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Do the Next Thing
Now and then I host what the Quakers call a “Clearness Committee” for an individual working their way through an issue about direction or a decision. This committee is a group of friends who know a person well, and the group’s only role is to ask questions. They cannot make statements or prescribe what a person should do. They cannot offer advice based on what they think they would do. The Quakers have a high regard for the ability of a person with the aid of insightful questions to come to the truth on their own. Last week a friend was sorting through an issue that affects all of us…
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Remembering
1. Now and then I host what the Quakers called a “Clearness Committee” for an individual working their way through an issue about direction or a decision. As I’ve mentioned in the past, it’s a group of friends who know a person well and their only role is to ask questions. They cannot make statements or prescribe what a person should do. The Quakers have a high regard for the ability of a person to come to the truth on their own. Last week our friend was sorting through an issue that affects all of us at one time or another. They had a fine career and were suddenly sideswiped…
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Jacob Wrestles With God
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Words for Elizabeth Rowan
Being asked by the family to offer these words is a gift not unlike welcoming my own children into the world. I feel as if I have been handed the precious life of Elizabeth for a moment and been honored to hold and care for her briefly as if she were my own – and then will hand her back to her family and to God. In John 12:24 Jesus says, “Listen carefully: Unless a grain of wheat is buried in the ground, dead to the world, it is never any more than a grain of wheat. But if it is buried, it sprouts and reproduces itself many times over.…
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Kindness
Some of you know I have taught a Sunday School class for 30 years. It’s my anchor as much as it is my pulpit. For years, I taught on topics or passages I chose, but then I put myself under the discipline of teaching the “lectionary.” Baptists don’t call it that, but that’s what it is. It is the assigned reading. There are times when I would rather break out and go back to being independent, but I guess this is my feeble attempt at growing in sanctification. For years, the word “sanctification” conjured up images of determined efforts to do better. You know Grant Woods’ classic painting, “American Gothic”…
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Sanctification
1. The whole idea and image of “sanctification” may be intimidating for many of us. It sounds more like an image of Grant Woods’ “American Gothic” – the famous painting of the farm couple. Both unsmiling and humorless – the man with a pitchfork. It’s serious business, isn’t it? For some it’s probably a series of lists and personal challenges they tackle every day. Benjamin Franklin developed a list of 13 virtues that he worked on every single day. When he woke up in the morning he asked himself, “What good will I do today?” and when he went to bed at night he asked, “What good did I do…
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Jacob Wrestles With God
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The Change Is Coming
I appreciate the responses we had to Peb’s question in last week’s blog: “Has anyone else noticed the eyes of major donors, especially the younger, beginning to glaze over when ministries describe the enormous numbers they are claiming? Is it just me or are others skeptical of the numerical ‘super-hype’ that has become standard and the sophisticated strategies that are producing and promising them with such confidence? Is everything finally measured by the standard of ‘how many’ and ‘how large’?” I do think donors are beginning to have a different standard for success than numbers but for reasons that go beyond a “glazing over.” It is deeper and more fundamental…
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A Towering Life
For the last several years I have met with a group of friends who also work in Christian philanthropy to talk, share experiences and support each other. Every year the conversations are different because our issues change. As well, each time we convene the trust level goes up, and the barriers to discussing uncomfortable issues go down. This year we discussed the ways both donors and ministries measure and evaluate results. While all of us have been around long enough to have seen the effect of the growing pressure on ministries to report (and sometimes inflate) their results for donors, it was a question from Peb Jackson that named the…
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Jesus Reigns
1. As Americans, we have a basic antipathy toward kings, don’t we? It’s in our bones. We resent any kind of royalty – except the ones we create – and the privileges of dynasties – except those who run for elected office. It’s been so from the beginning. “In England a King hath little more to do than to make war and give away places; which, in plain terms, is to impoverish the nation and set it together by the ears. A pretty business indeed for a man to be allowed eight hundred thousand sterling a year for, and worshipped into the bargain! Of more worth is one honest man…
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