Reflection Roundup: Adding Value
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.
1. As the weeks wind toward a looming 50th birthday, reflection offers a choice. Age either hardens or softens us. Years harden if we tighten our circles of relationship to only those with whom we walk in complete agreement; they soften if we buy the “Love Them Anyway” T-shirt, wear it, and mean it. Bonnie Kristian writes “Why We Don’t Dump Friends Who Disagree” for Christianity Today and couldn’t be more timely. Our enemy would prefer we bite, devour, and eventually consume one another. We must hold ourselves to trusting the universal oneness of the body of Christ, the Church to which we all belong, and through which we will all one day be perfected (Gal. 5:15). Glory to God.
2. Bonnie Kristian also shares personal reflection that can assist as we seek to clarify the waters and sift out true patriotism. In “How to Have Patriotism Without Nationalism” for Christainity Today, Kristian writes, “Patriotism in Christians must ... be a far humbler thing, a homely affection for our local communities, their people, and their distinctive merits.”
3. Beginning with the simple way Krista Tippett and Jason Reynolds are present to one another in this beautiful conversation, there are many translatable perspectives in “Imagination and Fortitude.” Tippett hosts Reynolds for this recent episode of the On Being podcast, playing with language, preserving our child-like mindset, pondering repentance, and giving our anti-racism muscles a good workout. We get stronger as we go (Ps. 84:7).
4. During our family’s travels during the past few weeks (including visits to cities COVID prohibited last summer), we reconnected with some old friends with ties to Hope Haven in Rwanda. If you haven’t taken a look at their website in awhile, poke around after reading Jason Peters’s “Glimmers of Light.” This post is part two in a blog chronicling the work being done by locals, donors, and visitors, adding value to the life and learning of God’s people living on the equator where it’s equally light and dark year-round. It embodies the truth, “Even the darkness is not dark to you. The night is as light as the day; darkness and light are the same to you” (Ps. 139:12).
5. David Leong, associate professor of missiology at Seattle Pacific University, writes “The Theology of a Collapsed Condo Building” for Sojourners, examining the disparities among our structures, both physical and societal. Leong says, “For too long, the Christian imagination has divorced our identities and social worlds from geography, as if we exist in the abstract, apart from the land and the built environment we inhabit.” Urban renewal is a daunting prospect in which many of us feel “in over our heads,” but Leong’s piece suggests we begin with simply noticing one another, attending to the inhabited spaces around us and those therein.
6. Journalist Stephanie Hunt writes “Rehabbing hate, a pastor’s lifelong ministry of protest and hope reverberates” for Duke Divinity’s Faith & Leadership. Hunt tells the story of Rev. David Kennedy and the church he pastors in South Carolina while developing a center for justice and reconciliation in Laurens County, redeeming a space previously used for marketing white supremacy. Kennedy desires that all people “engage in open conversation. We’ll say, ‘Let’s talk about why you think the way you think,’ and hopefully, they’ll leave with a change of heart.” Hunt’s piece suggests such questions to the reader as these: “Who is working to ‘rehab hate’ in your community? How is the church participating in this work?” and “What spaces in your community are ripe for physical and spiritual rehabilitation?”
7. Religion News Service reporter Jack Jenkins draws together the latest research related to church affiliation from the U.S. Public Religion Research Institute in “Survey: White mainline Protestants outnumber white evangelicals, while ‘nones’ shrink.” This latest data is worth the read as it seems to represent a turn of sorts and depicts pockets of greatest and least religious diversity in the U.S.
8. What better way to add value to a relationship or a fellowship than to participate actively in the gift of forgiveness? The Greater Good Science Center at UC Berkeley offers a “practice of the week,” including mental health-focused exercises toward such Christ-centered ends that can aid us when our spirits are willing, but our flesh wonders how. “Nine Steps to Forgiveness: A research-backed process for letting go of a grudge” is a concrete resource for individuals and communities who are ready to do the work.
9. It’s a beautiful season to reflect on creation no matter which hemisphere we’re in. But I must confess that summer finds me affixed like a lizard to one of these rocks, basking in the Lord’s warmth. Geoff Gentry writes “Chapel in the Earth” for Alabaster, a reflective photographic journey toward worship at artist Marguerite Brunswig Staude’s Chapel of the Holy Cross in Sedona, Arizona. It’s a place where all receive “an invitation to the intersection of stewardship, beauty and worship – inviting us forward, deeper into participation with our Creator.” Take a look; plan a visit.
10. I’m pretty sure these guys have something to say that we all need to hear. You’ll recall this scene from the movie Remember the Titans.
