Dale Lauener

Dale has worked for a long, long time with Jr. High youth at The Chapel...much longer than I've been there. He passed away quite suddenly after a very brief fight with leukemia. He had a passion for life and for people that was inspiring.


Dale E. Lauener

CUYAHOGA FALLS -- Dale E. Lauener, 64, died June 28, 2007.

Born in Oberlin, Dale was raised on a farm and graduated from Cedarville College in 1968. He worked in the stewardship department at The Chapel and actively ministered to youth for over 30 years. He was a member of the Akron Bicycle Club, SPOKES and successfully completed 15 Great Ohio Bike Adventures.

Preceded in death by parents, Edward and Adeline Lauener, he is survived by sons, Matt (Sylvia) Lauener, of Chicago, Ill., Josh Lauener, of Bluffton, S.C.; grandchildren, Nicholas and Adaline; sister, Kay Lauener of Kent; and beloved friend, Sharon Runyon.

Friends may call Sunday 2 to 5 p.m. at the Redmon Funeral Home. Pastor Knute Larson will conduct service Monday, 11 a.m. at The Chapel (in Memorial Chapel), 135 Fir Hill, Akron. Private burial will be at the Camden Cemetery. The video tribute for Mr. Lauener will be available at www.redmonfuneralhome.com. Should friends desire, memorials may be made to Camp Patmos on Kelleys Island.

quaker history

there's many reasons why that on the rare occasion someone asks me with what denomination i'm affiliated, i respond "Quaker". this is one of them:

from a history of the abolition of slavery on the BBC:

The Unsung Heroes of Abolition
By Adam Hochschild

The Quakers were the first religious denomination on either side of the Atlantic to come out against slavery. There were only some 20,000 Quakers in Britain in the late 18th century, but they supplied nine of the 12 members of the influential abolition committee that began meeting in 1787.

That first meeting took place in a London Quaker bookstore and printing shop. An all-Quaker abolition committee had actually been started four years earlier, but because of widespread prejudice in Britain against religious dissenters, the committee's efforts failed to gain public attention until it joined forces with similarly-minded Anglicans.

For decades to come, Quaker merchants and businessmen provided most of the movement's financial support. The network of Quakers around the country were the core of the local anti-slavery committees organised by Thomas Clarkson. Clarkson himself once said he felt 'nine parts in ten' a Quaker, but politically it was more sensible for him to remain an Anglican. Clarkson and others were much influenced by the writings of the early Quaker abolitionist Anthony Benezet, who, like many Quakers, spent time in both Britain and America.

Other Quaker stalwarts of the anti-slavery movement included Elizabeth Heyrick, businessman-philanthropist Joseph Sturge - who travelled to investigate conditions in the West Indies - and his sister Sophia, who personally called on 3,000 households to ask them not to eat slave-grown sugar. The Quaker John Woolman campaigned against slavery on both sides of the Atlantic, and his 1754 anti-slavery tract was one of the very first to profess opposition to slavery.

an email

so this is an email i sent to some friends recently:

So I don't know how familiar you gents are with web 2.0, but it's generally the idea that the web is transforming from a universe governed by what the few could post and maintain (those web-savvy webmasters & website designers) to being a universe governed by the many, and by many I mean any, as in anybody who wants to can know post, interact, share, network, and broadcast themselves, their thoughts, feelings, and dreams to the world.

Honestly, it's a bit like when the Reformation hit the church. The power transformed from the Priest to the parishioner, from the elect to the everybody.

This short little piece gives an interesting take on web 2.0.



Of particular interest is that people really believe in this transformation. Enough that they are creating movies like this, publishing articles, and that web 2.0 has become an actual term that people recognize. The idealized ending is fascinating to me.

And so how does this affect us? Does any of this translate into our context? I propose that perhaps the emerging conversation is a second, mini-reformation. Religion has gone corporate, with mega-churches, political jockeying, conservative lobbying, and new papal-like empires such as Focus on the Family, the Moral Majority, and the Christian Coalition. The emerging conversation, ideally, pushes the power back to the people, per se. Not to say that it doesn't have it issues. Like web 2.0, a lot of useless waste accompanies this opportunity. For every worthwhile blog, youtube video, facebook connection, there's plenty of wasted myspace pages, pointless online journals, and maybe even some stalking. But the potential of web 2.0 is incredible. And worth rethinking how we use technology at all, computers specifically, and how we understand the internet altogether.

To those who have spent their lives building what we have, I ask: Is the church now too established to expand? Too complete to recreate? Too near an end product (and the end-times) to explore new territory? Dreaming seems too often squelched by evangelicalism today.

To those who spend their time frustrated with what we've become, I ask: Is the church too dead to dream and resurrect? Too derelict to redirect? Has the sun set or is it on the horizon, ready to burst into the brightness and beauty of a redemption-filled, re-imagined day? Dreaming seems too often squelched by post-modernism today.

So where shall we venture tomorrow?