Reflection Roundup: A New Offering From the Siburt Institute
Within the Siburt Institute a wide array of resources flows across our desks and through our computer screens each week. This new initiative seeks to curate and dispense more broadly news items, books, blog posts, notable opinion pieces, and more that address the work of ministers and other church leaders. Listening widely expands our capacity to listen well to God and to our ministry contexts. We believe the items we share each week are useful and important for leaders to know about. We ask also that you recognize that we may share news or resources that you (or we) don’t necessarily agree with. Yet, that too, can be important for us to know.
So without further ado, here are 10 things worth sharing this week.
1. How do Churches of Christ, notorious for Scriptural fervor, respond to the realities of the post-Christian era in which America now lives? Many find themselves longing for the church of their youth and wondering why it feels we’ve had a giant rummage sale on our values and practices. Culture merges with history to interpret this forest fire of a time.
2. An age old, fair question begs persons and communities as the COVID circle tightens around all of us: where is God in suffering? Reflecting back through survivors’ responses to tragedies contained in recent world history, Reverend “Dr Roger Abbott, Senior Research Associate in ‘Natural’ Disasters at the Faraday Institute, wants to help Christians and non-Christians alike think through” the challenge of why? “Why does God allow us to experience difficulties and disasters?,” a microcosm interview on the book What Good is God? Crises, faith, and resilience, co-authored with Cambridge geophysics professor Robert Whyte, presents a different perspective based on folks’ experiencing these challenges. May these experienced perspectives grow our mustard seeds (Matt. 17:20).
3. “There are different ways of doing what can be done.” Two churches in Denver have opened up their own homeless encampments, stretching the boundaries of what it means to be a “safe space.” May we go and do likewise.
4. Grants of up to $10,000 are available to help “young adults find direction and strength from mentors who walk alongside them as they explore their purpose and discern their vocation. FTE Mentoring Grants lay a foundation upon which congregations and church-related organizations can support and accompany the next generation of leaders for the church.” Application deadline is February 1, 2021. See also how best to expertly assess ways to plug said grant money into your local ministry.
5. How does a minister navigate current events from the pulpit? Where is the balance between informed sensitivity and dogmatism, especially when it costs some ministers their jobs? Psychology professor Richard Beck, ACU’s current professor of the year and author of multiple works including his blog Experimental Theology, aids in getting a handle on the weight we as Christians place on politics. Michael Niebauer also addresses how we might respond as leaders when “a 100 person church is now filled with 100 different expectations for what should be discussed at church.” Beck highlights “Hendrik Berkhof’s observations in his book Christ and the Powers” as we ask ourselves how to navigate faith in terms of politics and the empire. Niebauer articulates the tension between silence and publicity many ministers experience in “Navigating the Pressure to Preach on Every Current Event.” Niebauer observes, “Instead of daily conversations taking place in person, many mostly converse within their own carefully curated online communities. And these interactions shape highly specific expectations for what can and should be discussed in community.” Beck reminds, “the issue here is one of attitude, about the size of the psychological and spiritual footprint politics has in your mind and heart.”
6. In “A Challenging Word of Encouragement for Hurting Pastors Today,” Chuck Lawless draws wisdom from the hand of Paul ministering to the Corinthians. There will be an end to these troubles; the time is coming when we will share everything with the faithful in the physical presence of God, Christ and the Spirit. Loving relationship gives chips of admonition to spend in faith that God will complete God’s work in each of us, communally.
7. Sean Palmer’s recent collaboration with Suzanne Stabile produced Forty Days on Being a Three, released last October by IVP as part of a full Enneagram series. “Written by diverse authors, these nine Enneagram Daily Reflections will give you a glimpse inside the experiences of each type. Formatted as forty daily readings, each volume also includes opportunities for further engagement such as a journaling prompts, reflection questions, a written prayer, or a spiritual practice after each day's reflection.”
8. Sandra Bowden and Marianne Lettieri released Seeing the Unseen: Launching and Managing a Church Gallery back in 2015 as a partnership with CIVA (Christians in the Visual Arts). Bowden and Lettieri “designed this book to offer practical help to local churches seeking to incorporate visual art into the life of their faith community.”
There are two distinct languages.
There is verbal, which separates people…
And there is the visual
that is understood by everybody.
–Yaacov Agam
9. God whispers in prayer, “Go low.” This daunting, familiar message echoes through Marlena Graves’s second book, The Way Up Is Down: Becoming Yourself by Forgetting Yourself, released Fall 2020. Writing in popular style, Graves reminds through concrete personal testimony and prophetic reminders of the smallness with which God chose to enter the world, challenging us to “be faithful to the small, daily work of hope and justice” (p. 44).
10. And lastly, a picture of 2020. Truth, too good not to share, at the hand of a child. “And a little child shall lead them” (Isa. 11:6).
