I was listening to a Carey Nieuwhof podcast (CNLP 134) interviewing Carl George and Warren Bird. One statement struck me and then I lost the train of the interview as I mulled on that. My internal monologue/dialogue tends to be louder than my laptop speakers. They were talking about how many church leaders take seriously …
Month: August 2018
A couple of minor changes
I thought I would note a couple of small changes to the website. It was that if you clicked on Recommendations you would get my book recommends. Now, it just gives you two choices. One is Book Recommendations. The other is My Promotionals. That page shows a few ministries that I and my family are …
The Odd Thing About Pastoral Care and Church Growth
Carey Nieuwhof has a great article on Pastoral Care and Church Growth. Feel free to click on it: How Pastoral Care Stunts the Growth of Most Churches One might think that I would like the basic premise of the article... that a majority of Protestant churches are limited to less than 200 people by a …
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Two Poles in Dialogue
Years ago I had a long discussion with a member of the Bahai faith. It was interesting in many ways, but also rather frustrating. The individual would like to say that all religions in essence agree with each other-- that all religions give the same answers. He would say that, and I would point out …
“Footprints” Thoughts
One of the great inspiring messages is "Footprints." It's author is unknown, but frankly that added to its popularity since it lacks any copyright issues. There are some claims as to who first wrote it. Some thoughts on the authorship and inspiration of it can be found at https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/blogs/evangelical-history/where-did-the-footprints-poem-come-from/ I always liked the story and …
Dreaming Small in a “post-Christendom” World
I am reading through the dissertation of one of my students when I was struck by a quote. She quoted Ed Stetzer who was in turn quoting Douglas John Hall. “Our Lord's metaphors for his community of witness were all of them modest ones: a little salt, a little yeast, a little light. Christendom tried …
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Three Servants: Guiding, Healing, Sustaining
Seward Hiltner was a leading, some would say THE leading, Pastoral Theologian of the 20th Century, serving as a professor at Princeton Theological Seminary. He saw the pastoral function as best understood with the metaphor of the shepherd. A few weeks ago, Ptr. II Samuel spoke on this metaphor of the shepherd. Within the pastoral …
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Meriting Dialogue. Kärkkäinen Quote
"“Dialogue has to be about the question of truth, even if no agreement about the truth can be reached. For consensus is not the goal of the dialogue. . . . If two people say the same thing, one of them is superfluous. In the interfaith dialogue which has to do with what is of vital and absolute …
Truth and Dialogue– Bringing Them Together
David Hesselgrave, in his book "Communicating Christ Cross-culturally," has an interesting figure in Chapter 9 called "The Contextualization Continuum." Here is a version of it. I find the figure interesting in some ways, and even useful. However, there are some aspects of it I disagree with. 1. One part of the figure I disagreed with …