v3 2016 pastoring is art

4 Steps to Artistic Pastoring

Recently, a designer friend of mine and I started a creative collective called The [un]Commons. Through various conversations and connections, there seemed to be this common desire amongst creatives in our city to have a shared space to process the creative and artistic life, so we created this space as the premier space for this collective desire to be fulfilled, …

How to Practice an Everyday Resurrection

Easter is over. We have celebrated the Resurrection and many of us are back to life as usual. These pivotal days of our faith seem to make little difference in the way we live. It’s More than a Day In the church calendar, Easter is a season, not a day. It extends from Easter Sunday until Pentecost, this year celebrated on …

civil discourse v3 2016

5 Practices for Rediscovering Civil Discourse

It has been a challenging season for me. Every time I write something it seems keyboard warriors are out in force, criticizing, abusing and telling me why I am wrong and they are right. Our Christian society is becoming more polarized, not just around political issues, but over issues of race, immigration, gender and homelessness to name just a few. …

v3_2016_ whom_God_sends

Whom God Sends

Over the last several years, I (and many others) have spent a great deal of time pondering Luke 10:1-12. We have noted how Luke’s context is similar to our own. We have wrestled with how counterintuitive, how countercultural the instructions to the seventy-two “sent ones”—and us—are. The following prayerful ponderation has come out of such dwelling on this text—actually, on …

how_to_spot_an_immature_apostle_v3_2016

How to Spot an Immature Apostle and What To Do About It

This is the first in a series of articles on recognizing immaturity in fivefold ministry and what to do about it. If you have no idea what fivefold ministry is, check out Alan Hirsch’s brief descriptions here, or JR Woodward’s video introduction here. “Gather your top eight to ten leaders,” he said, “and start investing in them. Then they can begin …

encourage_one_another_2016

Let Us Encourage One Another

Murphy’s Law says, “If anything can go wrong it will.” If your doctor’s appointment is for 4:00pm and you have something else at 5:00pm, he or she will be an hour behind. If you’ve decided to go on a ski holiday, it will be the mildest, most snowless winter on record. This is just one reason why we all need …