Keywords by David Yonke

Got a call this morning from the UK office of my publisher, Continuum. That is actually the company's main office and Sarah called to say they had a last-minute request for me to do an interview with Radio Europe in Spain. The station has 500,000 English-speaking listeners, so it was too good an opportunity to pass up. I had a jam-packed day at work but of course I found the time. The host's name is Morris, and he's originally from Ireland, and we talked for about 20 minutes, not just about the book but about the whole crisis facing the Roman Catholic Church. I was grateful that Morris mentioned my book and Amazon's UK website several times. He did mispronounce my name as "David Yonk," which is understandable -- I've been called worse! I tried to be polite about it when I corrected him, and I hope he didn't mind.
This fact that a European radio program, in Spain with an Irish host, was interested in the book is proof enough to me that this story appeals to people far beyond the Toledo area.
Any more radio hosts out there looking for a story that will enthrall their listeners?
* * *
A week ago Sunday, on Feb. 18, I was interviewed on WBGU-FM (simlucast on WFAL-AM), A college radio station at Bowling Green State University. The show, slyly called "Dead Air," runs for two hours, live in the studio, and it amazed me that any radio program would devote that much time to any topic. Thank God for noncommercial radio.
The show's hosts were terrific -- Jim Barnes and a couple who go by the radio names of Haley Comet and Frank Black.
They read the book, cover to cover, and asked informed questions. They also had fun, pretending, for example, that we were broadcasting live from the Space Shuttle.
We took phone calls and email from listeners, and the callers were articulate and asked some very good, and sometimes very tough, questions.
Even though the show was two hours long, the time seemed to zip by... Frank said he wishes we had had 4 hours to talk. I'm looking forward coming back to "Dead Air."
* * *
A Toledo TV program called The Editors, on which I appeared last year, was rerun recently. I think more people saw it this time than on the original broadcast. I had so many people say they saw me on TV, and it took a while to realize they were talking about a rerun. I guess the folks at WGTE-TV must have liked the show or they wouldn't be recirculating it.
* * *
I have a friend who runs a public relations firm and he has been patiently waiting for me to give him the go-ahead to make an effort to promote me and my book. I've been putting it off since Continuum has a publicist assigned to the book and I didn't want to step on any toes. But I ran into Jon at a concert Friday (for 91-year-old bluesman David "Honeyboy" Edwards) and gave him the go-ahead to contact Oprah's producers. Sure enough, Jon called on Tuesay and reminded them of my book... It seems like he handled it well and renewed their interest. I can't imagine how many proposals they get. But Jon reminded them that they had asked me for a copy of the book and then a dvd of me on television shows. I guess they had forgotten about that part of it. As busy as I am at The Blade, with all the books and press kits I get, I know how things can slip-slide away, even stories I am interested in, and I'm sure Oprah receives a hundred times more proposals than I get. Maybe a million times more. Anyway, Jon's phone call appeared to have been well received.
If Oprah doesn't come through (but I think she would recognize a great story when she sees it), perhaps the European connection will catch on first and then spread from Europe back to America. A lot of artists know that sometimes it's best to get away from your hometown if you want to get noticed.... and maybe out of your home country, too.
* * *
I spoke to a class at BGSU today and enjoyed it immensely. Every time I do that, I get the bug to teach journalism in college again. It just feels like a perfect fit. I get to share my experience with students and we have fun as we do it.
With the way The Blade continues to is disintegrate from labor strife, I am feeling more motivated to look around at possible teaching positions, hopefully in this area.
* * *
More trouble is brewing in the Toledo Catholic Diocese. I'll have a posting about it shortly.

Sylvania, Ohio, February 28, 2007

Father Thomas Leyland, pastor of St. Rose Church in Perrysburg, announced that he is retiring in July after 43 years as a priest.
Sounds routine, but there is a story behind the story.
Father Leyland is one of the few priests who dared to criticize his bishop in the media. In this case, it was over the diocese's business decision to create a new parish next door to his that effectively cuts his parish in half.
The rub, Father Leyland told The Blade, is that he was not sufficiently consulted by the bishop or church headquarters about the potential impact the new parish would have on his church and his parishioners.
He expects to lose a large number of parishioners, which consequently results in a drop in revenue. St. Rose Church subsidizes St. Rose school, and a shortfall in income will likely force layoffs or cutbacks in school programs.
Father Leyland called the bishop's decision-making process "high handed," and said Bishop Blair should have listened to him, his staff, and his parishioners before making the move.
Now, in the midst of a severe priest shortage, Bishop Blair announced he will appoint a new pastor of St. Rose Parish and reassign Father Leyland -- reportedly to an associate pastor position, a demotion. Further, he is claiming that he is concerned that pastoring St. Rose may be too stressful for Father Leyland, an implicit slap at the priest's competence.
So rather than take the demotion quietly, Father Leyland wrote a letter to his parishioners saying he did not agree with Blair's decision but that the bishop is the boss and he has the right to make the change.
Blair said today via a spokesman that he is not punishing Leyland but merely making his annual routine pastoral appointments.
I wish that were so.
Father Leyland has a lot to offer a parish. He is considered by many to be a model priest, a man of integrity and a highly respected spiritual leader. Now, at age 68, he's going into retirement even though he would prefer to stay on at St. Rose.
The end result is that the Toledo diocese has lost a good priest. Sadly, it's the parishioners who are the ones that will suffer.
Read more about it in The Blade on Friday, March 2. www.toledoblade.com
Sylvania, Ohio, March 1, 2007

Dear friends, I have not been writing much lately because I've been in Scotland for a brief vacation, and have just arrived in Ireland. Europe is far behind America when it comes to public Internet access... Will get back in blog mode upon my arrival home. Have a great week and see you soon!
David
P.S. Today is Adam Clayton's 47th birthday -- I hope to find the party!
Dublin, Ireland, March 13, 2007

Just when you think you've heard it all, you find out that there's another conspiracy theory circulating around the Father Robinson case.
To begin with, such theories begin with the presumption that the priest did not get a fair trial. Maybe the jurors were dumb, ignorant, prejudiced, or vindictive. Or maybe the prosecution withheld key evidence. Or the priest's defense attorneys were incompetent.
The new conspiracy theory alleges that a Detroit serial killer named Coral Eugene Watts was the likely culprit. He is an admitted serial killer who stabbed and strangled to death at least four women and claims to have killed many more.
His victims were killed in the late 1970s and early 1980s and he is now serving a life sentence in a Michigan prison.
Sister Margaret Ann Pahl was strangled, then stabbed to death in 1980, but other than the similarities in the way the victims died and the era of the slaying, there is nothing to support this new theory. His victims were young women, and they were all in Michigan.
I reviewed the 1980 police reports from cover to cover and there was never any mention of Watts -- and that covers 600 suspects -- despite some reports to the contrary. Police investigating the slaying of Connie Sue Thompson looked at Watts as a possible suspect but as it turned out she was a victim of the Cook Brothers, two of Toledo's most notorious murderers.
The thin link between Watts and Robinson, however, is enough to keep conspiracy fires burning. If there was any value to this theory, you can be sure that Robinson's defense attorneys would have shouted Watts' name from the rooftops in their effort to raise reasonable doubt. Oh wait, maybe they were covering it up -- I forgot that we're talking about conspiracy theories.
Nevermind that the murder weapon was found in Robinson's locked apartment, and that he lied about his whereabouts the morning of the murder, and that he admitted lying to police during an interrogation, and all the other evidence that built such a solid case against Robinson that the jury deliberated only 6 hours before convicting him.
I once got a call from a reader who said he could identify the thin, neatly dressed blond man seen in the hospital corridor the morning of the murder. That man, the caller said, was Jeffrey Dahmer. He was certain of it. His decision to share that information meant that I had "the scoop of the century," he said.
Jeffrey Dahmer, Coral Eugene Watts ... who's next? Where was Mark David Chapman, who murdered John Lennon only eight months after Sister Pahl's slaying? OK, I've gone too far with the Chapman comment, but I'm amazed at the lengths some people will go to claim that an innocent man was convicted of killing Sister Margaret Ann Pahl.
The priest does have an appeal in the works, so let's wait and see if his attorney asks for a sample of Watts' DNA.
Sylvania, Ohio, March 19, 2007

Having just returned from a whistlestop tour of Scotland, Ireland, and Northern Ireland, I can say with all my heart that we definitely live in the world's greatest nation. God bless America, land that I love. Our food is the best, our quality of life is the highest, and we drive on the right side of the road!
Not to mention the price of gas, which in the UK was as high as $7 per gallon (3.6 pounds, which at the current 2-to-1 exchange rate equates to more than $7 U.S.).
Nevertheless, it was an absolutely wonderful experience to travel through those European island nations, meeting their wonderful residents and seeing such historic and fascinating cities as Edinburgh, Glasgow, Aberdeen, Dublin and Belfast.
Edinburgh is gorgeous, with the 1,000-year-old castle set high up on a hill overlooking the bustling city of 540,000. Aberdeen is all gray granite buildings, with lots of gray roofs and very little color. We arrived on a cloudy, misty day and it was as if the city were invisible. Dublin is fantastic, with 1.4 million residents it is a big city but not too big to be intimidating. I loved the city's rich history, especially its literary history with four winners of the Nobel Prize for Literature.
Belfast, well, that's quite a story. The city centre is bustling and the residents are at peace now. But driving through the neighborhoods, you see that the Protestants and Catholics are still fiercely opposed to each other. There are incendiary murals painted everywhere, pledging to never surrender and to always remember the martyrs. As my Belfast-born friend said, when it's not boiling over, it's simmering. We may not be hearing much about Ulster in the news these days, but the deep-seated feelings are still very much there and will, sadly, boil over someday.

I had the most interesting interviews yesterday and today with a woman who worked for Johnny Cash for seven years, from 1968 to 1975. That was a time when Johnny was just starting to reach superstar status, and after he had won his battle with pills.
The woman, Barbara "Bobbie" John is 81 now and has a lot of memorabilia and newspaper articles about her and Cash. She's quite a character, too. Funny, feisty, energetic. I'll bet she was really something back in the days when she worked with Johnny. She said he called her "Miss Bobbie."
Anyway, she said Cash was genuine in his faith, a man who sought to walk in the footsteps of Jesus. It wasn't a show for him, it was his life story. She said Johnny had a photographic memory and when he said something about the Bible or quoted Scripture, "you didn't have to look it up because he was always right," she said.
I'm working on an article about Johnny Cash's "Gospel Road" film, a movie about Jesus' life that he narrates. It was his and June Carter Cash's lifelong dream to make the movie and Bobbie served as a producer. My story will run on Saturday, March 31, so check it out then online at www.toledoblade.com.

Meanwhile, she told me a great anecdote about Johnny. When he did his first Billy Graham crusade, Cash was a smoker. Graham met with him backstage and said Johnny looked a little nervous. Cash said it wasn't that, it's just that he smoked cigarettes and wanted to quit. Graham said he would pray for him, and put his hand on Cash's shoulder.
According to Bobbie, Cash never smoked again. He told her it was because "He didn't want to tell Dr. Graham that his prayer didn't work."
Was it a divine healing, or a matter of will power? Either way, it worked!

Sylvania, Ohio, March 22, 2007

After arriving in Glasgow and visiting Edinburgh, our little group headed north to Aberdeen on Sunday, March 11.
I knew very little about Aberdeen beforehand, I hate to admit. Normally I do my homework before traveling, but this time the city was not on our itinerary so I didn't study up on it.
It was about a 2 hour drive from Edinburgh, crossing over the Firth of Forth via the Forth Street Bridge, away from the city and into the sprawling, rolling countryside with stone cottages and flocks of fluffy sheep perched on emerald green hills. Naturally, it started raining as we drove, but that was one of the only times we dealt with rain on this trip.
Aberdeen is known as the Granite City, and you can see why as soon as you approach it.
Almost all the buildings are made out of granite. The predominant color, by far, is gray -- gray stone houses, churches, businesses, roofs. It seemed the cars were all gray too. When we arrived, it was drizzly and misty, making everything even more gray.
We went right to the Rev. Ian Duthies' home, where we had some tea and chatted for a short while before we had to leave for his church's Sunday night service.
The Aberdeen Assembly of God is a thriving church, as far as Scotland goes, with about 300 members. The service was joyous and full of life, lots of college students, in an old Church of Scotland building on a downtown street.
Afterward, we went back to Ian's house and the minister cooked delicious omelettes for everyone as we sat around his kitchen and chatted for several hours. It was one of the highlights of the trip, for me, being welcomed into this family's home and talking about life and God and politics and teenagers -- all that great stuff.
Ian has an amazing story.
He is a medical doctor who gave up a lucrative practice to become a pastor. In doing so, he took a 75 percent pay cut. And he and his lovely wife, Elizabeth, have 5 children -- so it's not like he can't use additional income. With 3 daughters, I know how fast the money goes.
Elizabeth jokes about how she didn't reacted to his decision to quit the medical field -- "Didn't you see the skid marks all the way to church?" she asked with a smile. Later, she joked that "I married a rich, handsome doctor and ended up with a bald, fat pastor." (Ian is NOT fat, and he's not all bald, so that's just a good example of Scottish humor!)
Anyway, Ian is a remarkable man with a remarkable ministry. I truly believe that churches like his are a key spiritual ingredient if Scotland is going to come out of its postmodern, post-Christian wilderness.
Here's a photo of Ian in the kitchen, cooking us those awesome omelettes...

Here is a link to The article on the Toledo Blade's website:
Eikon

The article is printed below for those who prefer not to jump to a link.

Minister seeks to reinvent services

By DAVID YONKE
BLADE STAFF WRITER

EDINBURGH, Scotland - The "seeker-sensitive" church, popular in America, is a foreign concept here but one that has caught the eye of visionary leaders.

Following the blueprint laid out by the Rev. Bill Hybels and pioneered at his Willow Creek Community in suburban Chicago, seeker churches are designed to attract people who normally don't go to church.

Their buildings can look more like auditoriums or movie theaters than traditional worship spaces. Pastors wear business casual clothing and services feature upbeat music, high-tech videos, innovative dramas, and sermons devoid of religious jargon and cultural assumptions.

Locally, CedarCreek Church is one of the notable examples, with more than 7,000 people attending five weekend services at its Perrysburg Township campus.

Here in Edinburgh, where Presbyterianism was founded by John Knox more than four centuries ago, church leaders are looking at ways to make their services relevant to a generation of sophisticated Europeans who have rarely, if ever, attended church and have a cultural bias against religion.

On vacation here a few weeks ago, I met the Rev. Tony Foley, pastor of a fledgling Edinburgh church called Eikon. It is the only Assembly of God church in Scotland's capital city of 540,000.

The official Church of Scotland, an Anglican branch, dates back to 1690 and 70 percent of the country's 5 million residents profess to be Christian. But only about 4 percent attend church on Sundays, according to Mr. Foley.

In conversation, the 47-year-old Irish-born minister freely quotes Scripture along with such pop-culture references as the American TV show 24 and Neil Postman's book Amusing Ourselves to Death.

Videos, computers, Web sites, blogs, and imagery are all essential tools if churches are to reach young Scots, he says.

He is determined to dial in the right combination of factors that will break down cultural barriers and change the negative attitudes that many young Scots have about church.

"I'm trying to understand the water the fish are swimming in," Mr. Foley says. "The fish don't know that water's wet. People are in the dark and they don't even know it."

He purposely leaves the word "church" out of his church's name, for example: It's just called Eikon - the Greek word for image.

Mr. Foley and his wife, Yvonne - who teaches applied linguistics at the University of Edinburgh - were missionaries in Taiwan for 14 years before coming to Scotland three years ago. His Far East experiences are paying off in Scotland, he says, because the people in both nations have no contextual understanding of the Christian Gospel. In other words, he builds his church and sermons on the premise that people know nothing about Jesus or Christianity.

"How do you explain atonement in a sinless society?" he asks. "There is no sin, no shame, without God."

Scots consume more anti-depressants and suffer more alcohol-related diseases than any other European people, he says. He quotes Austrian psychiatrist and Holocaust survivor Viktor Frankl, who said that godlessness tends to foster addictive tendencies, depression, and aggressive behavior in society.

Mr. Foley walks along Edinburgh's cobblestone streets, in the shadow of historic Edinburgh Castle, greeting strangers on park benches and bus stops. He smiles his Peter Fonda-like smile and invites them to visit Eikon, "a church for people who don't like church."

After more than a year of preparation, Eikon opened its doors in February, meeting in a banquet room in the posh Carlton Hotel downtown. The church's entrance is through a side alley that Mr. Foley and his small staff sweep clean and mop with bleach every Sunday morning, wiping away the foul reminders of Saturday night's parties.

They hang a sign over the door that says, "Eikon: Everyone Is Welcome."

Visitors get a free cup of Starbucks coffee - yes, Starbucks is big in Scotland - and a muffin, then sit at round, linen-draped tables.

The service begins with a few worship songs led by two singers and an acoustic guitar.

Nobody passes a collection plate; donations can be dropped in a box at the back of the room.

Mr. Foley steps to the front of the room and says he is going to talk about "a person we are all familiar with." He doesn't mention the name Jesus right away.

He offers a welcoming prayer and then preaches a 15-minute message based on Mark Chapter 8. Jesus was "a bit snappy" with his disciples in these Scriptures, he says, "suggesting a creeping irritation. ... Jesus is on a mission, it was weighing heavily on his mind."

He tells the crowd of about 20 to raise their hands if they have questions. He tells them Jesus was not the greatest teacher who ever lived, and never claimed to be.

Mr. Foley challenges his listeners to think, and just when a preacher would be expected to spoon-feed his flock the answers, he snaps his Bible shut and says he'll resume next week.

Afterward, he tells me that today's young church-goers need to interact. "The people want dialogue. They don't want a debate," he says.

Mr. Foley is energized by the task of bringing God's word to a secular society.

"I love being with non-Christians. I like it better than being with Christians," he says with a smile.

Mr. Foley is determined to melt the icy spiritual heart of contemporary Scotland.

"This is the most exciting mission field for me because this is where the rest of the world is headed," he says. "If America is not careful, this is where it's headed," Mr. Foley says, "a post-Christian, postmodern society where Christians are at the bottom of the food chain."

David Yonke is The Blade's religion editor. Contact him at dyonke@theblade.com or 419-724-6154. More information on Eikon is available online at www.eikonedinburgh.com.

After my trip to the UK with several ministers, visiting Scotland, Ireland, and Northern Ireland -- which, in the opinion of most pundits qualifies as "post-Christian" nations -- I came across a scripture to the Israelits that seems to address the present situation.
Europe is a unique mission field. Unlike Third World countries in Africa, Asia, and Central and South America, the people living in Western Europe and the United States have plenty. When people have their material needs met, they don't look elsewhere for help. They tend to be independent, self-sufficient, and spiritually callous.
People who have nothing, on the other hand, who don't know where their next meal is coming from or whether they will be able to get treatment for an illness, are more likely to turn to God for help.
This is what makes the missionaries' job in Europe so tough. As the Rev. Michael McNamee said, jokingly but as usual with wry truth, he sees missionaries come back from Africa and say that the $10,000 they received in donations enabled them to start 100 churches and each one is running 1,000 people. In Europe, Michael said $10,000 enabled him to hold an outreach event where he saw one person shaking -- and maybe it was because of the air conditioning.
The dollars don't go as far and the people are not as open to hearing the Gospel when they have a roof over their head, a car in the garage, and a plasma tv in their media room.
Check out the wisdom of Deuteronomy, Chapter 8, Verses 10 to 14: "When you have eaten your fill, praise the Lord your God for the good land he has given you. But that is the time to be careful! Beware that in your plenty you do not forget the Lord your God and disobey his commands, regulations, and laws. For when you have become full and prosperous and have built fine homes to live in, and when your flocks and herds have multiplied along with everything else, that is the time to be careful." (New Living Translation)
I'd say our countries today are in the same situation God was talking about when he gave these words of wisdom to the ancient Israelis.
Syvlania, Ohio
March 28, 2007