on the passing of carl fh henry

blake wrote a verse that has meant an enormous amount to me through the years:

He who bends to himself a joy
Does the winged life destroy;
But he who kisses the joy as it flies
Lives in eternity's sunrise.

somehow I have always known that my time with my little ones [michaela siobhan (7), skye teresa (5) and alia noelle (3)] would be very brief. When I have held them - tonight, even, when chalea and I were on one of our "dates" driving from ice cream to walmart where she was going to spend some christmas money - i realized that this was a brief moment and I needed to cherish it, but not hold it too tightly to my chest because i simply can't have it for long. On new years day, I was walking through Patuxent Valley State Park with Alia on my shoulders playing "Where's Alia?" And she would laugh and then she would bend her little blond head in front of mine, first left and then right so that I would see just where she - in fact - was.

In just a little time, my precious little birds will fly away and my nest will be empty.

In just a little more time (with God's grace), my time will be nearly gone and I will decline.

I've been reading through 2nd Chronicles and I so want to end my brief sojourn in time well. Its sobering to read of the Israeli kings who lived well and then lost their path at the end. I'm so happy to hear that Dr. Henry kept in the way until the end.

The other day I reminded beth that we have many pains ahead. Both of my parents and Beth's mom are alive and they will not live forever. Our daughters (by God's grace) will hit the teenage years and will surely break our hearts (could it not be so perhaps?). And we will grow old. I reminded Bethany that the time is now to invest in those things that will make our hearts and souls strong so that when these storms hit we will stand in Jesus Christ. I cannot find the quote, but somewhere Thomas Jefferson, who I believe lost most or all of his kids and his wife before he passed, wrote that we spend our lives preparing for the moments of supreme sorrow.

I want to be faithful and be strong in God so that I will remember what really matters when it matters the most.

God help us all to have an end as well-regarded as Carl FH Henry's.

does God ever hate church?

not that long ago if you were christian, you went to church; if you weren't, you didn't. lately it seems to be more and more common for people to be committed to following jesus but uninterested, if not antagonistic, toward church. this phenomenon is gathering increasing attention. witness Sociologist Dr. Alan Jamieson's recent tome A Churchless Faith.

Yesterday I was reading Isaiah 1:12ff

12"When you come to appear before me,
who has required of you
this trampling of my courts?
13Bring no more vain offerings;
incense is an abomination to me.
New moon and Sabbath and the calling of convocations--
I cannot endure iniquity and solemn assembly.
14Your new moons and your appointed feasts
my soul hates;
they have become a burden to me;
I am weary of bearing them.
15When you spread out your hands,
I will hide my eyes from you;
even though you make many prayers,
I will not listen;
your hands are full of blood.
16Wash yourselves; make yourselves clean;
remove the evil of your deeds from before my eyes;
cease to do evil,
17learn to do good;
seek justice,
correct oppression;
bring justice to the fatherless,
plead the widow's cause.
18"Come now, let us reason together, says the LORD:
though your sins are like scarlet,
they shall be as white as snow;
though they are red like crimson,
they shall become like wool.
19If you are willing and obedient,
you shall eat the good of the land;
20but if you refuse and rebel,
you shall be eaten by the sword;
for the mouth of the LORD has spoken."

(English Standard Version)

and it occurred to me: I bet sometimes God hates church too.

leadership formation

yesterday i had a great lunch with one of my teammates on our church's adult ministry leadership team. we were discussing our leadership development plan for the rest of 2003 and 2004 which we are soon presenting to our entire team. during the meeting, i was reminded of lyndon johnson.

this past summer during the 2-3 hours a day i spend commuting between just south of baltimore and northern virginia, i've been listening to robert a caro's wonderfully exhaustive biographies of lyndon johnson - The Path to Power, the Means of Ascent and Master of the Senate. Caro began studying and writing ab lyndon in 1975. and if he takes as long to finish volume 4 of his johnson library as he has spent with the first 3 volumes leading up to johnson's presidency, he will have spent 4 decades studying and writing about his subject.

i think i will remember this past summer as "the summer of lyndon johnson."

lyndon johnson, apparently, was a man who - as caro puts it - was not limited in his ascent to power by ideology or ethics! but he was a genius at politics and truly "a master of the Senate." he was a far stronger senator than president. at the core of his formidable skillset was his ability to read men. he was a consummate strategist and an master salesman. he did not make a lot of speeches. most of his movements were not public ones. he hated reading books. he accomplished much of all that he achieved in the senate - and he achieved quite a bit, especially as a champion of civil rights - in one on one conversations. in the senate cloak room, on the telephone, in his senate office #231, etc.

caro's interest in lyndon was motivated by his desire to see how government and politics really worked. caro is fascinated by power and wished to study it. in the process, i think he's illustrated a principle not only for how government change occurs, but since government is nothing more than an aggregate of powerful people (plus rules, laws and tradition), caro has shown us how people-change occurs.

as i've listened to now tens of hours of these biographies over the last many weeks, as i've listened to how lyndon worked personally with folks to get done what he needed to get done, it's made me even more convinced that when we think of leadership development we need to think small. ministry programs, leadership structures, development paths - I am convinced - are nothing more than contexts within which the more foundational one-on-one development occurs. and i'm certainly not against these contexts. we need a means of transferring critical information about leadership without - however - relying on the information transfer alone as the primary means of leadership development. we've often, i fear, gotten it backwards in leadership development programs (and there are analogies here with spiritual development programs - actually that's primarily what i'm talking about). mentors and proteges don't serve the programs, structures, and classes, etc. rather all of these formal structures exist to serve the mentors and proteges. every such formalized entity we develop (leadership hierarchies, leadership workshops, seminars, conferences, reporting structures, reportage modalities, effectiveness criteria tracking etc) only exists as tools for the mentors and proteges to use.

some months ago my lunch mate and i had the chance to meet with our church's elders to talk about adult education. at that time i suggested to the team that when they thought of what had actually been spiritually transformative in their lives, what they principally thought about was not lectures or books or sermons, but faces and names. what has changed our lives has been people. books and articles and sermons and talks - and the contexts in which they occur - all have a place and are not to be depreciated. but they are not to be regarded, as we've said before, as the omnicompetent modality of spiritual transformation. we have to keep the main thing the main thing and those of us with leadership responsibilities in the church have to manage to relationships and not view relationships as being merely serendipitous to spiritual change. relationships are the very engine of spiritual change and we musn't lose sight of that.

in the short term it will feel slower. it won't be as dramatic as one person lecturing to 10,000. but in the long term, as we create a culture of leadership that includes as a primary value the critical necessity of constantly pouring our lives into future leaders, growth will become both exponential and holistic.

this is the best chance we have to recapture the past dynamism that Christ's church has intermittently displayed.

leaders must make leaders and not rely on their institutions to make leaders. the institutions can and should provide contexts and tools. but the work itself is personal and intimate.

star struck

Yes, it happened to me.

This past Monday, 15 September I walked into one of USA TODAY's conference rooms for our standard 8:30 AM Circulation Marketing meeting where the Director, our VP and other managers meet to discuss ways to convince folks to subscribe to our paper. I was the first one in the room, one of our many conference rooms in our beautiful new corporate headquarters where I have had the privilege of working since January of 2002. My office is about 50 feet behind this conference room. But there was a man there setting up bright lights, a camera and a microphone. Turns out that in 90 minutes bono of u2 was going to come to this very room to be interviewed by USA TODAY editors. I even got to do a sound check on the mike for the guy!

bono was in town to "appeal to america's greatness" and to meet with President Bush about treating AIDS in Africa.

i will confess that I was a bit star-struck. I wasn't the only one. folks were standing around the glass-enclosed conference room watching the back of bono's head. a co-worker of mine just walked right up to him and shook his hand. it occurred to me how unusual it must be to be surrounded by such throughts and stratagems every day of your life.

but bono's message was an important one and he's been delivering it for a while now.

you can see clips from the interview by clicking "see it for yourself" in Whitney Matheson's column on the event.

kingdom leaders

tonight Clay Carver of soul horizon, ron willoughby, and mark goodrich of grace community church had a great teleconference call with todd hunter. he was gracious enough to meet with us to discuss holistic leadership formation. clay and ron are involved in church planting and mark and I serve on grace community church's adult ministry team . we asked todd questions for ab an hour. towards the end of our talk, i wrote down 5 words that encapsulated my take away's (in no particular order):

service
friendship
competencies
knowledge
character

service and character

todd mentioned that modern evangelicalism has a tendency to front load our leadership development as if someone is qualified when the end of the program is reached. he suggested that instead we need to take a more holistic approach and to realize that life and experience are the best teachers and that it takes time.

i mentioned that as i've done hiring in my day job, i've realized that i have to hire folks at 94% and bring them to 97% but that i'll never get someone hired at 67% to 97%. todd suggested that the in establishing selection criteria that we look at character and service. he suggested that we focus on leaders already serving with good character. he suggests we over-rely on information.

friendship

after the meeting, i mentioned to mark, ron and clay that clay's qualification for ministry isn't clay, mdiv but rather clay, friend of ron. i walked away from our meeting thinking that a strong, confiding spiritual friendship is an absolute requirement as a leadership qualification.

knowledge

i do believe knowledge is a strong component of this; but - as i've written before here and elsewhere - knowledge is not the omnicompetent modality of spiritual transformation.

competencies

and - of course - competences are important. but we must remember as Bertoldo de Giovanni told Michelangelo, "Talent is cheap; dedication is costly." and dedication is the stuff of character.

what does all this mean?

i believe it means our best approaches must be more organic, holistic and relational rather than only systematized, proceduralized and structured. i don't believe systemic is intrinsically bad. but it is not primarily effective.

i believe we focus more on selection, looking for people of character *and* service accomplishment.

i believe we continue to do information transfer but not rely on it only.

i need to think ab all this more.

David K Clark's To Know and Love God

Dan Brennan has posted a review of Professor Clark's newest book.

Soul Horizon

Had a great time this morning breakfasting with Clay Carver and Dave Cowan of Soul Horizon and their friend Randy Millwood. A couple of members of Grace's Adult Ministry Leadership Team came and one of our Emerging Leaders came as well. We talked about holistic approaches to leadership development. It was rich!

And now, Postmodern Celtic Baptists

See for yourself!

letter from Chuck Smith to President Bush

Calvary Chapel pastor Chuck Smith joins Brian McLaren as a pastor who writes letters to our President.

new book on jonathan edwards by george marsden

Today's Washington Post Book Review pullout ran a review of George Marsden's new book on Jonathan Edwards. Looks like a good read.

the holistic development of spiritual leaders (or whither seminary)

Wrote a little more than I intended on this today in a note to a seminarian.

More on Iraqi War News

I am dedicated to my country (though not above my dedication to God). I also believe in the possbility of just war. But I also wasn't sure this was a just war.

On faithmaps.org's Iraqi War News Page, I added Arab and other international sources to the mix. Tonight I added Venik's Aviation (Russia), which has a one day delayed translation of iraqwar.ru. Here's what Venik's Aviation has to say about iraqwar.ru: "The IRAQWAR.RU analytical center was created recently by a group of journalists and military experts from Russia to provide accurate and up-to-date news and analysis of the war against Iraq." Be sure to also check out John Sutherland's article about this site in The Guardian,

I found out about this site from daily Kos to which I was referred by Warblogs:cc.

WarBlogs

I've added some of the better known Warblogs to the Iraq War News Page.

Chris Temple...

is with Jesus.

News on the War in Iraq

I built out a page that's dedicated to linking to United States and International news sources on the War in Iraq.

Baghdad Bloggers

No joke. See Bob Sullivan's Net Diaries Describe Baghdad Attack who writes about Salam Pax's and Bettejo Passalaqua's online blogs.

Deb Delgiacco

A friend of mine died Sunday 2 March after visiting her doctor with flu symptoms the previous day. She was a beautiful, beautiful woman inside and out. Bethany and I met her in 1999 in our neighborhood when as a 39 year old woman she had a teenager and a newborn. Her youngest daughter just turned 1 year old a couple of weeks ago. The Howard County Times ran a nice piece on Debi .

on Chris Temple

Some of you will remember my posting ab Chris Temple some mos ago. He's the new pastor fresh out of seminary who collapsed in his pulpit one Sunday. Turns out he has leukemia. His faithful friend, Amelia Hendricks sent this out on Sat. 8 March 2003:

As I e-mailed a couple of weeks ago, Chris has not been feeling well lately.
He announced to his congregation last Sunday, after delivering the
message, that his leukemia is back (out of remission). Chris and Roberta
have decided not to go through chemotherapy again and just to receive
supportive therapy. Supportive therapy means some medications, transfusions
of blood products as needed, and the like. He is not in any pain, but he is
very weak. They are praying for God's healing, of course, but don't know if
God will answer by healing Chris here or in heaven.

Chris is still able to carry out parts of his role as shepherd of the
Ligonier flock. He plans to keep preaching every other Sunday as he is
able.

Thank you for your prayers for him, his family and his church. I will
include his address at the bottom of the e-mail if you want to send them a
card.

Chris and Roberta Temple
324 W. Vincent St
Ligonier, PA 15658

The Real Deal About Chemical, Nuclear & Biological Warfare

A couple of days ago, a friend sent me an email supposedly from SFC Red Thomas (Ret), Armor Master Gunner, Mesa, AZ entitled A Soldier's Viewpoint on Surviving Nuclear, Chemical and Biological Attacks. I used to get these kinds of emails all the time (less now for some reason) and so my first instinct was to find out if this were a hoax. And so I checked my favorite Urban Legends site and found out that not only was the email substantially what it said it was but that there was some good information in it as well (though there are some dissents).

I offer it here as a public service!

Dealing with Arab Rage

I was reading Arab Friends Turn Away from the US and it reminded me of something I had posted not long after 9/11.