Last week I came across one of those news articles that makes you wonder if we’re all just flying upside down. This headline comes from the Telegraph in the UK”Council sets up scrutiny panel - to scrutinize its scrutiny panels”

A spokesperson from the Wealden District Council said a working party was established in July to oversee the decisions of its three existing scrutiny panels and to “scrutinize the Council’s scrutiny arrangements.” It sounds to me like the citizens of Wealden District are the ones getting scrutted…but I digress. The article continues:

Mark Wallace, from the Taxpayers Alliance, said: “Whilst it may be well-intentioned the council appear to have wrapped themselves up in knots and ended up in an absurd situation. By all means they should review their procedures but…

Mike Foster thinks we should stop calling ourselves “Pastor.” In a tweet last summer he wrote: “If I don’t make employees/clients call me ‘Creative Principal Mike’ then why do some expect ‘Pastor’ in front of their name?”

He’s not the only one dropping the “Pastor” prefix. Erwin McManus is known as the “Cultural Architect of Mosaic.” I’ve also met a few executive pastors who are the”Chief of Staff.”

Maybe they’re all on to something. After all, “pastor” doesn’t carry the cache it once did. According to one survey the profession of “pastor” is near the bottom of the list of most-respected professions…just above “car salesman.” To make matters worse, pastors don’t seem to think very highly of their profession either. The following stats come from The Fuller Institute, George Barna, and…

Today I’m at Northwestern University to speak at the “Leadership for a Religiously Diverse World” conference hosted by the Interfaith Youth Core. I’ll be sitting on a panel with representatives from a number of other faiths to discuss why we believe cooperation between religions in worth the effort.

I was connected with the conference and IFYC through Eboo Patel, the president of IFYC. Eboo and I actually grew up together in Glen Ellyn, IL, and attended elementary through high school together. We lost contact after high school, but our lives took interesting parallel paths. Eboo’s parents and my father both immigrated to the US from India. And after years of exploration, Eboo came to embrace Islam and pursue issues of interfaith cooperation. I, on the other hand, committed to…

I’m in Atlanta this week for the Catalyst Conference. The blog I manage for Leadership journal, Out of Ur, is one of the official blog sites for the event. I’ll be posting regularly on the site, as will Marshall Shelley, Kevin Miller, and Drew Dyck. You can keep track of what’s happening at OutofUr.com.

If you’re at Catalyst, let me know. It’d be nice to see some friends and interact with Leadership subscribers and Urbanites.

Read more about ministry legitimacy and “The Daisy Cutter Doctrine” here.

On Wednesday (09/09/09), Leadership Network and Catalyst hosted an online event called “The Nines.” It featured 9 hours of 9 minute videos posted by church leaders each answering this question: “If I had nine minutes to share one thing with church leaders across America, what would I tell them?”I was invited to participate in The Nines, and I chose to talk about the issue of legitimacy and something I call “the Daisy Cutter Doctrine.” I’ve gotten a number of emails and Facebook responses to the video. And some colleagues have reported some Twitter activity about it too. (I didn’t actually see my video air or the Tweets because I was taking my son to his first day of pre-school at the time.)

I guess the organizers of The Nines…

Back in May I spoke at a conference in Portland, Oregon. Among other things I did a seminar based on The Divine Commodity. After returning home someone directed me to a blog post by Pete Tegeler. Pete had attended the conference in Portland and decided to create a “fake” interview with me on his blog based on what I had presented.

It’s always scary to have a stranger putting words into your mouth, but after reading Pete’s fictional interview I was actually impressed. He not only captured my thoughts accurately, he even did a great job rendering me in MS Paint. Here’s an excerpt of my interview with Pete Tegeler about Consumer Christianity.

From Pete Teleger’s blog:

Like I said in my last post, Christian commodification has been on my radar. …

The following article was published in the Spring 2009 issue of Leadership Journal.  I wrote the piece with Brandon O’Brien. What isn’t mentioned in the article is that Eboo Patel and I grew up together in Glen Ellyn, IL. We attended the same elementary, junior high, and high school. We lost touch after graduation and reconnected for this article. The full piece can be read on Leadership’s website.

Eboo Patel is not the most likely seminary professor. His credentials are not the issue. Patel earned his doctorate from Oxford University, and he is a respected commentator on religion for The Washington Post and National Public Radio. He has spoken in venues across the world, including conferences for evangelical church leaders.

What makes Eboo Patel an unlikely seminary professor is that he is…

I know Eric Bryant through our participation together with the Origins Project. On his blog, Eric has been doing a series of teleseminars with church leaders and thinkers. On June 1 (3-4pm Central) he will be interviewing me live about The Divine Commodity. The teleseminar is free, but you need to sign up in advance to participate.

SIGN UP HERE for this free, live teleseminar.  

Eric’s teleseminars are similar to conference calls where you can dail in and listen/interact live, or you may listen online via live streaming audio. By signing up you can also submit questions to Eric and me to answer during the call. Check out other recent teleseminars on Eric’s blog.

I’ll be in San Diego this week for the National Pastor’s Convention hosted by Zondervan. Leadership’s assistant editor, Brandon O’Brien, will also be there and we’ll both be posting regular updates from the conference at Out of Ur. I’ve been to NPC a number of times in the past, and it’s always a great place to make connections. If you’re planning to attend and would like to chat, be sure to drop me a line.

The schedule this year is pretty full for me. Here are some highlights:

-Meeting with Dan Kimball, Dave Gibbons, Erwin McManus and others to discuss the formation of the new network which is still in its early phases of development.

-I’ll be teaching two seminars: “The Critical Role of the Imagination in Spiritual Formation and Preaching,” and “Why…