Congratulations to Jodi for winning, and thank you for all of you sharing your game changing stories.

“helping parents identify things that get in their way, and then leading each to cast aside the preventers. a new way of partnering with parents.”

Reblogged from From Gordon West, KidZ PreZ:

• 

We just heard yet another news story about the evergreen tree with colored lights on it being called a “holiday tree” this year. We attended the Phoenix Symphony yesterday for a wonderful afternoon of “Holiday Pops,” where Santa Claus wished us all “Happy Holidays.” And last night a very kind Home Depot employee noticed my VBS t-shirt before telling us that he refuses to obey corporate policy and always wishes people a “Merry Christmas.”

Read more… 361 more words

It’s been exciting to see children’s ministries all over the place helping children see and respond to global social issues. The challenge, though, for children’s ministry leaders and parents is finding resources to help children grab onto and understand issues like building wells for clean water. It’s such a foreign concept for children who grow up not having to worry about whether or not the water they are about to drink will make them sick or not.

Here is a great picture book written by Ariah Fine entitled Clean Water for Elirose that speaks on a level that kids can understand what it might mean to not have access to clean drinking water. Not only does Ariah help kids contextualize the issue of clean water but it also gives kids and families action steps they can take to make a difference in the world when it comes to building wells in underprivileged areas of the world.

I encourage you to take a look at the electronic version of the book by clicking here. Not only that… I encourage you to buy copies of books for the kids in your ministries. All the profits from the book go to Charity:Water. Ariah has partnered with them this year to raise $5000, which will build one well! You might even consider buying the books, selling them for a nominal profit to the families at your church and donating those to a well building project of your own!

To order the book, check out the book website at http://cleanwaterforelirose.com. The pricing is structured as a Pay-What-You-Can-Afford beginning at $3 per book with free shipping.

Ariah is also giving a book away a day between December 1 and 15. Here are some ways you can enter:

• Like the Clean Water for Elirose Facebook Page: http://www.facebook.com/CleanWaterForElirose
• Refer someone to “Like” The facebook page (proven by them posting your name on our wall as the person who referred them)
• Follow @WaterForElirose on Twitter
• Tweet or post on Facebook about Clean Water for Elirose linking back to the website, facebook or twitter page
• Blog about Clean Water for Elirose on your blog (counts as two entries) – And you might want to post it on our Facebook or email info@cleanwaterforelirose.com just so we don’t miss it.

(picture originally uploaded to Flickr by Javier Delgado Esteban)

I know I’m a bit late on this, but this past Sunday (Palm Sunday) marked the beginning of Holy Week in the church calendar. I’m curious to find out if any of you do anything with the kids and families in your churches for Holy Week? It seems to me that we tend to pass up the events leading up to Easter and focus on the resurrection event. Don’t get me wrong, I get excited about Christ’s resurrection and look forward to celebrating Easter from year to year! I think we miss out, though, by taking that hop, skip and a jump from the celebratory nature of Palm Sunday to the even bigger celebration of Easter Sunday.

We pass over the grief and sadness of Christ’s death. We miss out on the fact that Jesus deliberately orchestrated the events of the week to ensure that he was put to death. Placing ourselves into the story of events that make up Holy Week, help us gain better perspective about the nature of the Kingdom of God and our role in it all. I think my friend, Robin Dugall, says it best in his Holy Week post:

“Another year has come and the journey remains the same…these regular rhythms are here for a reason…they give us an opportunity to rehease the mysteries of God and His transforming love and power…you see, we simply don’t “remember” as if this whole Jesus following thing was simply an exercise in cognitive recall…but we walk it again…we put ourselves around that table of the last supper…we take our place at the foot of the cross…we stand under the sacrifice of Jesus and wait patiently and prayerfully at the “soon to be” empty tomb.  It’s too important to pass up…”

So, what are you doing in your children’s ministry to re-live the events of Holy Week?
How are you helping children and families experience the sorrow of Christ’s death?
It’s too important to pass up.

(photo originally uploaded to Flickr by SimplyShutterbug)

A HUGE thanks to all of the contributors to the One.Life blogging project. This was an independent project of mine so each of the contributors got nothing in return for their participation other than the opportunity to share their thoughts on, what I believe, to be a valuable book. If you haven’t had a chance to check out the posts, I encourage you to do so by clicking on the links below. I also encourage you to check out the blogs of each of the contributors.

We’d love to hear your thoughts, as well, on each of the topics covered so as a little incentive I will be giving away a copy of One.Life to one lucky person! Here’s what you have to do in order to be entered into the drawing, which will be Saturday, April 16 at midnight (PST):

• Comment on at least one of the blog posts below (you get one entry per blog post you comment on)

AND

• Tweet this or put this on your Facebook: “How would you answer, ‘What is a Christian?’ Join the conversation & win a copy of One.Life by Scot McKnight! http://bit.ly/g5Lz2q”

Be sure to check out all of the posts in this book blogging project:

• March 28 – Chapter 1: One.Life – Doug Olson
• March 29 – Chapter 2: Kingdom.Life – Eli Suddarth
• March 30 – Chapter 3: Imagined.Life – Dan Scott
• March 31 – Chapter 4: Love.Life – Emily Mullens
• April 1 – Chapter 5: Justice.Life – Noel Walker
• April 2 – Chapter 6: Peace.Life – Jesse Smith
• April 3 – Chapter 7: Wisdom.Life – Jared Massey
• April 4 – Chapter 8: Church.Life – Tim Shiels
• April 5 – Chpater 9: Committed.Life – Chris Lema
• April 6 – Chapter 10: Sex.Life – Henry Zonio
• April 7 – Chpater 11: Vocation.Life – Helen Lee
• April 8 – Chapter 12: Eternity.Life – Christiaan VandenHuevel
• April 9 – Chapter 13: God.Is.Love.Life – Henry Zonio
• April 10 – Chapter 14: Cross.Life.Ressurection.Life – Barbara Graves

(picture originally uploaded to Flickr by Babo Style)

This is part of a book blogging project for Scot McKnight‘s book, One.Life. In this blogging project, various contributors will be looking at each chapter of the book as McKnight unfolds his answer to the question, “What is a Christian?” I believe that what McKnight has to say will challenge each of us in different ways on how we view what it means to follow Jesus and how we help children and families understand that. Please interact with what is written here in the comments section below. Also, I encourage you to pick up One.Life and read along with us adding your thoughts and impressions as well.

The review for chapter 14 is submitted by Barbara Graves. Barbara has been in children’s ministry for over 30 years and currently is the children’s pastor at Momentum Church in Woodstock, Georgia.  She has been married to her husband, Chris for 27 years and they have 4 grown children.  She loves to read and tweet, and drinks way too much coffee. You can also catch Barbara at her blog, Caffeinated Adventure.

Chapter 14: Cross.Life.Resurrection.Life

In this chapter, Scot McKnight looks at the Cross.Life.Resurrection.Life. I love this chapter because it deals with an entirely different perspective on what the Christian life should look like from what most Christians envision. So often, it seems that we reduce what the cross represents to a repeat-after-me prayer, and then we are on our way to living the glorious life of the redeemed. If we could fully grasp the cost of redeeming us from sin, I believe the idea of shuv that McKnight introduces would be more of a reality in our lives. McKnight brings out that the Hebrew word shuv, meaning repent, was more than just saying you’re sorry or feeling bad. Shuv represented a complete change in behavior. McKnight explains:

“Shuv means concrete, real life changes from unjust actions and unpeaceful deeds and unloving behaviors into the Kingdom.Life of acts of justice, deeds shaped by peace,and behaviors that reveal God’s love.”

What a difference this perspective will bring to the family that embraces it!

Here is one of my favorite parts of this chapter:

“The cross, where Jesus bore the pain and sin of others, became both a place of redemptive power and a model for discipleship.”

We are redeemed and then provided with the supreme example of how to live a life that will be the most rewarding life ever: a life lived or, as McKnight calls it, a Cross.Life. Parents that live this Cross.Life and discover the joy in it will raise children who have a completely different mindset about success than their peers. As their peers watch their parents work for new cars, bigger houses or other material gains, Cross.Life children will see their parents find joy in clothing the homeless, encouraging the elderly and sharing whatever they have with whoever needs it. McKnight goes on to say,

“Our sins morph into his, our death morphs into his, and our stories morph into his. And at the very same time, his righteousness morphs into ours,his life morphs into ours and his story morphs into our story.”

How can we read those words and not have our spirits soar? At Calvary we embrace Jesus and He embraces us. Just as we are, He exchanges everything that is wrong with us: all of our brokenness, all of our weaknesses, and all of our defiant sin for a heart that is like His. When we accept that change and embrace it, we find joy and satisfaction in the same life that Jesus lived—a life that helps others.

So many times those of us who have been brought up in church so easily can say, 
“Jesus died on the cross for my sins.” We say it so fast and so often that we lose the real meaning of those words. We understand that it was totally His decision and His grace that provides us with our salvation, but we have become calloused to the reality of what we say. We don’t take the time to meditate on the price the cross extracts. McKnight challenges us to change.

This is especially true in children’s ministry today. In our efforts to use every possible angle, technique, and medium to bring the Gospel message to our children, it’s easy to get caught up in the lights and bells and whistles. I think it would serve us well on occasion to just stop; stop in our children’s services and meditate deliberately on exactly what Jesus did for us. If we can help our children to learn, at a young age, the joy of serving others for God, we are doing them the best service possible. This will lead to a life of true joy found in this Kingdom.Life.

But McKnight doesn’t leave us at the pain and inspiration of the cross. He reminds us that Jesus has defeated death and lives victoriously:

“The cross is not the final word, the final word is Life the God.Life that raised Jesus from the dead to sit on the throne as the Lion.”

McKnight ends the chapter with the encouragement that if we will pick up our cross daily and follow him, the Lion’s roar will give us the confidence to continue living the Kingdom.Life. “If the Lamb becomes the Lion, so, too, do we.”

You have One.Life. Live it well.

Be sure to check out the rest of this book blogging project:

• March 28 – Chapter 1: One.Life – Doug Olson
• March 29 – Chapter 2: Kingdom.Life – Eli Suddarth
• March 30 – Chapter 3: Imagined.Life – Dan Scott
• March 31 – Chapter 4: Love.Life – Emily Mullens
• April 1 – Chapter 5: Justice.Life – Noel Walker
• April 2 – Chapter 6: Peace.Life – Jesse Smith
• April 3 – Chapter 7: Wisdom.Life – Jared Massey
• April 4 – Chapter 8: Church.Life – Tim Shiels
• April 5 – Chpater 9: Committed.Life – Chris Lema
• April 6 – Chapter 10: Sex.Life – Henry Zonio
• April 7 – Chpater 11: Vocation.Life – Helen Lee
• April 8 – Chapter 12: Eternity.Life – Christiaan VandenHuevel
• April 9 – Chapter 13: God.Is.Love.Life – Henry Zonio
• April 10 – Chapter 14: Cross.Life.Ressurection.Life – Barbara Graves

(picture originally uploaded to Flickr by Leonard John Matthews)

This is part of a book blogging project for Scot McKnight‘s book, One.Life. In this blogging project, various contributors will be looking at each chapter of the book as McKnight unfolds his answer to the question, “What is a Christian?” I believe that what McKnight has to say will challenge each of us in different ways on how we view what it means to follow Jesus and how we help children and families understand that. Please interact with what is written here in the comments section below. Also, I encourage you to pick up One.Life and read along with us adding your thoughts and impressions as well.

The review for chapter 13 is submitted by Henry Zonio. Henry has 20 years’ experience in children’s ministry as a volunteer and a full time Children’s Pastor in the USA and Canada. Henry is the founder of Elemental CM, which exists to move ministry to children and families forward through coaching, consulting, and conversation on the blog. Henry has served in children’s ministry leadership roles in multiple denominations and has led children’s ministry workshops and breakouts at various conferences. Having lived in warmer climates like California and more frigid ones like Thunder Bay, Ontario, Henry has taken his love of watersports to new levels from swimming and wakeboarding to sitting in a sauna followed by rolling in the snow.

Chapter 13: God.Is.Love.Life

“God is love.” 1 John 4:8b

I remember learning that verse in Kindergarten. Then there was that one Psalty song… “Beloved, let us love one another…” But that’s enough about my childhood. We hear that God is love, but what does that really mean? Do we really believe it? Even more so, do we actually live in a way that reflects that reality of that statement?

“It is much easier to say we believe God loves us than
it is to bask and dwell in that God of Love
by receiving and returning love” (p. 171).

Scot McKnight makes the observation that many people say that they know God loves them, yet they have a hard time actually feeling any sense of love from God let alone really love him back. McKnight quotes from Andrew Newberg, a neuroscientist who specializes in the brain and religion, that, at least in the U.S., we have assigned four different personalities to God:

• The authoritarian god (32% of us)
• The critical god (16% of us)
• The distant god (24% of us)
• The benevolent god (23% of us)

McKnight goes on to say that if we truly want to embrace Jesus’ dream for the kingdom, then we have a problem if only 23% of us are able to see God as loving and benevolent. We need to rediscover a God who is love.

I’ve had the privilege of being able to hear Tony Campolo speak either in person or via recordings on a number of occasions. I love how Campolo describes his daily morning experiences of God’s love. Campolo says that when he wakes up, he stays in bed and allows God’s love to wash over him; he basks in the reality that God loves him. He doesn’t jump up to get ready or work on his to-do list. He simply allows the God of love to infiltrate his very being. Wow! What a way to start your day!

“To follow Jesus in to this God-who-is Love God is to enter into the Divine Dance. Jesus’ vision of the dream kingdom, then, is a dream about dancing with the God who is Love” (p. 173).

McKnight, then, takes the parable of the prodigal son in Luke 15 to show how Jesus portrays a come-as-you-are, remove-the-mask, vulnerable kind of love that God has for us. Jesus breaks down the idea that we have to put some sort of show to prove ourselves to him as the older brother resentfully did. We have to come to the realization that we “walked away from God’s Dance, and true confession asks God to walk [us] back to the dance floor.”

What if we helped the children we minister realize they can experience this kind of love? Brennan Manning describes it as “the furious longing of God” in his book of the same name. God’s love seeks us out with the intensity of a raging storm. What if we help families realize that God’s love is there to fill us when we take those steps toward him in vulnerability and honesty, hiding nothing from ourselves or him? Only when we can embrace a God-is-Love God can we experience a God.Is.Love.Life.

“The kingdom dream of Jesus is designed for those who will tell the truth about themselves, turn from their sins, and turn back to God by banking on God’s gracious forgiveness in Jesus’ death and resurrection, God’s gracious welcome, and the open seat waiting at the table in God’s family” (p. 179).

Be sure to check out the rest of this book blogging project:

• March 28 – Chapter 1: One.Life – Doug Olson
• March 29 – Chapter 2: Kingdom.Life – Eli Suddarth
• March 30 – Chapter 3: Imagined.Life – Dan Scott
• March 31 – Chapter 4: Love.Life – Emily Mullens
• April 1 – Chapter 5: Justice.Life – Noel Walker
• April 2 – Chapter 6: Peace.Life – Jesse Smith
• April 3 – Chapter 7: Wisdom.Life – Jared Massey
• April 4 – Chapter 8: Church.Life – Tim Shiels
• April 5 – Chpater 9: Committed.Life – Chris Lema
• April 6 – Chapter 10: Sex.Life – Henry Zonio
• April 7 – Chpater 11: Vocation.Life – Helen Lee
• April 8 – Chapter 12: Eternity.Life – Christiaan VandenHuevel
• April 9 – Chapter 13: God.Is.Love.Life – Henry Zonio
• April 10 – Chapter 14: Cross.Life.Ressurection.Life – Barbara Graves

(photo originally uploaded to Flickr by Newtown grafitti)

This is part of a book blogging project for Scot McKnight‘s book, One.Life. In this blogging project, various contributors will be looking at each chapter of the book as McKnight unfolds his answer to the question, “What is a Christian?” I believe that what McKnight has to say will challenge each of us in different ways on how we view what it means to follow Jesus and how we help children and families understand that. Please interact with what is written here in the comments section below. Also, I encourage you to pick up One.Life and read along with us adding your thoughts and impressions as well.

The review for chapter 12 is submitted by Christiaan VandenHeuvel. VandenHeuvel has been serving as Children’s Pastor in the San Francisco Bay Area for the past 17 years. As part of a fast-growing church he currently oversees ministry to over 1,000 children each weekend at Cornerstone Fellowship. He blogs at kidmintoday.com and at christiaanity.com.

Chapter 12: Eternity.Life

Now I know why it’s smarter to pick a topic, because the chapter assigned for me to review was a chapter about heaven and hell. I love a good, superficial, kid-level discussion about heaven and hell any day, but Scot McKnight (already having done such a great job turning over some stones that have gathered way to much moss in Children’s Ministry) challenges the reader to go a little deeper… Okay, a lot deeper.

I think I remember taking a great class on the theology of heaven and hell. So many of the themes, discussions and thought-provoking questions that McKnight poses ring a familiar bell—nothing too extreme, nothing too far out in left field. However, McKnight’s approach and careful research challenged me so much about what we do to teach children (and their parents) about heaven and about hell and justice. This is info that children need to hear. This is theology we need to teach.

In my church, the need to teach the basics to our children is paramount. Every week we see dozens of brand-new, never-been-to-church, don’t-know-Jesus-from-a-cuss-word children who need to hear the basics—not much more, never less. The basics of our faith and theology can (and does) fill up a scope-and-sequence very nicely. But McKnight’s explanation of the importance of truly grappling with what Jesus said about heaven and hell—what the Bible says about these things are—really makes me think of ways that we can incorporate a study of heaven and hell with children. Something like this would likely happen outside our visitor-filled weekends, but I will need to find out a way to teach this.

McKnight does a great job of reminding the reader that knowing about heaven and what people do/will do there and knowing about hell and what that would look like are important ingredients that make up our knowledge of God. His attributes, character and personality cannot be explained outside these themes. Children would learn so much about God and his character by studying these terms… these places!

Let’s figure out how to teach children about the eternal places that are beyond this life without scaring them, and doing it in a way that does not make those places seem like a storybook fantasy. Read chapter 12 of Scot’s excellent book, and let’s talk!

Be sure to check out the rest of this book blogging project:

• March 28 – Chapter 1: One.Life – Doug Olson
• March 29 – Chapter 2: Kingdom.Life – Eli Suddarth
• March 30 – Chapter 3: Imagined.Life – Dan Scott
• March 31 – Chapter 4: Love.Life – Emily Mullens
• April 1 – Chapter 5: Justice.Life – Noel Walker
• April 2 – Chapter 6: Peace.Life – Jesse Smith
• April 3 – Chapter 7: Wisdom.Life – Jared Massey
• April 4 – Chapter 8: Church.Life – Tim Shiels
• April 5 – Chpater 9: Committed.Life – Chris Lema
• April 6 – Chapter 10: Sex.Life – Henry Zonio
• April 7 – Chpater 11: Vocation.Life – Helen Lee
• April 8 – Chapter 12: Eternity.Life – Christiaan VandenHuevel
• April 9 – Chapter 13: God.Is.Love.Life – Henry Zonio
• April 10 – Chapter 14: Cross.Life.Ressurection.Life – Barbara Graves

(photo originally uploaded to Flickr by George Vnoucek)

This is part of a book blogging project for Scot McKnight‘s book, One.Life. In this blogging project, various contributors will be looking at each chapter of the book as McKnight unfolds his answer to the question, “What is a Christian?” I believe that what McKnight has to say will challenge each of us in different ways on how we view what it means to follow Jesus and how we help children and families understand that. Please interact with what is written here in the comments section below. Also, I encourage you to pick up One.Life and read along with us adding your thoughts and impressions as well.

The review for chapter 11 is submitted by Helen Lee. Helen is longtime Christian journalist, as well as a homeschooling mom to three boys 8 years old and under, and wife to classical pianist and Moody Bible Institute professor Brian Lee. She is also the author of the newly released book The Missional Mom: Living With Purpose in the Home and in the World. Helen has served in her church’s children’s ministry for as long as she has had kids and currently teaches a class of junior high school girls, which means that she has many conversations about topics she knows nothing about. You can follow Helen on Twitter (@helenleeauthor and @themissionalmom) or connect with her on Facebook.

Chapter 11: Vocation.Life

The college I attended did not have a Campus Crusade chapter, but even I can recite the first of Crusade’s well-known spiritual laws: “God loves you and offers a wonderful plan for your life.” But for many people I know who seek to live the Christian life, knowing the phrase does nothing to ease their questions about it. They do not doubt that God loves them, but they unceasingly wonder if they are in the center of God’s plan and living the life he has intended for them.

We all, at one time or another, have likely asked the question, “What is God’s will for my life? What should I do with my life?” And these timeless and challenging questions are the ones that Scot McKnight addresses in his chapter entitled “Vocation.Life”. The word “vocation” comes from the Latin root vocare, which means “to call,” and so from the Christian perspective it is not merely choosing a career path, but giving a life response to the One who is calling us to begin with. McKnight offers so much wisdom and direction on these questions of calling in his typically facile, anecdotal style that it’s easy to miss all the pearls. But let me highlight a few points that I found particularly valuable.

1. There is no distinction between “sacred” and “secular” jobs.

It may seem easier to find meaning in jobs or activities that have a distinct Christian purpose or intent, such as being a pastor, or a missionary, or a volunteer in a church ministry. However, McKnight is “unconvinced that some jobs—the so-called ‘spiritual ones’—are valuable while others are ‘secular’ and therefore not as valuable.” And I wholeheartedly agree with him. Any action we undertake, if it is done with God’s Kingdom.Life in mind, becomes a sacred act, whether we are preaching the Gospel at a crusade to an audience of thousands or doing laundry at home. It is less a question of the specifics of what we are doing, and more a question of our attitudes and our heart-orientation in the midst of those activities. You can be a pastor in a megachurch for all the wrong reasons and be less in the center of God’s calling than someone who is touching the life of just one other person in a meaningful and Spirit-led way.

2. The worth of a job has nothing to do with how much income it generates.

We live in a culture in which the most valued jobs have become the ones that earn the highest income. A recent column by New York Times’ Nicholas Kristof bluntly declared, “Pay Teachers More.” Kristof notes that “in 1970, in New York City, a newly minted teacher at a public school earned about $2,000 less in salary than a starting lawyer at a prominent law firm. These days the lawyer takes home, including bonus, $115,000 more than the teacher.” There is a reason that the legal, medical, and business professions attract many of the country’s best and brightest minds. In the eyes of most Americans, success is often defined in monetary terms. McKnight aptly reminds us that “when the kingdom dream of Jesus shapes our vocations, it turns us from folks who strive for wealth into folks whose vocations are used for others.” Imagine what could happen in the church if every Christian parent, teacher, and children’s ministry leader intentionally and consistently helped the children in their midst to embrace this idea as opposed to letting the culture dictate the values these kids adopt in their own lives?

3. If we are committed to furthering God’s kingdom, we do not need to worry about whether we are in God’s will.

It doesn’t seem to matter if you are a teenager or a retiree or somewhere in between; people can become paralyzed from making any choice for fear of making the wrong one with respect to decisions about calling. This is why I so appreciate what McKnight says in this quote: “God’s will…and what you dream about in your deepest dreams line up so well, you can usually chase your dreams and you will more often than not find God’s will.” If you are sincerely seeking to please God in your life choices, and you are doing the best you can to align those choices with God’s works-in-progress in the world, you are unlikely to make a wrong choice. And even if you do, you can trust God will shut the appropriate doors or find ways to communicate when you are going down the wrong path. You might be surprised to know that Eugene Peterson did not originally intend to become a pastor. But he “paid attention to God until he realized that a pastor is what he was created to be.” (From Jonathan Wilson-Hartgrove’s review in Christianity Today of Peterson’s newly-released memoir, The Pastor.) And so, too, can all those who are Christ-followers rest assured that as long as they are sincerely “paying attention” to God’s leadings, their sense of calling will emerge and develop.

4)  Say “no” to those valuable endeavors that are outside our particular calling.

I found this point to be the most challenging for me and yet the most critical one to incorporate in my own life. The opportunities to be involved in establishing God’s Kingdom “on earth as it is in heaven” are more numerous than any one of us can handle. McKnight encourages focus instead of spreading ourselves too thin. He writes, “When we try to do too many good things, we burn out or we tune out or we leave out someone we love…In order to ‘do that’ one thing well, one must guard from trying to do too many other things. Saying no to other things is what keeps life balanced.” I think it’s helpful to remember that when we say “yes” to every need that appears before us, we are actually diminishing the opportunity that another person has to embrace the calling God has given them. So we need to prayerfully consider what our specific calling is, understanding that discovering that call is as much about saying “no” to the good opportunities so that we can say “yes” to the best ones that match God’s intent for us.

I’ve only highlighted a few of the many helpful ideas McKnight presents in this chapter. It’s well worth the time to read the entirety of Vocation.Life, crafted by someone who clearly is living within his own God-given call as a teacher and writer. But make no mistake: your life and vocation are no less important or valuable to the One who has called you in the first place.

Be sure to check out the rest of this book blogging project:

• March 28 – Chapter 1: One.Life – Doug Olson
• March 29 – Chapter 2: Kingdom.Life – Eli Suddarth
• March 30 – Chapter 3: Imagined.Life – Dan Scott
• March 31 – Chapter 4: Love.Life – Emily Mullens
• April 1 – Chapter 5: Justice.Life – Noel Walker
• April 2 – Chapter 6: Peace.Life – Jesse Smith
• April 3 – Chapter 7: Wisdom.Life – Jared Massey
• April 4 – Chapter 8: Church.Life – Tim Shiels
• April 5 – Chpater 9: Committed.Life – Chris Lema
• April 6 – Chapter 10: Sex.Life – Henry Zonio
• April 7 – Chpater 11: Vocation.Life – Helen Lee
• April 8 – Chapter 12: Eternity.Life – Christiaan VandenHuevel
• April 9 – Chapter 13: God.Is.Love.Life – Henry Zonio
• April 10 – Chapter 14: Cross.Life.Ressurection.Life – Barbara Graves