Month: May 2012

Letters From the Past and Future, Questions of Science and Progress, and Other Notables

  1. Gary Molander on “what I would tell my 20-something self.” Interesting stuff…I wonder if I would say similar things?
  2. Michael Ruse claims that science can answer many questions, but it cannot answer this one: “Why is there something rather than nothing?“
  3. Interesting letter from Ronald Regan to his son. Love the line: “how really great is the challenge of proving your masculinity and charm with one woman for the rest of your life.”
  4. Tyler Braun on the 5 shadows of leadership.
  5. Steven Johnson (one of my favorite social commentators) wondering if Facebook will turn out to be its own worst enemy.

Don’t Be Complicit

Here are a couple of intertwining thoughts from two different books I’ve been reading. In Safe People (by Cloud and Townsend) the authors write: “An important question to ask (when discerning if a person is safe or unsafe) is: what does this person do with my no?” 

Saying yes and no (being truthful), and how people respond to that, is a theme that keeps showing up in a number of places.

In The Bottom of the 33rd, Joe Morgan (no not that Joe Morgan) is the manager of the AAA Pawtucket Red Sox. As a AAA (closest minor league level to the major leagues) manager Morgan saw a lot of guys who went on to play in bigs, but he also saw a lot of guys who were good but not quite good enough.

These not quite good enough players would hang around and hang around hoping against hope for their break. At some point they would come to Joe and ask: “What do you think, skip? Am I going to make it?”

And Joe Morgan was honest with them. He told them the truth. Sometimes that was a really hard, even brutal, assignment. But, and here’s our quote of the week:

“Morgan never wanted to be complicit in another man’s delusions. He felt morally required to provide either encouragement or release. To say yes or no.”

He wasn’t a jerk about it. He didn’t take delight in crushing a man’s dreams. But he didn’t lie to them either. This is a hard lesson of leadership, but, as I am learning, it is important to tell the truth.

Resurrection (Thoughts on Teaching and 35 Weeks of Luke)

This past Sunday our church partner, [REUNION], wrapped up a 35 week series on the book of Luke. It was long, but fruitful journey. I had the privilege of teaching 5 or 6 of those weeks. Most recently, week 34 to be exact, I got to speak on the resurrection.

Now, in some ways this is a home run for preachers…who doesn’t get excited to teach the resurrection?! On the other hand, there is a good amount of fear and trembling that goes along with the subject matter. What if the skies don’t open up? What if people shrug their shoulders and say “that was nice”? What if no one is moved?

This is not meant to be a critique of sermons or preachers, but as I was preparing I knew we needed a story. As it turned out there was a great story in our community that couldn’t have dovetailed any more perfectly.

Nancy told her story and she told it well, and probably the most important thing I said all day, and the thing people likely remember the most, was “that’s the power of the resurrection” after she had finished.

We need good teaching and people who can sermonize well, but how powerful and effective is a story? Amazing. And humbling from a teaching perspective. But, so important to the life of a community. Thank you Nancy!

*you can listen to it all here.

Summer

The school year is winding down and the pace of life is changing, but that doesn’t mean nothing is happening with Sojourn this summer. Here are a few highlights:

  • I will be helping REUNION write some community group curriculum
  • We are going to hold a city-wide weekly (thursday night) get-together for students who are still in the city 
  • Fundraise (see friday’s post)
  • Teach once a month at REUNION
  • Plan and scheme for the fall
  • Go to a conference I’m really excited about
  • A couple of weekends away for Amy and I
  • Get ready for the baby!

Some Quick Thoughts on Fundraising (Dedicated to Phil Tatum)

We have a big challenge in front of us this summer…raise a new budget: one that more accurately reflects the stage of life we are entering (parenthood).

So, here’s what I love and don’t love about this process.

Some things I dislike about fundraising:

  1. Being told no
  2. Feeling like a mooch
  3. Living in uncertainty
  4. Potentially seeing people as money signs, not people

Some things I love about fundraising:

  1. Being told no (builds and reveals character)
  2. Experiencing God’s economy (people want to give to something important)
  3. Living by faith (we’ve always had enough)
  4. Seeing people as partners (there are people all over the country, and even the world, who are helping college students in Boston on their journey back to God…how awesome is that).

Thursday Links

  1. Campus Ministry/Pastoring/Theology themes today…we begin with: Daniel Kirk posts about the importance of community in embodying the “presence” (the new temple).
  2. Ed Cyzewski on what every pastor secretly wants 
  3. Thom Ranier on the five biggest challenges for pastors
  4. The Faith on Campus “blogathon” has produced some great stuff including these two posts from Cor Chmieleski: One reminding us that there is no ministry silver bullet, and…
  5. How to use the summer to get ready for another year of work in campus ministry

We Don’t Do That Here

On a friend’s suggestion I picked up Bottom of the 33rd: Hope, Redemption, and Baseball’s Longest Game and I have not been able to put it down. The book tells the story (and the back story) of the longest game in professional baseball history. The game took place in 1981 between the AAA level minor league teams for the Red Sox and the Orioles in Pawtucket, RI (about 40 min south of Boston).

The book is full of a number of incredible anecdotes, and anyone who loves baseball or who has lived in New England should read it!

One of the best scenes centers around, arguably, the most famous player to participate in the game: Cal Ripken Jr. Ripken was a bit of a hot head in his younger days, a star in the making who needed to be put in his place. Here’s how it went down:

“Ripken’s white-hot desire to win, always, leaves little allowance for the inevitability of failure. He is quick to lose his temper–usually, but not always, with himself. A couple of years from now, after Ripken will have emerged as an up-and-coming major-league star, a veteran teammate, Ken Singleton, will show him a videotape of yet another Ripken fit; something thrown, something slammed. Embarrassed, Ripken will work hard from then on to contain his temper, to be a model of retrained passion, the message imparted by Singleton finding hold somewhere deep in his temporal lobe: ‘We don’t do that here.’“

Trees

Someone asked me the other day if there has been something from Scripture that I have found sustaining and life-giving over the past school year. For me, it has been Psalm 1. I read this Psalm a couple of times a week and pray fervently that I would be “a tree planted by streams of water.”

In my mind the Psalm conjures up an image of an old oak tree that one might find in central California. An old tree has seen a lot of things, has lived through a lot of storms, and has developed a certain amount of “sway” (the ability to flex and bend but not break in the face of winds and all kinds of weather).

Verse one of the Psalms describes the ways we get sucked into sinful and dysfunctional patters (walk, stand, sit). It feels unsettled when compared to a deeply rooted tree. The key, in verse two, is to meditate on the law of the Lord.

I want to be like an old oak tree, but I don’t feel that way very often. I feel a lot more like a sapling with shallow roots, or an unsettled tree that is too far from streams of water and has become brittle. My branches feel too easily broken.

My prayer is that I grow to be a tree deeply rooted by streams of water.

1 Blessed is the one
who does not walk in step with the wicked
or stand in the way that sinners take
or sit in the company of mockers,
2 but whose delight is in the law of the Lord,
and who meditates on his law day and night.
3 That person is like a tree planted by streams of water,
which yields its fruit in season
and whose leaf does not wither—
whatever they do prospers.

4 Not so the wicked!
They are like chaff
that the wind blows away.
5 Therefore the wicked will not stand in the judgment,
nor sinners in the assembly of the righteous.

6 For the Lord watches over the way of the righteous,
but the way of the wicked leads to destruction.


Baptisms and Block Parties

We had another full and crazy weekend! Graduation ceremonies, work, Cinco de Mayo block parties on our street, sermon prep, sermon delivery, free student lunch (last one of the school year), and a baptism celebration. All of which was really, really good. The highlight, though, was to be able to baptize my friend, the legendary Cuban John, yesterday afternoon. Sometimes, in the busyness of life and the semester I can lose track of progress that is being made, or the transformation that is happening over time in people’s lives. It’s so good to have a moment to recognize the journey that someone has been on. I needed to see that!