President
The Fund for Theological Education
February 02, 2009
The second day of the retreat focused on listening for one’s call. We spent the first half of the day learning how to ask open and honest questions. The second half of the day focused on providing us opportunities to participate in clearness committees, which are the deepest expression of a Circle of Trust retreat and are a communal approach to discernment.
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President
The Fund for Theological Education
February 01, 2009
This weekend, I was in the North Carolina Mountains for a retreat on holy listening at the YMCA Blue Ridge Assembly. I was invited by one of our recent Calling Congregations grantees, John Knox Presbyterian Church in Greenville, SC. A small band of members led by Joseph Gaston, an associate minister at the church, had come to the mountains to experiment with Parker Palmer’s Circles of Trust as a congregational practice for vocational discernment.
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Former President, The Fund for Theological Education
January 26, 2009
A week has not passed as I write this post, and yet the pressure on the new president’s administration could make diamonds out of coal. This week, pundits expect some of the worst economic news from companies that represent every sector of the global marketplace. News stories of new atrocities to young women in Afghanistan show the renewal of Taliban strength. A tense truce continues in Gaza, but the clock is ticking. A generation of children have been recruited as warriors in central Africa, and the potential for real change seems remote. As the global economy declines, human trafficking and the seduction of profits from illegal narcotics also seem to increase. The expectations of the new president are simply overwhelming, and yet the need for immediate intervention is critical. And because the systems and processes involved in all of these matters are so complex, measures of success will largely be determined by historians.
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Vice President for Ministry Programs and Planning
January 15, 2009
The New York Times magazine gives us this week a story about “the cussing pastor,” Mark Driscoll, 38-year-old pastor of the Mars Hill Church in Seattle. If you are fascinated by American culture as I am—and especially what Americans do with Christianity—you should read this very well-written article by Molly Worthen, “Who Would Jesus Smack Down?”. I come to this story from a place of attention to the call and formation of young leaders for the church. It sounds like a prototypical American story of revival: charismatic leader emboldened by the Gospel radicalizes people hungry for salvation from meaninglessness, loneliness and isolation and forms a community set apart by its convictions. The Mars Hill Church in Seattle meets on seven campuses around the city, with a reported total weekly attendance of 7,500, and a growing ministry, mission and organization. Clearly, something is going on that attracts people.
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Former FTE Vice President for Doctoral Programs and Administration
January 12, 2009
What’s going on?
I had many conversations over the past several weeks---with family around the dinner table, with friends at holiday house parties, with familiar people in my neighborhood grocery store check-out line, and with random strangers in department store parking lots as we all rushed to place our purchases in the trunks of our cars. Everyone had plenty to talk about: the economy, politics, high food prices, job lay-offs, terrorism, the war in Iraq, the education of our children and on and on and on. Some level of anxiety seemed to permeate many of these conversations. There just weren’t too many folks feeling optimistic about very much. On one occasion, I found myself asking, “What do you think we need to get out of this mess?” Some said, “We need good leadership!” Others suggested, “Trouble don’t last always!” In many respects these responses were on target. It seems to me --- good leadership and hope may very well go hand in hand during times like these.
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Vice President for Ministry Programs and Planning
January 07, 2009
A few days before Christmas, amidst the growing anticipation of new life we Christians celebrate as Advent, I heard a commentary on NPR about in-vitro fertilization (IVF). (http://kut.org/items/show/15152). More than a half-million frozen embryos are currently being stored in American facilities and thousands more are being added each year. Some will be thawed out, implanted into a mother and grow into real, live babies; others will be kept for future use, either as siblings to the now-born babies or … well, that’s the problem, the “or for what.”
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Former President, The Fund for Theological Education
January 01, 2009
And so the new year begins. As we waited for midnight last night with our 12-year-old son, I was reminded how anti-climactic New Year’s Eve always seemed. All of the excitement and build-up to the moment the ball drops (or in Atlanta, the moment the peach drops), a few minutes of cheering and dancing, a chorus of “Auld Lang Syne,” and then…and then…
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