(Authors Note: I am taking a break from this blog till September but felt re-posting some of my older stuff would be cool. Here is my first post as a blogger back on July 20th, 2009. Comment if you want because I plan on checking my WP e-mail weekly, or there about,  so I will get back to you.Till the next re-post be cool, fly low and Peace!)

We have a new tradition at our church that is not unique per say but does go against the grain of most “churches”. It is called Don’t Go To Church Be the Church Sunday. It is a day set aside to do community projects on Sunday not on the traditional Monday through Saturday schedule most churches, including our own, use. Well we like to use t-shirts as a way to build unity and identify our outreach projects. Or as a t-shirt I saw worn by a friend of mine said” you will know they Christian’s by their t-shirts”.

In this vein we decided to have t-shirts made for the Don’t Go To Church Sunday. The shirts are black with big white letters on the front that say “Don’t Go To Church..” and on the back it finishs with “..be the church.”  Well when some of our towns upstanding church going folks saw this there was mixed reactions from “did that really say what I thought that said” to out right ( self) righteous indignation. Well that is till they saw the back and if, and I mean IF they asked, we could explain the outreach to them.  Most were glad to be away from the Crazies!

How many time have you and I passed judgment or thought wrongly of someone or something and realized later we didn’t get the “rest of the t-shirt (story)”. I am not just a member of Jumping To Conclusions Air Club For Man I am a the President. I tell you that I am guilty as the next on doing this but as time passes I see the value and the need to listen to both sides of the story. It is simple really: I want people  to do the same for me. Not rocket science at all but the basic want of being treated fairly and in doing so being shown basic respect.

I will be honest with you the biggest obstacle in me doing this before is that there is a lot of work and responsibility in looking at both sides. There is a cost to it that requires us to be engaged and take the time to weight the facts as we know them. It is easier to throw our thoughts against the wall and see what sticks and call it good than actual working at it. So let’s see if we can look at both sides of the t-shirt and maybe we will see both sides of the story before jumping to conclusions.