I’m happy to be participating in an ad hoc blog tour for a new book written by a new friend of mine named Dan White. The book is called Subterranean. My assignment was to engage with Chapter Two… so here goes: Subterranean Ch. 2: Excessive Personality Dan begins with a recollection of his third grade teacher asking his class to draw a picture representing what they wanted to be when they grew up. Taking the larger-than-life persona of the... Read more
I confess that a few weeks ago I was leaving work at the end of the day, and as I was backing out of my parking space I got an alert on my iPhone. It said, “You are twelve minutes from home.” I had never received a message of this kind before. My first thought was, who is this & how the heck did they know I’m going home right now? It was a little freaky. My next thought was, eleven minutes my arse… I’ll... Read more
Why are there so many jokes about a priest walking into a bar? Why was it so powerful when Pope Francis addressed a joint session of Congress? Same reason. The premise of the priest-in-a-bar joke is that someone holy has walked into an unholy place. Bars–or so the jokes suppose–are places where people say and do questionable things they wouldn’t want their priest to know about. The priest represents conscience or virtue. It’s ironic. When Pope Francis addressed Congress–also a place where people say and... Read more
“The hardest lesson I’ve had to learn as a leader is this: If I am not vulnerable, I am not leading.” Shrink, p.44 “We must lead from a position of vulnerability. Most people think that leadership is the exercise of power, but it is not. Leadership that has been informed and transformed by Christ is about learning to embrace vulnerability, leveraging it in ways that will inspire faithfulness in the lives of others. – Shrink, p. 142” One... Read more
When I listen to Rich Mullins’ music (and I still listen), he makes me want to go camping. It’s weird, I know, but it always seems like I could more easily imagine the world he imagined if I could just get off the grid for awhile. And I want to imagine the world that he imagined. Rich used to joke during concerts that in the imagination of his fans he lived on the edge of rivers lighting campfires (the cover... Read more
This comes from the Indian Country Today Media Network, where they are also fans of the Friday Funny. When NASA was preparing for the Apollo project, they did some astronaut training on a Navajo Indian reservation. One day, a Navajo elder and his son were herding sheep and came across the space crew. The old man, who only spoke Navajo, asked a question, which the son translated: “What are the guys in the big suits doing?” A member of the crew... Read more
If the church is the body of Christ, then the megachurch is like an athlete on steroids. Every major city has a bevy of churches drawing between 5k-25k people. To get a body to grow that big leaders have to use some sort of performance enhancer. These things—typically models, strategies, and techniques gleaned not from the gospel or the Christian narrative, but from the world of business and the narrative of consumer capitalism—serve as performance enhancers that help create enormous congregations with huge... Read more
“I think our criminal justice system is working as intended. It is only broken to the extent that our society is broken… the lens of criminal justice is the way this country has traditionally regarded black people. I don’t know that anything is broken at all. The deeper question is: are we okay with something on the order of 4,000 African American males per 100,000 being in jail …are we okay with there being a 1 in 3 chance for every... Read more
Who would you be if you lost it all? I save great questions in the back of my journal. When I start a new one, that’s the first page I copy over to the new journal–every question, every line. I use these questions in times of self-reflection, and when I’m doing spiritual direction with others. This question is going on the list. Who would you be if you lost it all: the spouse, the job, the career, the family, the house, the 401k,... Read more
When we awoke on that morning we all knew we were basically safe & sound. When we went to bed, we all knew we were not. It was an illusion to be sure, but until 9/11 Americans really thought we were secure… we were safe & sound. The most enduring impact of SEP 11 2001 was the loss of any sense of security. It was gone, and it really hasn’t come back. What’s so incredible is that it happened to everybody, and it happened at... Read more
Ad-Free & Subscriber Log-In