Andy Rowell | Church Leadership Conversations

Updates: Family Photos, Courses, Books, Calendar, Facebook, LinkedIn, Favorite Podcasts

A few of you have emailed to ask about the delay in posts.  My family and I are well!   I am loving my doctoral work here at Duke!   All is well.   

Two excuses about blogging:
(1) Blogging about politics and abortion will definitely make blogging feel like a burden!  (See my last post and comments).   The topics in this post are much lighter!
(2) I have so many things I want to blog about that are related to church leadership but I just haven't found the time.  I think my coursework and family should get priority and the blog comes sometime later as I know you all agree!

In the meantime, here are some updates.

Family Photos  

We had some new family photos of our family taken: Amy, Ryan (2 1/2) and Jacob (5 months) and me.  One is posted to the right.  The album is here. 

Courses

My courses this semester are:

1. Scripture and Ethics with Richard Hays and Allen Verhey
2. Church and Ministry in the New Testament with Richard Hays
3. Theology of Mission with Laceye Warner
4. Leadership with Allan Lind at Duke University's Fuqua School of Business.  I am just sitting in on this one.  Duke's business school, Fuqua, is ranked #9 by US News & World Report, #9 by BusinessWeek,and #12 by Forbes. 

Books

I have also updated the books I am reading this semester in the right column.

Calendar

I am preaching at:

• Clayton Presbyterian Church pastored by Monte Johnson in Clayton, NC on March 30th.
• Granville Chapel pastored by Andy Perrett in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada April 20th.

At both places my title is "Good News: Jesus is Enough" from Colossians 1:22-23 and Acts 11:17-18.

My wife Amy is speaking at the Granville Chapel Women's Retreat April 17-20 and then preaching at Granville Chapel April 27th.

I will also be at the "Jürgen Moltmann Conference" - the Society for Pentecostal Studies and the Wesleyan Theological Society Joint Meeting, hosted at Duke, March 13-15, 2008.  Calvin's James K. A. Smith will also be here. 

Facebook

Being a professor at Taylor University the last couple of years, I have been on Facebook for a while.  I recommend it as a way to connect with high school and college friends.  I don't use it for much else though you can spend lots of time on it! I recommend just putting up a profile and then waiting for friends to find you!  Facebook can produce a lot of emails unless you limit it to just Friend requests.  You have to join Facebook to see my full profile.  See my Facebook profile at this link.  My profile is a good example of a pretty basic one.    

LinkedIn

I am also on LinkedIn which is a networking site.  My LinkedIn profile is at this link. 

Favorite Podcasts

My favorite podcasts are (in alphabetical order):

• BusinessWeek - Cover Stories - interesting to hear an interview between the executive editor and writer of each week's cover story. 
• BusinesWeek - The Welch Way - interesting to hear former CEO of GE and business management guru Jack Welch answer questions. 
• Catalyst Podcast - great interviews with church leaders
• CNN Reliable Sources - video podcast that you watch.  Great to hear media critics discuss how the media has covered the stories in the news each week. 
• NBC Nightly News - Amy and I often watch this at night when it downloads between 9:30 pm and 10:00 pm Eastern time.  It is on TV at 6:30 pm but we usually miss it. 
• Lots of preachers

These links will only work if you have iTunes installed (which is a free program).  I have explained podcasts before at this link.

Music

I am loving using Pandora for internet radio.  Free!

Firefox

If you are an Internet Explorer person, I would encourage you to try Mozilla Firefox which is very similar to Internet Explorer but I find it much faster in opening.  It is a free download.      

Home Page - iGoogle and Gmail

My home page tabs are iGoogle and Gmail.  I am enjoying them both. 

Photo

I also have a new photo on my blog biography page.

New baby boy - Jacob Graham Rowell

Today a new baby boy joined our family. 

Jacob Graham Rowell

20 1/2 in

7 lbs 0 oz.

6:21 am today Sunday, September 16, 2007.

Mom and baby are well.

Big brother Ryan is happy.

 

Update at Monday 7pm:

We are home now.

Update on Tuesday 11:00 am:

We are feeding Jacob every 2-3 hours so that reduces normal sleep significantly.  But we are doing well.

Update on Thursday at 9:30 pm:

Here is a photo of Ryan and Jacob from this morning.  You can click on the photo to see it larger.

Moving, Summer Schedule and New Email Address

June 3, 2007 (See updates to this post farther down in the post). 

Dear All,

Sorry for not blogging much recently but we are busy preparing to move from Upland, Indiana to Duke, North Carolina.  I am going to be doing my Doctor of Theology (Th.D.) at Duke Divinity School.   The full update about that is at my post Starting Doctor of Theology (Th.D) at Duke Divinity School in the fall. 

Schedule

Here is our upcoming schedule if you want to keep track of us or meet up with us. 

• June 5-7 Wheaton, Illinois. Visiting my parents
• June 13 Upland, Indiana. Packing the PODS moving container.
• June 14-17 Traverse City, Michigan. Wedding for Deepak Prabhaker and Corinne Fosdick.  I am giving homily.  Deepak is a high school friend of mine. 
• June 17 Grandville, Michigan.  Amy and I are attending church at Rob Bell's Mars Hill Bible Church on Sunday at 11:00. 
• June 18 Drive to Durham, North Carolina. 
• June 19-21.  Paint inside of house. 
• June 23.  Move stuff in to house. 
• July-August.  Teach myself to read German to pass language exam in the fall if possible.  I haven't been able to find anyone yet to study with me. 

New email address

I have also updated my email address.  My primary address will be andy.rowell@ gmail.com (There is no space).  I don't plan on ever posting that one on the web in its entirety to try to keep away the spam.  I have another one listed on this website rowell.andy@ gmail.com.  That one will be forwarded to the main account.      

I also have a Duke email address but since it is limited to 100 MB and gmail gives you 2860 MB I am just going to go with the gmail one.  If you are curious, it is andy.rowell@ duke.edu (there is no space) - that will also be forwarded to the main account.  Perhaps if I am writing any serious proposals, I will use the duke address but the practical aspects of the gmail one are strong!

I can send you a gmail invitation so you can get gmail if you email me and ask. LATER NOTE: Anyone can now sign up for gmail.  No invitations are needed. 

My wife Amy's new email address is rowell.amy@ gmail.com (no spaces).

I used How to Import Archived Outlook Email Into GMail Using GML - wikiHow to import our Taylor University email messages into gmail.

I will blog again soon.  Until then, there are lots of other good things to read and listen to.  See my:

The Best Blogs for Church Leaders to Read

Best Podcasts for Church Leaders

I have also been reading Christianity Today's new LiveBlog. 

Grace and peace, 

andy

Update July 9, 2007:

We have arrived in Durham and are getting settled.  The photo below was taken July 1st in front of Duke Chapel. 

Update July 19, 2007

German

I have finished 10 of the 30 days of German Quickly: A Grammar for Reading German by April Wilson.  I have made and used German Quickly flashcards on Flashcard Exchange.  (You can use them online for free or pay $20 for a lifetime membership for access to printing them.  I used this site when I studied for the GRE last year.  See my post about the GRE here).   

July 21, 2007

Email update

I send out an email yesterday to friends and family with our new phone numbers and address.  If I didn't email you and you are a friend, I don't have your email address!

Here is the quick update I sent to people:

• I am starting my Doctor of Theology (Th.D.) degree this fall at Duke Divinity School. 
• We thoroughly enjoyed serving as professors of Christian ministry at Taylor University the last two years.
• We have purchased our first home and have moved to Durham, NC.   
• Amy is due to have Baby #2 September 27th.  It's a boy. 
• Ryan turned 2 in April and is doing well. 
• It will probably take me about five years to finish the program. 
• Amy is hoping eventually to work part-time in pastoral ministry at a church.

Audio of my wife Amy Rowell preaching on suffering in Taylor University Chapel

My wife, Amy Rowell, spoke in chapel Wednesday at Taylor University.  I introduced her.  Amy has her Masters of Divinity degree from Regent College in Vancouver, BC and has served on church staff in a number of capacities including pastoral care, children's ministry, adult education, women's ministry and preaching.  Like me, she is serving as a professor of Christian Educational Ministries at Taylor.  She and I share one full-time position and take turns hanging out with our one-year-old Ryan. 

The text she chose was Mark 5:21-43 which includes the healing of the bleeding woman and the daughter of Jairus.  Through expositorily preaching this narrative, she outlines a realistic and robust theology of suffering.  She specifically reflects on the untimely death of her mother in April.  She had three main points.  Here is my paraphrasing of them:  (1) Jesus is compassionate and has the power to heal.  (2) Sometimes Jesus doesn't heal at the time we'd like.  (The daughter of Jairus died when Jesus stopped to heal the bleeding woman).  (3) But Jesus walks with us on the road and heals when we eventually arrive home. 

The mp3 and streaming audio are available at Taylor's website here.  Sadly, the video folks had the day off so didn't get her filmed.

This is a photo of us after a wedding in August 2006. 

Being a pastor's wife is sometimes the only way a woman can be involved in church leadership

Another outstanding piece from Lauren Winner at Leadership Journal's Out of Ur blog.  

Married to the Ministry: has the pastor’s wife’s role changed for better or worse?

She says that some women who were not allowed to pastor themselves, married pastors and thus found some fulfillment by engaging in the limited amount of pastoral work expected of a pastor's wife.

I have also seen extremely competent pastorally gifted women who have found their way into roles as "administrative assistant" or church secretary. In another setting, these competent gifted women may have considered seminary and become outstanding pastors themselves. Interestingly, according to 2005-2006 report by the Association of Theological Schools, there are almost as many "Black" women pursuing their Masters of Divinity degree these days as men (2,366 Men and 2,330 Women). However, for "White", the numbers are still quite far apart: 16,268 Men and 6,791 Women.

Other pastorally gifted women have gone into "Christian Education," chaplaincy, or counseling as the acceptable approximations for church ministry. And others struggle wondering what to do with their pastoral gifting when they haven't met the right man and what to do with their time when they are struggling with infertility. (See the journeys of Carolyn Custis James and Gretchen Gaebelein Hull as told in their books).

Sadly for many of our young women growing up in evangelical churches, becoming the pastor's wife still seems like their best shot at being involved in church ministry. The number one nonfiction book on the Christian Bestsellers List for September 2006 is Captivating by John and Stasi Eldredge. As a professor at Taylor University, an evangelical Christian college, I can tell you that young Christian women are reading it in droves. Unfortunately as Agnieszka Tennant points out in her Christianity Today article "What (Not All) Women Want: The finicky femininity of Captivating by John and Stasi Eldredge", the Eldredge's advocate a "tame idea of beauty" - one exemplified by "Pioneer women [who] brought china teacups into the wilderness." There are other ways of being beautiful. I know because I have a pastor's wife who has her MDiv just like me. I'm thrilled to be a pastor's husband.

Lauren Winner is great.  My wife Amy uses her book Real Sex in the Personal Foundations for Ministry course.  Lauren came to Taylor this spring to speak as well.  She is married to a friend of ours from Regent College.

See my post about Captivating here.   

Why I redesigned my blog

I added the explanations to the right about how to use this blog after talking with various people who are new to blogging and therefore gave me the honest "the emperor has no clothes" feedback that

a) they thought my old Blogger site looked better and was simpler and less busy and

b) that they had no idea what a blog was for and that all the features are confusing.  What the heck are categories? 

Therefore I tried to make sure there is more "white space" and tried to think "less is more" in designing.  One thing I got rid of was the second picture of me on the same page.  (See below middle snapshot).  My wife thought it was definitely too much and when your wife says that . . .   :-)  She hasn't looked at the new site and I'm not holding my breath.  I think she has read under 5 posts ever.  She is interested in the subject matter.  (She has her MDiv, has pastored, and also teaches Christian ministry at Taylor).  She simply would rather talk to live human beings than read blogs.  Can you believe that?  :-) 

Here are printscreen ("prt sc") snapshots of the the three versions: old, initial typepad, present. 

Moving to New Home August 1st

We are moving a block away.  Taylor University is going to tear down the house we are living in now because it needs a new roof and lots of other repairs.  We will still be close to campus (3 blocks) so that will be nice.  Here is a photo of the two bedroom house we will be renting.   The house is a block closer to Ivanhoe's, the wonderful ice cream place, which is dangerous for the waistline. 

Download IvanhoesMenu2006.pdf

Download IvanhoesMenu2007c.pdf

Marva Dawn on Scripture and William Lane Craig on Christian Theism

Ryan and I listened to a lecture by Marva Dawn from the 2004 Regent College Pastor's Conference. (Sorry not a free one but it is available at Regent Bookstore or you can listen to random Regent Radio for free). She recommended the book The Art of Reading Scripture edited by Duke profs Ellen Davis and Richard Hays and used that as the foundation for her talk. (See one of my other posts that references this book). She also talked about her Ph.D. work at Notre Dame and having her dissertation rejected six times (I think). She did her work in Ethics so that she could do second emphases in "First and Second Testament." She also talked about memorizing Psalms and going over them as she swam in the pool.

Later we heard a "Christian theist (William Lane Craig) vs. atheist (Austin Dacey)" debate from the Veritas Forum. I thought Dacey's intial arguments were better but Craig's responses were better.

Sometimes we wonder if other people (for example I was talking with my mom about Oprah today) have a coherent world view. But do we? Listening to this debate helped sharpen my mind a bit today as I did dishes and fed Ryan. You can tell from the photo that he enjoyed the lectures!