I recently graduated with a doctorate in Leadership and Global Perspectives. What does that mean? What are my plans now? Maybe this short video will help explain:
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Posts related to my personal life and family.
I’ve been a Christian for as long as I can remember. I was baptized when I was seven and, except for the prototypical “wandering” that most cradle Christians engage in during their college years, I’ve always identified myself as “Christian” or a “follower of Jesus.” But you can call me, “Bea.”
The image of the lamb in the video above, bounding back and forth as her owner calls her name, but never quite sure where the voice is coming from, describes my relationship with Jesus well. I hear my name being called, but it seems like I’m always mistaking where it’s calling me to. So, I bound with enthusiasm from one place to another hoping that, like Bea in the video, I’ll eventually get it right and end up finding the arms of my Shepherd.
Until then, however, my life must look pretty comical! I bounded out of my undergraduate degree in theater into a seminary master’s program in practical theology. Then, I bounded again from seminary into college campus ministry. Then, hearing my name called again, I bounded onto the staff of a megachurch. Then I bounded into a doctoral program. Then I bounded across the country to work at the seminary from which I’m receiving my doctorate. In each of these instances, I was sure that I was hearing my name called and I responded with gusto! But there’s something in me that makes me think I’ve just been bounding back and forth across the hall… that I’ve not gotten it quite right, yet.
Do you ever feel that way?
At this point, a good writer or blogger would have three simple takeaways for the reader. Brilliant, yet simple insights that would cause the post to be shared among friends, maybe even go viral. At this point, a good practical theologian would write about all the shepherd/flock/lamb imagery in the Bible, ending in some mind-blowing insight. On my good days, I’m that blogger or I’m that theologian. On my best days, I might even be both. Today, however, I am just a silly lamb, listening for the voice of the Shepherd, and ready to bound off again, hoping that it will someday make sense!
Sydney, my eldest child, sat next to me during our community’s worship gathering this weekend. She had a cold and her sister and mom were in with the younger kids. It was just me and her. We sat near the back where she could doodle while she listened to the sermon and where her incessant nose blowing would be less noticeable.
Each week, after the sermon portion of the gathering, we take communion. Sydney and I went up together, knelt, and partook. Back at our seats, I continued to stand and sing. Sydney’s eyes wandered over the walls.
Spaced equally around the sanctuary hung fourteen rectangles of muslin, each with a duct tape cross in the center. Each piece of fabric was decorated differently, some ornate, others simple, some with images, some with words. Together, they make up the fourteen stations of the cross.
I leaned down to her and said, “You can go check those out, if you want.”
After almost three years of being out from behind a pulpit, this weekend I get to share with my home community here in Portland: Theophilus Church. We are nearing the end of our journey though the book of Hosea together and AJ has asked me to keep us moving forward by sharing out of Hosea 13. If you’ve not read that chapter recently (or ever) you should take a minute to do that.
Man, this chapter seems like a really Debbie Downer of a passage, right? Check out this imagery:
[T]hey will be like the morning mist,
like the early dew that disappears,
like chaff swirling from a threshing floor,
like smoke escaping through a window.. . .
I will come upon them like a lion,
like a leopard I will lurk by the path.
Like a bear robbed of her cubs,
I will attack them and rip them open.
Like a lion I will devour them: a wild animal will tear them apart.
You are destroyed, O Israel,
because you are against me,
against your helper.. . .
Pains as of a woman in childbirth will come to him,
. . .
They will fall by the sword;
their little ones will be dashed to the ground,
their pregnant women ripped open.Hosea 13:3, 7-9, 13a, 16b
This is the Word of the Lord. Thanks be to God, right?
So, where am I going to go with this passage? Well, if you’re in the Portland area on the evening of Sunday February 24, you should come find out. I’ll give you the working title for the message is the same as the title of this post, so maybe that will give you a clue as to what I’m thinking: “Cafeteria Spirituality, A Wild Lion, & the Death of Death.”
What would you draw out of this chapter? Or, even better, what would you want to hear talked about from this chapter?
Excited to announce that I will be co-editing a book on fatherhood with @shaunking (founder of @hope) for @ispeakformyself. Details to come!
— Anderson Campbell (@andycampbell) January 4, 2013
A couple weeks ago I announced via Twitter and Facebook that I’m co-editing a book of essays with Shaun King. Here’s a little more information about the project.
The book is the fifth in a series called “I Speak for Myself.” The first book, published in 2011, contained 40 essays from 40 American women under 40 writing about what it means to be Muslim. It was co-edited by a good friend of mine from college, Maria Ebrahimji. Shortly before the release of the book, she and I talked on the phone and she expressed how it was her hope to take the book’s format, 40 contributors under 40, and expand it to other faith traditions.
This summer, the first I Speak for Myself book on Christianity will be released. It is taking on the subject of “Taboo” and will feature 40 essays from 40 American Christian women. It is being co-edited by Erin Lane and Enuma Okoro and has some great contributors. Among them are Rachel Held Evans, Julie Clawson, Micha Boyett, and others. Last fall, I was contacted again by my friend, who asked if I would help brainstorm some names for co-editors for a book of essays by American Christian men under 40. I sent her a list of names and figured I’d given her all the help I could give.
I was only partially right. A couple of week later, Maria and I spoke on the phone again and she asked if I would consider being one of the co-editors. I was shocked. I mean, I don’t have any “platform,” I don’t have a previous bestseller that will compel people to buy this book, and I don’t pastor some big church with thousands of congregants. I’m not that big of a deal, really. What I do have, Maria insisted, is the ability to pull together a broad number of perspectives around a central topic. And she’s right. Networking has long been a strength of mine and making sure that a wide and diverse group of people speak into a conversation is quite important to me. So, I agreed to edit the book and to find a co-editor with a bit more platform than I.
The next decision was to propose a topic for the essayists to explore. After batting around a couple different ideas, I settled on “fatherhood.” The subject is one with which people from all different faiths can relate: every man is a son, some men are fathers. I think it will be intriguing to see what role one’s Christian faith plays into understanding oneself as a father or a son, or the relationship between father and son. Maria and her business partner, Zahra, agreed. So, off I went on the search for a co-editor.
I had a shortlist of names and had a tie for who I’d most like to co-edit with me: Matthew Paul Turner and Shaun King. I sent Matthew a quick email to see if he’d even be interested. He was but, as it turns out, he’d just had a book proposal accepted by his publisher and wasn’t going to have the time to commit to the project (though I’d still like him to contribute an essay, so go bug him on my behalf!). So, I quickly turned to Shaun, who I was able to get in touch with via our mutual friend, Leonard Sweet. Shaun was immediately excited about the project. He agreed almost right away to jump in with both feet, even though he’s incredibly busy with a bunch of irons in the fire (if you haven’t heard of HopeMob, you must check them out). With a topic and a co-editor on board, the full book proposal was sent off to the publisher, White Cloud Press, for review. They accepted the proposal and gave us the green light to begin soliciting contributors.
It is early still, but the book is starting to shape up nicely. I’m excited about the stories that are emerging. There’s a guy who is going to write about losing a child, and another about losing his wife and now raising daughters as a widower. I have a stay-at-home dad who’s going to pen something fantastic, and a dad writing about the anxiety of parenting a pre-teen girl. There’s a new dad writing about his first child and a man writing about being unable to have kids at all. There are more stories waiting in the wings, I’m sure.
Some of the contributors you will have heard of, like Jason Boyett, Andrew Marin, Shane Blackshear, and A.J. Swoboda. Other names will be new to you. All the stories will be worth telling (and I promise not all the contributors are white!). I’m humbled and excited to be part of such a great project. I can’t wait to see how it shapes up. I’ll keep you updated, friend.
The end of the year generates a lot of “Top ____ of 2012″ posts. Instead of looking back at my top posts, or albums, or books, I thought I’d go a different route and look at my top failures of the past year. Why? Well, every failure presents a new opportunity. Though some of the things I list below can be easily explained, even justified, each one presents me with an area of growth for 2013. So, without further ado, here are my top 12 failures of 2012:
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Remember when you were in grade school and one of the first assignments upon starting a new school year was to compose a short essay on how you spent your summer vacation? Well, this is like that. Except it’s about Christmas. And I’m not in grade school anymore.
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Between you and me, I can’t believe I actually followed through on the 35 for 35 blogging exercise, but I did! 35 posts over 35 consecutive days leading up to my 35th birthday. I learned a lot about myself and about my readers. The posts you liked the most were the ones about life’s big events: being fired, getting married, my parent’s divorce. I learned that I’m still working through a lot of stuff from some of the negative experiences in my life, and likely will be for a long time. But as I reread those posts, I see glimmers of hope. While I may not be completely healed from the various wounds about which I’ve written, I see a lot of growth in my life because of them.
The most surprising thing that came out of this series is a fresh start between me and my mom. If you read that post on her, you’ll see why. I don’t know if the conversation between she and I would’ve happened, were it not for this series of posts. That totally makes it worth it. So, thanks for reading these. I hope you feel like you know me a little better and can hear me a little more clearly when I write about things in the space with which you might not agree. We all have a story and we’re all spinning a story. Maybe by knowing more of my story, you can see better the story I’m spinning. I know I can.
Here is a comprehensive list of all the posts in the order in which they first appeared:
- Atlanta
- Dunwoody Baptist Church
- Tattoos by Court
- Jeep Wrangler
- My Brothers
- My Baptism
- Trip to Israel
- The Cabin
- Gainesville Theatre Alliance
- Coalition for Christian Outreach
- The Last Battle
- My Girls
- Divorce
- Philadelphia
- Running
- Homebrewing for Dummies
- Living Truthfully
- The Bible
- Northern Virginia
- Abba’s Child
- You’re Fired
- DMINLGP
- Beach Week
- The Dark Tower
- Mom
- Wedding
- Irresistible Revolution
- Portland
- Dick & Deb
- Civil Rights Tour
- The Shack
- Bren
- Music
- Dad
- April
My love.
Perhaps there is no more fitting way to close this series than with a post about my wife, April. She
loves me like no one has before, and like no one ever will. Over the past 14, almost 15 years, we’ve
undergone our ups and downs, like any couple does. Yet with all we’ve been through together,
she’s never wavered in her longterm commitment to our marriage and our family. Continue Reading…
Perhaps no single person has had more of an influence on shaping me than my dad. As I’ve written elsewhere, I spent some of my most formative years in a household that was made up of just me, my brothers, and our dad. I saw him struggle through divorce, adjustments to his job, his involvement in church, dating, and then remarriage. The early 90s changed my dad a lot, and I was there to witness those changes first hand.
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