Hi All,

This site is still kind of experimental but is my place to interact with readers of my writings, students from Denver Seminary where I teach, as well as retreatants and conferees at places where I speak.  I welcome any comments on the article in Lead Journal…or Talbot’s Formation Journal.  I would love to answer questions, discuss ideas further…just “comment” below and it will get to me.  And to my students…keep in touch.  I am praying for you all…and I am back at my post here at Open Door.

Just back from a great road trip with my new son in law to be, Mike Perszyk and our buddy Steve McCormick and the InterVarsity Conference in Chicago.  NT Wright was awesome. You can download his three part talk on Colossians (Jesus the Wisdom of God, Glory and Virtue).

Am preparing for the St Malo Retreat Course in the Colorado Rockies Jan 19-23, 2009 with Denver Seminary’s Doctor of Ministry Program where I teach.  This has been a balm to me in the midst of having to make position cuts at church.  Keeping me centered just preparing the lectures..experiences, etc.  See my students there.

I am now done with five chapters on my book for IVP, Whole Life Transformation: One Pastor’s Personal and Professional Journey and have three left.  Am working with my editor on two possible books for my next project, either one on Formation and Pain “Your Thorn and Your Formation in Jesus”, or one about,  Life Changing Practices for Groups as Illustrated in Psalms – title????  TBD.

In November my article, Stopping Lesson: Life From Sabbatical Rest went out in the second issue of The Journal of Spiritual Formation and Soul Care.  In January my article, Mega Church and Monasticism, goes out in Leadership Journal’s winter issue.

God bless you.

Keith

I have an article in the new JOURNAL OF SPIRITUAL FORMATION AND SOUL CARE’s second inaugural issue coming out this November.  This first Evangelical Academic journal of formation has asked me to be on its editorial board and write…my first article is about doing things with God, not for Him… STOPPING LESSONS: MINISTRY FROM SABBATICAL REST.  I also have an article in LEADERSHIP JOURNAL’s winter issue on MEGACHURCH AND MONASTICISM…yes…you read it right – Skye Jethani, L J’s managing editor heard me talk about our staff retreats where we practice monastic stuff so that we can do things with God and not just for HIm…so much more powerful and fruitful than being on our own… and so…there we go.  And when I can I will put these on my MEDIA page on this site.

Hello to the couples up here with me at gorgeous Estes Park, CO and our retreat who may be visiting my site (which is under heavy construction). I had a sweet time sharing with pastors and their mates yesterday and today.  Look forward to tonight.

This afternoon I went to St. Malo’s down highway 7 where I will be teaching a course for Denver Seminary in January on spiritual retreats.  WOW…this is where the Pope, John Paul II stayed in ’93 and I hope to stay in his suite that week. Can’t wait.

In a few days I will begin praying for the students in the Denver Seminary Doctor of Ministry course I teach this January at St. Malmo’s Retreat Center.  If you want to know why I think this course is important read the article I have in my media/writings page.  It is being published in Talbot Seminary’s new Journal of Spiritual Formation and Soul Care and is titled, Stopping Lessons: Ministry From A Life of Sabbath Rest.

We often live from our false self, a performing, people pleasing side of us and not from a place of rest in who God sees us as.  On top of this we live in the idolatry of our work or job, letting service to God get in the way of intimacy with God and ultimately even genuine relationship with others.  On top of this we often equate our organization’s survival or success with what God is doing and miss out on his agenda for us in all circumstances…we might be successful and failures…failing and succeeding in following God.

Can’t wait to be with you all. Something to think about:  What do you think is the biggest hindrance to your ministering from a place of resting in God, being with him, partnering with him, rather than from the restlessness of “doing things” for him, apart from him?

I just got done presenting at the TACT Conference (THEOLOGICAL AND CULTURAL THINKER’S GROUP) in Los Angelos – I LOVE LA!!!.  It was sunny but cool, and someday I would love to live in CA.  One conferee wanted to know what three books I would recommend as good places to start in learning about Spiritual Formation, another wanted to know what I was reading currently.  My three books?  The Great Omission by Dallas Willard, Surprised By Hope by N. T. Wright, and The Imitation of Christ by Thomas A Kempis (any edition will do but the one with  a great introduction and reflective questions by Father Dennis Joseph Billy is a good one to start with).

What book am I reading right now? Christianity and the Social Crisis In the 21st Century by Walter Rauschenbusch (an update edition with brief commentary after each chapter by authors like Tony Compolo, Stanley Hauerwas, Jim Wallis and others) is what I am reading now.  A few years ago Dallas told me that Rauschenbusch was one of the few thinkers who combined a fervant personal faith in Jesus for formation with social action.

Although credited with starting what some Fundamentalist’s and many Evangelicals called a perversion of the Gospel, or the “Social Gospel”, this author actually woke up the church to its neglect of the implications of the Gospel for our involvement what is now called social justice and very much on the frontline of young Evangelical concerns.  The book I have recommended was published on the 100th Anniversary of the first book’s publishing.  In a year when the Evangelical vote is being courted heavily by both Obama and McCain, this book can provide some help “purple” thinking to balance the extreme reds and blues.

Sara Palin, VP running mate of McCain, was quoted in the Wall Street Journal as believing in the Second Coming of Jesus and therefore the “end of the world”.  This caused some to question her ability to commit to solve environmental issues like global warming.  In the opening skit of Saturday Night Live actress Tina Fey played Palin saying global warming was only “God hugging us close”.   This parody of Evangelicals misses the growing concern of Evangelicals as represented by the National Association of Evangelical’s (NAE) Leith Anderson who have issued statements on the need to do take seriously issues such as the environment and the plight of the immigrant.   Yet so many churches are only conscious of abortion or traditional marriage as issues. Rauschenbusch was also concerned with Christianity’s neglect of addressing social problems due to an End Times mindset that put all earthly transformation after Jesus’s Second Coming so that Evangelicals would consider any social change as what one preacher called, “rearranging chairs on the titantic.”

What does our living for Jesus and work for social justice have to do with the new heavens and the new earth?  N. T. Wright thinks we will be “surprised by the hope” that the new heavens and earth are the same ones we live in now and so how we live has everything to do with what they will turn out to be in the future.  Dallas read and taught us at the last session of TACT from Romans 8…that the whole creation is groaning…waiting for the children of God to deliver the creation from its bondage.  This is all shaping my thinking as I consider my responsibility to vote in November.

In that light…what concerns, questions, issues are important to you as you decide how to vote and now does that relate to how you follow Jesus and walk that out in your everyday life (I’m NOT asking who you will vote for but what you are thinking about as you are weighing the candidates and positions)?

I look forward to keeping up with those I met in LA last week, students I teach or have taught at Denver Seminary, pastors and wives at retreats like the one coming up in Estes Park for the Rocky Mountain Evangelical Free Church District  through this website and blog.  I am not fully launching it until a year from now and you will help me test it by telling me how it works for you.