Last week I had two interesting conversations with familiar strangers. These were those people that we have become comfortable around because of propinquity yet don’t really know. You know them, people at work we see every day but only say “Hi” and “See your tomorrow.” Or, those people at church we greet every week because they sit near our pew to whom we’ve passed the peace but could not tell the names of their children or what they do for a living if asked.

As often happens, those familiar strangers can turn out to be very interesting people with life stories that verge on the adventuresome. Such was the case with my two conversations. Both left me saying to myself, “Wow. You never know.”

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We are please to announce that BTSR student Greg Harrell is the recipient of the 2008 G.R.A.CE. award. Congratulations, Greg! The G.R.A.C.E. Award is given to a student enrolled in the M.Div./Christian Education emphasis who shows the most promise of exemplary contribution to the profession of the pastoral educator.

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I discovered the book, Becoming A Community of Salt and Light, by Peggy Prevoznik Heins (Ava Maria Press, Notre Dame, Indiana) while I was researching our (Galindo and Canaday) soon-to-be-published book, Organizing for Christian Education Formation: A Faith Community Approach. The author makes the point that leadership is an issue of skill development, and that leaders not only need to be able to address the functions they are called to, but must possess certain leadership qualities. She calls attention to eleven leadership qualities in a chart in her book. These eleven qualities are listed with slight modification below.

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Last week I heard someone ask the question, “How am I supposed to think about this?” That’s a good question. Often we’re asked about what we think about something, but perhaps a more helpful question is “How are you thinking about this?” There are more ways of thinking than we can imagine (imaginative thinking being one of those ways).

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It’s been pretty hot in Richmond lately, even for this former Miami resident. For those needing relief from the heat, here’s something cool. One of the world’s most awesome waterfall (the term “awesome” has been trivialized due to its overuse for just about anything, but these cataracts may help recapture the intent of the word).

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I was a hospice chaplain for about five years. It was a great job, despite the obvious need to redefine professional competence and success that comes with the territory. Nothing I was able to do would help the patient “get better.” And every one of our patients died. Over six hundred patients died under my ministry. That’s not something I put on the resume.

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I’m often amused by what church leaders anxious about numbers and attendance assume about non-church-goers. A lot of loopy and unfortunate ideas get foisted on “prospects” in an effort to entice them into the church front doors—especially the 20-somethings and young adults. More often than not, it seems to me, those efforts tend to do their best to make church more palatable, friendlier, “inviting,” and “less threatening” only resulting in stripping the Church of all the distinctiveness it offers as something “set apart” from culture. I often imagine prospective seekers asking, “If there’s no difference, then what’s the difference?” Here’s another item from the June 12, 2008 issue of the Christian Century, this one on sacred space and architecture.

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One of the concepts I continually stress to my seminarians is the concept that Christianity, and faith, is corporate in nature. One expression of the concept is the idea that while there is a personal dimension to faith, faith is always corporate in nature. In other words, “You can’t be a Christian by yourself,” or, “You cannot be a Christian apart from the Body of Christ, the Church.”The corporate concept of Christianity and faith often is a challenge for many students reared in overly- or exclusively individualistic experiences of faith and church.

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