Daniel Darling's Blog, page 15
September 10, 2020
The Way Home: Chris Crawford on the pro-life witness, politics, and how churches can help people vote
Show Notes
Guest Biography: Chris Crawford is a Senior Program Associate for Constructive Politics at Democracy Fund, an independent foundation working to ensure that our political system is able to withstand new challenges and deliver on its promise to the American people. In that role, he manages the Faith in Democracy portfolio, a collection of faith-based initiatives that empower religious leaders and their communities to promote pluralism and strengthen our democracy. This work is part of the Governance Team’s constructive politics strategy to explore what unites us while helping governing institutions become more diverse, inclusive, and better serve all Americans.
Chris joined Democracy Fund in 2015 after serving as a government affairs associate at Susan B. Anthony List. During the 2014 midterm elections, Chris was Assistant National Field Director for the organization’s Super PAC, leading a Get Out The Vote operation that made over 1 million live voter contacts across four states. Chris has worked on multiple campaigns at the local and federal level in his home state of New Hampshire.
Chris holds a degree in political science from The George Washington University and is currently pursuing an Executive Masters in Nonprofit Administration from The University of Notre Dame.
Website: DemocracyFund.org
Twitter: @CrawfordStuff
August 27, 2020
The Way Home: Tim Carney on division and healing in an Alienated America
What is the source of division and divisiveness in our country? What important bonds should we be creating at the local and national level to help bring healing and hope? Tim Carney is a journalist, author, and Christian whose book Alienated America looks at the policies and social disruption that has plagued many American communities. He joins me on The Way Home podcast as part of a special series highlighting themes from my new book, A Way With Words: How to Use Our Online Conversations for Good.
Show Notes
Guest Biography: Timothy P. Carney is a columnist at the Washington Examiner and a resident fellow at the American Enterprise Institute. He is the author of The Big Ripoff: How Big Business and Big Government Steal Your Money and Obamanomics: How Barack Obama is Bankrupting You and Enriching His Wall Street Friends, Corporate Lobbyists, and Union Bosses. He lives in the Washington, D.C., area.
New Book: Alienated America: Why Some Places Thrive While Others Collapse
Twitter: @TPCarney
August 25, 2020
Grace for Leaders in a Time of Covid
I’ve had conversations with pastors across the United States over the last few months. And while my friends do ministry in vastly different contexts, there is one thing they share in common: pastoring (and pastoral care) in 2020 is the most exhausting, frustrating, difficult season of their lives. The cross-pressures right now on leaders is immense. Some don’t understand why their churches can’t resume the full range of ministries they conducted before the pandemic. Others don’t think there should be ministry at all until there is a vaccine. And then the racial tension in the country has provided a whole different set of discussions with opinions pulling and tugging at a pastor’s leadership. Having to develop new sets of plans every few weeks has worn out so many pastors.
Grace and the common good
What we need in this moment is something Christians are often too late to dispense: grace toward fellow believers. For those of us who sit in the pews, we should give the benefit of the doubt to those in leadership. This doesn’t mean we always agree with hard decisions or always come down in the same spot on cultural discussions. Grace isn’t the same as a lack of accountability for leadership. But it seems that we are too quick to dismiss our fellow believers over disagreements on important but secondary issues. And pastors, trying to display the best wisdom possible, are often caught in the crossfire in their pursuit of the common good for their people.
These times in which we are living are unusual and strange. We are grappling with choices we never thought we’d have to make. Social pressures bombard us every day as we scroll social media and hear what our friends and family are saying. Financial pressures hit us as the economic fallout of the pandemic continues to wreak havoc on communities and families.
Read more:
image credit: milo bostock
August 20, 2020
The Way Home: Max Lucado on pastoring in a pandemic
Max Lucado is one of the most widely read authors in the world. His books have sold over 100 million copies worldwide in 54 languages. But most of all, Max is a pastor, whose reassuring words have brought encouragement and hope during troubled times. His daily encouragement via video has helped thousands endure a global pandemic, racial tension and economic distress. He also shares about his writing process.
Max comes back on the podcast to talk about pastoring in a pandemic and how leaders can make difficult decisions in a way that both shepherds and leads. His latest book, You Are Never Alone releases on September 15 and helps those who feel lonely and disconnected find intimacy in a relationship with Christ.
Show Notes
Guest Biography: Since entering the ministry in 1978, Max Lucado has served churches in Miami, Florida; Rio de Janeiro, Brazil; and San Antonio, Texas. He currently serves as Teaching Minister of Oak Hills Church in San Antonio. He is America’s bestselling inspirational author with more than 140 million books in print.
New Book: You Are Never Alone
Website: MaxLucado.com
Facebook: MaxLucado
Instagram: @maxlucado
Twitter: @maxlucado
August 13, 2020
6 Social Media Habits Pastors Should Avoid
“… And he’s a pastor!”
I hear this phrase almost every week about a pastor’s online activity—namely, their treatment toward another human being through harsh speech. It’s almost as if we get behind a keyboard or touchscreen and forget our calling as heralds of God’s Word, shepherds of God’s people.
Today there are many ways for pastors to disqualify—or at least embarrass—themselves, but few are as easy and fatal as social media. One friend of mine remarked recently that before looking for a church, Christians should check a pastor’s social media feed. That’s good advice.
Pastors—particularly when we have that label in our social media bio—can make or break the opinion of seekers or cynics when it comes to representing Christ well in our interactions. And a pastor who displays a critical spirit or ill will toward those not in their tribe can quickly discourage other believers on Twitter.
So what are some critical mistakes pastors can make on social media? Here are six of the most common ones we should avoid.
Read more:
Image credit: Christopher on Flickr Creative Commons
The Way Home: Paula Faris on why she walked away from her dream job
Paula Faris was the weekend host of Good Morning America, an anchor on The View and one of America’s top journalists when a series of trials forced her to reconsider her calling and walk away from her dream job. Paula has also hosted World News Now and America This Morning.
Paula joins me on The Way Home podcast to talk about her career in broadcasting, what it’s like to live out the Christian faith in a secular news environment, and her brand new memoir: Called Out: Why I Traded Two Dream Jobs for a Life of True Calling.
Show Notes
Guest Biography: Paula Faris is a television correspondent for ABC News and host of the ABC podcast Journeys of Faith. From 2014 to 2018, Faris was co-anchor of Good Morning America Weekend. She also was co-host of The View for seasons 19-21. Faris graduated from Cedarville University with a degree in broadcast communications. She lives with her husband and three children in New York.
New Book: Called Out: Why I Traded Two Dream Jobs for a Life of True Calling .
Twitter: @paulafaris
Facebook: Paula Faris
August 6, 2020
The Way Home: Tim Challies on how Christians should engage online
Tim Challies has been blogging on the Internet since the Internet first started. His blog, challies.com, was an early pioneer in Christian content online. Tim joins me on The Way Home podcast to discuss the way Christians should engage online and on social media, as well as the good and bad ways we approach the word “discernment.”
Show Notes
Guest Biography: Tim Challies is a Christian, a husband to Aileen and a father to three children aged 13 to 19. He worships and serves as an elder at Grace Fellowship Church in Toronto, Ontario. He is also a book reviewer, a co-founder of Cruciform Press, and has written a number of books including:
The Discipline of Spiritual Discernment (Crossway, 2007)
Sexual Detox: A Guide For Guys Who Are Sick of Porn (Cruciform Press, 2010)
The Next Story: Life and Faith After the Digital Explosion (Zondervan, 2011)
Do More Better: A Practical Guide to Productivity (Cruciform Press, 2015)
Visual Theology: Seeing and Understanding the Truth About God (Zondervan, 2016)
A Visual Theology Guide to the Bible (Zondervan, 2019)
Epic: An Around-the-World Journey through Christian History (Zondervan, 2020)
Website: challies.com
Twitter: @challies
Facebook: Facebook.com/challies
Featured Resource: My new book, A Way With Words, focuses on how Christians can use their online conversations for good. In the book, I lay out an approach that applies biblical wisdom to our engagement with social media, an approach that neither retreats from modern technology nor ignores the harmful ways in which Christians often engage publicly. A Way With Words comes out in less than two weeks, but you can pre-order now here.
Jesus in the Bio But Nasty in the Timeline?
A follower of Jesus myself, I normally like to see those words on someone’s Twitter profile. Lately, however, I’m reluctant to scroll down for fear that this same follower has cussed out a politician on the social media platform or tweeted nasty things at a person they disagree with.
How can people who claim Jesus as Lord act so mean?
First, we often think that because we are fighting for the right things – justice, truth, righteousness — that it doesn’t matter how we say what we say. The Apostle Peter, no stranger to impulsive talk, has a tip for us. He urged first-century believers to “have an answer for everyone for the hope that lies within you” but to do this with “gentleness and kindness.” In other words, civility and courage are not enemies, but friends. The loudest person in the room or online is not necessarily the most courageous.
Second, we go off the rails online because we forget the humanity of the person on the other end of that tweet. That person we are calling out or punching at rhetorically is not a mere avatar to be crushed, but a person, made in the image of God. Those with whom we disagree are not the sum total of their opinions. James, Jesus’ brother and another leader in the first-century church, urges us to consider the imago dei of the other before we unleash a verbal assault.
Third, we often abandon kindness because politics has replaced religion as the primary driver of our discourse. We may have Jesus in the bio, but it’s the Republican or Democratic Party that is really in our hearts.
The collapse of religious institutions and the decline of church attendance have created a vacuum that politics is only too ready to fill. But politics makes for a disappointing god. It only takes and will never fully satisfy the longings of the heart.
How do we know we are worshipping at the altar of the 24/7 political cycle? When we make every argument a political one. When every aspect of life becomes read through a narrow ideological lens. When every criticism of our candidate is perceived as an attack on our hero. When we turn a blind eye to the misdeeds of leaders in our ideological camp.
As we muddle through the coming election season and a global pandemic that has divided Americans, Christians will be more tempted than ever to abandon civility.
Read more here at RNS.
July 30, 2020
The Way Home: N.T. Wright on Finding God in the Pandemic
Show Notes
Guest Biography: N.T. Wright is the former Bishop of Durham in the Church of England and one of the world’s leading Bible scholars. He is now serving as the Chair of New Testament and Early Christianity at the School of Divinity at the University of St. Andrews. For twenty years he taught New Testament studies at Cambridge, McGill and Oxford University. His award-winning books include The Case for the Psalms, How God Became King, Simply Jesus, After You Believe, Surprised by Hope, Simply Christian, Scripture and the Authority of God. Perhaps his most significant work is Resurrection of the Son of God.
Latest Book: God and the Pandemic: A Christian Reflection on the Coronavirus and Its Aftermath
Website: ntwrightpage.com
Facebook: Official N.T. Wright
July 4, 2020
Politics and the Pandemic
USA Today published my latest oped on politics and the pandemic. Here is an excerpt:
We are learning more and more about the virus every day and our responses are getting smarter and more targeted. And our best and brightest minds are working feverishly to develop vaccines and treatments to hold back this deadly contagion that threatens our most vulnerable.
But we cannot succeed if we are divided. We need less finger-pointing and more cooperation. We need our institutions to display greater transparency. We need leaders with credibility in a time of cynicism.
It erodes public trust when public officials shame one kind of public gathering and encourage another. It’s not very thoughtful when others confuse wearing a mask with an infringement of liberty. And it fans the flame of division when media outlets let bias and sensationalism shape their coverage instead of informing the public and reporting the facts.
What we need are leaders willing to speak candidly and take measures, not guided by social media chatter or media pressure, but based on the data in front of them and informed by human dignity. We need hope and realism, faith and science, courage and civility.
Read more
