The movie Amadeus features a memorable scene in which Emperor Joseph II approaches Mozart after the premiere of his opera Die Entführung aus dem Serail and awkwardly suggests that Mozart uses “too many notes.” A perplexed Mozart responds, “There are just as many notes as...
In late March, people packed into the entry hall of a Macy’s Department Store in downtown Philadelphia. The store was closing, but the crowd had not come for the close-out sales. They were there for one last day (at least for now) with the famed...
Over the past several years we have encouraged church boards to ‘dig deeper wells’ of meaning and mutual understanding that can nurture their leadership in the midst of complexity and ambiguity. And then this week, author Seth Godin gave some nicely related advice: “Dig your...
As we approach Holy Week, we share a hymn by James Montgomery (1771-1854), who was born in Scotland to Irish parents. When he was just five years old, James’ parents left him in care of a Moravian community in Ireland, while they answered a call...
The church is not asked to invent an identity; it is to live the life of Jesus Christ in the world. - Jurgen Moltmann How can you just leave me standing Alone in a world that's so cold? - Prince, When Doves Cry A recent feature article about Prince included the...
We received the following question from a colleague two weeks ago: Does this data point to a period of the church reintroducing ourselves to the public … or a period of being in the wilderness, while relearning why we are Christian before we reintroduce ourselves? Our colleague...
For Marty, the only real swear word was tribalism — watching out for my interest, my family, my town, my country, my tribe — at the expense of others…. Everyone, and he meant everyone, deserved a seat at the table of public discussion as long...
The sheer velocity of change in this season – touching everything from routine tasks to global alignments – is leaving people and institutions out of breath and rife with stress. We wonder if the writer of Philippians could have imagined the world that would receive...
Out of arguments with others, we make politics. Out of arguments with ourselves, we make art. - William Butler Yeats Is there any church board out there unacquainted with all those “arguments with others” that have saturated our society for the past several years? Almost every decision...