Author: guy.chmieleski@gmail.com

Big Ideas & 'Best Of'

Technology: What is Essential for Ministry?

I’ll be the first to admit — I’m not the most tech-savvy person I know.

In fact, I really dragged my feet when it came to:

getting a cell phone and
getting on Facebook
But I must say, that after slowly easing my way into the waters of technology and social media, I’ve really come to enjoy much of what it has to offer.

So yesterday I posed the questions (on Twitter, Facebook and Google+):

If you have all 3: a smartphone, ipad/tablet and laptop/pc – which do you use the most? Why? Which of these 3 would you give up first if you had to? Why?

Big Ideas & 'Best Of'

Utilizing Google+ for Ministry

Have you heard about Google+ yet? OK, but have you taken the time to check it out? Or try it out?

If not, let me be the first to introduce you to this growing addition to the social media world… and tell you that its intent is to rival Facebook for our all-purpose social networking allegiance.

I found this 4-minute video that does a pretty good job of describing what Google+ is all about:

The Campus Minister

A Story Among Stories

I am a pastor of college students on a university campus.

It’s what God has called me to be — and if you’re reading this — then you have likely experienced a similar call.

And as pastors within this specific context, we often see ourselves as participants in the stories of our students — maybe even shapers of their stories — in some small way.

But if you’re anything like me it can be all too easy, at times, to overlook the ways in which students (and the campus community at large) play a role in the unfolding of our own story.

Academics & Vocation

Helping Students to Identify a Call to Pastor

Do you remember when it was that you first realized God was calling you into ministry?

More specifically, do you remember when it was that God was calling you to be a pastor to college students?

My guess is that God started to plant that seed deep within us long before we ever realized it.

We likely experienced different things — events, conversations, moments of clarity or divine appointment — that seemed odd or out of place at the time… but were actually pointing us toward the very thing that we now find ourselves doing.

Student Culture, Trends & Issues, The Campus Minister

A Pastoral Presence Online

Campus — today — is not what it use to be.

Technology continues to advance at a staggering pace and social media is making personal and mass-communication (of a new kind) very accessible to whoever wants it… and our students are well-versed in most of it.

About a year ago I had the chance to step away from campus and spend some time with campus ministers from across the U.S. (and Canada!), thinking about our shared work with college students. On our final morning together I was asked to lead our group in a conversation about what is happening here at Faith ON Campus, but I quickly found us expanding the conversations to explore what it meant (and means) to be a pastor in this digital age.

Spiritual Formation

Every Step An Arrival

I’ve been sitting with this phrase today… every step an arrival.

It’s the subtitle for Eugene Peterson’s Memoir entitled: The Pastor. I read this book for the first time last summer, and am planning to reread it this summer (and probably every summer to come — it’s one of those books).

Peterson credits a poem written by Denise Levertov, in which she gives an account of her development as a poet, for the origin of the phrase. As you might deduce, Peterson now uses it as a way to encapsulate his vocational unfolding as a pastor.

Every step an arrival.

Every step.

An arrival.