Reflection Roundup: Taking Time
Each week we gather news stories, notable pieces, and other important items for Christian leaders today. As always, listening broadly draws together differing perspectives from which we can learn but may not concur. Here are 10 things worth sharing this week.
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1. Timothy Keller generously brings the reader alongside his own exploration of mortality upon receipt of a pancreatic cancer diagnosis that followed on the heels of his publication of On Death, third in a three-book series entitled How to Find God. In “Growing My Faith in the Face of Death,” Keller openly expresses his process of alignment of head and heart with the practical reality of Christ’s resurrection, including the personal implications for one facing a death that feels too soon. Taking his own advice turns out to be a process he and his wife have had to explore, the fruit of which he kindheartedly displays as a benevolent host on the table of his writing. Keller’s Hope in Times of Fear: The Resurrection and the Meaning of Easter releases this week.
2. Those of us in higher education can all learn much regarding “The Importance of Grieving.” Writer Beth McMurtrie quotes Josh Eyler of the University of Mississippi, saying that when we’re all about just moving on, “It feels to the people who worked through it that it’s not acknowledging their significant experiences. It feels like what they did didn’t matter. … It’s just a really hard transition to make.” There’s grief to process as well as beneficial learning that might not have happened any other way. Riley Fisher, junior editorial staff writer for The Optimist, ACU’s campus newspaper, puts meat on the bone of this sentiment in “Reflecting on the year that changed the world.”
3. Richard Hammar, attorney, CPA, and developer of Pastor, Church & Law, has centralized this free, “no-miss” resource referenced on Christianity Today’s Church Law & Tax site. “The Top Five Reasons Churches and Religious Organizations End Up in Court” includes a downloadable PDF for quick reference along with the article detailing Hammar’s research and writing on the most common legal disputes related to churches.
4. “Improvising leadership,” a Faith & Leadership interview with Samuel Wells, former dean of Duke University Chapel and current vicar at London’s St. Martin-in-the-Fields Church, expands Wells’s view that all of life actually is a rehearsal. “Improvisation is about allowing yourself to be obvious. It’s about being so soaked in a tradition that you learn to take the right things for granted. People who train in improvisation train in a tradition. They learn to trust one another and to say the obvious thing.” Traditional moments, repeated over time in community, inform our response in key intervals that require both comfort and context. In “Improvisation is Theological,” MaryAnn McKibben Dana unpacks improvisation further: “This idea of improvisation is a powerful way to think about how we interact with this God who is ultimately beyond our understanding and our comprehension.”
5. Andrew Hess writes “3 Things I Wish I’d Known When I Was Single,” reflecting on the challenges and opportunities of singleness. Once again, all of life is a rehearsal as the need for virtues like contentment, gratitude and unselfish attitudes rear their heads in all phases. Here’s a little more on the possibilities singleness offers.
6. In “A 1 Corinthians Word of Encouragement for Struggling Church Leaders,” Chuck Lawless offers a brief, yet timely, reminder of the opening and closing of Paul’s letter, one in which he articulated hard things to people who had clearly captured his heart.
7. The unknowns are present, sometimes to a paralyzing degree. The continued state of hypervigilance wears on a church population in which anxiety and mental health concerns were on the rise even pre-pandemic. Thom and Sam Rainer open a podcast conversation with author Gregory L. Jantz on “Dealing with Pandemic Anxiety and Stress in Your Life and in the Church,” episode 686 of Rainer on Leadership. This interview coincides with the release of Jantz’s book, The Anxiety Reset: A Life-Changing Approach to Overcoming Fear, Stress, Worry, Panic Attacks, OCD and More.
8. Experimental Theology blogger Richard Beck writes, “The Bible is, rather, a collection of stories about real people in real places, and about how God comes to them, and to us and the entire world, in small, messy, intimate spaces.” It’s the stuff of Lent, narrated throughout Genesis and refreshingly translated by Robert Alter in Alter’s own, The Hebrew Bible: A Translation with Commentary.
9. Preachers, “you are God’s child, not God’s sermon.” Encouragement from someone who “knows” comes this week by way of reminder in “What You Bring,” from Ronnie Martin on The Preachers Corner, a series from For The Church.
10. We have special people in our lives and in our churches whose needs differ from what might be considered “the norm.” In “Out There I Have to Smile,” mom Heather Lanier processes the “treacherous spaces of out there” and sheds cleansing tears describing the pressures many parents of special needs children – and many immigrants for that matter – feel living in a country or inhabiting a space where “you have to smile all the time.” Lanier’s generous, insightful piece offers vital perspective.
11. (Worth the bonus!) “It’s taught me you really need to appreciate what’s in front of you.” This taken from the lens/mouth of a birdwatcher, shared here.
