If we already have more pastors than we know what to do with, and if the infastructure of the denominational institution is being reduced every year, is it practical, desirable, and beneficial to say “We want what we’ve been getting, but cheaper and better”? I don’t think it is. (Inspired by Seth Godin and his new book STOP STEALING DREAMS)
Tagged: seminary
In the March issue of Wired, Jonah Lehrer recounts that statistician David Banks once wrote a paper on what he called the “problem of excess genius.” Banks noted that the people who generate new ideas that radically change the world are not scattered evenly across time and space, but are clumped together in roughly the same times and places. Between 440 and 380 BCE, Athens produced Plato, Socrates, Herodotus, Euripides, Aeschylus, and Aristophanes. In Florance, between 1440 and 1490 CE, we were treated to Michelangelo, da Vinci, Botticelli, and Donatello. Lehrer contends that, while this clumping of genius is a mystery, it’s not a total mystery. He says that the result of a flourishing in creative ideas is actually the result of the presence…
Sometimes we first need to identify what we do not want in order to articulate what we do. -Christopher Butler, “Future Daydream”, Print, February 2012, 66.1 When you think about the future of the church, what is it that you think of? I know it’s a difficult image to conjure, given that we’re in a time of so much upheaval in the life of faith, but surely you’ve thought about it. Perhaps you can just glimpse some nascent truths you hope flower into something larger. Perhaps you’ve been able to articulate something quite robust in a particular area. However, my guess is that you are like the rest of us and you fall back on a very tried and true notion of many an…
…but it’s okay. There’s a way around that. Last fall, I read a great book on startups called The Lean Startup by Eric Reis. I know, I know – you have problems with the mash up of business talk and church talk. I do, too. The great thing is that this book hates “business talk” as well. Everything Reis writes is based on the idea that traditional business practices are good for traditional businesses, but that start ups are completely different beasts. Much of what he offers is golden, but here is the most golden thing: The #1 job of a startup is to learn. Here’s what Reis has to say on theleanstartup.com: Too many startups begin with an idea for a product that…
About six months ago, I left the congregation I had been serving to begin service to a regional level of my denomination. This is the first time in almost 10 years that I’ve not actively served a local congregation (in some capacity) on a regular basis, and a few things have brought themselves to my attention. I’m a firm believer in the Pareto Principle. Most of us know it as the “80-20 Rule”, and it states that 80% of the output is the result of 20% of input. I look at everything this way, constantly trying to pare down the things I’m doing to what is actually effective and beneficial. Naturally, attending other churches with the kind of insider knowledge I have means that (for a…
