From Willimon’s book, Pastor, in a section where he describes the church as a world or culture in which it’s members learn how to live — a place that has rituals, practices and ways of being that teach us who we are and how to be in the world: So, when an early twenty-first-century North American says, “What the church says may be OK for some people, but I think it is important to think for myself,” that person thinks…
An article asserting the superiority of Chinese mothers in comparison to their western counterparts has been making the rounds recently. I’ve had it emailed to me and I’ve seen friends posting it to their facebook walls. You can read the article “Why Chinese Mothers are Superior” online. The article is written by a Chinese mother (who happens to also be a Yale Law School professor and author) named Amy Chua. In the article she anecdotally argues for the superiority of…
The church that Mary and I are a part of wants to be a place that takes the call to be the hands and feet of Jesus seriously. We want to be a community that makes a difference in the world. That’s why we’re partnering with One Day’s Wages to try and raise money for the flood victims in Pakistan. Here’s a blurb from the ODW website: This natural disaster is affecting nearly 20 million people – more than the…
I just came across an article about a male Gordon-Conwell student (the seminary I attended) who allegedly broke into a female student’s dorm room and setup a video camera with the intent of filming her. You can read about it on the Boston Herald or the Salem News sites. I feel badly for this young woman. I can’t imagine the feeling of invasion of privacy and the lingering effects of this incident. I also feel badly for the student that broke…
I love Jim Gaffigan. His routines are funny because they humorously describe the most common human experiences. He has great bits on recycling, bacon, watching TV, and working out to name a few. In the clip above, he captures the awkwardness of evangelism. He perfectly portrays the discomfort that comes when someone says to you, “I’d like to talk to you about Jesus.” There is ample reason for us to feel uncomfortable when a complete stranger approaches us and says,…
Ruth Haley Barton says there is a dark side to leadership. A church planting coach I recently heard, says that the biggest issue church planters and young leaders have to face is their past emotional baggage. When leadership seems oppressive, difficult and emotionally taxing, what dark habits will emerge in your life? What old emotional baggage will resurface in your life without warning? I believe this happens. I’ve seen it happen in my own life. It’s a real problem, and…
As a church planter in a community that is attempting to be more relational and organic, Parker Palmer’s words on leadership really strike a chord. He argues that it’s in the less rigidly defined community that leadership is most important not in the structured and hierarchical system: Unfortunately, our idea of leadership has been deformed by a myth that links leadership to hierarchy, as if leaders were needed only in systems that operate from the top down. But when we…
It seems like everyone in the evangelical world is talking about starting over. Everyone is talking about how corrupt the church has gotten. Many are urging us to return to the purity of the early church. Others are saying our theology has been co-opted by a Greek or Roman or Platonic philosophical system, and we need to free our minds from this system in order to tap into the “true version of the church.” Others, say that the right way…
There’s often a lot of talk by Christians lamenting the non-religious nature of our government, but what I find ironic is that the early Christians faced criticism from the government lamenting that they weren’t religious! The Roman Government repeatedly called Christians atheists and even killed them for it. In fact, the first martyrdom recorded in Christian history outside the pages of the New Testament was due to just such a fact. Polycarp, a devoted Christian was killed for not being…
Don’t you hate overly serious pastors? Don’t you know that their earnestness belies their insecurity? When one’s in a position of spiritual authority, be it a situation where we counsel, preach, or lead a meeting, there can be a temptation to use seriousness to gain leverage. By being overly serious about a matter, we can manipulate the emotions of a meeting. It becomes unsafe for anyone to disagree. We’re so serious in the delivery of our sermon we must be…