Archive for February, 2008
Intimacy and Orthodoxy
Worship music sung during any given church service is a nexus of cultural and theological elements. Lyrics that a congregation sings and hears regularly can be deeply spiritually formative in that they are easily retained and often repeated. However, much of contemporary worship music does not challenge cultural distortions of intimacy and the way the [...]
The Present Future
In this provocative book, author, consultant, and church leadership developer Reggie McNeal debunks these and other old assumptions and provides an overall strategy to help church leaders move forward in an entirely different and much more effective way. In The Present Future, McNeal identifies the six most important realities that church leaders must address including: [...]
Prayer
My wife and I have an evening ritual of praying together using J. Philip Newell’s Celtic Journey as a guide. With each day there is a passage of scripture, retold as a narrative and then there is time for reflection and prayer. Tonight was the story of Moses and the Israelites wandering in the desert, [...]
ChurchPlanters.com: Transitional to Missional Ministry
ChurchPlanters.com “Giving You Permission” : Transitional to Missional Ministry
The above link is a helpful little article on missional leadership and moving towards being a missional church. What is most interesting to me, however, is the one response to the post.
CS says, “These people may be “highly spiritual,” but without God, they are also “highly [...]
Falling Slowly
Ever since my wife and I saw the movie “Once” I can’t shake this song. The movie and the music are brilliant!
Lessons from the DMV
Recently I spent three hours waiting to get a new driver’s license at the local Department of Motor Vehicles. It was a busy day at the DMV, but nothing out of the ordinary. There were teenagers coming in with their parents to get their learners permits, young couples with kids who had just [...]
An Efficient Gospel?
What is the Gospel? It sounds like a simple enough question, right? But is it? In some Christian traditions “The Gospel” is simply the term given to the the means by which a person gets to heaven when they die. “The gospel was understood to be a series of propositions meant [...]
Lenten Prayer
Jesus, May I have the courage to walk with you on this road of suffering…on the road to the cross. The cross is beautiful and scandalous, horrible and wonderful, mysterious and plain. At the cross mercy and grace and forgiveness and healing were fully realized. Give me courage Jesus to walk with you…to know and [...]
Summoned to Lead
Leaders are neither born nor made. Leaders are summoned. They are called into existence by circumstances, and those who rise to the occasion are leaders. A retelling of the Ernest Shackleton story to showcase the fine arts of leadership that emerged from his failed expedition. (From the Zondervan Website)
Initially I struggled to engage with this [...]
Who Stole My Church?
This article highlights the conversation at a “Discovery Group” meeting between Gordon Macdonald, a pastor and the editor at large of Leadership Journal. There has been much written on the time of transition in which we live…a time when the dominant worldview is shifting from “modern” to “postmodern” and the challenges that result from [...]
