Culture, Death, Spiritual Growth
John Beeson
Planned Obsolescence and My Backpack

I’ve had four bags in my (nearly) ten years of pastoral ministry at New Life. I bought a leather briefcase that was too small and came apart at the seams followed by a leather briefcase that was too large and stiff. I gave up on the briefcase experiment and for the past three years I have used my son’s hand-me-down backpack from his middle school years. My wife and kids constantly teased me about my middle school backpack. But you know,

Four years ago, I was tagging along on my wife’s shopping trip and found a backpack tucked away on a clearance rack. It was love at first sight, and not just because of the 60% off tag.

Planned Obsolescence and My Backpack
Recommendations, Christian Living, Culture, Heaven
John Beeson
This Week's Recommendations

  1. Four good questions to ask your tech: Tim Challies says, “We are in constant communication with our devices and through our devices. And since we are already in the habit of asking them our deep and personal questions, perhaps it would do us good to ask them some good and honest questions about themselves. Here are four questions I propose we ask of any technology that has become (or has the potential to become) deeply embedded in our lives.”

  2. Embracing the silence: Christopher Cook says, “We’re spiritually exhausted, disoriented, and desperate to hear from God. And in our desperation, we turn up the volume, hoping that more input will lead to more clarity. But the Lord doesn’t compete with the chaos. His voice doesn’t cut through the noise. It waits for stillness.”

This Week's Recommendations
Death, Suffering, Wisdom
John Beeson
The Ruin of Me

Today I have the pleasure of sharing a poem by my daughter, Camille (age 21). It is from the perspective of King Ahaz (see 2 Chronicles 28).

The Ruin of Me
Christian Living, Evangelism
John Beeson
Open Dumpster Living

Along the route from my house to the church is an undeveloped intersection on three of its four corners. Two medium-trafficked two-lane roads converge at a stop sign. A while ago, inexplicably, two massive forty-yard dumpsters showed up on one of the undeveloped corners. They sat empty for a few days, and then some observant neighbors, likely determining that the dumpster didn’t have another purpose, dumped a ragged armchair in the dumpster.

The proverbial floodgates opened. Old TV sets, broken dressers, bikes, and couches filled the two dumpsters to overflowing. Over the next two months, the dumpsters were emptied multiple times and then quickly filled.

Open Dumpster Living
Recommendations, Church, Counseling, Culture
John Beeson
This Week's Recommendations

  1. Understanding therapy culture from different generations: This article from Sheryl Jacob resonates with my experience in the counseling room with different generations. “Millennials (born 1981-1996) grew up with therapy as mainstream - encouraged to talk about trauma, set boundaries, process their inner child, and name anxiety. While this openness is good, this generation also normalised many struggles the Church should have addressed long ago.”

  2. Be drunk with love: J.A. Medders encourages, “We get filled with the Spirit—when bottles (barrels) of the vintage gospel hit our bloodstream, our Blood Gospel Content rises above the legalistic limit.”

This Week's Recommendations

Christian Living

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This Week's Recommendations

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This Week's Recommendations

1.       Church Hunters: Jon Crist's mockumentary skewers church shopping with a smile.

2.       What If I Can't Find the Perfect Church? Josh Buice shares why "Nonattendance was not an option for the early church and it shouldn’t be an option for the modern church."

3.       The Challenge of Really Loving Your Church: Jonathan LaBarge offers not-so-easy wisdom: "Father Cyprian wrote, “No one can have God for his Father, who does not have the Church for his mother.” There will be many times when we will have to say to the church, “I do not much like you right now, but I do love you.”"

4.       Diagnosing and Mortifying the Sin of Complaining: Geoffrey Kirkland reflects, "Everyone does it. It’s all around us. In fact, it’s so normalized and pervasive that we hardly even recognize when it actually occurs. The sin of complaining is one of those “respectable sins.” That is, it’s one that’s hardly spoken about, seldom preached against, and still less frequent, a sin with which Christians persistently wage violent war. Complaining is ugly. Complaining is one of the most commonest and frequent sins that’s almost as easy to find and common as the air we breathe."

5.       How We Spend Our Days: How the average American adult spends their days. An infographic. Lots of fascinating gems in here: religious and spiritual activities are doubled by shopping which itself is doubled by personal care. 

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How to Pray for Someone in Need

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How to Pray for Someone in Need

“How are you today?” you greet your neighbor at the park. You asked the question like you meant it, and, perhaps because of that her response, “Okay,” is accompanied by the expression that says that she is most definitely not “okay.” “What’s the matter?” you ask, thoughtfully ignoring her “okay,” responding instead to her expression. And out comes the story of her fight with her husband last night. How do you conclude your conversation? You know you should pray, but how do you pray?

Perhaps the only thing stronger than our natural impulse toward the spiritual and religious is our reticence toward public displays of our religion.

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Why We Offer So Much More Than “Sending Good Thoughts”

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Why We Offer So Much More Than “Sending Good Thoughts”

Your co-worker has just shared with you that her son is battling a drug addiction. You press in and provide a listening ear. But as the conversation closes, what do you say? Nothing? That you will pray for her family? Or do you ask if you could pray with her right then?

I’ve done all three, and there are circumstances where all three are wise and godly responses. But usually praying for a friend with a request then and there is the best response. There have been far too many times when I have not prayed with someone who needed prayer or told them I would pray for them later when the most loving thing I should have done for them was to pray with them right there.

Offering to pray for someone in the moment can feel incredibly awkward. Your mind races: do they even believe in God? What god do they believe in? Are they going to be offended if I ask?

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This Week's Recommendations

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This Week's Recommendations

1.       The Birth of a Daughter and the Birth of the Camera Phone: The story of how the camera phone was born.

2.       8 Major Changes in the Church in the Past 10 Years: Thom Rainer reflects on the most significant changes in the church in the past decade. It's a pretty encouraging list.

3.       A Hill to Die On: When is a hill worth dying on? Jonathan Van Maren reflects on whether hills are worth dying on. Douglas Wilson's quote is helpful and I'm still wrestling with it: "Whenever we get to that elusive and ever-receding “hill to die on,” we will discover, upon our arrival there, that it only looked like a hill to die on from a distance. Up close, when the possible dying is also up close, it kind of looks like every other hill. All of a sudden it looks like a hill to stay alive on, covered over with topsoil that looks suspiciously like common ground. So it turns out that surrendering hills is not the best way to train for defending the most important ones. Retreat is habit-forming."

4.       The Case for Free Range Kids: Lenore Skenazy makes a case for free range kids by sharing a story of the day she let her 9 year old find his way home in New York City.

5.       Thunderstruck: a collection of beautiful supercell thunderstorms.

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Teaching for Change, part 2

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Teaching for Change, part 2

I took three preaching courses at seminary. They were all excellent. I didn’t take any courses on teaching, and wasn’t aware of any offered. It wasn’t until a campus minister sat me down for a conversation I would have even considered the need for a separate class on teaching. Aren’t they both just presenting biblical truth accurately and memorably?

That conversation ended with the most impactful advice I’ve ever received about teaching: prepare your lesson around several open questions that engage the group. Such preparation maximizes what small group teaching environments can do so well: connect biblical truths with individual hearts to bring about change.

Let’s unpack how I prepare to teach with the aim to experience change myself and help those in the group experience change.

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The Imitation of Christ by Thomas a Kempis

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The Imitation of Christ by Thomas a Kempis

I recently re-read Thomas a Kempis’s The Imitation of Christ after fifteen years. The years that passed made the book that much sweeter. It was made sweeter still by the updated translation which made the book that much more powerful. At over 600 years, The Imitation of Christ sparkles with clarity and application, time apparently hasn't worn any sharpness off its edges.

If The Imitation of Christ was merely the second of its four books, it would be a masterpiece. The second book, titled, “The Interior Life,” challenges and consoles, cuts and bandages. A Kempis's book is a strong call to the imitation of our Savior, and yet is seasoned with profound grace. It is, quite simply, a book every Christian should read.

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This Week's Recommendations

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This Week's Recommendations

1.      Arizona's Monsoon Season Begins: Incredible footage of an incredible season here in Tucson. 

2.      How the Worst Moment in My Life was Also the Best: David Murray shares the story of Matthew Bryce and considers it in light of our salvation: "Just over a week ago, Matthew Bryce decided to go surfing off the Scottish coast. Within a few hours the tide and wind had blown him thirteen miles out to sea. He watched the sun set, knowing he would not survive the night."

3.      How Self-Forgetfulness Makes us Happier: Randy Alcorn on how self-forgetfulness makes us happier: " However, people who think a lot about Christ and His grace, the great doctrines of the faith, and how to love and serve others tend to be happy people. By redirecting attention from ourselves to God, we adopt a right perspective that brings happiness."

4.      What to do when singleness lasts longer than expected:  Marshall Segal shares, “Marriage is a good gift and a terrible god. Most of my grief in my teenage years and even into my twenties came from giving more of my heart to my future marriage than to God. It’s easy to anchor our hope and happiness in a wife or husband and to define our growth, maturity, and worth by our marital status. And when we worship love, romance, sex, or marriage—and not God—we welcome the pain and disappointment.”

5.      7 Things to Consider Before You Make a Political Post: Thanks to Tim Challies who pointed me to Scott Slayton’s sage advice.  

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LeBron James Messed Up Your Christianity

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LeBron James Messed Up Your Christianity

LeBron James recently completed perhaps the greatest performance in the history of the NBA Finals, averaging 33.6 points, 12.0 rebounds and 10.0 assists, something that has never been accomplished before,[i] and against one of the greatest teams in NBA history no less. And yet there was no space for us to stop and appreciate James’s performance. Judgment was our first impulse. Every fan had an opinion on what this means to James’s legacy. Many declared that by losing these finals, the fifth NBA Finals he’s lost, he forfeited his right to be considered one of the greatest basketball player of all time.

Let’s set aside the argument of whether or not James ought to be considered the one of the greatest (although, he is!). My point is that, in a society driven by social media, we become, more than ever, agents of judgment and identified by our opinions. Hot-takes don’t just fill the waves of sports talk radio, they fill our social media feeds, and even our souls. We are taught to have strong and quick opinions on all matter of subjects. We build up and tear down social icons like skilled contractors.

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This Week's Recommendations

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This Week's Recommendations

1.     This is About That: That Great video on the true meaning of marriage by Andrew Wilson.

2.     What Does Evangelism Look Like in Your Day-to-Day Life? Phil Miglioratti with a call to show and tell the gospel as we go.

3.     12 Ways Your Phone is Changing You:  Excerpt from Tony Reinke’s new book.  

4.     Coptic Christians Do the Unimaginable: The incredible testimony of the forgiveness of the Egyptian Christians.

5.     Marriage Wounds: Melissa Edgington with a compelling reflection on marriage, scars and beauty: "But, a few days ago I looked down and realized that somehow in the course of my work, my ring had gotten knocked against my finger and had left a small cut there, hidden underneath the beautiful gold, a scar on the delicate-looking redhead’s fair flesh of my left hand. I was surprised to see it there, because in all of these years of dealing with babies and a mother’s work, I never remember my ring doing such a thing. But, there it was. A wound inflicted by the very symbol of never-ending love between a man and a woman."

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6 Ways a Leader Needs to Respond to a Departing Congregant

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6 Ways a Leader Needs to Respond to a Departing Congregant

I sat across the room from the couple, trying to slow down my mind and open my heart to the criticism they were leveling at me. They had been offended by my sermon and had reacted on Facebook, indicating they were leaving the church. I reached out privately and asked if we could meet to talk. They agreed to do so. When we met, he was relatively calm, but she was very upset and I knew that I needed to hold my own emotions in check to be able to listen to the heart of what she was saying and respond in love, not hurt. As I had prayed to prepare for the meeting I genuinely didn’t think I was going to be able to ask for forgiveness for anything as I didn’t think I had done anything wrong. But in the midst of the meeting God opened my heart to see an area of blindness. I was able to ask and receive their forgiveness for the way this blind spot had injured them. I then asked if they would be willing to ask for forgiveness for their slander. They were willing to do so and I forgave them.

These are not the meetings that you think about when you sign up to be a pastor or leader, but there are few moments more important in your ministry than these tense conversations.

Two friends have responded to my series on leaving and finding a church with questions about a pastor’s responsibility in the midst of church departures. It’s a fair and helpful question. Over the course of this series I’ve reflected on a congregant’s responsibility, but pastors and leaders bear a responsibility to help congregants navigate departures well.

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