Barnabas File

In a recent conversation, a pastor friend asked this question: “Does God require all the things I think my congregation needs?”    Great question!   Depending on our experience and faith family, we each have ingrained idea of “this is what a church looks like.”  When I was involved in a church start several years ago, we worked hard to offer everything that our denomination (at that time) told us that good church needed—Sunday morning and evening worship, Bible Study (Sunday School) for all ages, Wednesday night service, and financial support for missions.  It was a lot of work for a small group of people, but we did quite well!   Over the years, what has come to be expected of a church has changed and even more so during the Pandemic.  We have pared down to the essentials and it has not looked the same in every case. I wonder, however, if we have included God in the conversation about what is “essential”?   Most often, God speaks t...

Every believer has struggled with some aspect of the biblical story.  It may be the slaughter of Israel’s enemies at the direction of God.  Perhaps it is the parallel accounts in the Hebrew Bible that seem to conflict with each other.  Most often, we wonder how the four gospel writers could see things so differently. Scholars take various approaches to these challenges.  Some deconstruct the writings and, in the process, deconstruct God.  Seeing inconsistencies between the written word and their concept of God, they end up rejecting God.  In The Bible Tells Me So , Professor Peter Enns take a different perspective.  Although he addresses major questions about the Bible, he never gives up his faith in God.  It is God who is holy, not the book about God.  The book represents the efforts of God’s servants to construct meaning out of past and present events in their culture.  We should not al...

Virtual meetings have become a way of life for most of us and—for better or worse—they are here to stay.  In Making Virtual Work:  How to Build Performance and Relationships , Betty Johnson goes beyond the mechanics and etiquette of virtual meetings to help us understand how to make them productive and engaging. In this age of virtual meetings, Johnson emphasizes humanity rather then technology.  She calls upon wise leaders to use empathy in designing and conducting meetings online.  She suggests three steps:       Understanding how participants feel.       Resonating with what they feel.       Doing what they need to make things better.   The book includes a self-assessment to help leaders understand their own tendencies in leading virtual meetings.  The self-assessment is practical and provides great insights for putting together meetings that are human-centered.   Although brief, ...