I’ve long been aware of a problem in Christian leadership circles: that it is far too easy for Christian organizations to maintain the status quo, to simply try and maintain equilibrium, to ignore a problem, to turn a blind eye from the evidence that has made clear that the organization is faltering. It’s why the…
January days are short, and evenings draw in quickly. After the bright sparkle of the Christmas season and the New Year’s fireworks, quiet winter settles around us with its early shadows and dark nights as we shift back to routine and daily life. This feels fitting. After the vibrant storytelling of the nativity, Love Incarnate,…
Winter may not be my favourite season, but I do appreciate much of its unique beauty. In the summer I’m often awake early, waiting for the robin’s song to announce sunrise. But in the winter’s darkness I need an alarm clock to rouse me from hibernation. Bleary-eyed, I follow the aroma of fresh coffee into…
January brings bright, cold days when the whole world can feel like a fresh, clean start, the new year a possible paradise. Historically, paradise framed the Christian understanding of time. It was the beginning of human life in creation and also the longed-for perfect end of time. We started in a verdant, Edenic situation and…
The title character of the British comedy-drama Doc Martin is a successful vascular surgeon in London whose career is derailed because he develops hemophobia, an extreme irrational fear of blood. He is forced to take up a humbler vocation as a village General Practitioner in the fictional seaside Cornish village of Portwenn (Port Isaac). Until…
I was a voracious reader as a kid. I wasn’t stuck on a particular genre, but if the story became too intense or lagged on long, I’d skip over the chapters and catch the ending. I welcomed spoilers. Later, as a young adult in college, my friends and I would commiserate over the fact that…
In the Bible, Matthew 25 is a parable about a kind of investment banker who, before leaving on a long trip, distributes eight bags of gold among three of his employees. The first employee gets five bags of gold, the second gets two bags, and the third employee gets just one bag of gold. When…
Change.Are you excited or frightened? Is it a command, a request, a statement? Do you see it as external or internal? In the changing of the year, we reflect on change “for auld lang syne.” Time, by definition, changes, and studies suggest the pace of change is increasing. There is economic change, social change, political…
Pain does crazy things to your life. It can bring the toughest person beyond their breaking point.
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