Some things run in the family. Years ago  author Pat McMillan (http://www.theperformancefactor.com/author.html) went to my father for advice about becoming a consultant.  Dad sat him down and did his best to discourage him with all the obstacles and hardships of building a consulting business and the likelihood of failure.  Fortunately Pat listened with respect and then went and built a very successful consulting business – Team Resources.  On my part I spent the better part of a lunch dissuading a young pastor from trying to build a ministry on some wild ideas he had about an innovative ministry he described as Mosaic.  Erwin McManus did exactly the same as Pat…

My church hosted David Zahl co-author of The Gospel According to Pixar and the founder of Mockingbird (www.mbird.com) in Charlottesville Virginia where he is on staff at Christ Episcopal Church.  The premise of the book is Pixar films have created high quality films that engage not only children but adults.  Moreover “the films tell compelling stories about love forgiveness fear loneliness identity etc. that provide vivid illustrations of how the Gospel interacts with real life.”  It’s ironic of course that animated films have been the vehicle for capturing the essence of many Christian themes and more importantly the possibility of redemption for everyone.  As well David talked about the “Nazareth…

I hardly ever read books ahead of time when I travel.  I don’t know why.  Most people prepare.  I “postpare” I guess.  I’ve been reading “God’s Continent” by Philip Jenkins (http://www.firstthings.com/article/2009/02/004-the-much-exaggerated-death-of-europe-16) after coming back from our Europe trip and he says something that makes sense – in a way that concerns me about our own church in America.  What happens when the “Christian social vision” is accomplished but is detached from the church?  What happens when the way we define that vision leads the way to the demise of people being engaged in the church?  “Living in a society that tries to achieve the Christian social vision – through a…

Nat Wei took on a challenge that was probably doomed to failure – to head the Big Society initiative of Prime Minister David Cameron aimed to reduce the role of the State and get local volunteers to provide more services and “to take power away from politicians and give it to the people.”  The Prime Minister in introducing it said it was “about changing the way our country is run.  No more of a government treating everyone like children…let’s treat adults like adults and give them responsibility over their lives.”  As well it was intended to make government date more accessible and to support social enterprises co-ops and innovations in…

I’ve never been an anglophile and frankly always gone a little out of my way to make the point.  When the opportunity to have dinner at the House of Lords with Lord Wei came up in our trip planning for London I was the first one to say “That’s not the kind of thing we want to do for dinner.”  What’s the attraction of having dinner with someone just because they have a title? My assumption has always been titles have been handed out for the same reasons major donors to successful Presidential political campaigns are awarded positions as ambassadors.  It’s patronage pure and simple.  As well the word “peer”…

I’ve just returned from ten days in Europe – London  Oxford  Paris and Prague.  A small group from The Gathering (11 of us) went together.  In the course of those ten days we made visits or heard presentations from 23 different ministries.  Yes that is insane but you should have seen us high-fiving after the final presentation.  For me 23 in ten days is a “personal best”…but that’s not a record I want to break.  I took good notes and intend to write it up in segments for the blog and the Board of The Gathering.  However this morning I wanted to focus on a theme that kept coming up consistently among the group. All of us have visited…

This afternoon I am meeting with a young man who is trying to figure out what to do with his life now that he has left his company. I have found most people in this situation go around and have conversations with individuals and then try to process everything they have heard in their own heads. It’s a pretty standard way of getting advice. If your primary doctor gives you a diagnosis you can go get a second opinion. If your insurance quote is too high you can call another agent. We tend to get advice and counsel that way. I’m not sure it is the most effective way of…

I live in a city of 100 000 people.  When I moved here 27 years ago it was 75 000.  Not much change in population but somewhere along the line we passed a tipping point that has affected once well established growth patterns management structures politics and a host of other things.  The change is not merely incremental. Like many cities in the South we have learned to accommodate and manage our differences.  We have a registered Democrat I think that covers us for political diversity.  We have many brands of Protestant Christians large numbers of Catholics and a healthy Jewish community.  Up until now our local “secular” community foundation…

In a recent column titled “Who will bat against ‘Alibi’ Obama” George Will wrote “Announcing his candidacy near the Statue of Liberty where Ronald Reagan began his 1980 post-convention campaign Huntsman promised “civility” because “I don’t think you need to run down someone’s reputation” when running for president. Actually you do.”  I doubt George was advocating vicious personal attacks but I do think he was saying we need to define “civil” as something other than bland.  I only mention this because I have had two conversations today with organizations in Washington who are both working to bring “civility” back into politics.  Is that like bringing romance back into human trafficking? …

In 1985 when five of us met for the first time to talk about giving we had two issues we wanted to discuss.  In our experience we had identified two ditches along the road we wanted to avoid if we were going to stay in this work for a long time.  The first was the tendency to become cynical and disillusioned.  People receiving grants did not always do what they said they were going to do.  We each had some stories to share that were both sad and funny.  However there were enough instances of people either misrepresenting their work or being outright fraudulent to make us concerned about our ability…