From the monthly archives:

February 2009

Tony Steward: What Are You Passionate About?

by Rhett Smith on February 27, 2009

What Are You Passionate About? I like all the creative things that different bloggers are doing online to help us connect and get to know others in the online community. I love Rick Smith’s “double popped” interviews and John Saddington’s chats or Friday 5′s, as well as the other creative things bloggers are doing. One [...]

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Helping Your Staff Transition Through Life Stages

by Rhett Smith on February 26, 2009

When I took my first full-time church job I was as 27 year old single college director. When I resigned I was a 33 year old husband and father of a baby girl. I had no idea what that stage or life transition would look like, and it was a tough one to make in [...]

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Lent: The Beginning of a Journey-Do You Participate?

by Rhett Smith on February 25, 2009

Growing up in a non-denominational Bible church as I did, I had no concept of Ash Wednesday. Rather, that was something my Catholic friends did, but not Protestants, and certainly not Evangelical Bible church goers. It was not until about 1999 that I attended my first Ash Wednesday service at a Lutheran Church, where my [...]

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Do You Have A Feedback Loop When You Speak/Preach?

by Rhett Smith on February 24, 2009

I hate being captive in an audience when the people on stage don’t have a feedback loop going with the audience. We’re used to living a two-way life online and expect it when in an audience too. Our expectations of speakers and people on stage have changed, for better or for worse. Robert Scoble I [...]

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Step Into Your Anxiety If You Want To Grow

by Rhett Smith on February 23, 2009

Recently I have been listening to the audio version of the David Snarch’s book Passionate Marriage: Sex, Love, and Intimacy in Emotionally-Committed Relationships. One of the things that he says in the lecture is (and I’m restating in my own words): That in order for a person to grow, they must step into their anxiety.  [...]

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Running & Participating in the Christian Life

by Rhett Smith on February 20, 2009

I absolutely love Eugene Peterson. Few theologians have the combination of brilliant insight and great writing skills like him. In his book, Eat This Book: A Conversation in the Art of Spiritual Reading there is a beautiful passage in there about running. As some of you may know if you follow this blog I have [...]

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What Keeps You Centered?

by Rhett Smith on February 18, 2009

What keeps you centered? This is a question that I have been thinking about a lot.  And it’s a question that I ask a lot of my clients, and my friends. If centered is not the right word for you, how about: grounded, balanced, focused. Anxiety is one of the biggest issues that I usually [...]

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Why I Disconnected Twitter from Facebook

by Rhett Smith on February 16, 2009

it’s official..i have disabled Twitter from my Facebook group..2 very different groups..I wrestled with this for months, but now i did it–12:19 AM Feb 12th from web In the grand scheme of life this decision is about as unimportant as the come…really, it is. But somehow it is something I have been thinking about for [...]

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Depression, Burnout & Ministry: Showing Hospitality

by Rhett Smith on February 13, 2009

This is my 8th and final post in my series on Depression, Burnout & Ministry. There are lots of things I wish I would have written about in this series, and lots more that has been left unsaid. Hopefully this will be an ongoing topic because it is an issue that is so prevalent among [...]

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Depression, Burnout & Ministry: Soren Kierkegaard on Actuality, Freedom and Possibility

by Rhett Smith on February 12, 2009

One of my favorite writers, thinkers, philosophers, theologians, psychologists is Soren Kierkegaard. Ever since reading Fear and Trembling when I was 22 he has continued to profoundly shape my life and thinking. So it is not surprising that in the book Depression and Hope by Howard W. Stone, that it is Kierkegaard that has something [...]

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