Blog
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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 […]
We had our weekly team meeting this morning. it was good to be together and wrestle through some of things that are on our plate as an organization. Each Tuesday meeting we begin with a short devotional sort of time. This morning we let James Autry’s poem “The Resurrection” center our conversation and prayer. It […]
One of the gifts of the past couple months has been our move of offices. We had been on the look out for a more suitable office space when Sioux Falls Seminary invited us to utilize some space they had available. They have been very gracious to us with affordable office and storage space, as well as […]
Genesis 3. Adam and Eve have just eaten of the tree from which God had forbid them to eat. The story goes on to say that their “eyes were opened” and they became “ashamed of their nakedness.” Then Adam and Eve hear God walking in the Garden and immediately they hide among the trees, “away […]
“So what’s defining you nowadays?” Each fall Emerging Journey groups come upon a discussion of this question in Session 5: Paying Attention to Character. We each answer this question not so much by filling-in-the-blank on a piece of paper, but by living it out with our lives. For it is amidst the demands of the […]