Remember to “fall back” Saturday night. Daylight savings time ends at 2:00 am Sunday morning. Of course, if you forget, you’ll be early at church on Sunday morning. Hmmm…

Eastland eBulletin 10.29.06

Area Meetings
•    Nov 5-10 — Expressway
•    Nov 10-12 — High School Road (Indianapolis) — Weekend workshop on improving congregational singing.
•    March 8-11 (Thursday-Sunday) — Our meeting with Ralph Walker. Begin making plans now.

Potpourri
•    Remember the kid’s bulletins in the racks beside the water coolers.
•    Today’s speaker is Reggie Robarts.
•    The November calendar is now ready.
•    2007 Duties — The deacons will compile various work lists for 2007 in the next two months. If you want to participate in something you are not already doing, please see one of them. Duties include serving the Lord’s supper, public prayers, announcements, ushering, sound system, snow removal, transportation, meals, preparing the Lord’s supper, leading songs, invitations. If you want to add some of these to your 2007 “to-do” list, please contact one of the deacons.

October Duties
•    Transportation: Broderson, McPherson
•    Lord’s Supper: P Reece, T Reece
•    Meals: B Crowder, B Barnett
•    Deacon: J Norris
•    Usher: K Swisher
•    Sound: J Price

You Hold In Your Hands A Powerful Device
By Cloyce Sutton II

It looks innocent enough. It is mere 8.5 x 14 inches, folded in half. It is a fraction of an inch thick. It is printed in plain, ordinary black and white.

It will never win a journalism award. On a good day, the writing is a bit above average. Most people who read it would probably never pay for a subscription to it.

Yet this little church bulletin is quite powerful.

That was confirmed to me recently in a conversation with my father. I asked him about a couple in his home congregation whom I did not recognize. He told me that the woman had worked with my twin sister many years ago at a public school. My sister had a habit of leaving the church bulletin in the teacher’s lounge each week. This woman happened got into a habit of reading them regularly, and over time was influenced by them. This woman and her husband are now Christians and worship where I grew up.

This is not an isolated incident. My sister used the same approach with another woman at a different job a few years earlier than this. Another woman read the weekly bulletin, and, eventually, came to Christ.

Never under estimate the opportunities in front of you. Never underestimate the effect of simple gesture. Never underestimate the power of the gospel working through the most unlikely channels. Never think that you can’t do personal work.

Now, how will you use this little bulletin?

Married U.S. Households Hit Lowest Level Ever
By Fred Jackson And Jody Brown (Agape Press)

For the first time, traditional marriage has ceased to be the preferred living arrangement in the United States. Seventy-five years ago, married couples accounted for 84 percent of American households. Now they account for just less than half.

It appears that when it comes to traditional values, the U.S. is quickly falling in line with western Europe. Marriage rates there have been falling for years. Now, new figures from the U.S. Census Bureau show that for the first time, the number of married households in America has fallen below 50 percent.

Out of roughly 111 million family households, more than 14 million were headed by single women, another five million by single men, and a startling 36.7 million belonged to a category described as “non-family households.” That is a term analysts say applies primarily to homosexual or heterosexual couples cohabiting out of formal wedlock.

The news service Agence France Presse (AFP) quotes Douglas Besharov of the American Enterprise Institute who says it is difficult for the traditional family to emerge unscathed after three-and-a-half decades of divorce rates reaching 50 percent, and five decades of out-of-wed1ock births.

“Change is in the air,” Besharov said during a recent interview. “The only question is whether it is catastrophic or just evolutionary.”

Besharov predicts the social landscape is likely to be dominated for years by cohabitation and temporary relationships. He also sees a move toward a “much more individualistic society” over time. “What I see is a situation in which people — especially children — will be much more isolated because not only will their parents both be working, but they’ll have fewer siblings, fewer cousins, fewer aunts and uncles,” he said.

An official with Focus on the Family, reacting to the census findings told The New York Times he believes the trend in fewer married couples reflects more of a tendency to delay marriage than it does a rejection of the institution. Steve Watters, director of young adults for the Colorado-based ministry, said the numbers show “a lot of people are experimenting with alternatives” before they marry — but he admits concern that those who wait “are going to find fewer models” or may find that they have “gotten so good at being single” that it will be difficult to be in a relationship with another person.

Tony Perkins, president of the Family Research Council, agreed and said single people are delaying marriage, and elderly people are surviving longer after being widowed.

“A majority of adult Americans are still married… and more than 68 percent of householders raising their own children are married. So don’t count marriage out yet,” Perkins said.

Interestingly, the census report indicated significant differences in household composition based on geographic location. For example, married households in one Utah county accounted for almost 70 per cent of all households; whereas Manhattan has a smaller share of married couples than almost anywhere in the country (26 percent). AFP notes that unmarried couples “gravitate” toward big cities (i.e., New’ York, Chicago, Los Angeles, San Francisco), but traditionalists are drawn to farm states in the Great Plains and rural communities of the Midwest and West. The highest percentages of homosexual couples were found in San Francisco (male couples; almost 2 percent of all households) and Hampshire County, Massachusetts (female couples; 1.7 percent).

Those demographics coincide with an observation made recently by Perkins describing what he called the “marriage and fertility gap.”

According to Wendy Wright of Concerned Women for America the trend toward a decrease in married households is neither inevitable nor irreversible, but should prompt the nation to do more to promote healthy marriages.

“The studies all show that people who are married are healthier, they are more prosperous, they live longer, and a married household is the best environment for children to grow up in,” she said. And toward that end, she added, churches should encourage married couples to serve as role models by having younger couples or singles in their home.

In The Southeast Outlook,
October 26, 2006, p A1, A10