Discipleship Archives - CRAZY DIFFERENT

The Art of Driving in the Rain: Looking for Signals Amidst the Noise

ByjamesgsppencerJuly 8, 2020

My family and I were returning to our home near Chicago after a visit downstate to see our family. As we were driving up I-55, we hit a heavy rainstorm. Visibility went close to zero. The cars that didn’t pull into the shoulder slowed to a

ByjamesgsppencerJune 30, 2020

A few weeks ago, I deleted my social media apps from my phone and decided to minimize my posts on social media. There were a lot of reasons I made that decision, which I’ll likely discuss in a later post, but, as I get ready to take a break from work with my family, I […]

ByjamesgsppencerJune 1, 2020

There is no doubt that we live in a world that is not as it should be…a world searching for solutions to the pain caused by events of the sort we have seen in the past few weeks. Yet, to what extent is the church providing a deeply, theological paradigm that points to a

ByjamesgsppencerMay 26, 2020

By the end of my second graduate degree in 2005, I needed a break. I was exhausted, confused, and less confident that I really wanted to pursue a doctoral degree. But, after earning an MDiv and a second MA in Biblical Exegesis, a PhD seemed like the logical, if not

ByjamesgsppencerApril 28, 2020

A couple of months ago I was asked to speak with a small group of young academic professionals working in the field of distance education. After giving some initial thoughts, we sat and talked about some of the challenges they were facing, how they thought about their career

ByjamesgsppencerJanuary 13, 2020

As a kid, I remember playing the game where someone would pretend that they were going to hit you. If you reacted, or “flinched,” you got “two for flinching” and were punched twice in the arm. When I first started working full-time as an Assistant Dean, I was prone to

ByjamesgsppencerSeptember 18, 2019

In 2017, I became frustrated that I couldn’t seem to drop any weight, so I decided to lean into the extra poundage and see if I could bench press 350lbs. Despite my undergraduate degree in Kinesiology and my five years of experience as a personal trainer, I went after

ByjamesgsppencerJuly 17, 2019

In my 20’s I worked as a personal trainer in a boutique, one-on-one fitness studio. Designing unique programs for clients was a big part of the job. Not every client was alike, so not every program could be. I had to consider the client when designing the program. I

ByjamesgsppencerMarch 22, 2019

When I applied for my first ministry job after completing my doctoral coursework, I felt a strong call to serve rural pastors. There was a Director of Missions opening with a Southern Baptist association in my hometown. It was part-time, but it came with a parsonage and Kim

Category: Discipleship

The Art of Driving in the Rain: Looking for Signals Amidst the Noise

What I’m Reading After Deleting My Apps

Lord, Give Us New Hearts

Inertia: Confronting Our Tendency to Continue Unchanged

The Capacity Conundrum

No Flinching…How to Develop A Crucial Leadership Skill

Coordination, Contribution, and Limitation in the Multi-Gifted Body of Christ

Designer Discipleship

God is in the First Cubicle on the Left: What Happens When We Put God in a Box