Posts from the “Church” Category

Pastors: “Go the F^(% Home”

Posted on April 9th, 2012

Something I have been fond of saying to church professional types for a while is If you’re working more than 40 hours a week, you’re doing it wrong. Here’s the truth: Jesus came to set us free and show us the way to Abundant Life. If we were to judge by the life of most pastors (who are ostensibly in the know about this sort of thing) then – I gotta be honest – the Christian life is not a life I want. Pastors are stressed out all the time. You’re telling me that sacrificing myself is going to lead to an Abundance of Stress? No thank you. I wrote about this a bit in Open Source Church, but this video by Pam the…

Categories: Church, Leadership

Tagged: abundant life, church, leadership, religion, spirituality

Let’s do seminary differently (repost)

Posted on March 8th, 2012

Note: This is a repost of an earlier post. Some folks have indicated that something screwy on the interwebs made it so they could read. I think this project is important enough that I want everyone to know about it. Sorry about the repetition. I’ve started an experiment, and I wonder if you’d like to help. No lie, I was keynoting a conference last weekend, struggling with getting to sleep as I often do my first night away from home an a trip, and decided to read Seth Godin’s new (free) book STOP STEALING DREAMS: What is school for? (the all caps are his, not mine, btw). That was a bad idea. Seth Godin is one of my “People you’d want to have lunch with”…

Categories: Church, Education

Tagged: seminary, seth godin, stop stealing dreams, theoligical education

Can we reimagine theological education?

Posted on March 8th, 2012

I’ve started an experiment, and I wonder if you’d like to help. No lie, I was keynoting a conference last weekend, struggling with getting to sleep as I often do my first night away from home an a trip, and decided to read Seth Godin’s new (free) book STOP STEALING DREAMS: What is school for? (the all caps are his, not mine, btw). That was a bad idea. Seth Godin is one of my “People you’d want to have lunch with” (Malcolm Gladwell being the other), and I find anything he writes to be perfect. He has an uncanny ability to cut through the bullshit of a given topic and lock onto the aspect that needs considering/questioning/improving/reforming/etc. In his new book, he turns his…

Categories: Church, Education

Tagged: leadership, religion, seth godin, theology

The Church is not here to make us better people

Posted on March 7th, 2012

A few years ago I was privileged to meet and be taught for a day by Andrew Root. Root is probably the best theologian going, in my opinion, and while he is ostensibly a professor of “youth ministry” the work he does truly blew my mind open about my own ministry as a “regular” pastor. Drawing on the work of Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Root fleshes out a modern application around the doctrine of incarnation as opposed to the modern fascination with influence. Here’s a 15 minutes video I recorded with Andrew about this very idea: So, given that, here’s the question I want to ask: Is the Church as the Body of Christ living up to the expectation set by the “body” of Jesus of Nazareth…

Categories: Church

Tagged: dietrich bonhoeffer, doctrine of incarnation, logical inconsistency, religion, theology, work avoidance

Posts from the “Church” Category

Pastors: “Go the F^(% Home”

Posted on April 9th, 2012

Let’s do seminary differently (repost)

Posted on March 8th, 2012

Can we reimagine theological education?

Posted on March 8th, 2012

The Church is not here to make us better people

Posted on March 7th, 2012

Can we imagine a Mainline monasticism?

Posted on March 6th, 2012