A digital commonplace for a Regular Guy called Charlie Pharis

Month: February 2007 (page 1 of 1)

Timothy Keller Article…

I don’t really remember exactly, but I think it was Steve McCoy who first pointed me toward Timothy Keller and the work of Redeemer Presbyterian Church in Manhattan.

Anyway, the latest print edition of Cutting Edge, the church planting magazine from the Vineyard churches, has a great article by Keller about developing city-center churches. (The issue is not online yet, but the print edition showed up in my mailbox yesterday.)

Good stuff! And it’s got me thinking about things like…

  • How do these concepts relate to my place?
  • Is it time to look at places like Woodstock, Georgia as still being the ‘edge’ of Atlanta?
  • Or are smaller, growing cities like Woodstock ‘cities on their own’?

And these money quotes (among many!) from the article…

You can’t just disciple people on how to be Christians in their private lives, (e.g., prayer, witnessing, Bible study). Center-city people don’t have much in the way of a “private life.” If you are in finance, or art, or acting or medicine, your vocation dominates your life and your time. Discipleship must include how to be distinctively Christian within your job, including how to handle the peculiar temptations and ethical quandaries, and how to produce work in one’s own field from a distinctly Christian world-view.

If you speak and discourse as if your whole neighborhood is present eventually more and more of your neighborhood will find their way in or be invited. Why? Most Christians, even when they are very edified in church, know intuitively that their non-Christian friends would not appreciate the service. What you want is for a Christian to come to your church and say, “Oh! I wish my non-Christian friend could see (or hear) this!” If this is forgotten, soon even a growing church will be filled with Christians who commute in from various towns and communities far and wide rather than filling up with Christians and seekers from your church’s immediate neighborhood. (p. 23)

Interesting Tidbits and Other Assorted Stuff…

Although I took a month off from blogging, I kept the ol’ Moleskine hot. Here’s a little smörgåsbord of thoughts from the last month or so…

Saturday, February 3, 2007 8:37 a.m….

What was the use of doing great things if I could have a better time telling her what I was going to do?
-Jay Gatsby, in F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby, p. 157

Thursday, February 15, 2007 6:03 a.m.

…if you allow sloppy practice and don’t push your team to continually improve, sloppiness becomes a habit; then it’s tougher to get the team to focus on getting better when it most needs to.
-Ken Blanchard & Don Shula, Everyone’s a Coach, p. 21

Friday, February 16, 2007 8:34 a.m.

And more to the point, if [Tiger Woods] were trying to be some “whole person” defined by having to do it all, then he would probably not win the Masters, as he would be misusing his talents, spending time doing something he might not do well and not doing what only he can do.
-Henry Cloud, Integrity: The Courage to Meet the Demands of Reality, p. 32

We need our gifts, but without wholeness of character – integrity as we are calling it – our gifts will become unusable or at least less fruitful. You can be the best designer in the world, but if no one will talk to you, or you can’t complete a proposal on time, you will be designing the inside of Dumpsters.
-Cloud, Integrity, p. 34

Things I Learned During a Month Off from Blogging…

Among other things, I learned…

  • People still check in on your blog, even though you said you were done. Cool!
  • Blogging really is an itch that needs to be scratched! It’s not quite like Jeremiah’s fire in his bones, but it must be pretty dang close! Within 10 minutes of posting that “I’m done” post a month ago, I had three or four things I wanted to post!
  • Perry Noble rocks!
  • So does my buddy, Gary Lamb. (But I knew that before I took my blogging break!)
  • My other buddy, Tony McCollum ain’t too shabby, either!
  • There is no substitute for passion.
  • There are a lot of things that keep our prayers from being answered.
  • If my prayers don’t articulate God’s character, advance God’s Kingdom, and achieve God’s purpose and plan, they probably aren’t going to be answered.
  • Some people “get it.” Some don’t. Some of the ones you think “get it” really don’t. And vice versa.
  • Medeski, Martin, and Wood are perfect for a Tuesday night post-blogging-break Unwind.