Beauty – Part 2

Violet Blue, writing in the San Francisco Examiner, interviewed a Burlesque dancer who admitted the following:

“I have shared dressing rooms with thousands of ravishingly beautiful women over the last 12 years, and the one thing they all have in common is … none of them think they are beautiful enough. Our society teaches women to pick themselves to pieces, analyzing each and every feature individually and keeping a list in our minds of each and every perceived fault. No one comes out of this scenario feeling good, and when women are in this mind-set, nothing you can say will change the way they feel about themselves. Believe me, I’ve tried. (Have you noticed that most women will argue with you when you give them a compliment rather than just saying ‘thank you’?)

What is this “our society” that she criticizes as the real culprit? Some would say it is men who ogle women and comment on their physical attributes out loud as if they were examining horses at a sale. Others would say it is the millions of women who analyze models to death and love reality shows that parade “almost perfect” women to discover their flaws. Some blame their mothers, others their fathers. There are some who see advertising and television as the villains and still others who find the source of physical self-hatred in the school system.

Who is to blame?

Might it just be “beauty” itself? I think there is an existence or thing we can call “perfect beauty” which none of us attain. Just as there is a holiness that sin has put out of our reach (apart from the gift of God in Jesus), so too there is a beauty that we cannot get a hold of because sin has mostly ripped it away from us.

As I said last time, when man sinned, the consequence was that we were lead down a garden path. At the end of that path is an idea that the physical realm is the only reality. Or if not the only reality, the only reality that we can evaluate. The naturalist would say: “Prove the existence of any other reality and then I will believe”. What they mean by that is “reduce any other reality to physical laws and I will accept it.” That, of course, is ludicrous.

Keats said “Beauty is Truth and Truth, Beauty. That is all ye know on earth and all ye need to know.” He did not mean Truth in the absolute sense, but naturally verified truth…as in “how many legs does a spider have” and “what colors are represented in this sunset”. Being a naturalist, he believed that all matter is beauty.

Tell that to the burlesque dancer with legs that go on forever and she will ask “do these sequins make my butt look too big?” She doesn’t believe all matter is beauty and I suspect that when Keats looked at other women as he was walking down the road with his wife, he didn’t believe it either.

I do remember that moment I held my first child while his body was greasy with afterbirth and his lungs were filling up with air and emptying with wails for the first times. My wife was being cared for and the nursing staff rushed around oblivious to me and my son. I held John and looked into his eyes for the first time. There was nothing for me to see that was appealing. He looked like an overdone lobster. He was messy, noisy, squirmy, and he made me nervous. But for a moment, I saw another realm leaking through. There was a glimpse of beauty, a Shining that came through him. I was tied to him as tightly as my Father in Heaven is tied to me. All three of us were joined and I felt “beauty” as a reality. It was like that moment when looking into a “Magic Picture” where your focus catches the real picture. That is what happened when I caught Beauty in my soulsight.

Beauty lasts…it cannot fade, since it is permanent…but my focus went elsewhere after awhile. I have caught other glimpses of Beauty at the strangest moments. So have you.

Beauty Examined – Part 1

A number of fascinating, coordinating searches have lead me back to the concept of beauty. I am beginning to learn that beauty is much more powerful a reality than I first imagined. The further I looked into it, the more complicated and ominous the subject became.

Take this verse in Psalm 27 for example:

Psalm 27:4

⁴ One thing I ask of the Lord,

this is what I seek:

that I may dwell in the house of the Lord

all the days of my life,

to gaze upon the beauty of the Lord

and to seek him in his temple.

David speaks of the “beauty of the Lord” as something he is seeking after in the house of the Lord. But what are we always told about beauty: That ‘it’ (beauty) is in the eye of the beholder. The implication is that all things can be beautiful if someone sees them that way. As prosaic as this subjective view of beauty really is, there is little to recommend that viewpoint. God Himself has beauty whether you or I agree upon it. God by definition is absolute and complete beyond any of our opinions. Therefore, there is beauty which exists apart from anyone’s opinion of it. Evolutionary biologists suggest that beauty is found in being most average. Really? That is what they believe. For instance, there are 22 measurements of symmetry in the human body (ears, eyes, breasts, shoulders, legs, etc., etc.). The more these features are symmetrical, the more beautiful someone is perceived…even by babies. The more a person looks like the average person of that race or culture, the more they are perceived as beautiful…even by babies. (We can tell that babies find someone pleasing by their facial and vocal reactions). Symmetry and culturally normal features make beauty. But do they? God is spirit, yet God has a beauty that cannot be denied. Can something be beautiful even if no one acknowledges that beauty?

There is a theory that Eve had a dynamic beauty that took Adam’s breath away. And I contend that Adam and Eve were more focused on the spirit realm bfore the fall of man than the physical (after all, once their eyes were opened, they saw the physical for the first time as important…they hid, the covered up etc.). Eve had a beauty that must have been more than physical, emanating from the deepest parts of who she was.

I was reading a book last week on Body Dysmorphic Disorder (BDD), an all-too common emotional problem. With BDD, a person obsesses over one physical feature that they believe is damaged or marred, whether this is true or not. A classic example of this would be a pop singer who thinks their nose is ugly, so they go through surgery after surgery to correct it; and end up creating an ugly proboscis. BDD patients not only obsess over body parts, but they can think of little else. They are convinced everyone is staring at their nose, their hair, their breasts, their tummy, their skin all the time. Even when they actually have a deformity, if it isn’t the same one that they have been obsessing on, they will ignore it and just focus on their supposed defect. It can destroy their school life, home life, love life. They are firmly encamped in the idea that they can never be beautiful or even normal. Beauty is always elusive to them. This obsession seems to have an ideal behind it: Is it possible that sufferers of BDD actually have an intuitive sense of beauty and are devastated because their fear and shame get in the way of finding it?

Is that what the daughters of Eve are always pining away for? Is that what the sons of Adam wish they could recapture? Is beauty a quality of life? And if it is, can we have it and not know it? Can we have it for awhile and lose it? Will we know it if we see it in others and in nature? Can it be found in nature? Is it found in all of nature? These are some of the questions that come up when I look at Beauty.

Internet Porn Panic Button

If you aren’t already familiar with it, the best resource for accountability in the use of the Internet is called “Covenant Eyes“. This program is not designed to stop you from visiting a site (try looking up anything on “Breast Cancer” with NetNanny or SafeSurf”) but rather it sends out a report each week on where you’ve been. There is virtually no way you can trick the program and get around it. For a very small fee each month, you can have your report sent to anyone…your spouse, your boss, your pastor, your counselor…or maybe even an accountability partner. I have my reports sent to two different people. Knowing that my wife and my accountability partner would be able to see everywhere I go on the Internet virtually eliminates the temptation for me.

But now, Covenant Eyes has another feature. It is called “The Panic Button”. It is reserved for those people who still struggle with porn and are totally committed to removing it from their lives. As you use the Internet, if the temptation to view porn is too great, and you don’t want to give in, you can hit the panic button and it will completely prevent you from using any part of the Internet. Then, when you feel your self-control returning, you can call them up and they will reset it in your computers.

Of course, I advocate getting Theophostic therapy for any addiction, but this is a good additional tool to help with the occasional mental slipups.

Back from the Dead

In view of the message I am giving this Sunday on what we are told by one who comes back from the dead, we will go from the ridiculous to the sublime. Today, the ridiculous

Telling Part of My Story

I’m not entirely sure if this blog entry will turn out to be instructive or cathartic. Perhaps a little of both. I’ll tell you what I did first, what happened as a result, and then we can discuss together what it means.

Reading this book by Viola and Barna last week brought back memories of 1997. I spent a lot of that year working on a book I wanted to market on a similar theme as Pagan Christianity. I had been thinking for a long time about Christianity’s American expression and not happy at all with what I saw. In particular, I took exception with how much American pastors were still playing the dominant role in church ministry and how individual members felt like second-class citizens in the Kingdom of God. This problem is nothing new: It has existed since the first century. On this point, Viola is accurate and astute. The concept of the Priesthood of all Believers has not worked out well in practice.

The book I decided to write was going to be called “Releasing God’s People”. At the time, I was still marketing my first book and doing radio interviews with stations across the country.

A Denver radio station asked to do a 15 minute interview with me which was to be followed up with listener questions. In the minutes before we started, the interviewer told me that they usually had one or two callers at that time in the morning and I shouldn’t expect to be on the phone for more than 20 minutes total. During the first ten minutes of on-air time, we talked about my book on parenting techniques and he pretty much followed the “questions list” my publicist had sent him. At one point, he stopped and asked if I was working on any new projects at that moment. I blurted out that I was writing a book on “Releasing God’s People” which would center on taking much of ministry out of the hands of the pastor and giving it back to the average disciple of Jesus. It was like I had woken the interviewer up with a slap on the face. He went from disinterested radio jock to curious enquirer. I should point out that this was not a religious radio station.

After ten minutes of questions, he opened it up to the listeners. From what he later told me, they had never had that kind of response. The phone lines were jammed with people wanting to ask questions of this “pastor guy”. After almost an hour of the question/answer banter, the radio guy cut it off and finished his slot for the day. When we got off the air, he asked me if I would send him a copy of the book when it was done. I assured him I would send it upon its publication.

He never got a copy of the book. It was never published. The manuscript still sits in the bottom of a file drawer awaiting its day. I am going to explain the two reasons for that in a moment.

I was approximately 80% finished with the book when I did that interview. The portion I was working on not only was the most difficult, but also the section I felt the least amount of peace over. It was the part where I explained what I thought should be done. In preparation for one of the chapters, an idea occured to me. It seemed so brilliant at the time that I really didn’t ask anyone if they thought it was a GOOD idea. That might have saved me a lot of anxiety.

Here was my idea. If anything was going to change, it probably needed to come from the people at the center of the problem: pastors. And if I was going to write a book about what I thought should change, I should be willing to lead the way. I still believe that. I just realize now that my idea was faulty. It didn’t seem that way at the time, but it was.

Here is what happened. I was teaching a series on Ephesians 4 in preparation for presenting some of my new ideas on the role of the pastor. During the week before the message, I had taken a sign off my door. The sign had given my name and my title and was situated at the front right hand corner of the sanctuary. I took off the words “Senior Pastor” and just left my name there. Then, at the beginning of my message, I announced I was resigning as “The Pastor” of the church. After allowing the gasps and emotions to subside a bit, I then explained myself. I looked at the Scriptures concerning the role of leadership in the church and found that it is rare for one person to be called by God to lead alone. It did happen a few times in the Bible, but the more common pattern was for God to raise up many leaders and give them various degrees of spiritual authority. What I was “resigning” from was the idea that I was the only leader in the church, the only minister, the only real servant of the Lord, the only one who could be called “God’s Anointed”.

After that service concluded, several people came up to me with concerned and worried looking faces and told me “I love you Mike, but I don’t think this is going to turn out well for all of us”. Several of the people I saw as the most mature members of the Body shared this same opinion with me. I hate to say that my wife was one of them. In fact, the people who loved what I had to say the most were the scariest ones: The rebellious, goofy and immature. Immediately I had to ask “what have I done?”

The next year was a horror story for me and the church as a whole. As I sought to bring changes to the leadership structure of the church and to have those changes filter to every level of the church’s experience, more and more incidents of sin, rebellion, and people trying to exert improper control over each other happened. In one year, 8 members of the church had to be disciplined for sinful behavior. We had only disciplined a half dozen in the 9 previous years. There was a huge split in the leadership team. A year later, half the board split off and formed their own church. The church voted to leave the fellowship of churches they had been a part of since their founding 16 years earlier. We had been the fastest growing church in town at that point and now we were shrinking like an iceberg in the Sahara.

And all I did was remove my title from the door. What harm could that have done? I mean, it was only a title, right?

Some of the wisest leaders in God’s church that I know have pondered this situation with me. I have written several people whose books sell millions and who are acquaintances…and they have shared their wisdom. I have sought the Lord and He showed me some things. Ministry leaders, prayer warriors, worship leaders, deacons, elders, small group leaders, Bible College presidents and evangelists have weighed in on this situation. Their wisdom amounts to three principles that I didn’t see the full value of at the time.

1. Human beings want God’s authority vested in other human beings. This goes right back to Israel’s first King. God didn’t fight it…he realized we have trouble with being lead by the unseen God. The Bible is clear that God raises up leaders (even secular leaders) to bring his hand of order and discipline.

2. The spirit realm is all about authority. When someone relinquishes authority, there is a vacuum into which the enemy can work more freely. King David is the classic example of this when he committed adultery with Bathsheba after refusing to be the leader of the Army going into battle. Never were there more ominous words in the Bible than these: “It was the time that Kings went out to war, but David stayed home.”

3. Rebellion is always waiting to show itself as soon as there is anarchy. You cannot have a group of people without a leader. For if you do not designate a leader by some means, the strongest and most power-centered person will take charge.

By not recognizing these three principles, I had caused God’s church irreparable harm. I have publicly confessed that sin to that congregation almost before it was too late. God did repair some of the damage, but most of it remains to this day. I refused to finish that book and publish it as a result. I think I know what the answer can be. I am waiting for someone else to write it, since I believe I have lost my right to be the one to say it. May God raise that person up.

I Love How this Sounds

Here is the 8th Psalm as translated in “The Message”. I don’t normally do this, but the word images are so crisp and poignant.

8 God, brilliant Lord,

yours is a household name.

² Nursing infants gurgle choruses about you;

toddlers shout the songs

That drown out enemy talk,

and silence atheist babble.

^3–4 I look up at your macro-skies, dark and enormous,

your hand-made sky-jewelry,

Moon and stars mounted in their settings.

Then I look at my micro-self and wonder,

Why do you bother with us?

Why take a second look our way?

^5–8 Yet we’ve so narrowly missed being gods,

bright with Eden’s dawn light.

You put us in charge of your handcrafted world,

repeated to us your Genesis-charge,

Made us lords of sheep and cattle,

even animals out in the wild,

Birds flying and fish swimming,

whales singing in the ocean deeps.

⁹ God, brilliant Lord,

your name echoes around the world.

Eugene H. Peterson, The Message : The Bible in Contemporary Language, Ps 8:1-9 (Colorado Springs, Colo.: NavPress, 2002).

Apology is Needed

I do want to apologize to readers of this blog for my vain attempts at humor regarding pastors. I admit that I don’t do sarcasm well…and for that I am grateful. It does reveal to me that I have some issues with a few of my colleagues which would be better served by praying for them or talking to them…or both.

I have removed the entries that don’t belong in this blog. That’s the reason you no longer see them.

Now I’ve Read the Entire Book – Pagan Christianity

After reading every word of PC, I feel a little better that my pre-review was pretty accurate. That also bothers me because it means that Viola and Barna are getting type-cast and predictable.

By way of background, there are a few things you need to know about the book. It doesn’t just attack the role of the pastor, but almost everything about today’s church. It attacks instruments in the service, worship services themselves, youth pastors, most contemporary ministry, charismatic churches, all clergy, all tithing, all contemporary study of the Bible, all Bible college, seminary and monastic education and practices. It even says that dressing nicely on Sunday is unbiblical. Wow! That’s quite a list. Add to that their attacks on Sunday School, Communion, Baptism, teaching, public prayers, layout of the Bible, any logic whatsoever in a lecture, breathing, happiness and apple pie (I made those last three up…I was on a roll), and you can see that Viola and Barna really don’t like anything to do with today’s church. It is 300 pages of why today’s church is wrong and needs to disappear and allow the Organic Church (unorganized, no leaders, no money, no influence etc.) to take its place.

Primarily, this is a book of inconsistencies. Because of these ones in particular, he has little credibility:

1. Viola and Barna Can’t Live What they Preach: They teach that no one should make a living off of the body of Christ. But Viola makes a living off of his books and lectures…to the Body of Christ! And no one is given more money from Christians these days than the Barna Group. They would counter that they don’t pressure people to give them money…they offer something for their services. So does today’s pastor and youth director and counselor. Viola castigates anyone who calls themselves a spiritual “expert”. But his biography in the back of the book says that he is the “nationally recognized expert in new trends in the church”. They say that the church is unbiblical because all it cares about is marketing and image. But I find this curious. I’ve been saying that for years; but one of the books given to me to counter that notion was a volume titled “Marketing the Church”…by George Barna!!! In Pagan Christianity, he fails to mention that title in his resume. Viola also sees higher education as an impediment to true Christianity, but he himself has a college degree and makes mention of it on his website.

2. Overdependence on One Chapter: Viola is actually the writer of the book…Barna only adds his name to it and a short introduction. The book actually came out in 2002, but sold sporadically. Barna has now “seen the light” and wanted it to be more prominent, so he added his name to it. Notice that it took an individual leader with credibility and stature to give the book prominence. I thought they were against leaders. Oh sorry…they are just against leaders they don’t like. Back to my point…they emphasize in many places that today’s pastor takes Bible truths out of context and preaches their favorite soapboxes. Yet, most of the structure for the church they emphasize comes out of 12 verses in 1 Corinthians 14! They say that the existence of the pastor is negated because it is only found in Ephesians 4, yet they make much of a House church worship structure that is really only mentioned in 1 Corinthians 14. Inconsistent.

3. Reliance on Verses, not context: Viola criticizes today’s church for reliance on chapter and verse designations (that are admittedly a Middle Ages creation). But everywhere in the book, he uses chapter and verse designations. Not only that, but his treatment of most bible passages in his book lacks any explanation of the historical context whatsoever. And even though Viola seeks to give historical perspective on almost every practice in the church, he completely glosses over several key passages of Scripture and gives no background of the church to which it was written (the most egregious example is Ephesians 4…which he attacks for poor exegesis, but he gives no historical background to the Ephesian church).

4. Use of the Old Testament: Viola has a dual way of dealing with the Old Testament. If an Old testament practice is still being used in the church, he admits it is biblical, but then says it is not Christian. He defines Christian as something written about in the New Testament. But the early Christians, who only had the Old Testament, would hardly agree with him. But, when the post-new testament era church added something to the practice of the Body which diverges from the Old Testament, he says it is not biblical but pagan. By doing this, he eliminates everything he doesn’t like or agree with.

5. Preaching from the Choir: Not that Viola accepts the legitimacy of choirs, but he sure does a lot of preaching from them. In his hundreds of footnotes, the vast majority are from those who already agree with his stance on the house church movement. He tries to overpower the reader with quotations, but many of them are from the same sources. These sources are not necessarily recognized historical scholars, but rather modern apologists for an unorganized church. When he does quote historians such as Will Durant, he uses some of their pithiest slogans and little of their research.

6. Out of Context: He hates when preachers take the Scriptures out of context, but he does it with several of the most famous people he quotes as support. His favorites are F. F. Bruce, Karl Barth and A. W. Tozer. These three men (all Seminary-trained theologians btw….something Viola can’t stand), are quoted as supporting Viola’s argument against a modern pastorate. Yet, when I looked up several of the passages he mentions, none of the men are saying that we should eliminate the pastorate. If Viola could find one credible, non-house church writer that agrees with his stance, it might hold more water.

7. Overemphasis on Catholics: Viola…there was a Protestant Reformation; Remember? Many, if not most of his criticisms in the book are leveled against Roman Catholic practices. Though I think he is overly harsh with some things, I recognize his point. But so does the entire Protestant world! When he says that Luther, Zwingli, Bucer and Calvin did not go far enough with their reforms, few Evangelicals will disagree with him. But in this book, you would think that no churches have improved upon the early days of the Reformation. For instance, I haven’t heard a 3-point Hegelian sermon in a decade. I haven’t seen a pastor in a boxed-in pulpit in 30 years. Yet, he makes a great case to eliminate both. Wake up Viola…have you been to a church lately? Many of them meet in schools, warehouses and on beaches. Most church members wear jeans to church instead of sunday clothes. The fact that he lives in the South probably clouds his vision.

8. Behind the Times: To be fair to Viola, some of the things he says are very good and ought to be changed. But the time to say them was 40 years ago. Today we have spontaneous singing in church. Today we have people in congregations writing new songs. Today, we have meetings where everyone brings a teaching or a prayer or a prophetic word. Has he not heard of the Emerging church or the Charismatic church or the Cell church or the Third Wave movements? Many of his proposals were being brought forward by Gene Getz, David Mains and Ray Stedman a quarter of a century ago. Ralph Neighbor talked about these views of the Scripture eons ago. There is nothing new about his viewpoints on the Bible, preaching, worship and ministry.

In short, I could give a dozen book recommendations that would be more helpful and more accurate than this one.

A Pastor By Any other Name

I am almost finished with Viola’s book “Pagan Christianity”. I have to say this about him. He definitely makes it sound academically rich (i.e. His theory on the pagan roots of modern Christianity). But when I did a cursory background check on some of his “facts”, several of them were not accurate. Naughty, naughty. That was just a tease. I will do a thorough analysis of the book next week.

But for now, let’s keep talking about the role of the pastor in today’s church.

(Note: If I occasionally slip and say “him” or use male pronouns in my description of the role of the pastor, it is not because I am in that camp that thinks only men can be pastors. It is because the vast majority of pastors are men and it is hard for me to break away from that stereotype completely. But I will try).

In the last entry, it was noted that today’s church pastor is not functioning like the pastor of the New Testament days. The modern pastor is not as much a coach, discipler and curate as we would hope to see if things had gone unchanged over the 20 centuries of Christianity’s existence. But should we have hoped for things not to change?

All organizations, no matter how loosely structured or how spiritually inclined, adapt and become more complex. Add one person to two and the amount of relational connections doubles. Add a third person and the relational connections triple (from two to six). This number gets larger on an exponential scale as you add more people. Not only that, but all organizations get more specialized in time. Today’s doctor does not look like the MD of yesteryear. Gone are the barbers who did surgery, the surgeons who only cut off body parts and the leech mongers. But also, gone are house calls; gone is bedside compassion; gone is the doctor who doesn’t take much money for their services. Now we have doctors who never see a patient (see the movie “Awakenings” for evidence of that), but only do research. Others specialize so completely that they know more than any other physician about the secretions of the pineal gland, but know very little about other parts of the body. Surgeons today cannot diagnose, but they know where and how to cut and which laser tools to use. My wife’s nephew has a job where he make a quarter mill. a year showing surgeons how to use the specialized tools his company makes. That is a far cry from old Doc Brown who delivered twins in the morning, cut out ingrown toenails in the afternoon and visited his six patients with TB in the Sanitorium before going home for dinner at 10 p.m.

Should things have changed for doctors? Probably. But were the changes all good? Probably not.

The same is true of the pastorate. Viola is wrong when he claims that the emergence of the Pastor owes its existence to the Roman governmental system. The concept of a person or persons in charge of Christian enterprises existed from the first days of the church. Only one person got up to preach at Pentecost. Only Philip went out to preach in Gaza. He didn’t bring a team with him. Only Peter got the vision of the gentiles coming into Christianity.

But in the early church, they also had other labels for their leaders. Some were called evangelists (Philip), others prophets (Agabus), and still others Apostles (Paul, Junia, a woman). Some of them weren’t given a title (Mark, Timothy), but because they were sent out by an Apostle, we assume that’s the role they played. But in another sense, Timothy really does sound similar to today’s pastor in some of the things that Paul exhorts him to do. Teachers show up in Antioch, but are not mentioned other places. Paul teaches as well – in one case all night long – but no one calls him a teacher.

People were known by their giftings in Corinth but nowhere else. Others were known by their calling (Saul of Tarsus) and others by their position (James the supposed head of the church). So they had calling, gifting and hierarchy in the early church. They also had many names for leaders in the church.

What would happen if we started renaming the pastor of today? Some groups have actually begun to do just that. Certain charismatic circles have begun to refer to their leaders by the Ephesians 4 definitions of Apostle (see Bill Hamon) and Prophet (e.g. Bob Jones, Steve Thompson). There are others who feel that all the ministry positions have evaporated except pastor and teacher.

We recognize evangelists today (Billy Graham, Luis Palau) and teachers (Chuck Swindoll, Charles Stanley, Jack Hayford)…everyone else is mostly assumed to be a pastor (with perhaps one of the other labels added on). I have been called a Prophet from time to time when I have prophesied and when I have taught on how to hear God’s voice. I have been called an evangelist when I have lead numerous people to Christ, a teacher when I have taught for longer than a half hour at a time and an Apostle when I planted churches. But since I do more counseling than almost every other ministry, I guess I fulfill some of the functions of pastor.

Our problem today is that we probably need some new labels. Or, we need to acknowledge that the pastor of yesteryear is gone and will never return. We have become more specialized and perhaps we need to be. Some need to devote their lives to reaching certain age groups. Others are devoted to specific handicaps (the blind, lame, emotionally bereaved) to the military, to other language groups.

Perhaps a good way to handle this is to start using terms like “director”, “coordinator”, “president” and then add their area of specialization: as in “Director of Worship”, “Chaplains coordinator”, “outreach President”, etc. Even today’s pastors can be called “Preaching Specialist” or “Teaching Elder” as they are sometimes referred to. Others who are gifted at administration or marketing can be called “Executive Director”.

Is it helpful to change the names? It might aid this new postmodern generation that fears old institutions.

Note About this Blog’s Content

To those who read this blog for musings and instruction on counseling and TPM: That is now moving to another blog altogether. Too many of Gateway’s attendees would rather I stick to mainstream issues here and deal with TPM in another forum. It will be a “members-only” forum, but if you email me at mikeinsac@sbcglobal.net I will give you the information to join once it is up. Watch this space for more details.