Posts Tagged "Argument Culture"

Vermont Hills United Methodist Church Us vs Them BrainStorm (Week 1) Play Episode Pause Episode Mute/Unmute Episode Rewind 10 Seconds 1x Fast Forward 30 seconds 00:00 / 00:44:57 Subscribe Share RSS Feed Share Link Embed Download file | Play in new window | Duration: 00:44:57Our discussion of “The Church of Us vs Them” is off to a good start. Listen in  and let us know your thoughts. You can also watch the video (including...

Here is a short encouragement that I shared with a seminary class recently. Be brave. Be bold. Be daring. … it probably won’t work anyway. The systems is so powerful and so dominating that it can absorb, adapt to, and even appropriate any protest or critique. Parables, by the way, are not earthly stories with heavenly meanings. Parables are earthy stories with heavy meaning. Parables come in underneath your radar when your...

I had the opportunity to be on the UMC podcast Get Your Spirit In Shape. My interview is Ep. 43 called Disagreeing Well. It’s no secret that people disagree, sometimes vehemently. When our opinions match, it is easy to have a conversation. When we are on opposite sides of an issue, talking can be far more challenging, but often more fruitful. In a time when opinions are strong in both our public and church lives, learning to disagree...

Last week on the Peacing It All Together podcast, Randy and I talked about ‘the call for civility’. Next week at the church’s pub-chat, the topic is the same. Randy and I came up with 3 ideas about this and I want to reflect on them here. First, it is important in ‘The Argument Culture’ (as Deborah Tannen famously called it) that we don’t prioritize policing people’s tone or vocabulary. Yes, we don’t want to inflame the situation and...