Dear SBC Family,
By now many of you may have heard that last week, IMB announced a plan to reduce the total number of our personnel (both here and overseas) by 600-800 people over the next six months. Since the moment this announcement was made, we have sought to communicate the details of this decision as clearly as possible to churches, state conventions, and national entities across the SBC (see this article and this FAQ document, in particular). In the middle of it all, though, I simply want to take a moment to share my heart with you.
This is certainly not an announcement that I, in any way, wanted to make. At the most recent meeting of the SBC in Columbus, I shared with messengers how IMB spent tens of millions more dollars than we received last year. In our budgeting process...
Lifestyle
Dear New Mum,
Firstly, congratulations on your teeny tiny bundle. You grew a human! That officially makes you awesome.
How are you feeling, now the dust has settled a bit? Probably a mixture of happy, knackered, confused and anxious. Because it's weird isn't it, becoming a mum? Pretty overwhelming, I'd say. I remember those early weeks so well. That feeling of exhaustion at the end of the day and thinking, 'Do I really have to do all this again tomorrow?' It felt like such a feat some days. I wasn't sure I was up to the job, to be honest.
Everything feels so permanent when you're a mum for the first time. Like it will never get better or easier. You think you'll never sleep again. I mean, how will you when the baby doesn't sleep for longer than a couple of hours? How on earth do...
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Coach Herman,
Hi! How are you doing? Hope things are well down in Houston. Looks like it's gonna be a hot few days this week down in the 713. Hope you're keeping cool down there, coach!
Family good? How is the Mrs. liking life down in Texas? I bet Priya loves the fall down there more than in Columbus! And TD and Maverick were probably made for the Lone Star State.
Anyway, enough small talk. Would you mind coming back to coach at Ohio State?
I know why you wouldn't want to. I know you're really happy being part of your own destiny, and running a program. This is something you've been wanting to do for oh, so long. I get it. It would be so hard to give that up and take what would basically be a demotion. But hear me out...
I know what you're building at Houston, and so far it...
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Dear Gay Community,
I am sorry. I am sorry that members of my Catholic Church (and other Christians) have not treated you with the love and respect you deserve, because we don’t agree with you on same-sex marriage or other issues. Because we disagree, that isn’t a reason to lash out at you, be triumphant, castigate blame, be divisive, or fail to love. Truly, I am sorry.
I am sorry that sometimes Christians have questioned your intent, as if you really are out to destroy the world or something. Yes, we disagree about some pretty important things – marriage, raising kids, sexuality, etc. But, you wouldn’t be asking for something if you thought it was going to ruin our culture or society.
I am sorry that we haven’t give you the Good News you deserve. Too often our faith comes across...
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Dear NFL owners,
I have loved the NFL ever since I can remember. I can recall watching games on the couch with my father, and how he stressed the importance of good line play. I remember my first plastic Dolphins helmet, and my favorite Dan Marino jersey (it’s still in my closet somewhere). I cheered in the rain at the Orange Bowl and froze on the metal bleachers at Foxboro Stadium. I tried to make it out alive at Giants Stadium and the Vet. I now make my living by (hopefully) enhancing fans’ knowledge of the game, and I often talk in the car with my son and daughter about the big games coming up. I can’t remember when the NFL hasn’t played a central role in my life. I love the game of football, and I have immense respect for those who are in that arena.
After much debate and...
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Dear Ally,
We’ve known each other a long time.
Back at the start of the 1980s, we were on opposing sides in a match between Brighton and Sunderland – and both of us ended up on the scoresheet.
We later shared a room on a golf trip to Las Vegas and will forever be linked by our mutual involvement in the events surrounding Rangers’ liquidation in 2012, something I could never have envisaged happening.
There have been a lot of questions thrown up since then. I would like, therefore, to make a public appeal to you for answers.
Answers to the questions that have left Rangers supporters dazed and confused throughout the events of the last 72 hours.
To read on the morning of a crucial Championship match that you had tendered your resignation was unprecedented.
To...
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Dear Principal,
I know you're busy, so I won't mince words: Hiring and supporting awesome people to work with the students who go to your school is the most important part of your job. Period. It's not school safety. It's not community outreach. It's not busses, instructional services or building maintenance. It's people. Because the better people you have, the more empowered and capable they are, the fewer problems you'll have in all of those other areas. Great people = great outcomes.
That said, I'm willing to bet you spend a lot of time thinking about this. Especially at this time of year when resumes, resignations, transfers and retirements start coming in. As a life long teacher, I associate the end of any school year with lots of things: kids waving out of bus...
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Dear Sam:
I’m going to disappoint you, I know. I have decided I am not going to make a gift to your program at this time.
I feel very good about your organization. I would not have agreed to see you and arrange for the appointment otherwise.
This is the first time you and I have met. You took over from Jane who had been calling on me for the past four years or so. I was very fond of her and we put together a number of programs I supported. I suppose you have my records and you already know that.
There are some things that just didn’t go right at our meeting. If you’re going to be calling on me again, I feel it only fair I bring them to your attention. My late husband often said, “If you can’t trust the messenger, you can’t trust the message.”
Forgive me if I number those things that...
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My dear children (and believe Me, that is all of you):
I consider Myself a pretty patient guy. I mean, look at the Grand Canyon. It took millions of years to get it right. And about evolution? Boy, nothing is slower than designing that whole Darwinian thing to take place cell by cell and gene by gene. And I have been patient through your fashions, your civilizations, wars and schemes, and the countless ways that you take Me for granted or ignore Me --Cheers!-- until you get yourselves into big trouble again and again.
I want to let you know about some of the things that started ticking Me off. First of all, your religious rivalries are driving Me up a wall. Enough already! Let's get one thing straight. These are your religions, not Mine. I'm the whole enchilada. I'm beyond them all...
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Dear Anna,
We don’t know each other. But I feel a connection with you and Josh because, like both of you, I grew up in a conservative Christian home and was homeschooled my entire life. Like Josh’s parents, my parents were leaders of homeschool groups and organizations (albeit on a smaller scale than Josh’s). So I grew up under the spotlight. I am familiar with living a life where your every move — and every stumble — has the potential to be examined by all sorts of people ready to critique you.
Of course, there’s also a huge chasm between you and Josh and myself. Whereas Josh and his parents — and consequently you and your children — have become new faces of the conservative Christian homeschooling movement we all grew up in, I now help facilitate a very different movement: the...
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