Engaging in the practice of patient, prayerful discernment may seem at times messy, sometimes contradictory, and often conflicting. We will experience both delight and the disillusion with it. The Spirit will often turn us on our heads. But the practice is worth it. Stay with it.
Members and leaders of the Episcopal Church aren’t the only ones thinking about restructuring in the service of mission. The Church in Wales has completed a top to bottom review process that examined the church’s structure and ministry.
In reflecting Tuesday evening on his seven years as dean of Duke Chapel, Sam Wells said his own faith was strengthened during his tenure and
“Preachers should approach preaching as a collaborative task. Exegesis might be done with members of the congregation, and at the least with other pastors.”
Punished by police and held overnight, John Helmiere has a few thoughts on how one might respond when met with blunt force in the midst of calling for peace to prevail.
“What have been the big applause lines in these debates? Well, a statement that the governor of Texas is responsible for killing 234 people on death row. Or that we favor torture. Or that we’re creating a fence on the Mexican border that electrocutes people when they try to cross it.”
The Search for Common Ground initiative worked tirelessly behind the scenes to secure the release of two hikers imprisoned in Iran.
No structure guarantees success or promises a life free of problems. “T.S. Eliot warned against “dreaming of systems so perfect that no one will need to be good.”
Something beautiful happens when a skilled listener creates a safe space for stories to be told in an unhurried, unworried fashion. Ethnographers find themselves at times entering into a holy space, a space in which the speaker may be saying something brand new, even to themselves.
The problems with performance reviews need to be viewed in a larger context. Our concern should be focused on organizational, not individual, performance. Using traditional performance reviews, we are measuring the performance of individuals when we should be measuring the performance of organizations.