A friday rebuke/correction/encouragement from our friend Eugene Peterson, “It is the pastor’s responsibility to keep the community attentive to God. It is this responsibility that is being abandoned in spades.” From Working the Angles
Category: Great Quotes
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November 21, 2008
The Pastor’s Responsibility
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November 19, 2008
What Do We become Christians for?
From David Bosch’s brilliant little book, Believing in the Future, As we call people (back) to faith in God through Jesus Christ, we must help them to articulate an answer to the question “what do we ahve to become Christians for?” As least part of the answer to this question will have to be: “In order to be enlisted into God’s ministry of reconciliation, peace, and justice on earth.”
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November 19, 2008
Working Through the Pain
Still reading the book Failure of Nerve. He’s writing about how leadership is affected by the way people and people groups in our society want the quickest relief possible even if it isn’t the best way forward. Friedman writes, For there is no way out of a chronic condition unless one is willing to go through an acute, temporarily more painful, phase….we will naturally choose or revert to chronic conditions of bearable pain rather than face the temporarily more intense anguish of acute conditions that are the gateway to becoming free. But what is also universally true is that over time, chronic conditions, precisely because they are more bearable, also tend to be more withering. This is very, very true for most of us....Read More →
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November 14, 2008
Leader: It’s Your Fault / Responsibility
Last week I wrote a little bit about how leaders need to take reponsibiltiy when things go wrong in their communities or organizations. Far too often we are quick to blame it on those we are trying to lead. Seth Godin says it in his book Tribes better than I did and clearer than Edwin Friedman did. He writes, If you hear my idea but don’t believe it, that’s not your fault; its mine. If you see my new product but don’t buy it, that’s my fault, not yours. If you attend my presentation and you’re bored, that’s my fault too. If I fail to persuade you to implement a policy that supports my tribe, that’s due to my lack of passion or skill, not...Read More →
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November 12, 2008
Amazing People
Been loving Seth Godin’s little book called Tribes. It’s full of some amazing one liners and is the kind of book that makes you want to get up off the couch and change the world. Here’s a good one: “When you have amazing people and give them freedom, they do amazing stuff.” Seth Godin, Tribes If you are a leader, this begs the question: Do you trust the people you work with?
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November 11, 2008
What is Mission?
“Mission is more than and different from recruiting to our brand of religion; it is alerting people to the universal reign of God.” David Bosch in Believing the Future
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October 9, 2008
The Church as Sent: Five Important Thoughts from David Bosch
I’ve been reading David Bosch’s book “Transforming Mission” for almost four years now. If you are familiar with the book, you will know why its taken me so long to get through it. It is essentially a summary of paradigm shifts in how mission has been understood throughout history. It’s widely respected and largely identified as one of the most important books in missional theology ever written. My friend John Chandler and I talk about this book being required reading in order to get your missional drivers license. In fact, Steve Taylor, author of The Out Bounds Church, writes here that “IMHO no-one should be allowed to talk about emerging church until they have read this book. It is such an essential missionary text.” So,...Read More →
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September 27, 2008
Lesslie Newbigin on Election
Great stuff from my favorite author… No one can say why it is that one was chosen and another not, why it is that here the word came “not only in word only, but also in power, and in the Holy Ghost” (1 Thess. 1:5), while there the same word carried no regenerating power. The answer to that question is known only to God. But if we cannot know for what reason one was chosen, we can most certain know for what purpose he was chosen: he was chosen in order to be a fruit-bearing branch in the one true vine (John 15:16), a witness through whom others might be saved. He is chosen in order that through him God’s saving purpose may reach to...Read More →
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July 19, 2008
NT Wright on the Resurrection & the Church
Reading NT Wright’s book, Surprised by Hope this afternoon. A few quotes for your reading pleasure: The mission of the church is nothing more or less than the outworking, in the power of the Spirit, of Jesus’s bodily resurrection and thus the anticipation of the time when God will fill the earth with his glory, transform the old heavens and earth into the new, and raise his children from the dead to populate and rule over the redeemed world he has made. (265) and… the split between saving souls and doing good in the world is a product not of the Bible or the gospel but of the cultural captivity of both within the Western world… (265)
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July 11, 2008
How does the gospel judge suburbia?
I’m working on a class at The Well for tomorrow that is basically serving as an introduction / overview to missional theology. It’s been a blast to put it together and I think we’ll spark some great conversation about our specific context and calling here in suburban Philadelphia. Of course, I’ve been looking back through a few of my Newbigin books and came across this gem in The Open Secret: “The day-to-day worship and word and witness of the local church has to be developed in relationship to all these in such a way that it becomes credible to the inhabitants to the local culture as a sign, instrument and foretaste of that one universal reign of God that is the true origin and goal...Read More →
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December 5, 2007
Individual Salvation and Restoration of all Things
Quote of the day from The Supremacy of Christ in a Postmodern World in the chapter by Tim Keller, “In General I don’t think we’ve done a good job at developing ways of communicating the gospel that include both salvation from wrath by propitiation and restoration of all things.” Yeah, I can get behind that! I tried to emphesize this concept in my sermon at the funeral last week.
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October 3, 2007
Congregations Aren’t Stupid
Eugene Peterson writes in his book Under the Predictable Plant, “The congregation is not the enemy. Pastoral work is not adversarial. These people in the pews are not aliens to be conquered – defeated and then rehabilitated to the satisfaction of the pastoral ego. Thomas Merton wrote, “it is both dangerous and easy to hate man as he is because he is not ‘what he ought to be.’ if we do not first respect what he is we will never suffer him to become what he ought to be: in our impatience we will do away with him altogether… and the congregation is not stupid and lumpish, waiting for pastoral enlightenment. Condescension is pastors is even worse than hostility.” This are some great thoughts from...Read More →
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September 18, 2007
The Gospel and The Cycle of Grace in Embracing Grace
I am leading a Bible study on Wednesday nights at our church on the book by Scot McKnight called, “Embracing Grace.” In it, he defines “the gospel” as, “The gospel is the work of God to restore humans to union with God and communion with others, in the context of a community for the good of others and the world.” I love this definition because its a very holistic definition (though i am sure not perfect). It deals with personal salvation of human beings and the restoration of their relationship with God, it deals with the work of God in restoring man to each other, it deals with the importance of community (or the Church) in this and finally it deals with that fact that...Read More →
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February 2, 2007
Barth on Discipleship
For your reading pleasure… “Yet there were others and it is here that the word acquires its pregnant meaning-who are called by Jesus and follow Him in the sense that they accompany Him wholeheartedly and constantly, sharing His life and destiny at the expense of all other engagements and commitments, attaching themselves to Him, placing themselves in His service, and thus showing that they are qualified to be His disciples…” Karl Barth Church Dogmatics, vol 4.2
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December 11, 2006
David Bosch on Mission
I learned recently that my dad spent a three day weekend retreat with David Bosch two years before he died. I told my dad, while I would have not been old enough to appreciate it (and i would have likely spent the time playing with my matchbox cars) I am officially mad at him for not taking me along. I am not sure I can ever forgive him. In honor of my dad’s deep lack of concern for me and my formation for the future, here is a quote from Bosch’s book “Transforming Mission” (page 390) “Mission [is] understood primarily as being derived from the very nature of God. It was thus put in the context of the doctrine of the trinity. The classical doctrine...Read More →
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November 11, 2006
Missional Food for Thought
I’m writing a paper on Newbigin’s book The Open Secret and quoted this in my paper. I thought it was a helpful quote for thinking about mission… “The Bible, then, is covered with God’s purpose of blessing for all the nations. It is concerned with the completion of God’s purpose in the creation of the world and of man within the world. It is not – to put it crudely – concerned with offering a way of escape for the redeemed soul out of history, but with the action of God to bring history to its true end.” (p. 34) and this one too to go along with it… “The forgiveness of sins is what makes possible the gift of God’s peace. The simplest and...Read More →
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June 7, 2006
Letting the Scripture “Get You”
Reading William Willimon’s book, “Pastor” and came across this thought, “A friend of mine says that there are at least two ways of knowing. One is that of the mathematics and similar endeavors, such as when you are working with a tough mathematical problem, struggling, and then at last you say, ‘I got it!’ That is one way of thinking. Another way is, say, when you have been to see a great movie, one that makes you a different person in the seeing. You emerge from the theater. You do not say, ‘I got it.’ No. What you say is, if you are able to say anything at all, “It got me.” …[of the text] we ask, ‘What does this text mean to me?’ or...Read More →
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May 9, 2006
NT Wright on Healing…
The last two weeks we have been talking about healing at The Well from John chapter 5. It’s been a fun two weeks as I looked at the more personal side of the healing passage and Gary looked at the theological side of the topic. You can listen to our two messages off of our church podcast (automatically subscribe to the podcast in iTunes here and view the message archives here) I am reading NT Wright’s new book, “Simply Christian” and came across this quote that captured a lot of what Gary was saying on Sunday, “Jesus didn’t see healings as some kind of premodern traveling hospital. He wasn’t healing the sick just for the sake of it, important though the healing itself was. Nor...Read More →
