Blog
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As the New Year begins I find myself returning to certain thoughts that have lingered with me over the past year. Jesus’ personal way with others has dominated much of my wonderings. His way of life always offers an alternative to our culture’s dominant ways of relating. Jesus lived out his mission by forming and […]
“Is it possible for people to miss their lives in the same way one misses a plane?” Walker Percy asks this question in his novel The Second Coming. With his character Will Barrett–a lonely widower, recently retired from a very successful business career—Percy confronts us with a person who has confused all the activity of […]
Along a 210-Freeway morning commute to Pasadena, California in the spring of 1996, a seed was planted which would grow into the work of VANTAGEPOINT3. As Randy Reese sat in Los Angeles traffic on his way to Fuller Seminary that spring morning, he considered the legacies of Charles Simeon (1759-1836) and Henrietta Mears (1890-1963). Both people […]
I came across a question today from a few weeks back: “Where is there breathing space in your life?” And my mind ended up thinking about Anne Morrow Lindbergh’s little book Gift from the Sea. Amidst the seemingly endless distractions of our lives, she asks, how do we remain attentive to that which matters most? […]
So Kay, Emily, Randy and I took a few VP3 team pictures yesterday for this year’s Christmas card. It was an enjoyable and harmless process, for the most part. After getting back to the office and batting around our opinions on which one would be “the chosen picture,” I found myself thankful yet again for […]
We can live so unreflectively nowadays, always hoping to “get by” with what we already know. Yet if life experience teaches us anything along the way, it is that we still have so much more to learn if we are to flourish as people. We will not be able to “get by” without a good […]
We approach this Thanksgiving week grateful for the many people and churches we get to work with across Canada and the U.S. We are reminded of the way God so creatively weaves together our deep concerns and passions and efforts into a holy shape. God is always up to something good, in ways far beyond […]
Oliver Wendell Holmes(1841 -1935) said, “I wouldn’t give a fig for the simplicity on this side of complexity, but I would give my very life for the simplicity on the other side of complexity.” This quote comes to mind when I think of Jean Vanier, Canadian philosopher and Catholic social innovator. He is truly a […]
The assumption that runs throughout Scripture is that God is up to something good in this world, in our communities, and in our lives. Our primary burden or task is to pay attention to what God is already up to, and then secondarily, to participate in what He is up to. Our Stage 2 process of […]
The Spiritual Formation Retreats of the past two weekends, one in Olympia, WA and the other in Crestline, CA afforded me an opportunity to reflect and converse with a number of Emerging Journey participants around this simple poem, “Fire.” It is often very simple images that can cause us to think or re-think where we […]
I was recently reminded of the importance of the work we do here at VP3 while re-reading a short column by Pastor Gordon MacDonald entitled “Leader’s Insight: So Many Infant Christians” (October 1, 2007, christianitytoday.com). MacDonald’s thoughts flow from his musings upon a quote by Martin Thorton, which begins this article. Thorton observes, “A walloping […]
A friend sent a video clip this week that has got me thinking. It introduces a fairly recent book on leadership entitled Multipliers: How the Best Leaders Make Everyone Smarter (HarperBusiness, 2010). Co-author Liz Wiseman was interviewed at a recent conference in which she summarized the findings of the research that is reflected in the […]