When recently asked what he was reading, Mick Jagger said he had just picked up Jonathan Franzen’s latest novel Freedom: “It’s not really my kind of thing,” Jagger said, “but everyone was talking about it so I thought I’d have a look.”

I have always felt that Christians must stay tuned quite intensely to what’s going on in the world. This is part of what we call our signature commitments at Seattle Pacific.

“It is what it is” — I have so often found myself using this phrase. We all use it from time to time. I suppose it is something like saying “roll with the punches,” or perhaps “let the chips fall,” or “stuff happens.”

In a previous post I talked about how we have built a culture obsessed by work. Recognizing the historical American devotion to a strong work ethic ...

I have been thinking about how one lets go of work. Let me say first that I love my job. I believe that a strong work ethic is essential to a productive, meaningful life.

In their recent, much-noted indictment on the failure of higher education in America today, Richard Arum and Josipa Roksa point out that “the future of a democratic society depends upon educating a generation ...

Readers responded in remarkable numbers to my posts on building better K-12 schools in America. Thank you for your energy and ideas. I plan to write much more in the weeks and months ahead about this enormous challenge in our midst.

I got lots of comments on my last post on the crisis in our schools. I was encouraged by the commitment and passion of so many people out there, those who are in the trenches as teachers and administrators in our schools.

In The New York Times on Sunday, April 10, 2011, Jonathan Mahler has an interesting article about the “deadlock” that has settled into our debate about school reform in America today.

Several years ago, John T. Casteen III, then president of the University of Virginia, made a statement that has haunted me in my own leadership.

Several weeks ago I mentioned an article by William Deresiewicz called “Solitude and Leadership.” The article was adapted from a speech Deresiewicz gave to the plebe class at the Military Academy at West Point. It appears in the spring issue of The American Scholar. Because I’ve been reflecting on this notion of solitude, I’d like to pull out a few more thoughts from this article...

Our society is constantly trying to measure the distinctions among colleges and universities. U.S. News and World Report has made a fortune on its annual publication ranking our institutions. People watch these things. Most presidents talk about how these rankings don’t matter, until their school moves up a notch, and then they trumpet it to the world.

A week ago two essays appeared in separate newspapers — The Wall Street Journal and The New York Times — suggesting much the same thing: The desire for liberty and freedom seem to reside universally in people all across the globe.

I found myself remarking to a colleague and friend the other day that “I am absolutely overwhelmed at the moment. There is just flat-out too much to do. I can’t even find time to think.”

… We all seem to think we need to multitask, talking on the phone while doing email, texting while driving, skimming the newspaper while talking at the breakfast table.

On the plane late last night … I became intensely absorbed in George Weigel’s brand-new book The End and the Beginning. … And somehow my reflections on what is happening in our nation’s capital seemed to come together with new thoughts about the life and leadership and teaching of Pope John Paul II.

In his latest book titled After You Believe: Why Christian Character Matters, the great N.T. Wright says that what the disciples discovered in Jesus was “a way of being human which nobody had ever imagined before. …”

In her weekly Saturday column in The Wall Street Journal, Peggy Noonan alerted me to an amazing article on the economic crisis in Greece. The article is written by Michael Lewis and appears in Vanity Fair. The discovery of this crisis took place with breathtaking speed …

We were in England this summer just days before the visit of Pope Benedict XVI. A visit from the pope of the Roman Catholic Church to Anglican England does not happen often, and such a visit is always fraught with some measure of tension.