In the late 90s, while I was still single, I met a young lady from India. We were part of the same Christian community for several months and it was not until circumstances sent us in different directions on the globe that I discovered that she had concealed a small crush on me. This was revealed in a letter she sent several months after the fact. She was back in India and it was now safe to reveal her crush. She had not pursued me, she explained, because she was shy and, anyway, her family was quite traditional and the…

The last two days I have posted Robert Frost’s poem Nothing Gold Can Stay: Nature’s first green is gold, Her hardest hue to hold.Her early leaf’s a flower;But only so an hour.Then leaf subsides to leaf.So Eden sank to grief,So dawn goes down to day.Nothing gold can stay.   After reading my post the other day, Melissa commented, “Boy, that’s a depressing poem.” Like other great poetry, many of Frost’s poems have a discernable spiritual dimension, but apparently his own personal faith was, as one biographer worded it, “nothing straightforward”.  So it is unclear if Frost believed that “nothing gold can…

Yesterday I mentioned Robert Frost’s poem Nothing Gold Can Stay. When I discussed this poem in my classroom a few days ago, I took the opportunity to introduce the literary term “allusion”.  As I suspected, the word was unfamiliar to the students, so I explained that an allusion is when an author references some famous person, place, or event but does not explain its relevance because he or she assumes the audience already has the knowledge and can make the connection.  The obvious allusion in Nothing Gold Can Stay is to “Eden”: Nature’s first green is gold, Her hardest hue to…

Lately I’ve become aware that I miss teaching.  I mean, I miss teaching the stuff that really matters. The stuff that at least has the potential for being life-changing.  In my current classes I focus on critical thinking and reading comprehension and writing skills. All important for life and career – nobody has to convince me of that.  But, ultimately, so what if we grow better able to read and comprehend if we don’t get to practice with the most important Book of all time? I remember hearing someone once say about typical American conversations, “We spend the most time…

I found out years after the fact that “God forbid!” was my father’s reaction when I first announced (during my senior year in college) that I was going to pursue a career in youth ministry.  His objection – which he kept to himself – wasn’t about anything like low pay, lack of status, or limited career options.  No, the gut-level “God forbid!” came out of his years of attending local churches and especially the experience of serving on various church committees.  Here was dad’s fear: I was a naïve idealist who was about to walk into the reality of the inner…

One evening, years ago, as a young youth pastor I walked into a scheduled church meeting, hoping it would be a short one.  And not just because it was a church meeting, but because I had play practice to get to. I was just out of college, living in LeMars, Iowa, and I had been pulled into a community theater production of a goofy play called “Bleacher Bums”. I had been way too shy to ever get on stage in high school, but I had always wanted to try. And now I was doing it. The cast was an eclectic…

The internet is littered with “leadership quotes”.  I looked through some recently and found: The first responsibility of a leader is to define reality. The last is to say thank you. In between, the leader is a servant. —Max DePree You manage things; you lead people. —Rear Admiral Grace Murray Hopper Before you are a leader, success is all about growing yourself. When you become a leader, success is all about growing others. —Jack Welch A leader is one who knows the way, goes the way, and shows the way. —John Maxwell Effective leadership is not about making speeches or…

I am always looking for solid Christian teaching online and thought you might be interested in one particular man who is doing some top-notch Scriptural studies on YouTube: Mike Winger.  Winger is apparently an associate pastor at a church in California, but he has dedicated more and more of his time in recent years to producing free content online.  He’s got hundreds of videos on YouTube these days – everything from refuting Jehovah’s Witnesses to methodically moving through the entire Gospel of Mark in 50 + parts. Winger is a rare breed – a teacher who is: -Relatable -Knowledgeable -Interesting…