We had a bit of an experience eating at the Yard House restaurant near the Kansas Speedway last night.  The restaurant was negligent to the point that I wanted to share it for posterity here and for anyone else who might think of going there.

Below is the e-mail I sent to the restaurant, telling the whole story.

For any family that read this, a quick note…  I was following the storm closely with radar data and storm reports on my phone and strongly doubt the tornado sighting you will see in the following e-mail.  I was also watching the sky very, very closely.  If I had thought there were any real danger I would have spoken up and would not have left the restaurant (this will make more sense once you read the account below.)

Still, this does not change the fact that Yard House did a truly negligent job with the data they had to work with.  I would recommend avoiding them just for their demonstrated ethics…

I wanted to share an experience my friends and I had at your restaurant in Kansas City yesterday (12 June 2008).

As we were eating a tornado warning was issued for the area and the tornado sirens sounded outside.  Rather than taking us to shelter, since a tornado warning means either a tornado has been sighted nearby or one may develop at any instant, our waitress came by saying she had instructions from the manager to secure our payment for the meal.

After some table discussion about Yard House’s poor priorities and our plans for never eating there again, things got worse.  A man whom I assume is the manager announced on the far side of the room (we couldn’t hear, but a waitress told us a couple of minutes later what he had said) that a funnel cloud had been sighted “directly overhead” and began ushering the patrons out the door suggesting a long walk to the other side of the Legends complex to take shelter in the basement of the movie theater– a long, outside walk.

I recently changed careers, but I used to be (and technically still am) a meteorologist.  However, it doesn’t take a four-year college degree to know that if a funnel cloud has been sighted outside the restaurant, to send people outside is not only ignorant, but negligent.  Possibly even criminally negligent.  We weren’t given the option of taking shelter immediately in the restaurant, but were pushed out the door (after our payment was secured, of course…  Priorities…)

Fortunately, some kind employees of a sports apparel store saw the exodus of people coming from Yard House and hurriedly ushered us through their store into an access hallway with an interior stairwell (good, sound shelter, clearly part of a pre-determined plan) where we waited out the storm.  While there we received word from an officer that a tornado had indeed been sighted from the complex– by all reports, our lives had indeed been placed in grave danger when we were sent outside by your manager.

You should know that I will also be posting this on my blog in hopes that others may know the priorities and policies of Yard House.

Thank you,

Jeff Slater.

As the Associate Pastor of Trinity United Methodist Church in Hutchinson, KS, I write a weekly article for the newsletter article. I invite both members of the church and other visitors to my blog to share their thoughts!

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My office looks out on the edge of the courtyard on the south side of the sanctuary.  As I write this, Trinity Treasures, our after school program, is having a party out there.  No special occasion, but why you do you need one to have a party?  There are two of those big, blow-up “bouncy” things…  One of them is a huge obstacle course for kids to quite literally bounce through– complete with tunnels, giant bowling pins, and a slide.  They are running and screaming and having such a good time!

I love watching kids play, totally oblivious to the cares of the world.  It’s not that they don’t have problems in their lives, of course, it’s that they’re able to set them aside so easily and so completely to simply enjoy life.

When do we loose that ability, do you suppose?  I know I have to work hard just to escape the things I think are important for a even a few precious moments.  Personally I don’t think we loose the ability, we just get “rusty.”

When was the last time you set aside your cares and just played?  Children help, and I’ll bet grandchildren help even more.  It’s a beautiful gift God’s given us to be able to play.  We can play with each other, but I think we can also play with God.  What could be more wonderful than just setting aside everything around us to simply laugh and run with God?

Take a moment this week to laugh and run and scream– it’s good for the soul!

At that time the disciples came to Jesus and asked, “Who is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven?”  He called a child, whom he put among them, and said, “Truly I tell you, unless you change and become like children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven.  Whoever becomes humble like this child is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven.
- Matthew 18:1-4

As always I welcome your comments at http://ministrygeek.net.

As I’ve explored the sense of call I feel both to the emerging church movement and to the United Methodist Church, I’ve often felt the “chafing” that leads many emergent-types to declare that postmodernity simply cannot exist within an organization as modern as the UMC.  I still feel deep in my gut, though, that postmodernity not only CAN emerge from within organizations like this one, indeed it is most healthy if it stays connected to it.  Therefore, I believe that a big part of my call is to be a sort of “postmodernity gardner,” doing all I can to nurture the signs of postmodernity I see emerging all around me.  The details of that I might go into later, but today I want to explore an observation I’ve had sitting here at the Annual Conference of the Kansas West Conference of the UMC.

One of the true hallmarks of the postmodern church (indeed of the church of any age) is true, authentic community.  The term I like is common in the emergent conversation: generative friendship.  (I vaguely remember hearing that Tim Keel coined the term???)  In other words, friendship that generates, that naturally works to create life within and outside of the individuals and the community.

One of the great things about Annual Conference is the “family reunion” aspect of it.  Most of the people here haven’t seen their closest friends/colleagues in a year, and so the bond of friendship is incredibly strong and very, very apparent.  It doesn’t spread much beyond the clergy into the laity (probably because of the “colleague” nature of it), but there is at least the beginning of this communal friendship spilling over into others.

But here’s the issue as I see it– most of it is not generative.  It is a very, very supportive friendship, but I see little “generated” from it.  Sure there are pockets of generative-ness, but as a whole it is more sustaining than life-giving, at least from my admittedly limited perspective.

If I am to fulfill what I see as a call to help postmodernity emerge from this Conference, one thing I don’t question is that it cannot be a “top down” leadership thing.  That puts me, who is much closer to the bottom, in the perfect place to effect positive change.  The idea I am playing with is, “How can I help move this wonderful, beautiful community to a place that is more generative?”  That in itself would be a tremendous force to move the Conference toward postmodernity.

I don’t quite know how to answer that yet, but perhaps the best way is simply to move “hallway conversations” away from the superficial, “catching up” nature they usually take, and instead instigate informal conversations about deeper matters, like for instance theological ways to think about whatever happens to be going on.

Just a few thoughts.  All I really know is that this community means a great deal to me, and nothing would make me happier than to see it move to the next level of being a truly creative force for the hundreds of churches that make it up– and to see it become a creative, life-giving force for the transitioning culture of our time.

I have lots of other thoughts from Annual Conference that will probably never make it to my blog (such as the incredible disconnect between a denomination crying out in pain from decline and an Annual Conference that spends it’s time celebrating– denial, anyone?), but here’s some food for thought.

I love Annual Conference.

As the Associate Pastor of Trinity United Methodist Church in Hutchinson, KS, I write a weekly article for the newsletter article. I invite both members of the church and other visitors to my blog to share their thoughts!

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I can’t tell you how many graduation ceremonies I’ve been to where I’ve been bored to tears by the long reading of names of the people who are graduating.  I know that sounds a little brash of me to admit, but who among us hasn’t been there?  At most graduation ceremonies we are there to support someone (or perhaps a few someones) we know, but the rest of the names fall on deaf (and bored) ears.

At my own graduation ceremony from Seminary last week, it struck me how the long reading of names was NOT boring– it was because I knew each one of the people well.  Have you ever read Romans 16:1-16?  I mean really read it; not just skimmed over it?  It is a list of Paul’s friends to whom he sends greetings.  I often think this passage is terribly boring because I don’t know these people from two thousand years ago, but in truth Paul drops just enough hints about them that we get a little peek into just how special these friends are to him.

At the end of the day, the truth is that God knows every person on every list, and he knows and loves them more than any human ever could.  I know this much: the next time I’m at a graduation ceremony and the next time I run across a list of names in the Bible, I’m going to try to read it with God’s eyes– all the while remembering that he loves me just as much as he loves each and every person on each and every list.

I welcome your thoughts at http://ministrygeek.net.

As the Associate Pastor of Trinity United Methodist Church in Hutchinson, KS, I write a weekly article for the newsletter article. I invite both members of the church and other visitors to my blog to share their thoughts!

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By the time this reaches you I will be just about to walk across the stage, receiving the hood that signifies my Master of Divinity degree from Saint Paul School of Theology.  (Technically I still have to take an intensive class in June to make up for the one I had to drop after my accident, but they’re letting me walk at Commencement anyway).

For those that are curious, the Master of Divinity degree, usually referred to as M.Div., is more or less the “standard” degree one gets to become a fully ordained pastor, or Elder, in the United Methodist Church.  It’s what Pat has and, I would assume, what most of Trinity’s previous pastors have had as well.  It requires more credit hours than most Master’s degree programs (most require 60, M.Divs require 90), and most people take twice as long to do it.  Pat helped me put into words why– it’s also change in identity.  When one challenges one’s faith and theology– the very root of their being that got them to seminary in the first place– you can’t help but emerge as something different on the other side.  This is especially true for those who left careers to become pastors.

So have I grown?  Unquestionably yes.  Am I “better” for all the formal education?  I am better suited to certain tasks maybe, but I am constantly amazed when I talk to all of you and realize how much I can still learn from every person I meet.

May none of us ever forget that.

I welcome your thoughts at http://ministrygeek.net.

My hip is recovering nicely from my December 30 fall…  I still can’t believe that of all the people I’m in ministry with, it’s the 30-year-old pastor who breaks a hip.  There is still a very slight chance I might need a hip replacement if blood flow to the ball of the hip isn’t good enough, but it’s a slight chance.  From what I understand, even still it will be the better part of a year before I have full mobility back.

Anyway, I saw this article in the NY Times just now.  Obviously this would be terrible if it actually happened.  Still, some demented part of my mind thinks you might be able to have fun with it…  No comment on the unnamed man about halfway down the first page.

As the Associate Pastor of Trinity United Methodist Church in Hutchinson, KS, I write a weekly article for the newsletter article. I invite both members of the church and other visitors to my blog to share their thoughts!

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I thought I would give you update on my hair.  You may remember that about a year ago I decided to grow it out for the Locks of Love charity, or perhaps for another charity like it (I have a while to make up my mind!)  The donated hair goes to make wigs for children who have lost their hair due to disease– can you even imagine the dignity, the hope, and the simple sense of “normalcy” such a gift gives?  It seems a simple way to give a gift more precious than I can imagine.

To donate, the hair needs to be in a pony tail, ten inches long.  Right now I have about 3, but the hair from the front isn’t quite long enough to reach the pony tail yet (so I can’t pull it back day-to-day just yet).  It will probably be at least a year before I can donate, but it will be valuable when I do…  The retail cost of such a hairpiece is $3,500 to $6,000!

Many of you will laugh at this (I know I am), but I made a fascinating discovery about a week ago.  Until recently, I had been using a comb– a trusted comb I had used for ages.  One day my wife saw me laboriously combing through the tangles, and asks me why I don’t use a brush.  I stared at her dumbfounded.  After she showed me the right type of brush for my hair, it was amazing!  I couldn’t even feel the tangles any more– the brush just goes right through, and the hair looks better, too!

Naturally, it made me think about faith.  When we pray, read the Bible, etc., there are times when the way we’ve always don’t work any more.  Sometimes life has gotten too long and tangled, and we’re in need of a new spiritual practice, or a new way of going about life.  Maybe it’s silence, maybe it’s a service like Evensong, maybe it’s focusing on a different part of the Bible than we usually do, maybe it’s finding a new way to be generous.

Any workman or cook or craftsperson of any type can tell you that much depends on using the right tool for the job.  Why should our faith be any different?

I welcome your thoughts at http://ministrygeek.net.