stronger feeling about what is in a service than they do about why there is a service. They may have a stronger feeling for the traditions of a church than they do about the future of a congregation.
That is why I love this story about Gideon. He has an army of 30,000 men, and God sends away 99% of it, because he wants them to understand something. When they achieve this victory, he wants them to know it is God’s victory. The traditional interpretation is that Gideon is too scared to go to battle until he hears the interpretation of the dream from the edge of the Midianite’s camp. It is a scared Gideon marching with 300 scared men, who don’t even have swords. Both hands are full- a jar with a torch, a trumpet and a yell is all they have to win the battle. And they do. The victory is not Gideon’s. The victory is not the Hebrew’s victory.
I don’t believe in trying to predict the future. But it is not unreasonable to try to perceive what will happen in a given course of events. I believe that this congregation will achieve a victory. It will not be a victory because of the work of your minister, although he is doing a very good job. It will not be the victory of the committees that have been meeting, although the work they are doing is thorough and fair and being done well. It will not be the victory of the people who are members of the congregation, though you have toughed it out through several setbacks. The victory will be God’s victory. It is God that inspired your minister to tackle this intense process of consolidation and resurrection. It is God that keeps the committees meeting and making painful but necessary decisions. It is God that renews your right spirit as a congregation, to keep moving forward, because you have something to offer to this community and this town and this world.
So I hope you take this message of Gideon, who was scared, and had 1% of what he already thought was not enough, who won the battle without losing a soldier. He won the battle because he was filled with the Holy Spirit of God, and went to where God told him to go, and he listened for what God would say to him. He was open to God’s victory, and God was victorious.
So let me leave you with a doxology that I’ve known my whole life, a text from the Hebrew Bible, Psalm 51. When we feel we need some energy, this is a prayer to remind us we are not doing this alone.
Create in me a clean heart, O God, and renew a right spirit within me. Cast me not, away from thy presence, and take not thy Holy Spirit from me. Restore unto me, the Joy of thy salvation, and uphold me with thy free spirit. Amen.
Sunday, August 9, 2009
Movie Camp: The Parables Like Aesop's Fables
Nordeast Luteran hosted three movie camps this summer, and I felt a great deal of satisfaction with how they went. There was action, learning, progress, and comedy.
My espousal unit, Kirsten, started this several years ago in a home-school coop, and the kids liked it so much she kept on doing it, even hiring me to handle the cats we were trying to herd. That was the secular version.
I was inspired to steal the idea when I was a youth minister in my MDiv Internship, when I asked my three teen guys if they had a favorite parable. They said, "What's a Parable?" There are enough parables, and enough kids who don't know about them, that I thought we should try making something happen.
Here's how it works. For the uninitiated, what we do is take kids from about 8 to about 13. It's a four day experience. Day one, we do theater warm-ups and exorcises, improvisation games that give the kids a sense of shared experience and the freedom to try ideas. After lunch, I read them four or five parables. Luke is best, but if you have repeat customers like we do there's plenty to dig through in Matthew. We talk about the message of each story, without being religious about it; but let me emphasise, we are very clear that these are stories about Ethics with a Capital E, and the kids really go for it. The jumpy and short-attention-span assumptions about kids disappear because they are being engaged with real ideas. I have to credit Rev. Scott Stapleton for this; he said to me, "If you don't challenge them, they aren't going to get it."
He was totally right. The challenge is to pick one story, maybe two, and rewrite them for our time and our place. That is, after all, the method a good church takes to the text; what does it mean for us today? Who would be the Good Samaritan now? How about the Pharisee and the Tax Collector?
The stories have to be explained first, and then we start generating ideas. The Good Samaritan needs to be someone that would be a surprise if they stopped to help someone; they picked a Homeless Person. The Pharisee needs to be someone powerful who is proud of themselves; they picked Gov. Schwarzenegger (a funny accent goes a long way). The Tax Collector, the unpopular minion of the powerful and oppressor of the poor, became the Foreclosure Specialist. It was really good stuff.
The first one was done with a small cast. The Widow and the Judge is about a widow who pesters a judge, who cares nothing for justice, and bugs him until she gets what she wants. Jesus tells this about prayer; that God loves us more than this judge cares about the widow, but we should pester God with our prayers until hey are answered. It's not about getting what you want, it's about praying for action that needs to happen, praying for Justice, and not giving up until justice is done.
The kids were from different places. One our very own Tommy, has been in every movie camp because he loves movies. He has gone from being a shy actor with lots of props to being a much better actor and in fact the editor of our last movie, when our VHS camera (built in 1492 with stone knives and bear skins) stopped working. Tommy's camera and Tommy's computer gave him a promotion, and we go the movie back on DVD in time to see it on our last day. Rachel came for her first one, and had the idea to be the homeless person who saves the robbery victim.
One kid, Gavin, had been to the secular movie camp and then did two Parable movie camps. He mused one day, "You know, in these stories we do here, the robbers always get away." And I thought to my self, "YESSSSS! Jesus is still up to date!"
But there were kids from outside the congregation, which is very much part of the idea. One kid was in a family that does not go to church, and has good reasons not to, but they liked the idea of their kid getting some ethical training. And that's how it's taught. That concept drew two more kids from another family. There was another from a family in the neighborhood who had a recommendation from the first family mentioned here. The church may or may not draw new members from outreach like this; but like the food shelf, we are making a difference in people's lives. I think it's a safe bet that these kids would not have encountered the teachings of Jesus in a way that was fun, creative, and useful. Storytellers say that when someone is preaching or speaking that we get as little as 14% of the information from the words (did I mention that before? Well, here it is again). The rest comes from tone, gesture, inflection, body language. So drama is an effective means by which the story can be installed in someone's head, instead of bouncing off. These kids, I believe, have a better chance of remembering.
This isn't a new idea, by any means, but it is new to these kids. It brings the story to where they are int he world, instead of trying to force them into something alien. And it may not change the world- but it will change Their world.
My espousal unit, Kirsten, started this several years ago in a home-school coop, and the kids liked it so much she kept on doing it, even hiring me to handle the cats we were trying to herd. That was the secular version.
I was inspired to steal the idea when I was a youth minister in my MDiv Internship, when I asked my three teen guys if they had a favorite parable. They said, "What's a Parable?" There are enough parables, and enough kids who don't know about them, that I thought we should try making something happen.
Here's how it works. For the uninitiated, what we do is take kids from about 8 to about 13. It's a four day experience. Day one, we do theater warm-ups and exorcises, improvisation games that give the kids a sense of shared experience and the freedom to try ideas. After lunch, I read them four or five parables. Luke is best, but if you have repeat customers like we do there's plenty to dig through in Matthew. We talk about the message of each story, without being religious about it; but let me emphasise, we are very clear that these are stories about Ethics with a Capital E, and the kids really go for it. The jumpy and short-attention-span assumptions about kids disappear because they are being engaged with real ideas. I have to credit Rev. Scott Stapleton for this; he said to me, "If you don't challenge them, they aren't going to get it."
He was totally right. The challenge is to pick one story, maybe two, and rewrite them for our time and our place. That is, after all, the method a good church takes to the text; what does it mean for us today? Who would be the Good Samaritan now? How about the Pharisee and the Tax Collector?
The stories have to be explained first, and then we start generating ideas. The Good Samaritan needs to be someone that would be a surprise if they stopped to help someone; they picked a Homeless Person. The Pharisee needs to be someone powerful who is proud of themselves; they picked Gov. Schwarzenegger (a funny accent goes a long way). The Tax Collector, the unpopular minion of the powerful and oppressor of the poor, became the Foreclosure Specialist. It was really good stuff.
The first one was done with a small cast. The Widow and the Judge is about a widow who pesters a judge, who cares nothing for justice, and bugs him until she gets what she wants. Jesus tells this about prayer; that God loves us more than this judge cares about the widow, but we should pester God with our prayers until hey are answered. It's not about getting what you want, it's about praying for action that needs to happen, praying for Justice, and not giving up until justice is done.
The kids were from different places. One our very own Tommy, has been in every movie camp because he loves movies. He has gone from being a shy actor with lots of props to being a much better actor and in fact the editor of our last movie, when our VHS camera (built in 1492 with stone knives and bear skins) stopped working. Tommy's camera and Tommy's computer gave him a promotion, and we go the movie back on DVD in time to see it on our last day. Rachel came for her first one, and had the idea to be the homeless person who saves the robbery victim.
One kid, Gavin, had been to the secular movie camp and then did two Parable movie camps. He mused one day, "You know, in these stories we do here, the robbers always get away." And I thought to my self, "YESSSSS! Jesus is still up to date!"
But there were kids from outside the congregation, which is very much part of the idea. One kid was in a family that does not go to church, and has good reasons not to, but they liked the idea of their kid getting some ethical training. And that's how it's taught. That concept drew two more kids from another family. There was another from a family in the neighborhood who had a recommendation from the first family mentioned here. The church may or may not draw new members from outreach like this; but like the food shelf, we are making a difference in people's lives. I think it's a safe bet that these kids would not have encountered the teachings of Jesus in a way that was fun, creative, and useful. Storytellers say that when someone is preaching or speaking that we get as little as 14% of the information from the words (did I mention that before? Well, here it is again). The rest comes from tone, gesture, inflection, body language. So drama is an effective means by which the story can be installed in someone's head, instead of bouncing off. These kids, I believe, have a better chance of remembering.
This isn't a new idea, by any means, but it is new to these kids. It brings the story to where they are int he world, instead of trying to force them into something alien. And it may not change the world- but it will change Their world.
Saturday, August 8, 2009
Bring Back Pneumonia
by Dean J. Seal
This is about my own personal viewpoint on end-of-life issues. Having spent some time around people when they reach the end of life, I have developed an interest in how people handle it. It's more than professional curiosity.
I heard a radio story the other day about a woman who was 92, in her own house still, but her body was starting to wear out. She was getting nursing visits, but she was worried that her insurance was going to run out (surprise! Having insurance doesn't solve every problems!. They asked her if she was going to live with family; she said there were a lot of kids there, so it would be inconvenient for the family. But she also said "...they don't want me to be exposed to pneumonia."
There was a time when pneumonia was called "the old man's friend" because it was fast, painless, and you usually transitioned while asleep. Isn't that the way a lot of us want to go? But her prospects were thus: living alone, isolated from children and grandchildren, fading in independence, worried about being a burden to the kids, worried about money, worried that resources would run out before her time did.
When we talk about these issues, the radically paranoid will insist that any such discussion is really about suicide and euthanasia. And it's not. It's about planning, freedom of choice and making your own decisions. Some people are suited to fight the good fight; my wife's grandmother is 102 and she says "the only thing that still works is my mouth." So she spends a lot of time on the phone and has a very active social life. But she has been saying for ten years that she is ready to go. I knew another woman who made it to 101, and she said "God don't want me and the Devil don't want me." She died trying to escape from the hospital they put her in when she broke her hip.
In the hospital, nurses and chaplains have said several times that it is the Christians who are afraid of dying more than anyone. Native Americans are the least afraid, because they consider it to be a natural event (is that primitive? Or advanced? I consider it to be the latter).They describe it as moving across a line, and it doesn't remove the deceased from their presence.
Why are Christians so afraid? Is it because they have been raised in fear? That a loving God will send them to hell for some slight, some unrepented morning where the paper and a cup of coffee seemed like a better Shabbat than church?
A study on lying says we average 3 lies every ten minutes in a conversation, and that the ability to lie is marked as a sing of maturity, of being able to cope with he person you are talking to (MPR). Is God sending us to hell because we told someone they look great when they don't? Or I'm fine when I'm not?
I do not want to be one of those whose body outlives their brain. I helped wheel 35 people like this into a room for a chapel service they mostly had no response to, and then wheeled them back out. Dozens and dozens in one building.
A conservative Rabbi told us in chaplain training that "life is sacred, and it is important to do what you can to sustain someones life. But- there is nothing sacred about prolonging someones death."
Medtronic tried to launch a line of heart stents in China, and it didn't go very well, because most of the patients decided not to rob the next generation of those resources to bring a few more years of ill-health. In the USA, I heard an unverified statistic that we spend 40% of our health care money extending someones life for less than another year (someone should look this up). I know my dad had a quadruple bypass which gave him another year, and a lot of pain. A great deal of pain. I asked him later if he would do it again, given the choice. "NOOOOO!" he said without hesitation.
Anecdotal evidence about people who have been revived with a defibrillator indicates they never really come back all the way. The question when going into intensive intervention like chemotherapy and heart surgery is, what kind of quality of life is being restored? Are you doing something For somebody, or doing it To somebody? Only you can answer these questions going in, for yourself or aq dearly loved person. But these are the questions, and rather than deal with them on the fly, in crisis, it is much better to meditate upon them and discuss them with the people who will be making those decisions for you when you can't.
Here are my final instructions: Do not resuscitate. Do not defibrillate. Do not allow my body to absorb nutrients after brain death. Do not give me chemo if it is going to be less than a 20% chance of recovery. If a miracle happens, great. Otherwise, I would dbe glad to depart from this veil of tears at the appointed time. I love my family, and we will miss each other, but I don't want to be taking their life away in order to hang desperately onto mine.
I have no fear of death. When we die, we go to God.
This is about my own personal viewpoint on end-of-life issues. Having spent some time around people when they reach the end of life, I have developed an interest in how people handle it. It's more than professional curiosity.
I heard a radio story the other day about a woman who was 92, in her own house still, but her body was starting to wear out. She was getting nursing visits, but she was worried that her insurance was going to run out (surprise! Having insurance doesn't solve every problems!. They asked her if she was going to live with family; she said there were a lot of kids there, so it would be inconvenient for the family. But she also said "...they don't want me to be exposed to pneumonia."
There was a time when pneumonia was called "the old man's friend" because it was fast, painless, and you usually transitioned while asleep. Isn't that the way a lot of us want to go? But her prospects were thus: living alone, isolated from children and grandchildren, fading in independence, worried about being a burden to the kids, worried about money, worried that resources would run out before her time did.
When we talk about these issues, the radically paranoid will insist that any such discussion is really about suicide and euthanasia. And it's not. It's about planning, freedom of choice and making your own decisions. Some people are suited to fight the good fight; my wife's grandmother is 102 and she says "the only thing that still works is my mouth." So she spends a lot of time on the phone and has a very active social life. But she has been saying for ten years that she is ready to go. I knew another woman who made it to 101, and she said "God don't want me and the Devil don't want me." She died trying to escape from the hospital they put her in when she broke her hip.
In the hospital, nurses and chaplains have said several times that it is the Christians who are afraid of dying more than anyone. Native Americans are the least afraid, because they consider it to be a natural event (is that primitive? Or advanced? I consider it to be the latter).They describe it as moving across a line, and it doesn't remove the deceased from their presence.
Why are Christians so afraid? Is it because they have been raised in fear? That a loving God will send them to hell for some slight, some unrepented morning where the paper and a cup of coffee seemed like a better Shabbat than church?
A study on lying says we average 3 lies every ten minutes in a conversation, and that the ability to lie is marked as a sing of maturity, of being able to cope with he person you are talking to (MPR). Is God sending us to hell because we told someone they look great when they don't? Or I'm fine when I'm not?
I do not want to be one of those whose body outlives their brain. I helped wheel 35 people like this into a room for a chapel service they mostly had no response to, and then wheeled them back out. Dozens and dozens in one building.
A conservative Rabbi told us in chaplain training that "life is sacred, and it is important to do what you can to sustain someones life. But- there is nothing sacred about prolonging someones death."
Medtronic tried to launch a line of heart stents in China, and it didn't go very well, because most of the patients decided not to rob the next generation of those resources to bring a few more years of ill-health. In the USA, I heard an unverified statistic that we spend 40% of our health care money extending someones life for less than another year (someone should look this up). I know my dad had a quadruple bypass which gave him another year, and a lot of pain. A great deal of pain. I asked him later if he would do it again, given the choice. "NOOOOO!" he said without hesitation.
Anecdotal evidence about people who have been revived with a defibrillator indicates they never really come back all the way. The question when going into intensive intervention like chemotherapy and heart surgery is, what kind of quality of life is being restored? Are you doing something For somebody, or doing it To somebody? Only you can answer these questions going in, for yourself or aq dearly loved person. But these are the questions, and rather than deal with them on the fly, in crisis, it is much better to meditate upon them and discuss them with the people who will be making those decisions for you when you can't.
Here are my final instructions: Do not resuscitate. Do not defibrillate. Do not allow my body to absorb nutrients after brain death. Do not give me chemo if it is going to be less than a 20% chance of recovery. If a miracle happens, great. Otherwise, I would dbe glad to depart from this veil of tears at the appointed time. I love my family, and we will miss each other, but I don't want to be taking their life away in order to hang desperately onto mine.
I have no fear of death. When we die, we go to God.
Saturday, July 25, 2009
Movie Camp
Movie Camp at Nordeast: Ethical, Cultural Training can be Fun by Dean J. Seal
This week had our second movie camp of the summer, and it was a treat. I used to look down on the task of teaching kids, because I wanted to work in the realm of grown up ideas. But I was wrong to think you can't do both. And as every teacher knows, the pleasure of the work is what the teacher get to learn. And when dealing n the classics, it is always wise to review them on occasion so that you remember what they are saying.
Movie camp is an idea I stole from my wife Kirsten. She started doing movie camps when our kid was in a home school environment. Kids love to make movies, and Kirsten gave them free reign. We still do a secular one every year, and the titles of the two films were "Don't Drink the Windex" and "Volcano Espionage!" Guess which one was done by Boys and which is done by Girls.
The idea here is to gather the kids together (ages 8-13) and do theater exercises to warm them up and get them comfortable. Then after lunch and some running around on the conveniently located playground, I read them several parables. Then they pick one or two and re-write them to make them contemporary. By putting the stories into their own time, they learn that the lessons of the stories are also for their own time. It's one method of learning about the Bible in a way that involves a lot of running around, putting together costumes, learning how to talk like Arnold Schwatzenegger, and going in front of the camera.
We settled on The Good Samaritan (Luke 10:25-37) , with a touch of the Tax Collector and the Pharisee (Luke 18:9-14). The Tax Collector, you may (or may not) recall, felt bad about what he did and who he was. The Pharisee was proud, boastful about how good he was. We made the Pharisee one of the people who walks by the robbery victim, and we made the Austrian-born Governor of California the other miscreant who would not stop; no other governors stand out enough. The Tax Collector was recast as a Foreclosure Expert.
The Good Samaritan was made a homeless person. She brings the robbery victim to a nice hotel. After two days, the Governor and the Foreclosure Expert come through the lobby. The Expert is guilt stricken, and returns the Deed to the Homeless Person, and gives her money from his last three foreclosures. This adds a Zachaeus element to the closing, which satisfies everyone's sense of justice.
What do the kids learn besides a couplke of Bible stories? Mario Puzo, author of The Godfather, said "All writing is re-writing." In that sense, these classes give kids an essential skill, experience and confidence in the process of writing. Another secular benefit is simple cultural literacy. Stories like The Good Samaritan are at the center of the dominant culture, Christianity. There is also ethical instruction, the surprise that a stranger may be more ethical than the rich and powerful. And then there is the religious instruction aspect: this is how jesus taught. He taught in metaphor, which means there doesn't have to actually be a good Samaritan to make the point of the story. This teaches them to discern the difference between literal and figurative, which should be a remedial task when anyone looks at the content of the Bible.
Two of our students were from a family that does not go to church. I explained thatthte stories are taught in the mode of Aesop's Fables, the Greek stories which carried morals of that tradition. Then we weren't a proselytizing class that would be about selling smething to the kids. It makes the stories of value to anyone, no matter what your tradition is.
To me, it is obvious that the rich and powerful have less morality than the poor, but most people are brought up in America to believe the opposite. They believe that the rich are virtuous and that the wealth 9s an indicator of God's pleasure. They believe the poor are being punished for something- otherwise they would not be poor. They think people are poor because they are lazy, and others are rich because they work hard. All we need to do now is look at Bernie Madoff, Gov. Spitzer, Gov. Sandford, and any number of other headline grabbers to understand that this is not self-evident; it also makes me think the ones who are caught are just the tip of the ethical iceberg. And it shows that Christianity, practiced the way Jesus taught it, is counter to American culture. It is indeed counter-cultural, and Un-American to follow Jesus.
Comparative religion is not taught in our schools, which makes our kids less able to understand other faiths, and also to understand their own. Former President Jimmy Carter just left the Southern Baptist Convention because they still refuse to ordain women; but it's more than that. They teach that women are to be subordinate to men, which leads women to believe their faith requires them to stay with battering husbands. A faith misunderstood can be a powerful force of destruction. As Stevie Wonder put it, "You believe in things you don't understand, and you suffer."
This is why the Movie Camps are not just a nice way for kids to spend a summer day; it is part of a core mission of the Church, our mission to teach our kids to think, and to show them how the Bible can help them to reach a moral and ethical structure of their own, to inform them in the decisions they make for the rest of their lives.
This week had our second movie camp of the summer, and it was a treat. I used to look down on the task of teaching kids, because I wanted to work in the realm of grown up ideas. But I was wrong to think you can't do both. And as every teacher knows, the pleasure of the work is what the teacher get to learn. And when dealing n the classics, it is always wise to review them on occasion so that you remember what they are saying.
Movie camp is an idea I stole from my wife Kirsten. She started doing movie camps when our kid was in a home school environment. Kids love to make movies, and Kirsten gave them free reign. We still do a secular one every year, and the titles of the two films were "Don't Drink the Windex" and "Volcano Espionage!" Guess which one was done by Boys and which is done by Girls.
The idea here is to gather the kids together (ages 8-13) and do theater exercises to warm them up and get them comfortable. Then after lunch and some running around on the conveniently located playground, I read them several parables. Then they pick one or two and re-write them to make them contemporary. By putting the stories into their own time, they learn that the lessons of the stories are also for their own time. It's one method of learning about the Bible in a way that involves a lot of running around, putting together costumes, learning how to talk like Arnold Schwatzenegger, and going in front of the camera.
We settled on The Good Samaritan (Luke 10:25-37) , with a touch of the Tax Collector and the Pharisee (Luke 18:9-14). The Tax Collector, you may (or may not) recall, felt bad about what he did and who he was. The Pharisee was proud, boastful about how good he was. We made the Pharisee one of the people who walks by the robbery victim, and we made the Austrian-born Governor of California the other miscreant who would not stop; no other governors stand out enough. The Tax Collector was recast as a Foreclosure Expert.
The Good Samaritan was made a homeless person. She brings the robbery victim to a nice hotel. After two days, the Governor and the Foreclosure Expert come through the lobby. The Expert is guilt stricken, and returns the Deed to the Homeless Person, and gives her money from his last three foreclosures. This adds a Zachaeus element to the closing, which satisfies everyone's sense of justice.
What do the kids learn besides a couplke of Bible stories? Mario Puzo, author of The Godfather, said "All writing is re-writing." In that sense, these classes give kids an essential skill, experience and confidence in the process of writing. Another secular benefit is simple cultural literacy. Stories like The Good Samaritan are at the center of the dominant culture, Christianity. There is also ethical instruction, the surprise that a stranger may be more ethical than the rich and powerful. And then there is the religious instruction aspect: this is how jesus taught. He taught in metaphor, which means there doesn't have to actually be a good Samaritan to make the point of the story. This teaches them to discern the difference between literal and figurative, which should be a remedial task when anyone looks at the content of the Bible.
Two of our students were from a family that does not go to church. I explained thatthte stories are taught in the mode of Aesop's Fables, the Greek stories which carried morals of that tradition. Then we weren't a proselytizing class that would be about selling smething to the kids. It makes the stories of value to anyone, no matter what your tradition is.
To me, it is obvious that the rich and powerful have less morality than the poor, but most people are brought up in America to believe the opposite. They believe that the rich are virtuous and that the wealth 9s an indicator of God's pleasure. They believe the poor are being punished for something- otherwise they would not be poor. They think people are poor because they are lazy, and others are rich because they work hard. All we need to do now is look at Bernie Madoff, Gov. Spitzer, Gov. Sandford, and any number of other headline grabbers to understand that this is not self-evident; it also makes me think the ones who are caught are just the tip of the ethical iceberg. And it shows that Christianity, practiced the way Jesus taught it, is counter to American culture. It is indeed counter-cultural, and Un-American to follow Jesus.
Comparative religion is not taught in our schools, which makes our kids less able to understand other faiths, and also to understand their own. Former President Jimmy Carter just left the Southern Baptist Convention because they still refuse to ordain women; but it's more than that. They teach that women are to be subordinate to men, which leads women to believe their faith requires them to stay with battering husbands. A faith misunderstood can be a powerful force of destruction. As Stevie Wonder put it, "You believe in things you don't understand, and you suffer."
This is why the Movie Camps are not just a nice way for kids to spend a summer day; it is part of a core mission of the Church, our mission to teach our kids to think, and to show them how the Bible can help them to reach a moral and ethical structure of their own, to inform them in the decisions they make for the rest of their lives.
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