The most recent Top 20 list of most religious college/university campuses. An observation: Of the top 20, there are 4 public schools (if Univ. of Utah is public). They are:

• Texas A&M University (#13)
• US Air Force Academcy (#14)
• Auburn University (#19)
• University of Utah (#20)

Top 20 list is here. Top five were…

1. Thomas Aquinas College (CA)
2. Brigham Younger University (UT)
3. Wheaton College (IL)
4. Hillsdale College (MI)
5. University of Dallas (TX)

My alma mater, Texas A&M has appeared on these sorts of lists before. I’m not suprised. Christian ministry on campus is strong.

Thoughts?

I can’t remember when I got turned on to TED talks, but I enjoy them sporadically. I’ll get on a roll and watch quite a few over a couple days or so. Here’s a couple I’ve enjoyed recently. Both of these guys come from different perspectives and end up with different conclusions, and both are worth the listen.

AJ Jacobs on his experiment on a year of living biblically (and book by that name):

or: http://www.ted.com/talks/a_j_jacobs_year_of_living_biblically.html

Rick Warren on the importance of finding one’s purpose and significance in life:

or: http://www.ted.com/talks/lang/eng/rick_warren_on_a_life_of_purpose.html

Gut! According to Made to Stick brothers Chip Heath and Dan Heath. They write about the value of feelings over rational deliberation in their current Fast Company column, “In Defense of Feelings.”

The obvious application to the church and the gospel is the long work of forming Christian character in people vs. equipping the mind alone to think through ethical issues. On the one hand, we definitely need the ability to think through complex ethical problems in order to find and live out the faithful response. On the other hand, we must be able to sniff out questionable situations and say no, because we are just as able (and apt?) to use our rational powers to justify ourselves in our badness as we are to follow God’s leading into goodness.

Saw a brief post on my friend JD’s blog about Buzz Aldrin’s account of celebrating the Eucharist, or Holy Communion, on the moon. Check it out here.

A longer account of things is here.

from Seth Godin’s blog… “The Law of the Little Shovel” post includes two items of interest for church…

first, on making an impact:

If you want to dig a big hole, you need to stay in one place.

If you walk around town with a little shovel, you’ll just end up digging thousands of little holes, not one big one.

Call on one person ten times and you might make the sale. Call on ten people once each and you will likely get ten rejections.

second, on effectiveness:

The important thing to remember is that separate events are often separate. If you use the same ineffective approach on one thousand people, it’s not going to start working better just because you use it more often.

ht: Steve Corn

from Peter Bregman’s blog at blogs.harvardbusiness.org, on how to change a corporate culture.

To start a culture change all we need to do is two simple things:

1. Do dramatic story-worthy things that represent the culture we want to create. Then let other people tell stories about it.
2. Find other people who do story-worthy things that represent the culture we want to create. Then tell stories about them.

For example, if you want to create a faster moving, less perfectionist culture, instead of berating someone for sending an email without proper capitalization, send out a memo with typos in it.

Or if you want managers and employees to communicate more effectively, stop checking your computer in the middle of a conversation every time the new message sound beeps. Instead, put your computer to sleep when they walk in your office.

Or if you’re trying to create a more employee-focused culture, instead of making the bride work on her wedding day, give her the week off.

We live by stories. We tell them, repeat them, listen to them carefully, and act in accordance with them.

We can change our stories and be changed by them.

Some stuff I’ve enjoyed reading online recently…

Sum up your leadership in 6 words – blogs.harvardbusiness

What’s the best 1st question for worship leading/planning? - JD Walt

On the gap between curious vs. committed – Seth Godin

Give up on humility? – Copyblogger

The value of failing – blogs.harvardbusiness

Creativity under pressure – blogs.harvardbusiness

Nonprofits and learning – blogs.harvardbusiness

How a leader is like a mountain-climbing guide – John Maxwell

So… I’m reading The Catcher in the Rye, by JD Salinger for the first time right now. I really enjoy Salinger’s style; I can see how this book is so popular from that aspect alone. Early on (in ch 3), I ran into this quotation from the main character, one Holden Caulfield, on how he evaluates the books he reads. It strikes me as an apt approach to Scripture and prayer as well.

What knocks me out is a book that, when you’re all done reading it, you wish the author that wrote it was a terrific friend of yours and you could call him up on the phone whenever you felt like it.

I’ve been reading a good bit lately. Mostly some books on ministry skills, which is good. But it is important not to get too stuck in those.

So, I just in the past few days read Timothy Keller’s The Prodigal God: Recovering the Heart of the Christian Faith. It is fantastic. He takes Jesus’ classic parable from Luke 15, which he reminds us ought to be called “the lost sons”, and helps us inhabit the text by interpreting both it and us well.

Both sons are lost, but only the younger knows he is. The older brother has been a faithful rule-keeper, but lacks love. In the words of Paul, he is a “resounding gong” and “clanging symbal” of a man. He does not know he is lost. Neither have chosen the true way of life, loving the Father for his own sake. Keller unpacks the parable, and with it the gospel, so wonderfully I felt engaged by the reconciliation of Christ once again.

On Tim Keller — If you don’t know who he is, he’s become more widely known in just the past couple of years. He’s had a couple of books published of which this is the second one. The first, The Reason for God: Belief in an Age of Skepticism, is an apologetic work. I’ve got it, but haven’t read it yet. Keller is pastor of Redeember Presbyterian Church in NYC. Christianity Today recently ran a feature on him here.

Go ahead and pick up The Prodigal God… and read it sooner than later.

How we say it is at least as important as what we say. I think that statement captures what Shane Hipps (former advertizing guy for Porche, current Mennonite pastor, and author of Flicking Pixels: How Technology Shapes Your Faith), The Onion’s recent “story” (“Report: 90% of Waking Hours Spent Staring at Glowing Rectangles“), and an essay from last summer in The Atlantic that I originally linked here titled “Is Google Making Us Stupid?“

A new friend recently read Flickering Pixels and blogged some of the big points here, here, here, and here.

And here’s a short video of Rob Bell interviewing Shane Hipps at the National Pastor’s Convention.

For communicators of the gospel, this means that we need to work very hard at our preaching/teaching and invest what it takes to become very good. I think it is alright to utilize video, but we should exercise a lot of caution and be judicious in our frequency of use. Big, even oversized, props are better I think because of their ability to spur on imagination before, during, and after the message.

Another big take-away from all of this is: READ!

I’m glad I’ve become a reader as an adult (didn’t like it as much as a Jr High/HS student). Reading is better for our brains in lots of ways. One thing I’ve done to decrease my TV time (I still have a few shows I like) is not replace a show after the series finaly wraps it up.