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One of the more pressing questions facing the Church in each generation is,
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“What is the church’s relationship to the culture?”
The reason this question carries such force is because the answer dictates how we, the Church, go about fulfilling our cultural mandate.
“Cultural Mandate?” you ask. (more…)
Alece and I on her first field trip….Yes, I got to drive the bus!
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I like specifics.
Whenever I take a group of kids on a trip with the school bus or drive the band to football games or competitions, the district always provides me with specific details: punch-in time, load-time, directions, and maps.
Such information empowers me to get the job done well.
So when it comes to building “gravitas” – that is weightiness of the soul – exactly how do we go about collecting spiritual mass? (more…)
If it is true that “people do what we inspect, not what we expect,” then exactly how do we monitor spiritual progress? How do we move from product-oriented metrics to process-oriented ones?
Let me begin by looking at the term “gravitas.” Craig Barnes defines it this way:
“[It is] a soul that has developed enough spiritual mass to be attractive, like gravity…. [Gravitas] has everything to do with wounds that have healed well, failures that have been redeemed, sins that have been forgiven, and thorns that have settled into the flesh.”[1]
Someone recently made this comment:
“People do what you inspect; not what you expect.”
For weeks now this simple statement has echoed in my head like a yodeler’s mountain call.
It forces me to examine life anew.
Seminary has surprised me. The things I thought I would learn are quite different from the things I’m actually learning. For example, I expected seminary to be a rich season of abiding spiritual intimacy with the Father. Certainly professors expect their students to remain “connected to the vine.” They expect us to maintain all the good Christian disciplines. (more…)
You can learn a lot about a guy by the way he defines success. It
telegraphs his values, priorities, and entire approach to his work. Consequently, it is important that ministry leaders clearly define what they mean by “success.”
I have long reflected on precisely how to define this elusive concept. I’ll spare you the journey and cut to the end of the matter: I believe success in ministry is…faithfulness. (more…)