Saturday Six-Pack

Welcome to the final Saturday Six-Pack for May 2013!

Grab your mug and settle in. Here are are six of the best articles I’ve read recently.  Most are faith-focused or ministry-minded; others are just a bit of who-knows-what!

If you need help starting, begin with my two *Picks of the Week*, and move from there.

For a steady stream of such links, follow me on Twitter ( @JasonBandura ) to the right of this post.  Sharp quotes and solid articles are tweeted 3-4 times daily.

Today’s edition:

1) Six Recent Lessons from Turnaround Churches
Thom Rainer has discovered that 9 of 10 North American churches are shrinking or growing at a rate behind their communities. Here are six lessons he recently learned from such churches who are turning it around.

2) The Divine Dance (*PICK OF THE WEEK*)
Scot McKnight shares these Tim-Keller-filled reflections on the Trinity. What does it mean? A whole lot!

3) Learning the Gospel from My Children
A pastor named Jason Micheli recently preached this sermon, and I am a sucker for anything that revolves around Luke 15.

4) Daily Rituals of the Most Creative People (*PICK OF THE WEEK*)
I am fascinated by how creativity works. This little essay, based on a full-length book, scratched that itch for a few moments.  For the record, I am unlikely to adopt many of W.H. Auden’s “labor-saving devices”.

5) Hotel Pornography and the Market of Morality
I found this piece, from The Public Discourse, ten months after its publishing. Well-written piece that uses a movement looking to ban hotel pay-per-view pornography as a case study on the strange dance between morality, economics, politics, and more.

6) 8 Habits of Highly Productive People
While the title looks like a knock-off of a best-selling classic, and the article contains a handful of typos, a few ideas here might help those longing to be more productive.

May your weekend be full of awareness and enjoyment of the God who already fills it with Himself and every good thing.  Blessings on you, my friends.

YOUR TURN: Direct other readers to the best stuff with a comment below, or weigh in on what you read.  Your input makes this post better!

[You can subscribe to this blog via RSS or email, in the upper right corner of this page.]

I Want to be This Woman

When I grow up, I want to be this woman.

Well, er… not this woman. Or even any woman, for that matter.

But watch, and you’ll know exactly what I mean!

Losing Faith VII: Trading It In

This is the seventh post in a series called “Losing Faith”. All posts can be viewed HERE.

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As mentioned in the first post of this series, it was a blogging friend who originally dispatched this train of thought for me. He observed how travel had played a part in the unraveling of a faith he once held.

I would echo that sentiment with an alternate angle.

TREASURE OF TRAVEL

Exposure to faraway lands and interactions with the folks of those places have led me to lose much of my faith as well—particularly faith in my culture, in popular Western thought, and more specifically in myself. However, those undoings only served to intensify my felt need for some form of Anchor, some Foundation upon which to construct.

There is a special pleasure to deconstruction. Who has ever carried a tool more fun than a sledgehammer? But at some point, there is need for some skilled builder to enter the scene. Creating rubble is fun, but it hardly provides a place to live.

This is my metaphor. others can grasp at their own well-fitted images. But for me, this is glove-like.

For I love to play the cynic more than most. To feign enlightenment through critique, this is the safe and satisfying life of the skeptic.

At least, it is until it isn’t.

Safe or satisfying.

My travel experiences and other life-tastes have at times fed that cynical, skeptical streak with a fresh spread of questions and rebukes toward the status quo that had both nurtured me and numbed me up to that point. Some of this caused me to grow; some just caused me to grump.

When it comes to religion, Christianity in particular, I often chuckle. I can recall a handful of conversations where speakers in attack mode unveiled their “faith-destroyers” to me. Typically, these “questions” ended with periods, rather than question marks. But punctuation aside, the tone carried a whiff of superiority silently declaring that the statement being made was surely news to me, and perhaps everyone else who ever “mindlessly” fallen into faith. In fact, it appeared certain to at least one in the room that surely no human in history had ever formulated this ground-breaking assessment of reality.

Now to be sure, I learn things every day, from sources and angles of every sort. But these types of encounter cause my chuckle to rise because they suppose shallowness.  To discover that my feet touch the sand on the bottom hardly means that I’ve plumbed the depths of the sea.  It merely means I can touch where I am.  To crucify Christianity for its smallness when the “great big world” enlightens is one form of losing faith.  To move my feet in pursuit of deeper and purer waters was mine.

Though I didn’t foresee the amount of seawater I’d have to swallow along the way!

I SAY THAT TO SAY THIS

I can state with confidence that the faith I have lost along the way was a small faith.  Perhaps that is exactly why I lost it. It is easier to lose coins than cars.

In exchange for my feather-weight faith, heavy on its need for certainty and control, I am receiving a more substantial faith, rooted in dependence upon the eternal Spirit of God and a recognition of my need to keep step with Him.  This need is driven by neither fear nor threat, but by the simple recognition that moving out of rhythm with the beat that drives the universe is clumsy and costly.  I would rather sync myself to sink myself into the groove awaiting those whose stride is guided by the All-of-Life-Giver.

LOSING THINGS

I hate losing things. Misplacing keys or phone drives me almost mad. Part of that is driven by the fact that I am typically very careful with my things, seldom losing track. So when I do, it cracks my composure. Losing my faith, even the small version, has felt like that. It had grown dear to me; it was worn and comfortable from years of use.

But it no longer fit.

Perhaps it never did.

Happy Birthday Youtube!

Recently Youtube turned eight years old. In case you struggle to grasp the site’s impact on our lives, this piece may offer some much-needed perspective.

Seven Minutes to Better Health

I just completed this workout for the first time.

The concept is built upon the theory of interval training, which is hardly a new idea. This version or workout has been featured on a number of websites lately, and I was up for something new. I can not say whether this method maximizes results, but I can attest to having a decent sweat and a faster pulse at the end.

If you’ve got seven minutes and some extra calories to burn, the image above sketches out the flow of exercises, and THIS LINK provides a perfect timing and instruction companion to free you up to think about more important things… like breathing.

Saturday Six-Pack

Welcome to the long weekend edition of the Saturday Six-Pack.

Settle in for a few minutes, and move your way through six of the of the best online pieces I found this week. Most are faith-focused or ministry-minded; others are just who-knows-what!

If you need help starting, begin with my two *Picks of the Week*, and move from there.

For a steady stream of such links, follow me on Twitter ( @JasonBandura ) to the right of this post.  Sharp quotes and solid articles are tweeted 3-4 times daily.

Today’s edition:

1) The Unexpected Antidote to Procrastination
What can a prairie boy learn from surfers about life? At least one great thing, according to this HBR piece.

2) Engaging Lecturers Can Breed Overconfidence
Research Digest makes the suggestion that great speakers actually distort the learning process for their listeners. So speakers, aim to suck! Or at least read this post to be aware of what happens when you’re excellent at your job.

3) What Seems to Help in the Midst of Pain
If you’ve ever hurt or wished to help others when they hurt, then Kathy Escobar‘s thoughts may serve you well today.

4) 2013 Chick-Fil-A Leadercast Highlights
I’ve long heard rave reviews of this annual conference. Michael Hyatt has posted a short list of his take-homes from the most recent event.

5) You Only Have $5. What is the Best Way to Invest and Grow Your Money? (*PICK OF THE WEEK*)
This brilliant piece uses an assignment given to Stanford students to vividly highlight the vital place for “out there” thinking.

6) Preaching Better Sermons Top 121 Tweets (*PICK OF THE WEEK*)
Preaching Rocket’s most recent online workshop can be tasted here in 121 tweet-sized morsels! Speakers of all stripes, have at it!

May your weekend be full of awareness and enjoyment of the God who already fills it with Himself and every good thing.  Blessings on you, my friends.

YOUR TURN: Direct other readers to the best stuff with a comment below, or weigh in on what you read.  Your input makes this post better!

[You can subscribe to this blog via RSS or email, in the upper right corner of this page.]

Pentecost for Kids

If you were trying to describe Pentecost to children, how would you do it?

If you were Phil Vischer, you’d do this…

Or if you were Dan Stevers, you might try this…