{"id":2029,"date":"2008-05-31T18:23:00","date_gmt":"2008-05-31T22:23:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/rjaharrison.com\/?p=2029"},"modified":"2015-10-18T20:09:50","modified_gmt":"2015-10-19T00:09:50","slug":"its-wonderful-thing","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/rjaharrison.com\/?p=2029","title":{"rendered":"It’s a wonderful thing"},"content":{"rendered":"

being married to somebody smarter than me. I’ve said this many times, and will no doubt say it many more. At the moment, I’m saying it again because my wonderful wife has just put words to something very important<\/a>, something we both feel very strongly, and done so better than I’ve yet managed to do. I’ve been talking through some of this with our elders, and preaching about it some, about what it means to be that kind of church, and how we get there; I’ve talked about how we become a church of square holes (and triangular, and star-shaped, and rhomboid, and . . .) so that people feel it’s OK to be a square peg, and I’ve been encouraged to find people listening, and open. But there’s no question, we can’t get there on our own; to do that, we need a response from others outside ourselves. We need to find ways to earn people’s trust (which means, of course, continuing to grow ourselves to be worthy of that trust), so that we can all be the Church of the Exploded Comfort Zone together.Anyway, go read Sara’s post; she really has said it better than I can.“Unless the Lord builds the house, those who build it labor in vain . . .”<\/em>\u2014Psalm 127:1a<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

being married to somebody smarter than me. I’ve said this many times, and will no doubt say it many more. At the moment, I’m saying it again because my wonderful wife has just put words to something very important, something we both feel very strongly, and done so better than I’ve yet managed to do. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[86,76,1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2029","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-church-and-ministry","category-scripture","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p6R3Ax-wJ","jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":903,"url":"https:\/\/rjaharrison.com\/?p=903","url_meta":{"origin":2029,"position":0},"title":"As I’ve said before","author":"Rob Harrison","date":"17 February 2010","format":false,"excerpt":"it's a wonderful thing being married to someone smarter than me. As I was putting together the retrospective post before this one (the first one I've done in a couple months), I was pointed again to a post my wife put up nearly two years ago now, addressed to some\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Church and ministry"","block_context":{"text":"Church and ministry","link":"https:\/\/rjaharrison.com\/?cat=86"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":1182,"url":"https:\/\/rjaharrison.com\/?p=1182","url_meta":{"origin":2029,"position":1},"title":"Note on the past week","author":"Rob Harrison","date":"11 August 2009","format":false,"excerpt":"If anyone wondered about the radio silence around here the last several days, you may be assured that I haven't run out of things to say (not that anyone who knows me would consider that likely); rather, we were on vacation in Pennsylvania and found ourselves unexpectedly without Internet access\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Church and ministry"","block_context":{"text":"Church and ministry","link":"https:\/\/rjaharrison.com\/?cat=86"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":2191,"url":"https:\/\/rjaharrison.com\/?p=2191","url_meta":{"origin":2029,"position":2},"title":"In defense of the church, part I: Preaching","author":"Rob Harrison","date":"25 February 2008","format":false,"excerpt":"This post\u00a0of Barry's, in response to\u00a0a meme\u00a0that's going around, got me thinking. Church-bashing is a popular thing, and with a fair bit of reason; even the best of churches are human institutions that screw things up and hurt people sometimes, and there are a lot of churches out there which\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Church and ministry"","block_context":{"text":"Church and ministry","link":"https:\/\/rjaharrison.com\/?cat=86"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":2221,"url":"https:\/\/rjaharrison.com\/?p=2221","url_meta":{"origin":2029,"position":3},"title":"Church as consumer option?","author":"Rob Harrison","date":"30 January 2008","format":false,"excerpt":"I've been troubled by Richard Mouw's defense of church shopping, published recently in Christianity Today; I have a great deal of respect for Dr. Mouw, but I think he's really missed the boat with this one, and I've been trying to figure out what needs to be said in answer\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Church and ministry"","block_context":{"text":"Church and ministry","link":"https:\/\/rjaharrison.com\/?cat=86"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":1008,"url":"https:\/\/rjaharrison.com\/?p=1008","url_meta":{"origin":2029,"position":4},"title":"Now, who is this church thing about, again?","author":"Rob Harrison","date":"28 October 2009","format":false,"excerpt":"I was blown away last night by a great post from the Vice Moderator of the 218th General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church (USA), the Rev. Byron Wade. I've never met him, but I'm confident in saying two things about him: 1) he's good people, and 2) he's on the\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Church and ministry"","block_context":{"text":"Church and ministry","link":"https:\/\/rjaharrison.com\/?cat=86"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":1839,"url":"https:\/\/rjaharrison.com\/?p=1839","url_meta":{"origin":2029,"position":5},"title":"The attractional church: a paradigm for abusive ministry?","author":"Rob Harrison","date":"8 September 2008","format":false,"excerpt":"(Note: this was originally posted on August 28\u2014and then had the misfortune to be swamped by political commentary. I've bumped it up in hopes that folks who might be interested who might have missed it before will catch it.) I want, if I can, to start a conversation here. Over\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Church and ministry"","block_context":{"text":"Church and ministry","link":"https:\/\/rjaharrison.com\/?cat=86"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]}],"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/rjaharrison.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2029","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/rjaharrison.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/rjaharrison.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rjaharrison.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rjaharrison.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2029"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/rjaharrison.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2029\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3705,"href":"https:\/\/rjaharrison.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2029\/revisions\/3705"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/rjaharrison.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2029"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rjaharrison.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2029"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rjaharrison.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2029"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}