Are We Slow?

“Why are we so quick to say that pastors ‘preach the gospel and administer the sacraments’ but so slow to say that pastors ‘carry out the great commission’ when the two are exactly the same?”

The question asked by Pastor Klemet Preus, in his essay “Pietism In Missouri’s Mission: From Mission Affirmations to Ablaze!,” which he presented at the 2005 Congress on the Lutheran Confessions. Available in Mission Accomplished? Challenges to and Opportunities for Lutheran Missions in the 21st Century.

Punch Above Your Weight

Jim Stike (pictured), CEO of Materials Innovation Technologies spoke at a business luncheon and offered some interesting stats:

The U.S. ranks eighth in global innovation with Singapore ranking first, he said. Small businesses are innovative job creators with 70 percent of new jobs generated annually in the U.S. coming from small businesses, Stike added.

"India and China are transforming the playing field and competing on cost alone won't cut it anymore," he told a group of 50 business people. "A skilled, educated work force is a key element to an innovative work force."

And the “punch above your weight” comes from a story Stike tells about a company he worked for at the time asked the British businessmen who were interested in buying them why they were so interested and they said, “'Because you punch above your weight.’”

Read more here about what that means and also learn about Stike’s three principles of entrepreneurs that all people should keep in mind.

Renouncing All that God Is

Quoting Martin Luther:

Friend, do not consider it a trifle to forbid what God does not forbid, to destroy the Christian liberty that cost Christ His blood, to burden consciences with sin where there is no sin. He who has the audacity to do this will also be audacious enough to commit any wrong; yea, he has thereby already renounced all that God is, teaches, and does, including His Christ.

Ewald M. Plass, compiler, What Luther Says: A Practical In-Home Anthology for the Active Christian, (St. Louis: CPH, 1959) §2412, 777.