Reflection Roundup: We Really Are Better Together
Within the Siburt Institute a wide array of resources flows across our desks and through our computer screens each week. This ongoing series 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. Here is a recent report on the coup and crackdown in Myanmar. These are our people, our brothers and our sisters. Please pray for them. Kate Shellnutt writes, “Ministries are scrambling to adapt so they can keep encouraging one another and ensure evangelism efforts don’t let up during another dark chapter in their country’s history,” and shares Michael Koko Maung’s words: “Christians in Myanmar are not timid and coward, but Christians might fight with [their] greatest weapon, prayer and Jesus himself.”
2. “Better together” requires a conscious aspect of neighbor-love these days. In “Let’s define with anti-mask means: A Christian perspective (and a special note for clergy and church leaders),” epidemiologist Emily Smith, in timely fashion with vaccines rolling out, nudges us toward continued communal thinking. And let’s be on the hunt for the next, new, adventurous way to love our neighbors!
3. Charlie Warzel writes about a conversation with “the Cassandra of the Internet Age,” Michael Goldhaber, who admonishes, “Attention is a limited resource, so pay attention to where you pay attention.” This concept stretches further back, as psychologist Herbert A. Simon coined the term attention economy in the mid-’80s to describe the power of having people’s attention. Goldhaber latches on to this idea of attention as a rare commodity and says (as quoted in Warzel’s piece), “Some people will try and succeed in getting huge amounts of attention.” How will they use it? In a similar vein, this begs the question of how we can truly be present even to ourselves? Poet Pádraig Ó Tuama writes “Hello to Here” in his book, In the Shelter, a means toward mindfulness.
4. Emboldened behavior is nothing new. “A Century Ago, White Protestant Extremism Marched on Washington” highlights striking similarities to last month’s riot. Kelly J. Baker, “a writer and public scholar of religion and racial hatred” remarks that, while there were interesting differences, “you can definitely find that if you look at a Klan newspaper from the 1920s that there was similar language about God and there’s similar language about the threat to the nation, from immigrants or Catholics or Jews. It just looked so familiar.” This article objectively observes history with the request that we ask ourselves some important questions.
5. “Divisions: Their Problem or Ours?” Likely we all appreciate the rhetorical nature of this question posed by Terri Fullerton as an echo of Paul’s admonition to the Corinthians before they shared the Eucharist. “He exhorts them to examine their own hearts before sharing this commemorative meal because some are weak, sick, and have forgotten the purpose.” Strong vs. weak is an adversarial relationship as old as time. Yet ancient Christians “just really despise[d] each other” when Paul stepped in with his reminder of Christ’s loving sacrifice, literally for all.
6. We’ve all heard Michael Green’s “belong, believe, behave” frame from his modern classic, Evangelism in the Early Church, or we’ve heard some mixture of these words describing the progression of the impact Christian fellowship can have on an individual life. But unpacking each of these aspects has communal benefit, it turns out. Trust is on the decline in the United States, but “When it comes to building trust, belonging beats belief, study finds.” How might affiliating with a faith-based group enhance one’s ability to trust, and how does this enhance our ability to extend grace when experiencing human failings?
7. Carey Nieuwhof’s podcast interview with Seth Godin hits gold for creatives whose medium is spoken and written communication. Preachers, make some time for this one. Godin has trained in word-thrift. The narrative recalls Godin’s life-focusing memory when someone helped him locate the light switch of his vocational passion, and the telos of consistently paying this one forward.
8. Need a new read for a cold night? Check out Navigating the Future: Traditioned Innovation for Wilder Seas by L. Gregory Jones, new president of Belmont University in Nashville, Tennessee, and Andrew P. Hogue, director of the Baylor Social Innovation Collaborative, director of the Philanthropy & Public Service Program, and senior lecturer in the Honors College at Baylor. This one pairs well with Scott Cormode’s The Innovative Church (2020). Don’t miss the Siburt Institute’s fresh interview with Cormode on Intersection.
9. In “Chosen Friends,” Jenilee Rebarber quotes C.S. Lewis in describing friendship as “the instrument by which God reveals to each of us the beauties of others.” May you celebrate these relationships in an intentional way, this week especially.
10. And if you’re looking for something to do, check out “Service Showcase 2021.”
