|
Readers, I Need Your Help!
By Lafe Tolliver, Esq
Guest Column
Dear Reader. As you know by now, the Casino On The
River will open this year and it is not too soon to prepare
ourselves and our community for this momentous event!
That casino has been touted as being an unprecedented source
of jobs, tax revenues, new cab companies, suppliers and
vendors and new opportunities for down and out prostitutes
and marginalized dope dealers to get a fresh start.
It should energize a sluggish drug-trafficking
enterprise in both downtown Toledo and Rossford. The alcohol
lobby is heads over heels with dreams of fantastic sales,
especially to the poor sap who throws down his or her entire
paycheck on RED 22!
Clearly children services will need to hire more case
workers as disgruntled casino players return to their homes
from a night of gambling with only lint to show in their
pockets and they take out their bad run of blackjack on poor
Shauntae and Demarcus.
Local security forces will have a chance to beef up
their employee rolls with the unemployed by providing them
with a gun and a badge so that they can hang around the
edges of the casino and monitor criminal activity.
Toledo and Rossford have made plans to share the
increase revenue that will result from speeding tickets by
those racing back and forth during their lunch hour to the
casino from nearby downtown Toledo businesses.
Consideration will be given to a special DWI court
located at the county jail in anticipation of the
groundswell of new charges due to the unwritten casino
policy of, “If you play here, you get drunk here!”
But the above scenarios, you already know about. The
help that I am talking about is trying to keep motivated the
local black church pastors who came out early and supported
casino gambling.
It appears that some of them are losing their zeal for
rolling snake eyes and pulling the one-arm bandits and now
they want to bail out of any gambling promotion for their
parishioners.
We need to tell them to remain strong, prayful and
diligent because the best is yet to come.
We need to encourage them not to waffle during these
next crucial months by which they will see their eagerly
sought for dream realized.
I need hundreds of volunteers to meet with me, organize
and be trained so that we can go church to church and
encourage these now flagging pastors who first supported the
bill that brought the casino to Rossford.
I need sympathetic volunteers to cheer up their
flagging spirits so that they are not despondent and that
they will renew their pulpit call for their parishioners to
undertake the short trip to Rossford and support the tax
revenues and jobs that the casino will generate.
When these God-fearing and bible-reading
casino-supporting pastors understand that they are not alone
in their lonely vigil in awaiting the opening of this Temple
of Baal, they will be encouraged and, in turn, rally their
congregants.
Now, if you want to volunteer but feel that you are
ill equipped to give encouragement and support to these
brave pastors and the people who will be directly affected
by the casino, don’t worry. I have assembled a crackpot team
of trainers who will slowly and thoroughly guide you through
the steps of what it means to be an “encourager” or armor
bearer and thus be a blessing to these valiant men.
The workshops for your training and edification will be
held at the downtown library on June 30, 2012 from 8 a.m.
to 6 p.m. Meals will be served and there is no admission
charge…simply sign up by June 23 and you will receive a call
back indicating what one of the below seminars you have been
assigned to.
WORKSHOP ONE: Worshipping the Almighty Dollar:
This workshop will take you into the mindset of pastors who
have forsaken the Word of God for the lures of the fast and
quick buck. You will understand the fallacies of the Word of
Faith gibberish by which you “name it and claim it!” and
that God is obligated to you to give you what you want if
you use a certain “magical word incantation.”
After this workshop, you will be equipped to spot such a
mindset in a pastor and be able to gently but firmly lead
him back to sanity and balance.
You will also be able instruct the novice church gambler and
his enabling pastor that chasing after the almighty dollar
leads to a host of evils including the love of money being
the foremost.
WORKSHOP TWO: More and More and More…Please!
This workshop will help you understand the psychology of
what it means to be trapped in
a mindset that places the acquisition of material goods over
that of the needs of the people. You will understand how
pastors and people get caught up in the tornado of wanting,
wanting and wanting and how gambling can feed into that
mania.
After this workshop, you will be able to lay hands on and
set loose and free up pastors and church members who believe
that gambling is the cure-all or panacea for ailing local
budgets and their own bank accounts.
You will thoroughly understand that regardless of the
success of gambling, enough is never enough and that the
gullible pastors, who were first caught up in the hype of
passing the casino levy, were simply victims of their own
flesh-induced fantasies of bigger and richer churches and
receiving the applause of man.
WORKSHOP THREE: Now What?
This seminar deals with the tragic aftermath of gambling and
for those who were simply not strong enough to avoid its
siren call of riches, drink, food and entertainment. Yes,
these are the victims that will return to their churches and
meekly seek counseling and guidance, maybe even from a
pastor that supported this casino in the first place!
These maimed individuals will need your help as you try to
re-integrate them back into their local church fellowship.
You will show them that they must release their
gaming-supporting pastor from their anger and hurt; and how
they must re-channel that desire to get rich quick into
other non-destructive avenues.
You will be taught the basics of family counseling, finding
emergency shelter locations, child abuse intervention hot
lines, medical providers and locating bankruptcy attorneys.
Also, you will be shown how to counsel naive pastors who
originally thought their political support of gambling was a
good thing for the local economy but they just did not think
it through and now they are embarrassed and ashamed of being
asked for “lucky numbers” after they give the church
benediction on Sundays.
To you volunteers! This will not be an easy job to
undertake because you will see and hear things that will
make you cringe and turn away when you see how corrupting
the dollar can be on people who only think that, “gambling
is fun and exciting!”
But, be strong and stay the course.
Before long, you will be on the front line of defense
awaiting the incoming casualties from the Baal Temple On The
Maumee River.
Contact Lafe Tolliver at
Tolliver@Juno.com
|
