Okay, so this isn’t a professional presentation by any means. But just wanted to give you a look in less than 90 seconds at the Amazon Kindle I got for Father’s Day.
And what I can’t convey by video, just let me say it’s amazing. It looks like I’m reading a real book, and feels like one too. Looking forward to downsizing my physical library and adding more books to the Kindle.
Alan Hirsch has a great article in Leadership Journal on what he considers to be the fivefold ministry in leadership, Three Over-looked Leadership Roles.
Hirsch’s main argument is that if we look at church leadership from Ephesians 4:11 we see five different leadership roles (apostles, prophets, evangelists, shepherds and teachers, but that the Church for too long has only focused on teachers and shepherds at the exclusion of the others. Hirsch says:
While at South, I was invited to lead a revitalization movement within my denomination—the fourth largest Protestant denomination in Australia. Seeing things from this higher altitude, I recognized that South was not the only church facing a crisis. My entire denomination needed to shift toward a missional culture if it was to grow and survive. But how?
We needed a new type of leadership, one with the courage to question the status quo, to dream of new possibilities, and to innovate new ways of being the people of God in a post-Christian culture. We needed missionaries to the West, but our seminaries were not producing them. If we take the five categories of church leadership from Ephesians 4:11, they were training leaders to be teachers and pastors for established congregations, but where were the evangelists, the prophets, and the apostles to lead the mission of the gospel into the world?
Apostles, Prophets, Evangelists, Shepherds, and Teachers—I refer to these together as APEST. But when I looked at my church and most others, I saw congregations dominated by leaders who were shepherds and teachers. What happened to the other leadership types?
Hirsch points towards much more of a collaborative team effort than what is seen in many churches where there is one pastor (head pastor, preaching pastor, exec. pastor, etc.) who makes all the decisions, or there is a very limited group in the decision making process. With a more diverse and collaborative team effort there is an increase in tension which brings fruition the best of all the leadership roles, rather than excluding some to the detriment of others.
I’ve really been interested in the topic of stay at home dads, or fathers who are the primary caregivers, and at the least are co-nurterers. And now that we are in transition to a new state and new jobs, I’ve currently finished up my job and am home full-time so I’ve been thinking about this even more. Last year, when my wife and I had our first baby we had to re-work our work schedules in some drastic ways. We did this for a few reasons:
I’ve been exposed to a lot of things that have really challenged my views on the makeup of the traditional family (i.e. the Bible, M.Div, MFT, marriage, reading, experience, counseling couples, etc.) recently. One of the books that I have found particularly challenging and helpful is Families at the Crossroads: Beyond Traditional & Modern Options by Rodney Clapp. I’m currently re-reading the book and will be sharing some thoughts with you, as well as hoping to get some feedback. But the Amazon review summarizes it nicely by saying:
“Scant decades ago most Westerners agreed that . . . Lifelong monogamy was ideal . . . Mothers should stay home with children . . . premarital sex was to be discouraged . . . Heterosexuality was the unquestioned norm . . . popular culture should not corrupt children. Today not a single one of these expectations is uncontroversial.” So writes Rodney Clapp in assessing the status of the family in postmodern Western society.In response many evangelicals have been quick to defend the so-called traditional family, assuming that it exemplifies the biblical model. Clapp challenges that assumption, arguing that the “traditional” family is a reflection more of the nineteenth-century middle-class family than of any family one can find in Scripture. At the same time, he recognizes that many modern and postmodern options are not acceptable to Christians. Returning to the biblical story afresh to see what it might say to us in the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries, Clapp articulates a challenge to both sides of a critical debate.A book to help us rethink the significance of the family for the next century.
I know plenty of fathers who are stay at home dads currently. Some are in graduate school, so their wives work full-time. So they pull double duty as student and father and the wife pulls double duty as “breadwinner” and mother. Some fathers I know are married to women who make more money, so they have decided that the father would stay home instead. Others is a conscious decision to divide the caretaking responsibilities between them. Some fathers I know work from home and have flexible schedules, so they stay at home, and raise the children while they work.
I am going to continue this series in the upcoming weeks, but let me ask a question:
Are you a stay at home dad? What went behind that decision?
Vanity Fair magazine has a good story on the invention of the internet, Inventing the Internet, An Oral History. You have to buy the magazine to get the full-version, but browse through the online article to get a snapshot of some of the key figures past and present.
Despite some of the bad press recently regarding Twitter, I still must say that I absolutely love it. Sure there are days when things take way too long to load, or they don’t load at all. But despite all that, Twitter is still the first site that I log onto when I get on the internet in the morning. What other site is going to instantly bring me up to date with what everyone in my network (friends, family, co-workers, etc) is doing?
For a great step by step primer on Twitter, check out Matt Singley’s post.
Check out Twitter in Plain English series below:
Those are some great resources on Twitter. And in fact, lots of people are writing about Twitter so it’s not hard to find online some effective ways to use it. So what I want to focus on in this post is just a few ways how you can effectively use Twitter in your ministry…or as I say above, how it can catalyze your ministry.
Three Reasons to Use Twitter in Your Ministry Continue Reading…
It was about six months ago when I announced my resignation to the staff and students at Bel Air Presbyterian Church and The Quest, and now the day has finally arrived. I’m sitting at my desk for the last time as the college director and it’s a bittersweet feeling. I’m super excited about the next step in the journey for my family and I, but I am also leaving behind a lot of great friendships, and a work place that was as much family as it was co-workers.
So I just want to thank all the students and staff who have really made an impact on my life the last seven years. The students I came across where as much an influence in my life as I was in theirs, and I’m thankful for that.
My family and I are preparing for a move to Dallas, TX (hopefully by mid-summer; I know, bad time to leave the beaches and head to TX), and we are excited about the new opportunities that await us. It’s definitely a new adventure for us, and we are particularly happy about moving closer to family, as well as living in a more affordable city that will helpfully allow us to keep our priorities organized, work schedules, etc. in a manner that keeps family first.
As some of you know I will be working full-time at the Pastoral Counseling Education Center in Dallas, pursuing my state licensure for Marriage and Family Therapy, which is something I have been wanting to do for a while. I love the intersection of marriage, family, theology, pastoral counseling, etc, and this should be a good place to do that.
I will also be working at a church part-time in Dallas, working in the area of social media and ministry, which is something I am super, super excited about. I will fill you in on more details about this later as my job description gets cemented.
And last, I hope to continue to connect with a lot of ministry tech people out there which I have already been doing, because I’m passionate about the blend of new social technology in the Church. And Dallas seems to be a great place to do this.
Please keep us in your prayers during this time. And I hope that before we leave town we can get together and hang out.
So I don’t need anymore books at this point in my life, but I have a store credit of $352 at one of the best new and used Christian book stores around. If you are looking for really great theological books, then Archives in Pasadena, CA is the place for you. And if you don’t leave near Pasadena, then you can buy the books online.
So, I’m selling the $352 store credit for $275 if anyone is interested. Just let me know.
Scott McClellan of Collide Magazine has an excerpt of an interview/article with Craig Detweiler on the the state of seminary, Culture and Seminary. In what I read so far, Craig brings up some interesting points.
COLLIDE: It seems to me that the majority of seminaries spend the majority of their students’ time focusing on 1st-century culture. Is there going to be a shift toward incorporating 21st-century culture as well? Or is that ahead of its time?
Detweiler: No, that’s the right question. Seminaries were created in an era where ministers were prepared to have the most information. The ministers were supposed to be the most educated and the most informed about the Scriptures.
COLLIDE: The most literate maybe?
Detweiler: The most literate. And none of that has necessarily changed, but we’re now dealing with an age of too much information. And so, the job is to help people sort through all of the inputs to find out what matters amongst the avalanche of information. It’s about pointing people to reliable sources, pointing people to credible interpretations, inviting people into ongoing dialogue with their friends, neighbors, and coworkers around the pop cultural expressions. So, it’s moving the seminary education from pastor as most informed to pastor as most insightful because people no longer have an information problem. It’s not about lack of information. It’s about lack of discernment. Information is available to all. Wisdom and discernment remain rarer than ever.
COLLIDE: So, is that change going happen at seminaries anytime soon?
Detweiler: The best seminaries for the 21st century will be born in the 21st century.
Question: Will pastors be threatened, or are they threatened by the available information to the laity, information that was once privy to them through all their education and study?
This short 7 minute video with Charlene Li and Josh Bernoff, authors of Groundswell: Winning in a World Transformed by Social Technologies is insightful.
I tend to filter social technologies through the lens of church and ministry, and I think they say some key things. Paraphrasing them:
Check out the video:
When it comes to Facebook I’m definitely an evangelist, but it wasn’t always that way. I was one of those pastors who was somewhat fearful of online social technology. I was an early adopter in some ways, but when it came to working with college students I was definitely a late adopter to MySpace (my students had been on for more than a year), and I was also a late adopter to Facebook (my students had been on it for over a year as well).
By the time I got the nerve up to put us on MySpace, my students had already left it and were living online on Facebook. I still remember the Wednesday night in the Spring of 2006 when one of my student leaders got up to make an announcement at the end of the night. He announced how he had created our Quest Bel Air Global Facebook page, and I was thinking to myself, “What does that all mean?”, while I could hear the cheers from the audience as if saying, “Finally!”
Ever since then I have been a big fan and it has revolutionized communication in our ministry. And yet, there is more we could be doing with it, I just haven’t had the time and figured out the best ways yet.
So I have some thoughts, but I would also like to hear from you, and see if we can find out some even more effective ways.
Continue Reading…
I'm a Licensed Marriage and Family Therapist (MDiv, MSMFT, LMFT), and co-facilitate marriage intensives. I also love to write, speak, and run.
Author of The Anxious Christian which is tentatively slated to be published by Moody Publishers on March 1, 2012.
To schedule a counseling appointment contact Auxano Counseling at 972-312-8893.
