Tyler Braun's Blog, page 20

A Conversation About the Intersection of Faith and Work

Last week I spent an hour with my friend Paul Pastor at the Mt. Angel Abbey. Aside from the great view on a beautiful day, we discussed the topics surrounding an upcoming event put on by Christianity Today and Leadership Journal on faith and work.

The event is in Portland, and as a reader of this blog, I’m able to offer you $40 off the Redeeming Work event! When you register here, just enter promotional codeBL40.

Here’s my conversation with Paul Pastor, one of the speakers at Redeeming Work (ch...

Life Wins

For the entire length of my Christian faith I’ve always placed a high priority on a few simple, quiet moments of reading, prayer, quietness, and meditation. In high school we called this JAM time. In college we called it quiet time. As an adult I simply think of it as soul cultivation.

In these moments I care about much more than simply broadening my knowledge about God, but for the purposes of my thoughts here let’s consider this emphasis on “quiet times” to reflect a push by Christians to kn...

Sneak Peek of My Latest Project

I have an exciting opportunity to throw your way today. But first, a bit of the back story (or, you can just scroll to the bottom and read about the sneak preview).

It seems I’m consistently having conversations with worship pastors and individuals who help lead worship at their local church, and ultimately these conversations end up focusing on which songs our churches are singing. We throw out a rearranged old hymn our church has enjoyed, or just the latestnew song people have seemed to enga...

Will I Write Another Book?

Ever since releasing my first traditionally published book with Moody back in August 2012, the number one question asked of me and my writing is, “Are you going to write another book?” It’s an interesting question because authors don’t simply choose to write a book or not, there’s plenty of other factors involved in publishing a book with a reputable organization.

The short answer to the question is simple: yes, someday I hope to write another book.

But not right now.

Behind the answer are two c...

This Good Friday World

Revelation 22:2 “I saw the Holy City, the new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God.”

Christian theology gets warped when the focus of God’s primary dwelling place is heaven, not earth.When Christians see their ultimate goal as being with God up in the clouds, they become escapists who ignore the importance of the physical earth in God’s plan of salvation and redemption.

John’s writing in Revelation is from the perspective of someone on earth, and he is being given a vision of the new J...

Up In Flames

Last Friday afternoon a guy from church called me frantically asking if our church building was on fire. I was confused. “Of course not,” I thought. But I, of course, was not at the building either. A few phone calls later it was confirmed that a small fire had started. Didn’t sound too bad.

I arrived 45 minutes later to smoke pouring out of every open window in the entire building. So much for small fire. As I later learned, most often a fire causes its damage through smoke, not flame.

No one...

On Being “Real” Online (a note to high maintenance online over-sharers)

Your feeds of full of them. The guy who sits in the back of pews of your church, never sharing a word, but whose Facebook feed is full of rants and frustrations about life. The family member you see twice a decade that you can’t unfollow, but who only shares about their latest setback in a way that makes you roll your eyes.

The power of the internet is its ability to give space for people to say “me too.” It’s what led to the insane growth of social networks online. Someone else is going throu...

Best of 2014

As a parent of one and soon to be two, 2014 has been a year of limits. Being a parent limits my free time. I no longer have time to watch bad tv shows, or read bad books, or watch bad movies. Most often I don’t even have time for the good ones.

If something isn’t connecting with me I move on quickly. But the ones that connect I come back to over and over again. In light of that…

Here’s a short top three list of my favorite things from the past year:

Books

Bonhoeffer : Read this on vacation in Marc...

Christmas Is Not the End, It’s the Beginning

The afternoon of Christmas Day is the worst, especially as a kid. All the presents are unwrapped. Piles of wrapping paper have filled the living room. You’ve gotten in a few hours of playing with all your new gadgets, and then reality sets in…it’s over Christmas is over. All of that anticipation is over. Time to clean up the mess.

This is where the traditional church calendar comes in handy. The old traditions of Christmas for Christians put the celebration of Christmas as beginning on the eve...

In Favor of Social Media Overuse

I fully admit that I use social media far too often. I joined Facebook back in the days of college exclusivity. I joined Twitter before Oprah joined and it blew up. And since then I’ve continued to pour hours and hours into the ongoing boom that is social networks. I’ve even made what I consider legitimate friendships through them, but none of this is why I’m in favor of engaging on social networks as much as possible.

In years past you could stay up with current events by receiving the newspa...