2014 in Review

Kendall's Compass for Cross-Cultural Ministry

• Remove aura of perfection
• Go where people are
• Listen, speak their language
• Respect their history, sociology
• Make internal culture inclusive

Mistakes will be made by everyone. "Be patient, bearing with one another in love, forgiving whatever grievances you have with one another." Ephesians 4:2, 4:32

Unknown Sources:

Samaritans, like the rest of us, need to feel they belong before they can believe.

Greed = perpetual state of dissatisfaction. The antidote is to simplify. Giving is the act of relinquishing control.

Clutter is an indicator of financial management and spiritual state. Stuff = happiness. Overwhelmed. Where is my contentment coming from?

Healthy families talk out their feelings. Unhealthy families act out.

The wounded and hurting have a hard time attaching to environments that are healthy.

Science reveals God's majesty.

Discouragement precedes destruction.

Tapping into your child's overwhelmed sense: The thing that your kid is stressed about is probably a strength that is underdeveloped.

Social media = in a conscious state of inattention

Be exceptional for the benefit of others.

Illiterate societies are easy to control.

Pride is a prison. It shuts us in; God and others out.

Prostitution is not the world's oldest occupation. It's the world's oldest form of abuse.

Jonathan Storment

In a pluralistic society, you will be judged by how well we benefit the people who don't belong to you.
Grace before anything is an indictment [of sin].

Bianca Olthoff

Scarcity breeds clarity.

Justin and Trisha Davis

An ordinary marriage is simply an overflow of an ordinary relationship with God. Ordinary is defeated as we tell the truth.

Brene Brown

• Power of Vulnerabilty, TED Talk
• Stories are data with a soul.
• Shame = fear of disconnection
• In order for connection to happen, we have to risk being seen. People who have the strongest sense of love and belonging are those who believe they are worthy of love and belonging. They fully embraced vulnerability.

Cynthia Tobias

Focus on the Family

Focus on strengths. What do they do well? When are they happiest? How do we transfer these strengths to school. Creating confident learners early in school sets them up for confidence in life.

Kathy Koch

Nurturing Your Child's Intelligence, Focus on the Family

• Plant kids where they can bloom.
• Paralysis and shut off part of the brain because discouraged, shunned.
• Develop character qualities so able to use abilities for good, not evil.
• How am I smart?

Dr. Larry Crabb

Unrecognized self-centeredness in the way we relate.
I want to put Christ on display by the way I relate. When Jesus was on the cross, he took care of his Mother, saved the thief, and forgave his killers.

Ask my wife, "What is it like to live with me?" Have to courage to respond non-defensively.
When do I make you feel alive? When do I make you feel dead?

Subordinate the expression of my feelings to the purpose of God. Desire, but don't demand.

Women afraid of feeling invisible to husband. They relieve pain by getting away.

Other centeredness = Thinking about the value of my wife and what I can do for her.

Debbie Storey

SVP Talent & Diversity Officer, AT&T

If you're 100% qualified for the job, it's not growth.

Austin Channing Brown

Reconciliation is what we do as we listen to hard truths form the marginalized around us...spending time in each other's spaces...creating shared spaces where both can breathe freely. If your culture is the standard for rightness, you have found the Imago Dei in others to be insufficient. Reconciliation is how we respond after being told we are . Reconciliation is having our hearts broken that people are experiencing these things, not having our feelings hurt for being called out on it. Staying in relationship until all these are cast out and love reigns.

Shane Hipps

The first step in the journey of discovering your true voice is fearless honesty. Nonjudging awareness.

Sean Palmer

• Sometimes we lack the will, the clarity, or the courage to talk about things that matter.
• We have experience that makes us more sympathetic to one side/party/person or the other.
• This is the kind of tragedy that says we need to eliminate everything that contributed to it.
• We've become a tool to the Right, an enemy to the Left, and prophetic to neither.

Elizabeth Lesser

TED Talk

Share me some of your life experiences. What issues deeply concern you? What have you always wanted to ask someone who holds a different perspective?

Larry James

• Part of the retreat into the church is to escape the challenge of the real world.
• Fine art of de-escalation.
• The mark of election in this country is money and success.
• You're important to me and I want to hear that. 
• Build relationships and knit the community together in ways that it hasn't been before.

Shaunti Feldhan

You have to believe the best of your spouse's intentions when you're hurt.

A Time to Speak 

Panel Discussion of Christian leaders on Justice and Reconciliation

• Dr. Darrin Patrick, The Journey Church, St. Louis: We are taking responsibility for the brokenness in our city.
• Unknown: Without proximity, there's no empathy.
• Albert Tate: Come have a black dinner. Umm "black dinner?"
• Derwin Gray: Quit seeking unregenerate people to do what we're called and commissioned to do. Let's not have an evangelical sit-out like we have in the past. Provide people a biblical vocabulary before the news outlets do.

Unattributed Quotes from Newsworthy with Norsworthy Podcast

• Take intentional step to get to know people not like us.
• What's the Jesus response to this?
• It's not about winning. It's about living a discipled life.
• Do the realtional work when the gun's not loaded.
• We're impacted by people with whom we share an identity.
• We vote group specific.
• Real human beings with good hearts disagree with me.
• Make a conscious decision to discern more than decide.