So the question before me is this: how do I do the things I love to do–and am gifted to do–in a way that is not just self-aggrandizement? How do I love God in my reading and writing and talking? How does this goal change the direction of my life?
All of us have felt our peers’ desire to do things differently, to see church in a new light; to work towards what we feel like is a real glimpse of the kingdom of God. We are not apologists of the “old ways” or fanatics for everything novel. We found ourselves in traditional ministerial contexts, and not elsewhere, and are trying to live faithfully and authentically in the church contexts that raised us to live faithfully and authentically. David Kinnaman’s You Lost Me is one part explanation, one part hopeful dreaming about the phenomenon of us Mosaics/Millenials and our beef with churches.
Henri Nouwen is among the hallowed names spoken with reverence and awe among ministers.
Nouwen is a complex man made simple, and he’s one of the best at condensing deep and complex issues into simple, accessible matters without, at the same time, oversimplifying or butchering them.
Addiction is a part of our modern worldviews. It is a concept we use to describe a relatively wide range of behavior. Certainly coffee “addiction” is nowhere near the same level as addiction to, say, meth. Often we use the term in a trivial kind of way to describe behavior that’s more along the lines of short-term obsession. One could say they are “addicted” to the show Grey’s Anatomy and, besides their obliviousness to the shame they should be feeling for saying such a thing, they could not really mean something along the lines of alcoholism.
