Kenton J. Kutney

I feel fortunate to have been asked by David Solmes to reflect on literary works that would be of interest to leaders, recommended by leaders.  Whatever your age or stage I invite you to join me in the quest of reading more deeply and widely.  I don't know of any better way to enrich your own life than through the gift of reading. We are all starting from different places but we have converged at this point, this opportunity, to discover together.  Join in! A Review of  Courageous Leadership  by Bill Hybels (Approximately a 9-hour read.)  Rev. Kenton J. Kutney  [I wonder if this title isn't 'Courageous' because Hybels submitted the manuscript to his wife to edit out all his jokes?  Just a thought.] Courageous Leadership  is actually based on more than a 100 pages of sermons collected over all of Bill Hybels' time of "repeated challenges" at Willow Creek Church.  It has taken that long for this book to brew.  Picture this book ...

An Introduction: Look, I know you're busy and reading takes up that precious time after which many other things are clamoring.  Even as you read this you may feel too rushed to continue. Please do.    I can hardly even get a reply from some leaders about books they'd recommend without hounding them repeatedly - let alone getting them to share insights they have gleaned. That troubles me. It makes me wonder just how much we're really reading and how widely.  How do you explore the interior world of your life,  peer into the mist of who we really are?  Can you Google that? (Actually, I did Google how to grow inwardly and came up with a site on ingrown toenails.)  One of the best ways to grow is through studies of other lives - the flow of time over an emerging life and the wisdom that it draws out.  We can learn a great deal from the lives of other leaders, through their study and through their stories.  The way to become a better  write...

The following exerpts are an attempt to offer some comfort and insight into the inevitable loss we all experience as a part of life. It does not pretend to be the last word on the subject. With permission they are shared to extend hope to others. ...Our hearts are saddened to hear the news of your brother's passing.  I want to encourage you in these times of grieving when you wish so desperately that you could have done more to minister to his faith.   There's no end to that kind of thinking and the enemy just wants to get you down. You did the most important thing - you were there for him.  Visiting and sharing love.  Praying for him.  God is in control, not us. God loves him even more than you and He is faithful. Your brother is in His loving arms.  You didn't do anything wrong.  You ministered in love.   Jesus said when we visit the sick in their time of need it is as though we were doing it unto Him.    God ...

Living a Healthy Life With Chronic Conditions (Originally written for the leadership magazine Enrich ) Imagine an enthusiastic pastor who is a runner, a rock climber, a person who enjoys skiing, a practicer of martial arts, and loves getting out in his canoe to work on sermons ... and then having it all slip away to the point that dragging yourself out of bed before noon is a real accomplishment.   For years I have struggled with chronic illness but it came on fast and furious in a matter of months.   First a definition: “Hyper Eosinophilic Syndrome is an idiopathic condition (which means they don't know what, when, where or why) associated with marked peripheral eosinophilia and gastroenteritis.  ...HES involves other organs such as the heart, lungs, brain, and kidneys and generally has a progressive fatal course.” (Fauci, Harley, Roberts, cited  in Wallace and Apstein, 1997.)   I have been on at least 20 medications for symptoms like chronic pain and fati...

COMMENTARY BY Caitlin Thomas Caitlin Thomas is a member of the Young Leaders Program at The Heritage Foundation. More young adults are opting to cohabit rather than marry or to delay marriage for financial reasons, such as debt, according to a recent  study published in Demography. However, National Marriage Week  presents a good opportunity to review how rigorous, long-term studies  have measured the substantial impact of marriage on financial stability, as well as relationship longevity and health outcomes. Here are five additional facts you may not know about cohabitation: 1. Cohabiting couples are more prone to break up (and break up for good) than married couples.   In the May 2003 issue of the Journal of Marriage and Family Study, Georgina Binstock and Arland Thornton  found that, in the first year of living together, couples who cohabited were eight times more likely to end their relationships than those who were married.  In the second and thir...

"Cheap grace is the mortal enemy of our church. Our struggle today is for costly grace. Cheap grace means grace as bargain-basement goods, cut-rate forgiveness, cut-rate comfort, cut-rate sacraments; grace as the church’s inexhaustible pantry, from which it is doled out by careless hands without hesitation or limit. It is grace without a price, without cost… Cheap grace means grace as a doctrine, as principle, as system. It means forgiveness of sins as a general truth; it means God’s love as merely a Christian idea of God. Those who affirm it have already had their sins forgiven. The church that teaches this doctrine of grace thereby conveys such grace upon itself. The world finds in this church a cheap cover-up for its sins, for which it shows no remorse and from which it has even less desire to be free. Cheap grace is, thus, denial of God’s living Word, denial of the incarnation of the word of God. Cheap grace means justification of sin but not of the sinner. Because grace alone...

From an Paschal homily by John Chrysostom: "Let all partake of the feast of faith. Let all receive the riches of goodness. Let no one lament their poverty, for the universal kingdom has been revealed. Let no one mourn their transgressions, for pardon has dawned from the grave. Let no one fear death, for the Saviour's death has set us free. He that was taken by death has annihilated it! He descended into Hades and took Hades captive! He embittered it when it tasted His flesh! And anticipating this, Isaiah exclaimed: "Hades was embittered when it encountered Thee in the lower regions." It was embittered, for it was abolished! It was embittered, for it was mocked! It was embittered, for it was purged! It was embittered, for it was despoiled! It was embittered, for it was bound in chains! It took a body and came upon God! It took earth and encountered heaven! It took what it saw, but crumbled before what can not seen! O death, where is thy sting? O Hades, where is thy vi...