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...

Describing Christian ministry as “relational” is not new. Since at least the 1970s, church leaders and authors have been inviting us to more relational ministry. But what kind of relationship did this paradigm assume? That’s the very important question that Andrew Root asks at the outset of his new book, The Relational Pastor: Sharing in Christ by Sharing Ourselves. [A quick but important disclosure: Andy is a colleague and good friend, and we’ve discussed many of the elements of the book while running together through our neighborhood. So I’m more than a little predisposed to recommend his book. Nevertheless, I really do think...

I found the following TED Talk fascinating because it deals with one of the most important topics in the world: education. How do we, that is, prepare an emerging generation to face the challenges that lie ahead, noting that the challenges we know about – global warming, scarce resources, overpopulation – are gargantuan and that there are tons more we can’t even imagine. But it’s not just the emerging generation. How do we educate ourselves? How do we keep learning in an economy where people are likely to change trades – not just particular jobs but trades and professions – six or seven times in a lifetime? Anant Agarwal is a...