So our fellowship's deacon (when you're as micro-small-tiny as we are, you only get one deacon), after reading the preceding post, forwarded me this post, 10 Ways to Effectively Criticize.
...do you think he's sending me a semi-oblique message...?
Labels:
Church,
Spirituality
Alrighty, then. For starters, a confession: The title of this blogpost was originally going to be a take off of the Ten Things I Hate About You movie... but I can only think of one thing I hate about Chris Elrod:
Labels:
Church,
Church Planting,
Pastors
I've got two blogposts from the Church Matters blog marked as "Keep As New" in my Bloglines reader so that I can go back and re-read them, both on the subject of worship.
They are:
Labels:
Pastors,
Preaching/Teaching,
Spirituality,
theology,
Worship
A lot of pastors whose blogs I read make oblation at the altar of Getting Things Done, which is all well and good if that's your thing (personally, I'm a FranklinCovey-aholic - I have PlanPlus on my HTC PPC6800 to keep me in line and beep at me to remember to... do stuff... that I need to remember... stuff...), though I have to wonder how much of the "effectiveness" fad among my brethren-in-the-cloth is (ironically) counterproductive to the real work of the Kingdom (which is often messy an disorganized) and really little more than a more-than-vaguely amusing and ultimately futile attempt to look "proffessional" and "respectable" to the world...
But anyway.
One of the couples in our fellowship forwarded me a great post on The Seven Habits Of Highly Effective Spaceship Captains. Tongue-in-cheek, very entertaining... but also somewhat insightful.
With the glaring exception of Habit 3, the habits and lessons learned can with only minimal tweaking be applied to pastors - and to ministry in general, both vocational and lay.
Though, sadly, some pastors have indiscriminately lived out Habit 3 with individuals other than their respective wives. And are still pastors. Which I will never get. But I partly digress.
The language of the post is mildly Mark Driscoll-ish, which means it's probably best rated "PG-13". So if worldly word usage wigs you way out, don't click on the above link. Remember: You can't expect unbelievers to act (or speak) like believers - you can barely expect believers to act (and speak) like believers these days. This is NOT a Christian post. On that note, if you've never been in the Navy and therefore are unused to sailor-speak, avoid the comments as well.
But if you can forgive the occasional ECM-like verbiage, it's a funny, interesting, and strangely applicable post.
Labels:
Culture,
Entertainment,
Humor,
Pastors
I'm sitting in the Starbuck's at the Barnes & Noble bookstore (one of my favorite places to go an study and such) and it's snowing like it hasn't snowed all year so far.
Lots of snow.
I mean, lots of snow.
The pictures that follow really don't do it justice.
At least, the pictures of the snow outside won't (thanks to the relatively low technology of my 4.0 megapixel Nikon camera).
But... I'm sitting here, updating the website, doing some administrative stuff for the church and getting ready to get some study time in for our Thursday evening study through Leviticus, and I see this monstrosity roll on by the window in front of me...
Labels:
Personal
Darren McCarty, one of my favorite players, is making his comeback with the Red Wings' AHL team, the Grand Rapids Griffins.
My lovely and gracious wife and I have four Griffins tickets left to spend this season (we bought a season "mini-pack" earlier last year), so I can't wait to go watch Darren mix it up on ice again...
On a lighter note, I just read this in my Bloglines reader from Slashdot: Apparently, Dr Alexander Shatskiy, from the Lebedev Physical Institute in Moscow has postulated a way to detect the difference between a black hole and a wormhole.
One of the consequences of M-Theory (a theoretical framework devised as a possible solution to the apparent duality inherent in much of string theory, as a way of unifying the five major superstring "flavors") is that there are very likely multiple "universes" (if you accept the basic premises of M-theory, and that many of the forces we see propagating in "our" universe (such as gravity, which propagates very weakly compared to the other three fundamental forces) are in at least some sense really the echoes of interaction between various "branes" (universes) and ours. Gravity, for instance, as we perceive it, is really "leaked into" our universe from and adjacent one.
Anyway...
Wormholes are theoretically permissible in general relativity, but so far no reliable means of detecting them has been proposed.
Enter Dr. Shatskiy.
Interesting, intriguing... and although I anticipate it'll basically amount to nothing, it's fun to think about, anyway...
Labels:
Science
One of the things that characterizes a shepherd is that he smells like the sheep.
That is, he spends his life with them. He knows them, lives among them, shares their joys, sorrows, even grief. When one is hurting, he's there to help and heal. When one is sick, he tends to it. When the flock is hungry, he searches diligently and leads them to good pastures.
It's no surpise that the Biblical image the Holy Spirit chooses for pastors is that of shepherds.
And it's particularly the joy of the small church pastor that he really has no choice but to "smell like the sheep." The bigger-church dudes can add layers of interference betwixt themselves and them smelly sheep them thar... but the small church pastor doesn't have that luxury option. He is in the thick of it with them.
But that's not always a joy. Sometimes, especially when the sheep are deeply wounded, he gets bled on, then bitten, by the bewildered sheep.
In our tiny yet small fellowship here on the lakeshore, 2007 has been a particularly painful year for a number of our families. For one family in particular, it has turned out to be the worst year of their lives. And it all came to a head the week before Christmas, when the husband discovered that his wife had been unfaithful to him. Through much counseling, and praying, and venting, and tears, the marriage has since disintegrated. But the sheep still hurts, and hurts deeply.
So much so, that he's at the point of walking away from the Lord.
It's heartrending, to watch a sheep, in spite of multiplied myriads of warnings, walk right over to and begin to leap off of the cliff on the edge of oblivion.
Some thoughts, though, that have arisen through this all:
It has been a tough year and I am not out of the woods yet but I am in the word and learning to trust more in the Lord every day. In you blog just have people pray for our family.
Labels:
Church,
Discipleship,
Pastors,
Personal
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