james on Innovation

Here is the uncomfortable truth: Humans run to a much slower evolutionary clock than our inventions. To use an engineering term, we are the “gating factor” that keeps a process from running faster. It...

Crises, and pressures for change, confront individuals and their groups at all levels, ranging from single people, to teams, to businesses, to nations, to the whole world. Crises may arise from extern...

Let’s state it clearly: One great idea of the biblical revelation is that God is manifest in the ordinary, in the actual, in the daily, in the now, in the concrete incarnations of life, and not throug...

To hope means to be ready at every moment for that which is not yet born, and yet not become desperate if there is no birth in our lifetime.

God bless us with discomfort at easy answers, half-truths and superficial relationships, so that we may live deep within our hearts. God bless us with righteous anger at injustice, oppression, and exp...

With vainglory, we crave notice of our achievements with pride, we take full credit for the progress we have made and do not think that God has been involved at all, let alone been our indispensible h...

In all affairs, it’s a healthy thing now and then to hang a question mark on the things you have long taken for granted.

How is genuineness expressed? Not in words. What you say to your partner is far less important than how you say it—with a smile, a shrug, a frown, or a glare. Consider this: nonverbal communication ac...

All: Knowing God, we often believe our way is the best way. In our arrogance, we ignore your will and your ways. We confess our dependence on knowledge and our independence from you. Thank you that yo...

Two construction workers had taken a lunch break and opened up their lunch boxes. One of them looked inside his box and said, “Not baloney again! I can’t believe it. I hate baloney. This is the third ...

In the Christian subculture, there is an unspoken standard, a notorious goal to “win the contest.” It’s there, the contest. We don’t say it out loud, because it sounds ludicrous spoken into the open a...

Practicing confession is one way to guard against paternalism in both extreme and more subtle ways. For example, we can tell stories of justice in a way that discounts other people’s agency—that is, t...

In his introduction to Scott Sauls’ Book, Irresistable Faith, Bob Goff tells a story about a summer adventure hitchhiking across New England, which would ultimately lead to staying with a hermit in Ma...

All-knowing God, we often believe our way is the best way. In our arrogance, we ignore your will and your ways. We confess our dependence on knowledge and our independence from you. Thank you that you...

New Testament theology is ‘inherently self-involving as it summons the reader to believe, confess, obey, and understand the entirety of one’s existence—both her or his thinking and willing—in light of...

Jesus describes his followers as being “salt” and “light” in the world in Matthew 5. When you think about salt, it doesn’t really have a whole lot of value when it’s just sitting in a salt shaker. Si...

All day long, all of us are framing and reframing our lives. We talk about the memory of our adorable but sexist grandpa. We label ourselves as movie critics or introverts or justice-lovers. We say th...

After the fall of apartheid in South Africa, Archbishop Desmond Tutu led his country in the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC). The TRC rejected the two extremes normally implemented after such...

In her book, The Next Right Thing, Emily Freeman describes the difficulty in making decisions, including the decision that would eventually lead to her enrollment in Graduate school. After a prolonged...

By forgiving another, I am trusting that God is a better justice-maker than I am.

Of all the values at our disposal, humility seems to be the least attractive. You don’t see many television ads or billboards extolling the virtues of humility, do you?

In a statement created by Christian leaders across the world, the Lausanne Willowbank Report calls for church leaders to return to the humility and servanthood that Jesus manifested in His earthly min...

Have you ever been guilty of being a “conversational topper”?  The topper is someone who, when another confides a challenge or shares an exciting event, immediately connects that event to their own li...

Eternal and Glorious God, Your grace calls us toward growth and service in You. Yet today we acknowledge the many times we have forgotten Your mercy and rejected Your love. Forgive us when we sin agai...

Therefore let us repent and pass from ignorance to knowledge, from foolishness to wisdom, from licentiousness to self-control, from injustice to righteousness, from godlessness to God.

Like the Good Samaritan, may we not be ashamed of touching the wounds of those who suffer, but try to heal them with concrete acts of love.

Time heals griefs and quarrels, for we change and are no longer the same persons. Neither the offender nor the offended are any more themselves.

In his 2008 book, Just Courage, Gary Haugen, a lawyer by training, describes an interesting legal precedent known as “void for vaugeness.” Haugen used the precedent to illustrate how vague ideas of Bi...

The only humility that is really ours is not that which we try to show before God in prayer, but that which we carry with us in our daily conduct.

As any parent of small children will tell you, children have an amazingly acute sense of justice. Even the most fractional disparity in the distribution of the most trivial family good will be met wit...