Identity, Mission, Prayer, Spiritual Growth, Vocation
John Beeson
God's Special Calling on Your Life

My heart was still beating fast from the rush of adrenaline from speaking to the crowd of several hundred teens. I stepped off the stage on that hot May night and an older man put his hand on my shoulder. “God has a calling on your life, son. You are going to bring revival to your generation.” I was eighteen years old.

The words churned in my heart and mind for many years. Sometimes they were an encouragement. Sometimes they were a burden. They were always aspirational: how amazing would it be to be part of leading revival?

God's Special Calling on Your Life
Recommendations, Culture, Parenting, Wisdom
John Beeson
This Week's Recommendations

  1. The class divide over screen time: O. Alan Noble notes that children in lower class households spend twice as much time per day on screens. He explains the five reasons why he believes this is the cases. For instance, “The reality is that the less income you have, the less resources you have to care for your children. This includes having less income to spend on childcare, but also less emotional and mental bandwidth to care for your children because of the burdens poverty places upon you.”

  2. Life will not get easier: Stephen Witmer begins, “There’s a lie we all want to believe — even against all available evidence. It trades on our God-given capacity for hope. It tempts even those with impeccable theology.

This Week's Recommendations
Easter, Death, Identity, Suffering
John Beeson
Behold, the Suffering Servant

Isaiah’s prophetic word to Israel contains four Servant Songs. You are probably familiar with the fourth of these, which you may well have read during Holy Week as we considered Christ’s sacrifice for us. As Christians we hold onto the incongruent truths that Christ was exalted and despised. But we sometimes miss the seemingly paradox that the Servant Songs refer to Jesus and us. What is true of Christ is true of us.

Behold, the Suffering Servant
Death, Easter, Heaven
John Beeson
The Resurrection of Jesus: An Eyewitness Account

Happy Easter!

Today we consider the resurrection of Jesus of Nazareth. What follows is a compilation of the eyewitness resurrection accounts of Jesus Christ as told by the authors of the gospels. They have been edited together to maintain the flow of the narrative and do not include Jesus’ multiple appearances following his resurrection. The accounts are framed by Paul’s extended reflection on the importance of the resurrection.

He is risen! He is risen indeed!

The Resurrection of Jesus: An Eyewitness Account
Recommendations, Easter, Death, Heaven, Nature
John Beeson
This Week's Recommendations

  1. Eagles, fowl, and a Savior with wings: Kevin Burrell’s post makes my heart sing, “And a living, risen savior is still our covering today, to all those who by faith trust in his wings. In fact, we are clothed in his righteousness. He is oh-so willing to gather us under his wings.”

  2. Even to death: Jamaal Williams invites us to consider Jesus at the Mount of Olives, “Jesus models what it looks like to stumble into the presence of God—hurting but hopeful.”

This Week's Recommendations

Leadership

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Teaching for Change, part I

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Teaching for Change, part I

When I signed up to serve as a pastoral intern during my seminary years, I knew I wouldn’t be able to preach on Sunday morning, but I would be given other opportunities to grow in preaching and teaching. One of those opportunities came in the form of our Adult Sunday School class. The popular and engaging regular teacher handed me the reigns for a half dozen or so weeks that first semester. I studied, I crafted a syllabus, and I wrote out a manuscript for the class’s first week. I handed out the syllabus (that included weekly homework) and launched in, hands gripped to the podium, with passion and verve.

I got a friendly call from one of the campus ministers who attended our church (and that Sunday School class) that week and he invited me out to coffee. Over mugs at the local caffeine dive, Small World, I had a brief conversation that was worth a semester’s worth of seminary education. It changed the way I have taught ever since.

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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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This Week's Recommendations

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This Week's Recommendations

1.      Bob Newhart’s Six Minute Tutorial for Effective Counseling: This is an all-time family favorite, especially since my wife is a counselor. If you haven’t seen it, you’ve got to watch it. If you’ve already seen it, you can’t watch it too many times.

2.      More Than Mere Equality: Jonathan Leeman broaches the difficult topic of privilege, identity politics, and gospel peace. Leeman reflects the tension between justice and moral agency. On the one hand, “Biblical justice isn’t just a putting down of the oppressor. It is a lifting up of the oppressed and downtrodden.” On the other hand, "The bottom line here is: Identity politics, at its most careless, undermines moral agency."

3.      Disentangling Privilege: Andrew Wilson digs deeper into the topic of privilege and reflects on what he believes we should acknowledge is true about white privilege and what isn't.

4.      Check Your Privilege: Denny Burk also reflecting on Jonathan Leeman's piece says, "Obviously, these conclusions are squarely at odds with biblical teaching about guilt, justice, and reconciliation with God and with one another. And that is why we are going to have to give careful attention to the claims being made by proponents of identity politics."

5.      A Day in the Life of Americans: A mesmerizing infographic of how Americans spend their time during the day.

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6 Things to Do Before You Leave Your Church

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6 Things to Do Before You Leave Your Church

So, you’ve decided to leave your church: you’re moving, or you’ve come to a doctrinal impasse, or there has been conflict that you’ve tried to navigate, but the church has been unwilling to biblically walk through a peacemaking process to bring about reconciliation.

As a pastor, every person who leaves the church hurts. As a pastor of ten years, there have been hundreds that have left the churches I’ve served at and I can only think of a very small handful that I was glad to see go. Every goodbye is painful.

But, as we discussed last week, there are times to say goodbye (although a lot fewer than we are encultured to believe). When you say goodbye, say goodbye well. Sadly, in today’s culture, most of us say goodbye very poorly (usually by not saying goodbye at all, just slipping away). We’re called to say goodbye in a harder, but better, way.

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This Week's Recommendations

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This Week's Recommendations

1.       Does Your Pastor Need Swag Seminary? Is your pastor out of style? Old? Outdated? Jon Crist takes his pastor to Swag Seminary. The results speak for themselves.

2.       What Learning Myths Do You Believe In? Illuminating quiz on learning myths. One helpful nugget: "Praising effort, rather than ability, is far more likely to motivate students to work hard and improve."

3.       When We Work and Rest: A mesmerizing infographic on how different industries work and rest during the day. 

4.       Things Your Wife Wishes You Knew: Courtney Reissig on what stay at moms want you to know.

5.       This American Life: Fermi’s Paradox: This American Life is always good. The last story on this episode asking the question “Are We Alone?” choked me up.

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This Week's Recommendations

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This Week's Recommendations

1.      Why Leaders Need to be Vulnerable: Patrick Lencioni with a great story of how to poorly ask for feedback and the benefits of real vulnerability. 

2.      Netflix’s Real Competitor: Tim Challies shares the haunting quote from the Netflix CEO that Amazon and HBO aren't their competition -- sleep is. “When you watch a show from Netflix and you get addicted to it, you stay up late at night. You really — we’re competing with sleep, on the margin. And so, it’s a very large pool of time.”

3.      A Word of Encouragement About Your Labor: Michael Kruger takes on an often misunderstood verse and explains that, then empowered by the Spirit, our good works are not "filthy rags."

4.      Don’t Spiritualize Ministry Mediocrity: David Prince on how some churches explain away their lack of excellence: "To put it another way, one who says that their commitment to the primacy of preaching, leads them to have little regard for the music, parking, greeting, signage, aesthetics, friendliness, hands-on ministry, evangelism, outreach, care-giving, announcements, and so on, is simply theologizing their laziness and apathy." 

5.      Darwin Was a Slacker and You Should Be Too: Long but thought-provoking article by Alex Soojung-Kim Pang, which weaves anecdotes of prodigiously productive workers with scientific studies on productivity and concludes that schedules that include shorter, focused hours with time of rest make the most productive schedules.

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A Purposeful Spiritual Life, part 5

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A Purposeful Spiritual Life, part 5

Mike Tyson, one of the greatest boxers in history earned over $400M in his career, but managed to file for bankruptcy in 2003 with debts of $27M. He is not alone. Mega-stars Scottie Pippen, Johnny Unitas, Lenny Dykstra, Lawrence Taylor, and Tony Gwynn all filed bankruptcy after careers that netted them hundreds of millions of dollars.[i] How is that possible?

Ex-athletes and soldiers struggle with life after the playing field and battle field for the same reason: their careers afford them a sense of individual and collective purpose that is difficult to replace.

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A Purposeful Spiritual Life, part 3

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A Purposeful Spiritual Life, part 3

For my birthday my wife took me out on a hike. We enjoyed the beautiful Arizona morning, winding our way up into the foothills of the Catalina Mountains through the lush Sonoran desert landscape. We went on a well-traveled trail toward our destination: pools tucked into the Catalina foothills, 2.8 miles from the trailhead.

As inexperienced hikers who hadn’t hiked the trail in some 20 years, we overestimated our progress and asked multiple passersby how far away the pools were. It shouldn’t take this long to go 2.8 miles, right? Our legs grew heavy and my wife wondered if we had made a wrong turn. Maybe we should just turn around?

Finally we crested over a hill and below us lay the pools below. Our pace quickened with the pools in view and the final 15 minutes sped by. We relaxed on sun-bathed boulders, ate a snack, took some pictures, and then headed back. Knowing the terrain now and having a much better sense of how far the 2.8 mile destination was, there were no moments of confusion or frustration. The trail seemed to melt quickly behind us and we arrived back at the trail head quickly.

Knowing your destination changes your hike.

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Creativity Inc. by Ed Catmull

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Creativity Inc. by Ed Catmull

Ed Catmull is one of the geniuses behind Pixar, the incredible animation company that revolutionized what we expect from animated films. The first 80+ pages of Creativity, Inc. are about Catmull's own story and the founding of Pixar. The rest of the book tilts more toward what the title promises: leadership strategies to unleash creativity. I enjoyed Catmull's story, but if you want to jump to the leadership strategies, you can leapfrog the first part.

Catmull's strategies won't strike anyone as particularly innovative. You'll likely have heard or intuited a lot of what he says, but what I found particularly inspiring was the tenacity and single-minded focus Catmull and the other leaders at Pixar had in implementing simple but profound ideas. And perhaps most impressive is Catmull himself, clearly a leader who embodies the ideals he puts forth.

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A Purposeful Spiritual Life, part 2

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A Purposeful Spiritual Life, part 2

Where am I going and how am I going to get there?

Leadership books abound which ask these questions and coaching leaders to zero in on a purpose and then strategize their daily schedules to achieve this purpose.

Such intentionality in the context of the business world makes our own lack of purposefulness in our spiritual lives all the more obvious. But such a purposelessness stands in direct opposition to the purposefulness that God invites us into.

Jesus himself lived an incredibly purposeful life. If you pick up the gospel of John, you see that Jesus is very sensitive to discerning and following God’s purpose for his life. A purpose which leads ultimately not to self-fulfillment but to self-giving at the cross. In John 17:1, Jesus prays, “Father, the hour has come; glorify your Son that the Son may glorify you.”

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