If we’d lived in first-century Israel and witnessed Jesus of Nazareth firsthand, we would have noticed that parties followed him wherever he went. After all, there was much to celebrate. The center point of his teaching, “The kingdom of God is near,” struck a deep chord in the people. They had been waiting a long […]
Last week I spent an early morning over zoom with a group of men from Cedar Falls, Iowa who meet together every Thursday. It is a wonderful group who over the last 16 months have become good friends, fellow travelers on the journey. They went through VP3’s The Journey last year and are now working […]
Tomorrow we will spend a couple hours with some men and women who will be facilitating groups through our second-year process, A Way of Life. As I thought about tomorrow’s conversation, I was re-engaged by a portion of the first session of the year entitled An Invitation to Discover. It began to ask some questions of […]
So, it’s really cold. I woke up this morning thankful for a warm house. Most days I take this warmth and safety very much for granted, but not this morning. The kids are home, the cartoons are on, and as I sit next to Rosie, all wrapped up in her new mermaid blanket, I am […]
A couple years ago now I pinned a poem to a wall in my office. It was sent from a woman named Kennette who was facilitating a group through The Journey and then A Way of Life. Her words remind me often of what is possible when a group of adults commit to having an extended conversation about God, themselves, […]
Over the events of the past week I have had the occasion to share this story twice. We tell the story in the first month of VantagePoint3’s A Way of Life process. It is such a beautiful invitation to live our way into “the grammar of grace” and, thereby, to discover the God and Father […]
20 years ago I read an excellent book that I still reread every two or three years – Leap Over a Wall: Earthy Spirituality for Everyday Christians by Eugene Peterson. At the tail end of a chapter on the friendship between David and Jonathan Peterson writes: It’s not unusual for any of us to […]
When I sit with friends who know me fairly well and we begin to talk about VP3 and what we are up to as an organization, I will often confide to them that we are in “the imagination business.” And then I tell them this story. _____________________ Over 20 years ago a few friends […]
One of things that jumps off the pages of the gospels is how often Jesus paused, stepped back, and took time to be alone in order to draw closer to God. The gospels record over and again that Jesus withdrew to a deserted place to pray. (Mark 1:35; 6:31, 45–46; Luke 4:42; 5:16; 6:12; Matthew […]
A phrase interrupted the tasks and interactions of my morning, and I think invited me to a bit of a focusing thought for this Holy Week–the surprise of brokenness. Near the tail end of Greg Paul’s wonderful little book God in the Alley: Being and Seeing Jesus in a Broken World (Shaw, 2004), Paul […]
Recently I have been listening to some folks who are getting close to finishing up The Journey and are considering moving along our pathway into the next process A Way of Life. And as I listen to them sort this decision out, I keep on thinking about psychologist Henry Cloud’s words in his book Integrity: The […]