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Tim Keller on why Christianity Needs to Make Emotional Sense before it makes Rational Sense

CT

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Why the CRC Synod Should Consider Spinning Off Its Agencies

A Brief History of the History

  1. The anxiety I hear and feel from lovers of the CRC who are also watching the numbers is that the realities of numerical collapse and subsequent financial collapse will come to the CRC before it has the political will or ability to make the kinds of subsequent changes that might arrest its decline.
  2. The reports from the Task Force Reviewing Structure and Culture (TFRSC) from the last three years (Agendas for Synod 2012, 2013, 2014) are required reading for understanding the development and the status of the organism to its modern institutional exoskeleton in this conversation. The denomination owes this group a debt of appreciation for the work they’ve done.
  3. The Synods of the last 40 years are responsible for the organizational chaos the denomination is currently in. I know it is easy and convenient to blame denominational employees for the structural chaos we currently possess but it is my judgment that the cause of the chaos of our current structure clearly rests with synodical compromises created by the political realities of the church over time. The well intentioned desire to eliminate conflict between the agencies and increase efficiency and effectiveness while resisting centralization lead to the dual-authority/accountability issues our system has today. We didn’t want to choose between classically based distributed authority and centralized authority and efficiency so we didn’t and the result has been the slow evolution of the structure into what we have today. The reports nicely outline that history.
  4. The CRC’s existential anxiety has been growing for 20 years and reached a level of awareness and intentionality in Jerry Dykstra’s administration as Executive Director. Jerry and I went through Seminary together and we served in Classis Central California together. In his ministry before taking the ED position he worked vigorously  on local and classical revitalization. He came to the Executive Director position with the conviction that unless more attention was devoted to action “in support of” the local church the ministries “on behalf of” those churches would face inevitable financial decline. Throughout his administration there were numerous attempts to study and address this awareness and anxiety but little to none of it developed to the point of addressing these changes at the Synodical level.
  5. The trauma surrounding the end of his administration, the pent-up anxiety of our inability to address ongoing numerical decline together with race and age demographic challenges lead to the creation of the Task Force Reviewing Structure and Culture.

The 2014 TRFSC Report Continue reading →

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Steve Jobs Stanford Commencement Address

Transcript

Again, you can’t connect the dots looking forward; you can only connect them looking backwards. So you have to trust that the dots will somehow connect in your future. You have to trust in something — your gut, destiny, life, karma, whatever. This approach has never let me down, and it has made all the difference in my life.

Don’t lose faith. I’m convinced that the only thing that kept me going was that I loved what I did. You’ve got to find what you love. And that is as true for your work as it is for your lovers. Your work is going to fill a large part of your life, and the only way to be truly satisfied is to do what you believe is great work. And the only way to do great work is to love what you do. If you haven’t found it yet, keep looking. Don’t settle. As with all matters of the heart, you’ll know when you find it. And, like any great relationship, it just gets better and better as the years roll on. So keep looking until you find it. Don’t settle.

Your time is limited, so don’t waste it living someone else’s life. Don’t be trapped by dogma — which is living with the results of other people’s thinking. Don’t let the noise of others’ opinions drown out your own inner voice. And most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to become. Everything else is secondary.

I lived with that diagnosis all day. Later that evening I had a biopsy, where they stuck an endoscope down my throat, through my stomach and into my intestines, put a needle into my pancreas and got a few cells from the tumor. I was sedated, but my wife, who was there, told me that when they viewed the cells under a microscope the doctors started crying because it turned out to be a very rare form of pancreatic cancer that is curable with surgery. I had the surgery and I’m fine now.

Continue reading →

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Phil Vischer on Dreams

Quotes from Phil’s book. 

Finally, and I am very serious when I say this, beware of your dreams, for dreams make dangerous friends. We all have them—longings for a better life, a healthy child, a happy marriage, rewarding work. But dreams are, I have come to believe, misplaced longings. False lovers. Why? Because God is enough. Just God. And he isn’t “enough” because he can make our dreams come true—no, you’ve got him confused with Santa or Merlin or Oprah. The God who created the universe is enough for us—even without our dreams. Without the better life, the healthy child, the happy marriage, the rewarding work. God was enough for the martyrs facing lions and fire—even when the lions and the fire won.

And God is enough for you. But you can’t discover the truth of that statement while you’re clutching at your dreams. You need to let them go. Let yourself fall. Give up. As terrifying as it sounds, you’ll discover that falling feels a lot like floating. And falling into God’s arms—relying solely on his power and his will for your life—that’s where the fun starts. That’s where you’ll find the “abundant life” Jesus promised—the abundant life that doesn’t look anything like evangelical overload.

Vischer, Phil (2007-01-09). Me, Myself, and Bob: A True Story About Dreams, God, and Talking Vegetables (Kindle Locations 3705-3715). Thomas Nelson. Kindle Edition.

 

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Cultivate Your Passion Don’t Follow It

The Minimalist “Following your passion is crappy advice”

In a recent speech, you told people to, “Do as Steve Jobs did, not as he said.” I thought this was great advice. Can you expand on it?

Steve Jobs, in his famous Stanford Commencement address, told the students (and I’m paraphrasing here): You’ve got to find what you love, don’t settle.

If you read the press and social media that surrounded the event, it’s clear that many people interpreted this as him saying, “follow your passion.” If you go back into the details of his biography, however you discover this is not what he did. He stumbled into Apple computer (it was a scheme to make a quick $1,000) at a time when he was “passionate” mainly about eastern mysticism.

But Jobs was open to opportunity. When he sensed that his scheme was bigger than he imagined, he pivoted and poured a lot of energy into building a company around selling computers. He cultivated passion. He didn’t follow it.

 

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James KA Smith Desiring the Kingdom

From the 2010 January Series

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The Kingdom’s Terrible Keys

From a CRC-Voices Discussion

The forced exile from the garden into the field is a consequence of the decisions of the man and the woman.

I think we too often flatten the action. It is amazingly nuanced in that brief but deep story.

1. Exile was foreshadowed in the hiding.

Adam and Eve implicitly self-exile in the hiding.
In that sense the forced and enforced exile can be seen both as punishment and mercy, giving them what they have themselves embraced but were perhaps too weak, unclear, confused, conflicted to pursue themselves. We don’t know that they could really leave the garden on their own.

2. The curses were also part of the exile.

The man and the woman’s avenues for power are both encumbered by difficulty. Power will not longer be as free and easy before the rebellion.

3. Their relationship with God goes from one of family intimacy to that of an estranged family.

There are visits, but they no longer live together.

4. God creates relational distance which is communicated in overt and subtle ways. Continue reading →

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Dave Ramsey the employer

Dave Ramsey the employer

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Adultery Site Moves Into China

The Atlantic

 

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