Tag: Post-gazette

Peace

On By thallfpcpLeave a comment

Last week Jana and I attended a forum on free speech at the Heinz History Center. The event was hosted by the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette and included a panel discussion led by the paper’s executive editor. Panelists included the rabbi from the Tree of Life Synagogue, a local imam, a Duquesne University law professor, a Rand Corporation scholar, a Post-Gazette editorial writer, and the Pennsylvania Attorney General. A packed house of 600 guests experienced a powerful, wide-ranging discussion. What are the limits of free speech in the Internet age? When does hate speech become criminal? When does censure become censorship?

As we’d approached the history center that night, we met folks handing out flyers. My first thought was that they were greeters for the event. I recognized one of the Post-Gazette writers who’d done a critical piece on me and the church five years ago. I suggested he come by the church to see what was going on today. Maybe he could see that he’d been wrong about us.

I glanced at his flyer. He wasn’t there to greet. He was picketing.

Newspapers, like churches, have been in decline for decades now. Great institutions with vital missions, gone. And the human toll has been great. Jobs lost; families disrupted.

I could feel for this writer. The flyer said he hadn’t had a new contract or a raise in years. But what to do? Hundreds of print organizations have closed, downsized, or gone to on-line only. The Post-Gazette has been trying to transform to meet these new realities. 

I was struck by the irony of a reporter picketing a free speech event, one hosted by his own paper, no less.

And I realized that the writer was doing to his employer what he had done to me and the church in his critical piece years before. Instead of seeking a new way ahead, he was tearing down. Couldn’t he see how the world has changed?

Change is personal, so change makers get attacked personally.

The flyer said he was fighting for the “heart and soul” of a great paper. Really?

When we become too certain that our goals and our ways are right, we move toward conflict rather than peace. We stop listening to others, and to God.

Silent sanctuary?

On By thallfpcpLeave a comment

Five years ago, the Dormont Community Presbyterian Church, once a thriving congregation in the South Hills of Pittsburgh, closed. The property was acquired by North Way Christian Community. North Way is an evangelical congregation in the North Hills of Pittsburgh, 25 miles away. Today, the former Dormont church is a thriving North Way campus. (What once was the Dormont United Methodist Church is now a Buddhist Temple.)

A couple years ago, the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette did a photo essay on two dozen churches in Allegheny county that had closed, with many of the buildings falling into decay. Dormont was one of the few to find new purpose.

(To see the photo essay, Google “Post-Gazette Silent Sanctuaries.”)

What happened? In every case, the neighborhood changed.

The mill closed and the workers moved away; a tight-knit immigrant community dispersed over time; the white middle class moved to the suburbs. Then people with different ethnic, racial, or economic backgrounds moved in.

The church was no longer ministering to its neighbors.

A stalwart generation kept the church going as long as it could, but then a big bill came due; the roof needed to be replaced; and that was that. The Rev. Dr. Sheldon Sorge, general minister for the Pittsburgh Presbytery, said the [Dormont] Presbyterian church reached a similar point as many congregations in changing neighborhoods. “They’re good people; they just didn’t have the energy to reach into a new community.”

Well, our church just got a report from a roof consulting company. Our roof, which was built to last 125 years, is 113 years old. But parts are in bad shape. We’ve only got five years of roof left, and its going to cost a million dollars to fix.

Is it curtains for us?

Well, our neighborhood is booming. $8.5 billion has been invested here in the last ten years. We still have money in our own investments to perhaps seed a rebirth.

Promising. Hopeful.

Here’s the rub. The people moving into our neighborhood are changing, too. Most no longer go to church.

If we hope to reach them, we have to make a difference, and be known for making a difference, in things that matter to them. We have to provide ways to welcome them, get them involved, let them see us making a difference.

Will we have the energy to do those things?

Will we have the courage to change the good things we’ve been doing to reach them?

I pray we will.