Serving as a Family

I made the decision long ago to serve the youth as a family, rather than to serve the youth with a family.

Looks like I wasn't the only one.

Andrew Jones, Tall Skinny Kiwi, recently posted this as a major game changer in his life:

BONUS GAME CHANGER: To minister as a family instead of a trying to minister as a man with a family. My kids and my wife, and even our dog, are all an integral part of what God has called us to do. That game changer has been great for all of us and has opened up more doors than you could imagine.

Naked Religion

I haven't read Richard Rohr's The Naked Now, but after reading this excerpt posted by Zach of Jimmy Eat World, I'm tempted to.

If certitude, predictability, and perfect order were so important, Jesus would have come in a time of digital recorders and cameras, and he would have at least written his ideas down somewhere–and more clearly! He would have described his task as the establishing of archives instead of a sprawling banquet of rich food and wine, as he consistently did. He said, “I have come that you might have life, and a very abundant life at that” (John 10:10). How did we ever get correct rational ideas confused with an abundant life? This happens perhaps to folks who are unwilling to let got of their attachment to their images of themselves, the world, and God. They will not let go of their attachments for a living relationship. “The old wine is good enough,” they say (Luke 5:39), and so they miss out on the great banquet that all the mystics, the prophets, and Jesus describe.

Surely God does not exist so that we can think correctly about Him — or Her. Amazingly and wonderfully, like all good parents, God desires instead the flourishing of what God created and what God loves — us ourselves. Ironically, we flourish more by learning from our mistakes and changing than by a straight course that teaches us nothing.