I am spending a lot of time in the Rockies of late. Last week it was several days with pastors in one of the Denver metro conferences of the Rocky Mountain Synod on retreat to talk about preaching in a changed and changing world. This week I am visiting with pastors of the Alberta Synod of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in Canada to discuss similar issues. With both groups the question has come up regarding how we might view and speak about our current situation not just as a problem – that is, defining it wholly in the terms of numerical decline – but also as an opportunity. One set of conversations has been particularly interesting to...

I don’t have a lot to say about the following poem. Sometimes that’s the only fit response when you encounter sheer wisdom. There is nothing say, just a great deal to ponder. William Martin’s counsel isn’t only for parents to children, I believe, but for all of us. For how can we give or ask for that which we haven’t experienced ourselves. And so before we can invite our children to see the extraordinary in the ordinary, we ourselves need to practice that discipline. A meal cooked by a friend. The quiet fidelity of a spouse. A warm fire to banish for a moment the chill of winter. A good book. A shoulder to cry on. A hand to...

This is another fantastic commercial that represents an emerging approach to advertising that seeks to empower its audience. It’s something of a counter-cultural approach in that most of advertising for nearly the last century has been dominated by what Jonah Sachs calls “inadequacy marketing.” Such marketing seeks to create in you a sense of lack – the belief that you do not have enough, even that you are not enough – in order to promise you that if you purchase the product being advertised you will not experience that sense of lack any longer. In his wonderful book, Winning the Story Wars, Sachs describes the history of this...