Quote of the Week (NT Wright on Forgiveness)

From NT Wright’s excellent book, Simply Jesus

“Forgiveness, indeed, is a sort of healing. It removes a burden that can crush and cripple you. It allows you to stand up straight without pretending. It spreads out into whole communities.

Forgiveness and healing! The two go so closely together, personally and socially. Whole societies can be crippled by ancient grudges that turn into feuds and then into forms of civil war. Families can be torn apart by a single incident or one person’s behavior that is never faced and so never forgiven. Equally, societies and families as well as individuals can be reconciled, can find hope and new love, through forgiveness. Jesus was tapping into something extremely deep in human life.”

Surprising Good Gifts

On Sunday night, Amy and I hung out with a celebrity couple. Not huge celebrities, but these people are way cooler than we are. Except they are totally normal, and we have a ton of things in common.

Superficial things in common (Amy said both couples can be described as tall white guys with “ethnic” wives =).

But deep things in common too: growing up in ministry families, similar journeys to parenthood, jobs that have strange hours and difficult demands. The list goes on.

Someone said that two of the most powerful words in the English language are “me too.” We had “me too” moments again and again. At one point, during a pause in the conversation, we all kind of laughed about the similarities in our stories.

I thought it would be really fun and interesting to hang out with this couple and to ask them a million questions. Turns out they ministered to us in a beautiful and profound way.

Good gifts are all around us, all the time, I believe. The question is: are we paying attention enough to see them and to recognize them for what they are. Jesus said a lot, “Let those who have ears to hear, hear.” (Or eyes to see).

Do we have the eyes and ears to recognize good gifts when they come our way?

Some Things That Are Awesome…

Another busy weekend as the semester winds to an end…our final gathering of first year/potential leaders was on friday…immediately afterwards we held our final leadership community of the school year…REUNION, our church partner celebrated its 5 year anniversary…and on sunday we honored (slash mourned) our graduates. Lots to celebrate and reflect on!

BU leadership developement:

Leadership Community Dreams:

Baseball Wisdom

I am a huge baseball fan and I love stories like Phillip Humber’s. I also loved this article by Tom Verducci about Humber. In it he talks a little bit about the art of coaching pitchers at the major league level. He says that every pitching coach has access to the same kind of knowledge…there’s no magic that one coach has that none of the others have. What makes the difference then is this:

“It’s the coach who gets the player when he’s ready to learn who will wind up getting credit for that player’s success.”

Conferences and Coming Home

Things I dislike about conferences:

  • People that brag about all the great things they’ve done
  • People who don’t ask questions
  • Activities organized by extroverts that make everyone talk
  • Listening to bad presentations
  • Being away from home

Things I like about conferences:

  • Space to dream
  • Interaction with ideas
  • Creativity and thinking
  • Listening to great presentations
  • Coming home and seeing Amy after being gone for 3 days!

Dallas, Full Circles, and High Church

It’s been a whirlwind week! Two full days of work last Monday and Tuesday followed by an early morning flight to Dallas for part 2 of our Leadership Network experience. Our time with the University Ministry Leadership Community continues to be an overall good experience (there are some frustrations…I sat through maybe the worst presentation on multi-cultural ministry I’ve ever heard in my life). I think we are seeing some tremendous progress organizationally as we “operatationalize our values” so that we actually do what we say we do, as opposed to saying a bunch of nice things.

Saturday morning at 1:15 am I got on a plane and flew back to Boston, came home, took a 30 minute nap, made some coffee, then headed to BU for an Earth Day/Clean Up project with our students. Being around students was energizing which helped me make it through the day. The funny part of the experience was our project was at the Hale Reservation where I spent two summers with Bird Street Community Center’s camp program. It was a little weird to be back, but also fun to be able to show people around and even connect with an employee who remembered me. Felt like a full-circle moment for sure.

Finally, I got to be a reader at Marsh Chapel’s Interdenominational service on Sunday morning. Marsh Chapel functions as the center for Spiritual Life at Boston University and it was a good moment to strengthen relationship with the school now that I am a campus minister at BU. I usually do the offering moment at REUNION so it was kind of funny/ironic to be the “Offertory” reader during the Marsh service. Very different context and yet a similar role.

A couple more weeks and the pace slows down!

Quote of the Week…

This is from one of my former professors at Western. Steve Korch was my favorite prof in seminary mostly because of his passion for people. He (re)wrote a book recently, now under the title The Presence, and it’s good. Here’s some great stuff on being able to laugh at life (and yourself):

“There is a kind of laughter that comes from seeing the foibles of life for what they are. It is an emotional release that surges forth when we don’t make every detail of life a serious issue. God says it is good for our soul to laugh (Prov. 17:22).

Chesterton writes: ‘Laughter has something in common with the ancient winds of faith and inspiration; it unfreezes pride and unwinds secrecy; it makes men forget themselves in the presence of something greater than themselves.'”