Entries Tagged 'highcallingblogs.com' ↓

Buddy Greene plays Harmonica like nobody’s business. Just open his site in a new browser and listen to his music while you read this. I was reading through the lyrics on his site this morning and was struck by these lines from “Jesus Has Left the Building”:

There’s a big crowd gathered at First Church
They’re dressed up and lookin’ so fine
They lean forward in their pews to hear the good news
And get a handle on God’s design

Isn’t that just like Christians? I go to First Baptist Church Kerrville, so these lines hit home. And they remind me of something I read in Christian Century at breakfast. In his essay “Reasons to Join,” Garret Keizer talks about the importance of paradox and ambiguity as agents against heresy in the church. (Whew, suddenly this post got all theological on me!)

Seriously, though. We try so hard to “get a handle on God’s design,” we turn church into a collection of religious autodidacts who are seeking the way to know God’s will and stick to the letter of the law. We turn into people of jots and tittles. We prefer the “pseudo-clarity to the many sidedness of truth, tidiness to the mess and complexity of reality.”

That’s the same warning I hear in Buddy Greene’s song–though he makes it all folksy and fun. The warning is still the same. And we need to know where we’re headed if we fall into this trap. Garret Keizer explains it well:

The fate of most  autodidacts, a fate I happen to understand only too well, is to be perpetually reinventing the wheel, and in the course of that needless reinvention, never to achieve the wing, the propeller or the time machine.

This is another reminder why it is so important to retreat. Retreat! Retreat! When we step back, when we slow down, we have a chance to hear voices other than our own. Sometimes we just hear the crickets. Sometimes we hear the wisdom of our neighbors. Sometimes we may eve hear God in the stillness.

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If you missed yesterday, Laity Lodge is sponsoring this month’s High Calling Blogs Group Writing Project: Retreat! Retreat! Retreat! You could win a FREE retreat just for participating in the project. But get hopping—you have to post before noon on Friday to be in the drawing. We’ve already had some good entries from L. L. Seedling, Carl Gyrovague, Gordon Real Live Preacher and Kathy Beyond Words. Also, Jacob Share is helping us promote the project again. Thanks Jacob! You’re welcome to participate too.

Yesterday, I promised to talk a little bit about the three retreats we’re featuring during this writing project. Buddy Greene is coming up first, May 29 through June 1. That’s right around the corner, and it’s going to be awesome.

Here are the details:

Musical Conversations with Buddy Greene and Company
(REGISTER HERE.)

May 29-June 1 (Thursday-Sunday)
Buddy Greene (AWESOME HARMONICA!)
David Dark (AWESOME WRITER!)
Sarah Masen (SUPER COOL SINGER!)
+ Raku Japanese pottery Larry Matthew (there’s a kiln and everything!)

The first HighCallingBlogs.com meme is spreading around the net. We’ve got people reflecting on lessons from some really odd jobs - a BBQ busboy, a Venus Fry Cook (not really), a sorter of phone cords (phones have cords?), and one really frightening picture of gas masks.

Drop by our main page to read some of these fun articles and insights.

And if you’ve ever had an odd job, write about it! Then shoot me an email so I can include you in the group. My Editor-in-Chief for TheHighCalling.org has tentatively agreed to let us publish the best meme entry on TheHighCalling.org. It could be you!

Lately, L. L. Barkat and I have been pretty busy trying organize everything we know about social media for a presentation at Mt. Hermon. Yesterday, I presented some of what I’ve learned about social media to the San Antonio Chapter of the Association of Fundraising Professionals.

I promised the AFP people to share the slideshow online. Here it is…
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At Laity Lodge, we’ve had a close connection to J. I. Packer for many years. Every year, I get the chance to hear this man speak and open the Scripture. At first, his style seemed dry to me, but gradually I came to appreciate the incredible wisdom he has. One Laity Lodge director described listening to Packer as being something akin to drinking from a firehose.

In the first ever posted Laity Lodge video, here’s J. I. Packer describing his calling to write. (I’d be curious what you think of the video, too.)

At FastCompany this month, Clive Thompson asks, “Is the Tipping Point Toast?” He makes a good point that “your average slob is just as likely as a well-connected person to start a huge new trend.”

Why should any readers of GoodWordEditing.com care?

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What is a widget, you ask? It is a little bit of code that can be shared between many users that changes based on the information it receives via an RSS feed.

How can you have fun with widgets?
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50,000 words each week. That’s how much people are writing as participants of HighCallingBlogs.com. A new draft of a nonfiction book about faith and work–each week! How awesome is that?

Gordon and I are slowly getting a handle on the gargantuan task of managing the network of HighCallingBlogs.com.

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It’s late. My kids are in bed. My wife is still in a corset pretending to be Gwendolyn from The Importance of Being Earnest.

And I wanted to play around with an interesting little widget I saw on ProBlogger this morning. AdaptiveBlue’s SmartLinks. They’re apparently using it or experimenting using it to promote their b5media blog network. Since that network is one of the models I’m following for HighCallingBlogs.com, I took note. At this point only 10 out of nearly 300 b5media blogs are showing up in the smartlink badge. I’ll be curious to see where they go with it.

So that’s the thing in my sidebar that may or may not become a community tool for HighCallingBlogs.com.

HighCallingBlogs, meet AdaptiveBlue. AdaptiveBlue, meet us. Maybe we’ll be fast friends. Maybe we’ll chat about the weather and move on. Who knows.