Sooner or later you make a choice. Do you think you’re the center of the world, or can you give those around you the benefit of the doubt, imagine sympathetically the challenges they may face, and emphasize and identify with them rather than see them as opponents or obstacles? I know that sounds like an easy choice, but as David Foster Wallace says, we are faced with this choice on numerous occasion nearly every day of our lives, and all too often we settle for the default setting where we assume our challenges are greater than those faced by others, our frustrations more valid and vexing, our excuses more understandable, our priorities...

Today is Ascension Day. Truth be told, even though I did a podcast about preaching on Ascension Day two weeks ago, I almost forgot that. In fact, if I hadn’t called my parents today and heard them mention the Ascension Day retired pastors’ luncheon they’d gone to earlier, I’m pretty sure I would have forgotten about it all together. Ascension Day is one of the more overlooked holidays of the Christian calendar. It doesn’t fall on a Sunday; there are no disciplines of preparation ahead of time or rites of celebration on the day to usher it in. Fewer and fewer churches remember it, let alone hold Thursday services. It’s no...

“Kids don’t learn from people they don’t like.” This is just one of Rita Pierson’s statements that is funny, insightful, and right on the target. She was responding to a colleague’s comment that, “They don’t pay me to like kids; they pay me to teach the kids. I teach; they should learn. Case closed.” Except, as Rita explained, “Kids don’t learn from people they don’t like.” At the core of Rita’s educational and pedagogical philosophy is one simple but powerful conviction: education is about connection. It’s hard to learn if you don’t feel connected. Which means that kids don’t just need a teacher, they...

I’ve been struck recently – recently as in the last 10 years or so! – by how frequently I hear people (and especially people in the church) name the challenges in front of us “problems.” We have a problem in church attendance. Biblical illiteracy is the problem. The problem is that people have a poor understanding of stewardship. Etc. I understand this urge. Faced with a challenge – and even more a challenge that has at its heart a threat – we tend to turn to our problem solving skills. That makes sense: we are, I believe, by evolutionary disposition and experience very capable problem-solvers. (Evolution definitely favors the...