Some Personal Notes
I have been enjoying this year so much I have not even bothered to stop and consider it retrospectively. I think I would like to here in a few short notes. Enjoy.
First, my heart is so full. God has blessed me with so many beautiful friends and family. I count them. I have been naming them in my prayers. My only trouble is that I need more hours and more money to spend on each of them. I am literally asking Dad for both of them.
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Not Dead
Contrary to popular opinion, I am not dead. It is true that I fell into a hole of silence since the first of February at this website. The fall wouldn't have been so noticeable if it had not been for a fairly prolific season of writing and posts in the months prior. My apologies. My problem is people. I like them. They come to my home, I see them in pubs, I speak to them on the Skype machine and it is so much fun that ... poof ... months go by and I realize I haven't written anything for my public space on the web. I can hear you crying, "Foul!" Yes, I realize you are people, too, and it is unfair that you get relegated to the cyberstatus persona non grata. True, and you have my sympathies. The silence, you have now understood, was just a web myth. I was actually very vocal and present with so many amazing folks but, for me, present in one space often means quiet in another. Hmm. I guess I write to let you know that I remember you. I don't lack interest in serving you in some small way on this site. I love writing and communicating kingdom ideas, but when it all comes down I am just better at it in person.
Say, isn't this a spring board to a paragraph about the relational ills of the Facebook generation?
Yes, I think so.
Oh, but isn't it also a gratuitous lead in for promoting our Village Gatherings this year?
Yes, that, too.
First, quickly about Facebook. They are not people. They are tiny portals into whatever part of their lives they want you to see. That's not a friend, its a tiny public relations campaign. If you really want to have a friend you are going to have to show up and look at and into a person from every angle you can, have dinner, go fishing, and learn the quirks of the way they laugh. Shut up already about how you can breadcrumb an almost infinite number of web people portals along with tiny crumbs from your life as you tell yourself and others that you are "staying connected." Let's talk about the death of the idea of connection, much less friendship. Connection used to be a reasonable definable quantity of relational value. Now it has been stretched out so far that is fast becoming meaningless. This distance between the Facebook feeling of being connected and actually being intimate with a close comrade or even a spouse has grown so wide now that it is blowing the curve on our entire relationship landscape. That is to say that the distance between an acquaintance and a comrade used to be, say, 10 miles. In between on this 10 mile stretch we had casual friends, relatives, work partners, closer friends, professional partners, best friends, and more all the way up to life-mate. The distances between these folks could we walked in a short time. People had the opportunity to move a bit on this scale of relational understanding over time and it was a normal part of a healthy life. Many other faces appeared on the perimeters but they were given no "status" and were free to stay off the road of relationship with you. Now, enter Facebook and the idea of staying connected by posting a note about what you liked at dinner. Now, because of this expansion of the definition, the 10 mile stretch between your acquaintances and your spouse is about 1,000 miles. The first 10 miles of reasonable relationship was stretched out to about 100 miles of relational distance. This has made it so hard to travel the personal distance to meet with and engage those folks on a regular basis, It has brought confusion because we don't focus on them like we used to. The remaining 900 miles of relationships is some invented blend of used-to-knows, keeping-in-touches, and potential customers. Yes, that last one was supposed to sting a little. Look, I am a both/and guy. I ripped into the Facebook thing a minute to shake the table, but I am not advocating a cyberfree lifestyle for you. I don't endorse the horse and buggy to get around town. I do endorse one very simple thing: decide to prioritize. It really is OK to draw circles on the ground, where you stand in the middle, and you add only a few in the center circle, you and add a few more in the next concentric circle, and bunch in the last one. Outside that last circle is all kinds of people you may love on occassion when you see them, but they are not normally to be your concern. The question is now: "How do you plan to enjoy the relationships in your circle in the coming months?" This is, after all, the only Church you will ever really know, the only family you will ever relate to, and the only people that will attend your birthdays or your funeral with any sincerity. Make them count!
Now, to the Village Gatherings. They are important for one reason: they give people a chance to come together and share their lives in real time. Specifically, these people are very hungry for the kingdom. And in keeping with our definitions above most of these people do know each other, or at least a couple "each others" in the guest list. We don't invite the world, and the world doesn't attend. We first invite and gather our friends, and then we try and open it up to their friends. If you have been tracking on my blog here for a while, or connecting in the podcast then you have just entered the opportunity zone for us to build a connection, but we don't have one yet. Would you like to? Then come to a Village Gathering. Make real friends. Get connected. As my friend Daniel and Garrett would attest, it is the deep value and powerful impact of receiving an impartation of the kingdom life through the touch of personal prayer that actually contributes to the most significant spiritual growth in our lives. You have my invitation to come and enjoy an exponential increase in your spiritual growth with us all together!
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You Are Invited to Join Us
Dear readers and subscribers,
In the spirit of the Churchthink gatherings we hosted for several years, combined with the desire for wild worship adventures and encounters with God as family and friends ala Enter The Worship Circle, we invite each of you to join as at any and all of our Village Gatherings this year!
We are hosting 4 gatherings, 4 different times, in 4 different places throughout the year. Go here to find out more and register.
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Churchthink.com Has Moved to BenPasley.com
Hello friends, I wanted to announce an important change in my writing and podcasting online. In short, I have moved all the activity that used to emanate from Churchthink.com to BenPasley.com, and so to stay in touch these posts you will need to resubscribe to the new feeds.
Here are the action points for you:
1. Please click this link to subscribe to my NEW total feed package (blogs, essays, podcasts)--from this page you can choose a feedreader or an email subscription.
2. If you subscribe to my podcast via iTunes you don't need to do anything as it will update automatically.
3. After resubscribing please forgive and ignore the duplicate emails or updates you might receive from Churchthink.com as they will disappear after 30 days.
Churchthink.com will remain online in its present form till the end of the year and maybe longer, but it will not be updated after today. For all new updates and posts please visit and enjoy the new and improved www.benpasley.com. Here is my latest on trusting God for financial provision in my new "Short Posts" collection. Remember, when you subscribe to my feed you get the Short Posts, the Big Essays, and thePodcasts all in one feed! The next series of posts will be focused on the basics in understanding kingdom finance, ministry and money, you and your wallet, etc.
Why the move?
Thanks for asking. There are a few reasons and here are a couple of the most important to me. First, my name is Ben Pasley, and I don't ever plan to change it so it makes a great internet home base. Secondly, I have grown weary of my own personal tendency to invent an identity for each of my functions or purposes in the public sphere, and in the coming years (till my death) I sense it would be much smarter to simply be myself and allow my functions to comfortably emanate from Ben Pasley (the one) rather than from different creative identities (the many.) Finally, I am kicking off a renewed commitment to writing and posting online and I believe this is the best time to reconfigure and move forward. Thanks so much for being a part of these conversations and don't hesitate to contact me anytime.
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New Book Coming Soon!
That's right friends, my latest book entitled Orphan Slave Son will be on the proverbial shelf in just a few weeks. This is really just a warning shot as I have had you, my Churchthink readers and wrestlers, on my heart for several weeks. I have so many new conversation rolling around in my head right now. I have some new voices in my ears being spoken by some great people, and I want to engage you in similar conversation.
First, it seemed, before I could come back and enter into some work in writing here I needed to finish the new book. This book is so intrinsically tied to my book Tom and the Goldfish Bowl, and even more closely related to Robin's book The Healing Path, that I felt I had to put all my composition and work into seeing it through. If Robin's book, (which I could not recommend to you strongly enough) is a personal, inviting conversation about overcoming the wounds of slavery and orphanhood so we can walk with confidence in our sonship, then this new book Orphan Slave Son is a deep and wide exposition on what all these words and ideas really mean. The terms spiritual orphanhood or spiritual slavery, I felt, needed some deeper conversation to make sure we could all get on the same page in the conversation. The beauty of walking in our sonship, then, could really come to life in brighter ways and not be misconstrued to mean something like a spiritual merit badge, as is so often the case, rather it can be understood as our fundamental experience in our walk with God. I will keep you updated on its release in both physical and digital form.
Looking ahead I have some thoughts swirling around in my head about these topics:
- Discovering God's promises for our city and our villages
- Laying hold of those promises as kingdom people to enact his heart for our peoples
- Getting away from the "devils under the bushes" tendencies of spiritual mapping/spiritual climate assessments so we can discover the kingdom destiny of a place
- How elders/leaders in a local fellowship can effectively cast vision and inspire people without falling into the trap of having to sell and mastermind what belongs only to Jesus to direct, the Church
- How to overcome the debilitating affects of judgment towards the moves of God in areas like the prophetic, healing ministry, intercession and worship, and speaking in tongues
- How the modern movement of prayer and the widespread epidemic of prayer rooms, gatherings, and prayer emphasis can be understood and embraced as potentially the most important move of God in our era
- How to be kingdom minded people in view of the polarized political climate in the west, and indeed the world, and how to avoid both shrinking back in isolation and launching out in the flesh to create division and more strife
Let's see what God will allow us time to share this year!
Oh, and don't forget to register for Worship@8500 this year and join us for a great kingdom focused weekend in the high country of Colorado at the end of June.
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Merry Christmas
This blog/writing space is not normally the place for casual or personal comment, but I have decided to make an exception because it is Christmas. Merry Christmas. Every bit of it. Here is a couple of things on my mind that might help us all keep it very, very Merry.
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You Are Invited to a Retreat!
We would love for you to join us in the high country of Colorado for one of our two Churchthink retreats this year. They are posted on our calendar from April 8-10 and then September 23-25. These retreats begin on a Thursday night and run through Saturday night.
Join up to 45 retreat participants for meals, gatherings, firesides, hikes ... all focused coming away together to discover the kingdom of God together! Our retreat focus is centered on the topics and heart of this website's writings, and the personal ministry work of Ben and Robin Pasley and the leadership team they call together for each retreat.
To reserve your spot visit these pages and make your reservations right here:
TOM and the Goldfish Bowl: RELEASED!
Ben Pasley's latest book is all about the kingdom of God, the Church, and the traditions of men. It is called TOM and the Goldfish Bowl. Using spiffy allegory and word pictures Ben has created a short book to help us understand the beautiful differences in these three, and most importantly how to walk as kingdom people. Here is an excerpt from Jack Taylor's Foreword:
Never has the Christian world been offered so much information on the Kingdom of God and, while it is welcome, it can be overwhelming if not confusing. This work will emerge, in my opinion, among the most clarifying offerings on the delicate discussion of the Church, the Kingdom of God and the traditions of men. To the open and searching heart it will encourage us to believe that it is all right to lighten up and, with tongue in cheek, have an honest and “ouchy” look at our funny, religious selves.
Available now in paperback in the Worship Circle online store for $10.95 (a Christmas discount of 15% off the cover price!) A perfect Christmas gift. Available soon at Amazon and other book sellers. Subscribe to the free book podcast at iTunes.
Book Release is Coming Soon
My latest book, TOM and the Goldfish Bowl is almost out! I have proofed the final work, and have ordered some physical copies for our online store at Enter The Worship Circle so you can order them in plenty of time for Christmas.
Check this page out at my personal website for a little more information about the book.
Subscribe now in either an RSS feed reader or by email to my complete audiobook podcast of TOM and the Goldfish Bowl. That's right the entire book, professionally recorded, released chapter at a time absolutely free for subscribers. Coming soon to iTunes as well. The first episode will release on December 1, 2009!
Introduction to the Next Season
Hello, Churchthink friends. Thanks so much for being a part of my ongoing experiment in how to communicate basic, family, foundational truths through articles and podcasts here at www.churchthink.com. There are a total of 66 articles and audio resources posted on this website. It means a lot that you have visited, subscribed, or bookmarked us as a resource for your journey with Jesus, especially as leaders in the family of God.
I am feeling a bit retrospective today.
I think this is partially because I just completed a major milestone in my personal ministry life this morning: I submitted my first Churchthink series book to the printers! Yes. It is true, in some ways I have used the discipline of writing big articles here as a proving and training ground to prepare me for book writing. This website is more than a trial run effort, for sure, because it is in itself a great and growing resource for Kingdom understanding and healthy leadership development; but I don't mind confessing that it has taken a lot of personal work and commitment to the task of writing to prepare me to take on a full book project.
As I reflect on book writing I would say that it is a lot like recording an album. Writing a 10,000 word article are like recording a song. Anything less than that, for me, is playing a ditty on the porch. As a point of information, my fresh articles on Churchthink for the next season will be ditties. I am going to intersperse these small offerings with large chunks of my book, in linear order, along with the audio recordings of each section…all for FREE. In other words by staying connected here through email or RSS, beginning this next post, you can receive my entire print and audio book for free over a period of months. Feel the love? Tell your friends so they can feel it, too.
I figure the smaller blog posts will allow me to keep my present heart and mind alive in these conversations we have been having together, and the bigger posts from my book will allow us both to enjoy the fruit of my labors on the book over the last several months. The book is titled TOM and the Goldfish Bowl and it will be available for physical orders at our store at www.entertheworshipcircle.com before Thanksgiving, and then at big retailers like Amazon in late December or early January. The ebook will also release a little closer to Christmas.
Some exciting news! Jack Taylor, a man I have great personal respect for and someone many of you already know and love, has written the foreword of the book! I will close this post by sharing his foreword with you, and don't forget to visit his website at www.coffeewithjack.com for some excellent reading and encouragements from him.
Foreword to TOM and the Goldfish Bowl
I love allegory for several reasons. It is, as this remarkable work, often couched in fiction.
Allegory approaches through the back door when the front door is shut and sometimes locked, and by dressing up controversial truth in acceptable garb allegory may find the reader open to areas of discussion that otherwise would be avoided. In allegory one may speak hard truths so disguised as to cause the observer to lay aside defensiveness and be open to truths heretofore refused. This is just such an allegory, and just such a book.
We are good at picking up a book, reading a few chapter headings, observing the brief biography of the author, looking at the names of the endorsers, seeking for a few theological buzzwords and making a decision to lay it down because it violates some “lightly held” religious tradition. EITHER THIS BOOK WILL DEFY SUCH AN EXERCISE OR BREAK IT UP IN THE MIDST OF THE PROCESS.
Allegory can be entirely fictional and lacking in purpose or it may revolve around a truth so mighty, so indispensable to our lives, so indescribable that it sends the reader on a life-altering saga. There is no doubt in my mind that TOM and the Goldfish Bowl is the latter.
Never has the Christian world been offered so much information on the Kingdom of God and, while it is welcome, it can be overwhelming if not confusing. This work will emerge, in my opinion, among the most clarifying offerings on the delicate discussion of the Church, the Kingdom of God and the traditions of men. To the open and searching heart it will encourage us to believe that it is all right to lighten up and, with tongue in cheek, have an honest and “ouchy” look at our funny, religious selves.
Ben Pasley is a binary genius (look it up), funny, loose and loaded with good sense. Is there such a word as trinary or quadrinary? If so, that too may describe Ben.
Thanks Ben, for a novel, pertinent, and a fetching trip into a field of truth that not only challenges our practice of faith, but also helps our sense of humor as we consider our sometimes laughable religious positions. You have moved us to be daring dreamers of approaching seasons when we will abandon sad and senseless traditions and take up the banners of praise and worship. Because you have helped us see Him as He is, we can more excitedly worship, walk and serve Him as we ought.
I feel somewhat guilty about having detained you from the excitement of what’s ahead in this welcome and exciting work. But humor me, I’ve enjoyed looking it over. Now, for goodness sake get on with it!
Jack Taylor, President
Dimensions Ministries
Melbourne, Florida
November 10, 2009