A moment of discord in Portland

I've been in Portland, Oregon since yesterday, preparing for the General Assembly of the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ). Today we launched our special General Assembly home page and I've been madly writing stories to populate it.

I was covering a pre-Assembly event on postmodern worship and had been attending some of the workshops and talking with organizers about it and really enjoying it. The highlight today was a multi-sensory, experiential worship service led by Bob Rognlien, who just wrote a book on the subject.

Well, the first time Bob (a Lutheran pastor) referred to God, he used "He." I tried to just ignore it, but then it was "He" again, and then "Father," etc.

Now why do all that rethinking of worship and then not even bother to use inclusive language for God? I had to get up and leave, it just bothered me. Some may call that immature. I feel like at age 40, life is too short to put up with crap.

But it left me with a nagging question for all those who can spend thousands re-doing their worship but not address their pronoun issues: Are you just lazy, or do you actually believe God is a man?

Speaking of that, I took a walk to Portland's Chinatown and saw a Chinese restaurant called "Hung Far Low." No kidding. I want to go back and take a picture of the sign tomorrow.

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