Bandits No More

Blogging on this site has been pretty slow this week. First, I was busy preparing for Sunday’s Charge Conference. More recently I’ve been busy I’ve been busy preparing for Hurricane Rita. We’re 300 miles form the coast, so the major force of the hurricane will be expended before it gets here. Our challenge will be winds (up to 55 mph or more), tornados, and rain. Lots of rain. The models I’ve seen show Rita parking over NE Texas and potentially dumping 20-30 inches of rain. We’re in a drought here, so we need the rain, though if I had my way it’d come in smaller increments.

In the meantime, we prepare to host evacuees from the coastal areas. Our church is the number 3 shelter in town. Since Pittsburg is somewhat off the main highways, the State has not been directing people here yet. Instead we’re getting self-evacuees. If you’d like to follow the action in Pittsburg, check out my other blog, Pittsburg Cares.

Last week Bishop Huie met with leaders from churches all around the Texas Conference in a series of district and bi-district gatherings. She and conference treasurer Elijah Stansell presented an overview of the work of the Strategic Mapping Team, material to be formally presented and voted on at a called session of Annual Conference November 19.

The current reality that led Bishop Huie to this plan includes:
Demographic Changes

• Population within the span of the Conference grew 40% from 1980 to 2000
• A further 30% growth (2 million people) is predicted by 2020 [I’m sure these figures don’t include possible realignment of population after Hurricane Katrina]
• The majority of the population in many counties will be non-Anglo

Population Growth Outpaces Conference Growth

• From 2000 to 2004 the population grew 5.3% while membership in our churches only grew 3%.
• As a percentage of the area population, Conference membership dropped from 4% in 2000 to 3.9% in 2004. It has been dropping since the early 1960s

Future Indicators from Church Statistics

• Attendance is down by .06%
• Professions of faith down 13%
• Baptisms down 14.4%
• Confirmation class enrollment down 8.9%
• In the Texarkana District our membership is down over 6%, and attendance down over 5%.
• [Unmentioned at the meeting but something to keep in mind is that because our churches average not much more than a third of their membership in attendance, membership figures are not a really good indicator of our strength.]

Worship Attendance

• 79% of Conference churches report worship attendance of less than 150
• Only 4% of our churches report attendance greater than 750.

In light of these realities, Bishop Huie sees us standing at a crossroads. We can maintain the status quo and slowly die or we can re-tool, take up our mission to make disciples, and make a better future.

Preliminary Recommendations
Vision: Vibrant, growing congregations changing lives and reshaping futures for Jesus Christ. [Perhaps this is a little less Christianese than “making disciples,” but covers the same territory. By speaking of “reshaping futures” it could be taken to apply not merely to individuals but also to families and communities.]
Mission: [Keep in mind that this is the mission of the Annual Conference] To equip congregations to make disciples of Jesus Christ for the transformation of the world to the glory of God. [In my seminary class on the UM doctrine and discipline, I was taught that the Annual Conference is the primary level of United Methodism. Now that we have – since 1988 – declared that the mission of the UMC is to “make disciples of Jesus Christ,” we are finally beginning to act on the necessary conviction that the local church is the primary place where the mission is fulfilled, i.e., where disciples are made. If we can say this and implement these changes without bringing up the bogeyman of “congregationalism” we’ll all be the better for it.]

The Strategic Mapping Team identified 4 “Key Drivers” that would provide that engines of change:

• Spirit- Filled
• Excellence
• Fruitfulness
• [the word “mutual” was added in our discussion] Accountability

[I think I know what they’re getting at here, but it would be more elegant if all the four were the same part of speech. As it is here, we have three nouns and an adjective.]

The Core Values that accompany this mission include the five Bishop Huie announced at Annual Conference this past spring and two additional:

• Radical hospitality
• Passionate worship
• Faith-forming relationships
• Risk-taking mission
• Extravagant generosity
• Connectional ministry
• Fervent prayer and diligent study of scripture

Given this broad framework, the Team has identified three “Strategic Themes”:
Congregational Excellence – Revitalize existing congregations and start new churches

• How do we lead congregations to revitalize and how do we reach unserved resident populations?
• Equip local congregations to be vibrant and grow
• Identify and prioritize resident populations and start new churches
• Implement plan from the Congregational Development Task Force [This is found in the Conference Journal. The particulars there include the need for a Congregational Development staff person and a time line through June 2006. So when we’re asked to approve the implementation of this plan, we do not yet have any details to approve.]
• What processes must be in place for congregational development?
• Develop a congregational assessment process: Assess, evaluate, educate [Various tools are available already: Christian Schwarz’s Natural Church Development and Bill Easum’s Complete Ministry Audit come to mind. At some point we’ll have to develop a clear and shared vision of what a healthy congregation looks like. Another thing that will happen here: Just as some pastors kill church after church, there are some churches that kill pastor after pastor. Below we’ll see that leadership accountability is a key feature of the plan. That’s absolutely the right thing to do. But if the cabinet has a skewed understanding of a congregation’s current reality while holding pastors accountable for achieving particular results, this is a recipe for pastoral depression and failure. We need to learn to tell the truth here. If we want energized, enthusiastic pastors who will lead their churches to revitalization and growth, we must stop identifying every appointment merely as “a great opportunity.”]
• Develop an effective conference structure that provides resources for transformation [well, yeah!]
• Identify and prioritize resident populations [The assumptions is that new residential developments will not be the only place to plant churches. Instead we’ll find people who do not currently have a church and plant one to reach them.]
• How will we control costs while promoting congregational development? [One way some people will ask this is, “How will we be able to pay for everything we’re already doing and pay for all this new stuff?” The obvious answer – at least to me – is that we’ll have to identify a bunch of stuff we’ll no longer do.]
• Reallocate Annual Conference funds
• Utilize fixed assets
• Develop volunteer partnerships
• As an Annual Conference, what must we learn and how must we grow in order to add value?
• Education measures for determining church vitality
• Models for new church starts for identified populations

Clergy Leadership: Ensure all clergy are effective in their settings

• How do we improve clergy leadership in the Texas Annual Conference?
• Affirm the giftedness of each clergy person [as we see below this additionally means, “Even if that giftedness is more in line with selling insurance than pastoring.”]
• Equip clergy with resources for professional development
• Recruit gifted and talented candidates for ministry [IF we can carry this thing off, my guess is talented people will come flocking, given the moribund status of so many annual conferences.]
• Equip clergy to develop fruitful law leadership within their congregation
• What processes must we master in order to improve the clergy of the Texas Annual Conference
• Identify potential clergy [Some of our Wesley Foundations have highly productive in this area. What about the others?]
• Affirm gifts [Wow! We’re doing it again already!]
• Assessment and accountability
• Recruitment of gifted pastors [Steal them from other conferences? If we’re aiming to reach the burgeoning Hispanic population, this might mean importing pastors from Mexico and Central America. Are we willing to open the way for non-middle class Americans to enter the ministry track?]
• Training and coaching
• Placement
• Exit strategies
• Attract new clergy to the TAC
• [What about the seminaries? Are they doing an adequate job training pastors to do what needs to be done? If not, what are we going to do about it?]
• How can we fund these activities?
• Utilize current funding streams
• Initiate grants and alternative funding
• What do we need to learn in order to improve clergy leadership of the TAC in a time of change?
• Develop pro-active mentality, skills, and mechanisms for recruiting candidates for ministry
• More effective assessment strategies
• Effective and diverse professional opportunities
• Improve skills in management of change
• More effective coaching
• More effectively match gifts with ministry opportunities [The salary sheet is not enough.]

Effective Missional Structure: To create a structure that serves the mission of the TAC

• How can the structure of the TAC serve and support local congregations?
• Redefine the organizational structure of the AC Service Center to add value to congregations [One way to do this is to find ways to project mobility over immobility.]
• Redefine the role of the District Superintendent to add value to the local church {Of course this will include freeing them from obligations to attend every meeting in the Conference.]
• Expand office of ministerial services to promote clergy leadership
• Create leadership office for revitalization and church starts
• Create leadership office for visioning and implementation
• How can we develop processes to increase support for the local congregation?
• Evaluate current AC structure
• Create an assessment for on-going ministries [This is a positive way to say, “Find things to stop doing.”]
• Adopt the necessary change to accomplish an effective structure [I think this just means “change.”]
• How can we be good stewards in funding a structure that supports the TAC mission?
• Assess all Conference expenses [Surely we can get by with fewer meetings. Surely we can get by with fewer people at each meeting. Surely we can use Internet technology to have more online conferences. Web cams are cheap.]
• Reduce the number of districts and reallocate funds [They mentioned going from 12 to 9. Each DS now costs about $175k]
• Sunset activities and reallocate funds [This will be painful when for so many years our mission has been “to do what we’ve always done.”]
• Identify tasks for possible outsourcing
• Develop an assessment strategy for future allocations related to vacant properties, churches, etc.
• Utilize current fixed assets
• Create a plan for funding new church starts and for revitalization [After Rita we might have to raise millions to rebuild structures we though were already established and in place.]
• What do we need to learn in order to create a structure that serves the mission of the TAC?
• Benchmark best practices with other Annual Conferences, businesses, and other denominations
• Ongoing study and understanding of changing demographics of TAC
• Develop processes for continual assessment and improvement of structure
• Skills for leading major change initiatives

My concluding comment: Sure there’s plenty of vagueness here. But as I look around the UMC I see nothing approaching this level of seriousness. It’ll be terribly difficult, but I think we need to do it.

Sunday sermon is now available – It’s Learning From John Wesley: Money. The main text is Matthew 6:19-34, but I start with Ephesians 6:10. The pivot text is Matthew 6:24 – “You cannot serve both God and Money [Mammon].”

I suggested first, that mammon is at least akin to one of the principalities and powers that is arrayed against us. These powers, though created good (Colossians 1:16), have been corrupted by sin. Money, wealth and riches are conceivably good for us. I can imagine God thinking that money would be a good feature of a complex economy. But it went bad. Like the other principalities and powers, it was defeated by Jesus on the cross (Colossians 2:15).

I also made the distinction between active sin and passive sin, modeled on the old distinction between Jesus’ active and passive obedience. This distinction is different from the common one of sins of commission and sins of omission. By my reckoning both of those are active sin. Passive sin is the sin we suffer – the sin of other people that impacts us – the destruction that comes to us from living in a broken world. The salvation Jesus brings offers us salvation from both kinds of sin. One support I see for this position is found in N.T. Wright’s works. He claims that the phrase “forgiveness of sins” goes beyond referring to forgiveness of an individual’s sinful actions to mean something like “return from exile.” Exile in this case is suffering for sins – sometimes your own, often form the sins of others.

As a power lined up against us, Mammon has been defeated by Jesus. Like at least some of the other powers, however, Mammon is still on the scene trying to destroy our lives. As we “Seek first the Kingdom of God and his righteousness,” we please God, live the good life, and frustrate Mammon. For more on how this message build on Wesley see my earlier discussion.

I’m going through a challenging time right now. I usually approach the world through knowledge and I find myself in a place where my knowledge is woefully inadequate. Tomorrow I will be fasting and praying for wisdom. Tonight, though, I picked up Eugene Peterson’s Christ Plays in Ten Thousand Places. I hadn’t read in it for a couple of weeks, but tonight it jumped out at me and the first thing I read was exactly what I needed to hear. Peterson says,

It always appears that history is dominated by powerful forces that totally overshadow people of faith in God: powerful politicians, powerful armies, powerful financiers, powerful institutions [and arson attacks]. What good are prayer and worship compared to these “principalities and powers”? The temptation, then, is to live small, settle for domestic coziness, retreat to the sidelines, create a ghetto in which we can carry out our life of faith in God with as little interference as possible from “the world.”

Timid people (intimidated people) often secretly admire those whom they fear. They constantly compare themselves unfavorably with them, but would very much like to be one of them. As a consequence their imaginations are shaped by a history that exhibits the power of the human and has no sense of God’s presence and action in it. They are left with a feeling that God is involved only in the privacies and domesticities of their inner lives – what they think of as their souls.

Whoever the person who burned down our youth building this summer, the ultimate agency was satanic. If satan would be concerned enough to attack us in this way, it seems unlikely he would make the one hit and then give up. But there are many ways to hit, and the hits continue – mostly through personal attacks on our leaders.

In the midst of these attacks, from God’s perspective we are going through a time of testing. Will we pass the test? Will our faith in God be our strength – rather than our plans and dependence on our abilities (and insurance)? Will we be single minded about pursuing our (God’s) mission of reaching people for Jesus? Will we stay united in love with each other? That’s my prayer.

FUMC Pittsburg has Charge Conference in just over a week. Here’s my communication to them about the meeting.

When: Next Sunday, September 25, at 9:00 a.m. Because of this odd hour, we will not have Sunday school that day and our single worship service will be at 10:30, after the Conference.
Where: In the Sanctuary
Who: I’ve asked Howdy Dawson, our District Superintendent (who presides over the meeting) to consider this a Church Conference. As a Church Conference, all full members of the church, regardless of age, are welcome to attend and vote.
What: Here are the main things that we do at Charge Conference:

• Hear reports summarizing our ministry for the year
• See the budget for the coming year
• Elect the slate of leaders for the coming year
• Make decisions on big issues facing the congregation

Why: The first answer is that the United Methodist system requires it. The better answer is that God has called us together to be one body in Christ. None of us alone has the wisdom and faith necessary to proceed. As we discern God’s will together we do much better than we ever would alone.
Dangers: There are several dangers associated with Charge Conferences.

• Sometimes strong emotions are present. God made us to be emotional beings, so there is nothing wrong with emotions. Danger arises when we give them control over our actions.
• Sometimes the way we do meetings leads us to believe churches are another example of American democracy at work. The church is not a democracy. We give our allegiance to the Kingdom of God. We are servants of a King. What the King says counts for more than what we say. Nonetheless, God likes to work through his people, especially the weak.
• We will be contending with other gods who do not like us on their turf. One of those false gods is Mammon – money. When Mammon accompanies us to church we usually end up fighting, bickering, and fearful. The alternative – which will frustrate Mammon – is learning to trust and obey God in the area of money, a challenge for the rich and poor alike.
• When we mix strong feelings, personalities, decision-making and fear, non-Christian behavior often results. We attack each other. We forget love. We forget our purpose. We forget Jesus – except when we find him useful for achieving our desires.

This year’s big issues:

• Election of leaders. Since we’re in the people business, what we do with people is the most important thing we do. When we elect leaders, we’re not looking for representatives of various constituencies or for our favorites. We’re looking for people sold out to Jesus who will lead us in the fulfillment of our mission. This is hard work.
• Building stuff. The end of the sanctuary renovation (building, windows, organ) is in sight. But now we have to replace the sanctuary roof and our youth building is burned down. What is our next step? What does God want us to do?
• Pursuing unity. You cannot read the letters to the early churches and not see God’s concern for unity. The three foundations of this unity are: (1) Our common sharing in Christ through the Holy Spirit; (2) Our sharing of a common mission of making disciples; (3) Our growing and abiding love for each other.

Preparation:

• Pray. Pray hard. Submit yourself to the Lord.
• Come. You are a part of the Body. We might need God speaking through you.

Another point Carol Lytch draws from Smith and Lundquist ( (“What Teens Believe,” Christian Century, Sept. 6, 2005) is one I made early this summer. In Lytch’s words, “teenagers… are not a people apart, an alien race about whom adults can only shake their heads and look forward to their growing up.”

The parents of the Baby Boomers created the myth of the generation gap, perhaps because it was easier than admitting they, too, had once faced the kinds of decisions and perplexities facing their children.

Can we all just agree we are over that now? Newsflash: today’s parents of teens were once teens ourselves. We were tempted by drugs, sex, and rock n’ roll too. Just like today’s teens, we struggled to try to fit in with our peers and at the same time find some kind of credibility with the adult world. We, too, had a naïve and idealistic view of the world that we couldn’t get the older folks to understand.

Young people today deserve to know, and know that we know, that they are not some alien race totally disconnected from all adults in society. They are a younger version of us. Let’s deal with it.

When UMs talk about growing and exciting UM churches they tend to point to Ginghamsburg, Church of the Resurrection, and Windsor Village. I’ve heard almost no mention of Granger Community Church (in Indiana) in UM circles, though I hear about it all the time from non-UM sources. Curious, isn’t it?

Here’s a piece by some of the Granger crew on “Attracting a Crowd to Your Church.” Some of there advice sounds downright manipulative:
Worship services must be upbeat to encourage guests to come back. The worship may be meaningful, but if people are less energized when they leave than when they arrived, what good is that? The message may be full of truth, but if listeners are thinking of their to-do lists for after church, what good is that? Services that lack energy will not be attractive to people who are deciding whether to return.

Here are some ways to raise the energy level in worship:

• Begin by pumping up the volume. The impact of the same song sung by the same talented artists played at the same tempo will vary according to the volume. Louder music creates more energy. You should also consider the volume of the music played before and after the service. If it’s loud, people will begin to talk over the music, and the energy level in the room will increase.

• Increase the tempo of the music. When you’re trying to create introspective moments, a slower, more contemplative selection is appropriate. Generally, however, songs that are upbeat and more celebratory in nature will generate a positive response from the cogregation. People will become more engaged in the service when they feel comfortable clapping their hands and tapping their feet as they sing.

• Add smiling faces to the platform, and make sure those faces are well lit. Your musicians and vocalists shouldn’t just rehearse their music; they should also practice looking happy. Happiness is contagious. Also, the lighting on the platform should be bright enough and positioned so that those watching can see the facial expressions of the vocalists and the teachers.

In addition to these factors, make sure you’re strategically using humor, paying attention to the pace of the service, and making effective use of variety. All of these will help you reduce the drool factor and fuel the energy levels in your services. That’s helpful for growing a crowd, and it reduces the possibility of sugarplums doing the boot-scootin’ boogie in your head.

I suppose we can safely assume that all the people we’re trying to attract are of a particular generation that is turned on by noise (oops! loud music). If you can’t have the Holy Spirit or spiritual substance, at least pump up the volume. As for happy faces, I suppose they’re better than unhappy faces. Even if they have to fake it.

They then turn to subjects to address, advocating the “felt needs” approach:

So what do pre-Christians need? What will get their attention? Here’s a short list:

• They need help with their marriages.
• They don’t know how to raise their kids.
• They aren’t sure how to handle their teenagers.
• They want their lives to count.
• They want to live within their means.
• They want help being better employers or employees.
• They’re beaten down and need encouragement.
• They’ve messed up and need forgiveness.
• They’ve been betrayed and need to know that Someone can be trusted.
• They’ve been through a crisis and need to make sense of it.

These are just a few of the issues people face. Does the Bible have anything to say about these topics? Can Jesus Christ give people strength and wisdom to deal with their marriages? their kids? their money? Absolutely!

Preaching biblical wisdom is essential, not merely as a tactic for increasing the crowd, but for building disciples. Unfortunately, when needs are defined by what non-Christians feel, it is very easy to end up with a variant of Moral Therapeutic Deism – and a god who serves as a butler to meet our every need. He’s there not only to help us with our marriages, kids and finances, but also to help us feel better and – getting more spiritual – to give us eternal life. If we’re going to successfully preach biblical wisdom, we will have to find ways to simultaneously take apart the secular narratives and world views people come in with, so they don’t just become innoculated against the faith.

Their next point I agree with whole-heartedly: go to multiple services. It’s more work for those of us on a church staff, but it’s worth it.

Next they tell us to “Embrace Entertainment:”

We’ve heard people say, “Your church is about entertainment.” And they’re right in a way. We are about entertainment to the extent that it allows us to captivate the minds and hearts of those who don’t yet know Jesus. Yes, we still talk about all the tough topics. In fact, we’re positive we’ve taught about every topic Jesus covered in the Sermon on the Mount. We’ve talked about sin, broken relationships, heaven and hell, the end times, the need for a Savior, and the cost of following Christ. There is a way, however, to present biblical truth so that a crowd shows up. There’s a way to offer a new life in Christ without dulling the minds of those who need him most. And sometimes that way can be downright entertaining.

I’m against entertaining in church. I’m all for captivating people with the Gospel. So – if as these guys claim – entertainment is about grabbing and holding people’s attention, I’m all for it. Long gone are the days when we could depend on people coming to church with a sense of duty to listen. Every time I stand before my people I work from the assumption that I have to earn their attention.

They have more to say, so go read the article. Although much of their style is not mine, and I think much of what they are doing would be significantly easier in a new church plant (than a 150 year old congregation), I’m all for what they’re doing. Go get ’em Granger!

I ran across MTD, or Moralistic Therapeutic Deism in Carol Lytch’s article, “What Teens Believe” in the Christian Century. In this areticle she reviews Christian Smith and Melinda Lunddquist Denton’s work with youth, published in their Soul Searching: The Religious And Spiritual Lives Of American Teenagers. (Oxford, 2005).

Smith and Denton identify the predominant “religion” of American teens as Moralistic Therapeutic Deism. They surveyed 3000 teens between ages 13 and 17. Here are the tenets of the “faith” they compiled:

1. A God exists who created and orders the world and watches over human life on earth.
2. God wants people to be good, nice and fair to each other, as taught in the Bible and by most world religions.
3. The central goal of life is to be happy and to feel good about oneself.
4. God does not need to be particularly involved in one’s life except when God is needed to solve a problem.
5. Good people go to heaven when they die.

Within modern philosophy (of the past couple of generations), there have been (broadly speaking) Realist and anti-Realist approaches to knowledge. The Realist claims that we have varying degrees of access to a world outside of us – that our knowledge of the world and its states can be more or less true. Anti-Realists take the opposite view: more or less, we do not succeed in making true statements about the world outside us. What we take to be statements about the world (outside us) are actually statements about what is inside us, either from an individual perspective or from a socio-cultural perspective.

Both approaches, as developed in the 20th century, were outgrowths or variants of foundationalism. Realists tended to be optimistic about whether foundationalist strategies of knowing worked while the anti-Realists tended to be pessimistic about those strategies. They agreed, however, that these strategies alone constituted real knowledge.

But then, oddly enough, some philosophers began to reject (either explicitly or implicitly) foundationalism. Those mired in foundationalism have trouble seeing any other way of approaching the issue, so when they hear (or read) these post-foundationalists they tend to take them to be speaking either (foundationalist) Realism or (foundationalist) anti-Realism. But they’re not.

One position that has arisen in this discussion has been called anti-anti-Realism. These folks don’t care to defend a Realism (which they see as hopelessly mired in failed foundationalist strategies), but see the fruits of anti-realism as unfavorable. They tend to say that however we do it, we generally can know the world well enough to do what we need to do, and since it works, it ought to be acceptable to call the related knowledge claims “truth.”

Anti-anti-Realism. Sounds pretty negative, doesn’t it? But it’s not.

Let’s shift gears and aply negative thinking to another area, the Christian approach to politics. Within the contemporary theological movement called Radical Orthodoxy, there has been a strong critique of both the modern nation-state and the modern market economy. In the books I’ve read, I see this most clearly in William Cavanaugh’s Theolopolitical Imagination. In Cavanaugh’s account, the modern state is idolatrous because its claims constitute a claim to be the savior of the world. This claim is not peculiar to the modern state – as Tom Wright frequently says, the language we associate with Jesus – “Lord and Savior,” “Good News (Gospel)” – were originally Caesar’s words. Caesar claimed to be “Lord and Savior” and to bring “Good news” to all people. Perhaps you know enough history to know not all people took him at his word.

If I were talking more about Cavanaugh and Radical Orthodoxy, I want to say something about their apparent oversimplification of both the State and the Market, not attending enough to the complexity and diversity of the development of each. But I have to think they’re at least partly right.

What I’m thinking of – negatively – is how Christians who are conservative politically tend to think negatively toward the State, while Christians who are liberal politically tend to think negatively toward the market. As one who tends (boy I use that word a lot, don’t I?) to be the former more than the latter, I have to confess I see both making claims beyond what they can do – claims that if not idolatrous, at least verge on it.

Consider Katrina. We actually expect the State to be our savior. We expect the leaders of New Orleans, Louisiana, and the Federal Government to be able to save us not only from natural disaster but also from our own actions.

Whenever elections come, Caesar hypes his abilities, promising to meet all our needs (while Mammon keeps transforming our wants into needs), strengthening our expectations of deliverance and salvation.

If I went by nothing other than what I see, I’d have trouble believing Caesar. As a Christian, my allegiance is to Jesus the cruficied and risen.

The market doesn’t fare much better. It claims to be able to settle all disputes and bring prosperity to all with its invisible hand(s?).

So are the State and the Market irretrievable evil? I don’t think so. They simply don’t deserve the level of confidence (and worship) they ask for (demand?). Submission to Jesus and his kingdom is a necessary prerequisite to having a truly healthy state and market.

So like the anti-anti-realists, I denounce the claims of both State and Market, seeing neither as god and savior. How’s that for negative thinking?

It is Senator Pat Leahy’s turn to climb onto the pedestal that is the Confirmation Hearings of John Roberts. (Why U.S. Senators need the extra time on the pedestal, I do not know)

In his speech, which is still going on, he referred to the relief efforts on the gulf coast. He said that, among other things, this disaster has shown the “growing poverty” of many in this country.

Excuse my ignorance, but how have these past two weeks shown that poverty as a problem is growing? Did Sen. Leahy do a double-blind peer-reviewed study with a variety of cities over a couple of decades to reach his conclusions?

It is just rhetoric, you may say. But someone way get hold of that statement, and quote the “authority” of the U.S. Senate that poverty is growing. I know it is a bold claim that will, no doubt, fall on deaf ears. but could we not ask all our politicians and leaders to be careful what they say?