Notes from the Trail

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The Fearsome Pirate has a  great post about why your community may not be involved in your church… It’s just, well, boring. And trite. And everything you touch is mediocre. If you say you believe in a glorious God, then why is everything produced by your church so humdrum?

…a hugely important thing is that it has to be good. Lutherans are addicted to mediocrity. If you’re going to try to reach out to the community, you have to divest yourself of the notion that the rest of the world is desperate for the kind of mediocrity and triviality that Lutherans offer. The fact is, they get more than enough of that from TV and the American education system. Our entertainment culture completely lacks seriousness already; they’re not impressed by Lutherans exhibiting a much more toned-down frivolity. Heck, even our frivolity is mediocre! The mediocrity culture of Lutheranism prevents depth, and this lack of depth makes conversation impossible. In today’s world, an unbeliever does not come to anything involving Christians because he wants something trite, shallow, and unchallenging!

The Power of Team Leadership: Achieving Success Through Shared Responsibility (Barna Reports)

by George Barna

All I can really say is… “Yawn.”

Barna simply writes too many books. This is probably way too unfair, but anyone who writes as many books as he does simply can’t hit homeruns all the time. This book is simply repetitive and adds nothing to the plethora of resources already available on team leadership. It almost comes to the curb too late. You get the sense that you’ve read it before, and you probably have.

Another distressing Barna characteristic is his omission of source material. I’m sorry, but in this book, there’s not much original.

Read Good to Great and save yourself some time. Then read anything by Aubrey Malphurs.

On the other hand, if you’ve never read anything on team leadership, I’d highly recommend this book. You’ll feel like Barna’s a genius.

See more about The Power of Team Leadership: Achieving Success Through Shared Responsibility (Barna Reports)

Derek over at Waiting in Athens has a powerfully short blog entry related to what excuses we offer to God for not following him. Here they are:

• God hasn’t spoken to me directly. This dangerous excuse has many forms, including: “I’m listening for His voice”, “I’m waiting on Him”, or the ever popular “I’m praying about it”. While the revealing of God’s will is paramount, we so often use this as an “out” to the dream He has for us. If He told us everything about His day-to-day will through Scripture and prayer, what room would there be for faith? Paul, in Acts 16:6-8 tries to go into three different areas to spread the Gospel. He knows that there is a plan for his ministry, but he doesn’t wait around: he acts. The Spirit guides him, and then the dream is made clear to Paul in what we know as the Macedonian call. The point here? Paul realized that inaction is dangerous to the Gospel. Dreams, as long as they fit within scripture as is, do not need to be detailed by God Himself from the very beginning: they are often revealed as you’re walking in the wrong direction.

• I don’t have _____. This is another very dangerous excuse. Fill in the blank with whatever you like: time, resources, people, etc. There are countless examples, both Scriptural and modern, of times when God’s providence has triumphed over the lack of something. It’s often said, and is so very true, that God will provide a way for His will.
• I have _____. This is the flip side of the above. It can be anything from an existing job to a family to feed to some other perceived obligation. Again, God will provide a way for His will.

Which of these do you find yourself trying to use most frequently? How will you resolve to release this as both a lie and an excuse? Why are you afraid of surrendering your life completely to Christ?

Stardust

by Neil Gaiman

I had high hopes for Stardust after Mark Wegley recommended it to me. I don’t know if it was my mood or just my expectations that caused this book to simply fall flat.

I’ll give it credit. I kept turning the pages. I was truly interested in how the story would develop. But it is no epic, and has has left no lasting impression, unfortunately. Alas.

For those interested in a short, easy-to-read fantasy-magic tale, it’s cute.

I think I’ve just gotten spoiled on the broader, character-driven epic series created by Lewis, Tolkien, Martin, Paolini and yes, Rowling.

See more about Stardust

A new site seeks to become the Digg of the Christian blogosphere. Blogs4God.com is an interesting concept, but who has the time?

With that said, I do encourage you to check it out. It may be your cup of tea. The idea is that as you’re surfing and reading Christian blogs, you click on a “bookmarklet” that you save to your bookmarks bar, and that blog entry that encouraged you so much is immediately submitted to blogs4god.com and shows up on their RSS feed. That way, others will see it, and hopefully over time, the entry you submitted will be highly trafficked and encourage the original writer.

There’s a good entry here about how to use blogs4god for your benefit and others.