I wanted to take mental illnesses and emotional disorders out of the closet, to let people know it is all right to admit having a problem without fear of being called crazy. If only we could consider mental illnesses as straightforwardly as we do physical illnesses,...
You can't make yourself feel bad enough about the past to change it. Ultimately, self-loathing is as narcissistic as self-torture is wasteful. The fact is, those distracting pursuits help no one…not those injured by your mistakes nor you who made them. There is a...
The trouble with steeling yourself against the harshness of reality is that the same steel that secures your life against being destroyed secures your life also against being opened up and transformed by the holy power that life itself comes from. You can survive on...
There's no substitute for a congregation making the effort to know itself well and to identify what makes it unique. Effective churches know who they are, and they claim their identity and gifts. from Driven
But our commitment is to do what we have promised, not to meet expectations, whether our own or those of others. If we can learn to measure effectiveness in terms of discerning what is really worth doing and keeping a covenant to do it, we might be both faithful and...
Human nature, when it is seeking power, wants either to play the victim or to create victims of others. In fact, the second follows from the first. Once we start feeling sorry for ourselves, we will soon find someone else to blame, accuse or attack—and with impunity!...
To refresh and re-energize, we can learn a few things from our devices. Disconnect, power down, unplug, re-charge, re-connect. When we ignore the 'low battery' warning in life, we risk hyper-anxiety, depression, chronic fatigue, and burnout. If our Creator rested on...
Because God is the subject of worship, we must back up a step to recall that, before liturgy can involve the work of the people who offer their praise, it begins with the presence of God graciously inviting that response. It seems to me that some of the worship wars...
All the above can be boiled down into a three-part artistic dilemma that has faced the church for centuries. First, if art is beautiful, it has to be used whether it is effective or not. This is the idol of quality. Second, if art is effective, it must be used,...
And this is it. This is the life we get here on earth. We get to give away what we receive. We get to believe in each other. We get to forgive and be forgiven. We get to love imperfectly. And we never know what effect it will have for years to come. And all of it…all...