Some interesting articles on my feed reeder this week. Really good stuff out there.
The 10 Best Writing Notebooks to Capture Your Creative Thoughts
I really like the old pencil and paper method when it comes to things, especially creative acts. I also still use a notebook and a fountain pen when I journal thoughts from scripture or prayer or ideas for writing. Tentblogger has a post laying out the 1o best notebooks to use when you are trying to be creative. Good stuff.
Women and Reading Passages Honestly
One of the biggest issues facing the church right now, other than homosexuality and immigration, is the role of women in the church. Scot McKnight has a post up discussing an article by David C. Cramer, a doctoral student in Religion at Baylor University with an emphasis in theological ethics. McKnight notes, “His article, ‘Creating a Culture of Equality as Witness to the Truth: A Philosophical Response to Gender Difference,’ was a finalist for the student paper competition at the 2009 CBE conference in St. Louis and was published in the Summer 2010 issue of Priscilla Papers (24.3). He has a forthcoming article in Priscilla Papers in which he further assesses the illogic of hierarchical arguments.”
This is an interesting article wondering if people denying the women’s right to serve as pastor are reading the passages from Paul logically and honesty. It’s a very interesting article and I would love your thoughts on it.
How-To Increase Your Church Facebook Traffic
Church Mag offers a post on seven ways to increase your Facebook traffic
Ur Video: Chandler vs. Furtick
Are seeker churches shallow? Are Reformed pastors doctrine snobs? Two young church leaders voice their differences.
Everyone in pastoral ministry has a bias. Some of us prefer deep doctrinal teaching. Others value ministry that is practical and immediately applicable. Others are all about reaching those far from God. And while there is nothing wrong with those different approaches, let’s be honest–many of us hold judgments and feed stereotypes about ministers in other camps.
In this video from The Elephant Room event featuring Matt Chandler and Steven Furtick, they openly admit their judgments about each others’ ministries. The tension is evident, but the honesty is refreshing.
Chandler and Furtick from Harvest Bible Chapel on Vimeo.
When Entitlement Meets Unemployment
Andrew McAfee is principal research scientist at the Center for Digital Business in the MIT Sloan School of Management. He is the author of Enterprise 2.0. He has a blog post on the entitlement mentality of millennials as they look for work. The unemployment rate for the millennials is over 18%. He has also seen that over one-third of undergraduates these days show no significant gains after four years in vital skills like critical thinking and written communication. So he gives advise to millennials looking for work.
The warning signs of defending the status quo
My guess is that if you are in a church, you’ve seen these. Note them the next time you being talking about new idea. This could prep you for coming confrontation!
When confronted with a new idea, do you:
- Consider the cost of switching before you consider the benefits?
- Highlight the pain to a few instead of the benefits for the many?
- Exaggerate how good things are now in order to reduce your fear of change?
- Undercut the credibility, authority or experience of people behind the change?
- Grab onto the rare thing that could go wrong instead of amplifying the likely thing that will go right?
- Focus on short-term costs instead of long-term benefits, because the short-term is more vivid for you?
- Fight to retain benefits and status earned only through tenure and longevity?
- Embrace an instinct to accept consistent ongoing costs instead of swallowing a one-time expense?
- Slow implementation and decision making down instead of speeding it up?
- Embrace sunk costs?
- Imagine that your competition is going to be as afraid of change as you are? Even the competition that hasn’t entered the market yet and has nothing to lose…
- Emphasize emergency preparation at the expense of a chronic and degenerative condition?
- Compare the best of what you have now with the possible worst of what a change might bring?
Calling it out when you see it might give your team the strength to make a leap.