Well I finished the book! It was a great read and especially helpful for those of us who are pastors. I like to call it, "Wild at Heart for Pastors." But I never finished, "Wild at Heart," because I was out beating my chest and saving my wife from fire breathing dragons. Anyways, I was challenged and now I have to re-read the good bits and figure out how to put it into action. What if I did not read a new book until I thoroughly captured what God wanted me to grab and actualll practice living it out first....?

Here are some good bits that made me think... they are set in a wider context that gives it more punch, but here are some lines:

"Necessary pastors manage people, putting them in boxes and groups by age, gender, ethnicity, and so on. Unnecessary pastors engender communities in which they themselves participate."

"The deep symbol of sin is one we also often trivialize by terming it merely a mistake. Many sins we euphemize; for example, we label fornication "sleeping together," which sounds so nice and cozy. We call it "fudging on our income tax" when we cheat the government or a "little white lie" when we do violence to the truth. Since in our culture we do not name sin for the despicable sin that it is, we rarely recognize how truly dead we are."

"Forget about charisma, go for character."

"What would it be like if every single person in our pews knew that if he or she were absent the church would not be complete?"

Lots to chew on for me.

Last softball game tonight. We have not won a game yet. Hopefully that will change. :)

Life is like a box of...
sd