Church, Culture, Book Reviews
John Beeson
The Long Journey of Self-Knowledge in a Culture ...

“We are currently experiencing the largest and fastest religious shift in US history. It is greater than the First and Second Great Awakening and every revival in our country combined...but in the opposite direction.” This is the conclusion of the largest and most comprehensive study of dechurching in America by sociologists Ryan Burge and Paul Djupe. In The Great DeChurching, pastors Jim Davis and Michael Graham unpack why and how over the past twenty-five years, forty million of those who formerly attended church no longer do so.

The Long Journey of Self-Knowledge in a Culture of Confusion
Christian Living, Prayer
John Beeson
The Air Raid Siren

Jerusalem, Israel

3:15 am, April 13

 

I sat up in bed to a wailing sound I had never heard before, but knew immediately: an air raid siren. Our building rattled to the booms of interceptors from Israel’s missile defense system hitting their inbound targets. I pulled back the curtains and watched as sprays of light streaked the sky.

 Iran launched 170 drones, 20 cruise missiles, and 120 ballistic missiles at Israel in retaliation for Israel’s purported attack on an Iranian embassy in Syria.

The Air Raid Siren
Christian Living, Nature
John Beeson
The Ground Where Saguaros Thrive

Nothing is more iconic to the Tucson landscape than the saguaro. The emblematic cactus is to the Sonoran Desert what the palm tree is to Miami: hard to imagine without it. Saguaros typically live between one hundred and fifty to one hundred and seventy-five years, not sprouting its trademark arms until around thirty to seventy years of its life and growing to around fifty feet tall.

For those Sonoran Desert natives, we intuitively know where saguaros thrive. They love the rocky (both granite and volcanic) soil at the foothills of the five beautiful mountain ranges that surround Tucson.

The Ground Where Saguaros Thrive
Leadership, Wisdom, Vocation
John Beeson
Anger, Retaliation, and My Scion xB

I drove a little manual 2005 Scion xB for about eight years. It finally gave out after 230,000 miles. I loved that little car. It was fuel-efficient and required minimal maintenance. But it is undeniably close to the least powerful car on the road. I’m pretty sure that on its specs, next to 0-60mph, it says, “Eventually!”

Unless I was lined up against someone from a nearby retirement community, I was the last car to reach the speed limit coming off a stoplight. Unsurprisingly, more aggressive drivers with more powerful vehicles tended to treat my little Scion like a safety cone on the road, more like an obstacle than a fellow traveler.

Anger, Retaliation, and My Scion xB
Family, Leadership, Parenting, Marriage
John Beeson
The Top Ten Ways to Lead in Your Home (and ...

In the past post we considered the biblical priority of leading in our homes before stepping into leadership callings outside of our home.

When I was asked to speak to our Mom’s Matter group on leading well in the home I was a bit intimidated. I felt far from equipped to speak as a man to women on the topic of leadership. And so, I did the only thing I could think of: I asked wise, godly women who were also great leaders. Starting with my wife, I began to listen to the advice my female friends offered on leadership in the home and beyond.

The Top Ten Ways to Lead in Your Home (and Organization, Too!)

fostering

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Injustice: The Gratitude Snatcher

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Injustice: The Gratitude Snatcher

I pray you had a blessed Thanksgiving. I hope your heart entered into this past week with a spirit of gratitude and that your time with friends, family, and God only heightened that gratitude.

No one wants to walk in ingratitude, and yet gratitude can be so quickly snatched from us.

What destroys thanksgiving? There are many threats: envy, pride, and selfishness. But one sneaky snatcher of gratitude is injustice. When the earth quake with injustice, its tremors rattle our hearts and our trust.

When we experience injustice, questions swirl: Why would God allow this wrong to happen? Doesn’t God care about me? Won’t the wrongdoer be punished? Won’t the victim receive restitution?

Our hearts cry out: but why God? When the solid ground beneath us breaks in the earthquake of injustice, we can be left feeling uncertain, shaken, and fearful. In this broken soil, gratitude can slip away.

When the people of Nineveh repent and God forgives them, Jonah is dismayed. How could a just God let the Ninevites off the hook? They were a city of “unceasing evil” (Nah. 3:19), filled with violence, cruelty, sexual debauchery, and idolatry. Jonah is indignant.

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Forgiving Like a Child

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Forgiving Like a Child

A transformation happened nearly every night we put our sweet foster boy down for bed. Minutes after the cherubic toddler was happily reading books with me, and seconds after he sweetly swayed in my arms as I sang to him, he transformed. The moment of metamorphosis occurred as I placed him in his crib. He would roll over and, with big tears rolling down his fat cheeks, wail. As I left the room and closed the door, he would stand in the crib, looking at me with pleading eyes. “How could you abandon me?” his eyes would ask.

The sun would set, the moon would rise and set, and the sun would rise again. I open his door to find him sleeping. I turn off the sound machine and open the window shade. He hikes up his cute bottom in the air, rolls over, pulls himself up, and greets me with the biggest smile you’ve ever seen. I smile back and he giggles.

Forgiven.

Fast forward several hours, and a couple sits on my couch in my office. He can’t move past the fact that she won’t make love to him. She can’t move past the fact she caught him watching porn.[i]

Not forgiven.

The claws of unforgiveness are sharp and relentless.

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What Our Two-Year-Old Foster Child Taught Me About Care

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What Our Two-Year-Old Foster Child Taught Me About Care

With our daughter’s recent graduation, I’ve been thinking a lot about parenting and was reminded of this post that I wrote several years ago. I hope it’s helpful to you.

Valentijn was hand-in-hand with the Department of Childhood Services worker. Chubby Romeo snuggled in the crook of her arm. The aid had just driven the boys from the shelter, where they had spent three weeks. Cute roly-poly Romeo was ten months old at the time and well adjusted. It was two-year old Valentijn who had been impacted the most significantly. This was the third time Valentijn had been removed from his home. He was affectionate but fragile and without boundaries.

As the Department of Childcare Services Specialist filled out the transfer paperwork to make our foster care official, Valentijn sat on my lap and pulled out the decorative pine cones from the bowl on the table and chucked them to the ground, one by one.

Not knowing what it looked like to love and discipline him well, I sat there, frozen, and let him disassemble my wife’s handiwork. From that first moment, I knew parenting these two would prove to be a much different task than raising our two biological children.

Our first nights with the boys were a disaster. Accustomed to the environment of the shelter, Valentijn wanted the lights on and woke up often through the night. Learning how to put Valentijn to bed over the next months provided a crash course in how to care well. Learning how to care for this traumatized boy was a steep curve.

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This Week's Recommendations

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This Week's Recommendations

1. The Day My Foster Son Leaned into Me: Russ Meek shares the moment his three-year-old foster son began to trust him. He shares, "Andrew won’t remember this moment, and God willing his body will forget the scarring on his heart. But for these past three years he has carried the trauma. Tense, unwilling to relax even for a moment, and constantly on high alert, he’s carried in his body the wounds of abandonment, of exposure to places and things no child should see, and of the absence of a person to help him navigate this world wrought with danger and the unknown."

2. 5 COVID-19 Problems that Have Gotten Worse for Pastors: Aaron Earls begins with this stat about disunity, “In April, 8% of pastors said they were facing disagreement and complaints within their congregation. By July, that number had jumped to 27%.” The rest of the stats are just as discouraging.

3. Pastor, Don't Imply That Church is Optional: Trevin Wax with wise counsel for pastors. He shares, "When I was a student in Romania, American evangelists would come and preach, and they’d sometimes say things like, “I’m calling you to trust in Jesus, not to become part of the church.” The translators would always change that last part."

4. 7 Lies the Church Believes About Singleness: One of the most thoughtful writers on this subject, Sam Allberry offers his wisdom on the subject. His third misconception is that "Singleness means no intimacy." He explains, "Our culture (and often the church) has so conflated sex and intimacy that we find it hard to conceive of any forms of intimacy that are not ultimately about sex."

5. Explore the Alps: Stop what you're doing and immerse yourself in three minutes of God's glory.

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The Tears of Success

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The Tears of Success

In class, philosopher Cornell West once said that every story that has ever been told is either a tragedy, a story with a sorrowful ending, a comedy, a story with a happy ending, or a tragicomedy, a story with elements of both. The tragicomedy, West said, is the most difficult story to tell, but it is the most powerful.

Angel Mateo was 17 months old when he entered our lives. We were his first non-family placement, but his fourth placement in four months. He had been shipped from one family member to another until none were left. We expected a traumatized child to arrive at our front door. But Angel Mateo had almost no signs of trauma. He slept like a rock, met every strange new face with poise, and greeted every ball he saw with an enthusiastic “BALL!” as though it was the first time he had encountered this spherical admixture of magic and fun. Joy exuded through every pore of this boy.

We fell in love.

One of the beautiful things about fostering is that you learn to love the other. When you look at your own child in your arms, you can be captivated by the ways this being reflects yourself back at you. There is a powerful beauty in beholding oneself in another.

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Forgiveness Like a Child

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Forgiveness Like a Child

Most every night a transformation happens right as our put our 20-month-old foster boy down to bed. Minutes after he is happily reading books with me and seconds after he is sweetly swaying in my arms as I sing to him, he transforms. The moment happens as I place him in his crib. He rolls over and, with big tears rolling down his fat cheeks, he wails. As I leave the room and close the door, he stands in the crib, looking at me with pleading eyes. “How could you abandon me?” his eyes ask.

The sun sets, the moon rises and sets, and the sun rises again. I open his door to find him sleeping. I turn off the sound machine and open the window shade. He hikes up his cute bottom in the air, rolls over, and pulls himself up and greets me with the biggest smile you’ve ever seen. I smile back and he giggles.

Forgiven.

Fast forward several hours, and a couple sits on my couch in my office. He can’t move past the fact that she won’t make love to him. She can’t move past the fact she caught him watching porn.[i]

Not forgiven.

The claws of unforgiveness are sharp and relentless.

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Three weeks to Healing

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Three weeks to Healing

She was the littlest thing. Fourteen months old but in nine month clothes. It was 9pm and the social worker put her limp sleeping body in my arms without ceremony. She was finishing up a long day and obviously wanted to get home. Handing the tiny bundle off meant that her final box was checked. She checked off the box and we stepped into it, not knowing what lay ahead. You never do.

They had told us hardly anything on the call: her age and that she was removed from her home because of neglect and abuse. And the social worker added no more details that evening. In fact, they got her name wrong. It would be a week before we would learn her correct name (which I'm withholding because of ongoing security concerns).

The next day we saw signs of neglect and abuse in spades. She wore nothing but a blank expression and cried every time we set her down, even for a few seconds.

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What Our 2 Year Old Foster Child Taught Me About Care

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What Our 2 Year Old Foster Child Taught Me About Care

Valentijn was hand-in-hand with the aid and Romeo in the crook of her arm. The aid had just driven the boys from the shelter, where they had spent three weeks. Chubby Romeo was ten months old at the time and well adjusted. It was two-year old Valentijn who had been impacted the most significantly. This was the third time Valentijn had been removed from his home. He was affectionate but fragile without boundaries.

As the Department of Childcare Services Specialist filled out the transfer paperwork to make our foster care official, Valentijn sat on my lap and pulled out the decorative pine cones from the bowl on the table and chucked them on the ground, one by one.

Not knowing what it looked like to love and discipline him well, I sat there, semi-stunned, and let him disassemble my wife’s handiwork. From that first moment, I knew parenting these two would prove to be a much different task than raising our two biological children.

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