This Week on Trans·formed (2/24)

Featured Articles on Trans·formed This Week

Thinking Strategically (Understanding Change, part 3) (Chad Hall): When incremental change is not enough, organizations and/or individuals need to consider transitional change.  This second-level of change involves shifting our strategies in order to open up the possibility of new actions, which can then lead to better results.  When we change our strategies, we change how we approach things.

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2 Things to Avoid in Shepherding (Bev Hislop): Each year I ask students in my Pastoral Understanding of Women course if they could remember a time when they really felt someone listened to them. The kind in which you know you are being heard and understood. The kind of listening that enables you to process your thoughts and results in knowing someone really cares. Nearly every time I ask this question, the response is the same. There are a very small number of students who’ve had this kind of experience.

Change Is Not Automatic (Bill Mounce): The life of discipleship is different, and it requires us to change. And part of the joy of following Jesus is that we want to change. But the change is not automatic. We can actually fight against the change in how we walk. And, to our great peril, we can win. (I’m talking here, of course, not of the change that God works in our heart, but the change that is necessary as we walk the path on the other side of the gate.)

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10 Things I Learned from Steve Jobs (John Johnson): Reading Isaacson’s Steve Jobs has been a pretty amazing experience. I just finished last night. And, like Gordon MacDonald, who recently wrote a piece on Jobs, I regretted getting to the last page.  He has to be one of the most unique men who has ever lived.  Maybe history will place him in the pantheon next to Edison and Ford, for he truly built the world’s most creative company, Apple.

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Other Articles on Trans·formed This Week

If you are not already following Matt Mikalatos’ series on “translating” gospel stories, you really need to start. As Matt says, “One side effect of growing up in Christian culture can be a certain contemptuous familiarity with the Bible.” So his series is an attempt to help make familiar stories new again.

You can read Matt’s explanation of the series: Why I’m Making a Wildly Inaccurate “Translation” of the Gospels. Or you can just jump right in with his first post:  The Teacher Shares about a Trip to the Zoo. Either way I think you’ll plenty to enjoy and think about.

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Other Posts of Interest from around the Web

• Are You a Lopsided Weightlifter? Recovering the Lost Skill of Reading Fiction: I often hear people say that they have a hard time reading fiction. Some just don’t like reading at all. But more frequently I hear from people who love to read, but who still don’t read fiction, commonly saying that reading fiction seems like a waste of time when there are so many good and important non-fiction books out there. With so much knowledge to be gained, why spend your time on some goofy story? But I wonder if there’s another reason.

• Religion for Everyone: The decline of religion in the West has brought a decline in community spirit. Could the secular world draw useful lessons from religious life? Alain de Botton offers new ways to find shared meaning.

• Love Your (Theological) Enemies: I find it hard enough to love the people I agree with. So how can I love someone on the other side, especially when the things that divide us are theological principles that really matter?

• An Open Letter to Praise Bands: It seems to me that you are often simply co-opted into a practice without being encouraged to reflect on its rationale, its “reason why.” In other words, it seems to me that you are often recruited to “lead worship” without much opportunity to pause and reflect on the nature of “worship” and what it would mean to “lead.”

• The Forgotten Influence of Martin Luther: At the time of his death he left a world turned upside down. There were lifetimes of work left to be done, but Luther would have to leave it to be finished by those who would follow after him and carry on what he had started. Today, 466 years after that stroke, the voice of Luther still rings through the church.

• When Should a Leader Leave?: I would never pretend to know the will of God for leaders. Indeed I am reticent even to suggest these reasons lest someone grasp one or more and leave his or her position of leadership prematurely. Nevertheless I interviewed dozens of leaders I respect. One of the simple questions I asked them was: How did you know it was time to leave your previous position of leadership?

• Martin Luther’s Last Days and Final Thoughts: A complex and complicated man, Luther left an incredible legacy. And he died a faithful death.