ken wilson online

Paul, the old guy, advises Timothy, the younger guy, to be careful about empowering “new converts” too much too fast in the leadership department because they are more prone to “conceit.”  As Bob Dylan sang, “there’s a whole lot of people dying tonight, from the disease of conceit.”  Defined as “a high opinion of your own qualities or abilities, especially one that is not justified.”  And there’s the rub, right?  When we’re young, we’re worried about our qualities and abilities.  We fear that our qualities and abilities are inadequate for the pastoring task. Which means we crave confident assurance that we’re wrong about our fears regarding ourselves.
Read the rest of this entry »

Man, do I feel optimistic lately.  Why?  Because of my kids.  They have a different take on the world, and it’s a take the world is due.  We baby boomers have taken things as far as we can with our current Oldsmobile. Our battles lines are firmly fixed, but from their perspective, wearing thin.  Now it’s time for us to listen to their take on the world as much as we’ve been yammering on about ours.  Then, having listened and learned, we’ll be able to see what we’ve been through in a new light and offer, not more information (they can get it faster than we can generate it)  but what they actually crave from us: wisdom, the one thing it takes time and experience and trial and error to gain.

The culture wars are boomer wars.  We inherited them from our fathers who lived in a binary world of good and evil neatly separated by geographic boundaries.  The evil empire was over there, far away from our fields of presumed good. I actually played cowboys and Indians assuming the cowboys were the good guys.  Pick up sides and duke it out; we boomers did it every day all summer long playing baseball in the streets.  May the best side win.  One side fits all.  Side in. Side out.  Are you on our side or the side of our enemies?  Neither, says this newer take on the world before us.  Maybe it’s time for us boomers to sit down, shut up,  and take off our shoes.
Read the rest of this entry »