Save the dates!

CCGB Program Highlight

Safe Place Goes Digital

By Dale R. Holder, Director of Janus Center for Youth in Crisis

Location, location, location!!!!  This not only is a key factor in the real estate market, but also was the key factor in getting the word out about Safe Place during National Safe Place Week.

It’s always good to know someone who shares your visions and goals.  Rev. Jonathan Hevita , one of Janus Center ’s Outreach Workers, had established a great relationship with Eric Lambert, Sales Manager for Lamar Outdoor Advertising, though their roles on the Bridgeport Regional Business Council.

When Janus Center began planning for National Safe Place Week, Jonathan had an idea to use Lamar’s digital billboards to get the word out about Safe Place .  Jonathan approach Mr. Lambert and asked if we could the billboards as part of the outreach efforts for the week.

Not only did Mr. Lambert agree to use of the digital billboards, he agreed to advertise on five billboards in strategic locations thru out this the city of Bridgeport .  The best part of this deal was that advertising was giving to us (a $1,250 value) FREE OF CHARGE!!!

Veronica Cruz , Janus Center ’s other Outreach Worker, was on-call during the week and reported a significant increase in hotline calls from both youth and families needing assistance.   I guess that there really is power in advertising.

Read about last year's honorees:

2008 Great Friends Keynote Speaker &  Honorees 

The resurrection story of Cleopas and his friend on the road to Emmaus (Luke 24:13-35) is a story of loss resolved by love.  Unique to Luke, it follows the first report of the Resurrection at the beginning of the same chapter, with its empty tomb, men in dazzling clothes, and the message from these celestial visitors declaring “He is not here, but has risen.” 

Compared to this, the Emmaus Road story is quietly reflective.  The two travelers talk as they walk along, and it is the pathos of loss that comes through so powerfully.  Jesus joins the two in their journey but they do not recognize him.  Jesus asks the content of their conversation and they stop.  Sadness envelops them incredulity infuses their speech: “Are you the only stranger in Jerusalem who does not know the things that have taken place there in these days?”  When Jesus asks “What things?,” Cleopas and his companion give the Gospel in a nutshell, with this caveat: “But we had hoped that he was the one to redeem Israel.”

The phrase is pregnant with unfulfilled expectations of geo-political hegemony and the restoration of a small desert nation to the glory years of Kings David and Solomon.  Not only had they lost a friend, a teacher and a mentor; they had lost a dream.

Godly people live in a world of loss.  We are touched by it and we are called to reach to others in their place of loss.  The stock market continues its volatile ride.  Wars in Iraq and Afghanistan grind on.  Genocide still unfolds around the world.  Partisanship, domestic and international, has not yet given way in most quarters to true bi-partisanship.

A congregation reduces staff as revenue falls.  A marriage of 43 years ends as spouses die within weeks of one another.  A marriage crumbles.  Children go hungry.  Drugs invade and destroy.  These losses are no respecter of persons.  Neighborhoods, social standing, schooling, socio-economic status are no protection from the inevitability of loss.

Left to our own devices, we remain bereaved or, worse, lapse into cynicism and despair.  But two surprising twists in the story help overcome loss.

First, we know that Cleopas and his friend knew the Lord before this day.  We know that because the text tells us they did not recognize him.  One can only recognize—“re-cognize,” “to know again”—those we have “cognized” before.  This prior knowledge prepares them to recognize Jesus when, in an act doubtless familiar to them, he broke bread with them.  The end of their grief, and the remembrance that their hearts “burned within them” when they spoke to Jesus before they recognized him, was based on a prior personal relationship.  Facing any loss can be overwhelming, but without the spiritual reservoir of established relationships, celestial and temporal, we have little reserve on which to rely.  Now, before the crisis and loss, is the time to know the Lord.

Second, Jesus did not allow empathy to limit truthfulness.  I confess that if I’m writing this Gospel story I have Jesus saying something like “There, there, don’t worry, it will be all right.”  He said no such thing!  He called them thick-headed and slow-hearted to believe the Good Book.  Clearly Jesus was not a member of Toastmasters and had not taken a Dale Carnegie course.  But as the story unfolds, his directness becomes a wake-up call to prepare Cleopas and his friend for a comfort that words alone could never have provided: the comfort of Christ’s living presence in love.

 Losses come.  No one is immune.  So begin now, or continue, to know the Lord and to cultivate life-giving relationships with all people.

The Rev. Dr. Brian R. Bodt is President and CEO

The Council of Churches of Greater Bridgeport, Inc.  

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