We spent two weeks on the Danube river recently and part of the tour was a variety of churches chapels and sanctuaries.  One of our guides a nonreligious person ” was also one of the most knowledgeable about Gothic and Baroque architecture.  In the course of looking at a number (a large number!) of cathedrals she talked about the theology and world view each represented.  I had never thought about it but it got my mind going about other things. Briefly” Gothic architecture was built around the transcendence ” awe and majesty of God.  Everything pointed vertically and the effect was to draw the congregation’s attention to heaven and…

  A young friend (let’s call him Cole from Chattanooga Tennessee) and I are having a back and forth conversation about the intrinsic value of donors becoming more competent and skilled.  While we are in agreement on the value of competence ” we are probably on different pages (for now) on how to define that. The exchange started with our both seeing the difficulty of donors first encountering complexity.  They believe (and sometimes ministries encourage this) that a gift to a particular cause will make everything in life better for a child.  If we can improve their access to water or health care or education or Bibles then their whole…

I'm not ordained so I cannot do weddings or funerals. But sometimes friends ask me to say a word that is not ordained and binding. It's just me talking. This was the case in the wedding of a former student…but permanent friend.  "The first wedding of the world was on a Saturday…just about this time of day. Five times it was morning and evening ” and then it was the sixth day and somewhere around three o'clock in the afternoon the Lord God straightened up from his work…and declared that everything up to that point was very good…so good in fact that it could not have been better. Everything had…

A few weeks ago a friend at a foundation in Michigan asked me to put together a list of books and/or other resources that would be helpful to him in his work in philanthropy.  I had never put a list together before and as I thought about what I would recommend to him I realized philanthropy is about so much more than the simple act of giving away money.  It involves understanding and working with individuals and organizations.  It relies on history psychology theology the arts ” business and economics.  So…here is what I sent him. Jayber Crow by Wendell Berry.  I am part of a community to which I…

  The Juvenilization of American Christianity. That's a mouthful.  It took me several times of practicing before I could use it this morning at church.  It's both an article in a recent issue of Christianity Today and a new book by Thomas Bergler.   "Juvenilization is the process by which the religious beliefs practices and developmental characteristics of adolescents become accepted as appropriate for adults."  While ministry innovations began as an attempt to tailor worship and programs to attract a new generation of youth the end result has been "fewer and fewer people outgrew the adolescent Christian spiritualities they had learned in youth groups…and although it may seem that the teenagers of…

  There is a rising tide of giving in this country.  Even in a weak economy ” giving in 2011 increased 7.5% from 2010 for a total of $346 billion.  According to "Giving USA" that will rise to $360 billion in 2012.  Individuals are the single largest source of giving (75%) and the largest recipient is broadly categorized as religion (36%). The largest non-religious channel for individual giving is the United Way which allows individuals to deduct contributions directly from their pay.  Another more publicized increase is that of young people giving small amounts through mobile phones to a wide variety of causes.  While it has been steadily growing for…

I am going to upset some people now.  It’s not intentional but I think there is a good deal of misinformation that has been floating around for years about the idea of ministering to donors. I am not arguing with the overall concept of ministering to people – just with a couple of assumptions about what ministry is to donors. First it assumes donors (especially major donors) need a particular kind of ministry due to their circumstances. Those circumstances are described as isolated lonely spiritually dry weighed down with family problems that include shaky marriages troubled kids and misplaced priorities. There are more but these seem to be the most…

  I grew up in a Protestant tradition that had no creeds.  Well we did sing "Just As I Am" and that was pretty close to a creed.  So when I branched out as a young adult and encountered the Apostle's Creed and especially the phrase "I believe in the holy catholic Church" I could not understand how the fellow Protestants were blithely mumbling the words without a hesitation. How could that be?  What had I missed? I grew up thinking Catholics abducted babies and shipped them off to Rome and practiced strange rituals late at night. Everyone reading this who grew up in a similar non-creedal church knows what…