Tag Archives: change

Mar 21 2013

this went thru my mind

 

Change: Five Secret Objections to Change by Ron Edmonson

“Show me an objection to legitimate, needed change and you’re almost guaranteed to find one of these hidden in the crowd somewhere. Probably multiples of them.”

Children, Easter & parenting: Preparing Your Children For Easter Without Rabbits! [required reading]

“For our children, Easter has become more about baby chickens, bunny rabbits, and egg hunts and hardly anything about Jesus! Part of the reason is that the story is sad, brutal, and gory. We have sanitized the lives of our children to the point that the real Easter story just doesn’t work. We need a Disney version for our young children. On the other hand, my 8-year-old, 7-year-old, and 5-year-old grandsons have all seen Star Wars, and some of them have seen at least the first episode of Lord of the Rings. They have all seen the Narnia movies—and they have all been to funerals. I think they can handle the basics of the passion story. I’d like to just suggest to you today a schedule of possible readings and activities to do with your young children.”

Church: Seven Ways to Kill a Church by Scott Elliott; * Bullies in the Church; * And Then the Conference Uninvited Me to Speak by Jen Hatmaker [required reading]

* “Be immature – Gripe, complain, nitpick, and criticize others. … Fail to get people involved. Don’t ask people to do anything. … Ignore the youth. Refuse to teach them anything meaningful about the Christian faith. … Pretend like worship isn’t important. Show up late and leave early. … Forget about feeding the flock. Give the congregation upbeat and entertaining messages with little or no substance. Never move beyond the basics of Christianity. … Convince people that leadership does not matter. Choose leaders who are biblically ignorant and spiritually immature. … Never look beyond the church building. Forget there is a world full of people who need help. Do not feed the hungry.”

* “There are books on school bullying—and more than enough data to support techniques for dealing with the problem. But when it comes to the church—there’s very little information. Nevertheless, there can be bullies in the church.  And most don’t fit the bully stereotype. Consider, for example, a few of the bully personalities that are more commonly found in the church …”

* “The Barna Group estimates that 80 percent of those reared in the church will be ‘disengaged’ by the time they are 29. 80 percent. Gone. … 73 percent of Nones came from religious homes; 66 percent were described by the study as ‘de-converts.’ … [But] as far as I can tell, Jesus is still the easiest sell on earth, because if you don’t love a guy who healed lepers and pulled children onto His lap and silenced the religious elite and ate and drank with sinners, then you just don’t know Him.”

Happiness: One Thing You Must Stop Doing to Be Happy

“The quickest route to happiness is to stop the pursuit of finding happiness and start the process of being happiness.”

Connectivity, technology & the Internet: * This is the World You Live (and Lead) in Now; * Danny Hillis: The Internet Could Crash. We Need a Plan B. [121/2 min. TED Talk video]

* “Mobile technology and digital social networks have changed our habits, rhythms of life, the way we connect, and get news and information. … They are not just tools. They are ways of being in the world. They have become an integrated part of our culture, our lives, and, indeed, the practice of faith.”

* “Internet pioneer Danny Hillis argues that the Internet wasn’t designed for this kind of scale, and sounds a clarion call for us to develop a Plan B: a parallel system to fall back on if — or when — the Internet crashes.”

Evangelism, outreach & questions: What Gives??

“Good answer!”

Poverty & social mobility: Why Social Mobility In The United States Is A Total Myth

“… 44%, of American adults who are in the bottom 20% in income were born to parents who were also in the bottom 20%; nearly half, 45%, of adults in the top 20% had parents who were also in the top 20%. Most Americans who were born in the middle 60% had parents who were also born in the middle 60%.”

Presence: Do You Have Time to Be Present? by Jim Martin

“Life is about being fully present in the one life that I am living — to the honor of God. What are your greatest challenges to being fully present with others?”

Mar 15 2013

this went thru my mind

 

Bible, change, growth, learning & openmindedness: Afraid of the Bible by Dan Bouchelle [essential reading]

“Here is the stark reality: churches are resistant to open Bible study because we fear new insights from scripture. … What does this say? I think is says at least four things: 1. We over estimate our understanding of scripture and have largely closed off our ability to hear fresh wisdom from God through his primary means of communicating to us. … 2. We fail to understand the role of the Holy Spirit working upon a community as it encounters God in his Word. We can’t control the Spirit or explain him and we fear what we don’t understand and control. … 3. We are still modern thinkers who believe … Scripture may describe what God did once, but it won’t help us much with methods for what we should do. 4. Since we know we can’t reconcile seeing something new in scripture and discounting it, as we can easily do with human writers, it is just safer to avoid seeking to learn anything new from the Bible. Who wants to be responsible for making changes if we did learn better?”

Catholicism: * Would You Pray for the New Pope? by Mark Woodward; * Virtual Reality Sistine Chapel; * It Is Better To Have People Think You Are A Fool Than To Write A Blog And Remove All Doubt ; * 5 Things to Know About the New Pope

* “The historian Arthur Schlesinger, Sr. said that Anti-Catholicism is ‘the deepest-held bias in the history of the American people’ (Gibson, The Coming Catholic Church, HarperCollins 2004). That’s a very strong statement in the face of both our racial biases and our economic and political biases.”

* The inside of the Sistine Chapel in virtual reality.

* “… I do not want Roman Catholic readers to judge me by some of the hate filled, ignorant posts written by some of my non-Catholic counterparts.”

* “He’s the first Jesuit and the first Latin American in modern times to lead the world’s 1.2 billion Catholics.”

Church: Pope Francis Calls Out the Church

“We have to avoid the spiritual sickness of a self-referential church. It’s true that when you get out into the street, as happens to every man and woman, there can be accidents. However, if the church remains closed in on itself, self-referential, it gets old. Between a church that suffers accidents in the street, and a church that’s sick because it’s self-referential, I have no doubts about preferring the former.”

Communication, listening, relationships & words: Barriers to Conversation by Scott Elliott [required reading]

“Here are a few common barriers to conversation.”

Controlling: Are You in a Controlling Environment?

“Ask yourself: Do ideas determine systems? or Do systems control ideas?”

Just for fun: The Greatest Homes Made from Shipping Containers Around the World

“The relatively cheap shipping container is a good foundation for a strong, mobile, and post-apocalyptic home. In the last two decades, architects have been incorporating shipping containers into everything from schools to houses — for aesthetic reasons, but also out of economic necessity. Here are some of their most eye-catching creations.”

Logic, reasoning & thinking: How Not to Argue Like an Idiot … The 15 Most Common Logical Fallacies

“… I’ve used and heard plenty of bad reasoning from Christians. The following list is composed of some of the most common logical fallacies; I’ve chosen to limit it to only those I’ve actually heard in the last couple years.”

 ; * 5 Things to Know About the New Pope

Jan 5 2013

this went thru my mind

 

Aging & resentment: Pitfalls of the Pious by Dan Bouchelle

“… as you get older you learn the besetting sin of the mature is resentment.”

Bible interpretation & diversity: Musings on the Bible (1) The First of Three Questions by Patrick Mitchel

“A pressing question for thinking Christians is what to make of the ‘brute fact’ of radically divergent readings of the Bible by other Christians who share a belief in its divinely inspired origin.”

Captialism & church: Values of Capitalism & the Church by Tim Gombis

“One of the ways that capitalism has succeeded in capturing our culture’s imagination, however, is that efficiency has achieved preeminent status, overpowering all other values.”

Congress, faith & politics: The Religious Composition of the 113th Congress

“The new, 113th Congress includes the first Buddhist to serve in the Senate, the first Hindu to serve in either chamber and the first member of Congress to describe her religion as “none,” continuing a gradual increase in religious diversity that mirrors trends in the country as a whole. While Congress remains majority Protestant, the institution is far less so today than it was 50 years ago, when nearly three-quarters of the members belonged to Protestant denominations. … Catholics have seen the biggest gains among the 533 members … Protestants, Catholics, Jews and Mormons each make up a greater percentage of the members of Congress than of all U.S. adults. The same is true for some subgroups of Protestants, such as Episcopalians and Presbyterians. By contrast, Pentecostals are a much smaller percentage of Congress than of the general public.”

Change, humanity, identity & personality: You Can’t See It, But You’ll Be A Different Person In 10 Years by Nell Greenfieldboyce

“No matter how old people are, they seem to believe that who they are today is essentially who they’ll be tomorrow. That’s according to fresh research that suggests that people generally fail to appreciate how much their personality and values will change in the years ahead — even though they recognize that they have changed in the past.”

Christian faith, guns & non-violence: Violence: The Christian Response by K. Rex Butts

“… when it comes to a response to the problem of violence, the loudest voice is that which calls for more arms.  In fact, from where I sit this voice has great support from many Christians, something I regard as gospel failure. The American society already has enough voices advocating for more arms, so the last thing society needs is the voice of the church lending support to this cause. Though likely not so welcomed, what America needs from the church is for the church to be what the church alone is called to be and that is to be the voice of the gospel that exemplifies forgiveness, love, peace-making, and reconciliation. This is for the church to do what it is admonished to do in scripture and put off the old, putting on the new self instead, including a new mindset, and speak truthfully as one body (cf. Eph 4:22-25).”

Humility, patience & tolerance: Suffering Fools Gladly [required reading]

“… understand that the habits we put in practice end up shaping the people we are within. ‘Manners are of more importance than laws,’ Edmund Burke wrote. ‘Manners are what vex or soothe, corrupt or purify, exalt or debase, barbarize or refine us, by a constant, steady, uniform, insensible operation, like that of the air we breathe in.’”

Statistics & the United States: Capturing America, Fact by Fact by Sam Roberts

“College graduates have less leisure time than high school dropouts. More people are injured on toilets than by skiing or snowboarding. More households have dogs as pets than cats, but cat lovers are more likely to have multiple pets. And more foreigners visited New York (9.3 million) than any other American city (Los Angeles was a distant second with 3.7 million). Those facts are among the thousands gleaned from the 2013 edition of the Statistical Abstract of the United States. …

“More than 41 percent of births were to unwed mothers, for instance, compared with 33 percent a decade earlier. Student loan debt in households headed by a college graduate soared to $36,809 from $12,373 three decades earlier. Since 1982, the number of federal civilian employees rose by 160,000 while the number of state and local government workers swelled by 6.6 million.”

Jan 4 2013

this went thru my mind

 

Change & Churches of Christ: A Major Change in the Church Among Us by Terry Rush [required reading]

“Such fruit … prompted a significant number among us to approach the eleventh hour with great fear that I haven’t done enough. How many times I have been called out in the night to hear this verse. The cure for it is found in two things: (1) praising God, and (2) making Jesus more prominent.”

Children, fathers & parenthood: Fathers Disappear from Households Across America: Big Increase in Single Mothers

“Though income is the primary predictor, the lack of live-in fathers also is overwhelmingly a black problem, regardless of poverty status, census data show. Among blacks, nearly 5 million children, or 54 percent, live with only their mother. Twelve percent of black families below the poverty line have two parents present, compared with 41 percent of impoverished Hispanic families and 32 percent of poor white families. … In all but 11 states, most black children do not live with both parents. In every state, 7 in 10 white children do. In all states but Rhode Island and Massachusetts, most Hispanic children do.”

Church: Three Reasons They Don’t Like The Church (And What to Do About It) by Chris Altrock

“Some do not value the institution of church because the church doesn’t seem to add anything of practical substance to the culture–socially, morally or spiritually. … Some do not value the institution of the church because they are skeptical of any institution claiming to have a corner on absolute Truth. … Some do not value the institution of the church because they’ve been hurt by church-goers.  Or they’ve seen too many hypocritical church-goers.”

Computing: Who Owns Your Online Content? by Kim Komando

“As I’ve told you before, Facebook’s terms of service grants it the full rights to your profile picture and name to use in ads. By using Facebook with the default settings, you let Facebook use your content for just about anything it wants.”

Cross-bearing, discipleship, Mark 8-10 & self-denial: The Most Remarkable Sequence in the Bible by Richard Beck

“… Jesus has to clarify–for the third time–what following him to the cross entails …”

Disasters, God, pain & suffering: Stuff Happens: Rain on the Just and Unjust by Mark Love

“… we are given no explanation of causation. Stuff happens.”

Grit & life: Kyrsten Sinema: A Success Story Like Nobody Else’s; * Former NFL QB Jon Kitna Finds ‘Gold Mine’ at His Troubled Old High School

* “For more than two years — starting when she was in third grade — they squatted in an abandoned gas station outside the town of Defuniak Springs on the Florida Panhandle …”

* “Before he left the Dallas Cowboys to come home again, Jon Kitna had one request of the two principals who run Lincoln High School: Give me your worst students.”

Holocaust, hope, humanity, identity, love & meaning: Lipstick Love by Joshua Graves

“In 1945, Lieutenant Colonel Gonin led a group of British soldiers in liberating a large concentration camp. In his journal, he gives an account of the dehumanization they’d encountered.”

Openness: Openness by Ted Gossard

“Being open I think involves not being hard and fast on issues, or holding them in quite the same way we hold on to the gospel. At the same time, neither does it mean we have to vacillate on them. We may be just as firm on some of those issues as on the gospel, as long as we don’t hold such as having the first importance the gospel has.”