Blogger’s Note: On this blog I occasionally offer brief reflections on particular days within the church year. Today’s post is one such reflection. Today in many churches across the world we observed All Saints Sunday. For some general context and background, All Saints Day is the day following All Hallows Eve. So November 1st is the proper time to celebrate All Saints, but in recent years … Continue reading All Saints Day
Tuesday means, its time for the links. As always the case, I entrust to you different things I have read or found in the past week for your reading, thinking, and reflecting pleasure. This week’s categories are: Church and Ministry Thought and Leadership; Cross-Sector Collaboration; Leadership Thought, Practice and Theory; Neighbor Love; and Miscellaneous Thoughts and Reads. Church and Ministry Thought and Leadership Pastor Keith Anderson … Continue reading This Week’s Links
Tomorrow the Lutheran Church observes Reformation Sunday, the only date on the church calendar year really unique to Lutherans. October 31 is the anniversary of Martin Luther posting his ninety-five theses for debate concerning the sale of indulgences. He nailed his proposal to the church door in Wittenberg, Germany on the Eve of All Saints Day knowing that in the morning, people coming to worship … Continue reading This Year’s Reformation
Following up on yesterday’s discussion and pondering about the implications on the congregation, a friend of mine shared this poem from the Huffington Post on Sunday. Here is an excerpt: My name is church. I welcome the: Hypocrite Dry Self-Righteous Shallow I welcome the: Sincere Passionate Forgiving Selfless I cannot shut my doors to the people who make you: Angry Uncomfortable Impatient Self-conscious I encourage … Continue reading A response to “Hello, My Name is Church” with more thoughts on the congregation as a place of welcome, sought, and accompaniment
Tuesday means its time again for an offering of some of the things I have been reading and thinking about from the past week. This week’s categories are, in alphabetical order: Church and Ministry Things; Leadership and Leadership Thought; Neighbor Love; Stewardship; and Vocation. I entrust these to you now in the hope that you find some of these helpful, interesting, and perhaps even provocative. … Continue reading This Week’s Links
It’s been a couple weeks since the last post in this series. Now its time to return and continue the conversation. As I asked, how is a congregation to really be an “all are welcome,” and “all are sought place?” How is a congregation to help its people grow in their ability and willingness to embody accompaniment, and truly be consistent to the congregation’s creeds and … Continue reading All Are Welcome, Sought, and Implications of Accompaniment for the Congregation
As I mentioned in my previous post, “All are sought,” which built off of the concept of “all are welcome,” I want to expand on an idea of accompaniment, something the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America seems to be moving towards embracing more and more. Accompaniment in this sense means meeting people where they are at, and walking alongside them, being an embodiment of God’s … Continue reading Accompaniment
Happy October! For those of you in the United States, however, it might not be so happy as the government has shut down as of midnight. As you might guess there will be some leadership and theological reflections offered as links in the following. As always, Tuesday brings a host of links which I offer as hopefully good reads that you might find interesting and … Continue reading This Week’s Links
What might it mean that all are sought? We pick up the conversation from last week where we discussed the idea of “all are welcome.” If the church, and its congregations are going to actively claim that “all are welcome,” I believe it needs to take seriously the conception that “all are sought.” So what might this mean? It starts in a missional understanding … Continue reading “All are Sought”
I enter into this post, deeply aware of how divisive this might be. I shake a little at the thought of this, but deep down I know I must write. A week and a half ago, perhaps more than at any other time in recent years, I felt convicted (and really, I still do given our current potential for a government shut-down)! I feel convicted … Continue reading Neighbor love in light of the past week’s events
Timothy Siburg 