Enlarge Rev. Kate Murphy, interim pastor at Hickory Grove Presbyterian Church.

Posted: March 8th, 2010 Greg Lacour

The Rev. Kate Murphy had a confession to make: There’s a section of Scripture, specifically Mark 7: 24-30, that’s bothered – even offended – her since her first year in Seminary.

It’s the story of a Gentile woman who approaches Jesus as he hides in a house. The woman’s daughter is possessed, and she begs Jesus to expel the demon. Jesus declines. It is not right, he tells her, to take the children’s bread and cast it before dogs.

She responds, Yes, Lord, but even the dogs under the table eat the children’s crumbs.

Jesus tells her to go, that the demon has left her daughter. She goes home to find her daughter demon-free. So, Jesus performs an exorcism. But wait – what was that business about the dogs? Did we read that right? Jesus, confronted by a suffering mother, responds by calling her and her daughter … dogs? “If I could cut any piece out of the Bible …,” Murphy, the interim pastor at Hickory Grove Presbyterian Church, told the congregation at The Chapel of Christ the King on March 7. It was the latest in Crossroads Charlotte’s Xchange Sermons series.

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Posted: March 6th, 2010 Tonya Jameson

University Park minister Nicole Massie drives past First Christian Church everyday on her way home, but until Feb. 28, she’d never set foot in the church on East Boulevard.

Massie delivered the sermon at First Christian Church as part of the Xchange Sermons. “It was an amazing, amazing experience,” said Massie. “That sermon embodied what we should be about as Christians, as people of faith in general, that we can come together and that we really are part of the same community.” 

Massie said participating in the Xchange Sermons was one way for people of faith to come together because it provides an opportunities to find commonalities.

“This program allows you to look for it, to recognize it, to stand on it,” she said. “There’s an element of me preaching that sermon that brings accountability to me. If I call myself part of a larger community, I have to act like it.”

Posted: March 5th, 2010 Andria Krewson

We don’t give up.

Charlotte Mayor Anthony Foxx used those four words to sum up a Charlotte meeting about jobs at Friendship Missionary Baptist Church on Beatties Ford Road on March 4.

With Charlotte’s unemployment rate higher than the national rate, civic groups convened a community conversation to talk about jobs.

Key speakers were Foxx and Jennifer Roberts, chair of the Mecklenburg County Board of Commissioners. Panelists were Jay Bryson, global economist for Wells Fargo; Natalie English, senior vice president of the Charlotte Chamber of Commerce, and Patrick Graham, president and CEO of the Urban League of Central Carolinas.

Foxx said he has attended three town hall meetings and has spoken to more than 500 people about jobs. At one of those meetings, a 64-year-old woman who spoke up about her struggle for work connected with an employer, Foxx said.

And that’s his goal: “To connect people to the things that they need,” he said.“A job means dignity, it means a meal, a roof, clothes. It means the basic things we need to survive,” he said.

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Posted: March 3rd, 2010 Meaghan Clark

On Wednesdays, Crossroads Charlotte Correspondent Meaghan Clark will give you a round-up of community-building news and events (click items for full stories):

1. A college application that requires students to be creative, turns into a YouTube sensation for a Charlotte teen.

2. A grassroots organization aiming to improve and expand bus routes has caught CATS and Matthews town officials’ attention.

3. Despite having laryngitis, feminist leader Gloria Steinem delivers message of empowerment at UNC Charlotte.

4. Supporting the neighborhood takes on a whole new meaning as the All Arts Market returns to the Neighborhood Theatre this week.

5. Teens in Fort Mill focus their business skills on fund-raising efforts to make a young boy’s dream come true.

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