ken wilson online

Jesus Brand Spirituality: He Wants His Religion Back is a book I wrote as an evangelical, by which I mean, as someone who cares about communicating the good news (gk. evangel) among those who have not heard good news.  Right here, for example, where I live.  It is based on a certain reading of the culture in which I live.   We who have received and therfore have a responsibility to be and share good news, also have a responsibility to face up to the cultural context we operate in.  Here’s the challenge: we have a branding problem.  We who love, admire and seek to follow Jesus of Nazareth, must acknowledge that the Christian brand in America has sufferred something very like trademark infringement.
Read the rest of this entry »

Good pastors are about empowering people to do the Jesus stuff.  So there is a great need for pastors who can learn to trust others to do things better than themselves.  Clericalism, the view that pastors are the Christian professionals who can do Christianity better than anyone else is boo-honkey.

But it’s my belief that many pastors have been too passive in their leadership.  We’ve allowed ourselves to be cow-towed by other voices within the wider Christian community.  We let them take the lead because they have the biggest media megaphones, or the biggest mailing lists or they have somehow gained the ear of many people.  Which is fine.  It’s good to have a mix of voices in any movement.  But we’ve given too much of our pastoral leadership task away to some voices.
Read the rest of this entry »

Because we need to work together to solve problems that cannot be solved without our working together.  It’s a simple as that.  During the era of culture war (the 1980’s through the beginning of the new millenium), the basic structures of society were functioning.  We had a highway system, a phone system, an energy system, a political system, an economic system, that more or less worked for the majority of people.  We had the luxury of being sharply divided.  People could gain power by highlighting our divisions, rather than focusing on what we had in common.

Sadly, many religious people fell for this power grab, listening to voices of paranoia and fear. (Did anyone see the letter from James Dobson imagining 2012 if the hated liberals took over?  As paranoid as the anti-religion zealots who see faith as the root of all evil.)
Read the rest of this entry »

Young pastor, prepare thyself for the not-so-local church. You grew up, perhaps, in a local church, or you were drawn to pastoral ministry through your experience in a local church (if not, get thee to one pronto, unless you plan to give away what you haven’t experienced). You may have been to seminary and taken classes on leadership in the local church–teaching, managing budgets, working with boards, and all that. These leadership classed may have been based on the assumption that the local church is led by local leaders. But the local church has changed, and it has changed rapidly and dramatically. It’s not so local anymore. And that means that you, pastor, aspiring or actual, are not in the same position of leadership that pastors once were. You will find within the local church, the powerful influence of leaders you don’t know and will never meet, some of whom you admire at a distance, others who make your skin crawl, and here’s the kicker, most of whom work at cross purposes with each other.
Read the rest of this entry »