Before taking this new job at Fuller, I was a pastor of a fantastic church for 23 years. That congregation wonderful as it was, was full of humans, which meant sometimes I was disappointed, hurt, angry, annoyed. Eugene Peterson defines the church as one part mystery and one part messy. That makes alot of sense. […]
Sometimes I just have to get away from the academic and theological world and escape into a different reality. I have just done that with a most wonderful novel by Sara Gruen called Water for Elephants (Algonquin Books, 2007). This is a book about life in the circus and on a circus train. In this […]
Margaret Wheatley in her book Leadership and the New Science writes about the one rule that guides a self-organizing system (as opposed to a mechanistic, hierarchical system): it must remain consistent with itself and its past. In this discourse on the edge of his death and resurrection, Jesus gives the promise of the Holy Spirit […]
There is a low-grade fever affecting many pastors and churches. Most of the time, we don’t acknowledge it. In fact we often just try to ignore it. It is simply a low-grade fever. But it is a persistent fever. And it won’t go away. The fever is this underlying sense that church as it is […]
As you read this prayer, can’t you sense Jesus’ urgency, burden and passion? For three years Jesus has traveled with his small band of disciples. Through his teaching, his miracles, the example of his life, Jesus has been pouring into these people a sense of God’s love and reign breaking into the world in a […]