By David Williamson. Legendary sports writer Sid Hartman turned 100 on March 15. The Minneapolis Star-Tribune produced a full 18-page special section of the paper that day celebrating Sid’s 100th birthday. He was a local and perhaps national legend in part because every notable person he met or interviewed became one of Sid’s “close personal friends.” Subsections of the special…
By Kelli Sallman, reprinted from Made to Flourish. Record layoffs. Seclusion. Loss. In three weeks, Americans filed more than 30 million unemployment claims and more are coming. Shelter-in-place rules, age, illness, and the broad loss of livelihoods have stripped away roles and outlets for talents that help form self-identity and purposeful work. For many in our communities, the world has become a…
By Demi Prentiss, reprinted from Living God’s Mission. Much of the world is sharing the experience of “sheltering in place” to “flatten the curve” in the Covid-19 pandemic. Many of us are dealing, simultaneously, with an unfamiliar cascade of emotions. Who would imagine looking to Harvard Business Review for guidance? So Scott Berinato’s recent HBR article was a surprising gift. “We feel the world has changed,…
Part one of two; reprinted from Workship. As I visited Laurel the other day to drop off a pre-recording of our weekly church service, Handel’s Messiah was pumping from her house. Laurel is over 80 and needs voices and music to be a little louder for her to appreciate them fully. I gave her the DVD and asked how she…
By Laura Haley, reprinted from The Chalmers Center. We’re all reeling from the changes the world has experienced almost overnight from the COVID-19 outbreak. In addition to the very real dangers the disease itself poses, the upending of our economic, social, and educational systems is taking a toll on us all. Even church services have been forced to move online,…
By Emma Matheson, reprinted from Ethos Engage.Mail. The author is a registered nurse with emergency specialization. She is also in her final year of a Master of Ministry degree at Morling College and a resident church planter at Earlwood Baptist Church, Sydney. The world we now live in is a dramatically different place to what it was a month ago.…
By Alan Stanley, excerpted from Workship. When my eldest two boys were young, they were given life-sized dolls of Bert and Ernie – from the television program Sesame Street – for Christmas. When opening their presents, what captivated them was not Bert and Ernie, but two small bags of balloons. Hmmm, what to get excited about, Bert and Ernie, or…
By Kenneth Barnes, reprinted from the Oikonomia Network. These are exciting times at Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary, as we celebrate the 50th anniversary of the merger between Gordon Divinity School and Conwell School of Theology. The merger was the brainchild of Billy Graham, John Harold Ockenga and J. Howard Pew. The stated aim was to “establish within a strong evangelical framework, an independent,…
By Darren Lim, reprinted from the Salt & Light Australia Daily Devotional. As many of our Salt & Light contributors have written about this week the effects of COVID-19 on our society as a whole have been quite far reaching – even more so than a lot of us (certainly myself) may have initially anticipated. In many ways the unanticipated impacts have been less about the…
By Lisa Slayton; reprinted from The Wholeness Journey. When I launched my own consulting practice a year ago, it was a time of real disruption for me and a season of transition. Stepping away from the old thing without the new thing being fully formed. As has often been my practice when I am navigating something new, I go into…
The Green Room 