Christian Y2k leaders Shaunti Feldhaun and Chuck Missler are advocating y2k as a huge ministry opportunity to feed and clothe our neighbors and share with them the love of Christ. Is anyone's church getting organized?

I am trying to get my church to look at Shaunti Feldhaun's model of church preparedness, Joseph Project 2000. She wrote a Y2K book based on Joseph in the Bible saving Egypt by preparing for seven years of famine during the seven years of plenty. Unfortunately, my pastors just pushed the first y2k meeting from November to January. Perhaps I could direct them to another church as an example.

-- Donna Mittelstedt (dmittels@csuhayward.edu), October 27, 1998

Answers

Donna, we just had our first y2k meeting last week. It was held at our church but the pastor was not present nor involved. We will continue to meet monthly and I just know that the attendance will grow each month. You can do it...there are others out there like you. I would NOT wait until January to have your first meeting! Blondie

-- Blondie Marie (Blondie@future.net), October 27, 1998.

Here is the Joseph Project 2000 website:

http://www.josephproject2000.org/

-- Gayla Dunbar (privacy@please.com), October 28, 1998.

Donna,

Yes......but, boy is it hard work. I've reported before that I was able to get the pastor of our church to let me address the congregation a couple of months ago. Since then we've stuck one page (double sided) pamphlets in each Sunday program. Finally, I was able to get a Y2K committee started, and we're working not to set policies for the church.

Pastors are very reluctant to get involved in this.

One reason is their fear that Y2 will be 'a bump in the road,' and they will have gone before their congregations urging action to protect against something that didn't happen.

Another, as I've mentioned before, is the fact that their plate is full and they can see the need for a lot of effort. If someone else is pulling the wagon they might go along. [Note: I'm pulling the Y2K wagon, and I'm the one with egg on his face in the unlikely event nothing happens.]

The nice thing about a committee, in our church, is that the church usualy votes for anything brought up to it, so that if it comes with the recommendation of the committee it will be approved.

BTW, the Dr. James Dobson tapes and a tape of CNBC's program dealing with the church in Michigan (I believe) are good tools to use.

January is too late.......way too late. It will take at least 6 months to agree to do anything worth while, and I think that by next summer everyone will be wanting to do something. It's called panic.

-- rocky (rknolls@hotmaill.com), October 28, 1998.

Yep. We're getting ready.

-- Pastor Chris (pastorchris@lifetel.com), October 28, 1998.

*sigh* this is an ongoing concern for some of us - if anyone out there has experience in presenting the y2k preparedness issue to *traditional* Anglicans I'd appreciate hearing about it.

(By traditional I mean no female clergy and homosexual activity is considered a sin, not an alternative lifestyle and no, neither of those topics is open for discussion or debate either.)

I'm just looking for ideas on how to present the whole preparedness thing to these folks...the tape of the Focus on the Family programs will help, but if anyone has anything else, especially from a specificly Anglican perspective I'd appreciate it.

-- Arlin H. Adams (ahadams@ix.netcom.com), October 28, 1998.

Donna M., I presented the "700 Club" video on Y2K (from July) to our church Sun. evening, Sept 13th followed by my assessment of the potential problems and then opened the floor for questions (all with pastor's permission). We had a much larger crowd than usual for night church. The people were remarkably open-minded and several were aware of the problem. Since then we have gathered 55 gal drums and made them available to members for water storage, established a bulletin board on which I place pertinent info from the I'net, encouraged people to contact their utility companies, planned "cook-ins" after the first of the year for bread baking, dehydrating, canning, perhaps making cheese.

Now we hope to have meetings twice a month to address the most pressing needs during 1998. Next Sun topic is "Water and Food Storage", then "Cooking, Heating, Lighting", "First Aid, Medications, Medical Needs, Prescriptions", "Finances and Barter Items" and after the first of the year we'll cover Communications, Protection, Waste Disposal and whatever else we need to cover.

With the help of a friend or two, I'm trying to present a concise, but thorough evaluation and solution for each topic. There will be handouts with holes punched for notebook storage as well as a Q and A opportunity at each meeting.

I don't know what our church as a body will do to meet the needs of our community yet; we are a small church and our own people must come to terms with this quickly.

-- Sylvia (in Miss'ippi) (bluebirdms@aol.com), October 28, 1998.

I wonder what the LDS church will do with 55,000 20 year old missionaries in all parts of the world. You know, like duty of care. And what about all of the other churches with volunteers aboard. O/T And say "doctors without borders". Some org has to run them in an admin way, do they have a duty of care to call them home for Christmas? I'm sure most churches will call back people overseas and interstate.

-- wureed juan (boydman@hotmail.com), October 29, 1998.

Let me toss out some suggestions to help churches get on board: 1. The 700 Club (that's me) & Focus on the Family tapes will help (Jerry Falwell also did Y2K; I only saw part of it, but what I saw was pretty good). 2. The CBN web site (that's also me- www.cbn.org/y2k) has a lot of stories from "mainstream" news & information sources. Many of these are posted for the precise reason of information dissemination- ie, I encourage people to print them out & pass them on to Y2K non-believers. Many people feel more comfortable with something from major newspapers or Congressional testimony or whatever. The Oct 26 post - from the Center for Strategic & International Studies - should be of particular help. There you had people like former Georgia Senator Sam Nunn talking, plus the head of the International Chamber of Commerce (she made some great statements), plus Senator Bob Bennett, plus the fellow from the UK (who informed us all that England will be shut down for 10-12 days from Christmas 99 to early 00- if Y2K isn't serious, why would they do that?), plus Ed Yardeni in the Q&A section (*don't* miss his remarks). Also, check out (in the archives) Rick Cowles' open letter to the utilities. In case anyone wants to know who Cowles is, just point out that he is credible enough that NERC has a link to his page on theirs. (And the Energy Dept has charged NERC with oversight of the power companies.) I have buried that site in material for the express purpose of raising Y2K awareness. Many of my introductions say "Print this out. Pass it on." etc for that very reason. (Of course, I go from awareness to encouraging contingency planning too.) 3. For those whose pastors are fearful about looking stupid, I use what I call the "insurance argument;" ie, do you feel stupid because you bought house, car, or medical insurance- and yet your house never burned down, you never had a serious car accident, or you never got a fatal disease? No- you buy insurance to protect yourself from a low-probability, high-risk event. The idea is protect oneself from the unexpected. Well, virtually everyone knows we cannot *know* what will happen during Y2K. Will it be mild or severe? Who knows? That's the point- we *can't* "know" it will be jes' fine- therefore, you should talk prudent steps to protect yourself, your family, your church, your community, etc, in case it is *not* jes' fine. (Trust me- you read the International Chamber of Commerce head's statements about how "we've failed... that's why we need contingency plans" etc- or Yardeni's statements about how he thinks authorities might have to tell people in the middle of 99 that food & power supplies can't be guaranteed (or words to that effect)- show these to skeptics or unbelievers and and you'll have an easier time convincing people of at least the *possibility* of problems ahead). I frequently emphasize the "not a kook" approach- ie, "Look, this is a leading United States Senator saying we can't know what will happen!" (which Bennett does- see the CSIS transcript I mentioned above). Another approach I use is the "avalanche" approach- I just bury people in evidence. You must be patient (it took me a while to really get it, as I suppose it does most people). Don't come in with your eyes wide and your hair on fire- that just turns people off. If you overstate the problem up front, people won't believe you. But if you keep presenting them credible evidence in credible stories from credible sources- it does work. For instance, I know someone who didn't believe Y2K. But in the days before I started the site, I did a lot of private e-mails, and this fellow's wife is the relative of a friend of mine. So she was on my e-mail list. And he started reading these e-mails. At first, he scoffed. He said "good old American ingenuity would come up with the answer. But over time, the sheer weight of evidence got to him. Now he's a big-time believer, and he intends to take action at the community level.

I didn't mean to come in here & publicize our site; I drop by this forum & others from time to time, but I have a sort of unofficial personal rule never to post anywhere (because I don't have time to follow up on them- I may not get back here for a week or more, literally). But I happened to see this threat, so I thought I'd babble a few words. It's late at night & I'm quite tired (as usual), but I hope it helps.

Drew Parkhill/CBN News

-- Drew Parkhill (y2k@cbn.org), October 29, 1998.

Oops, sorry- the Cowles letter is found on the Oct 1 date in our archives. Forgot to mention that (told you I was tired ).

DP

-- Drew Parkhill (y2k@cbn.org), October 29, 1998.

Drew....Read you everyday....Keep up the GREAT WORK.

-- consumer alert (private@aol.com), October 29, 1998.

Drew Parkhill mentioned above about Jerry Falwell's sermons on y2k. The transcripts can be found at:

http://www.trbc.org/Media/Sermons.html

-- Louise (~~~~~@~~~~.~~~), October 29, 1998.

We had a couple of meetings in are church , but turn out is kinda of low. I guess nobody really care's if the computers go wacho. It some times can be very discouraging. In are last meeting somebody said something that was realllly funny,I don't even remember what they said, but we all laugh for what seem like 5 minutes. Boy that was such a great feeling and I believe we all needed that laugh considering all the plans we been making and all the things that need to be done with so little time.

-- David (pingpongdave@dreamsoft.com), October 30, 1998.