Eight years into the new millennium has diminished the novelty of that turn of the calendar. I can’t remember when was the last article or workshop I’ve seen with a reference to how to anticipate and address some concern “in the next millennium” or “in the new millennium.” And I, for one, am glad of it.

Reading history gives perspective and I try to read as much of it as I can. I finally got down the “to-read” books pile deep enough to pull out a book nine years in the waiting. And Robert Lacey’s The Year 1000: What Life Was Like at the Turn of the First Millennium (New York: Little, Brown and Co., 1999) was worth the wait.

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Our church’s youth group has about 5-6 active youth. When I first started working with them, I tried to schedule everything around everyone’s dates. I wanted to make sure to include everyone. I thought, “How hard could it be with such a small group!” Big mistake!

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Last week someone left a plastic bag on my porch. It contained two hefty telephone directories. This yearly event used to annoy me. I have no use for phone books. If I want to find a person, company, or address I use the internet. Phone books are obsolete. Why do they go through the expense of printing and distributing them?

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In preparation for an upcoming presentation I’ve been examining the dynamics of emotional process and anxiety as they relate to leadership. Since my orientation for this study is Bowen Family Systems Theory (BFST) my definition of leadership is related to a person’s functional position in a relationship system (a family, a corporation, an institution, etc.) rather than a narrow organizational definition.

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The following is from the book Myths: Fact and Fiction about Teaching and Learning by Israel Galindo. How well do you know fact from fiction?

Fiction: Christopher Columbus sailed to the new world on the Nina, the Pinta, and the Santa Maria.

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Who in the life of the Church can we look at as a clear leadership model for the church in the 21st century? Dr. Lynn Anderson answered this question in They Smell Like Sheep: Spiritual Leadership for the 21st Century (West Monroe: Howard Publishing Company, 1997) by pointing to the leadership style of Jesus in the New Testament. According to Anderson, Jesus exhibited three leadership models: shepherding, mentoring and equipping. These models can guide us as we strive to lead the church in a time when those outside the church are questioning the church’s relevance.

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What’s the difference between religious thinking and “religiosity”? Or, what’s the difference between faith and magical thinking? When I worked at a state mental hospital during my CPE it seemed rather easy to tell the difference in the “closed ward” where patients spent the first stage of their admittance. When a patient claimed to be Jesus Christ it was easy to identify that as delusional thinking. When a patient used religious language disconnected from the reality of their circumstance it seemed easy to diagnose “religiosity.” But what about for most of use church-going religiously committed (no pun intended) run-of-the mill believers? How do we distinguish authentic belief from magical thinking? What distinguishes prayer from wishful thinking?

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Just about every year one of our doctoral students approaches me wanting to do a study on why church members leave their congregation. About half the time it’s clear about what’s behind the motivation for the study: anxiety from church leaders (the deacons) or anxiety from the pastor. My usual response is to try to steer them toward more interesting research questions and a more worthwhile study. My comment to them is, “People leave the church for 101 reasons. Fifty of them are bad ones and fifty one are legitimate. In the end, it’s their decision to make.”

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