A Letter to Christian Songwriters

By Jeremy Myers

Till He Comes: Living Life on Mission

 

"Dear Christian Songwriter,

I would like to ask you to stop writing songs. It is clear that most of you have not experienced the pain and tragedy of life, and until you do, your songs are empty and void of meaning. Sure, you can put together a nice melody which causes people to hug and sway, but is this really what you want to accomplish through your music? If so, then ignore the rest of this letter.

But if you want your music to actually connect with people–including men–I have a few suggestions.

First, Jesus is not my girlfriend. Jesus and I are friends, but as a man, I don’t really want to be in his arms, feel his breath on my cheek, or lay my head on his chest. These songs make me shiver. And not in a good way. I don’t want to hold his hand, sit on his lap, or kiss him. What’s next? A lap dance for Jesus?"

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Jesus Wants us to use Common Sense

by Donald Miller

"I remember reading a big report from a church I used to go to, a vision statement outlining the plan for the church to grow. It involved buying new property and building a new building and  more than quadrupling the size of the congregation over the next twenty years or so. When I read it, I remember thinking that the vision lacked common sense. The church was in a rural area, and there was no growth happening in the community. It seemed like, if you wanted to reach more people, you’d just send another pastor into an area closer to town and plant another church. It would be a lot cheaper to do it that way anyway. But the vision was couched in a lot of God talk, a lot of talk about how it was “bathed in prayer” and the sort of language that creeps normal people out. That vision statement came out ten years ago, and very little has happened, save a church split and a lot of controversy.

I find it suspect when a vision for power and glory for man is couched in a lot of religious talk."

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The Power of Partnerships

By DAVID BORNSTEIN

David Bornstein is the author of “How to Change the World,” which has been published in 20 languages, and “The Price of a Dream: The Story of the Grameen Bank,” and is co-author of “Social Entrepreneurship: What Everyone Needs to Know.” He is the founder of dowser.org, a media site that reports on social innovation.

"Some problems are simply too complex to solve with any single approach. Consider the fact that in the United States, a million students drop out of high school each year. To begin to turn back that trend, we need to work on several fronts — assist vulnerable families when children are infants, improve classrooms from preschool through high school, provide after-school supports and college access assistance, tackle the issue of summer-learning loss and get much smarter about addressing students’ social and emotional needs at every stage. In the words of Clay Shirky: “Nothing will work, but everything might.”

But doing “everything” in piecemeal fashion won’t work. We need not only to do all of these things better than we have in the past; we need to link them in smarter and more effective ways.

In Tuesday’s column, I wrote about an effort in the social sector that is gaining momentum called “collective impact,” a disciplined effort to bring together dozens or even hundreds of organizations in a city (or field) to establish a common vision, adopt a shared set of measurable goals and pursue evidence-based actions that reinforce one another’s work and further those goals."

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Compassion Towards the LGBT Community

by Tony Campolo  

"Eric Hoffer, in his book The True Believer, makes an incredibly profound statement.  He declares that a movement can exist without a god, but never without a devil!  Hitler understood that when he made the Jews the devil and convinced the German people that the Jews were responsible for all that was wrong in their society, and even convinced them that it was the Jews who were responsible for Germany losing the Great War.  Hitler was able to unify the German people in their hatred for the Jews and in their desire society of them.  The Jews were the devil to the German people because Hitler made them so."

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"With the collapse of the Soviet Union and the tearing down of the Berlin Wall, those who wanted to start a movement had to find a new devil, and there were a host of Evangelical preachers who declared that the gays and lesbians of America were the devil.  Homosexuals, they contended, were going to destroy the American family and bring an end to the godly values that gave birth to this country.  They declared, "We have to get rid of this devil!  We have to drive the homosexuals out of our society!"

There are those who have dared to say that the gay community is not the problem for the American family.  In reality, it is the heterosexual community that is filled with people who are getting divorces.  Divorce and marital separation have left half of the children of our country with single parents and, in some cases, with no parents at all.  It’s the heterosexuals who are getting divorces.  The gays want to get married—and if you can’t see the irony of that, you have no sense of humor whatsoever."

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Where do we Find Life?

by Donald Miller
donmilleris.com

"If I place myself in a scene with Christ, I am most comfortable on the outskirts, an anonymous follower hidden in the crowd. I’d stare at Him for sure, until He stared back, after which I’d quickly make conversation with somebody else hoping He wouldn’t come over. I’d probably do this for a few weeks until I knew I could trust Him. And this only because I have religious baggage. If I hadn’t grown up in religion, I’d probably talk to Him right away and tell Him he’s a fool and then realize pretty quickly He’s not and then we’d get a beer."

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"What strikes me about my perspective regarding the Bible before is how little of it had to do with Jesus. It was mostly about doctrine, and arguing doctrine or proving and disproving doctrine. Jesus says to the Jews 'You search the Scriptures because you think that in them you have eternal life; and it is they that bear witness about me, yet you refuse to come to me that you may have life.'"

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