A good friend sent me this article, and it resonated so strongly with me that I’m sending it on to you. Perhaps that is because Pete and I also attended a well-known university, and what we’re doing now also has little to do with our respective degrees. In any case, I find this post both challenging and liberating. I think you may too.
You’d never know it now, but when I first met Pete, almost 40 years ago, he was a shy, introverted nerd. Really. Oh, he was sweet and kind, and smart and fun, but he seemed unsure of himself, and a tad socially awkward. Much later I happened to see a bumper sticker that summed him up quite nicely:
(He was an engineering major, but you get the idea.)
Which is more important—social media or an actual person standing in front of you?
Most of us would agree—at least most of the time, the physical presence of a person trumps catching up on Facebook or Twitter, answering texts or phone calls. Sure, my best friend understands that if we’re chatting and my husband calls, I’ll probably take the call. And I’ll tell Pete that I’m in the middle of a conversation—is this important or can it wait a bit? On the other hand, if my friend is confiding about something serious and important to her (and me), I might not answer the call. There are no hard and fast rules, but there is courtesy.
A friend of ours recently pointed out an article by Shane Bennett that appeared several years ago in Missions Catalyst, “a free, weekly electronic digest of mission news and resources designed to inspire and equip Christians worldwide for global ministry.”
In his two-part post on Top Ten Myths about Missions , Bennett explained:
I want to understand how the average Lou and Sue, sitting in the pew, think about missions stuff. What begins to crackle in their minds when the pastor introduces a “missions” speaker? What synapses fire when a video rolls about poor kids in Faroffistan? From what I’ve seen there are some serious misconceptions floating around in our churches, at least some of our churches. We could call these collective assumptions, beliefs that simply don’t reflect reality, “myths.”
Compost 