My hope is to write 24 poems in 2024. I am sure they will have varying degrees of quality and connectivity.This first poem was occasioned by my 45th birthday and is actually an update of something I wrote in 2020.

It is called … The Man.

2023 was a year full of bangers, as I believe the kids like to say. This is my unsolicited and borderline arbitrary list of favourite records from last year.

Nostalgia can be a bit of a liar, but she speaks truth when she says that this record from 30 years ago is one of the greats. It details the journey of maturity, mental health, broken relationships, self-doubt, longing, and the deep seated need that we all have to see ourselves changed. It still holds up today sonically, thematically, musically and lyrically and I think it just might be good enough to stand amongst some of the greats for another 30 years.

College sports is one of the most peculiar oddities of American culture that I have experienced. I don’t understand it at all, but I do love it.

And so I will wear my burnt orange and hold my hookem horns up high, but make no mistake, that while I cheer, I’ll be asking myself … but why?

Four unbelievably easy things I do to maintain pastoral connectivity and availability even - and especially - in the midst of very busy, and very large, ministry environments. I am painfully aware that these sound small, obvious, and perhaps even pitiable, and that none of them would be necessary in a smaller church (a blog topic for another day) but they have all been really effective tools that have helped me and the people I serve as we seek to walk this life of Jesus following AMONG one another.

Different people might need different approaches at different seasons in their lives. One thing they all need is patience.

Patience is grace applied over time.
We all need that.

The book is marketed as a memoir of Bono’s life told through the lens of forty U2 songs. But that’s not really what it is. Surrender is more of a contemplation of death, relationships, faith, and fame written by a pretty complicated person. The writing alone is worth the price of admission. Let me show you what I mean.

When you live long enough to realize that the world isn’t all about you, then you begin to understand that every person around you has a fascinating story, a story worthy of a slow and attentive hearing, one filled with lessons to learn from if we would only ask.

This realization is particularly stark when you realize that it is true of your parents. Parents are people, with stories (for good and for bad), and not all of their life was taken up with you. They had, and still have - if they are alive - hopes, fears, dreams, insecurities, regrets, secrets, desires, hurts, and all the other things that exist in people’s inner worlds.

As my parents, and my parents in law have gotten older, I have become more and more interested in their lives and stories. This has led to a few really powerful conversations with my mother, where I have learned many things about her and from her. She has lived, and continues to live, a fascinating life, and so, today, on her 75th birthday, I wanted to share some little bits of that story with others.

Oh America. Land of the free. Home of the brave. Let’s build some stalls to show the world and the potential alien invading force what a remarkably sophisticated bunch we are. Let’s close the stall gaps once and for all.

For dignity. For privacy. For freedom.

It seems hubristic to an almost absurd extent to suppose that anyone would care at all to know what I enjoyed reading and listening to in the past year. And yet, here we are, feeding my dysfunctionally unbridled need to share even the most mundane details of my life. So without further ado, here is my list of favorite reads and favorite listens for 2022.

As I write this, the sun is rising over a cold Texas morning and I cannot help but think of how similar Texas winter days are to Johannesburg winter days. Frosty ground on dormant grass, with big blue skies overhead which seem to reflect the cold rather than offer the warmth that the unhindered access to the sun would usually afford. The day is just beginning here, and I know that it is ending for my friends across the globe. The Lord made the day for me just as He did for them, and He gifts the grace and mercies that we will need to begin this day as He does for those whose day is winding down.

What a big and small world. What grace to call more than one place home.

I read somewhere recently that true friendship is like a sacrament of sorts, and I think I agree with that. Friendship, well practiced, is a spiritually formative reminder of the love and grace of Christ manifested in and through the loving presence, patience, and pursuit of His image bearers. One can’t help but feel the presence of Christ when a friends shows you grace at your least lovable. It is a very Christ-like thing to do. It has happened to me many times and continues to happen to me in the life of the church that I get to be part of today.  

How can we take back our lives from a reactive world of chaos? How do we skillfully sail amidst the raging waves of our daily schedule and demands? How do we summon the strength to keep going when so many of us are on the edge of burnout?

As a pastor, you tend to enter into people’s lives in the deep end. It is usually something significant that results in you being drawn into their orbit. A loss, a gain, a wedding, a funeral, a divorce, or a divorce they’re trying to avoid. This means that there is an instant intimacy that feels like a friendship, but often isn’t. You are a service provider, you just don’t know that. 
You think that perhaps you are a friend trying to help.

A round up of some online content I found interesting this week. It includes practical help on masculine initiation, a warning against a biographer, a call to faithfulness where you are, and touching story of an aging hero.

In August of 2021 I began to experience crippling anxiety and related depression that impacted my physical and emotional functioning to the extent that it became difficult, or perhaps impossible, for me to do my job. This ultimately manifested in some significant and truly terrifying panic attacks. I sought help and encouragement from a counselor and reached out to my wonderfully compassionate boss, who encouraged me to see my physician to see if additional help was needed. The doctor (as well as the counselor) agreed that I was struggling with Generalized Anxiety Disorder and that the best path forward was to seek treatment with counseling, medication and an immediate reduction of stress.

I was deeply ashamed.

As we poured out into the Manhattan streets I saw the potential of tens of thousands of people who had been reminded that the status quo isn’t good enough for a lot of people in the world. Discontent can function as a seed of awakening in a society, and I could feel the fruit of that awakening growing inside of me through an evening of discontented reminder. Imagine if we could channel that sort of discontent into churches and communities in a way that made us respond not in the sin of anarchy but in the love of the Kingdom of God. Imagine if we took the time to hammer our rage on the anvil of love until it turned into a tool useful for human flourishing?

What a wonderfully confounding thing it is to be a person. We are all a complex mix of image-bearing potential for good and serpent-believing potential for wickedness, and our recognition of this tension ought to make us the most humble and yet most hopeful of all creatures.

The early reviews were gushing, ready to anoint Taylor not just as a queen of pop but as a decent candidate for the UK’s next Prime Minister. But then, as a few days passed, the curmudgeons emerged from the dark wood paneled writing pits they inhabit with critiques so vociferous, so grumpy and so personal that you would swear that Ms Swift murdered one of their children with one of the many synthesizers that she wields on this record.

Welcome to The Resident Aliens! A place of content creation and collation from a pastor who isn’t from around here.