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Derek Andersen
Derek Andersen
@DerekjAndersen
This article about the Mormon Church is the best I have read in +10 years. @mckaycoppins almost perfectly captures the faith experience for me and many others. Here are a few thoughts and stories about being Mormon in Silicon Valley the past 15 years.....


2/ At my first job at Electronic Arts, I was told that a senior game developer wouldn't work with me b/c I wouldn't drink with his team. I was once offered to work on the Dante's Inferno videogame because of my "connection to spiritual things." I nervously laughed and passed.

3/ One colleague came to my desk every week asking about how my wives were doing. Then one day he approached somberly and said his father was very sick and implored me to pray for him b/c "God is more likely to listen to you than me." I replied that wasn't true, but I would.

4/ As a Mormon entrepreneur I am so grateful for @claychristensen who is idolized by most in Silicon Valley. He always had the perfect things to say about business, secular, and religious issues. He was one of the best humans I've ever met. RIP.

5/ Having 4 children gets a look that screams, "What is wrong with you??" To Bay Area people 4 children implies that you are surely a religious zealot b/c you wanted a "big" family. Having a startup+family at the same time has typically meant more unfundable than fundable.
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Matt B. Redmond
Matt B. Redmond
@mattredmond
Thread

re: How the early church responded to a plague.

A few days ago I started reading *The Patient Ferment of the Early Church* by Alan Kreider. It's an interesting read for many reasons.
1/

One of the reasons he wrote the book was to answer the question, "Why did the early church spread in the first three centuries?"

In answering that question he looks at how the church in Carthage in the 250s responded to a plague. This plague is known as "the Cyprian Plague."
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Pontius was the biographer of Cyprian, who was the leading bishop in North Africa and it is because of him we know what Cyprian taught the people about how to live during the plague.
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Keep in mind that these people had just lived through an empire-wide persecution under the reign of Decius. The Christians themselves would have been blamed for the plague because they did not offer sacrifices to the gods.
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What did Cyprian say to the Christians?
5/
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Steve Bezner
Steve Bezner
@Bezner
After 20+ years of pastoring, a thread of some thoughts for you youngsters and seminarians:

First, theology is important, but probably not in the way that you think it is.

Bottom line: theology—when pastoring—must be relentlessly tied to helping your church live out the faith.

In seminary, theology can serve primarily as an intellectual exercise, as the ultimate mind games. So we ask Qs like:

Does God predestine souls to an eternal destination before birth?
How do we reconcile the existence of God/evil?
How to make sense of certain Scriptures?

Etc.

These are good and even helpful—if we are constructing a pastoral framework with them. It is helpful to remember that many questions/situations have a *theological* response and a separate *pastoral* response. While the pastoral response may be informed by theology, it is unique.

For example: When a church member tells me he has an inoperable brain tumor, my theological treatise on God and evil is tone deaf, and, frankly, likely pastoral malpractice.

The pastoral response in that situation? To sit. To grieve. To hug. To say, “I am so sorry.” To pray.

Later, at some point, that same church member *will* be ready for a theological discussion of “Why?” But, even then, I must remember this is not a classroom. I am not attempting to win an argument. I am helping a very real human make sense of reality. That is what theology does.
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