This Week on Trans·formed (10/13)

Featured Articles on Trans·formed This Week

Pastor as Prophet, Priest, and King. On the drive home that day, I recognized that what makes Jimmy such a great pastor sounded very familiar because it rings true to the threefold office of Christ: prophet, priest and king.  I began to research the model and found that (thankfully!) I was not the first to consider Christ’s threefold office as a model for pastoral leadership.

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The ‘Why’ or the ‘Who’? Tullian discovered that a big part of the deep pain he felt was the devastating blow to his personal identity as their son. The family name gave Tullian a sense of significance and security. But more than that, Tullian had made it into an idol. He would say he worshiped the good reputation he had by virtue of being their child (Billy Graham’s daughter Gigi Graham and Stephan Tchividjian).

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A Centering Word In a Highly Politicized Moment. There are lots of models of engagement with culture. Richard Niebuhr gave a series of lectures in the early 50’s, in which he sought to answer the question—“How should the church relate to culture? ” … Niebuhr presented a series of models. On the one hand, we can withdraw from culture, creating an alternative society (think of the Amish). The other side of this is to become immersed in culture such that a believer is one with culture (at the extreme, think of Christendom at its height, when everything and everyone fit under this one model of faith).

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Other Posts of Interest from around the Web

• Mistake #12: When We Allow Competence to Replace Character. The simple but disturbing fact is that more leaders fall over character issues rather than competency issues. It seems to me that we too often bring people into our organizations and onto our teams based on competency (what they can do) and end up letting some go based on character (who they are and have become).

• Five Types of Critics in the Church. All pastors and other church leaders have their critics. No leader in the church can escape the sting of criticism. Indeed, dealing with critics is one of the great challenges pastors have in ministry. Though the pain of criticism cannot be removed, it can be handled constructively.

• How to Avoid Procrastinating When You Feel Overwhelmed. Feelings of overwhelm, perfectionism, lack of management and organizational skills can cause us to lose motivation and lead to procrastination. Procrastination is a phenomenon in which a person neglects to attend to a necessary responsibility, such as a task or decision, in a timely fashion, often despite their good intentions or inevitable negative and unpleasant. Simply put, we avoid what’s good for us.

• The Four Elements of Missional Theology. If you had to pick the top three, four, or five ideas in “missional theology” which would you choose? I know some would choose justice, and others — those who think “missional” means “evangelism” — salvation or justification, while yet others would choose church-state relations or even participation in society.

• The “Mega-Problems” of Mega-Churches. I think it needs to be acknowledged that the problem isn’t size in and of itself. Who would possibly be against a huge church of fully devoted follower of Jesus on mission with God?! Not this guy. But here’s the thing, those of us who have icky feelings in our stomachs about mega-churches do so because they tend to be built on characteristics and practices that actually work against this vision.

• Leaders are Readers: 9 Tips for Picking Good Books. More than 1,000 books are printed every day in the world, and several thousand new religious titles come out each year. So how can you recognize jewels from junk when you’re looking for a book? Here are a few tips.