It’s fashionable this time of year to make a gift guide. Magazines and tech bloggers and gadget gurus and the like all make them. Many of them are filled with cool stuff, leaving me with a secret desire that someone would forward these lists to my wife, along with the necessary cash to buy everything on them.… Read more▹

My memories of grad school philosophy classes are a mingling of confusion, trauma, and contempt for long dead authors with too much time on their hands. Somewhere in that swirling of dread, a few interesting quotes have survived. One that I think of often is

The birth of the reader comes at the death of the author.

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A few weeks ago, I stayed up into the early morning hours, in a room lit by nothing other than 2 million pixels on my iMac. I was feeding a troubling addiction, an addiction that been with me for years and years now. I can avoid it for long periods of time, but it does, on occasion, get the best of me.… Read more▹

Once again, posting these books in the order of value to me in terms of ongoing thinking and reflection.

Looks like a more productive month of reading than it felt like. A few of these books I had been chipping away at for quite some time, and I think I had more car time this month, because three of these were audiobooks.… Read more▹

For most of this year, we’ve been thinking about the monthly rhythms in our church community, and how we might be more intentional in forming those.

And letting them form us.

The idea of a monthly rhythm has been with us since the start, as we started with the intention of a forming a network of smaller communities that come together once or two Sundays per month.… Read more▹

So Christ himself gave the apostles, the prophets, the evangelists, the pastors and teachers, to equip his people for works of service, so that the body of Christ may be built up until we all reach unity in the faith and in the knowledge of the Son of God and become mature, attaining to the whole measure of the fullness of Christ.… Read more▹

This isn’t another blog post about Rob Bell’s book Love Wins. Not exactly, anyway.

(Though I wouldn’t want to feel the need to apologize if it was! A book is at it’s best when it stirs good dialogue. Of course, that dialogue is at it’s best when people have read the book in question, but I digress.)

Before I get into where I’m going with this, I will say that the reprimand of Rob Bell that is to follow is not because of what he had to say in Love Wins.… Read more▹

While I was on vacation last month, my friend JR Briggs asked this question:

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I’m sitting on a plane after a rich six days jaunt to the East Coast. The majority of the time was spent north of DC at the Ecclesia Network National Gathering, followed by a few days north of Philly with Todd Hiestand and The Well.

Barring the fact that it involves being away from my family, the Ecclesia National Gathering is my favorite week of the year, and it’s the only Christian leaders conference I’m finding is worth the investment of my time and money.… Read more▹