ben's blog

New blog, new season - Go to bensternke.com

Amazing how time flies! I started this blog over four years ago to document some of the questions I was wrestling through as I tried to figure out church and ministry and culture and Christian witness in a rapidly changing cultural landscape.

And while today certainly doesn't end the asking of those kinds of questions, it does mark the end of this blog. I am heading into a new season of life and it felt like a good "line in the sand" to start a new blog with a new direction and focus for my writing.

The new season is that I am planting a church in Fort Wayne along with several others who have been meeting, worshiping, dreaming, arguing and praying together for the past 18 months or so. I will be cycling out of pastoral oversight duties at Heartland, but will likely continue there for a season in a part-time capacity as we get a foundation in place to plant.

As we head into this exciting new venture, I'm going to be learning and wondering and asking and reading and risking and doing, and I am eager to share that journey with others. I will be sharing the vision we have and the questions we're wrestling with and would love it if you'd join the conversation.

So starting today, I am blogging at bensternke.com, and won't be blogging here any more (Update your links please! I think my RSS feed should stay the same, though). Hope to keep hearing from y'all on the Interwebs!

Blog changes in T minus 1 day...

Tomorrow, that is.

Blog changes in T minus 2 days...

Just making sure you're still counting with me. Changes in 2 days.

Blog changes in T minus 3 days...

I'll be making some changes to this blog in 3 days. Stay tuned.

You are living in a story

We all live by stories. I don't mean that we use stories as illustrations for life principles or that we like to hear stories as entertainment. I mean that the only way to make meaning out of human experience is by believing you are part of a story. Stories are sense-making devices. We have some idea about a past and a future that help to make sense out of the things we are experiencing right now. This is simply inevitable, and part of what separates us from the animal world.

For the Incas and many other ancient cultures, it made "sense" to sacrifice virgins to the gods in exchange for good weather and plentiful crops. Why? Because of the story they were living in. The stories we live in have massive consequences for our lives.

It's really important, then, to make sure the story we are believing and basing our lives upon is the true one. Don Miller recently wrote about this (I think it's kind of a preview of his new book) in a great post titled "How the Stories you Believe are Screwing with Your Mind." In it, he outlines what he sees as a false gospel story that is told in way too many churches Sunday after Sunday:

It really is time to do things differently

Thanks to Bill Kinnon's scathing review of a new book (ouch!), I found this quote on John Armstrong's blog.

The recently retired US President of the Navigators, Alan Andrews, recently said this:

In my opinion the time has come to do church differently. I am convinced that we must shift our focus from highly programmed ministry to developing Missional/Transformational Communities that are formed as a seamless organic whole. These types of communities are rare and difficult to visualize because we have moved so forcefully to programmatic ministry in the last half of the previous century. ... Now the climate in America has begun to shift. Much of the culture is beginning to look for integrity and wholeness. Many people are coming from broken backgrounds with deep wounds in their souls. They long for something that provides real relationships, something that provides integration for their lives, and something that fills the longings of their soul. In short, though they are not aware of it, they seek the whole Gospel for their whole lives.

I just love that quote, especially because it comes from a seasoned Christians who has worked with an evangelistic organization for some time. Just a quote to provoke, more than anything else. Churches and church leaders have to start thinking less like managers of organizations and more like instigators of missionary movements.

Danger Mouse and Sparklehorse and David Lynch: Oh My!

Apparently they’ve all collaborated on some kind of musical/visual project that nobody is allowed to buy yet because of a dispute with a record company. In the meantime, you can listen to the album online thanks to NPR. This is very good music.

Do not be afraid

HT to JR Woodward for posting this prayer by Walter Brueggemann. I needed to pray it today.

Salvation Oracles [On reading Isaiah 43:1-5]

There is a long list of threats around us:
terror,
cancer,
falling markets,
killing,
others unlike us in all their variety,
loneliness,
shame,
death -
the list goes on and we know it well.

And in the midst of threat of every kind,
you appear among us in your full power,
in your deep fidelity,
in your amazing compassion.
You speak among us the one word that could matter:
“Do not fear.”

And we, in our several fearfulnesses, are jarred by your utterance.
On a good day, we know that your sovereign word is true.
So give us good days by your rule,
free enough to rejoice,
open enough to change,
trusting enough to move out of new obedience,
grace enough to be forgiven and then to forgive.

We live by your word. Speak it to us through the night,
that we may have many good days through your gift.

From Prayers for a Privileged People

Massively unnecessary quotation marks and apostrophes

I've posted before that unnecessary and misused quotation marks bother me. Seth Godin points out that, unfortunately, it makes you look stupid (no Seth you are not the only one who gets that impression). You are probably not stupid, of course, but because you didn't take the time to appropriately use apostrophes and quotation marks, you appear that way, and people will write you off. Again, it's very unfortunate, but it's how things are.

Anyway, I think this sign takes the cake for quotation-mark-and-apostrophe unnecessariness, in that absolutely none of them should have been used in this sign at all.

 

(found here)

N.T. (Tom) Wright on blogging and social media

Tom Wright's thinking on blogs, social media, the online world...

NT Wright on Blogging/Social Media from Bill Kinnon on Vimeo.