Where’s the Fire in Middle Georgia Preaching? FPD’s Chaplain Charley Chase Explains Why He Wasn’t Burning Before, But is Now

Macon, Georgia, March 22, 2015:

Being in the Bible Belt with as many churches as Macon has, you might think there’d be more fire flaming from Macon’s pulpits. There’s still some fire, though, if you know where to look for it.

Macon Monitor staff and friends had the opportunity this past week to hear one fired-up preacher, Dr. Charley Chase, who, despite being of grandparental age, manages to get the rapt attention of a difficult-to-reach cohort, including hundreds of high-school students, perhaps the most difficult of all to reach.

Chase has been the chaplain for First Presbyterian Day School in Macon, Georgia, for the past eight years, and you can see why. The Monitor invited Chase to explain what fires him and his student followers.

Monitor: What had you done before coming to FPD, and how did that inform your work with young people in the past few years?

Chase: I’d served in parish ministry for 30 years before coming to FPD. For most of that time, my preaching wasn’t really on fire. It was more like a birthday candle than a nuclear blast. I had a sort of Road-to-Damascus moment shortly before I came to FPD, though, and began … Continue Reading

Dog Fight Continues: Brinsons to Appeal Dangerous Dog Ruling After Split Decision

By Dave Oedel, March 22, 2015, Macon, Georgia:

This dog fight will go on. On Monday, March 9, 2015, five members of the Macon-Bibb County Board of Health split 3-2 on whether to deem three female pitbull dogs, Cocoa, Pearl and Justice, “dangerous.” As previously reported in the Macon Monitor, those dogs were involved in the death of another dog, Renalto, that was passing by the pitbulls’ home on a walk with Renalto’s owner, Claudio Naranjo, from Miami. The pitbulls are owned by Ryan Brinson and kept at the home of his mother, Veronica Brinson, at 124 Brookefield Drive in the Brookefield subdivision of north Macon off Bowman Road.

Board of Health members Bert Bivins, Ethel Cullinan and David Garrow voted to find the dogs “dangerous” within the meaning of both state law and a Macon-Bibb ordinance. Two other Board members, … Continue Reading

President Barack Obama’s Speech at the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma, Alabama, March 7, 2015, Commemorating the 50th Anniversary of “Bloody Sunday”

President Barack Obama, Selma, Alabama, March 7, 2015

You can watch President Obama’s 32-minute speech here. Below is the text as transcribed by the White House.

It is a rare honor in this life to follow one of your heroes. And John Lewis is one of my heroes.

Now, I have to imagine that when a younger John Lewis woke up that morning 50 years ago and made his way to Brown Chapel, heroics were not on his mind. A day like this was not on his mind. Young folks with bedrolls and backpacks were … Continue Reading

My Reflections on Selma: Jack Ellis Recalls the History, and Surveys Some Present Challenges, of Race and Voting in America

By C. Jack Ellis, former Mayor of Macon, March 14, 2015:

On September 22, 1862, President Abraham Lincoln announced his intention to sign the Emancipation Proclamation, which he did on January 1, 1863. Soon after Lincoln’s announcement, in an October 12, 1862 newspaper article, Karl Marx wrote that Lincoln’s “proclamation, . . . the manifesto abolishing slavery, is the most important document in American history since the establishment of the Union.”

I would have agreed with that sentiment — prior to the … Continue Reading