landon whitsitt (dot) com
  • 2012 Speaking Schedule
  • Books & Music
  • Contact
  • Who is Landon Whitsitt?

Posts from the “Leadership” 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

15 Comments

+Read more

Can we imagine a Mainline monasticism?

Posted on March 6th, 2012

A couple of questions have bugged me for a while now: If we achieve the goal of everyone living a missional life then what is the purpose of the church as an institution? If the point is to work with God so that everyone is exhibiting the Kingdom of Heaven, then what do we do when that is the case? My tradition is pretty clear that we understand the Church to be the “provisional demonstration of what God intends for humanity.” In other words: we are God’s demonstration classroom, the place people should be able to look and think, “Ah, that’s the way we should be doing this thing called life.” And yet, we’re not really demonstrating anything. What we’re basically doing is fighting with…

Categories: Church, Evangelism, Leadership

Tagged: community architect, intentional community, new monastics, social service organization

8 Comments

+Read more

A question about theological education

Posted on February 28th, 2012

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)

Categories: Church, Leadership

Tagged: seminary

9 Comments

+Read more

What I don’t want the future of Christianity to look like

Posted on February 23rd, 2012

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…

Categories: Church, Leadership, Spirituality, Theology

2 Comments

+Read more

Infastructure matters

Posted on February 14th, 2012

Who cares if there’s a GigantoMegaSuperStore over there if there are no roads leading to it? In this time of restructuring and change, we need to make sure that we are paying attention to the the infrastructure of the system. We have to make sure that the Big Ideas we are generating have some place to go because it truly is about arriving at a destination. In the place I live, real estate development is exploding. It seems like every single day there is a new building going up here or there. But for a long time all there was were roads. Roads leading nowhere. But when they put those roads in, they did it with the plan that, someday, there was going to be…

Categories: Church, Leadership

1 Comment

+Read more

« Older entries   

Search this blog

Enter your email address to follow this blog and receive notifications of new posts by email.

Join 1,552 other followers

  • RSS - Posts

Top Posts

  • A Priest, a Levite, and a Samaritan walk into a bar...
  • Contact
  • Who is Landon Whitsitt?
  • Mama's Boy (reflections on a "masculine Christianity")
  • The Spirituality of the ESFJ

Amazon US $0.99

Buy Theology is Art for Kindle or Nook for only $0.99. Or download for free.

Amazon US $9.99

Buy Open Source Church for Kindle or Nook for only $9.99.

topics...

Announcements Church Ebooks Education Evangelism Leadership Music Personal Philosophy Religio Reductio Simplicity Spirituality Testimony Theology Uncategorized Writing

recently…

  • I’m blogging elswhere for a while. Come check it out…
  • Religio Reductio: Easter Pop Quiz
  • Pastors: “Go the F^(% Home”
  • I’m back, and I have a new idea. (Yes. Another one.)
  • What Theocademy is really about
  • Scared of the dark
  • Let’s do seminary differently (repost)
  • Can we reimagine theological education?
  • Help me kick off a project
  • The Church is not here to make us better people
  • Can we imagine a Mainline monasticism?
  • A question about theological education
  • Creating space for good ideas
  • What I don’t want the future of Christianity to look like
  • You know that great idea you have for a church? It’s probably not so great…

archives…

  • May 2012
  • April 2012
  • March 2012
  • February 2012
  • January 2012
  • December 2011
  • November 2011
  • October 2011
  • August 2011
  • July 2011
  • June 2011
  • April 2011
  • March 2011
  • February 2011
  • January 2011
  • December 2010
  • October 2010
  • September 2010
  • August 2010
  • July 2010
  • May 2010
  • April 2010
  • March 2010

Return to top

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.

Blog at WordPress.com.

Theme: Duet by The Theme Foundry.