Radically Happy

  • LEAD! A.1 God’s Word

    LEAD! A.1 God’s Word

    [Based on feedback, this study will actually become the first lesson, prior to God’s Commission] In Which We Discover How God Speaks to Us, and Why We Ought to Listen to Him [Updated Sunday, August 3rd]

  • LEAD! A.2 God’s Commission

    LEAD! A.2 God’s Commission

    In Which We Discover God’s Call For Us As Leaders, And What Theology Has To Do With It

  • LEAD! Part A: Thinking Theo-Logically

    The LEAD! Bible Study is a tripod, built on three legs: theological education character formation skill development While these roughly correspond to three 12-week “trimesters”, the larger goal is to incorporate all three aspects in each and every segment. The question thus becomes, what is the most effective way to…

  • LEAD! Underlying Assumptions

    The LEAD! Bible Study is supposed to focus specifically on the training of leaders, as opposed to merely general-purpose discipleship. To accomplish that, I’m planning on observing several fairly strong constraints — listed below — as I develop this material.

  • LEAD! A Transformational Small Group Bible Study

    The format I’m proposing for LEAD! is what I’m calling a “Transformational Small Group Bible Study”. This builds on my many years in InterVarsity Small Groups during eleven years of college, as well as numerous “home groups” in churches since then. The key aspects are: • Bible Study History and…

  • LEAD! Leadership Enrichment and Development

    [Or maybe: Leadership Equipping And Development] Good news! My pastor bought off on my proposal breaking next year’s Leadership Training into three 12-week semesters, structured as a focused bible study. We are using “LEAD!” as the working title. The initial draft syllabus is below. The catch is that I am…

  • Requirements for Transforming Leadership

    As part of my journey to rethink leadership training, I wanted to summarize the goals and constraints of such a process. Here’s a first cut…

  • CTE Light: Imago Christi

    In my Rules of War, I assert that the most important challenge is to “Know your Objective” — i.e., understand where you are going. Earlier, I stated that The Purpose of Comprehensive Theological Education was: to equip leaders for a lifelong journey of bringing their “whole selves” (heart, soul, mind…

  • ESS is More: Essential Skills for Serving

    For the third part of my trilogy on leadership development, I want to focus on practical skills. Here’s my short list (twelve, again) of the key abilities I believe leaders need to cultivate. Anything you would add or subtract?

  • TELL: Theological Essentials for Lay Leaders

    As a counterpart (or even prequel) to my previous article about “safety skills“, I wanted to identify those theological topics essential for lay leaders to understand. In particular, I believe lay leaders need a more concise and practical “boot camp”, in contrast to the multi-year “officer’s training school” provided in…

  • Twelve Steps to Arrow-Proof Your Ministry

    Apologies for the pretentious title, but I wanted to challenge myself to identify and reorganize the lessons we covered in last year’s leadership class into a coherent prescription for facing down “Ministry Killers”.

  • “Insights into the critics on revival” by John D.

      [Reposting an essay by my cousin, at his request. — Ernie P.]

  • Introducing Joshua Rohan Prabhakar

    Ernie and Sandhya are excited to introduce you to the newest member of our family…

  • In Memory of Mahema Devadoss

    Mahema Devadoss, writer-artist, passes away Though she was what society call “crippled”, she enjoyed life more thoroughly than anyone else I’ve ever known. I am proud to call her my aunt (technically, my mother’s cousin). Our prayers go out to her devoted husband (“Manohar Mama”) in his bereavement.

  • Keys to the CTE

    Even though I haven’t posted for a while, I’ve been thinking a lot about Comprehensive Theological Education. In particular, I’ve been trying to identify the key “success factors” necessary to improve upon traditional methods. Here’s my current list. Any thing you’d like to add, Gentle Reader? [Updated March 9th to…

  • The Purpose of Comprehensive Theological Education

    As I’ve been meditating on the idea of “Comprehensive Theology“, I’ve begun to realize that it’s main difference from systematic theology isn’t merely (or even primarily) the content. Rather, it is whole pedagogy associated with traditional theological instruction I am reacting against. I might characterize (caricature?) the traditional model as:…

  • TACTOG: Towards a Comprehensive Theology of Glory

    I am once again working on an alternative to systematic theology. My current hypothesis is that the problem with systematic theology is not so much the content, but the flow – or rather lack thereof. Systematic theology (in my admittedly limited experience) is always presented as a series of facts…

  • TASPOR: Towards a Scientific Perspective on Religion

    One of the most common complaints about religion is that it is “anti-scientific”, or conversely that science has removed the need for religion. To be sure, there is a grain of truth in this critique — especially given the anti-intellectual tendencies of American Fundamentalism, which is what the new wave…

  • Leviticus 4-6 Ignorance is Blitzed

    Questions: Are we accountable for unintentional sin? How much? Does it depend on who we are? Or what kind of sin? What if we can’t pay the price? What if we sin against our neighbor? Does that cost God? “Read More” to pursue answers from Leviticus. [Ed. note: Yeah, it…

  • Systemic Failure

    Alas, I didn’t make any progress since my last post on Systemic Theology. I think the core problem is that even I found the topic too dry, intellectual, and negative. Maybe it really isn’t possible to critique systematic theology without reinventing it! Instead, I figured I should take a step…