Embracing Failure: Why the Church Needs to Quit Worrying about Dying

My Dirty Secret

I have a secret fear. I don’t like to talk about it, because I find it embarrassing.

I’m afraid of looking stupid.

I don’t like to be laughed at. As a professor, I operate with a low-grade fear that at any moment one of my student’s will pipe up and say, “That’s not correct what you said.”

I teach World Religions–mostly the big five: Hinduism, Buddhism, Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. I’m fine with Christianity, and Judaism to a lesser extent. The other three, though …

I’ve taught the course so many times that I maintain a fair comfort-level. But when I get into a tradition that’s not my own, I realize how much I don’t know. It can get pretty nervy.

I had a student one time who had been a Buddhist monk. I found that out, of course, just as we reached the unit on Buddhism.

Really? It already feels like I’m doing this without a net. Now, you’re going to tell me you know this stuff better than I do? How am I supposed to teach this stuff in front of you?

I told him to jump in if I got it wrong. (I hope my commitment to education surpasses my fear of looking incompetent.)

He was really nice about it–corrected me only a couple of times.

Continue reading on [D]mergent . . .

Derek Penwell

Author, Speaker, Pastor, Activist. Derek Penwell is senior pastor of Douglass Boulevard Christian Church, and a lecturer at the University of Louisville in Religious Studies and Comparative Humanities. His newest book, Outlandish, focuses on understanding the political nature of Jesus’ life as a model for forming communities of resistance capable of challenging oppression in the pursuit of peace and justice.

He is an activist and advocate on local, state, and national levels on issues of racial justice, LGBTQ fairness, interfaith engagement, and immigrant and refugee rights.

https://derekpenwell.net
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A Thought About Christian Voting from the Family Foundation