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I’ve been wanting to do this for a while now, and this seems like a good time as another semester has drawn to a close. Ever since I’ve been teaching on a college or graduate level, I’ve had the privilege of reading – and learning – from some pretty profound writers.
In this case, I’m not talking about the great books and journal articles I get to lead students through. I’m referring to the papers and other written assignments that I have to grade. At my peak earlier in the year, I was grading bout 25 papers a day.
As you may expect, most of the things I read are rather average, and some are, um, well, below average. But every once in a while, somebody blows me away with their ability to creatively, powerfully express a truth. Sometimes it’s just a sentence. Sometimes it’s a paragraph.
Over the years I have collected my favorite student quotations. So in the tradition of my “Half-Baked Ideas that I’m still thinking about,” I wanted to share seven with you.
Drink these in slowly. Let them “bake in your oven” for a while. You’ll be richer for it. Click here and brace for impact!
During the days of the American Old West, a tribe of Apaches captured the army paymaster’s safe. The Apaches had never seen a safe, but they did know that it held a large amount of gold. So they went to work on it.
First, they pounded on its knob with stones. No results. Then they used their tomahawks on the tempered steel case. When that failed, they roasted the safe because they knew that iron can be softened by fire. But that didn’t work, either. Then they threw it off a cliff. All that did was break one of its wheels. Next, they soaked it in the river. Finally, they tried to blast it open with gunpowder, which only resulted in some of them being injured.
Totally frustrated, they tumbled the safe into a ravine. When the army found it, the gold was still inside.
As you lead your organization, reach out to friends, teach that class, or spend time loving children, remember that in any endeavor involving the hearts of people, are “going after the gold.” And like the gold in the safe, many people have encased their hurts, their failures, and their “real selves” with a protective shell and a “keep out” sign. [click to continue…]
…the season of singing has come, the cooing of doves is heard in our land.
Arise, come, my darling; my beautiful one, come with me (Song of Solomon 2:12)
Be like the dove, He said… [click to continue…]
What turned my head was the sign for Aunt Beaut’s pan-fried chicken.
Why is it when God wants to get my attention, the easiest way to do it involves chicken? My belt really is a leather fence around a chicken graveyard.
Anyway, last week we were in downtown Charlotte on vacation. And there on the corner of West Trade and Tryon Street was the King’s Kitchen. Open for lunch or dinner, the restaurant trumpets “New Local Southern Cuisine.”
They had me at “Southern.”
True, I can get fried chicken anywhere. But when was the last time you went into a restaurant that had collard greens, cream corn, and butter beans all on the menu for lunch?
So I staked the place out, and the next day my wife and I walked the block from our hotel to sample the King’s Kitchen for lunch.
I immediately knew something was different about this place when I read the quotation on the wall just inside the door [click to continue…]
I think I’ve found another reason to identify with Simon Peter, that famous-for-so-many-reasons disciple of Jesus. I can already relate to the fact that I feel like I’m supposed to be the first to show off when I think I know the answer to a question.
I can so relate when it comes to answering supernatural statements with in-the-natural answers or observations.
Most of all, I can relate to wanting so bad for my screw-ups to be the secret kind, only to have them aired out for the whole dang world to see.
But there’s another characteristic I see in this impetuous, impulsive, impassioned fisherman that I totally understand:
His randomness.
You just get the idea that Peter’s mama must have had a time trying to get him to do his homework. The very image of Andrews’s brother planning ahead for anything is laughable.
Ready. Fire. Aim. Uh oh. Sorry. Shutting up now.
Resurrection Randomness
So get this scene. Jesus has been crucified and risen from the dead. Peter, having denied the Lord publicly had become a reproach and embarrassment to the Lord, himself, and his companions. But he had also met the risen Christ and experienced the wonder of being forgiven by Christ.
So what now to do? [click to continue…]
You up for a little side trip? This one rolls down Memory Lane in a church bus with papered-up windows, wide-eyed teenagers, and me in handcuffs in the back of a police car. This is the (true) story of what happens when non-planning randomizers like me actually take the time to plan something. This is the story of The Underground Project.
Once upon a time (hey, I said it was a story), I was a youth pastor in Lumberton, Mississippi. I was fairly new, and school had just let out for summer. For the folks at First Baptist Church, that meant one thing: Vacation Bible School. And I was expected to have something each night for the youth group. So I planned to do something unique and special each evening. Can’t remember which night it was for sure – I think it was Tuesday. But on the promotional information, I said very little. I just said come later – at 8:30 – for The Underground Project.
Use your imagination. Be an energetic teenager in a small, south Mississippi town in the early summer. You arrive at the church to see a painted sign attached to the chain link fence that says, Closed by Order of the State. (What’s funny about that is that the old church building actually had a bad flood/mold problem and had been ordered closed within a year or so.)
Ex-pec-tant and excited, you enter the fellowship hall, where you are asked to have a seat and wait for instructions. Then in groups of 6 or 7, you are invited into a room. There I explain that I have some important information for you. [click to continue…]
I expected to learn some things and be reminded of some things when I made my first trip to Thailand. I was not disappointed. To put an exclamation point on our trip, here are some things I learned along the way…
You may think you know what humidity is, but you’re wrong.
My wife had one unending childhood adventure.
Churches everywhere are made up of humans, with human needs, human potential, and human flaws.
Pastors may not speak the same language, but the leadership issues they face are the same worldwide.
It’s amazing the trust you can gain with a sincere smile. [click to continue…]
I’m about to share some relevant, important information to you – especially if you are interested in starting a business or avoiding germs. I’m also going to show you something that’s so painful, it’s funny (or vice-versa). Why? Because I can! And because The National Enquirer was right about inquiring minds.
But first, a story with a point.
I miss my old friend Randall. During our younger years, we spent many hours together praying, talking, and clowning around.
Randall once told about a funny, yet convicting experience. For a long time he’d been watching another highly-respected Christian. One day he announced to his brother Leigh, “I think I’ve finally found something wrong with Greg.”
Leigh, known for his dry humor and sometimes biting sarcasm, replied, “Congratulations! You found the mote!”
The “mote” to which Leigh referred was the old King James word for “speck” in Matthew 7:3-5.
“And why do you look at the speck in your brother’s eye, but do not consider the plank in your own eye? Or how can you say to your brother, `Let me remove the speck out of your eye’; and look, a plank is in your own eye? Hypocrite! First remove the plank from your own eye, and then you will see clearly to remove the speck out of your brother’s eye.”
Next time you’re in a crowd of people, Christians in particular, look around. You will find your share of people whose “eyes” are filled with “motes.” And you’ll be tempted to look past the pole in your own eye to notice, criticize, or try to correct the specks in someone else’s. [click to continue…]
Two posts ago I started sharing what we’re learning about being instruments of healing to people in the “Land of Nod” – the realm of the aftermath of broken relationships. It was to this place that Cain went after he had killed his brother and rejected the mercy of God.
To bring hope to the Land of Nod, we must:
1. Reconnect the spiritual with the interpersonal.
You relate to people in the same way you relate to God, and vice-versa. We must be faithful to live that message, and communicate it well to others.
2. Expose anger for what it is, and provide a model for forgiveness.
Anger is always a choice; so is forgiveness. To help the Nodians, we must encourage them to accept responsibility for their anger and guide them toward forgiveness.
The third thing we are learning to do to bring hope back to Nod is:
3. Respond to Victimhood by Redefining Responsibility
Week in and week out, people pass through our doors carrying a past that neither they nor we can change. [click to continue…]
Dear Daniel,
Thank you for taking the time to share your heart and concerns with me last week. I respect your honesty, and am frustrated that you have experienced so many disappointments and hurts in your church relationships. While I can relate to many of them, only you know how savagely this has impacted your life and the life of your family members.
I know it has to be a bit surreal to always feel as though, in your words, “you kept missing the memo” about what was expected beyond a simple faith in Christ. And to be caught in between two conflicting women “leaders” had to have felt like a no-win situation.
I still don’t understand what the whole turf war stuff was all about. But I do understand the tension between trying to show grace and love to someone in deliberate sin and yet not approving the lifestyle. I guess until Jesus comes, we’ll still be arguing about that one. [click to continue…]
