Last week I mentioned being, in a sense, reformed, charismatic, catholic, and even pentecostal. You’ll need to read the posts to understand what I mean.
So, in the midst of that, this came across my desk:
I’m working on reformulating my preaching and worship style as we speak….
(Thanks to Snowbot for this link.)
Technorati Tags: Worship
Before Flannery O’Connor was a great writer, she was a student at an Iowa writing workshop. Which is to say, before she was a great writer, she put herself on the path to becoming a great writer.
A man in our church is a potter. He is doing what he loves. But his path to being a potter wound through college, an artists training center in Tennessee, and a masters degree at one of the finest universities in the country. He still is not making his living making pots. But he, and his wife, also a potter, care enough to pay the dues, invest the effort, and perfect their craft.
I am appalled at the tendency I see in me to want to accomplish things without investing the effort necessary to do them well. I want to accomplish without paying the dues. I want to excel without focus. Perhaps that works in the case of a few geniuses (Mozart comes to mind). But for the vast majority of us, we need to find what we love, and then devote ourselves to pursuing it with every ounce of passion we have.
Success in anything demands, of course, that we have some endowment of gifts. But an endowment is not sufficient. The commitment to pursue what we love has to come with it.
While I was ruminating on this, several quotes passed by me, profound and not. My favorite is the last.
“Do or do not… there is no try.” – Yoda
“Baseball is 90% mental – the other half is physical.” – Yogi Berra
“You can’t help but remember what Faulkner is alleged to have said when asked whether he wrote daily or only when the inspiration hit him. It’s said he replied that he wrote only when the inspiration came, but that he made sure it came every morning at ten o’clock sharp when he sat down at his desk.” – Rick Bass
Worth seeing.
Thanks to Looking Closer for the link.
As you know, the internet can be a wonderful place for finding helpful resources to aid our Christian reflection, knowledge, and growth. (It can also be an albatross, but let’s think positively here.)
On August 24, I will be teaching an informal class at Hope Church in Bradenton on how to use the internet for Christian growth. I will be introducing the class to
You get the idea. It will just be one day and I won’t be able to do much. However, I would like to leave each participant with a list of possible resources.
So, here is my request: list for me the resources on the web that you find the most helpful in your growth as a Christian. I’m looking for audio, blogs, news sources, and the like. I’m looking for the types of things to which I might direct an average Christian looking for helpful resources.
My idea is to compile a list (which I will, of course cull and edit a wee bit) to pass on to the members of the class.
My view across the web is limited. I would love to have you help broaden my scope. What do you find helpful?
Apparently on Monday Google Mail had a server power problem resulting in the temporary cessation of its service for a whopping two hours. Did you notice? I didn’t, but that would have only been because I was otherwise occupied at the time.
Apparently, many did.
If you follow the above link, you will be introduced to a philosophy of work and life management known to insiders as GTD. It is based on David Allen’s very helpful book Getting Things Done. I commend it. But more on that later (or better, more now here in James Fallows’ summary of the system).
I noticed a month or so ago that I was addicted to email. I’ve always been a little bit ADD. (Can one be a LITTLE bit ADD?) I was on a week of study leave and was hanging out at a nearby retreat center where I had no internet access. All I could do was read and reflect with no distraction from the outside world.
But here is what I noticed: that I was constantly stopping what I was doing to look at the computer screen where a little red dot would appear every time a new email came in. Intellectually I KNEW that it would be impossible for any email to appear. But I was stopping nonetheless and looking – habitually. I wanted a dot to appear. I wanted the distraction!
But the distraction never came. Boy, did I accomplish a lot during those times.
I happen to think that email is a wonderful thing. So is pizza. But I can indulge either way too much.
Like any addict, kicking the habit is painful. There are times – particularly when I am engaged in concentrated study – that I simply turn email off, and let the productivity begin.
I share this because I suspect I am not alone. If it isn’t email, it’s Facebook, or blogs, or puzzles, or novels. Good things can often steal from us the best things.
I’ve had relapses. But I’m learning.
For those of you for whom email really is a productivity killer, check out this post on the psychology of the ‘ding’. A piece to whet your appetite:
Even the beeps notifying the arrival of email are said to be causing a 0.5 per cent drop in gross domestic product in the United States, costing the economy $70bn a year.
Hmmm.
Technorati Tags: Work
Another milestone.
Yesterday, our fifth child, Jerusha, was asking to be let down from her high chair. Tonight, she is asking for the car keys.
This afternoon, she took her driver’s test and contrary to her announced expectations (but conforming to her inward hopes), she passed.
Wow. Congratulations, J.
We’re proud of you!
Technorati Tags: Family
Jiminy Cricket woos us:
When you wish upon a star
Makes no difference who you are
Anything your heart desires
Will come to you
Yeah, right. I know better, but I confess to acting this way. I love to wish away conflict.
As a pastor I have season tickets to a ringside seat to conflict. Sometimes, I’m actually in the ring. And try as I might, wishing conflict away just does not produce satisfying results.
So, I have been urged over the years to pick up a copy of The Peacemaking Pastor by Alfred Poirier. A year ago, I did. Starting now to read it, I’ve been given a glimpse of what pastoral ministry could be but often isn’t. This has humbled and shamed me, which is good, because through that I’m able to look up to a better way.
If you have any leadership role in any society of Christians, pick it up and read chapter 9. Then let me know what you think. I promise – he packs a punch, but he punches gently and with grace.
Here is a sample of Poirer’s reflections from that chapter. He notes that pastors and elders are quick to rush to the hospital and to hold the hands of those suffering from physical illness, but they are quick to run from or ignore conflict.
“There is a great disconnect here. How is it that on the one hand we who specialize in comforting the suffering at the same time flee from assisting the conflicted? Why does physical suffering demand our attention and pull on our heartstrings when the soul-crippling disease of sinful conflict does not? Why are we fleet of foot to alleviate physical suffering yet guilty of foot-dragging in our efforts to alleviate conflict? I do not have answers to these questions. They haunt me. They shame me.” (pages 194-195)
Yeah. Me, too.
Poirer excellently links conflict resolution inextricably to the knowledge of the Gospel, drawing this convincingly from the example of Paul in his letters. I (we?) flee from or ignore conflict quite possibly because we have yet to understand or believe in the power of the gospel.
Technorati Tags: Conflict
I have for twenty plus years lived and breathed a culture of extreme conservatism. I have not only smoked Rush Limbaugh, but I inhaled. For a while, I was into the harder stuff – even a few trips on Rushdoony, I must confess. Many of my friends continue to do so, though I gave up the nasty habits several years ago.
That culture has created an industry of mockery and mistrust of everything but business and free market economics. One of the targets of this mockery has been those who have fought hard over the years for higher environmental standards. I joined in the mockery.
But the other day, I rode my bike to work. I marveled at the clear blue sky overhead, the norm for life here on ‘the Suncoast’. And I could not help but compare that to the pictures being beamed back from Beijing or to the stories I’ve heard of Mexico City and elsewhere in the world. I breathed and relished the beauty of God’s creation.
And I began to think – perhaps those ‘environmental wackos’ have not been so wacko at all. Perhaps we owe them not mockery but thanks. Perhaps we need to take care what we smoke.
Technorati Tags: Environment
Forget for a moment the points at which you agree or disagree with this author’s post. I simply want you to consider the following observations.
When did being moved by a deep desire to bring the eternal hope of the gospel to all men by all means become a punishable offense and the desire to punch and kick the ass of those who desire such become trendy? When did having a broken heart for the lost and attempting therefore to remove all artificial barriers between the church and the world become sinful? About the same time that boasting of one’s violent passions was added to the fruit of the Spirit? I guess so.
Don’t misunderstand me. I get and I appreciate hyperbole. But I also understand arrogance. I’m intimately acquainted with it. I hate it in me. I hate it when I see it in the church growth types who claim that they will do church unlike the church the world grew up hating. And I hate it when I see it tossed about with the air of urgent superiority by those who claim to be able to do ministry untainted by the stain of he modern world. No matter how pure you claim to be, you are not above the fray.
So the Julies of the world are leaving the church, and are doing so for noble reasons. Are there ever noble reasons for disobedience to Christ? Are her reasons more acceptable than the guy who leaves church in order to pursue his passion racing go carts? or to start a business? or to work on his golf game? I think not. One can only hope that the church she is giving up on pastorally pursues her. (Or perhaps she has been so ungraciously critical that they are glad to see her go.)
Should we be concerned about losing the Julies of the world? Those men I know who long for the expansion of Christ’s kingdom are not unconcerned for Julie. But they are also desperately concerned for the Bills and the Mikes and the Beths and the Martas whom the church has not found a way to reach. I’m deeply disturbed when shots are taken at men seeking to bring the gospel to all people (imperfectly to be sure) without revealing that those taking the shots know the hearts of these men.
By all means lets be in conversation. Let’s hear from one another. Let’s sharpen one another. But let’s grow up and stop throwing darts at one another. We have an enemy who is all too willing to do that. He does not need our help.
[For the record, Julie’s longing for genuine community in church merged with a respect for the grandness of God is a passion I share. I like to think that she’d be comfortable at HPC. I also know this is the passion shared by many men who are pastoring what some might call gargantuan churches. It is the attitude of disdain for one another and the stereotyping revealed in the linked post that disturbs me most.]
While I’m equivocating (establishing an argument through subtly allowing the definitions of words to ‘morph’ in the midst of the argument) I’d like to add to yesterday’s post (in which I longed to be reformed, charismatic, and catholic all at the same time) the footnote that in my presbyterian church, I have a ton of pentecostals.
Of course, anyone walking into our service looking for pentecostal fire would confront cultural shock of epic proportions. But in another sense, we are very pentecostal.
A while back, I was meeting with a group of key leaders and asked them to tell me what their ideal worship service would look like. Their answers varied, of course. But to a man they were all expressing their desires for worship in a way that was rooted in an experience of past worship and in their own emotional response to God. Many longed for worship that was akin to what they had grown up with, worship which, no doubt, evoked pleasant feelings and memories.
I inwardly chuckled at this. For all our talk of objective and biblical liturgy, when we peal away the surface, we tend to most respond to and long for worship that makes us feel good.
The critique those in our tradition often level at pentecostals is that they are all about emotional response. I think we are not too far removed from that, if at all. And I’m not sure that is really such a bad thing.
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