Caesar Agustus, a close personal friend of Herod was quoted as saying, “I’d rather be Herod’s pig than his son.”
The truth is, being a pig in Herod’s household would’ve been much safer than being a family member.
He killed his favorite wife, Mariamne (he had 10 wives), because he suspected… Read More
Insecurity is a carnival mirror…
It paints a false picture—a jaded one.
It exaggerates and amplifies the negative.
It attacks your sense of belonging and worth.
Insecurity makes you feel small and your problems insurmountable.
Consider these… Read More
Louise is a new friend of mine. She loves to read and travel, so we pretty much “get” each other. The other day, Louise shared a comment on my blog – actually, it was a list. She wasn’t giving me a to-do list; she was sharing hers.
Here’s what Louise said…
This will keep me busy for the rest of my life… Read More
A few days ago, I was asked this question online: “How would you define success as a pastor?”
Before I could respond with a positive answer, my brain first went to all the things I would NOT define as success for a pastor (like celebrity status, number of church campuses, number of attendees, book on the NY Times Bestseller list, having a conferences for other pastors so I can tell them what they should be doing and how they should be doing it, building mega-campuses, being on TV, getting invited to preach around the world, driving a Bentley, etc.).
When I was done eliminating what success is NOT, I started thinking about the essence of what it IS to me.
What I came up with isn’t exhaustive – but it is the core of who I want to be and what I want to be known for as a pastor.
Here’s my reply… Read More
On Today’s Sunday Shout Outs, I’m sharing four posts that are really good and worth reading. I hope you will…
This post, I Raise My Hands: A Prayerful Response To Ferguson, by Osheta Moore. Here’s my favorite line: “Today, I raise my hands because the truth is black lives matter and black kids don’t have to be college-bound for their deaths to… Read More
One of my all-time favorite movies is 1986′s The Mission starring Jeremy Irons, Robert De Niro, and Liam Neeson. The soundtrack, by Ennio Morricone is haunting and beautiful.
Rodrigo Mendoza (Robert De Niro) is a former slave trader seeking atonement for the sin of killing his younger… Read More
The picture above is of the flowering cereus that blooms at night. The flowers are short lived, and some of these species bloom only once a year—for a single night.
The following are quotes from Richard Rohr‘s book Falling Upward…
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Our daily experience of this world is almost nothing like Plato’s world of universal and perfect forms and ideas; it is always filled with huge diversity, and variations on every theme from neutrino light inside of darkness, to male seahorses that bear their young, to the most extraordinary flowers that only open at night for no one to see.
Jesus had no trouble with the exceptions, whether they were… Read More
I wouldn’t even mind if you read these three posts (they’re not mind). Actually, I’d love for you to read them. And I kinda think you will love reading them. Um, what are you waiting for???!!?!
This post, A Few Things I’ve Learned As A Christian Outsider, by Benjamin Corey. Here’s a brief sample: “Theological labels have a way of making us crazy– we allow them to define us, give us identity, give our lives meaning, and all kind of other things that ultimately take the place I’ve learned only Jesus can fill.”
In Frederick Buechner‘s book Telling The Truth – The Gospel as Tragedy, Comedy, and Fairy Tale, he briefly describes a few people sitting in those pews on a Sunday morning…
“In the front pews the old ladies turn up their hearing aids, and a young lady slips her six year old a Lifesaver and a Magic Marker. A college sophomore home for vacation, who is there because he was dragged there, slumps forward with his chin in his hand. The vice-president of a bank who twice that week has seriously contemplated suicide places his hymnal in the rack.
A pregnant girl feels the life stir inside her.
A high-school math teacher, who for twenty years has managed to keep his homosexuality a secret… Read More
First, let me start with something light and funny.
I received the following e-mail from Andy Jones the other day:
“Working on some Celebrate Recovery stuff and came across these self evaluation questions…
Have you exaggerated yourself to make yourself look better? In what areas of your past have you used false humility?
Hahahahahahahahahaha
All pastors.”
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Richard Rohr, in his book Falling Upward, talks about the need to do “shadow work.” The following are quotes from chapter 11 – The Shadowlands…
Your shadow self… gradually detaches you from your not-so-bright persona (meaning “stage mask” in Greek) that you so diligently constructed in the first half of life.
Your stage mask is not bad, evil, or necessarily egocentric; it is just not “true.”
It is manufactured and sustained unconsciously by your mind; but it can and will die, as all fictions must die.
Persona and shadow are correlative terms.
Your shadow is what you refuse to see about yourself, and what you do not want others to see.
The more you have cultivated and protected a chosen persona, the more shadow… Read More
