Barnabas File

As I talked with someone recently about my post on the digital revolution and how this impacts the church, he commented, "Perhaps we are saying that the best person to deal with this is a "renaissance man." If you are not familiar with this concept, the renaissance ideal of the consummate individual was one who was skilled in a number of fields--languages, the sciences, art, music, etc. In that era, the concept was embodied by Leonardo da Vinci and Nicolaus Copernicus. Later examples would be Isaac Newton, Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Jefferson , H. G. Wells, and Albert Schweitzer. I don't believe my friend was saying that one's knowledge has to be as comprehensive as that of one of these unusually gifted individuals in order to be an effective church leader today. (If so, I might as well hang it up right now!) Instead, I believe that he was saying that the effective church leader must a generalist, one who is conversant with oral, print, broadcast, and digital worl...

A friend recently introduced me to this quote from Peter Leyden: “ We are living through an extraordinary moment in human history. Historians will look back on our times, the 40-year span between 1980 and 2020, and classify it among the handful of historical moments when humans reorganized their entire civilization around a new tool, a new idea. These decades mark the transition from the Industrial Age, an era organized around the motor, to the Digital Age, an era defined by the microprocessor … [a] defining moment when society recognized the enormity of the changes taking place and began to reorient itself.” I have been part of an online group of ministers for the last several weeks that has been discussing the implications of the Digital Age for the church—especially a five generation church that includes people with three worldviews (print, broadcast, and digital). Here are a few things that have come to mind for me. First, what does it mean to be a “gatekeeper” in an era when info...

A pastor friend in another state is dealing with a major conflict. The church he pastors has decided to close a Christian school that has been meeting in church facilities for 40 years. This has provoked anger from parents, several church members, and some individuals in the local community. Of course, the media has jumped on this and publicized the dissension. Why did the church make the decision? I am sure that were many factors involved, but one was that the school no longer reflected or furthered the mission of the church. If we have not personally been afflicted with cancer, we know someone who has. The person is diagnosed with the big "C" and is usually offered a regimen of treatment. The treatment is not easy. It is often long, painful, and draining. Given the options, however, the person reluctantly agrees to try the treatment. People who go through this are heroes to me. The church finds itself in the same situation. Many churches need to make decisions about their f...

When we visited Williamsburg recently, one of the guides talked about the dangers of childbirth in the colonial period. Even among the gentry, the birth of a child was a dangerous time. The child might die, the mother might die, or both might die. This, of course, was true well into the early 20th century, but I did not realize how this possibility might come home so soon. Friday morning my wife received a call that the daughter of one of our closest friends was in the delivery room birthing her first child and there were complications. Rita immediately went to the hospital. When I didn't hear anything from her, I went over and walked into a tragic situation. The mother, who was only 25, had "complications" in childbirth. The baby boy survived, but the mother did not. Her pregnancy had been normal, there were no evident problems, yesterday was her due date, but she did not make it. We really don't expect this to happen in 2008. Sometimes infants don't sur...