Lent (quotes)

From the New York Times:

“There’s something tricky about the secular notion of Lent. You give up something personally important, so its absence will remind you of your purpose in giving it up, but not so important that it disrupts life much. You give up chocolate, but not refrigeration. Bread, but not the Internet. Coffee, but not Downton Abbey. Americans are not a naturally ascetic people, and it shows. Fasting lies at the heart of Lent, and most of us are not fasters. We choose our Lenten sacrifices from a very short menu.”

I’ve struggled with this idea myself. I’ve given up some good things for lent the last couple of years: coffee, tv, etc. But I still drink coffee, and I still watch tv.

So, this year I’m trying something different. Rather than give up something, I’m going to add something. Time to ramp up the Scripture reading.

The goal: the New Testament in 40 days. The hope: this extra reading will cut in (or cut out) other things like tv, like mindlessly surfing the net. Maybe I’m doing it wrong, but this year I like the idea of mixing it up.

Matthew 1, here we go…

Prayer

I’ve been re-reading some Eugene Peterson stuff on prayer. I tend to stink at praying and yet, for a whole bunch of reasons, I find myself praying more and more these days. Here are couple of thoughts that have been helpful:

“His prayer took him into a world far larger than his immediate experience.”

and

“Every thing and every person has an interior. Prayer goes beneath the surface and penetrates the heart of the matter. Unlike mere action, prayer is not subject to immediate evaluation or verification. If we are addicted to ‘results’ we will quickly lose interest in prayer. When we pray we willingly participate in what God is doing, without knowing precisely what God is doing, how he is doing it, or when we will know what is going on–if ever.”

From Tell It Slant.

A Quote About Stories

From The Story Factor by Annette Simmons:

“Story makes sense of chaos and gives people a plot. A story can help people make sense of their frustration. People don’t need more information. They are up to their eyeballs in information. They want faith…It is faith that moves mountains, not facts. Facts do not give birth to faith. Faith needs a story to sustain it–a meaningful story that inspires belief and renews hope.”

Community and the Extrovert Ideal

I started reading a fascinating book this week called, Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World That Can’t Stop Talking. Without further ado, here is the quote (or quotes) of the week:

Today we make room for a remarkably narrow range of personality styles. We’re told that to be great is to be bold, to be happy is to be sociable…[as a result] many people pretend to be extroverts. It makes sense that so many introverts hide from themselves. We live with a value system I call the Extrovert Ideal–the omnipresent belief that the ideal self is gregarious, alpha, and comfortable in the spotlight.

And then, here’s the kicker:

Introverts living under the Extrovert Ideal are like women in a man’s world, discounted because of a trait that goes to the core of who they are. Extraversion is an enormously appealing personality style, but we’ve turned it into an oppressive standard to which most of us feel we must conform.

I have several reactions to this, but initially my thoughts turn towards community. I’ve had a number of conversations recently around the idea of community and when I pull them all together the picture (or working definition) of community that I get is of a large number of people who are together all the time and who do tons of fun things.

Is that true community though? Consider Jesus. He certainly interacted with a lot of people and at times had huge crowds around him.

That was not his community.

His community was 12 guys. These guys were a true community because:

They were a manageable size.
They had a mission (and a risky one at that).
They spent a lot of “deep” time together.

Jesus also talked about the Kingdom of God as a party. He went to festivals and feasts. Again, he wasn’t afraid of the crowds.

But I wonder if the Extrovert Ideal hasn’t warped our idea of what authentic community really is. And that is pretty interesting to me.

More to come from this book, I am sure!

On the Entrepreneurial Spirit

I’m reading a fascinating book called My Korean Deli. It’s the story of a convenience store in Brooklyn (and it is quite the story). Anyone who has lived in the city has seen, and been in, one of these ubiquitous establishments at some point (if not every day).

It’s a fascinating read for a number of reasons: race and immigrant issues, inter-racial marriage dynamics, neighborhoods in transition…it’s got a little bit of everything.

In ministry, especially start-up campus ministry and church planting you have to embrace the entrepreneurial spirit at some level or else you are in trouble. Ben Howe, the author, perfectly captures the difficulty of the entrepreneur:

“The thing about business is that, like anything else, it takes a while to figure out how you’re really doing. You’re like a pilot whose dashboard instruments don’t function until the plane has reached cruising altitude–you don’t know how fast you’re going, how high you are, or how close you are to stalling and dropping out of the sky. There just isn’t enough information, and what there is you don’t know how to interpret…beginner’s errors distort the picture…ballpark guesses often turn out to be rosy-picture guesses.”

And then this:

“No matter how mixed the evidence, to a fledgling entrepreneur the future always looks shiny and bright, doesn’t it? You’re in business, you have a store, and it has customers, which might seem like modest accomplishments, but it’s the beginning and it’s hard not to succumb to the delusion that things can only get better.”

That is good stuff, especially in ministry when defining the “bottom line” can get tricky. Doing something, does not always equate with quality. A good reminder, for me, that clarity in big goals brings clarity in smaller things.

Quote of the Week (from Moneyball)

I have numerous opinions about the film adaptation of the book Moneyball. I won’t bore you with that 5000 word treatise (check out the links tomorrow for an article that articulates my opinions well), but there is a gem of a line in the film and it goes like this:

“The first guy through the wall always gets bloody.”

If that isn’t leadership in 9 words…

It’s so much easier to be the second, third, or tenth person through the wall…you avoid the wounds, and the pain, and the blood.

But you never get to be the first one through the wall. And, more importantly, if you don’t break that wall down, there’s a chance no one goes through.

Go bust some walls down!

Quote of the Week

Actually, two quotes…

As a staff we’ve been reading through Stephen Lutz‘s excellent book College Ministry in a Post-Christian Culture. I met Steve at the first Leadership Network Leadership Community for University Ministry last fall.

His book has been a great resource…it feels like Sojourn in a book. Among other things, he also provides some great material and reasoning behind the importance of campus ministry.

For example: “It may be an understatement to say that ‘perhaps the most important mission field in contemporary America is the college campus.’ [quoting David T. Olson, The American Church in Crisis] Higher Ed students make up nearly 7 percent of our national population (20.5 million undergraduate and graduate students according to 2006 census data). But because these people grow to be leaders in every sphere, the impact they have on the world far exceeds their numbers…College ministry is the most strategic mission field in the world today.”

Perhaps, he overstates the case, but I’m with him!

As important as Campus Ministry is, it can be overwhelming…how does a team of 7 staff and 25 student leaders reach 250,000 students (in Boston)? If you include our Providence team, how does 9 staff and 30 student leaders reach 350,000 students?

Seems daunting.

I’ve also been reading a biography of Herb Brooks, coach of the 1980 “Miracle” Ice Hockey team that won the gold medal. You might have heard of this before.

I find a lot of inspiration in that story, and here’s a quote from the book that sums up that inspiration perfectly:

“An imaginative tactic, when executed by a team totally committed to it, can upset a vastly superior opponent.”

Yes!