, ,

What Obama should have said

03.28.08 | Permalink | 2 Comments

Even ministers sin.

,

Cheeto Jesus

03.27.08 | Permalink | 9 Comments

It’s Cheesus!

(Hat tip to my fundy plant.)

Papaya!

03.20.08 | Permalink | 4 Comments

So someone last night recommended I change my user name—at work, no less—to “papaya.”

What am I supposed to think of that?

, ,

Four and only four rules for doing church

03.12.08 | Permalink | 9 Comments

I’ve been reading books like Organic Community and Finding Our Way for work. At the same time, the congregation is moving into a looser knit, team-based ministry model (as opposed to a council and committee structure). I’m learning a lot.

It’s a bit chaotic at times. We’re trying to focus on our assets, personal and congregational, instead of needs and deficits. We’re trying to avoid unnecessary structures that only serve to say “no, you can’t do that,” or “we tried that and it didn’t work.” And get rid of the meetings. We’re experimenting a lot, and some things work out and some don’t, which is all good.

There are four rules I’m giving all my teams. (Actually, three, but the fourth occurred to me yesterday during staff meeting.) I think this is all we need to move forward and make the vision we have for the congregation happen.

1. Whatever works. We don’t need consensus. If it’ll get the job done, and someone wants to do it, they get to do whatever seems best at the time. If it’s easy and doesn’t require meetings, all the better. Unless it causes harm, all is permissible.

2. Whatever’s welcoming. Can new people come into this process? Will they feel they’re contributing to it and not just towing the line? Do they need years of congregational history (the “why” behind “we’ve always done it that way”) or will they feel good about jumping right in?

3. Whatever’s sustainable. Not just environmental sustainability, which is an ideal we’re working our way into, but process sustainability. Does the work depend on one person with unique abilities and hours and hours of free time? Can someone come right in and pick up where they left off? And, as far as financial sustainability, will it break the bank?

4. Whatever puts the congregation’s best foot forward. Will newcomers look at it and think, “That’s a pretty cool place to be”? Will it embody the congregation’s highest values and not put its integrity at risk?

,

Garfield minus Garfield

03.11.08 | Permalink | 1 Comment

This makes the classic comic strip so much better.

, , ,

Disciplined openness and the reality of community

02.29.08 | Permalink | 1 Comment

From James Fowler:

Conjunctive faith includes a genuine openness to the truths of traditions and communities other than one’s own. This openness is not to be equated with a relativistic agnosticism (literally, a “not knowing”), however. Rather, it is a disciplined openness to the truths of those who are “other,” based precisely on the experience of a deep and particular commitment to one’s own tradition and the recognition that truth requires a dialectical interplay of such perspectives.

And…

Conjunctive faith combines deep, particular commitments with principled openness to the truths of other traditions. It combines loyalty to one’s own primary communities of value and belief with loyalty to the reality of a community of communities. Persons of conjunctive faith are not likely to be “true believers” in the sense of displaying an undialectical, single-minded, uncritical devotion to a cause or ideology. They will not be protagonists in holy wars. They know that the line between the righteous and the sinner goes through the heart of each of us and our communities, rather than between “us” and “them.”

« Previous Entries
» Next Entries