Tonight, 6:30pm Central

Wanted to get a quick post out to you today.  I just noticed an event you might want to check out tonight.  It’s a Veritas Forum from MIT with a very interesting group of speakers!  The theme is Exploring Meaningful Work – click here for the details on the Veritas Forum website.  My GFM colleagues in Boston are sponsoring this event featuring former GFM staff member and author, Tish Harrison Warren.  If you want to attend tonight’s event you need to register on the Veritas Forum web-page above.

Reading Group this Sunday – 7pm

How’s that book coming along?  From a couple of posts ago, you might recall that I invited boilerroom readers to read a book with me (assigned reading for an upcoming staff conference).  Healing from Racial Trauma by Sheila Wise Rowe.  We’ll discuss the first half of the book this Sunday, June 28th at 7:00pm.  I will text the Zoom-room link to my PBR readers on the day of the book discussion!  Hope to see some of you there!

Parting Shot.  Fiscal Year End…

See my previous post on wanting to end my year in the black and working on next fiscal year’s budget.  Thanks to those who have been responding!  I’ve been receiving some encouraging one time donations!  Thank you!

Click here to be taken to Tim ‘s donation page on IV’s website.

Thanks for your prayers!  Have a terrific week!

 

 

This might be my shortest blog in a while.  I’m even going to try to write shorter sentences.  The chart says most of what I need to.  Our fiscal year end is 11 days away.

To make a donation to Tim’s account click here.

I’m incredibly grateful for those who have been giving to my ministry budget.  You are the 83% of my budget steadily coming in month after month, year after year.  Thank you.  Some of the 83 are people who have recently joined my support team.  Thank you!  Some of the 83 are donors who gave extra this year in light of the challenges some of us are experiencing raising our funding.

The Eleven

The next chunk of the donut is the fraction of my operating budget I needed to find (back in February).  Earlier this spring I was set on finding $12K in new support.  “I ought to be able to do that by June 30,” I remember thinking at the time.   I had some trips planned to talk with potential supporters.  Till March happened.

The Covid Gap

Since March a little over $6,000 has dropped out of my budget due to to Covid.  That’s not too much, really.  I was braced for more.  Donations may fall further before the economy recovers.  My total need is to find about $17,000 in new support throughout the coming year.  I’ve been working on making connections.  Since the pandemic, it’s been quite a bit more challenging to find funding.  I’d really appreciate your prayers.

June 30th

This will be the first June 30th I will not be carrying overage to the finish of the fiscal year.  What does InterVarsity do if your budget doesn’t balance?  In most cases staff carry their deficits forward into the next year.  I will most likely carry a $6-7K deficit into July and have to work on it next fiscal year.  Several donors have given one time gifts to help me with the shortfall.  If you’d like to join them I’d be so grateful.

Zoom Calls!

The thing that makes fund development a challenge in addition to the economy is the format we’re reduced to during the pandemic.  I vastly prefer meeting in person.  Pray for me to connect with people this summer and to be able to make a case for my funding via zoom sessions.  It’s not ideal.  But it’s the best we can do given the circumstances.  The Lord will provide I’m convinced.  Meanwhile we’d also appreciate your prayers for me and my team as we spend the next 2 months re-thinking how to re-start campus ministry.  Some of our campuses won’t be re-opening in August.  Ministry will be a hybrid of the virtual and the social-distanced-in-person.  These are really challenging times.  Thanks so much for praying!

 

I’m curious if any of you would like to journey further with me into this theme of reconciliation.  There’s too much to process, isn’t there?  I have stuff happening here in Omaha I need to think about and respond to.  I’m wondering how adventuresome you might be.  Here are two things I’d like to do in the next couple of weeks.

A Watch Party.  And… a Book Discussion.

Are you a watcher or a reader?  I hope you’re more than both.  Honestly, both can be pretty passive depending on what you do with what you see and hear.  But reading and watching can be ways of jumping on a needed learning curve you may have been avoiding.  So, which would you rather do?  Let me give you the details and I’ll see if I get any takers.

A watch party!
I saw a live interview last week I think others might find helpful. It was hosted by Tommy Lee of Resource Global, a leadership development cohort for “young adults desiring to bring social and kingdom impact into the marketplace.”    The hour and 15 minute round table discussion focused on response to current tensions over Black Lives Matter and police brutality.  See details at this link on my Facebook.  I was drawn to the event when it caught my attention on the InterVarsity staff Facebook page.  With Rev. Dr. Brenda Salter-McNeil on the panel I decided I had to watch it.  I’m going to watch it again exactly one week after the live event.

My watch party will be THIS THURSDAY JUNE 18th at 7:15pm Central

If you watch this on your own, you’ll enjoy it.  I’m asking you to watch it WITH ME! Watching in community with discussion happening takes your learning further.  A watch party is a way for “all of Tim’s friends and supporters” to experience something together.  I’ll have it up and ready to go on my Facebook page so anyone who can get to my page can watch (whether or not you’re on Facebook, whether or not your my Facebook friend!).  If you are a FB friend, you’ll get a notice on your page when I start the party.  I’ll also text you a link earlier in the day as a reminder!

Spoiler Alert:  My wife knows that I talk while I watch things (much like I write obnoxiously in the margins of my books).  Cheryl, I promise if anyone shows up, I’ll behave…

So…you’re a reader instead of a watcher?

Or maybe in addition to being a watcher?  Want to read a book with me?  I have been assigned to read Healing for Racial Trauma by  for my Region’s annual staff gathering next month (happening virtually not in person this year).

I have to have this book by the end of June. I’m wondering if you’d like to join me? People who will find the book most helpful of course are people who have experienced racial trauma. Honestly, I am reading it because I am a staff supervisor who wants to know how to care for staff, students and faculty members. I’m reading it to hopefully discover the kind of healing that I need as a person more likely to be the cause of racial trauma than the victim. You might be like me. I’m wondering if you’d like to help me read this. I get more out of a book when I can discuss it with others.

So how are we going to do the book discussion. How about we do it in TWO 45 MINUTE Zoom calls?  Give yourself a week to get the book.  Another week to read the first half and another couple of weeks to read the second half.  Here’s the table of contents and here are the two dates I’ll suggest for the zoom call.  They are both Sunday evenings.

Did I mention that I want to send you the book free!  Yes.  Free.  You’ll have to email me and let me know you want it.  I can have it sent to you electronically or in paperback (I’ll need your address if I’m shipping it to you – your email will do if I’m sending it electronically).  I’m serious about this!  [Or you can order your own copy of Healing from Racial Trauma at IVP Online.]

Join me in learning!
Tim

tim.perry@intervarsity.org 

So much for procrastination. For several weeks now the need to blog has been gnawing at me.  I’ve been looking for a good space in my schedule to post.  Covid has been a moving target that I’ve just become fed up with.  Do I keep uploading pictures of zoom meeting 3X3s?  I also took some days back in May to travel to Illinois helping my son with his big move to California.  Then things started heating up in the aftermath of the George Floyd killing.  I wasn’t really sure how this was going to land in my own community.  Till the weekend of May 29th!

Statement from InterVarsity president, Tom Lin on recent events

Demonstrations were peaceful in my town.  At first.  Friday night.  Saturday night.  Sunday night.  The tension escalated throughout the weekend.  We live on 51st Avenue, about half a mile east of where the demonstrations began.  Our local Target store is at 72nd and Dodge in midtown.  It’s a huge intersection protesters had blocked off.  Friday night seemed pretty orderly.  Not Saturday night.  What started at 72nd street was eclipsed by protests and looting in the Old Market area of downtown Omaha.

That night I was in my backyard packing our SUV for a trip to Illinois (helping my son’s family move).  Sirens tore past our block as police vehicles raced to downtown.  Lots of demonstrators.  And lots of vandalism to downtown businesses.  A shooting happened outside a bar whose owner had foolishly carried a weapon to the scene.  James Scurlock, an unarmed black man in his 20s was shot to death – not by police.  Why was the bar owner there with a weapon in the first place?  Many more details came out in the aftermath.

Jake Gardner, owner of The Hive, has a well worn reputation with flagrant racist tendencies.  At first it was perceived as a self-defense shooting.  Shortly afterwards enough evidence surfaced to have Gardner face a grand-jury trial (not the immediate acquittal it looked like he was about to receive).

“I can’t breathe” reverberated through the streets of my town.  I was only able to catch up with the details later in the week.  I had left Omaha that weekend and traveled over the road in a U-Haul with Aaron the following week.  We saw evidence of the nation-wide unrest as we traveled.  St. Louis shops were boarded up.  Curfews were imposed in many of the states we passed through – not the least of which was California.  The night we arrived in the L.A. area an Amazon warehouse was burnt to the ground.

The pictures I’ve used in this post are the work of two gifted photo-journalists who helped me see what had happened back here in Omaha.  It’s one thing to see things on the news in other communities, it’s another to feel the unrest in your own part of town and see the images of what happened.  Thanks to Chris Machian and Anna Reed I can see not only the physical damage on the streets – I can begin to see the toll this takes on Black lives.  The look on the face of a father who will never see his son again.  The tears of a friend shocked at how senselessly life can be taken away.

I was in the same moment proud of my community and repulsed by my community. Encouraged to see the diverse, young crowds of demonstrators – on message and insisting on change.  And repulsed by the unbridled race-bating and hatred shown in Mr Gardner’s behavior.  Horrified that a business establishment in my town had such poor standing yet stayed in operation till now.

Pray for my town.  Pray for me and for InterVarsity’s ministry with students and faculty.  Pray for BCM (Black Campus Ministry) and BSAP (Black Scholars and Professionals) – InterVarsity’s ministries among African Americans.  Pray for InterVarsity’s leadership as we continue to respond not only to the devastation of the Covid pandemic, but also the sad, persistent drama of racism, nationalism and white supremacy.

If you’d like to track with more details on the Omaha stories, here are a few links you may find of interest.

Omaha World Herald coverage.

Eye-witness back-story on James Scurlock shooting.

Video message from Greg Jao on behalf of InterVarsity Leadership.

Thanks for your prayers!