As a disclaimer, anything that is to come is not intended to bash men or women, rather, it's to point up how jacked up things are in this life and in our natural patterns of behavior.

A few years ago I first came across the book, Love and Respect. It's a marriage book based on a mix of Ephesians and sociological research and, it proposed, the couples act in a love and respect cycle.

Basically, there's some solid research out there that reveals that men, on the whole, really want to be respected (you could say that for me, respect = love), while women, on the whole, really want to be loved. So, the love a respect cycles basically says that when a man acts lovingly, then a woman will act respectfully, and when a man acts unlovingly, then a woman will act disrespectfully. Obviously both of these actions then feed into the other so you either end up with something stable or something that's completely jacked.

When I first heard this idea I really liked it, but, as I'm watching more and more relational dynamics unfold, I don't think it's accurate. Rather, I think, when a man acts lovingly, there is something inside a woman that asks, "Is he being loving because he loves me, or because I did something respectful?" In other words, she wants to know that she's truly and unconditionally loved (a desire that isn't a bad thing).

Now, I don't think the next step is necessarily malicious or intentional, but the only way to find out if the love given is based on her actions or because she is unconditionally loved, is to act disrespectfully and discover what the man does ... does he prove himself loving or does he grow cold?

At this point there's two options. The man can do what's right and continue to act lovingly (which I've seen result in more disrespect and, essentially, a lifetime of having to prove himself ... a move which eventually emasculates him), or he can act unlovingly, an action that, based on my observation, often prompts a woman to act respectfully in an attempt to regain a sense of being loved (only to have the cycle restart once things are stable again). Of course, in time, a guy figures out that if he wants her to act respectfully, that he needs to keep her constantly on edge so she's always trying to doing something that will give her a sense of being loved (of course, this will ultimately wear her out as well).

Thoughts? Is the revamped model accurate? What needs to happen so couples can break this dysfunctional model and return to a healthy love and respect cycle?

It's sort of funny, I used to think that church boards were the way they were because they were church boards. However, having spent about 6 months on the board of Capitol Hill United Neighborhoods (CHUN), a community organization here in Denver, I've come to the conclusion that the way boards operate has nothing to do with the church, but has everything to do with the nature of boards. After all, organizationally speaking, it's really difficult to get any farther from a conservative Lutheran church than CHUN.

And yet, as I sit in a board meeting, if I wasn't paying attention to the issues, I really couldn't tell the difference. The reasoning behind the arguments is the same, there's lots of talk with little action, an general contentment with the status quo, and a desire to squelch change agents.

Now, there are some obvious exceptions and John Carver has devoted his life to developing a model for boards that don't do these things, but for the most part, when left to their own doing, boards will be boards, no matter what the organizational context might be.

With all that in mind, some prayers as I head to a "special board meeting" to deal with an "important personnel issue" would be appreciated.

I never realized how accurate this ad is until the past couple days when I had to do some tech support on a Vista machine in a church office. It's ridiculous how often you get asked to do, well, just about anything in Vista. Of course, it's all because the base operating system has so many security holes that make it an easy target for a third-source that might want to damage your files. All of this reminded me of a quote I heard a while back, "Mac OSX, because making UNIX user friendly, was easier than fixing Windows."

All of this got me to thinking about how we address various issues in our life, be it a personal struggle, relationships, a group we're a part of, or whatever else. When an issue comes, are we like Microsoft folks who focus on eliminating the symptom (there's a risk for a security breech so we'll put something in place to guard the gaping hole), or do we take a Mac approach and address the actual problem (getting rid of the hole)?

I'm thinking, more often than not, when confronted by something, we look at what's right in front of us, the symptom, and try and deal with that, rather they trying to diagnose what's behind the symptom (the actual problem). The problem is, we address one symptom and another appears ... and then another ... and then another ... and then another.

However, if we operate diagnostically and use the symptoms to lead us to the actual problem, we can actually find a viable solution.

Thoughts? Are you a symptom or disease kind of person? Have any examples to share?

It's always nice to receive encouragement, although, tonight, my encouragers didn't know they were doing just that.

You see, recently, we made a few changes on the fshbwl, one of which means that the blogs of site users are featured on the front page of the site under the "live" heading. The basic idea is giving visitors and opportunity to look in on the lives of people who are trying to live out this faith. As a result of this change, I'm far more aware of what others are posting.

Well, tonight, as I was clicking through "live", I ran across this post which is basically a summary of earth in the elemental life. Then, the next post I read in "live" was this one, which really jives with the whole idea of wind in the elemental life.

So, where's the encouragement? It's always cool to see that you're not way out there in what you're thinking and, if nothing else, you're resonating with others. Thanks for the encouragement Paul and Jay!

Last week I ran across this article, an interview with Tim Keller, in Christianity Today. This week in my blog I decided to look at the questions he was asked, pull a quote from his answers, and share some thoughts.

Q: What are the changes that you see for your ministry?

A: The question is, How do you make sure that not only the particular theological and ministry DNA of the church is such that other people can get ahold of it?

Of all the things Keller said in the interview, this is the one I have the most issue with. While I'm confident that it's not his goal to package Redeemer and ship it out to all kinds of other urban churches (although him referring to sharing the DNA makes me worry a bit), that's what always happens when you do this. Rick Warren told people not to do what he did, but the result was guys in Minnesota wearing Hawaiian shirts. St. Toms in Sheffield, England makes the same argument when you go over there, and yet there are now churches all over the place using the Lifeshapes, holding cluster meetings, and doing all that stuff.

The problem with all this is that no other urban church is in NYC and has the exact same history and cultural conditions of Redeemer. The same goes for Saddleback and St. Toms. Those are unique situations ... just like the church that's buying up everyone else's resources. Certainly there's something to learn from the process and philosophy of ministry, but trying to replicate the DNA just isn't it.

That's why I'm loving the whole Church Unique book.