August 2011
0 posts
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“It occurred to me that…there was finally the first Christian who opened that...”
– Stan Mitchell, pastor of Gracepointe Nashville, in second message (7/17/11) from sermon series entitled The Bible.
July 2011
2 posts
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“Excessive routine is the enemy of intelligence. Exposing yourself to the same...”
– Steve Pavlina in Personal Development for Smart People
May 2011
3 posts
3 tags
Principles
Brendan Greeley gets it way wrong in an article in the most recent Bloomberg Businessweek. In the first lines of the article entitled “Why Bin Laden Lost,” Greeley states:
The most successful organizing principle the world has ever known is a simple guarantee that we can buy and do things that have no point greater than the satisfaction of our own happiness.
Really? In the entire...
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1 > 20,000
Larry Brooks has created one of the best blogs for writers at storyfix. In a recent post entitled “Suffering Is Optional” he says this:
If you can’t describe your story in one compelling sentence, you probably can’t write it in 20,000 compelling sentences, either. Why? Because to write a story successfully, you need to be in complete command of what the story is about, at its...
4 tags
“The task of the Church is to get on with implementing the victory of the cross;...”
– N.T. Wright in Following Jesus: Biblical Reflections on Discipleship, p. 22.
January 2011
1 post
My favorite 2010 albums
Here are my favorite albums released in 2010:
7. The Band Perry - The Band Perry - This album had to make the list since the father of the band members is our pediatrician. Kimberly, Reid, and Neil Perry have called Greeneville home for nearly the last decade, and in 2010 they started getting national recognition for a song Kimberly wrote called “If I Die Young.” It’s the...
November 2010
4 posts
2 tags
“Jesus’ vision of God’s kingdom…grew directly out of his...”
– Tom Wright commenting on Luke 10:1-16 in Luke for Everyone
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“Until we come to terms with WAR as the context of our days we will not...”
– John Eldredge in Waking the Dead (p. 17)
“Often, I’m afraid, the church is a place where preachers preach not out of their...”
– Frederick Buechner in A Room Called Remember, p. 123.
October 2010
1 post
4 tags
1700 years later, the Church is still a boat
Received my Fall 2010 copy of The City (a publication of Houston Baptist University) in the mail today. The first page contained this passage from one of Augustine’s sermons:
Meanwhile the boat carrying the disciples – that is The Church – is rocking and shaking amid the storms of temptation, while the adverse wind rages on. That is to say, her enemy The Devil strives to keep the wind from...
September 2010
3 posts
3 tags
Stephen Hawking's Grand Design
So, Stephen Hawking’s new book The Grand Design was released three weeks ago, and it is currently #10 on the Amazon.com bestsellers list. That’s remarkable, considering the majority of Americans cannot even comprehend the book’s premise, as stated in the Amazon review:
In The Grand Design we explain why, according to quantum theory, the cosmos does not have just a single...
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“If I eat and am not eaten, it will seem that God is in me, but I am not yet in...”
– St. Bernard of Clairvaux, Commentary on the Song of Songs, 71:5
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“Question of the Day: How do I know when I am transformed?
Paul uses a...”
– Richard Rohr, Daily Meditation for July 26, 2010 - Adapted from Contemplative Prayer (CD)
August 2010
2 posts
“Yes, a man is a dangerous thing. So is a scalpel. It can wound or it can save...”
– John Eldredge in Wild at Heart
“If people who had never heard of Jesus visited these churches, they’d have to...”
– Matt Casper, atheist, after visiting numerous churches with Jim Henderson - as documented in Jim & Casper Go to Church
July 2010
1 post
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What does ministry look like? (An open letter to...
It’s been common over the past few decades for ministry in America to be passed along as standardized and generally non-pliable. The result has been cookie-cutter churches and cookie-cutter ministries following cookie-cutter patterns for growth – growth generally measured by counting how many people gather at specified meeting times
For decades, and even centuries, the prevailing religious culture...
June 2010
1 post
“Ultimately, each church will be evaluated by only one thing - its disciples....”
– Neil Cole in Search & Rescue: Becoming a Disciple Who Makes a Difference, p. 185.
May 2010
9 posts
Why don't churches have mechanics on staff?
In my random thoughts today, I was thinking about churches that have multiple staff positions and minister to hundreds or thousands of people weekly. I began wondering why such churches don’t have a mechanic (or mechanics) on staff. Perhaps some do, and I just haven’t heard of it, but it’s likely that most don’t.
Why not?
I’ve heard hundreds of church staff...
WatchDan Heath: How to Find Bright Spots. Originally posted on the Fast Company website, May 12, 2010. Props to Dan for including Hall and Oates as the “superstars at the top!”
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“Whenever I’m asked why Southern writers particularly have a penchant for...”
– Flannery O’Connor
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“Stanislavsky once wrote that you could play well or badly, but play truly. It is...”
– David Mamet, as quoted in The Brand You 50 by Tom Peters
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“It is only by remaining aware of our imperfections that we remain open to...”
– David Dark in The Sacredness of Questioning Everything
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“Thou shalt not” might reach the head, but it takes “Once upon a...”
– Philip Pullman, as quoted by Laura Miller in “Far from Narnia: Philip Pullman’s Secular Fantasy for Children”
Conversation with Dallas Willard
The Spring/Summer 2010 issue (Issue 8.1) of Conversations Journal includes an interview with Dallas Willard, ordained minister and philosophy professor at USC.
Willard is the author of numerous books, including The Divine Conspiracy, The Spirit of the Disciplines, and Renovation of the Heart. The Conversations website has made available a free PDF of the...
“The world is full of highly talented, network-savvy, failed mediocrities.”
– Hugh MacLeod, How To Be Creative, http://changethis.com
April 2010
7 posts
“If you want a happy ending, that depends, of course, on where you stop your...”
– Orson Welles (via Nate Barksdale @ Culture Making)
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“It doesn’t matter how good your beef tenderloin is. Don’t try to...”
– Karen Salmansohn
Fourth Sunday of Easter
Walter Brueggemann’s view of the preacher’s - and the Christian’s - task has challenged and inspired me for several years now. In a sermon posted on Theolog in 2007, he expounds on Acts 9:36-43 which tells the story of Peter raising Dorcas back to life. Brueggemann says:
It is indeed a “miracle,” which means that it is an inscrutable, inexplicable happening beyond all of...
“This is not priggery nor even scrupulosity; it is the language of a man ravished...”
– C.S. Lewis on Psalm 119 in Reflections on the Psalms
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Scandalous Grace
Jeff Dunn posting at Internet Monk:
Is God’s grace scandalous, as Robert Capon would put it? Capon, after all, takes grace to extremes that can be very frightening. From his book, The Mystery Of Christ–And Why We Don’t Get It, he writes,
There is no sin you can commit that God in Jesus hasn’t forgiven already. The only way you can get yourself in permanent Dutch is to refuse forgiveness....