Thread on The Congregation in the a Secular Age:

Pastors and ministers, I know that the pandemic as been no joke. It has taken a pound of flesh. I’m hopeful that The Congregation in a Secular Age can speak to some of this burden.
It was written before the pandemic, but I think will offer some insights on why the 2nd half of the pandemic has been a hellscape to do ministry in. And it may help you rethink what your congregation is for and how it should be in the world.
The post-pandemic risks being even harder on pastors. As vaccines are given & the world revs its engines like never before to race back to speed, I think the book could help give some insight into the phenomena within the pandemic,
but more so it offers points of reflection as we move toward a post-pandemic horizon. It’s a book written pre-pandemic that I think will really help post-pandemic. It will help resist the calls for your congregation to accelerate and race for change.
The pandemic has burnt out many, and if we’re not careful the post-pandemic will be the same song at frenzied pace.
The book argues that the local congregation is not depleted of resources/money (as is often assumed) but of time. Our great temptation is speed—and this will be intensified post-pandemic.
There will be voices calling for us all to make up for lost time by accelerating double and triple speed (this happened in the 1920s after the Spanish flu and thanks to our own time-keeper, Silicon Valley, it will be even more intense for us).
Now is the time to think about all this for the sake of the gospel.
Find the book here: https://t.co/D1neo2BMB6

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My book examines how business groups formed to lobby against patronage and corruption, and in favor of institutional reform, in the 19th c. (https://t.co/FnNhZUupBG)

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I’m torn on how to approach the idea of luck. I’m the first to admit that I am one of the luckiest people on the planet. To be born into a prosperous American family in 1960 with smart parents is to start life on third base. The odds against my very existence are astronomical.


I’ve always felt that the luckiest people I know had a talent for recognizing circumstances, not of their own making, that were conducive to a favorable outcome and their ability to quickly take advantage of them.

In other words, dumb luck was just that, it required no awareness on the person’s part, whereas “smart” luck involved awareness followed by action before the circumstances changed.

So, was I “lucky” to be born when I was—nothing I had any control over—and that I came of age just as huge databases and computers were advancing to the point where I could use those tools to write “What Works on Wall Street?” Absolutely.

Was I lucky to start my stock market investments near the peak of interest rates which allowed me to spend the majority of my adult life in a falling rate environment? Yup.