“But you, O Lord, are a shield around me; you are my glory, the one who holds my head high.” (Psalm 3:3, NLT) Any time I would get down or discouraged when I was a kid my dad used to tell me to keep my chin up. I understood the metaphor and interpreted it as…
Month: March 2021
My (un)Biased Thinking
My friend Matt recently shared a podcast series titled Learning to See, produced by the Center for Action and Contemplation and hosted by Brian McLaren, Richard Rohr, and Jacqui Lewis. This series suggests 13 different biases that we can have, each serving as a lens through which we view the Bible, culture and current events….
More Like King Saul?
There would be little dispute that the most familiar Old Testament Bible story is the epic battle between David and Goliath. Sunday School teachers, Sunday morning preachers, high school coaches, and a host of others have leaned into this passage to describe how strength is overcome by weakness, evil surrenders to good, and big is…
A Church Called Tov: part 3
McKnight and Barringer spend one half of their book discussing what Tov is not. Part 2 of A Church Called Tov outlines seven habits of goodness that shift and shape a healthy culture of goodness in a church. Tov Churches Nurture Empathy. Citing the authors, “Empathy is the ability to feel what someone else feels,…
Impressing Solomon
About a year ago I came across a portion of Ecclesiastes that I found to be striking. I hadn’t noticed it before, but it was a game changer. If you take Solomon as the writer of Ecclesiastes, you’ll recognize him as renown for his exceptional wisdom. He was so wise, kings from around the region…
The Gift of Pre-Planned Funerals
(If you’re not a Pastor, the majority of this article can still be beneficial to you! Just skip the first and last paragraphs, and you’ll get to the core importance, which is your need to pre-plan your funeral!) As Pastors, we often try to stay out of the personal affairs of our congregants, especially when…
A Church Called Tov: part 2
Narcissism and power through fear are the entry points for toxic and dysfunctional church culture. When these are active in a church, the soil becomes fertile for increasing levels and variants of dysfunction. Let’s unpack those observations from McKnight and Barringer. The first step toward dysfunction is narcissism, a personality disorder that couples self love…
A Church Called Tov
Those of you who know me will be aware of my appreciation for Scot McKnight as a New Testament scholar and author. His commentaries and monographs are prominently displayed on my library shelves with respect and admiration. His latest work, co authored with his daughter Laura Barringer, is his most prophetic work to date. A…
A Checklist for Humility
As you can note from my reading list, I have included a book that is a compilation of men and women from antiquity who have written on the subject of spiritual formation. We have Richard Foster and James Bryan Smith to thank for sifting through thousands of pages to produce a work that I use…
