tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-88786090610588886662024-03-09T19:46:17.294-07:00Covered in His Dustmarty.solomonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13745964321113271609noreply@blogger.comBlogger387125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8878609061058888666.post-56848377319396584982021-09-17T06:44:00.002-06:002021-09-17T06:44:43.605-06:00Sabbatical Blog Has Moved!<p>For those of you who may be coming here to follow my sabbatical journey on the blog (mentioned in the <a href="http://makingtalmidim.blogspot.com/2021/09/the-sabbath-year.html">last post</a> below), please come and follow along where we are hosting this conversation on the BEMA site, for a little more pleasing experience.</p><p>To find this ongoing conversation, please <b><a href="https://www.bemadiscipleship.com/articles">click here</a></b>.</p>marty.solomonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13745964321113271609noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8878609061058888666.post-79229411170497313642021-09-06T00:39:00.001-06:002021-09-06T00:39:00.235-06:00THE SABBATH YEAR<p><span style="color: white;"><span style="caret-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 12px;">Tomorrow is Rosh Hashanah and ushers in what is called the High Holidays of the Jewish Calendar. Rosh Hashanah is the Jewish New Year and leads into ten days of introspection, reflection, confession, and repentance. Those days, also called the “Days of Awe,” will lead into Yom Kippur (or the Day of Atonement). You can read more about these holidays (and others) </span><b style="caret-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 12px;"><a href="https://www.chabad.org/holidays/JewishNewYear/template_cdo/aid/36130/jewish/High-Holidays.htm" target="_blank">here at Chabad</a></b><span style="caret-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 12px;"> or even watch my </span><b style="caret-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 12px;">“<a href="https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLn6CCcE7mHhYlaru-32cCevW8_JNz2Hn0" target="_blank">Festival Edition” playlist</a></b><span style="caret-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 12px;"> over on YouTube.</span></span></p><span style="color: white;"><span style="caret-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 12px;">The High Holidays this year also usher in what is known as </span><i style="caret-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 12px;"><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shmita" target="_blank">shmitah</a></i><span style="caret-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 12px;">, or the Sabbath Year. Today, Rabbinic Judaism has ruled that Sabbath Year is directly connected to the land of Israel itself. Because of this, there are no requirements for Jews who live outside the land of Israel. It is, however, a fascinating study in the principles of Sabbath and what God desired His people experience in the land when they entered it thousands of years ago.</span><br style="caret-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 12px;" /><br style="caret-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 12px;" /><span style="caret-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 12px;"><a href="https://www.impacttheu.com" target="_blank">Impact Campus Ministries</a> requires all full-time staff to take a sabbatical every seven years. For most of our staff, this looks like 100 days of what we call a “working sabbatical.” It is a paid time of planned, prepared engagement and accountability structures. It is not just 100 days of vacation, although we will often “unplug” from our usual communication (email, etc.) during this time. It is guided by objectives in our organization’s Policy and Procedures Manual and is a very intentional practice for our staff.</span><br style="caret-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 12px;" /><br style="caret-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 12px;" /><span style="caret-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 12px;">For me and my family, instead of engaging in that typical 100-day approach, we will be combining these same objectives with the principles and timeline of the biblical Sabbath Year. I look forward to sharing those notes with you over the year to come and inviting you into this unique sabbath space. I also look forward to sharing stories and prayer requests. There is so much to discuss and talk about!</span><br style="caret-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 12px;" /><br style="caret-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 12px;" /><span style="caret-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 12px;">For now, I simply want to invite you to this space and introduce these ideas. I will be using this blog space to keep a </span><b style="caret-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 12px;">Sabbatical Journal</b><span style="caret-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 12px;"> during my experience and I invite you to follow along.</span></span><div><span style="color: white;"><span style="caret-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 12px;"><br /></span></span></div><div><span style="color: white;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgaMINg2W0rU3zODJExP0hDfUl0cWKSC5CD-vwN5-i8B9VqHGFxuqyON6c07-I7PstDHq9Uf3-FveUY3BnrtvPZsZUo6RSn6eTZMaFsZ6v5_zh9bbuYKKklemuKZDvDyCvhJEmZthA8iGw/s2048/06-13_0442.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1366" data-original-width="2048" height="266" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgaMINg2W0rU3zODJExP0hDfUl0cWKSC5CD-vwN5-i8B9VqHGFxuqyON6c07-I7PstDHq9Uf3-FveUY3BnrtvPZsZUo6RSn6eTZMaFsZ6v5_zh9bbuYKKklemuKZDvDyCvhJEmZthA8iGw/w400-h266/06-13_0442.jpg" width="400" /></a></div><br /><span style="caret-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 12px;"><br /></span></span></div>marty.solomonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13745964321113271609noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8878609061058888666.post-4039792212671101402019-10-31T07:37:00.000-06:002019-10-31T07:37:04.051-06:00Get Up<i><span style="font-size: xx-small;"><span style="caret-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); font-family: "helvetica";">Note: It may be helpful to read my introduction to this series in order to have some context and understand my disclaimers. You can find that post <a href="http://makingtalmidim.blogspot.com/2019/06/the-loss-of-conventional-wisdom.html">here</a>.</span></span></i><br />
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<span style="font-family: "helvetica"; font-size: 12px;">In this final video where Rowe closes up the S.W.E.A.T. Pledge, I find what is maybe the most important of all the principles. It will make or break all of the others we have examined in this miniseries.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "helvetica"; font-size: 12px;">Most people (but not all) will be able to “show up” for life to do what is necessary. But there is an intangible quality to the fact that a much smaller group demonstrate an internal fire and personal commitment to “get up” long before what is necessary and do what it takes to be excellent.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "helvetica"; font-size: 12px;">Angela Duckworth calls it “grit” in <a href="https://www.ted.com/talks/angela_lee_duckworth_grit_the_power_of_passion_and_perseverance?language=en">her well-known TED Talk</a>.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "helvetica"; font-size: 12px;">And Rowe is right. This commitment is about <b>choices</b>.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "helvetica"; font-size: 12px;">It is not about talent; it takes no talent to get up earlier and work harder than anybody else. It is not about education; you cannot teach this to others in a lecture hall. It is not something that can be medicated or consumed as a product.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "helvetica"; font-size: 12px;">This commitment is an internal commitment to be a part of something (to use the cliche) “bigger than yourself.” For many from the secular perspective, they find this fire by being internally committed to themselves. Others find this in their commitment to the larger team, community, or group of “others.” I am assuming that for some, this internal fire is even dysfunctionally fueled by guilt, insecurity, and fear.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "helvetica"; font-size: 12px;">Appropriately placed (in my mind), this fire comes from a deep and abiding belief in what is most true about the world: a belief that God is putting the world back together, that this project is deeply meaningful to lots of other people and a planet that suffers from all kinds of brokenness. It is a belief that <b>God is looking for partners</b> and an unbelievable gratitude that we get the opportunity to be a part of these restoration efforts.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "helvetica"; font-size: 12px;">We have the opportunity to <b>get up</b> every day and be a part of what the Jews call tikkun olam, or “the repairing of the world.” If this opportunity doesn’t inspire us to be deeply committed to personal growth and hard work — not for ourselves and our own Towers of Babel, but for the wholeness of the universe — then I don’t know what will.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "helvetica"; font-size: 12px;">But getting up and working hard is the piece we can control that has the ability, when used by God, to turn morsels into miracles. When neglected, it is also the thing that has killed more potential than any other problem we have ever encountered.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "helvetica"; font-size: 12px;">Of all the principles we looked at in this series, if there is one thing I could magically give to each of my students, it would be this principle of hard work and dedication combined with a healthy understanding of identity and a true rest of the Spirit that comes from knowing we are loved as we are. It should be a beautiful mixture of work and rest — work finding its appropriate place, and a healthy human being at rest in the love, value, and acceptance of God.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "helvetica"; font-size: 12px;">And the bummer is that you cannot manufacture this in a blog post any more than you can in a classroom.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "helvetica"; font-size: 12px;">But the combination of those two realities can change a world — your world. And when enough of our worlds are changed, it helps us be a part of changing the big one. This is why I work with college students: I have a deep, abiding belief that if you can mentor this in enough students, you can change the course of history. If you <b>Impact the U</b>, you <b>Impact the World</b>.</span>marty.solomonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13745964321113271609noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8878609061058888666.post-54568842285289662362019-10-21T07:27:00.000-06:002019-10-21T07:27:07.397-06:00Life Is Not Fair<span style="font-size: xx-small;"><i><span style="caret-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); font-family: "helvetica";">Note: It may be helpful to read my introduction to this series in order to have some context and understand my disclaimers. You can find that post <a href="http://makingtalmidim.blogspot.com/2019/06/the-loss-of-conventional-wisdom.html">here</a>.</span></i></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "helvetica"; font-size: 12px;">In this video, Mike Rowe talks about a principle we toss around with frequency — particularly when it is convenient (in realms like parenting or mentoring) — but rarely do we ever take the time to consider how profound and difficult the truth of the statement is.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "helvetica"; font-size: 12px;"><b>Life is not fair.</b></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "helvetica"; font-size: 12px;">Rowe uses the example of a job he had earlier in his life and a generous holiday bonus he received with great joy — until he found out a coworker had received more than him. Rowe goes on to simply observe and accept the very honest reality that life is full of these moments and circumstances. I really appreciated that he did not spend any time trying to explain the details of “what could be going on” or why we may or may not be “seeing it correctly.” Instead, he simply stated it and accepted it as a common life experience: life is not fair. Life will be full of moments just like this one. Rowe spent no time trying to blame the bosses or talk about what is wrong with the culture of his former workplace.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "helvetica"; font-size: 12px;">Nope, this is going to happen in life. A lot. We can either accept it as a common experience or fight it (to no avail, I might add) at every turn.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "helvetica"; font-size: 12px;">And he rightly pointed out the two things I think are important about remembering how to respond to life’s unfair moments: circumstance and control.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "helvetica"; font-size: 12px;">First there is <b>circumstance</b>. Life happens. Each day you wake up, and life hands you your pieces of the puzzle. All you have to work with are the pieces of the puzzle you are handed that day. They might be more than what you need, and they might be wrong in every way. You might not have the right puzzle pieces, or the picture on the lid may be inaccurate. You might not have enough to finish the job. Whatever it is, each day presents you with another piece to play in the puzzle of your life.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "helvetica"; font-size: 12px;">So when that piece is lousy, what do you do? When the circumstances are off, and life is unfair, how do you respond? Do you jump on Facebook and rant about how things aren’t turning out in your favor? Do you blame others for the plot you find yourself in?</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "helvetica"; font-size: 12px;">You certainly could. Of course, it just doesn’t make a difference with those puzzle pieces. It doesn’t change the circumstances. And if it does anything, it changes you from the inside — and not for the better.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "helvetica"; font-size: 12px;">But then there is <b>control</b>. There are things we can control. We can control our choices, and we can control what we are going to do with the mess that lies in front of us. No matter who is to blame, no matter how hopeless, and no matter how unfair, there is only one direction we can head: forward. We pick up the pieces, and we do the best we can with what we have. We do not concern ourselves with how our table of puzzle pieces compares to our neighbor’s. We simply do the next right thing with what we have to work with.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "helvetica"; font-size: 12px;">And as I have added throughout this series, this does not mean we cannot address injustice and that there aren’t proper ways to address things in life that are wrong. This is about being crippled by the idea that you are entitled to a different situation just because somebody else experienced something different.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "helvetica"; font-size: 12px;">And I won’t be taking the time to write some cheap blog post about this or that group and their “participation trophies” or their generational entitlement; those are easy straw man arguments to make, and the thick irony is that those who make them miss the very principle we are espousing here.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "helvetica"; font-size: 12px;">It is <b>your path</b>. Be grateful for what is on your path. Be grateful for the opportunity to walk your path and to make something of the hand you have been dealt. And do not calculate the value of your path by comparing it to your neighbor’s.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "helvetica"; font-size: 12px;">And as for your neighbor’s path? Be grateful for that, too. Cheer for their success and celebrate their victories. For their path will have its own turns and disasters — and we all need cheerleaders. And the negative internal change we spoke of above? It can be reversed by celebrating the success of others. Gratitude begets more gratitude.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "helvetica"; font-size: 12px;">No matter what life throws us today, let’s crack our knuckles and be glad to tackle it the best we can.</span>marty.solomonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13745964321113271609noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8878609061058888666.post-87917994679609685352019-10-10T07:41:00.000-06:002019-10-10T07:41:02.601-06:00Choices v. Circumstances<span style="font-size: xx-small;"><span style="caret-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); font-family: "helvetica";">Note: It may be helpful to read my introduction to this series in order to have some context and understand my disclaimers. You can find that post <a href="http://makingtalmidim.blogspot.com/2019/06/the-loss-of-conventional-wisdom.html">here</a>.</span></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "helvetica"; font-size: 12px;">This video was short and to the point. To be honest, I was so refreshingly surprised by Rowe’s proposition in this video, and I couldn’t agree more. Some people make horrible mistakes. I am a person who believes in second chances, and so do most of my readers. When people make mistakes and then respond to those mistakes appropriately, they should be given the opportunity to keep building on that positive momentum. Some of the greatest contributions to this world will come because of some of our worst errors.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "helvetica"; font-size: 12px;">What I love about what Rowe did here was that he did more than just agree to an idea. He didn’t just nod his head and decide not to get in the way of someone’s rehabilitation; he actually put his foundation out there to help the person be successful.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "helvetica"; font-size: 12px;">To be honest, if any of us are going to rebuild from our major mistakes, we are going to need more than just the tacit agreement of our right to do so. We are going to need proactive and compassionate help from others investing in our success. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "helvetica"; font-size: 12px;">The math doesn’t seem to work right. You take one negative (a person’s mistake) and add it to another negative (some other person’s sacrificial investment), and it seems like you should be losing ground and ringing up negative growth. And yet, the Kingdom economy doesn't work that way. It takes those two negative variables and turns it, somehow, into positive growth — often exponential in nature.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "helvetica"; font-size: 12px;">Is it possible we somehow end up even better by responding to mistakes properly than if we would have done it by the book in the first place? I think it is.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "helvetica"; font-size: 12px;">I know this series is supposed to be about <b>conventional wisdom</b>, but sometimes that wisdom takes us right into discovering some <b>post-conventional</b> truths, as well.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "helvetica"; font-size: 12px;"><br /></span>marty.solomonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13745964321113271609noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8878609061058888666.post-46555513549373841902019-09-30T07:31:00.000-06:002019-09-30T07:31:00.537-06:00Education is Already Free<span style="font-size: xx-small;"><span style="caret-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); font-family: "helvetica";">Note: It may be helpful to read my introduction to this series in order to have some context and understand my disclaimers. You can find that post <a href="http://makingtalmidim.blogspot.com/2019/06/the-loss-of-conventional-wisdom.html">here</a>.</span></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "helvetica"; font-size: 12px;">This is one of my favorite videos of the SWEAT pledge. Mike Rowe tells a great personal story about his time on QVC and uses it to make a great point. In his experience, he needed education; he realized education could be found anywhere, and it was his responsibility to get it.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "helvetica"; font-size: 12px;">To be clear, I love this video for purely selfish reasons. I have built most of my career on the premise of this particular conventional wisdom. To be fair, I did go to college and complete my undergraduate education, but I did it at an institution that was unbelievably affordable and not academically impressive. None of this, however, impacted the quality of education I was responsible for getting on my own.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "helvetica"; font-size: 12px;">I was able to study as hard as I wanted to study and access information from any field I so desired. My education was totally in my control, and my academic institution simply provided me with parameters for focusing that energy and proof of the work that I put in.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "helvetica"; font-size: 12px;">After graduation, I was able to use those tools to know how to study well. Not all information is good, academically vetted, or even scientific at all (when applicable), but college gave me the ability to know how to find resources and tools to educate myself.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "helvetica"; font-size: 12px;">After college I did not pursue graduate-level study, and to this day have no plans to do so. But I think it would be safe to say I have done far more education since I graduated from college than during my studies as an undergrad. There are some drawbacks: I don’t have letters after my name or degrees to prove the work I have done; I have had to exercise quite a bit of autonomy to accomplish all of this and doing so kept me from increased academic relationships and accountability, and my vocational career does not benefit from the academic network provided by a graduate-level education.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "helvetica"; font-size: 12px;">But I have been educated and seek to connect more and more of my students to the proper systems — oftentimes those are universities (sorry, Mike!) — and counsel them in pursuing their own goals. I have become an educated teacher and individual who can quote sources (not opinions) and talk about the larger academic conversations that drive my conclusions. I am not speaking of “rogue science” or self-published authors spouting nonsense. The same study from those fine institutions is available to me as a learner. Although the quality of this education is proportional to the money spent, and the oversight is minimal, the opportunity is still mine to seize.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "helvetica"; font-size: 12px;">But these goals are available to all of us. College students and high school dropouts, churches and think tanks, businesses and non-profits — we all have the opportunity to use the resources at our disposal to become better at everything we do. There is nobody who can keep us from this task. Some of us enjoy more opportunities and privilege than others, but all of us can work to become better versions of ourselves. It would also be wise to remember something Rowe hinted at in his video: there are many times when we are each other’s best resource. “Education” is not owned by an elite group of people or a system of institutions; it is a process we can all engage in, and the more we do so together, the better it will be.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "helvetica"; font-size: 12px;">It seems to me Jesus told a parable about people who were each given different amounts to invest in his Kingdom project (see Matthew 24:14–30). Some were given more than others, but all were expected to take what they had been given and use it to invest in more. Only the one who took the amount and buried it, refusing to do any more than keeping what was handed to him, was scolded.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "helvetica"; font-size: 12px;">May we hear the wisdom in this teaching and know we are invited to invest our blessings. May we remember much of this world’s education is already free, and it is our responsibility to pursue that learning.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "helvetica"; font-size: 12px;"><br /></span>marty.solomonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13745964321113271609noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8878609061058888666.post-49410790741641876632019-09-19T07:21:00.000-06:002019-09-19T07:21:00.516-06:00Missing More than His Limbs<span style="font-size: xx-small;"><span style="caret-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); font-family: "helvetica";">Note: It may be helpful to read my introduction to this series in order to have some context and understand my disclaimers. You can find that post <a href="http://makingtalmidim.blogspot.com/2019/06/the-loss-of-conventional-wisdom.html">here</a>.</span></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "helvetica"; font-size: 12px;">This video is loaded with good stuff — perspective, inspiration, personal challenge. Just from the perspective alone, the video is worth a watch. We often have opportunities to see things, hear stories, or meet people, and each helps us put things in perspective. That is one of the blatant and surface-level takeaways from this video, at least for me. Some people have it bad — <b>really bad</b> — and it helps me to remember how my circumstances stack up against those of others.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "helvetica"; font-size: 12px;">I live quite a life of opportunity, comfort, and privilege. This video reminds me of that, as I’m sure it does many others. In addition, it reminds me that some of those comforts and privileges have come from the sacrifice of others. I don’t take that lightly.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "helvetica"; font-size: 12px;">It’s important to note that the power of these stories lies in the stories themselves — and the people who get to tell them because of their own experience. One of the dangers of this video is that people watch it from a place of opportunity and privilege, feel the conviction and the inspiration, and then project it onto everyone else from their place of comfort. I’m not faulting Rowe for this, but the danger is there.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "helvetica"; font-size: 12px;">The power is in the story and the inspiration of seeing life lived out in a compelling way.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "helvetica"; font-size: 12px;">The danger is when we take that inspiration, turn it into a principle, and then expect everyone else to do the same. We cannot do that. Travis has his story: He is a human being with unbelievable complexity and nuance, personality, training, context, relationships, etc. Every human life is different, and every human story is valuable. The story is powerful when it is shared and used to start great internal and external conversations. The story is dangerous when it stops being a story and becomes an expectation projected onto everyone who struggles.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "helvetica"; font-size: 12px;">The projection is doubly dangerous when it is being projected by people who speak from places of comfort, power, influence, and privilege. We need to be aware of those things. I am purposely leaving out political buzzwords that will set off my audience, but I think we all need to be challenged (on all sides of our many debates and conversations) to think about where and how we project those things.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "helvetica"; font-size: 12px;">But I digress in a serious way, because after writing a whole post on the dangers of this video, I actually really enjoyed its conventional wisdom. The video ends with Rowe asking two questions.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "helvetica"; font-size: 12px;"><i>“If [Travis] can get through the day without whining and complaining, why can’t I?”</i></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "helvetica"; font-size: 12px;">This is the dynamite question we can all be challenged with. This is the question that inspires me and challenges me today.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "helvetica"; font-size: 12px;">His second question, appropriately qualified, is where it gets dangerous:</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "helvetica"; font-size: 12px;"><i>“With respect, why can’t anyone?”</i></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "helvetica"; font-size: 12px;">May we be challenged to live with less whining and complaining. May we be resolute in our commitment to pursuing our day with a more positive attitude. But may we also ask that second question with much less assumption and more genuine intrigue. May our personal conviction lead to a better life (a “good eye” to call back to our previous discussion), and our intrigue lead us to more compassion and a less assumptive, less critical spirit.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "helvetica"; font-size: 12px;">And in this, may we find and help create a better world.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "helvetica"; font-size: 12px;"><br /></span>marty.solomonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13745964321113271609noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8878609061058888666.post-1030750448852913492019-09-09T07:13:00.000-06:002019-09-09T07:13:00.168-06:00Cheerfulness Is a Choice<span style="font-size: xx-small;"><span style="caret-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); font-family: "helvetica";">Note: It may be helpful to read my introduction to this series in order to have some context and understand my disclaimers. You can find that post <a href="http://makingtalmidim.blogspot.com/2019/06/the-loss-of-conventional-wisdom.html">here</a>.</span></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: helvetica; font-size: 12px;">I’m not sure I would add much to this conversation at all. I will just say, “What Mike said!”</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "helvetica"; font-size: 12px;">In all honesty, I feel like if I were to write a few paragraphs, I would be trying to manufacture some deep, profound thoughts pulled from the pool of post-conventional wisdom.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "helvetica"; font-size: 12px;">So I won’t! There it is. Cheerfulness is a choice. May we all be challenged by the application of this in our own lives.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "helvetica"; font-size: 12px;"><br /></span>marty.solomonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13745964321113271609noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8878609061058888666.post-87042645948550556712019-08-29T07:06:00.000-06:002019-08-29T07:06:08.130-06:00No Substitute for Common Sense<span style="caret-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); font-family: "helvetica"; font-size: xx-small;">Note: It may be helpful to read my introduction to this series in order to have some context and understand my disclaimers. You can find that post <a href="http://makingtalmidim.blogspot.com/2019/06/the-loss-of-conventional-wisdom.html">here</a>.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "helvetica"; font-size: 12px;">“Guidelines are great, but they are no substitute for common sense.”</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "helvetica"; font-size: 12px;">For me, this video was not the most inspiring in Rowe’s series, but the content is decent, and the point is well taken. Even though people tell you that your safety is </span><b style="caret-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 12px;">their priority</b><span style="font-family: "helvetica"; font-size: 12px;">, it does not remove it from being </span><b style="caret-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 12px;">your responsibility</b><span style="font-family: "helvetica"; font-size: 12px;">. I think this goes for a lot of other things as well, not just safety. People might say this about your education or your success — they would suggest it is their priority; however, that doesn’t mean it stops being your responsibility.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "helvetica"; font-size: 12px;">I like it. There won’t be a lot to say here. Pretty straightforward.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "helvetica"; font-size: 12px;">But one passing thought: Some of these same ideas are relevant in a culture that loves to blame others for our circumstances. We love to point fingers and talk about how our situation is brought about by our family, our employer, our government, our neighborhood, our school. We go on endless rants about how somebody else’s mistakes have created my mess.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "helvetica"; font-size: 12px;">And this may even be true some of the time.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "helvetica"; font-size: 12px;">And I’m definitely not suggesting accountability doesn’t matter or that we shouldn’t fight for justice. That is not my point </span><b style="caret-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 12px;">at all</b><span style="font-family: "helvetica"; font-size: 12px;">, and anybody who knows me will know I am a big proponent of pursuing those things.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "helvetica"; font-size: 12px;">But there is a very significant line crossed when the objectivity of pursuing justice, mercy, and accountability becomes the subjectivity of blame.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "helvetica"; font-size: 12px;">People (especially leaders) should be held accountable for the worlds they create.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "helvetica"; font-size: 12px;">But we are responsible — solely — for how we respond to our circumstances. And I do get frustrated when people pick one of these sides and denounce the other. They are not mutually exclusive. I say that with all of the awareness of the comfort and privilege I bring to the conversation. As a white male, my list of circumstances working against me is horribly short. And yet, some of the people who have taught me the most about responsibility (especially in the last few years) have been people with much less privilege and comfort than I have.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "helvetica"; font-size: 12px;">So accountability does not remove responsibility. And responsibility does not remove the need for accountability. Can both of these statements be true? I certainly hope so.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "helvetica"; font-size: 12px;">What does this mean for you and your circumstances? It is not for me to say. I cannot understand what it is to walk in your shoes and I cannot apply wisdom in your life (only my own); but together, we learn from each other.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "helvetica"; font-size: 12px;"><br /></span>marty.solomonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13745964321113271609noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8878609061058888666.post-26780362225888143242019-08-19T07:00:00.000-06:002019-08-19T07:00:12.114-06:00A (Potential) Bad Decision<span style="font-size: xx-small;"><span style="caret-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); font-family: "helvetica";">Note: It may be helpful to read my introduction to this series in order to have some context and understand my disclaimers. You can find that post <a href="http://makingtalmidim.blogspot.com/2019/06/the-loss-of-conventional-wisdom.html">here</a>.</span></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: helvetica; font-size: 12px;">This video is wonderfully straightforward. And while there are a couple of things I’m not necessarily interested in (the conspiracy theory mentality is just a little thick in this video, and the promotion for his foundation is beside the point for my purposes), I don’t think I would or could add much to his argument. As someone who is around universities and students for my job every day, I can tell you that this problem is real.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "helvetica"; font-size: 12px;">And that probably makes me a really bad campus minister.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "helvetica"; font-size: 12px;">But I don’t actually believe it does. I do think there needs to be a market adjustment on the industry of secondary education, but I don’t believe (nor does Mike Rowe) that the institution itself is broken. The university is still an essential place where many vocational pursuits receive specialized training necessary for a given job. I can hardly imagine a world without people trained in medical or legal fields. Engineering allows so much of our world to exist effectively and efficiently. And I need people trained in history, economics, political science, and the like to help lead us.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "helvetica"; font-size: 12px;">But what Rowe said in this video is so true. This is not how we’ve been selling university education.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "helvetica"; font-size: 12px;">When I was in high school (and I’m not aware of this changing much in recent years), the impression was that college is an absolute must if I want to be “successful” or even simply survive with a family in the future. I got lucky: I went to a very affordable Bible college and was able to, with the help of my family, escape without student loans. But this is becoming more and more of a miracle in today’s experience. And while undergraduate and graduate level training is actually quite effective and useful in many ways, it is not delivering what we were promised. It is developing us as human beings (at least in some ways), but it is not producing jobs.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "helvetica"; font-size: 12px;">It used to be true that if you went to college, you were almost guaranteed a starting position in your career field. That is no longer true. Such education used to be affordable; but as you saw depicted the video, this is no longer true. College is no longer (for many) the ticket it used to be, and it is no longer (for many) a wise investment. But we were all told that this is where the path to success starts. For far too many, it is no longer leading to the same destination.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "helvetica"; font-size: 12px;">I can tell you that classmates who did not go to college are a few steps ahead if they simply applied themselves and began a practice of hard work. To be sure, their earning potential is often much less than my college-trained counterparts, but the latter are so saddled with crippling debt and had such a slow start on their earning potential that they cannot round the curve.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "helvetica"; font-size: 12px;">Meanwhile, an entire generation has bought into a counter-productive narrative (when thinking of the Kingdom of God) that fills them with insecurity and leaves them empty of meaning.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "helvetica"; font-size: 12px;">It may be time we quit feeding the same trope of what leads to success and start teaching how to ask a better set of questions. To be sure, I hope our college campuses continue to be filled with people who are convinced of their calling and driven to be trained in their specialized field. I hope these students experience training that is more intentional and a job market that is more balanced with people who have a better understanding of what they do — but even more importantly, who they are.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "helvetica"; font-size: 12px;">If we are an organization that believes </span><b style="caret-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 12px;">when we impact the U, we impact the world</b><span style="font-family: "helvetica"; font-size: 12px;">, then we have to take that logic out beyond the walls of the university campus. To be sure, tomorrow’s leaders are on our university campuses. But they can also be at our trade schools and our community colleges. They can be taking classes in the School of Life Experience. These people, with or without four-year degrees, will be tomorrow’s parents, artists, small business owners, and church leaders. We might even see a world where they can be our political leaders and representatives.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "helvetica"; font-size: 12px;">If all of this is possible without being enslaved to crippling debt, this world will be a better place. I hope for people to be found in our university classrooms, but I hope those rooms are filled with more and more of the right people. I hope those who have been fed a line will find the right place in a world that needs their leadership so badly — a place just as fulfilling and necessary.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "helvetica"; font-size: 12px;"><br /></span>marty.solomonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13745964321113271609noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8878609061058888666.post-5717977951576101932019-08-08T07:48:00.000-06:002019-08-08T07:48:06.909-06:00Bringing the "Awesome" to Anything<span style="font-size: xx-small;"><span style="caret-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); font-family: "helvetica";">Note: It may be helpful to read my introduction to this series in order to have some context and understand my disclaimers. You can find that post <a href="http://makingtalmidim.blogspot.com/2019/06/the-loss-of-conventional-wisdom.html">here</a>.</span></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "helvetica"; font-size: 12px;">In this conversation, Mike Rowe speaks against this common idea of “following your passion.” I think Mike might say this idea falls squarely in the realm of the less mature, pre-conventional wisdom. He suggests passion is not something you follow, but instead something you bring with you.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "helvetica"; font-size: 12px;">One of the things we are intentionally working on at Impact Campus Ministries is <b>the art of sacred vocation</b>. We have a fundamental belief that all work is holy and sacred. There is a sanctity to a vocation that is often overlooked. Why is vocation holy and sacred? Because vocation is, in its essence, about the proper ordering and stewarding of God’s creation. For centuries, Christian theology has unintentionally (I hope) pulled apart soil and spirit, giving the impression that the “Kingdom work” is done by clergy and missionaries, while the rest of the parishioners essentially make money to help the real work happen. They rub shoulders with the unsaved at their places of employment. They bring the money and “the lost” to the conversation and the holy folks do the spiritual work.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "helvetica"; font-size: 12px;">But this is not grounded in good theology. God is putting the whole world back together, bringing shalom to the physical chaos of creation. What this means is that the real work is done by those people who have their hands in the soil (literally or otherwise). It is the job of the clergy to help others see why their work matters. The non-clergy folks are actually engaging in the <b>ends</b> and not the <b>means</b> to that end. It’s all holy and spiritual work, but the clergy are engaging in the means to the Kingdom end — we usually have it backward!</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "helvetica"; font-size: 12px;">This is so important in the conversation Rowe begins above, and yet one of the hardest ideas to grasp is where the <b>passion</b> lies. For many, the conversation about sacred vocation revolves around the idea that they must find the perfect vocation where their true passion lies.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "helvetica"; font-size: 12px;">But as Rowe points out, this is backward thinking.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "helvetica"; font-size: 12px;">Passion does not lie in the content of the vocation; passion describes the way we engage vocation in the first place. I think some of us go through life looking for the thing in our future that will give us passion when that passion is already within us and would transform the way we engage with our present.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "helvetica"; font-size: 12px;">One of the values at ICM is <b>passion</b>. We use this word to talk about the energy we bring to our pursuit of God. In this case, it is fitting that Rowe’s point is we bring passion to our work. In the same way passion describes the energy we bring to our pursuit of God, passion also describes the energy we bring to our vocation.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "helvetica"; font-size: 12px;">We have all met people who remind us of Les (from Mike’s video). They aren’t driven by their circumstances but bring a passion that affects the circumstances around them. It might be a grocer who always makes you feel better by the time you are checked out. I once heard a speaker talk about the parking lot attendant at a local establishment; living in a major urban city, he will drive past two other stores of the same franchise just to interact with this parking lot attendant. Why? Because they bring passion to their job, and their job becomes a sacred kind of “holy.”</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "helvetica"; font-size: 12px;">Some of these people have jobs that would impress us — jobs of influence and intense specialization and high salaries.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "helvetica"; font-size: 12px;">And yet, some of these people work incredibly menial jobs and have a similar impact on the world around them.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "helvetica"; font-size: 12px;">It is true we have been created with certain gifts and are wired to be good at particular things. It is true some jobs align with those gifts better than others and that some situations are suffocating and stifling the life that burns within us. But we are not created for a particular career. We are created to be a particular kind of person. Our careers are simply the place where we can let those things grow.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "helvetica"; font-size: 12px;"><br /></span>marty.solomonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13745964321113271609noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8878609061058888666.post-72545410043656302732019-07-29T06:52:00.000-06:002019-07-29T06:52:01.727-06:00No Such Thing as a Bad Job<span style="font-size: xx-small;"><i style="caret-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); font-family: Helvetica;">Note: It may be helpful to read my introduction to this series in order to have some context and understand my disclaimers. You can find that post <a href="http://makingtalmidim.blogspot.com/2019/06/the-loss-of-conventional-wisdom.html">here</a>.</i></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "helvetica"; font-size: 12px;">This is a great conversation to follow our last post where we talked some about persevering in the face of rejection. In this video, Rowe shares more stories about his youth and what he learned about work. His point in this video is that every job is an opportunity to be shaped and to learn. This is good wisdom, rarely spoken of or promoted as worthwhile.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "helvetica"; font-size: 12px;">And yet, I know many of my students would struggle with exactly how to apply this truth. Do you just say yes to every opportunity that comes your way? Usually not. Especially as life begins to progress and take off, you will be given more and more opportunities; and in fact, saying no to things will be the bigger challenge. There are some chapters in life where you are not given multiple opportunities. You feel like you aren’t being given any shots, and you take the first thing that comes along. Yes, this happens as well. Life is full of complexity and just about every experience you can imagine. We aren’t talking about formulas, but general principles and conventional wisdom.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "helvetica"; font-size: 12px;">What do you do when you graduate with your degree, and you are looking for that career? I know many, many students who are paralyzed by the fear of screwing their life up at that moment. Young adults at this age are crippled by the choices, often believing if they make the wrong decision in these moments, they will drastically change the trajectory of their life.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "helvetica"; font-size: 12px;">This may be true. But that is what life is about, and you have no other options — except, of course, to do nothing.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "helvetica"; font-size: 12px;">We do the best with what we have; we make the best decisions we can. What I see most of my students doing is trying to remove all uncertainty from the equation before they move forward. This is foolishness — the opposite of wisdom. All of life is a calculation of high/low risk, high/low reward situations. You make the best choices you can with the best conventional wisdom you can muster. You make the decision, and you move forward.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "helvetica"; font-size: 12px;">As much as I might have tried to convince myself otherwise, I have never made a life decision with a complete absence of uncertainty. There is always the unknown. Sometimes I have made decisions where I felt 90% confident (and I’ve been wrong about some of those, by the way). I often make decisions about things that I feel 75% sure about. And sometimes life has thrown me situations where I needed to make a decision immediately, or in the near future, and I made decisions I felt only 50.1% sure about (in non-mathematical terms, an “I have no idea, but I’m just barely leaning this way” decision). This is a part of life and a part of moving forward. It is necessary.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "helvetica"; font-size: 12px;">We will make mistakes; we will judge things wrongly. We will make honest mistakes, and we will make mistakes where we certainly knew better and chose wrongly anyway. This is all a part of life.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "helvetica"; font-size: 12px;">And every chapter we walk into will provide us with an opportunity to learn and be shaped by our circumstances. The moment after we make these decisions, it is no longer about the decision, but about the way we respond to the circumstances. What we learn, what we take with us, the way we will be different because of this chapter. These are the things that matter.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "helvetica"; font-size: 12px;">So press on and make decisions. Know that you will probably have to do things you hate and go through periods where you don't have “the right fit” and struggle to find yourself. This is a normal part of the human experience in the modern world. Resist the existential crisis and push on to the good stuff that will go with you into the “next.”</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "helvetica"; font-size: 12px;"><br /></span>marty.solomonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13745964321113271609noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8878609061058888666.post-29024914399944042019-07-18T06:45:00.000-06:002019-07-18T06:45:03.204-06:00[Maybe] The Best Thing to Ever Happen to You<span style="font-size: xx-small;"><i style="caret-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); font-family: Helvetica;">Note: It may be helpful to read my introduction to this series in order to have some context and understand my disclaimers. You can find that post <a href="http://makingtalmidim.blogspot.com/2019/06/the-loss-of-conventional-wisdom.html">here</a>.</i></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "helvetica"; font-size: 12px;">Rowe took time in this video to share multiple stories of rejection he experienced on the path to his own calling. While I’m not a major fan of the phrase “pursuit of happiness,” I really did appreciate his overall point. But I would like to add something I don’t feel he touched on.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "helvetica"; font-size: 12px;">Throughout his story, the obtrusive question I kept thinking about was, “Why did he keep going down this path?” I do not ask that question with an assumption of the negative (“He should have tried something else!”), but rather an assumption of the positive (“Why was he driven to persevere?”). The fact of the matter is that Rowe would have never learned this great life lesson to share with the rest of us if he had not kept going back, again and again. But because he did, he learned a very important lesson about rejection.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "helvetica"; font-size: 12px;">I believe some people have an internal awareness of the thing they are made to do. There is this inner voice that tells them they exist to be a part of some idea or create a certain experience. Because of this, they keep getting up and walking down the same road. I do not want to give the impression that I understand the psychology behind this reality; certainly, insecurity rears its ugly head in many different ways for so many of us.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "helvetica"; font-size: 12px;">I do know what I have experienced with my students, though. Many of them are very quick to question what we are doing and who we are becoming. Many of us see obstacles and frustrations as signs that we’re not made to do “this” and we change our track. I often feel like every time we do this, we begin to suffer an increasing lack of resilience and rising levels of doubt about ourselves.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "helvetica"; font-size: 12px;">This is not to say that obstacles and pushback are not powerful tools to help us make decisions and find the best fit in life, but I want to recognize that there is a tacit awareness, a resonance of the soul, a leading of the Spirit, that wants to guide us to who we are becoming. When we find that thing, we need to run down that path with a resilient commitment to the calling. We need to trust that calling and learn from our mistakes — which is another thing I feel like Rowe didn’t address. He probably learned a great many things from those experiences of rejection. Still, we push on, knowing that if we keep pushing toward the good, we will experience hardship and rejection. And yet, through it all, the relentless pursuit of our calling might just lead us to a place better than we could ever hope or imagine.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "helvetica"; font-size: 12px;"><br /></span>marty.solomonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13745964321113271609noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8878609061058888666.post-23574932655130112902019-07-08T07:35:00.000-06:002019-07-08T07:35:00.361-06:00Values Reflect Gratitude<i style="caret-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); font-family: Helvetica;"><span style="font-size: xx-small;">Note: It may be helpful to read my introduction to this series in order to have some context and understand my disclaimers. You can find that post <a href="http://makingtalmidim.blogspot.com/2019/06/the-loss-of-conventional-wisdom.html">here</a>.</span></i><br />
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<span style="font-family: "helvetica"; font-size: 12px;">In this first video Mike Rowe shares, he covers two big ideas that are directly connected in his mind. Those two ideas are </span><b style="caret-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 12px;">gratitude</b><span style="font-family: "helvetica"; font-size: 12px;"> and the </span><b style="caret-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 12px;">trade skills gap</b><span style="font-family: "helvetica"; font-size: 12px;">. At first, when I watched the video, I couldn’t see how those two ideas were connected. But Rowe connected them with a couple of sentences. We’ll go over those ideas.</span><br />
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<b style="caret-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 12px;">GRATITUDE</b><br />
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<span style="font-family: "helvetica"; font-size: 12px;">Rowe’s idea is built upon the premise that an “attitude of gratitude” changes your posture enough in life to affect everything you do and experience.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "helvetica"; font-size: 12px;">From a Jewish perspective, this point is spot on. This is practiced within the Jewish tradition by the commitment to say multiple blessings throughout the day, thanking God for all the ways He provides and how we encounter Him in our lives. There are blessings for waking each morning, blessings for food (both before and after you eat), blessings for bowel movements (not kidding!), blessings for Sabbath and rest — most orthodox Jews will tell you that a typical day contains anywhere between 70 and 100 blessings (or more). Just try that exercise; it’s hard to get to 40! A great book for further study here would be </span><i style="caret-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 12px;"><a href="https://amzn.to/2X0hvGK">One Thousand Gifts</a></i><span style="font-family: "helvetica"; font-size: 12px;"> by Ann Voskamp.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "helvetica"; font-size: 12px;">Beyond the practice of blessing, the rabbis teach that this impacts your </span><b style="caret-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 12px;">perspective</b><span style="font-family: "helvetica"; font-size: 12px;">. Or is it that your perspective impacts your gratitude? Either way, it is a beautiful circular experiment. The rabbis have spoken at great length about the </span><b style="caret-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 12px;">“good eye”</b><span style="font-family: "helvetica"; font-size: 12px;"> (also known as </span><i style="caret-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 12px;">ayin tovah</i><span style="font-family: "helvetica"; font-size: 12px;"> in the Hebrew) and the </span><b style="caret-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 12px;">“bad eye”</b><span style="font-family: "helvetica"; font-size: 12px;"> (known as </span><i style="caret-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 12px;">ayin ra’ah</i><span style="font-family: "helvetica"; font-size: 12px;">). To have a good eye is to live with a sense of optimism and hope; it is to see the good in everything and to assume the best in others. The bad eye is connected to a “scarcity mentality” that always assumes the worst and sees the potential danger, never opening up and sharing, never giving others the benefit of the doubt. Our gratitude impacts our </span><b style="caret-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 12px;">eye</b><span style="font-family: "helvetica"; font-size: 12px;">, and our </span><b style="caret-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 12px;">eye</b><span style="font-family: "helvetica"; font-size: 12px;"> impacts how grateful we are throughout our experience.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "helvetica"; font-size: 12px;">Notice what Jesus says about this idea in Matthew 6:</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "helvetica"; font-size: 12px;"><i>“The eye is the lamp of the body. If your eyes are healthy, your whole body will be full of light. But if your eyes are unhealthy, your whole body will be full of darkness. If then the light within you is darkness, how great is that darkness!”</i></span></blockquote>
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<b style="caret-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 12px;">TRADE SKILLS GAP</b><br />
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<span style="font-family: "helvetica"; font-size: 12px;">Now, while I love to float in conceptual clouds and dwell in poetic possibilities, what I loved about Rowe’s work in these videos is how he connected it to very practical application for young adults — the people I work with every day. Rowe’s one statement that just clicked for me was toward the end of the video when he said the following:</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "helvetica"; font-size: 12px;">“The skills gap isn’t a mystery; it’s a reflection of what we value, and what we value is a reflection of what we’re grateful for.”</span></blockquote>
<span style="font-family: "helvetica"; font-size: 12px;">This is a great statement of truth to dwell upon for a bit. Obviously, I’m captivated by how appropriate that statement is for so many things, things well outside the topic of skilled labor. The statement is just resounding with some of that </span><b style="caret-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 12px;">conventional wisdom</b><span style="font-family: "helvetica"; font-size: 12px;"> — I want to consider and ponder how far its truth goes.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "helvetica"; font-size: 12px;">But the practical application for young adults entering the world of education is also quite staggering. There will be more discussion on this later, but it is helpful for us to consider as families, parents, teachers, mentors, and churches how this truth comes out in the way we mentor our children.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "helvetica"; font-size: 12px;">Are we truly grateful for skilled labor?</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "helvetica"; font-size: 12px;">Do we encourage vocational trades as great options for young leaders?</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "helvetica"; font-size: 12px;">Do we actually discourage those decisions, telling them “college” is the only option for a bright future?</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "helvetica"; font-size: 12px;">And while we’re here, has our lack of gratitude impacted the way we see other people groups who usually engage in these trades on our behalf — groups who are often different from many of us ethnically, economically, and culturally? And what’s up with my pronouns? Why do we talk as if there is an “our behalf” — as if the middle-class, white, suburban experience is the one that matters most?</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "helvetica"; font-size: 12px;">Good food for thought. May we become more grateful for the lives we are given and aware of the ways our </span><b style="caret-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 12px;">eye</b><span style="font-family: "helvetica"; font-size: 12px;"> — </span><i style="caret-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 12px;">tovah</i><span style="font-family: "helvetica"; font-size: 12px;"> or </span><i style="caret-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 12px;">ra’ah</i><span style="font-family: "helvetica"; font-size: 12px;"> — affects our interactions with others and the futures of our children.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "helvetica"; font-size: 12px;"><br /></span>marty.solomonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13745964321113271609noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8878609061058888666.post-78245761150919657002019-06-27T07:19:00.000-06:002019-06-27T07:19:00.153-06:00The Loss of Conventional Wisdom<span style="caret-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 12px;">It has been a while since I have written here. I was waiting for inspiration and the right time to “have something to say” rather than “having to say something.” Those things are radically different.</span><br style="caret-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 12px;" /><br style="caret-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 12px;" /><span style="caret-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 12px;">Well, my inspiration finally came from an unexpected place. This means, as usual, the upcoming series will require a disclaimer since we live in a world that likes to make assumptions rather than give the benefit of the doubt. (Is that another series waiting to be written? Maybe!)</span><br style="caret-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 12px;" /><br style="caret-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 12px;" /><span style="caret-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 12px;">At any rate, I bumped into a series of videos by Mike Rowe. It was promoting a scholarship program funded by an initiative he calls the SWEAT Pledge. The pledge is a written covenant of twelve commitments a person is willing to make, and they “buy” the pledge to hang on their wall with the donations going to a scholarship program. You can <a href="https://www.mikeroweworks.org/sweat/">read about the program on your own</a>; I am not writing to promote Rowe’s program. Whether you support or not, that’s none of my business.</span><br style="caret-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 12px;" /><br style="caret-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 12px;" /><span style="caret-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 12px;">What struck me was the content of the twelve videos that outlined the commitments contained in the pledge. They were full of what I would call “salt of the earth” conventional wisdom. They are things I desperately want to share and teach college students; they seemed to resonate with the soul of what I want to impart to young adults as a professional campus minister.</span><br style="caret-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 12px;" /><br style="caret-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 12px;" /><span style="caret-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 12px;">Having said that, I was taken aback by the source. Mike Rowe is the creator of <i>Dirty Jobs</i>, but he is also a relatively significant online personality — and not one I typically agree with, particularly when it is addressing political and social issues of the day. I rarely find his voice to be helpful. But in this case, I feel like his videos for the initiative nailed it. I have always been committed to celebrate truth wherever I find it — no matter the source — so I decided to eat some humble pie and share the information. I will be doing that in the posts to come.</span><br style="caret-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 12px;" /><br style="caret-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 12px;" /><span style="caret-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 12px;">But it also caused me to reflect for weeks on why these truths were so powerful for me. And I thought of two things: <b>wisdom</b> and <b>my dad</b>.</span><br style="caret-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 12px;" /><br style="caret-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 12px;" /><span style="caret-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 12px;"><b>First, there is this idea of wisdom.</b> One of my favorite teachers loves to talk about the ideas of pre-conventional, conventional, and post-conventional wisdom. Human beings all experience the idea of pre-conventional wisdom. This is immature wisdom, usually experienced during infancy and childhood. Pre-conventional wisdom would say, “I don’t want to go to bed; I want to stay up all night.” It is not really wisdom at all. It masquerades as wisdom but is really foolishness. Of course, as we grow, we move into an awareness of conventional wisdom, the idea that all human beings need sleep and have to get sleep every night. This is wisdom — standard, straightforward truth. But some will move into post-conventional wisdom. This is wisdom able to look back on conventional wisdom, break down some of the structure, question the assumptions, and move to transcendent wisdom. Perhaps this is the person who becomes even more aware of controlling their sleeping patterns and rather than simply “getting sleep” every night, they are very intentional about the sleep they do get and engage sleep in a whole other way.</span><br style="caret-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 12px;" /><br style="caret-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 12px;" /><span style="caret-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 12px;">While the easy way to see this truth is in our childhood, adulthood, and continued maturity, we often struggle with this development culturally, financially, socially, and spiritually — well into adulthood. I have watched plenty of full-grown adults indulge pre-conventional wisdom at will.</span><br style="caret-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 12px;" /><br style="caret-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 12px;" /><span style="caret-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 12px;">The nature of my job and my desire to be a lifelong learner means that I often find myself dwelling in the realm of academia and study. It is a world filled with wonderful thought and critical engagement of our culture. I eat deconstruction for breakfast. It is a world dripping in self-proclaimed post-conventional wisdom.</span><br style="caret-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 12px;" /><br style="caret-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 12px;" /><span style="caret-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 12px;">And in that space we start to sound (and act) like idiots.</span><br style="caret-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 12px;" /><br style="caret-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 12px;" /><span style="caret-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 12px;">We need to return to good ol’ conventional wisdom. We need to remember the things that are just true, built on common sense, and provide a foundation on which to grow toward healthy critical thinking. This is what I found so refreshing about Rowe’s take on this upcoming generation of young adults: his blue-collar, common-sense work ethic is full of wisdom I struggle to impart to my educated student base. I was drawn to that.</span><br style="caret-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 12px;" /><br style="caret-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 12px;" /><span style="caret-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 12px;"><b>Second, this made me think of my dad.</b> As I watched these videos, I kept thinking, over and over again, “My dad taught me this.” One of the biggest things to strike me as I’ve matured is how thankful I am for what I never realized my dad was giving me. This SWEAT Pledge, created by a communications genius, was common knowledge and daily living for my father. As I have wrestled with these truths in the last weeks, I have also realized how important the little things, the everyday occurrences, are in our family and our parenting. It’s the small, mundane opportunities that teach us things like faithfulness, attitude, and hard work.</span><br style="caret-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 12px;" /><br style="caret-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 12px;" /><span style="caret-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 12px;">I’m so thankful for what faithful parents, mentors, and instructors have taught me through the underestimated acts of character and integrity. It is for these reasons that I introduce this series.</span><br style="caret-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 12px;" /><br style="caret-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 12px;" /><span style="caret-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 12px;">And since we’re talking about wisdom, it might be right to remind ourselves of where wisdom comes from. No matter its form — pre-conventional, conventional, or post-conventional — all wisdom comes from one place. Ultimately, it is not our parents, nor our study and learning, nor Mike Rowe. It is from the very mouth of the LORD. May the words of Proverbs 2 guide our critical thinking along this journey.</span><br />
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<i><span style="caret-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 12px;">My son, if you accept my words</span></i> </blockquote>
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<i><span style="caret-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 12px;"> and store up my commands within you,</span></i></blockquote>
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<i><span style="caret-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 12px;">turning your ear to wisdom</span></i> </blockquote>
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<i><span style="caret-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 12px;"></span><span style="caret-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 12px;"> and applying your heart to understanding—</span></i> </blockquote>
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<i><span style="caret-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 12px;">indeed, if you call out for insight</span></i> </blockquote>
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<i><span style="caret-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 12px;"> and cry aloud for understanding,</span></i> </blockquote>
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<i><span style="caret-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 12px;">and if you look for it as for silver</span></i> </blockquote>
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<i><span style="caret-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 12px;"> and search for it as for hidden treasure,</span></i> </blockquote>
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<i><span style="caret-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 12px;">then you will understand the fear of the Lord</span></i> </blockquote>
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<i><span style="caret-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 12px;"> and find the knowledge of God.</span></i> </blockquote>
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<i><span style="caret-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 12px;">For the Lord gives wisdom;</span></i> </blockquote>
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<i><span style="caret-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 12px;"> from his mouth come knowledge and understanding.</span></i> </blockquote>
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<i><span style="caret-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 12px;">He holds success in store for the upright,</span></i> </blockquote>
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<i><span style="caret-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 12px;"> he is a shield to those whose walk is blameless,</span></i> </blockquote>
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<i><span style="caret-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 12px;">for he guards the course of the just</span></i> </blockquote>
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<i><span style="caret-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 12px;"> and protects the way of his faithful ones.</span></i> </blockquote>
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<i><span style="caret-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 12px;">Then you will understand what is right and just</span></i> </blockquote>
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<i><span style="caret-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 12px;"> and fair—every good path.</span></i> </blockquote>
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<i><span style="caret-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 12px;">For wisdom will enter your heart,</span></i> </blockquote>
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<i><span style="caret-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 12px;"> and knowledge will be pleasant to your soul.</span></i> </blockquote>
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<i><span style="caret-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 12px;">Discretion will protect you,</span></i> </blockquote>
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<i><span style="caret-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 12px;"> and understanding will guard you.</span></i></blockquote>
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marty.solomonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13745964321113271609noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8878609061058888666.post-24762282031072645992018-12-27T08:49:00.000-07:002018-12-27T08:49:07.948-07:00PULL UP A CHAIR: Stories on Passion<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<span style="caret-color: rgb(255, 253, 238); font-family: arial, tahoma, helvetica, freesans, sans-serif; font-size: xx-small;"><i class="" style="font-family: Arial;">For a summary of what I’m hoping to accomplish in this blog series (in the fourth week of every month of 2018), I recommend reviewing my explanation </i><b class="" style="font-family: Arial;"><i class=""><a href="http://makingtalmidim.blogspot.com/2017/12/my-blog-in-2018-week-four.html" style="text-decoration: none;">here</a></i></b><i class="" style="font-family: Arial;">.</i></span><br />
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<span style="caret-color: rgb(255, 253, 238); font-family: Arial;"><span style="font-size: xx-small;"><i>Jeff VanderLaan (no relation to Ray, for those of you familiar with my teachings) is the Vice President for Impact Campus Ministries and has become one of my closest friends. He has served with ICM for over 24 years and knows our </i></span></span><span style="font-family: Arial;"><i style="caret-color: rgb(255, 253, 238); font-size: xx-small;">organization and its DNA </i><span style="caret-color: rgb(255, 253, 238); font-size: xx-small;"><i>intimately</i></span><i style="caret-color: rgb(255, 253, 238); font-size: xx-small;">. </i><span style="caret-color: rgb(255, 253, 238); font-size: xx-small;"><i>Jeff</i></span><i style="caret-color: rgb(255, 253, 238); font-size: xx-small;"> was discipled by ICM's founder, Dean, and knows these principles in ways that </i><span style="caret-color: rgb(255, 253, 238); font-size: xx-small;"><i>few</i></span><i style="caret-color: rgb(255, 253, 238); font-size: xx-small;"> of us do. I could think of nobody else to close out this year's blog posts then by having Jeff share his </i><span style="caret-color: rgb(255, 253, 238); font-size: xx-small;"><i>perspective</i></span><i style="caret-color: rgb(255, 253, 238); font-size: xx-small;"> on <b>PASSION. </b></i></span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none;"><i>“Will you pursue God with all your heart, mind, body, and soul?”</i> </span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none;">It was the fall of 1994, and I was a senior at Michigan State University attending His House Christian Fellowship when Dean Trune asked me that one question. That question was the whole application and interview process to join the first Impact Campus Ministries campus ministry plant in Albany, NY. There was no written application, no reference checks, and no skills assessment. All Dean cared about was if I would have a passion for God.</span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none;">For the next 15 years, while Dean was my boss, the question about my passion for God led every conversation and was included on every report I had to turn in to the organization. Often my answer would start with ministry success stories. Dean would politely listen, then re-ask about my personal relationship with Jesus.</span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none;">Dean knew what I needed to learn. Ministry is hard. It would be easy to lose focus on God and get distracted by the ministry. It was not that Dean was anti-ministry. He just knew we cannot control “making an impact” or “fruitful ministries,” but we have absolute control over developing intimacy with God. He would say, “We must not allow ‘ministry for God’ to crowd ‘intimacy with God’ out of our lives.”</span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none;">Dean knew that passion for God would naturally lead to ministry. Actually, it would lead to a ministry where you would willfully do more than is required to do. It would lead to a ministry driven by more than enthusiasm or excitement when successful. Your passion for God would lead to an ambition that is materialized into action through the good times and the bad.</span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none;">Dean was right. We called the first year the year of tears. It was hard. Between Satan opposing the expansion of God’s kingdom to the University at Albany through campus ministry, and God’s appreciation of my choosing to serve him, I discovered the need for God to refine me to be a more usable vessel. It was never clear if the blow was from Satan trying to stop me or God trying to shape me, but I was sure it hurt. Yet passion for God gave us the strength to continue into year two and eventually through year 15.</span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none;">Through the years, Impact’s value of passion for God has continued to teach me so many things.</span></div>
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<li style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 13px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none;">When I focus on ministry, people will be drawn to ministry. Focus I on God, people will be drawn to God.</span></li>
<li style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 13px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none;">When I focus on ministry, I often take the credit. When I focus on God, I often give him the credit.</span></li>
<li style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 13px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none;">When I focus on ministry, my weaknesses limit the ministry. When I focus on God, his strength empowers the ministry.</span></li>
<li style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 13px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none;">When I focus on ministry, I often choose the direction taken. When focusing on God, he directs the ministry.</span></li>
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<span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none;">There was so much learned from such a simple concept.</span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none;">Impact Campus Ministries values passion for God. May this value continues to underlie everything we do and continue expanding our understanding of what it can teach us in the future.</span></div>
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marty.solomonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13745964321113271609noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8878609061058888666.post-38831058116829521492018-12-18T07:53:00.000-07:002018-12-18T07:53:01.201-07:00MAKING AN IMPACT: Passion<span style="caret-color: rgb(255, 253, 238); font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Helvetica, FreeSans, sans-serif; font-size: xx-small;"><i style="font-family: Arial;">For a summary of what I’m hoping to accomplish in this blog series (in the third week of every month of 2018), I recommend reviewing my explanation </i><b style="font-family: Arial;"><i><a href="http://makingtalmidim.blogspot.com/2017/11/my-blog-in-2018-week-three.html" style="text-decoration: none;">here</a></i></b><i style="font-family: Arial;">.</i></span><br />
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<span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none;">The last value we have to talk about is the value of <b>passion for God</b>.</span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none;">This value is really the first on our list and I purposely saved it for the last post in our series. Why? Because this brings us all the way back, full circle, to where we started years ago under the leadership of Dean Trune. Dean’s passion for Jesus, back then and still today, is his sole concern. For Dean, his pursuit of God was his passion, and true passion is seen in our pursuit of Jesus.</span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none;">Anyone who meets Dean would be able to tell you about his spiritual posture, through all of the ups and downs of his family and their experiences. Through Dean’s successes and mistakes (he’d be the first to tell you he makes them), his steady gaze, fixed on Jesus, is the one trademark he tries to pass on to as many people as he can.</span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none;">At <a href="https://www.impactcampusministries.com/">Impact Campus Ministries</a>, following Jesus and giving him our everything is not an afterthought. It is not a secondary focus. It is not what comes at the end, or the value that gets our leftovers.</span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none;"><b>It is the foundation we start from.</b> We begin our workday, our productivity, with a focus on what Jesus is doing in us, through us, and around us. We attempt to discern the movement of Jesus and go with it. This is not just the thing that we do “before the real work begins.” On the contrary, <b>this is actually the work</b>.</span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none;">One of the things I should certainly do here is recommend Dean’s writings. His first two books have always been my favorite when it comes to communicating the essence of who we are at ICM. Dean’s first book is <i><a href="https://www.amazon.com/Path-Toward-Passion-Spiritual-Disciplines/dp/0983786526/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1543942286&sr=8-1&keywords=Path+toward+PAssion">Path Toward Passion</a></i>, and I’ve always felt like it is his personal magnum opus. His second book challenges me to be more “awake” and present in my interactions; the book is titled <i><a href="https://www.amazon.com/Gods-Divine-Appointments-Bringing-through/dp/098378650X/ref=sr_1_10?ie=UTF8&qid=1543942335&sr=8-10&keywords=divine+appointments">God's </a></i></span><i style="font-size: 12.8px;"><a href="https://www.amazon.com/Gods-Divine-Appointments-Bringing-through/dp/098378650X/ref=sr_1_10?ie=UTF8&qid=1543942335&sr=8-10&keywords=divine+appointments">Divine Appointments</a></i><span style="font-size: 12.8px;">.</span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none;">This last January, we had an opportunity to let Dean come in and remind us (for some, it was brand new) of the thinking he instilled in our beginnings. One of the examples he used was the idea of deep friendship versus romance. Many of us have experienced or observed a deep and meaningful friendship; we have also seen or experienced the different kind of quality in a romantic relationship. Both are meaningful and powerful, yet one is so much more intimate.</span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none;">Dean suggested to us that far too many Christians have a deep friendship with Jesus, but not a romance. I have written at great extent to show how far the Scriptures go to reiterate this perspective of God’s relationship with His people. Outside the metaphor of “Father,” the metaphor of “Lover” is a close second. God wants to have that kind of intimate relationship with us.</span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none;">God wants to have that kind of relationship with college students.</span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none;">It is this kind of intimacy that empowers them with a supernatural ability to <b>Impact the World</b>.</span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none;">How will we ever <b>Impact the U</b> with this kind of message if we don’t experience it daily in our own lives?</span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none;"><i>Jesus, please lead us, call us, and draw us to yourself, that we might know you intimately and be able to share that kind of “knowing” with the world around us.</i></span></div>
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marty.solomonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13745964321113271609noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8878609061058888666.post-81911097739351586662018-12-11T09:24:00.000-07:002018-12-11T09:24:55.324-07:00A DAY IN THE LIFE: Promotion<div style="caret-color: rgb(255, 253, 238); font-family: Arial; font-size: 13.199999809265137px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;">
<span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none;"><span style="font-size: xx-small;"><i>For a summary of what I’m hoping to accomplish in this blog series (in the second week of every month of 2018), I recommend reviewing my explanation </i><b><i><a href="http://makingtalmidim.blogspot.com/2017/10/my-blog-in-2018-week-two.html" style="text-decoration: none;">here</a></i></b><i>.</i></span></span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none;">The last installment of <b>A Day in the Life</b> is going to be a post about organizational promotion. Is there some reason that I waited to the last month to talk about this? Is this the climactic part of my job that defines what I do?</span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none;">Simply, no.</span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none;">This was the part of my new role that I was most unfamiliar with. While it hasn’t been the worst challenge I’ve ever faced, it isn’t the part of me that comes naturally. I’m pretty introverted in my nature. I like to retreat and study, to teach and preach, to create and dream and podcast. While I don’t try to avoid people (and I can even enjoy them in small doses), I typically like to sit just enough away from social situations.</span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none;">But promotion is the exact opposite of that natural tendency for me. Promotional conferences are about face time and intentional connections with others. It’s about putting your face on the organization and letting the organization grow through your interactions. It’s all about <b>people</b>.</span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none;">And this actually explains why I didn’t have a post until now. These experiences are so filled with anxiety for me that I never get any videos! I like the challenge, but the focus needed for me to do this part of my job well can be exhausting. One thing is for sure: I sleep extra well on these trips.</span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none;">We have a natural and annual rhythm to the promotional events we take part in. Every May, we head to the <b>Campus Ministers Retreat </b>put on by the Association of College Ministries at McCormick’s Creek State Park in Indiana. A few weeks later in June, we are usually on our way to wherever that year’s <b>North American Christian Convention </b>is; the NACC (no longer taking place after 2018) is a gathering where people come to hear speakers, attend workshops, and browse the exhibit hall full of different missions organizations.</span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none;">In July, the Association of College Ministries puts on their annual <b>National Student Conference </b>where many different ministries bring their students to learn from speakers and workshops, as well as network with other opportunities to grow and serve in the field of missions and vocational ministry. Then, right before Thanksgiving, we attend the<b> International Conference on Missions</b>, usually somewhere in the Midwest. This gathering is very similar to the NACC, with more emphasis on networking and service.</span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none;">These are beneficial times where we get to strengthen our relationships and partnerships with other ministries. We get to meet people interested in the work of campus ministry and often find new recruits at events like these. And of course, we also get to pursue some exposure, helping people recognize our name, our mission, and what we are doing.</span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none;">Here’s a video diary I made of my most recent trip to ICOM.</span><br />
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<iframe allow="accelerometer; autoplay; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture" allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="290" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/CnnG57Sr7sQ" width="500"></iframe>marty.solomonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13745964321113271609noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8878609061058888666.post-19060433950770226262018-12-04T09:34:00.000-07:002018-12-04T09:34:39.944-07:00Top 12 of CiHD: #1<div style="caret-color: rgb(255, 253, 238); font-family: Arial; font-size: 13.199999809265137px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;">
<span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none;"><span style="font-size: xx-small;"><i>For a summary of what I’m hoping to accomplish in this blog series (the first week of every month of 2018), I recommend reviewing my explanation </i><b><i><a href="http://makingtalmidim.blogspot.com/2017/09/my-blog-in-2018-week-one.html" style="text-decoration: none;">here</a></i></b><i>.</i></span></span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none;">This is it! We’ve travelled this 2018 path of the <b>Top 12 Blog Posts at <i>Covered in His Dust </i></b>and we have arrived at the end of our list — the most viewed post in my blog’s history. The winner of this title is the blog I wrote on the Resurrection back at the end of August 2015. The post was titled “Empty” and you can read the original post <b><a href="http://makingtalmidim.blogspot.com/2015/08/empty.html">here</a></b>.</span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none;">So, for one last time, let’s remember what I’ll try to do.</span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none;">In this series, as we look at each post, I want to ask three questions: <b>why, what, </b>and <b>what else</b>?<b> </b>Why do I think these posts got so many views; why were others drawn to them? What do I hope people found when they got here; what do I hope they heard? Finally, what else have I learned about this; what else would I say about these ideas?</span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none;"><b>WHY THIS POST?</b></span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none;">Well, if you would have asked me about which post I had <b><i>hoped </i></b>would get the most views, it would have been this one. I am a big believer that the most important truth, the most profound reality, the pinnacle of all theology and of the Kingdom is the resurrection. There are many theologians who talk about the crucifixion as being the most central to theology, that everything revolves around the work of Jesus on the cross. Many of these theologians are men and women I respect very deeply. But I respectfully disagree.</span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none;">The apostle Paul did not say that without the crucifixion, our faith is in vain. No, he said that without the <b>resurrection</b>, our faith is in vain. That’s a strong assertion to make and it drives my theology.</span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none;">Having said that, I wonder if there are other reasons the page views were driven up. I don’t feel like it was one of my best written posts. Are people that driven and interested in the resurrection? That hasn’t been my experience, typically. I can’t seem to find any unique or unusual words or phrases that would have caught some other Google search. Did people think I was posting about how I was feeling empty and so they were driven to click in and read? That could be.</span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none;">Well, the truth and power of the resurrection is really, in a lot of ways, a mystery. Part of the reason we don’t get more excited about it is because there is so much about it that we don’t understand. Much of the last century has been misdirected in simply trying to prove the historicity of the event. This is a shame, as the power of resurrection doesn’t lie in intellectually proving that it happened. No, the power of the resurrection lies in realizing what it means for our daily walks, trusting that great truth to be real, and leaning into the consequences.</span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none;">Even I struggled (then and now) to write about the resurrection in such a way that captures the power of this great truth. To that end, I recommend a great book called <i><a href="https://www.amazon.com/Surprised-Hope-Rethinking-Resurrection-Mission/dp/0061551821/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1543940650&sr=8-1&keywords=surprised+by+hope+n.t.+wright">Surprised by Hope</a> </i>by NT Wright. It does a good job of talking about the resurrection in a western way that helps us capture some of the applicable ramifications of the resurrection.</span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none;"><b>WHAT ELSE WOULD I SAY?</b></span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none;">I would talk about the power of <b>hope</b>.</span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none;">The story of God’s people, all the way back to the story of Abram, is a story about hope. It’s a story about people who believe there is more going on — that more is possible than simply the concrete thing we experience in the Order of Brokenness. This reality is deeper and greater than a battle between optimism and pessimism. This isn’t about whether or not the glass is half-full or half-empty.</span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none;">This is about whether or not you believe the glass was meant to be full — and, no matter what happens, will be full again.</span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none;">The resurrection is about what you fundamentally believe is true about the world. What is the truest true? What is the realest real? What is the thing that if you burned away all of the dross, would remain? Does love win? Does life end in death? Or is death not really an end? And no, I’m not just talking about what happens when we die. I’m talking about the true order of things.</span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none;">Here. Now. When we are alive.</span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none;">When the Order of Death rears its ugly head, is it a roar of triumph, or is it the gasping and grasping of a creature whose days are numbered?</span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none;">When you encounter greed and selfishness, are you dismayed? Or are you grounded — as a Child of the Resurrection — in a truth that what you are looking at is a fleeting shadow? And does this change the way you live?</span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none;">It should. It should make us more selfless. More generous. It should make us better priests. It should prepare us for Kingdom, making us conduits of God’s redeeming work. It should rid us of fear and equip us to lay our lives down — because we understand that there really is no way to lose our life.</span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none;">Maybe this is the reason the Rabbi said the only way to save your life is to lose it.</span></div>
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marty.solomonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13745964321113271609noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8878609061058888666.post-38846598128324496222018-11-27T08:00:00.000-07:002018-11-27T08:00:09.139-07:00PULL UP A CHAIR: Stories on Church<span style="caret-color: rgb(255, 253, 238); font-family: arial, tahoma, helvetica, freesans, sans-serif; font-size: xx-small;"><i class="" style="font-family: Arial;">For a summary of what I’m hoping to accomplish in this blog series (in the fourth week of every month of 2018), I recommend reviewing my explanation </i><b class="" style="font-family: Arial;"><i class=""><a href="http://makingtalmidim.blogspot.com/2017/12/my-blog-in-2018-week-four.html" style="text-decoration: none;">here</a></i></b><i class="" style="font-family: Arial;">.</i></span><br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhDEowTEehyphenhyphenle58Y3_p1UFLeRCFdr-IulTOYqvdG8ntG5GJFftn7tXRzc-HwmDOXT47l1eCt6soK7ZRBCR6lXmTCdmnoCvXFF9LISmHbRutD1gdaezTcydqflLMhbB7EnwgY5Ur8fl7fqU/s1600/44944378_10161094935875008_8848509894010077184_n.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="960" data-original-width="960" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhDEowTEehyphenhyphenle58Y3_p1UFLeRCFdr-IulTOYqvdG8ntG5GJFftn7tXRzc-HwmDOXT47l1eCt6soK7ZRBCR6lXmTCdmnoCvXFF9LISmHbRutD1gdaezTcydqflLMhbB7EnwgY5Ur8fl7fqU/s320/44944378_10161094935875008_8848509894010077184_n.jpg" width="320" /></a><span style="font-family: Arial;"><i style="caret-color: rgb(255, 253, 238); font-size: xx-small;">For the last two years, Alex VanDuyne has served as ICM's team leader at the University of South Florida in Tampa, FL. Alex, Emily, and Samuel have demonstrated a very thoughtful presence amongst the </i><span style="caret-color: rgb(255, 253, 238); font-size: xx-small;"><i>students</i></span><i style="caret-color: rgb(255, 253, 238); font-size: xx-small;"> at USF and have been very </i><span style="caret-color: rgb(255, 253, 238); font-size: xx-small;"><i>intentional</i></span><i style="caret-color: rgb(255, 253, 238); font-size: xx-small;"> about their </i><span style="caret-color: rgb(255, 253, 238); font-size: xx-small;"><i>engagement</i></span><i style="caret-color: rgb(255, 253, 238); font-size: xx-small;"> with the local church and its ability to help them minister to young adults. I knew that with Alex's passion for </i><i style="caret-color: rgb(255, 253, 238); font-size: xx-small;">teaching and communication, he would be a great staff person to </i><span style="caret-color: rgb(255, 253, 238); font-size: xx-small;"><i>ask to share his thoughts about our value of <b>church.</b></i></span><i style="caret-color: rgb(255, 253, 238); font-size: xx-small;"> </i></span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none;">I love the theology of the church universal. Almost everyone believes in it, though some people talk about it more than others. It means that the Church—the “big C” Church—is the communion of all Christians, across every country, across all time. We are an incredibly tiny part of a great chorus of praise to God that involves every Christian who has ever lived and ever will. But part of the beauty of this idea is that it’s so big and abstract and that it does not actually require anything of us. It’s just a certainty. It’s clean and beautiful like looking at the earth from space.</span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none;">For our purposes, for the practical now, the “real church” is the local church. This is where the action happens. Our local churches are the hands and feet of God. The local church is much different. It gets messy and dirty and complicated. Churches are inherently messy because they’re made of inherently messy people. Sometimes we act like messy churches are a sign that the gospel isn’t working, but messy churches are like hospitals with sick people—neither surprising nor something to condemn, but entirely natural.</span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none;">Churches are where God lives. We think of the Holy Spirit as living inside each believer, but the primary metaphor for the Holy Spirit dwelling within us is not as individual believers, but as believers assembled. We like to say, “We don’t go to church, we are the church.” This is partially correct. It is better to say that we become the church when we gather as the church.</span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none;">The local church is to the universal church what a brick is to a wall. It’s what a cell is to a complex organism. It’s what a nutrient is to a meal. The local church is the least common denominator, the base unit that makes up the greater Church. And this is simply the way it is. There’s no alternative. No competing design. God has ordained to work primarily through local churches. And thus so do we as Christians. And thus so does Impact.</span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none;">There’s no biblical precedent for a solo believer. Neither the Bible nor church history suggests that a Christian should be a Christian apart from membership in a local gathering. Are there exceptions? Probably. Thought experiments show it to be possible. Life certainly yields people on the outskirts who cannot leave their home or who live in countries with few believers. But these people are the exception, not the rule, and certainly not the ideal.</span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none;">Impact values church. We value church because church is the native language of God. Church is primarily how he speaks and acts. We cannot preach “Pursue” without calling people to do so in the context of a local body of believers when possible. And it’s nearly always possible. For our staff to say we are pursuing God if we are not invested in a local church is problematic at best. Students, more than anyone, require the stability of a healthy, multigenerational church if they are to nurture a serious and significant relationship with Jesus. Impact doesn’t try to supplant this because it’s fundamentally impossible. A student who treats Impact as their church is a like a sick person on a ventilator. Sometimes it is necessary, and it might be helpful during times of crisis, but eventually you need to start breathing on your own.</span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none;">Ultimately I have not done my job if I don’t direct our students into the local church. Ultimately one of the clearest signs of whether I have been successful with students is whether they insist on membership in a flawed, messy, beautiful local church after graduation. My own serious input on a student’s life lasts only about two and half years. I hope this sets the foundation for a lifetime of church membership, where my own strengths and failures in each student’s life will be rounded and smoothed and balanced out in the beauty of Christian submission.</span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none;">This hard commitment to churches made of broken people is one of the core signs of Christian maturity. But it’s also one of the key paths to Christian maturity. Church is where we learn submission, and submission means submitting to not only those we acknowledge are right, but also to those who we think might be wrong, and those who are definitely wrong. We have to work out what submission means in each instance, but it usually means staying in your community and fighting for unity, peace, and a passion for God. Remember, Christ’s great act of submission was not submitting to the crowds who called for him as a king, but submitting to the crowds who called for his murder. This is the model for the backward gospel ethics that we learn about in the Bible, the model of life we call students to at Impact, and the attitude we learn to live out in the local church.</span></div>
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marty.solomonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13745964321113271609noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8878609061058888666.post-31746493191693545112018-11-13T07:30:00.000-07:002018-11-13T07:30:08.964-07:00MAKING AN IMPACT: Church<span style="font-size: xx-small;"><i style="font-family: Arial;">For a summary of what I’m hoping to accomplish in this blog series (in the third week of every month of 2018), I recommend reviewing my explanation </i><b style="font-family: Arial;"><i><a href="http://makingtalmidim.blogspot.com/2017/11/my-blog-in-2018-week-three.html">here</a></i></b><i style="font-family: Arial;">.</i></span><br />
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<span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none;">One of our values at Impact Campus Ministries is <b>church</b>.</span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none;">It might seem like a silly value, but let me explain why we put it on the list.</span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none;">Too many times, para-church organizations get started because of some need that the local church isn’t meeting — oftentimes because it would not be practical, wise, and good stewardship of their time and resources. There are many ministries like this and almost any missions organization you can think of will fit into this category. While some of these efforts are less para-church than others (e.g., sending missionaries to international settings is less about filling an unmet need and more about sending missionaries to do the work in other corners of the world), a bulk of these organizations will be like this. Homeless shelters, food pantries, and benevolence ministries will be like this. Pregnancy crisis centers and free medical clinics will be like this. Campus ministry organizations often make the list.</span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none;">Because of this natural gap, there is often an animosity that grows, whether intentional or unintentional. Oftentimes these organizations are started because of a frustration that the local church isn’t meeting an obvious need. That chip on the shoulder is an unhealthy attitude that festers in the church world. In places like campus ministry, it can become easy to critique the local church, throw stones at their methods, and start our own thing to replace the broken piece. In return, churches become increasingly frustrated with organizations critiquing without helping, wanting to take without giving back, and always draining the resources of a church community that struggles to give generously.</span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none;"><b>And so, ICM wants to be sure we state up front that we value the local church.</b></span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none;">We do not think we are here to critique or fix the state of the church. We are not the answer to all the world’s problems. We are simply here to help. And we want to start by coming alongside what God is already doing in His local church.</span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none;">We will not try to replace the local church. We will not talk negatively about the local church. And while not all of our teams will have intentional partnerships on the level that some teams do (like our team on the Palouse), we will seek to partner with the local church whenever that partnership will be effective and efficient.</span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none;">We want to do our job in a way that encourages all of our brothers and sisters to run the race well. And we want to do our job in a way that makes the church want to return the favor.</span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none;">If we truly believed in the work of <b>MILIEU </b>(that <a href="http://makingtalmidim.blogspot.com/2018/07/making-impact-milieu.html">we spoke of before</a>) then we have to be active partners with the local church. You may remember <a href="http://makingtalmidim.blogspot.com/2018/07/pull-up-chair-stories-on-milieu.html">Eric Wright sharing his stories</a> of having students exposed to different ideas. We want to remind ourselves that if we are <b>Impacting the U </b>because we believe it will <b>Impact the World</b>, then we have to keep our students surrounded by healthy diversity and a wide demographic of people. This kind of exposure will enhance their personal development, make them better professionals, and increase their ability to lead others later in life. <b>How could we truly pursue this and not value a connection with the local church?</b></span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none;">And yet, it is easy to miss. And so we have to remind ourselves by putting it on our list of values.</span></div>
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marty.solomonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13745964321113271609noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8878609061058888666.post-91520165486976419762018-11-06T07:30:00.000-07:002018-11-06T07:30:03.804-07:00A DAY IN THE LIFE: Personal Time<div style="font-family: Arial; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;">
<span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none;"><span style="font-size: xx-small;"><i>For a summary of what I’m hoping to accomplish in this blog series (in the second week of every month of 2018), I recommend reviewing my explanation </i><b><i><a href="http://makingtalmidim.blogspot.com/2017/10/my-blog-in-2018-week-two.html">here</a></i></b><i>.</i></span></span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none;">“OK, Marty, but what do you like to do for <b>FUN?</b>”</span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none;">I get this question a lot when I talk about my life. It’s a good question and it’s important for all of us to find space to do things that we love — personal space built to refresh us and let us simply be who we are, unplugged.</span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none;">This part of my life used to be a lot larger, that is for sure. Some of that is OK. I love my job and find it incredibly fulfilling. There are many parts of my job that don’t feel like a job at all. Moments when I get to teach, preach, or speak to a group of people are awesome times that fill up my tank. It is what I am made to do. I also find that whatever free space I have is going more and more to my children. I think God is teaching me to be OK with this. I’m not sure any alternatives are the right option. My children are becoming my joy and that is just fine.</span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none;">However, it’s still important to make sure you don’t always have to be “on” all the time. In years past, I used to enjoy major commitments to different video games. I had a long, long affair with <i>World of Warcraft</i> that than turned toward <i>Star Wars: The Old Republic </i>(yes, I was an MMORPG guy) and I’ve had my seasons where I flirt with <i>Skyrim</i> or <i>Call of Duty</i>, but those are short-lived. Too often as I’ve grown older, these relatively brief seasons turn into watching different TV shows or documentaries.</span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none;">I do enjoy the Cincinnati Bengals whenever I can (which isn’t very often the way that they play).</span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none;">And I have some other vices that involve tobacco pipes and distilleries, but we don’t need to pull that apart here.</span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none;">One favorite hobby of mine comes around each fall and involves solitude, silence, and beautiful mountain scenery — <b>hunting</b>. I recently finished another season of hunting and enjoy this annual activity so very much. I love fall/winter, I love the mountains, I love the practical nature of filling my family’s freezer with meat that I harvested myself and can be confident was taken and butchered humanely (I am not trying to offend my vegetarian brothers and sisters; I respect you very much). I enjoy guns and the sport of hunting (while not acting like common-sense gun legislation is a ridiculous conversation). [My goodness, why all the disclaimers? What a world we live in.]</span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none;">At any rate, I do make space for personal enjoyment. I love lots of things, but I also love hunting and here is my short video. (Don’t worry, there’s no bloody animal at the end.)</span></div>
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<iframe width="500" height="290" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/CP4rJQ2utQY" frameborder="0" allow="accelerometer; autoplay; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture" allowfullscreen></iframe>marty.solomonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13745964321113271609noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8878609061058888666.post-27143620475992403442018-10-30T09:32:00.000-06:002018-10-30T09:32:24.468-06:00Top 12 of CiHD: #2<div style="font-family: Arial; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;">
<span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none;"><span style="font-size: xx-small;"><i>For a summary of what I’m hoping to accomplish in this blog series (the first week of every month of 2018), I recommend reviewing my explanation </i><b><i><a href="http://makingtalmidim.blogspot.com/2017/09/my-blog-in-2018-week-one.html">here</a></i></b><i>.</i></span></span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none;">We’re down to the last two posts in the <b>Top 12 Blog Posts at <i>Covered in His Dust </i></b>series. Today, we’ll look at the second-most-viewed post in the history of my blog. Just what is the second-most-viewed post, you ask? Well, it’s an old post on the book of Obadiah. You can read the original post <b><a href="http://makingtalmidim.blogspot.com/2014/06/obadiah-petra.html">here</a></b>.</span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none;">Wait… what? <b>Obadiah?</b> You’ve got to be kidding.</span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none;">I’m not kidding, but more on that in a moment.</span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none;">In this series, as we look at each post, I want to ask three questions: <b>why, what, </b>and <b>what else</b>?<b> </b>Why do I think these posts got so many views; why were others drawn to them? What do I hope people found when they got here; what do I hope they heard? Finally, what else have I learned about this; what else would I say about these ideas?</span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none;"><b>WHY THIS POST?</b></span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none;">I have absolutely no idea.</span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none;">I couldn’t even begin to offer a respectable guess on why this was my second-most-read post. I can’t find any keywords that jump off the page. I can’t think of any topical connections. While the ancient city of Petra may have <i>some</i> draw to it, I’m not sure it would justify that kind of viewership.</span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none;">What about the <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_-Ux9Sp66b8&list=PL4B02B051648D5034">old Christian rock band</a>? Yeah, I don’t think so, either (although you're welcome for that link).</span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none;">Moving along…</span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none;">I hope the reader found a helpful dialogue about a book that we spend very little time in. Writing about these prophets is fun because a person could count the number of sermons or lessons they’ve heard on Obadiah on one hand (if there were any to count at all). So to bring an unexcavated portion of the Text out and shine a flashlight on it is a great discipline to be a part of. I hope that experience was beneficial for my readers.</span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none;">I also hope this conversation on a seldom-talked-about book of the Bible provided a new look at a conversation that we <b>do have </b>often — that is, how we treat other human beings, no matter who they are. These conversations or behavioral soundbites can become like white noise in our world of spiritual development. We hear the “be nice to others” lesson so much that it loses its potency. A book like Obadiah has the potential to jar us to attention because of the unusual setting where the conversation takes place. The context is like its own inductive teaching.</span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none;">I think I would be tempted to wax eloquent on how this post is even <b>more applicable</b> now than it was when I first wrote it. The original was posted on June 4, 2014, in a much different world than we live in today. In the last four years, a few things have changed politically, ecclesiologically, and digitally — and mostly not for the better. We now seem to demonstrate <b>even less</b> ability to show the minimal amount decency and respect to others. Quite simply, we need to figure out how to disagree and still have a dialogue. We need to figure out to the find the humanity in our brother/sister and not demonize their perspective or their history. We need to figure out how to learn from each other and seek understanding like buried treasure.</span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none;">And that means this book has a deeply serious message for us: <b>God expects a certain amount of human decency from all people — how much more the people of God! </b>It is not OK for human beings to treat other human beings in need with disdain or negligence. I have always felt like the words that fell from Cain’s lips in Genesis — <i>“Am I my brother’s keeper?”</i> — are the words that sit unspoken by the people of Edom in Obadiah. And God’s response is telling: “Yes, you are your brother’s keeper.” We all have to look out for our brothers, our half-brothers, our distant cousins, and even our enemies.</span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none;">It doesn’t matter if the person you are talking to wears a MAGA hat or voted for Hillary. It doesn’t matter if they are pre-millennial, post-tribulation, Muslim, or Baptist. They are people; they are divine image bearers with thoughts and values that lead to convictions, just like you. There is a shared humanity being lost and I have great faith that our children are going to teach us how to reclaim it. My prayer is that their instruction will come in time, before the condemnation of Obadiah passes for too many of us Edomites.</span></div>
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marty.solomonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13745964321113271609noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8878609061058888666.post-18067862494095043192018-10-23T11:15:00.000-06:002018-10-23T11:15:45.558-06:00PULL UP A CHAIR: Stories on Community<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<span style="caret-color: rgb(255, 253, 238); font-family: arial, tahoma, helvetica, freesans, sans-serif; font-size: xx-small;"><i class="" style="font-family: Arial;">For a summary of what I’m hoping to accomplish in this blog series (in the fourth week of every month of 2018), I recommend reviewing my explanation </i><b class="" style="font-family: Arial;"><i class=""><a href="http://makingtalmidim.blogspot.com/2017/12/my-blog-in-2018-week-four.html" style="text-decoration: none;">here</a></i></b><i class="" style="font-family: Arial;">.</i></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial;"><i style="caret-color: rgb(255, 253, 238); font-size: xx-small;">Impact Campus Ministries hired Karl Moritz to plant a team at the University of Montana in Missoula, MT at the beginning of 2017. Karl's been </i><span style="caret-color: rgb(255, 253, 238); font-size: xx-small;"><i>in a</i></span><i style="caret-color: rgb(255, 253, 238); font-size: xx-small;"> fundraising </i><span style="caret-color: rgb(255, 253, 238); font-size: xx-small;"><i>phase</i></span><i style="caret-color: rgb(255, 253, 238); font-size: xx-small;"> since then </i><span style="caret-color: rgb(255, 253, 238); font-size: xx-small;"><i>and</i></span><i style="caret-color: rgb(255, 253, 238); font-size: xx-small;"> demonstrated a </i><span style="caret-color: rgb(255, 253, 238); font-size: xx-small;"><i>true</i></span><i style="caret-color: rgb(255, 253, 238); font-size: xx-small;"> commitment to our </i><span style="caret-color: rgb(255, 253, 238); font-size: xx-small;"><i>vision</i></span><i style="caret-color: rgb(255, 253, 238); font-size: xx-small;"> as an </i><span style="caret-color: rgb(255, 253, 238); font-size: xx-small;"><i>organization</i></span><i style="caret-color: rgb(255, 253, 238); font-size: xx-small;">. He and Gretchen have been an </i><span style="caret-color: rgb(255, 253, 238); font-size: xx-small;"><i>unbelievable</i></span><i style="caret-color: rgb(255, 253, 238); font-size: xx-small;"> asset to our ICM </i><span style="caret-color: rgb(255, 253, 238); font-size: xx-small;"><i>family</i></span><i style="caret-color: rgb(255, 253, 238); font-size: xx-small;"> and his presence is a wonderful difference-maker for us. </i><span style="caret-color: rgb(255, 253, 238); font-size: xx-small;"><i>Recently</i></span><i style="caret-color: rgb(255, 253, 238); font-size: xx-small;">, Karl's family began to walk the path of having a </i><span style="caret-color: rgb(255, 253, 238); font-size: xx-small;"><i>family</i></span><i style="caret-color: rgb(255, 253, 238); font-size: xx-small;"> member who is battling cancer. Their journey has been an inspiration to many and I asked Karl to </i><span style="caret-color: rgb(255, 253, 238); font-size: xx-small;"><i>reflect</i></span><i style="caret-color: rgb(255, 253, 238); font-size: xx-small;"> on </i><span style="caret-color: rgb(255, 253, 238); font-size: xx-small;"><i>his</i></span><i style="caret-color: rgb(255, 253, 238); font-size: xx-small;"> observations about </i><b style="caret-color: rgb(255, 253, 238); font-size: xx-small; font-style: italic;">community </b><i style="caret-color: rgb(255, 253, 238); font-size: xx-small;">for our post </i><span style="caret-color: rgb(255, 253, 238); font-size: xx-small;"><i>this month.</i></span></span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none;">Going back as far as I can remember, some of my first memories were of our family home being filled my with my father’s co-workers. He worked for a church and these people were his work community, our family’s spiritual community, and they were our friends.</span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none;">Being raised in and around the church meant that I had built-in community surrounding me. There were always people nearby to call me out on something or give me praise. Away from my family structure, I was involved in youth group that provided a fun and safe community, as well.</span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none;">Fast forward a few years when I moved away from home to college, I lost that community that had surrounded me for years. I was on my own, making poor decisions, and it took me many years, three moves, and two different campuses to find my community again. Those years were rough. The best community I found was off campus at The Alpha Omega house, a community house in Missoula established on Christian principles, run by a couple that love and cherish students.</span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none;">About ten years ago now I met my wife and our community formed through church and small groups. Three years ago, our small group was at a crossroads. We were craving more and started listening to BEMA long before knowing Marty. Through a series of events, I had the opportunity to start as a Recruit with Impact which has changed the way I view a lot of things in life.</span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none;">Our close friends encourage, support, and love us. Our Impact family prays with and for us and is always thinking of ways to help me in the position that I’m in. With fundraising, our family, close network, and community rally around us to remind us that we are doing the right thing. When life gets too hard and I consider a break from fundraising, my fellow staff members and my boss tells me it is OK to take a break. Impact values me and my community more than my “job.”</span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none;">So today we lean into our community so that our family can continue to grow. We are comfortable having hard conversations about how it feels to lose a loved one slowly through cancer. We charge into discussion about why I am striving to do ministry but rather working full time. And the community we have around us is wonderful.</span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none;">I’m so thankful for the home I have with our Missoula BEMA group, my Impact family, and in our cul-de-sac. Without our community, I would feel lost.</span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none;">In Matthew 18:20, Jesus says, “For where two or three are gathered in my name, there I am with them.” As we move forward through life we are constantly reminded that we must have good community around us. If we don’t surround ourselves with the right kind of community, those who build us up, we will find community in other places that don’t.</span></div>
marty.solomonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13745964321113271609noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8878609061058888666.post-26202054774922031892018-10-16T08:22:00.000-06:002018-10-16T15:48:03.946-06:00MAKING AN IMPACT: Community<div style="font-family: Arial; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;">
<span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none;"><span style="font-size: xx-small;"><i>For a summary of what I’m hoping to accomplish in this blog series (in the third week of every month of 2018), I recommend reviewing my explanation </i><b><i><a href="http://makingtalmidim.blogspot.com/2017/11/my-blog-in-2018-week-three.html">here</a></i></b><i>.</i></span></span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none;">Let’s talk about the value of <b>community</b>.</span></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgxuMB434M8tVrri_Ze4AM90EfvQkMKmXjY6IAiEulIHaDQy4ub4Locj9UPcZg_8CZsG6PTTvSHjdT3IlaRrHRhdPP3sgW3GSClCF12PkXZlkR8YSI_Bc_znz9twW2Y5vue9cNJ7Emzi0g/s1600/2018+ASCstaffboard+1.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1068" data-original-width="1600" height="267" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgxuMB434M8tVrri_Ze4AM90EfvQkMKmXjY6IAiEulIHaDQy4ub4Locj9UPcZg_8CZsG6PTTvSHjdT3IlaRrHRhdPP3sgW3GSClCF12PkXZlkR8YSI_Bc_znz9twW2Y5vue9cNJ7Emzi0g/s400/2018+ASCstaffboard+1.jpg" width="400" /></a></div>
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<span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none;">Like last month’s post on <b>character</b>, this is another one of those buzzwords I don’t think too many people are going to disagree with. We might call it relationships or fellowship or community, but we all value people, don’t we?</span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none;">We might know that it’s important, but I think truly valuing community in our world is incredibly tricky business. Relationships are difficult and messy. There are a lot of things that must get done. In order to truly value community, it’s going to take more than just lip service. It’s going to take a hefty reorganization of our priorities. It means relationships are going to have to take precedent over productivity, consumerism, and busyness.</span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none;">On one hand, I am deeply committed to the value of <b>community</b>. I have long treatises about the theological and ecclesiological importance of community. Anybody who has participated in my <a href="https://bemadiscipleship.com/">BEMA study</a> or been able to participate in one of our <a href="http://makingtalmidim.blogspot.com/2018/09/a-day-in-life-bema-trip.html">trips</a> to Israel and Turkey will know that “community” is one of my “four pillars” and a major tenet of what I want every participant to take home. I run around the desert and throw my hat as I critique our commitments to true community and caring for each other.</span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none;">And yet, I think this may be the ICM value I am challenged by the most. To be honest, I like community when it’s on my terms. I like relationships when I get to call the shots. I like the idea when it is convenient and not messy.</span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none;">This value at <a href="https://www.impactcampusministries.com/">Impact Campus Ministries</a> does not speak of the buzzword or shallow commitment to relationships. This value is not on our vision posters for the times it is convenient, tidy, and on our own terms. The value of <b>community </b>is stated for all of those times when it is none of these things.</span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none;">This value says that we will be there for one another when we need help — any kind of help.</span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none;">This value says that we will prioritize relationship over rightness.</span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none;">This value says that we will try to work together whenever possible.</span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none;">This value says that we will avoid working apart because it is easier or more expedient.</span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none;">This value says that we will care not about what you can do, but who you are.</span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none;">This value says that we are not human doings, but human beings.</span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none;">This value says that we will care about the whole self.</span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none;">This value says that we are going to fight for your place in the family.</span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none;">This value says a lot.</span><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none;"> </span><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none;">I have not always lived up to this value well or modeled it to our staff the way that I ought.</span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none;">Ironically, I have found that the healthiest way for me to hold myself accountable and grow in this area is to make sure I’m surrounded by other members of the family. Ironic, but not counter-intuitive.</span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none;">I want to become better at <b>community</b>. I have places where I have planted my flag and grown in the last decade of my life. I can say with confidence that I am much, much better at community today than I have been in the past. I could not say with confidence that my life is a beacon for the value of community.</span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none;">And for this reason, I want to continue to grow and value this more. Will you grow with me?</span></div>
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marty.solomonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13745964321113271609noreply@blogger.com0