At the Imperial Sand Dunes this summer.

gold van on sand

Over-functioners, beware of 1 Thessalonians 4:11.

God connects us to each other in many ways. One way is through our shared watersheds. @WaterHarvester explains how and with beautiful maps in Watershed Maps Are Community Maps. Who’s in your rainborhood?

Life is full of surprises. According to my source, what unicorn fairies do is sort papers.

Girl holding the one while wearing wings and a unicorn headband

From bud to blackberry and everything in between, a lovely picture by @BestofTimes.

cat laying on ipad

Here are a few of the books that have helped me improve the organizational and discipleship structures at Covenant.

Comprehensive Treatments

Although leadership is essential for shepherding the oranizational and discipleship structures of the church, the strucutres/systems/cultures—and not leadership—are the focus of this list. Each of these books offers something unique, but any one of them will help a great deal if read and applied well.

The Book of Church Order of the Orthodox Presbyterian Church

Hearers and Doers: A Pastor’s Guide to Making Disciples Through Scripture and Doctrine by Kevin J. Vanhoozer

The Trellis and the Vine: The Ministry Mind-shift That Changes Everything by Colin Marshall and Tony Payne

The Whole Systems Approach: Involving Everyone in the Company to Transform and Run Your Business by W. A. Adams, Cindy Adams with Michael Bowker

An Everyone Culture: Becoming a Deliberately Developmental Organization by Robert Kegan and Lisa Laskow Lahey

Extra Credit:

The Gospel Commission: Recovering God’s Strategy for Making Disciples by Michael Horton

Evangelism: How the Whole Church Speaks of Jesus by J. Mack Stiles

Specific Topics

If you are looking for help with a specific topic, there are so many good resources. But here are a couple good places to start:

Faithful and Fruitful: Essays for Elders and Deacons ed. by William Boekestein and Steven Swets

Various articles in Ordained Servant. Check the subject index.

The new podcast Ad Navseam is fascinating. Funny too. My son and I listened together today and loved it. And since he’s reading the Iliad at school, the timing with the current miniseries is perfect.

Listening to Gautier Capuçon play Debussy. So beautiful.

God punished Sodom and Gomorrah for several reasons, one is to teach us some things we need to learn.

The greatness of Jesus on display during his arrest gives us confidence in his victory and love for us. Listen to my morning sermon from last Sunday to hear more.

Beautiful beans from Bonita Bean in Willcox, AZ.

mixed uncooked beans

ETS et al. meeting online this year is a bummer in some ways, but good for folks like me who can attend now.

Monsoons arrived on Saturday.

Ouch! The key pad at the gas station was so hot today I had to take breaks typing my PIN.