==john ortberg jr======
John Ortberg Jr. (born May 5, 1957) is an American evangelical Christian author, speaker, and the former senior pastor of Menlo Church in Menlo Park, California, an ECO Presbyterian church with more than 4,000 members. Ortberg has published many books including the 2008 ECPA Christian Book Award winner When the Game is Over, It All Goes Back in the Box, and the 2002 Christianity Today Book Award winner If You Want to Walk on Water, You've Got to Get Out of the Boat. Another of his publications, The Life You've Always Wanted, has sold more than 500,000 copies as of 2008. On August 13, 2012, Ortberg's book Who Is This Man? debuted at #3 on the New Release chart on Amazon. Ortberg resigned from his position as pastor of Menlo Church in Summer 2020 after it was revealed that he had allowed one of his sons, John Ortberg III, to continue volunteering in working with minors at the church after the son had disclosed having experienced unwanted thoughts of attraction to minors. The allegations had arisen in late 2019, initially without identifying Ortberg's son as the volunteer in question.
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All That Glitters is Not Gold – Revelations about John Ortberg’s Alleged Abuse While at Willow Creek Church I have received the Police Report filed by Sahaab Jauhar-Rizvi in March 2021 and I wanted to include the relevant pages for your review. The redactions were all made by the South Barrington PD with the one exception of my address, which I made. Based on this Police Report, Dee’s talks with the women accused of having taken part in the abuse, and several convincing comments by readers of this article I have changed my opinion. I don’t believe Sahaab Jauhar-Rizvi’s accusations concerning John Ortberg. (Wartburg Watch 5/31/24) READMORE>>>>> Politics, after all, is largely about power. And power goes to the core of our issues of control and narcissism and need to be right and tendency to divide the human race into 'us' vs. 'them.' --John Ortberg
This is why people are leaving the church Recently I was surprised to see a post from one of my former seminary professors quoting leadership advice from John Ortberg. Perhaps he did not know what caused John Ortberg to resign from his church. Multiple credible media reports have noted Ortberg left his last position as pastor because he allowed one of his children to continue to volunteer with minors after discovering the adult child struggled with a sexual attraction to minors. While reports and opinions vary on the result of investigations, Ortberg was reinstated after a period of leave and said he “failed to do the right thing” and apologized for his “lack of transparency.” Later he and the church parted ways, citing broken trust and fallout from his poor decision making. (Baptist News Global 10/30/23) READMORE>>>>> As much as we complain about it, though, there's part of us that is drawn to a hurried life. It makes us feel important. It keeps the adrenaline pumping. It means I don't have to look too closely at my heart or life. It keeps us from feeling our loneliness. --John Ortberg
Jan 31, 2023: Christian Post: Andy Stanley to host conference for Christian parents of LGBT-identified kids
With a stated goal of helping “parents demonstrate the unconditional love of Jesus,” the Unconditional Conference includes a scheduled lineup featuring Stanley, Embracing the Journey co-founders Greg and Lynn McDonald, former megachurch pastor John Ortberg, North Point Ministries’ Debbie Causey, and LGBT advocate Justin Lee. Mar 13, 2015: Youtube: Nurture Seminar John Ortberg 3_9_2015
Dec 29, 2014: Christianity Today: Our Best Articles of the Year
Mars Hill meltdown: Lots and lots of voices were raised when Mark Driscoll resigned as pastor of Mars Hill in Seattle. But Ben Tertin talked to key people both inside and outside the church to put the whole thing in perspective. The Painful Lessons of Mars Hill was the year's most-read article, and it offered timeless wisdom on an intensely current theme. A companion piece by John Ortberg on our Parse blog was another well received commentary When a Pastor Resigns Abruptly. July 2, 2014: Bible Gateway: How to Care for Your Soul: An Interview with John Ortberg According to a Harris Interactive poll, a majority of Americans believe humans have a soul and that it could survive after death. I would have thought that people living 2,000 years ago would have been bored out of their minds. What did they do? There were no computers. There were no podcasts, no movies, nothing. But precisely because of that fact they were able to focus their attention on streams of thought for long periods of time. They did not require external stimulation to carry their attention. The whole dynamic of boredom is a fairly recent occurrence precisely because we have gotten so used to offloading the marshaling of our attention to television, movies, radio, podcasts, computers-whatever it is. Our attention muscles, if you want to think of it that way, have gotten really, really flabby.
So as a preacher I have to be aware of that, and I have to try to find ways that I can use visual cues-anything that can help. Like last weekend at our church, we were talking about saying “yes” to God. So I just had a big easy chair put up on a platform. I got a volunteer to come up from the crowd and put slippers on his feet, gave him Ovaltine and a Twinkie and a remote control. We had one of our vocalists sing a lullaby to him, put the lights down and then just asked everybody, “Does this look like a man who’s ready to spring into action? If God comes along and asks him to do something really hard, does he look like he’s ready to sacrifice?” And that image of life in a chair is such a strong one. For a lot of us, that’s what we’re really after-comfort, safety, security. But you were meant for something more than life in this chair. Then it becomes a short-hand way of referring to a way of life that enables preaching to pack a much stronger punch than if you just tried to describe it with words. --John Ortberg Sin is very important to the soul because sin is what disintegrates the soul; it's what attacks the soul. Sin kind of is to the soul what cancer is to the body. --John Ortberg
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August 7, 2021: The Sentinel reported: Pastor John Ortberg tells a wonderful story about Clarence Jordan, best known for his Cotton Patch Gospels. Clarence led revival services once at a church in the Deep South. This was more than 80 years ago, when segregation was the norm in the South. Clarence got up to preach, and he realized the congregation wasn’t segregated. There were black folks and white folks all together. After the service, he asked the pastor, an old hillbilly preacher: “How did your church get this way?” For most of us, the great danger is not that we will renounce our faith. It is that we will become so distracted and rushed and preoccupied that we will settle for a mediocre version of it. We will just skim our lives instead of actually living them. --John Ortberg
Sin is, somehow, at the root of all human misery. Sin is what keeps us from God and from life. It is in the face of every battered woman, the cry of every neglected child, the despair of every addict, the death of every victim of every war. --John Ortberg
March 13, 2014: Christianity today reported John Ortberg's Megachurch Approved To Leave PC(USA) over Multisite John Ortberg's megachurch has received approval to leave the PC(USA) for ECO. And to help pay the nearly $9 million price tag, Ortberg will sell his home of 10 years of which his wife Nancy once expressed, "I want to live here until I die, and when I die I want to be buried in the back yard." August 13, 2012: John Ortberg's book Who Is This Man? debuted at #3 on the New Release chart at Amazon.com. Spring 2011: Ortberg article in Christianity Today: The primary criteria for the effectiveness of a church service is not "holding people's attention." It's not compliments after the service, or growth in attendance, or satisfying our staunchest critics, or even satisfying our own internal assessment. It is this: Is Christ being formed in those who hear and participate? Paul told the Colossians he struggled and agonized as he taught in order to "present everyone mature in Christ." Sometimes this means we get creative in gaining peoples' attention; sometimes it means we are willing to risk losing it. We are not the first generation of church leaders to wrestle with this tension. Charles Spurgeon was widely criticized for too much levity in the pulpit, both by attenders and by other clergy. He once commented: "If only you knew how much I hold back, you would commend me …. This preacher thinks it less a crime to cause a momentary laughter than a half-hour of profound slumber." May 19, 1997: Ortberg wrote for Christianity Today: The gospel is about eschatology, not nostalgia. The values to which we are called are not the values of any past tradition, but the eternal values taught and lived by Jesus and expressed authoritatively in the Bible, which stand over and above every party platform and political agenda. I am not advocating silence or neutrality on the controversial issues of today. But I do fear that with the current culture wars comes the devaluing of one of the church’s primary tasks: discipleship. The reduction of Christianity to an ideology allows people to evade the task of true discipleship. It does not come through holding a certain set of values but by living a certain kind of life. It is far easier to promote values than to live them. “All men will know that you are my disciples,” Jesus said, not “if you promote my agenda” but “if you love one another.” A watching world will be persuaded not when our values are promoted but when they are incarnated. As the wars rage on and the church enters the fray, may we remember that Christ’s call is not an invitation to be on the right side; it is an invitation to become the right person. |