Barnabas File

One my grandchildren’s favorite songs from the original High School Musical was “Get’cha Head in the Game.”  I think this is something that every leader should practice.  Leaders too often seem either weighted down by the past or lost in the future.  Either way, they become distracted from what is going around them right now. Knowing the history of a situation, especially in an organization like the church, is not a bad thing.  I am a historian by training, so I love to read about and seek to understand what has happened in the past that impacts the present context.  We can learn from and celebrate many of those things. Living in the past is not wise, however.  The past has good times and bad times, but all we have to work with is the present.  We learn from the past, but we don’t let it restrict us.  We need to concentrate on what God has placed before us right now and act. Likewise, I enjoy speculating about the future and...

The latest entry in the Star Wars canon is an entertaining visual treat.  Although it basically follows the structure of The Empire Strikes Back , it gives us as fans a solid second act in this new trilogy.  In this blog, however, I don’t intend to provide a review, but reflections on a couple of main themes in this episode. In the interplay of old and new characters, several key ideas emerge or are clarified.  (I will try to provide as few spoilers as possible.) First, after viewing The Last Jedi , we discover that the Force seems to be more egalitarian than we were previously led to believe.  In The Last Jedi , Luke Skywalker (Mark Hamill) provides a much more engaging and informative explanation of the Force than Qui-Gon Jinn (Liam Neeson) did in The Phantom Menace .  He explained it as something in the blood that provided the potential to manipulate the Force.  In some fan literature, the statement is made that you can tell if someon...