Queso Quote: Don't Interrupt

"The one who says it cannot be done should not interrupt the one who is doing it."

—Chinese proverb

BOOK REVIEW: The Hole In Our Gospel by Richard Stearns

God has used a handful of books—out of hundreds I have read—to shift my worldview to the extent they actually altered the trajectory of my life.

The Hole In Our Gospel, which I just finished, is one of those books.

I don’t know exactly how, or how much, I will change after reading this book; but I know I don’t have the option to not change.

In his book, Stearns describes how God called him from a life of prosperity and power to become president of World Vision, one of the world’s foremost humanitarian organizations, while deftly weaving the Church’s biblical mandate to care for “the least of these” throughout. Stearns strikes the perfect balance between prophetic passion and personal humility.

My first response to the book was to lay my life before God—again—making sure I haven’t made any assumptions about His will for my life. My second response was to examine my own hardness of heart and failure to act on behalf the poor. It has been a painful yet beautiful exercise…and one I feel is just beginning.

I highly recommend this book.

I’ll be highlighting favorite quotes and thoughts from the book on my blog in the weeks to come…but in the meantime, GET THIS BOOK and read it!

Disclosure of Material Connection: I received this book free from Thomas Nelson Publishers as part of their BookSneeze Blogger Review program. I was not required to write a positive review. The opinions I have expressed are my own. I am disclosing this in accordance with the Federal Trade Commission’s 16 CFR, Part 255: “Guides Concerning the Use of Endorsements and Testimonials in Advertising.”

Teachers Rock!

Today was the first day of the school year for my two oldest kids. I am now officially the mother of a 1st and 2nd grader! Both boys had wonderful first day experiences.



Once more I find myself extremely grateful for their teachers. Public school teachers work so hard and sacrifice so much, for so little pay. And yet their investment in our children is immeasurable. I am praying for my boys' teachers as I write this, hoping they know how important they are to me, to my kids, and to the world.

I'll leave off with another inspiring video from the folks at Deidox. It's about a teacher named Lindsay...

Deidox Lindsay from Deidox on Vimeo.

Thanks, Deidox, for allowing me to embed the video. May God use it to increase your tribe!

(If the video doesn't show up in your reader, just click here.)

John Hannah On Sin

I recently came across my notes from a talk Dr. John Hannah, author and professor at Dallas Theological Seminary, gave at a Campus Crusade staff conference several years ago.

Dr. Hannah has generously invested his wisdom and gifts in our staff for decades, and our movement is all the better for it. An informal Q & A session about marriage with Dr. Hannah and his wife years ago was a highlight of my CCC career.

The topic of this particular talk was sin. Some of my favorite quotes:

“Most of us are concerned with the effects of sin, not the sin itself.”

“Sin does not go away by avoidance.”

“We need to deal with sin in the causal state, not in its fruitful state.”

He also shared 10 common methods of falling into sin:

1. Sloth and neglect of sin


2. Loss of fear of God


3. A complicated view of the gospel


4. Lack of a serious watchfulness of Satan


5. Imitation of bad examples


6. Enjoyment of secret lusts of the heart


7. Lack of private times with God


8. An increase of knowledge without obedience


9. An increase of worldly wisdom


10. A failure to repent

Reviewing these notes freshly pierced my own heart…may they do their work in yours as well!

No Ordinary Love

The other day I was talking with a friend about a woman we know who is leaving her husband after only three years of marriage. My friend theorized that because the woman recently lost a significant amount of weight, she now felt like she deserved someone better. He proposed that people only enter into a romantic relationship with someone they feel is their equal; they won’t ever stoop to be with someone “beneath” them.

That’s probably true for ordinary love.

But there is another kind of love…

The love of Superman, giving up his powers in order to be with Lois Lane in Superman II.

The love of Luthien, relinquishing her immortality in order to follow Beren into death and the life beyond in The Lord of the Rings.

The love of Robertson McQuilkin, leaving his influential post as head of Columbia International University to care full-time for his wife Muriel, who suffered from Alzheimer’s.

The love of Hosea, standing among the crowd at the auction block, waiting to buy his wife Gomer back after she whored herself out to the neighborhood.

This kind of love is a foolish, illogical kind of love, where the line blurs between romantic and ridiculous, between lavish and laughable, between passionate and preposterous, between wild and wasteful.

It’s the kind of love God has for me…for there has never been a more unequal romance in all of history.

I am Lois Lane, lost and lonely, hiding behind a tough exterior of professional success.

I am Beren, staring death in the face, unless someone comes to rescue me.

I am Muriel McQuilken, feeble of mind and body, and terrified.

I am Gomer, soul-scarred from running after lovers I knew were only using me.

And the God of the universe has literally moved heaven and earth to pursue me with a passion that is mind-boggling and heart-melting.

This is no ordinary love.

A Primer On White Privilege (or, Challenging The Myth Of Meritocracy)

White privilege (def.): a set of advantages enjoyed by white people beyond those commonly experienced by non-white people in the same social, political, and economic spaces. (Wikipedia)

While Peggy McIntosh was associate director of the Wellesley College Center for Research on Women, she wrote an essay on her personal experience of becoming aware of white privilege. As a women’s studies professor, she realized that her experiences with oppression as a female in the context of male privilege helped her unlock the door to understanding her own white privilege.

I found her essay very helpful in my own journey to understand (and attempt to minimize) my own racism. Some highlights:

“As a white person, I realized I had been taught about racism as something that puts others at a disadvantage, but had been taught not to see one of its corollary aspects, white privilege, which puts me at an advantage…

I think whites are carefully taught not to recognize white privilege… I have come to see white privilege as an invisible package of unearned assets that I can count on cashing in each day, but about which I was "meant" to remain oblivious. White privilege is like an invisible weightless knapsack of special provisions, maps, passports, codebooks, visas, clothes, tools, and blank checks…

My schooling gave me no training in seeing myself as an oppressor, as an unfairly advantaged person, or as a participant in a damaged culture. I was taught to see myself as an individual whose moral state depended on her individual moral will. My schooling followed the pattern my colleague Elizabeth Minnich has pointed out: whites are taught to think of their lives as morally neutral, normative, and average, and also ideal, so that when we work to benefit others, this is seen as work that will allow "them" to be more like "us"…

I decided to try to work on myself at least by identifying some of the daily effects of white privilege in my life. I have chosen those conditions that I think in my case attach somewhat more to skin-color privilege than to class, religion, ethnic status, or geographic location, though of course all these other factors are intricately intertwined…”

McClintock identified 50 daily effects of white privilege in her own life. I have included 9 here:

1. I can if I wish arrange to be in the company of people of my race most of the time.


2. If I should need to move, I can be pretty sure of renting or purchasing housing in an area which I can afford and in which I would want to live.


3. I can be pretty sure that my neighbors in such a location will be neutral or pleasant to me.


4. When I am told about our national heritage or about "civilization," I am shown that people of my color made it what it is.


5. I do not have to educate my children to be aware of systemic racism for their own daily physical protection.


6. I am never asked to speak for all the people of my racial group.


7. If I declare there is a racial issue at hand, or there isn't a racial issue at hand, my race will lend me more credibility for either position than a person of color will have.


8. I can be late to a meeting without having the lateness reflect on my race.


9. I can remain oblivious of the language and customs of persons of color who constitute the world's majority without feeling in my culture any penalty for such oblivion.

To view her entire list, and her complete essay, click here.

I’ll leave you with one last quote from McClintock:

“And so one question for me and others like me is…whether we will get truly distressed, even outraged, about unearned race advantage and conferred dominance, and, if so, what we will do to lessen them. In any case, we need to do more work in identifying how they actually affect our daily lives. Many, perhaps most, of our white students in the United States think that racism doesn't affect them because they are not people of color; they do not see "whiteness" as a racial identity…

Describing white privilege makes one newly accountable…So one who writes about having white privilege must ask, 'Having described it, what will I do to lessen or end it?'"

So How Do You Measure A Man?

Ken Cochrum recently posted the following quote on his great blog, OnLeadingWell:

"The ultimate measure of a man is not where he stands in moments of comfort and convenience, but where he stands at times of challenge and controversy." – Martin Luther King Jr.

The title of the blog post was, “How Do You Measure A Man?”

I’ve always liked that quote. But then Judy Nelson posted this comment:

"I like the one about telling the worth of a man by looking in the eyes of his wife. Not sure who said it, but they said it better than me. Think it says a lot. Wonder how Mrs. King’s eyes looked. Great leader, poor husband. Can you be both?"

Good question.

What do you think? What is the ultimate measure of a man?

The Social Media Revolution

Fascinating stats and insights on Life 2.0...



If your browser doesn't support this video, just click here to view it.

My Kids' Quotes: Greatest Hits, Vol. 2

They’ve been at it again…

E: "Daddy, if you die, and then Mommy dies, then could we watch SpongeBob?”
…………………………………………………………………

J2: “I wish I was a Transformer. Transformers don’t have to have their hair brushed.”
…………………………………………………………………

I knew it was a mistake to let my kids out of my sight while shopping at Target, even for a moment.
E, loudly: “MOMMY! J1 is wearing a booby pad!!!”
(This is what the kids decided a bra was called. And yes, he was actually wearing one.)
…………………………………………………………………

J1: “Mom, Megan told me that when she turned 16 she would take me on a date to Jason's Deli. And then, after she graduates from college she would marry me. If she can find me.”
…………………………………………………………………

E, after dinner: "I’m full. And I don’t want to eat one more bite, because I don’t want my belly to get big, like Daddy’s or Santa’s."
…………………………………………………………………

J2: "I hope we never get dirty in heaven. Then I'll never have to take a shower again!"
…………………………………………………………………

E: “Daddy, I like my PJs. They’re bulletproof.”
…………………………………………………………………

J1: "Mom, when we give to God, does He like gift cards?"
…………………………………………………………………

E, while flipping through her bible: “I know God has to be in here somewhere!”
…………………………………………………………………

J2: “Dad, I was just thinking about if I was a firefighter, and I was fighting a fire in a building, and I had to tinkle, and I tinkled on the fire, and it put the fire out.”

To read My Kids’ Quotes: Greatest Hits, Vol. 1, click here.

Lesson From A House Of Mourning

It is better to go to a house of mourning than to go to a house of feasting, for death is the destiny of every man; the living should take this to heart. (Ecclesiastes 7:2)

About a decade ago, my husband and I got a phone call relaying a friend of ours had just been diagnosed with cancer. We were shocked. Our friend, Steve, was active and seemingly healthy. He was only 34 years old. However he was given only two weeks to live.

And that is all he got.

The impact Steve’s funeral had on my (and my husband’s) life cannot be overstated. At his memorial service, people were allowed to come forward and tell stories about Steve. Over and over, we listened to his friends recount how he regularly dropped everything to come to their side in times of need.

I still remember what one man in particular shared:

While Steve was in dental school, he made time to invest in the lives of a group of middle school guys through the ministry of K-Life. Steve had a knack for seeking out guys who were a bit socially awkward. He noticed a common thread among those guys was they each lacked a father at home. So he determined to be a father figure to them.

Then the man said, “I was one of those guys, and I’m here representing our whole group. We have pledged that now Steve is gone, we will be the fathers to his three young children the same way he was to us.”

………………………………………………………

At that time my husband and I were the leaders of the local Campus Crusade movement at TCU. After a few difficult years of ministry, we were finally seeing things take off, and we were excited.

However, Steve’s funeral made me stop and reassess my definition of success. I thought about what people would say at my own funeral if I died suddenly. I realized they would only be able to say things like, “Well, she was very driven, very committed to the cause of Christ.” “She was a good teacher, very visionary.”

I was haunted by the fact that even though I worked in full-time ministry, with seemingly much more time in my schedule to invest in the lives of people than most, my memorial service would not be full of people telling stories about what a great friend I was.

………………………………………………………

That day changed me—hopefully for the better. But I still struggle with this issue. I can come up with all kinds of excuses—My temperament! My background! My “gift mix”!—for avoiding the call of Christ to enter into the lives of people. But the bottom line is that I often place my own self-protection, self-promotion, and self-satisfaction before the needs of others. “To-do lists” are much more manageable than people’s messy, broken lives. I can keep up the illusion of control and competency when my world is small.

………………………………………………………

Several weeks after first reading Scott Rodin’s article on spiritual leadership, I find myself still pondering it. I posted several quotes from his article previously, but here is another favorite:

“If…we are true to our Trinitarian historical commitments, we see…a God who in his very nature is defined by relationship. We see Father, Son and Holy Spirit as distinct persons yet also interdependent in their perichoretic relationship. The mutual indwelling of the three persons of the Godhead gives us a different understanding of what God values in us and desires from us. Here we learn that relationship is what defines us [emphasis mine]…We learn that leadership must be concerned with the whole person, and that God’s intent is for us to do the work of the kingdom within and through the community of believers. All of this we come to know from only one place, namely, in the person of Jesus Christ. If our epistemological starting point is solely in the incarnation, life, death and resurrection of Jesus Christ, then our focus as leaders must change drastically. For Jesus was concerned about people over product, relationship over output, and transformation over transaction.”

Good thing my Savior is so very different from me.

How Much Is A Trillion?

Last month the U.S. federal deficit topped $1,000,000,000,000—that’s $1 trillion—for the first time in history. It could actually reach $2,000,000,000,000 by this fall.

Recently I was shopping for books for my kids at Goodwill (one of my favorite places to pick them up) and found a book by David M. Schwartz called How Much Is A Million? Both of my boys are in that basic math phase where they figuring out the comparative value of different numbers, so I picked it up for them.

It’s a delightful little book that uses visual pictures to describe “how much is” a million, a billion, and a trillion. I thought I would share a paraphrase of one of the descriptions of how much a trillion was:

If I went to a store and purchased an item worth exactly $1,
and then paid for it with a $1 trillion bill,
and the cashier gave me change in $1 bills,
it would take him almost 200,000 years to count it out!

Three Marks Of Leadership Maturity

One of my favorite people I’ve ever had the privilege to work for is a man named Gary Runn. Gary led the Campus Crusade region I’m a part of for about 20 years. Many influential leaders appear great from afar, but when you get close to them you begin to see through the veneer a little, and respect for them can fade.

Not so with Gary. After working directly under him for a number of years, I actually got to spend the last year I worked full-time (before I had kids) as his administrative assistant. But my respect for Gary only grew during that year.

Gary has since gone on to greater things—specifically to Florence, Italy—where he focuses on building into the next generation of spiritual leaders in Western Europe. Fortunately for me, and many others, we can still glean from his wisdom via his blog.

With his permission, I’m reprinting the meat of his latest post, “Three Marks of Leadership Maturity”, here:

“What does mature leadership look like? How is it experienced? What are its marks? There are three aspects that stand out to me that mark a corner being turned from immature to mature leadership:

1. Being able to share power
Leadership is about power and influence-but young leaders quickly become confused about the center of power and its purposes. There are really only two alternatives—power centers around the leader or the leader learns to give power away. Young leaders often want to control and be served. These are marks of the leader being at the center of power. But servant leadership is about making others the focus—therefore empowering others for success. Power sharing also reveals itself when you have shared leadership. In our organization we usually employ twoteam leaders for every team—a man and a woman. A leader's ability to come to the table as equals and truly honor the other leader demonstrates maturity. Immaturity requires the other leader to be subservient to them.

2. Leading towards your team's needs—not simply your own
This is similar to 1. except it goes beyond where power is located and begins to steward that power toward someone else. An immature leader can be overly concerned with their own needs or their own organization. A mature leader begins to look at the true make up those entrusted to them and they become students of their strengths, gifts and abilities. They begin to provide what each member needs to see them succeed. They provide structure, resources, counsel, developmental opportunities—all in the name of making them better.

3. Being able to appropriately lead up
Leading up is about response to authority. Immature leaders complain about the leaders over them rather than respectfully engaging them. Immature leaders diminish their leaders to others rather than communicating respectfully about them. Mature leaders are not "salute and obey" leaders—but they are also not rebellious. They know how to rightfully and respectfully dialogue with those in authority over them—and trust God fully who positioned those leaders in the first place.”

To read the article in its entirety, click here.

Atheists Choose To Get “De-Baptized”

Last month USA Today reported on a small but growing trend among people who grew up in a religious tradition, but have now converted to atheism: getting “de-baptized”.

You can read the article here.

Philosophy Professor Challenges Students To Abstain From Media

Trinity Western University recently published an online article about a social experiment Associate Professor of Philosophy, Robert Doede, PhD, runs each spring:

“For a 5% bonus credit his Philosophy 210 students are challenged to abstain from all social and traditional media throughout the three month semester and journal about their experiences. Only the strong succeed, giving up things like Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, videogames, television and movies. Doede says that out of a typical class of 35 only about 12 seek the challenge, and by the end of the semester only four to six are still ‘media abstinent.’”

21-year-old Hannah Jenkins decided to take Doede up on his challenge. From her journal:

“I think Facebook and meaningless television (which is not all television) owe a huge percentage of their success to people being dissatisfied with their lives. In our modern brilliance, we have invented ways to avoid our shortcomings instead of looking them in the eye and overcoming them. Screens are too easy, too accessible and too freeing to ignore. They offer an escape from reality but for so many people they become the reality, and the inadequacies which they were trying to escape simply mount higher.”

To read the article in its entirety, click here.

Music Video: In The 80's

Rhett & Link are truly two of the funniest people I know. (Except that I don't actually know them. I just know alot of people who do know them.) If you want a great night of entertainment, spend some time flipping through their awesome website.

But for any of you who are remotely close to my age, you absolutely MUST check out their latest video creation, "In The 80's":

What Sotomayor's Confirmation Means To Me

What is the significance of this photo (taken from the White House Flickr account)? According to the official caption: “The youngster wanted to see if the President’s haircut felt like his own.”

How much impact do you think that moment had on that little black boy? What impression do you think was made on his formative young mind, to know someone who looks (and feels!) like him is the President of the United States of America?

It would be hard to measure. But I think it has to matter.

And so I’m having my own little private celebration today upon hearing the news that Sonia Sotomayor’s nomination to the U.S. Supreme Court has been confirmed by the Senate. Not because of her judicial philosophy, or her credentials, or her dramatic life story. Simply because she is a Latina.

You see, my daughter is half-Caucasian and half-Latina. Growing up in America, she will certainly self-identify as a Latina—perhaps to varying degrees at different stages of her life. But I am happy that as she is growing up, she will have the privilege of seeing someone who looks like her in such a prestigious position.

I think it has to matter.