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Archive for February, 2010
Lessons From A Holy Man
Monday, February 22nd, 2010
It was late, and the resturaunt was closing when the question was asked. We looked at each other—lips greased from burgers, cheeks reddened by the late hour. No one responded. We were pastors, teachers—professional Christians and yet the poverty of our own lives was obvious. Certainly none of us were holy. We gazed awkwardly at the table. Then Pam saved us:
“I met a man. A Franciscan. It was a one-day conference on nonviolence. I was up in the front pew. Next to me was this woman who sat with her spine straight, legs crossed in some Yoga contortion. She had….
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Building a Paradigm for Your Ministry
Saturday, February 20th, 2010
I recall some of the best advice I received before graduating from seminary and heading into my first call as a youth pastor. It went something like this: “Name your approach. Pick one. Learn all you can about it. Make one up if you must. But make it explicit because if you don’t, your lack of an approach will become your approach, and you will be tossed this way and that with each passing fad.”
In the mid 1970s, Thomas Kuhn published his landmark book in the philosophy of science, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions. Citing Copernicus, Galileo, Newton, and Einstein,….
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The Confirmation Teacher/Mentor
Saturday, February 20th, 2010
We boarded the train just after midnight, sad to leave behind the breathless beauty of Venice (and the Italian ice cream sandwiches, of which I had already consumed a half dozen). We were on our way to Nice in the south of France for another adventure on twenty dollars a day. My wife having won a fellowship during our final year of seminary, we had chosen to stretch the funds to their extreme by traveling the world.
This particular evening, we hauled our backpacks through the thin aisles of a train until we found our way to our sleeper car. We….
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