Reflection Roundup: Honest and Curious

Each week we gather news stories, notable pieces, and other important items for Christian leaders today. As always, listening broadly draws together differing perspectives from which we can learn but may not concur. Here are 10 things worth sharing this week.

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1. How to Lead When You Don’t Know Where You’re Going: Leading in a Liminal Season leaves me wanting to recommend this book to everyone I know. Susan Beaumont’s description of the three stages of transitional experiences, her charge for leaders to be sensitive to the degree of disorientation with which groups and individuals can cope, and a concrete picture of what steady presence involves are just a few of the initial fruits harvested from this read. It’s hard to put down as every turn of the page offers something revelatory and practical.

2. Unified vision. That’s what we’re supposed to have, right? But how do we go about “Getting on the Same Page Now”? Susan Beaumont’s recent article describes the “learning agenda” prescribed by the season our congregations inevitably are in right now. Our instincts tell us to strategize and plan our way through, but Beaumont encourages us to learn our way through with some specific instructions that feel freeing as she reminds us, “We rarely find true unanimity even in the best of times.” The emphasis is on everyone feeling heard over and above everyone coming into agreement. This article reads much like her book mentioned above and is a good taste of the motivating lines of thinking contained therein.

3. ACU’s Baptist Studies Center and Siburt Institute for Church Ministry present this conversation on “Pastors and Politics,” in which panelists Preston Clegg (pastor at Second Baptist Church in Little Rock, Arkansas), Jennifer Hawks (associate general counsel at Baptist Joint Committee), and Jemar Tisby (author of The Color of Compromise: The Truth About the American Church’s Complicity in Racism) discuss topics such as advocacy vs. partisanship with relation to non-profit status, and practical ways we can advocate within the bodies of our churches in relation to our communities and country. “Helping people see that other perspective can be a big step forward. The value of relationships cannot be overstated” when elevating a voice that needs to be heard in all ears, including those who might resist its hearing. This panel encourages all of us to “put in the work to read the present time” and attend to reliable sources. They address the fact that “both our speeches and our silences can hamper the productivity of the gospel,” and the ways in which the church can more closely reflect the public ministry of Christ. This one’s packed!

4. The Henri Nouwen Society’s podcast Now and Then hosts Ruth Haley Barton regarding solitude and silence as fuel for “Strengthening the Soul” of leaders. In this interview, Barton unpacks material that readers may remember from her book Invitation to Solitude and Silence: Experiencing God’s Transforming Presence, applying it to leadership and urging the necessity of the practice for all people, especially those influential in the lives of others. Barton speaks from the practical application of retreat described in her more recent Invitation to Retreat: The Gift and Necessity of Time Away with God.

5. To go right back to our pre-pandemic ways of ordering and experiencing worship would be to disregard the good strides we’ve been forced to make even before realizing their necessity and benefit even for less stressful times. In “Let's re-envision ‘normal,’” Alex Shea Will of South Church in Andover, Massachusetts, says that “clergy and congregations together have a chance to chart a new path forward that both welcomes what we missed and honors what we’ve discovered, if we are brave enough to be honest and curious.” While acknowledging the immense suffering of the world throughout the pandemic, Will reminds readers of the church’s leading role in portraying restored life, in living out the kinds of rhythms for which God built into our DNA the need. Some of these resurrected frames have resurrected us. Let’s hold on to those!

6. Dillon Daniel, managing editor for The Optimist, Abilene Christian University’s campus newspaper, writes “My experience back in a fully-opened church.” In this brief but revelatory piece, Daniel gives the attentive reader insight into young adults’ church experience. In a phase of life transition, including transition associated with the pandemic, Daniel expresses, “This semester has felt spiritually lonesome.” He continues to share his mix of excitement and anxiety about attending in-person, coupled with reflection on truth the experience affirmed.

7. Jennifer Schroeder leads a post-pandemic children’s ministry in the greater Atlanta area, and she writes “Foot Check. Nose Check. Smile Check.” this week for Mosaic, sharing what she’s determined to be the essentials for God’s ministry in her location moving forward. These include smiles “so big that we can even tell that they are smiling behind their masks, because God is smiling right there with us;” a communicated, experienced pursuit of the presence of God in everything we do; and the stillness and prayer such a quest requires. Schroeder generously allows the reader a peek into what “new normal” looks like in her view, reminding that “Jesus Christ is the same yesterday and today and forever” (Heb. 13:8).

8. If you’ve checked out Richard Beck’s new book Hunting Magic Eels: Recovering an Enchanted Faith in a Skeptical Age, then you’re primed and ready for this next recommendation based on the suggestion that Shakespeare’s plays may be more divinely enchanted than previously thought, based on the close study by Anthony D. Baker from Seminary of the Southwest. Shakespeare’s work suggests there’s more to hear on the matter of religion than is overtly spoken in his day, and in “Shakespeare’s musings on religion are like curious whispers – they require deep listening to be heard,” Baker poses that his plays “are his attempt to give voice to religious noise beyond the range of the religious certainty of his age.” Curiosity vs. certainty, close listening and reexamination ... all good explorations this week. ACU’s theatre department is hosting a live Shakespeare Festival this June, a perfect opportunity for close listening.

9. Church Mutual offers many resources for churches; it’s worth getting on their website and nosing around. This week they are advertising a free downloadable tool kit full of resources surrounding risks of the sexual abuse of children. “Help Protect the Most Vulnerable from Sexual Abuse” offers vital information we all must consider as we reopen our doors and minister face-to-face once again.

10. In this little video, find a warm reminder of the beauty of humanity, that people are people, and find encouragement to remain curious about others in terms of culture and religion. We all do our quiet activities in much the same way. And maybe sliced bread isn’t the best thing? Now for some pizza toast...