Today's Thinker: Henri Nouwen

In the way that perhaps only Nouwen could, he writes in In the Name of Jesus:

[Jesus] asks us to move from a concern for relevance to a life of prayer, from worries about popularity to communal and mutual ministry, and from a leadership built on power to a leadership in which we critically discern where God is leading us and our people.

That's a summary of his prophetic insight into Christian leadership in the 21st century, written in 1989. Perhaps in the conversations concerning ecumenism, postmodernism, emergence, and relevance, we'd do well to keep his words close to heart.