Confessions of a Recovering Pharisee

[Yahoo]

As financial workers suffer through tumultuous times on Wall Street, some are turning to an old source of solace: religion.Religious leaders said attendance was up at lunchtime meetings in New York’s financial district last week, with many more people in business attire than usual.

That is hardly surprising, said Reverend Mark Bozzuti-Jones of Trinity Church Wall Street, given that people don’t know if their employers will survive from one day to the next.

“The economic financial crisis is a reminder that we cannot put our faith in riches, that we cannot put our faith in money,” Bozzuti-Jones said in his sermon at lunchtime on Friday, which he devoted to coping with the financial crisis.

A handful of men in suits and ties and women in business attire were among dozens of people at the Episcopal church, which was hit by debris from the World Trade Center collapse on September 11, 2001.

The church, which normally attracts tourists and a few financial workers, experienced an upturn in visitors this week, Bozzuti-Jones said. In the past few days he had requests for help to pay rent from those who had lost their jobs.

“People are just sitting there, praying or crying and definitely exhausted. There has definitely been an increase in the number of people who have come in,” he said in his office after the service.

Read more here.

[From me]

Well, if it takes a recession or worse to bring people back to God I may not like it but ultimately it is up to Him.  Are you willing to give up your comforts if it brings people to Jesus?  Really?

What do you think?

[CNN]

Rob Skinner did not expect to find a chaplain in the office when he started his sales job at Piedmont Air Conditioning in Raleigh, North Carolina. “I was a little worried because I didn’t want God shoved down my throat,” says Skinner, 38, a self-described liberal Christian.

Turns out Dwayne Reece, from the nonprofit, nondenominational Corporate Chaplains of America — which provides Christian chaplains for companies that request them — offered encouraging words instead.

Piedmont had hired him after the death of an employee, and it worked out so well, he’s been visiting for nine years.

“Having him there really makes you feel that the company cares,” Skinner says.

Religion, like sex and politics, once was considered inappropriate watercooler talk. Not anymore. Prayer sessions, religious diversity groups and chaplains like Reece, along with rabbis and imams, have become more common across corporate America in the past decade.

Fifty percent of those questioned in a 2002 Gallup poll said religious expression should be tolerated in the work place while another 28 percent thought it should be encouraged. That’s compared to 21percent who didn’t see a place for religious expression on the job.

Read about it here.

[From me]

Now this is a topic I can speak of from personal experience.  I worked as a Corporate Chaplain for Marketplace Chaplains for 5 years.  Marketplace and Corporate Chaplains of America are good organizations.  I loved my time working at Marketplace and would have continued had there been a “full-time” option but there was not.  CCA hires only full-time and MC hires part-time people.

We never shoved God down anyone’s throat.  I would enter a workplace and just be there for the employees if they needed someone to talk to.  If not I would move on.  I never mentioned God’s name unless they wanted to talk.  I called on a large apartment leasing company, a large home builder and a oil change company.   I never had an employee tell me to get lost.  Sometimes I knew they were busy and I would just move on.   Most of the time they would talk.  I did have several opportunities to share my faith but only after they gave me permission.  I even led a man to Jesus one day.  We were available to the employees 24 hours a day.  I had to keep a pager on me at all times even when I preached!

I don’t know why anyone would have a beef with this but I’m sure some will.   It is a service and it is voluntary.  It is also being used by God.

What do you think?

[Daily Mail]

Simon Allison, the man who eats pet food for a living.

Chicken dinners, beef strips or campfire jerky bars - it is all the same to him: if it’s a dog’s dinner (or cat’s breakfast), he eats it. What’s more, he enjoys it.

Mr Allison is a senior food technologist for Marks & Spencer with special responsibility for pet food. This means no M&S product goes into the nation’s pet bowls unless it has been tasted by him first.

Read about it here.

[From me]

Oh my!  If I had a job like this I sure wouldn’t admit it.  I love this quote:

Afterwards, he chews gum to prevent “dog breath” 

What do you think?