“Hi Bob. You don’t know me, but I read your newsletter…”

I was in an airport – waiting to board my flight back to Orange County – when that chance encounter took place. He knew me… but I didn’t know him.

How did he get on the distribution list for the Point of View? A friend from a marketplace ministry cohort had pointed him to our website, and he had subscribed (clarification: this is not a newsletter; rather, a weekly commentary on what’s happening, written from a biblical point of view).

The Point of View – delivered as an outbound blog posting every week – is the current version of what started as the Fax of Encouragement in 1989. Back then it was sent every Monday to a few hundred people. Today, PoV lands in about 8000+ e-mail boxes, across the USA and dozens of countries. Apple Computer used the advertising slogan Think Different from 1997 to 2002. That’s been my objective for the last 25 years, with nothing to sell.

The Christian experience has always been served by leaders whose letters have been broadly circulated. Peter opened his first epistle – 2000 years ago – with that reminder:

“…writing to exiles scattered to the four winds. Not one is missing, not one forgotten. God the Father has his eye on each of you and has determined by the work of the Spirit to keep you obedient through the sacrifice of Jesus. May everything good from God be yours! (1 Peter 1:1-2).

We’re living in a world – and, embedded in a culture – that is message-loaded: the barrage of propaganda from worldviews that are competitive with and contrary to the Truth we have from God is unrelenting. PoV regularly starts the week with a conversation that challenges some hot topic in the headlines and resets the conversational table with another perspective that can have great value. 

That’s our task: Think Different. Like Peter’s audience of exiles, we’re all living in this world on a temporary basis, waiting to be taken home to Heaven – permanently – where we’ll finally fit-in.

If you appreciate this time we have together every Monday – and, if you sometimes forward it to friends – I’d like to ask you to expand our reach and extend your influence. 

The Challenge: forward this edition of PoV to your friends. Point them to a free subscription, so that they can be direct recipients of this weekly conversation. It’s simple: www.priorityliving.org. At that home page, click on the Blog’s tab (up top). Choose Point of View; the link below says “Manage or Subscribe to the Point of View.” No cost; no hassle. 

The Point of View can be a fresh perspective on a subject that’s in play in the office this week, or a conversation starter among Christian peers who Think Different, together. Pastors quote from it; friends re-send it to their groups. How might it serve your friends as they process life in a world without a biblical moral compass?

This offer has no inherent limits: forward it to 10 – or, 100 – friends you’d like to add to the weekly distribution. Be generous; be strategic: who are the men and women in your world whose influence you’d like to influence?

Next week, I’ll be back in my normal commentary mode. Why not get some friends and/or colleagues into this dialog? 

Helping leaders Think Different,

Bob Shank