Blog | Topic: Discipleship

My Morning Routine: Starting the Day Well

20130719_105716My good friend Gideon Strauss, Executive Director of the The Max De Pree Center for Leadership and editor of Fieldnotes Magazine, compiled a list of morning practices that help people start their day in the article “Starting the Day Well.” It was an honor to be included in such an impressive list of people! Here’s my contribution (read more morning routines here):

Coffee. Silence. Prayer. Reading.

My morning routine is so rigid, that if I miss it my day is shot. Ask my wife!

I wake up around 6:30 AM. Brew coffee. I then sit in silence and sip. After 10 or 15 minutes I pray. I’ve a created a prayer-by-notecard system contained in a little black box. The system is a bit complicated and it’s taken me over 10 years to perfect. Basically it involves a prayer from one of three prayer books (The Valley of VisionThe Lutheran Book of Prayer, or The Book of Common Prayer) followed by a few things to pray for each day, including family, community, church, upcoming speaking events, fundraising. I then read from a devotional of some kind that typically involves reading a biblical passage. After that I read or reread a book that I am currently reading slowly. Most often it is something by Eugene Peterson, N.T. Wright, or Wendell Berry, or it is a biblical commentary. I shower at 7:50 AM and I’m at the office by 8:30 AM. It’s a short commute!

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Rethinking Worldview: J. Mark Bertrand Interview

Bertrand_slideshowThe term worldview is now widely used in discussions about faith, philosophy, culture and education. The word jumped into English from the German, Weltanschauung, and has become increasingly familiar in the last fifty years, especially in some Christian circles. Many Christians latched onto the term because it helped to describe the all-encompassing, cosmic scope of the Gospel. The Christian faith is not just a religion, but a way of life that has far-reaching implications for the way we “see” reality and live in the world. A worldview is a vision of life and for life. Familiarity often breeds contempt, however. While many agree that the popularity and wide-spread acceptance of the concept has been a good thing for the church, some critics suggest proceeding with caution when teaching that Christianity is a worldview.

J. Mark Bertrand has spent much of his adult life teaching young people the value of understanding worldviews and thinking “Christianly” about all areas of life. But he too has concerns about the misuse and misapplication of the term. In his book Rethinking Worldview: Learning to Think, Live, and Speak in This World (Crossway) Bertrand seeks to capture a more complex, nuanced appreciation of what worldviews really are. Bertrand has a degree in English from Union University and an MFA in creative writing from the University of Houston. He is also the author of a successful 3-part series of “Roland March” detective novels (Back on Murder, Pattern of Wounds and Nothing to Hide). What follows is an interview with Bertrand about worldview and how the concept, when properly understood can help young people grow in faith…

Download the interview (.pdf) here.

Read more expert interviews here.

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