Relationships and Community on Play

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Playing for His Father

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Scripture

Proverbs 22:23, Deuteronomy 6:6-9, Philippians 4:13, Hebrews 12:1-3, Psalm 19:93-94

A blind father, proud of his son who played Rugby at its namesake school, would listen intently to the roar of the crowd and the cheers for the winning team. Though he never saw his son in action, he ...

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The Kingdom of God is a Public Park

Author

Elizabeth Achtemeier

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Scripture

Zechariah 8:1-8

What is the Kingdom of God, according to the prophet Zechariah (Zech. 8:1-8)? It is a public park! It is a park where old people are no longer cold and lonely and ill and senile, but participants in a...

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Author

Annie F. Downs

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I think when we go looking for fun what we are actually looking for is home. We are looking for peace. We are looking for simplicity, something to fill that spot that has been left by growing up or gr...

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Author

Archytas of Tarentum

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Place

To be is to be in place.

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Author

Mark Regnerus and Jeremy Uecker

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Relationships are a large playing field upon which other life contests and struggles get worked out.

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Two Options to Deal with Online Critcism

Author

Brant P. Hansen

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In this short excerpt from Brant Hansen’s excellent book, Unoffendable, the author shares a “hypothetical” example of how he deals with online criticism. Generally speaking, it never goes the way you ...

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Author

Ronald A. Heifetz, Marty Linsky, Alexander Grashow

Keywords

Scripture

Proverbs 19:11, Romans 12:21, Isaiah 50:7, Nehemiah 6:3, Galatians 1:10

When you take "personal" attacks personally, you unwittingly conspire in one of the common ways you can be taken out of action-you make yourself the issue. Attacks may be personal, understan...

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Pete Carroll’s Call and the Error of “Resulting”

Author

Annie Duke

Keywords

Scripture

Matthew 7:24-27, Galatians 6:7-8, Proverbs 16:3, Psalm 119:105, James 1:5

One of the most controversial decisions in Super Bowl history took place in the closing seconds of Super Bowl XLIX in 2015. The Seattle Seahawks, with twenty-six seconds remaining and trailing by four...

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What is Your Purpose?

Author

J. D. Greear

Keywords

Scripture

1 Corinthians 12:7-12, Ephesians 4:16, Romans 12:4-5, 1 Peter 4:10, 1 Corinthians 3:9

A pastor friend of mine once brought about ten people onto the stage at his church and assigned them roles to play on an imaginary fire truck. One person was assigned to drive; another controlled the ...

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The Enemy Lines are Hard to Find

Author

Fleming Rutledge

Keywords

A friend of mine who is a child psychologist told me about something one of her young patients said. It is common practice to give toys to children in the treatment room so they work out their conflic...

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The Politics of Ministry Book Review & Quotes

Author

Stuart R. Strachan, Jr.

Keywords

Scripture

Philippians 2:21

Picture this: you are just about a year into your first call as a minister. Everything seems to be going swimmingly. You caught up with a seminary friend over the weekend and you slightly brag about h...

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The Cellist of Sarajevo

Author

James Bryan Smith

Keywords

Scripture

Habakkuk 3:17-18, John 16:33, 2 Corinthians 4:8-9, Romans 12:17-21, Psalm 57:

From 1992 to 1995 the world witnessed one of the worst civil conflicts, the Bosnian War. Three factions, each tied to a religion (Orthodox Serbs, Catholic Croats, and Muslim Bosniaks), began attacking...

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If Hollywood decided to make a movie

Author

The Pastor's Workshop

Keywords

Scripture

Genesis 50:20, Exodus 3:1–12, Ruth 1:16–17 , Hebrews 12:1–2, Luke 7:36–50, Psalm 139:16

If Hollywood decided to make a movie about your life, what would it look like? What genre would it be? Action/Adventure? Drama? Comedy? Who would play you? Tom Cruise? Denzel Washington? For most of u...

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The Darkness of Epiphany: Herod’s Murdering of the Innocents

Author

Fleming Rutledge

Keywords

Scripture

Exodus 1:15-22, Jeremiah 31:15, Hosea 11:1, Matthew 2:1-18 , Revelation 12:1-6, Psalm 10:17-18

Presentations of the Matthean narrative that have had such an illustrious life in art and imagination are not complete without the disturbing involvement of Herod and the political killings that resul...

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A New Direction for Family Discipleship

Author

Brian Dembowczyk

Keywords

If the Prof is 10 min late... I was in my freshman year in college, and Statistics was the final class before Thanksgiving break. When the professor was ten minutes late, I and several others got up ...

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Sacred Space: Lessons from Ethiopia’s Church Forests

Author

William Rowley

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Too Busy for God? American work culture is all-pervasive. For many members of your congregation, it can be a real fight to get actual time off—and cell phones and the internet has made it possible to...

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Envy Defined

Author

John Ortberg

Keywords

Envy

Scripture

1 Samuel 18:10-16, 1 Corinthians 3:3, James 3:16, Titus 3:3, Ecclesiastes 4:4, Proverbs 14:30, Exodus 20:17

Envy is wanting what another person has and feeling badly that I don’t have it. Envy is disliking God’s goodness to someone else and dismissing God’s goodness to me. Envy is desire plus resentment. En...

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Don't Take Conflict Personally

Author

Stuart R. Strachan, Jr.

Keywords

Scripture

1 Peter 3:8-11

Called to Pastor, Inclined to Argue When I was graduating from college in the mid-2000s, I was encouraged to take a career test to determine where my personality type would fit in the working world. ...

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God of grace, power and glory –

Author

Richard Herman

Keywords

Scripture

1 Corinthians 15:57, 1 Chronicles 16:11, Romans 8:28, Philippians 4:13, Psalm 121:2

God of grace, power and glory – Creator, Redeemer, and Sustainer – and our Father: When we’re tempted to think it’s all up to us: to change the world, to overcome evil, to establish Your kingdom. to m...

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God of grace, power and glory–Creator,

Author

Richard Herman

Keywords

God of grace, power and glory–Creator, Redeemer, and Sustainer–and our Father: When we’re tempted to think it’s all up to us: to change the world, to overcome evil, to establish Your kingdom, to make ...

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God of the common and of the uncommon.

Author

Richard Herman

Keywords

Scripture

Colossians 3:17, Matthew 5:16, Psalm 34:18, Isaiah 43:18-19, James 5:14-15

God of the common and of the uncommon. You meet us in the ordinary routines of life–when we play and when we rest, while we work and while we worship. And You reveal yourself in the extraordinary, too...

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God–our Father, Lord and indwelling

Author

Richard Herman

Scripture

Philippians 4:6-7, 1 Timothy 2:1-2, Psalm 133:1, 2 Corinthians 9:13-14, Matthew 28:19-20

God–our Father, Lord and indwelling Spirit of grace and power: Thank you for hearing us when we pray whether in songs of rejoicing or through tears of sorrow. Thank you for gifts–for the gifts of musi...

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A Thanksgiving Litany

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Let us give thanks to God our Father for all his gifts so freely bestowed upon us. For the beauty and wonder of your creation, in earth and sky and sea. We thank you, Lord. For all that is gracio...

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Finally Discovering Lordship

Author

Les Goertz

Keywords

“A young man came to visit me with a question on his mind. He asked, “I prayed to receive Jesus as my Savior, but why has nothing really changed in my life?” I asked him, “Who is running your life?” H...

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Half A Head of Lettuce

Author

Source Unknown

Keywords

There was a boy who worked in the produce section of the market. A woman came in and asked to buy half a head of lettuce. The boy told him they only sold whole heads of lettuce, because that's the...

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Getting to Know You

Author

M. Robert Mulholland Jr.

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I have a little game I play when traveling. I regularly hear strangers meeting strangers, and usually within thirty seconds to a minute one asks the other, “What do you do?” Well, when someone asks me...

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Author

Fred Rogers

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Things Are Different: You never know the story By the cover of the book. You can’t tell what a dinner’s like By simply looking at the cook. It’s something everybody needs to know Way down deep inside ...

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Control Issues

Author

M. Robert Mulholland Jr.

Keywords

Scripture

Proverbs 16:9, Jeremiah 29:11, John 15:1-27, Proverbs 3:5-6, Galatians 2:20, Matthew 6:25-34

In their excellent book Invitation to a Journey , M. Robert Mulholland and Ruth Haley Barton describe the foundation of life as being spiritual in nature. This means we are constantly be “formed” s...

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Crazy, But True Stories of Criticism at a Christian Radio Station

Author

Brant P. Hansen

Keywords

In his excellent book, Unoffendable, Brant Hansen shares a few humorous, but sadly true, stories of people being critical of his work at a Christian music station: One day, we talked about the local...

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Author

Eugene Peterson

Keywords

I often found myself preferring the company of people outside my congregation, men and women who did not follow Jesus. Or worse, preferring the company of my sovereign self. But soon I found that my p...

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