Here's what one resident of Anderson thinks of our North American Convention:
... the Church of God is in town. Anderson (for some odd reason) happens to be the world headquarters for the Church of God and every summer in June they have this huge, week long convention where members from all over the world come to Anderson and crowd our resturaunts and drive horribly down our streets. The only people who tolerate them being in town are store owners because business goes up. Sorry, I just needed to rant.
6 comments:
Yup- as a former Anderson resident, and a person who worked his way through seminary as a waiter, I can testify that it's not the most popular time of year. Given that it's often the only vacation that underpaid pastors get (speaking as a pastor's son), I can see how Anderson would not welcome us with open arms.
And, to be honest, we deserve the criticism... Our light doesn't exactly shine during campmeeting week, as we tend to be more interested in renewing old friendships than in thinking past ourselves to how we can impact the community. There may be a comment in this about how our ChoG theology plays itself out Monday to Saturday, but I'll leave that one alone.
I can say, though, that it's an interesting relationship between ChoG/AU and the city, especially now that the city's industry has/is dying and Anderson is becoming a mere bedroom community for Indianapolis (so much so that 'North' Anderson Church of God is moving south, near Pendleton and the I-69 corridor).
Final thought: I had always heard that alcohol sales in Anderson increase during International Convention. After living there for 10+ years, I believe that this is not due (as much) to the out of town ChoG guests, but due to Anderson residents driven to the bottle(s) in order to cope with the influx of many less than grace-ful visitors.
Oh, and do you think it would be worthwhile to let Kasey Anne know that we are distinctive due in part to our belief that all Christians are "members", and not just... Oh, nevermind.
edThat, is heartbreaking.
I just spent last week with 4 students from AU.
I was so underimpressed ... I'm writing a letter to AU ... if you're going to send out camp teams ... make sure they are kids who actually want to invest in kids lives and plan on doing more than judge the other counselors they are working with and the states they are going to. Oh, and by the way, senior in college men, flirting with our junior high girls ...is really offensive.
Will I make it sound like that,hopefully not, that's why it hasn't been written yet and camp got out last Friday. I'm wanting to say something about what an opportunity they missed out on an investment into their own lives by separating themselves and judging harshly our state etc.
I DO hope the people at Anderson this week are behaving better than the AU students behaved at camp this last week!!!!
Perhaps we could take a lesson from how IYC works to positively impact the cities hosting the convention. To give and not just to take!
I used to be a waiter too. I worked through a camp meeting. Tips were about the same for me. But there were some people that said the year before someone left a tract for the tip. I was poised and ready to follow someone to their car if that happend. It didn't.
How can we as a group not be Bull Horn Guy [Nooma reference] to A-town? How can we change the perception of the church to the community. I like the IYC idea.
Chuch I heard from the horses mouth about alcohol sales. As another college job I used to clean windows and one of our cliants was Keg-N-Bottle. Through a random discussion he told me the three biggest times of the year were in this order: 4th of July, New Years and when ChOGers were in town. I was so suprised to hear that the 4th of July was bigger than New Years :)
It's too bad you had an expierance like that at camp. The camp team that I worked with were good. Maybe not as big into camp as some other years, but they were good people.
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