Essays
Rise and Choose
Each day we rise and choose. Nobody else chooses for us. It is our choice and our choice alone.
We choose joyfulness. We choose hopefulness. We choose gratefulness. We choose happiness. We choose love.
We choose anger. We choose rage. We choose frustration. We choose irritation. We choose hate.
It is our choice. Nobody can make us do anything.
Faithful Presence - Reconciliation
In this week’s installment of #LoveWell Dan discusses the discipline of reconciliation. He’s riffing off David Fitch’s text, “A Faithful Presence: Seven Disciplines That Shape The Church For Mission.”
Continue the conversation with Dan on Twitter: @danielmrose or Telegram: t.me/danielmrose
Pastor, Celebrate!
Every so often there is what I call, “The Pastor’s Lament.” This is when pastors take to the social media and explain how hard it is to be a pastor. They share memes of how pastoral ministry is so hard that they age like the President of the United States. They complain about the people they serve (not in public, but in private forums).
Basically, they whine.
I too am a pastor. Are there difficult things that go with being a pastor? Absolutely.
However, let us not lament, whine, or complain for we get to be cared for by the people of God to pray, serve, study, write, preach, and lead.
Family Together Is Better
When we started the Antioch Movement, what is now becoming the Acts 13 Network, we made a decision about families. We decided that we wanted families to be together in all that we did. Our hope was that families would not be separated during their times of worship.
We believe that for children to grow and see what it means to be God worshipers, they need to be with their parents. Not only that, we think that they need to see other adults worshiping God too. Also, they need to be witnesses to the worship of their peers.
The Promises Are Good
Do you ever wonder about God’s promises? You know, the ones that seem to be huge and wide sweeping. The ones that seem to go on forever.
Yet, never really seem to happen.
I do.
Often.
Shhh...Quiet Your Soul
How is your soul?
>Is it filled with anxiety? Is it filled with stress? Is it scattered? Is it weary? Is it joyous? Is it happy? Is it content?
How is your soul?
Faithful Presence - The Lord's Supper
Dan explores the significance of the Lord’s Supper in being the church on mission as he riffs on ideas from David Fitch’s text, Faithful Presence: Seven Disciplines That Shape The Church For Mission.
Continue the conversation with Dan on twitter: @danielmrose or on Telegram t.me/danielmrose
A Waiting Hope
It was late fall and the leaves were almost completely off the trees but hadn’t been raked. At the end of our street was a 90 degree turn because we lived on a horseshoe. One morning, shortly after receiving my driver’s license, I was fiddling with music in my car and wasn’t paying attention. As I looked up the turn was coming at me. I slammed on the brakes and slid into a bank of mailboxes. Thinking nobody saw me, I continued on to school.
Later that day, I was home watching TV when the phone rang and my mom answered it. Something in me knew I was done for.
“Dan, were you involved in a hit and run today?” my mom asked.
“Me? No I didn’t hit anyone. Come on.” I replied.
“Well that was the police and they said someone reported that you hit the mailboxes at the end of the street this morning and fled the scene.”
“Oh. Yeah. That was me.”
The Bullied Theme
“Why do bad things happen to good people?”
That’s a question that is on the tip of many tongues. Too often too many people feel as though they are experiencing injustices.
Faithful Presence: The Intro
We get going proper into our discussion of “Faithful Presence - Seven Disciplines That Shape the Church for Mission” by David Fitch. Dan gives a general overview of where we are headed over the next few weeks. We hope you will join us in the conversation!
Connect with Dan on Twitter: @danielmrose
Connect with Dan on Telegram: danielmrose or love well.
Happiness Is...
There is a great picture floating around on social media. It’s a photo of two kids on a medal platform. The kid in first place has a sour look on his face. The kid in third place is rejoicing! The caption typically reads something like this, “Happiness is all about your perspective.”
I dig that sentiment.
My Kids!
Are you a parent? I am and I struggle daily with being a parent. It’s really hard and scary work. Parenting is not for the faint of heart.
In America we organize everything around our kids. Over the last few years there have been helicopter parents and now lawn mower parents (I’ll let you hit the Duck Duck Go Machine if you don’t know what those are).
Joy in the Memory
A conversation…
“I could never be a pastor. I don’t know how you do it."
“What do you mean?” I asked.
“You have to walk through all the terrible stuff in people’s lives. You’re face to face with all the bad stuff all the time. I guess, I don’t understand how a pastor could ever stay a Christian. It seems like it would be really hard to keep the faith when you see all the times that God doesn’t do what you want."
Who Are You?
Where do you find your roots? Is your identity rooted somewhere? How do you know who you are?
As we walk through this life I think that this might be one of the most important questions that we face. The world comes at us pretty fast and more times than not the knowledge of who we are helps us to know what to do.
Be Honest
There are times when we feel like nobody cares about us. Sometimes, we feel all alone. That sense of being alone in the world is brutal. It lays us bare. It can feel like a million pounds is weighing us down.
This sense of being alone in the world and that nobody cares is not something new. It is common to the human experience.
Grateful To Live Here
Some Bible passages make us super uncomfortable in the modern era. It’s often because we don’t take time to think about what they’re saying and what they’re not saying.
The Scriptures were not written in a vacuum, culturally or otherwise. Neither should we interpret them that way. Nor are all passages written in the same genre and so we must take the time to understand what is happening in a particular passage.
Psalm 122 is one of those kinds of passages.
A Song for the Journey
Have you ever noticed that life isn’t quite as easy as everyone says it’s supposed to be?
Our conversations so often look like this:
“How are you?" “Fine. Everything’s good."
Then you find out they are dealing with marital problems, cancer, or something else super hard.
We Gather for Peace
Why do we need to gather together in community? Have you ever thought about it? Seriously, why?
To gather in community is not something that only Christians do. People from all kinds of religions meet together. Non-religious people gather in community, why? What is it about gathering together that we feel the necessity to do so?
A Faithful Presence: Missional Community
Today, I launch a new podcast series on #LoveWell called, “A Faithful Presence." I will be walking through David Fitch’s Faithful Presence: Seven Disciplines That Shape the Church for Mission and discussing how we are living these disciplines out in our Missional Communities.
Before I dive in though, I wanted to talk about what I mean by Missional Community. I riffed off a nice little article by Brad Brisco where he defines “Missional Community."
Grace To You and Peace
There are few passages in the Scriptures that have impacted me more than 2 Corinthians 5. The whole chapter is amazing as it centers on the reality of the one who seeks to follow Jesus is a “new creation.” The ultimate result of this new reality is that the follower of Jesus is called an “ambassador” and is entrusted with the “ministry of reconciliation.”
Help Us!
As you might imagine a pastor is connected with a lot of people and accounts online about religion. My feeds are filled with other religious people and with people critical of religious people. If there is one particular kind of thread that I see often it goes like this:
>Christians only care about getting folks “saved.” The rampant hypocrisy of >the Christian is overwhelming. I love Christ but despise Christians.
To be clear, the particulars of this thread change, but that’s the heart of it. I see it from Christians and non-Christians. I see it from theists and atheists.
Uncle Ben, Spiderman, and Puritans
One of my favorite lines in any comic book or movie is the one from Uncle Ben, Peter Parker’s uncle in Spiderman. He said to his nephew, “With great power comes great responsibility.”
That line is memorable because I think we know that it is inherently true. We live in a world where so often we see the opposite. People with great power in our culture tend to abuse it. The powerful, with many exceptions, often use their power to amass more power. The wealthy, with many exceptions, use their wealth to amass more wealth.
When Grace Lays You Bare
There’s a line in a prayer that I reflected on this morning that says,
>Let us bless thee at all times and forget not how thou hast >forgiven our iniquities, >healed our diseases, >redeemed our lives from destruction, >crowned us with lovingkindness and tender mercies, >satisfied our mouths with good things, >renewed our youth like the eagles. (Valley of Vision, 382)
There are two responses this that run through my heart and mind to this and they are intertwined. I think that they feed into one another.
A Social Media Rule
Introduction
In the long history of Christianity there have been many “rules.” These treatises of living have had profound impact in the life and ministry of the faith. From Benedict to Francis to the modern day, the “Rule” has been a means by which to order one’s life.
Over the past number of months I have been thinking a great deal about my social media and how I use it. I have listened to and taken in the reactions of people in my life to how I use social media. Their responses and perceptions have helped to shape this rule.
Beyond that I took some time to read through my “activity” on Facebook, approximately 13 years of social media usage. What I saw there has also significantly shaped this rule.
Finally, I hope by writing this out and publishing it publicly, I will learn to live by it. My desire is to live life to the full and to #LoveWell.
To Superintendent Sean McNatt and the Lincoln Board of Education:
Update: On May 17th Coach McGoy was officially reinstated as the head coach of the Varsity baseball program. This was almost completely due to the overwhelming outpouring of support from the community.