Most Maturing
An Invitation to
Serve,
Priscillia Bui, Mission Year
If I was placed at the school to serve, why was my
ability to find joy in serving others tied to the type of work that I was
doing? I realized that in serving the staff and students at the school, it did
not matter the type of work that I was doing, but rather, with what type of
heart I was serving with. I saw how much I was trying to make the service about
myself and what I could do, rather than about those I was serving. I could do
my work with a bitter and resentful heart or try to find joy in simply serving
others. It was then that God revealed to me that the heart of service is simple
– to serve others wholeheartedly and with joy, regardless of what the task may
be…And so my question for you is, wherever you may be and whatever you may be
doing, whether it is something you love or hate, what is God inviting you to
and how is He inviting you to love those around you?
Question of the
Week
Watching HBO
R-Rated Movies,
Jon Acuff
A
few months ago, my friend asked me a question, “How come we Christians get
upset about the nudity in the show ‘Game of Thrones,’ but not at the violence?”
Listening to
Bianca
Various
talks by Bianca Olthoff
“The
outcome of fasting is to recalibrate the heart and mind.”
“Forgiveness
is to embrace the wound someone has given you…willingness to suffer discomfort
for the heart of Jesus.”
They’ve Got an
App for that!
10 Mobile Apps,
No Make That 49, That Make Our Day, Lee Odden, Online Marketing Blog
Experts
have stated that the average person has 40 apps on their mobile device, but
regulary use only 4-5 of them. So, add a
few more from this list! A few new ones
for me:
·
Vine
·
Timehop
·
Grocery
IQ
·
Paper
Churchrelevance.com
I
love finding interesting reads. I particularly am interested in spiritual
growth, ministry, church digital strategy, reconciliation, and discovering
what’s cool and fascinating. That’s why I was thrilled to see Church Relevance
magazine unveil their “Revamped Top Church Blogs List”. Patheos and
representation are what resonate with me after going through this list.
1.
300
is A LOT. I used up four lunch breaks to
be able to look at them all.
2.
Patheos
sure offers lots of content, with many Catholic, Evangelical, and Progressive
Christian blogs making the list. Seems
like a good resource.
3.
If
you like Justin Timberlake, go to Patheos.
The paid ads section on the right-hand side serve up plenty of JT videos
from his Mickey Mouse Club days until now.
Dance on!
4.
As
far as I can tell, 51% of the writers making the list were men, 20% women, and
29% various.
5.
Do
the ladies feel represented? 20% is
probably high compared to most Christian conferences and events. Rachel Held
Evans offers her list of women writers in response to another list.
6.
And
while we’re on that, how about people of color?
5%. Low, but probably comparatively high. Between Worlds
offers her list of culturally diverse Christian writers.
7.
I
wish my affilitation (churches of Christ) had more of a presence in mainstream
Christiandom. We tend to keep our voices away from many conversations and
conferences. There may be reasons for
that, but not here, not today. I feel we
have a lot to offer and can learn some things too.
8.
At
the end of the day…er week… I walked away with 39 blogs to add to my
Feedly. That makes a whopping 83 feeds
on my account! Digital overkill, I
know. But how can one ignore potentially
good content?
Most Conciliatory
Civil
Religion a Modest Proposal, Jonathan Storment
When
we demonize the other, we rarely have healthy conversations about the issue of
disagreement. We divide up the world into right and wrong, and lose the ability
to learn and grow from each other.
…
Modesty basically means to not over-estimate
ourselves, it is the virtue of knowing and embracing our limitations. We don’t
know everything, we don’t know for certain what’s best for the world, and no
human should find themselves so certain that they can dehumanize another
because they disagree with them.
Most Challenging
Most Personally Relatable
Say Anything,
by Allison Vesterfelt
…my
answers tend to be clouded by what I fear they will think of me....Maybe our
ideas—the real ones—matter for something....If that’s the case, if what I have
to say matters, I need to learn to not hold back. ...Because it’s in the
sharing, I think, that healing comes, humility comes, growth comes. It’s in the
sharing I’m changed, and you’re changed, and a bridge is built between the two
of us.
Head Bobber
Where
are the People of Color in Children's Books? by Walter Dean Myers
When
I was doing research for my book “Monster,” I approached a white lawyer doing
pro bono work in the courts defending poor clients. I said that it must be
difficult to get witnesses to court to testify on behalf of an inner-city
client, and he replied that getting witnesses was not as difficult as it
sometimes appeared on television. “The trouble,” he said, “is to humanize my
clients in the eyes of a jury. To make them think of this defendant as a human
being and not just one of ‘them.’ ”
I
realized that this was exactly what I wanted to do when I wrote about poor
inner-city children — to make them human in the eyes of readers and, especially,
in their own eyes. I need to make them feel as if they are part of America’s
dream, that all the rhetoric is meant for them, and that they are wanted in
this country.
Books
transmit values. They explore our common humanity. What is the message when some
children are not represented in those books? Where are the future white
personnel managers going to get their ideas of people of color? Where are the
future white loan officers and future white politicians going to get their
knowledge of people of color? Where are black children going to get a sense of
who they are and what they can be?
And
what are the books that are being published about blacks? Joe Morton, the actor
who starred in “The Brother From Another Planet,” has said that all but a few
motion pictures being made about blacks are about blacks as victims. In them,
we are always struggling to overcome either slavery or racism. Book publishing
is little better. Black history is usually depicted as folklore about slavery,
and then a fast-forward to the civil rights movement. Then I’m told that black
children, and boys in particular, don’t read. Small wonder.
Because it Still Matters
The
Racial Subtext in Church by Kelsey Munger
"Guys
like that [black guys] don't go to church."
How
could she think that? Why would she think that?
Maybe
because when Best Friend looked at the “missionary bulletin board” at her
church she could spot the missionaries because they were the only whites in the
picture, and the new converts and “assistants in spreading the gospel” could be
identified by their brown or black skin tones.
Maybe
because she’d been to church camps, conferences, her parents had even worked at
a bible college, but she had never heard an African-American preacher or bible
teacher. There must not be any Christian blacks in America or, if there are,
maybe they don’t have anything worth saying.
Maybe
because the only brown-skinned children to ever make a guest appearance on one
of her friends’ MySpace profile pictures (yes, that’s what we used back then)
was a child in a third world country that someone had met while on a mission
trip — they were never neighbors, children from one of the Sunday school
classes, or a friend’s younger siblings. They were the poor, the unreached.
Maybe
because the only pictures of dark-skinned men and women to appear on church
promotional material were for advertising a mission trip to Mexico or a fund
raiser for the poor — they were never the faces of one of the bible study
leaders or an upcoming conference speaker. They were the people in need, the
ones we — white Christians — reached out to.
How
did Best Friend get to the point where she honestly thought there weren’t any
good Christian black men in America? Because she’d grown up in a family, a
church, and a community that was not only extremely white, they were extremely
disengaged and uninterested in issues related to race.
You The Man
Reframing
Biblical Masculinity,
Tim Krueger
