A Christianity Worth Believing

The book is available.  Doug Pagitt’s new book came out several weeks earlier than anticipated so now is your chance to get your hands on your own copy.  The title of the book is “A Christianity Worth Believing” with a wonderful subtitle “hope-filled, open-armed, alive-and-well faith.”   

The book is available just about everywhere but to make life easy you can just go to Amazon and you can have a look and read a bit of a preview.  

On a completely unrelated note, I have been invited to a pastor gathering in Illinois to tell the story of PRN and our goal of introducing the practice of Sabbath, solitude and rest to pastors who are burning the candle at both ends.  

It looks like massive road-trips are in the offing over the summer.  It’s good to be busy doing something that helps bring new life to pastors who are just about ready to call it quits.  

 

Nice or Right

I have, for a long time now, been an interested observer of Christian behavior especially in the area of how we treat one another.  Part of my professional training, way back in the day, was in the area of interpersonal communications; I even paid attention long enough to become a certified trainer for the Sales Analysis Institute, a corporate training organization that was based in Oak Brook, IL.  That company has long since been purchased by another training company; the point in all of this is that communication skills are absolutely critical, especially to those of us who claim to be committed to advancing the Kingdom. 

As the Scriptures teach – our words can build up or tear down – kind answers can turn away anger and on and on the examples go.  What I don’t quite grasp is why “the church” spends so little time equipping people to speak the truth in love.  Sadly we have become quite good at speaking the truth in anger, speaking the truth in arrogance, and speaking the truth over the top of our listener’s objections or questions.  

Jesus said that there are two things that are of paramount importance – loving God and loving one another. How we communicate with one another is a good barometer of where our love level happens to be at any given moment.  

I hope that as we continue to make strides forward in the missional church expression, that communicating in love takes on a higher level of importance.   We have to get beyond “having to be right’ at all costs – when we must be right we alienate and minimize our listeners.  

More on this later – but for now I just wanted to get those few thoughts out there – but in closing, one axiom that I live by is that kindness does not equal weakness, let that soak in and it will effect the way you communicate . . . I promise.