Jon Swanson

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About Jon Swanson
Jon Swanson helps people and organizations find sense at urgent and important times. Whether sitting at deathbeds with families or sitting over coffee with people needing counsel, Jon's experience allows him to find the words and silence that help meaning come to the surface.
Once upon a time, Jon thought he would use his PhD in Rhetorical Theory and Criticism to teach college students how to analyze speeches. Instead, he has been helping people read the Bible for more than thirty years. In small groups and conversations, he tries to listen to the text, listen to people and connect the two in ways that are practical and often unexpected.
Jon has been a communication prof, college administrator, and an associate pastor. Currently, he's a hospital chaplain and a consultant.
He and Nancy have been married since 1983 and have two married children and a daughter in heaven. Jon and Nancy walk at least two miles a day, conversing the whole time.
Jon has been blogging since 2005. In 2008, he started 300wordsaday.com, where he writes in simple language about following Jesus, 300 words at a time.
Once upon a time, Jon thought he would use his PhD in Rhetorical Theory and Criticism to teach college students how to analyze speeches. Instead, he has been helping people read the Bible for more than thirty years. In small groups and conversations, he tries to listen to the text, listen to people and connect the two in ways that are practical and often unexpected.
Jon has been a communication prof, college administrator, and an associate pastor. Currently, he's a hospital chaplain and a consultant.
He and Nancy have been married since 1983 and have two married children and a daughter in heaven. Jon and Nancy walk at least two miles a day, conversing the whole time.
Jon has been blogging since 2005. In 2008, he started 300wordsaday.com, where he writes in simple language about following Jesus, 300 words at a time.
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Blog postListen, if you will, to this word from Rich Dixon:
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Why didn’t they listen?
The question came up in our small group (I might have asked it). A prophet brought a clear message from God. He told them the consequences of disobedience. They ignored his warning and suffered the consequences. Cry out to God. Repent.
Rinse, and repeat. We see the same pattern throughout Israel’s history, and we have to wonder.
Why didn’t they listen?
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T14 hours ago Read more -
Blog post(Part two of a message from April 23, based on John 20:19-31. See part one.)
And we say, “But what about Thomas’ statement when he heard about the night?” He says, “unless I see his hands and side, and I touch him, I won’t believe.”
That’s the sure sign of a doubter, right?
May I ask a question? Who is he doubting? Jesus? Or is he doubting Peter? The man who had said he would stick with Jesus and then denied him. Is he doubting Nathaniel, who had been the oriYesterday Read more -
Blog postPart one of a message from April 23, 2017 based on John 20:19-31.)
In our reading this morning, we heard about a disciple named Thomas. People who never knew him have labeled him “doubting Thomas” and he’s had to bear that label for millennia. But I’m pretty sure that’s not what his friends would have called him.
At the time he was also called Didymus. The twin. There’s no record of who his twin was. None at all. And it’s only in John that we see him as an individual. In2 days ago Read more -
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Blog postGod.
We are cautious.
At least many of us are.
Except maybe about what we like and share.
And even then we make choices more cautiously than people know.
We make decisions out of an abundance of caution.
We are cautiously optimistic.
We are cautious about who we trust or what we commit to do.
Because our hearts have been betrayed, our minds have been deceived.
And we aren’t going to let that happen again.
And so,3 days ago Read more -
Blog post“Half-hearted praise is no praise at all.” That’s what the worship leader said. He was trying to get us to sing louder, I think, or more enthusiastically. He wanted us to be whole-hearted, all in. “Come on, church.”
I’ve stood where he stands. I may even have offered that call. But I can’t anymore.
It may be a true statement, when talking to an individual, with an awareness of a pattern of half-hearted commitment. The young man who approached Jesus wanting to know ho5 days ago Read more -
Blog postI know that in the 16 months since I wrote this, much has changed. But I think the point is still worthwhile.
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“I’m so glad we had this six months.”
That’s what the woman said to her sister, talking about the time they’d had since the diagnosis until now. It was a time of clarifying what matters to them, about putting arrangements into place, about tying up loose ends.
I kind of laughed when she said it. Not loud enough for her to hear. I wasn’t laughing at6 days ago Read more -
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Blog postI wanted to help us laugh today. I searched my archives for “laugh”. I found this and laughed again.
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The challenge made me laugh on Saturday night.
After the first line of a book, add “and then the dragons arrived.”
Suggestions included The Hobbit, One Fish Two Fish Red Fish Blue Fish, The Gospel of John, Jane Austin books, Madeleine, Paddington, and books I don’t know.
The point of story is disruption. Things are going along as1 week ago Read more -
Blog postI wrote this seven years ago.
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Hope and I were driving home from work. We had carpooled, her to the pizza place, me to the church. I picked her up, rolled the window down, and headed home.
It was the first warm Spring day we’d traveled together. I handed her the end of a cable. One end was plugged into the radio. The other was for her phone, full of music.
“What do you want to listen to?” she asked.
“The windows are down,” I said.
And soon Be1 week ago Read more -
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Blog postRich Dixon has good words for some of us today.
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“But we had hoped that He was the one…”
If I’m honest, I live a lot of my life on Saturday.
Not the fun-and-games teenage Saturday. Not the every day is Saturday – or Thursday – of the pandemic, when days of the week don’t seem to matter.
As a guy who struggles with chronic depression, I know all too well how it felt on the Saturday between Good Friday and Easter. I live a lot of my life on the day whe1 week ago Read more -
Blog postGod.
Happy Easter.
We would sound more sincere, but
we are grumpy and scared and weary and sad.
Some of us, anyway.
We are like John, a little afraid to look in the tomb.
We are like Peter, looking inside but then going back home and locking the door.
We are like Mary, weeping and not seeing you clearly.
There you are, inviting us to converse, inviting us to breakfast, inviting us to start by simply acknowledging you.
We1 week ago Read more -
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Titles By Jon Swanson
God. We Still Need You.: A Year of Pandemic Prayer and Practice From a Hospital Chaplain
Mar 23, 2021
by
Jon Swanson
$5.99
Sometimes we need prayers to help us reflect on the pain we've lived through. In the euphoria of a vaccine and the freedom that people will feel, the work of those who lived through the worst will be forgotten. Tragically, the effects of that work will linger for the rest of the lives of those nurses. And respiratory therapists. And intensivists and patient care techs and EVS workers and child life specialists and radiologists and pharmacy techs. And chaplains. We will all carry with us the pictures of families on the other end of Zoom calls, watching mom as she is taking her last breaths. We will remember the fastidious, almost paranoid attention to donning and doffing protective gear. We will remember the IV poles in the hallways outside rooms with COVID-19 patients. Or we will forget those moments and be surprised when we suddenly start crying. We will all carry with us the tension in our bodies we felt as we read our social media feeds talking about a made-up virus as we think about its actual cost on the people we took care of inside the hospital. Into this grief come the words of a hospital chaplain who worked through this year. Starting with Advent 2019 and going through Thanksgiving 2020, these essays and prayers reflect one hospital chaplain’s conversations with God and others during a challenging year. The framework is the church calendar: Advent, Epiphany, Lent, Eastertide, Ordinary Time. Each section starts with orientation to the season, to what was happening outside the hospital, and what was happening inside. The heartbeat is the Sunday prayers. Essays from the author's blogs, 300wordsaday.com and SocialMediaChaplain.com, are placed into that framework at the time they were written. The death and uncertainty aren’t always in the foreground of these prayers and reflections. There are stories that I can’t tell, moments that must be protected. But those stories and moments are always informing the writing. And this isn’t a memoir, not in the kind that reviews the past and provides meaning. Instead, it is a journal, written in public, offering glimpses of a difficult year.
Other Formats:
Paperback
by
Jon Swanson
$6.99
I’m sorry you are here. No one buys a book on how to do a funeral service or a memorial service unless someone else died.
You are stepping in front of a group of people who are two days after the hardest moment of their life and are having the saddest day of their life, and you have to summarize someone’s life, give it meaning, and help people take their next step.
If you are in a church tradition that gives you all the words, use those words. But if you are reading this book, all the words weren’t enough. And many books tell us how to do things with great authority. They say, “This is THE way.”
But you aren’t looking for THE way. You are looking for help to figure out YOUR way to do a service to honor someone.
And I want to give you that help.
With more than thirty years of helping people communicate, of helping people think, of helping people sort through hard situations, I can offer you frameworks, options, and samples.
You’ll still have to do the hard work, of course. But this short book will help.
We’ll cover the service itself, starting fifteen minutes before and ending at the cemetery. We’ll talk about how to start, how to decide what goes in the middle, how to build a message, and how to finish the service. We'll talk about the particular challenge of a funeral for an infant.
I'll give you several samples of messages, a few checklists, and as much encouragement as I can fit in a small book for a tough time.
You are stepping in front of a group of people who are two days after the hardest moment of their life and are having the saddest day of their life, and you have to summarize someone’s life, give it meaning, and help people take their next step.
If you are in a church tradition that gives you all the words, use those words. But if you are reading this book, all the words weren’t enough. And many books tell us how to do things with great authority. They say, “This is THE way.”
But you aren’t looking for THE way. You are looking for help to figure out YOUR way to do a service to honor someone.
And I want to give you that help.
With more than thirty years of helping people communicate, of helping people think, of helping people sort through hard situations, I can offer you frameworks, options, and samples.
You’ll still have to do the hard work, of course. But this short book will help.
We’ll cover the service itself, starting fifteen minutes before and ending at the cemetery. We’ll talk about how to start, how to decide what goes in the middle, how to build a message, and how to finish the service. We'll talk about the particular challenge of a funeral for an infant.
I'll give you several samples of messages, a few checklists, and as much encouragement as I can fit in a small book for a tough time.
Other Formats:
Paperback
by
Jon Swanson
$0.99
In 2020, we felt like the whole year was Lent, giving up everything. As we try to recover our spiritual and emotional equilibrium, having a guide like Lent for Non-Lent People brings thoughtful and compassionate structure to the Lenten season in 2021.
Lent for Non-Lent People is a daily guide to prayer, fasting, rest and following Jesus for people who want training wheels for Lent.
The first seven chapters are each divided into seven readings, allowing for daily readings, starting the week of Ash Wednesday (2/17/21) and going through Easter (4/4/21). The final chapter provides several strategies to take Lent into the rest of the year.
Topics include Lent as an experiment in habit, Lent as finding living food, the forty day fasts of Elijah and Jesus, the conversations Jesus had with several women, having a cup of tea with Jesus, 7 lessons to learn from sleepy disciples, and the difference between routine and ritual.
Lent for Non-Lent People is a daily guide to prayer, fasting, rest and following Jesus for people who want training wheels for Lent.
The first seven chapters are each divided into seven readings, allowing for daily readings, starting the week of Ash Wednesday (2/17/21) and going through Easter (4/4/21). The final chapter provides several strategies to take Lent into the rest of the year.
Topics include Lent as an experiment in habit, Lent as finding living food, the forty day fasts of Elijah and Jesus, the conversations Jesus had with several women, having a cup of tea with Jesus, 7 lessons to learn from sleepy disciples, and the difference between routine and ritual.
Other Formats:
Paperback
A Great Work: A Conversation With Nehemiah For People (Who Want To Be) Doing Great Works
Nov 29, 2013
by
Jon Swanson
$0.99
Nehemiah is a brief book in the Bible. Nehemiah is also a man steeped in religious tradition and working for a foreign government. When bad news arrives, he finds an impossible purpose for his life: rebuild Jerusalem. This book is a series of conversations with Nehemiah exploring how he followed God and led people.In these conversations, Jon Swanson explores prayer, opposition, distraction, injustice, and staying faithful to the end of life. The conversational style reaches beyond the book of Nehemiah and teaches us a way to explore the Bible. A Great Work is not a typical commentary on the Bible, it’s a conversation with the Bible.
Other Formats:
Paperback
"God. We Need You.": A Year of Prayer in a Hospital Chapel (Resources on Faith, Sickness, Grief and Doubt Book 5)
Jun 21, 2020
by
Jon Swanson
$0.99
Every Sunday, people listen to readings from the Bible and then listen to someone pray. That happens around the world in a variety of settings. And the prayers respond to the setting and the scripture and the people.
When a hospital chaplain prays in a hospital chapel every Sunday, the prayer represents the conversations with people and God that have happened that week. The words to God on behalf of the people must reflect knowing that people are living and dying, knowing that the listeners are facing good diagnoses and bad, the beginning and ending of life.
This is a collection of a year of those Sunday morning prayers, based on Year C of the Revised Common Lectionary.
When a hospital chaplain prays in a hospital chapel every Sunday, the prayer represents the conversations with people and God that have happened that week. The words to God on behalf of the people must reflect knowing that people are living and dying, knowing that the listeners are facing good diagnoses and bad, the beginning and ending of life.
This is a collection of a year of those Sunday morning prayers, based on Year C of the Revised Common Lectionary.
Other Formats:
Paperback
by
Jon Swanson
$0.99
From the introduction:
The way we live is a routine. When we get up, which path we take to work, what we do at work, how we spend our time when we have a choice, how we react when we don't have a choice. A routine is simply a set of thoughts and behaviors performed consistently. Gymnasts have routines. Parents create bed-time routines for their children.
We often find our routines to be routine, unexciting. We want to change them, to find excitement. And change is exciting. It throws everything off. But eventually, even the novelty becomes a routine and becomes routine.
Unless we find a template, a proven technique. Someone else’s routine. I’ve done this often, looking at time management tools, attention management tools, life management tools. So have you. When we’re done, we have built a collection of techniques. And we live our routine better, but sometimes we still wonder why we are doing this.
That’s because routines are about how to live. They need to have a why.
There are lots of whys available as well. And rather that look at all the options, I want to pick one and look at it.
Matthew 5-7 is known as "the Sermon on the Mount." I invite you to spend some time with me looking at this sermon, this teaching, where Jesus describes learning a new routine. Jesus answers a simple question: What does the routine of the kingdom of heaven look like?
What others are saying:
"I started reading this out loud. There were pages that made me smile, laugh and cry. I have to finish this and see how it ends. And then read it again. And share with others. And I heard voices as I was reading out loud:
Mine, which I am familiar with.
Yours, which I have heard before when I read 300 words a day as my morning devotion.
And God's voice too."
-Scott Howard
"Jon makes Jesus real. A real person, with real friends, doing real work. Jon understands the disciples as people, human in all their struggles and failings, continuing to miss the point of their Friend's guidance, support, advice and comfort. In so doing, he connects us not just with words or sermons or commands, but a framework for following Jesus and permission to get it wrong while working to get it right."
-Rob Hatch
The way we live is a routine. When we get up, which path we take to work, what we do at work, how we spend our time when we have a choice, how we react when we don't have a choice. A routine is simply a set of thoughts and behaviors performed consistently. Gymnasts have routines. Parents create bed-time routines for their children.
We often find our routines to be routine, unexciting. We want to change them, to find excitement. And change is exciting. It throws everything off. But eventually, even the novelty becomes a routine and becomes routine.
Unless we find a template, a proven technique. Someone else’s routine. I’ve done this often, looking at time management tools, attention management tools, life management tools. So have you. When we’re done, we have built a collection of techniques. And we live our routine better, but sometimes we still wonder why we are doing this.
That’s because routines are about how to live. They need to have a why.
There are lots of whys available as well. And rather that look at all the options, I want to pick one and look at it.
Matthew 5-7 is known as "the Sermon on the Mount." I invite you to spend some time with me looking at this sermon, this teaching, where Jesus describes learning a new routine. Jesus answers a simple question: What does the routine of the kingdom of heaven look like?
What others are saying:
"I started reading this out loud. There were pages that made me smile, laugh and cry. I have to finish this and see how it ends. And then read it again. And share with others. And I heard voices as I was reading out loud:
Mine, which I am familiar with.
Yours, which I have heard before when I read 300 words a day as my morning devotion.
And God's voice too."
-Scott Howard
"Jon makes Jesus real. A real person, with real friends, doing real work. Jon understands the disciples as people, human in all their struggles and failings, continuing to miss the point of their Friend's guidance, support, advice and comfort. In so doing, he connects us not just with words or sermons or commands, but a framework for following Jesus and permission to get it wrong while working to get it right."
-Rob Hatch
by
Jon Swanson
$2.99
It's been a challenging year. We could use Advent to help us recover.
Advent is a season to help us get ready for Christmas. By spending time slowing down our busy schedules, we can prepare our hearts and minds to remember Christ's first coming and to anticipate the second. Or we can open calendar boxes with chocolate.
That's in a usual year.
In 2020, all our routines have been disrupted. We could use some help with making sense of the year. And Advent is a perfect season for looking back and looking forward.
Giving a Year Meaning: A Healing Journal for Advent 2020 walks you through this Advent with reflections and activities designed to help you find meaning and healing. Rather than wise sayings or interesting stories this is a journal that will invite you to reflect on things we may have missed during the year and then take steps to remember and recover those things.
For example, some of us have forgotten to smile. Some of us have missed out on comforting others in their pain because of our own distraction. Some of us have gotten pretty upset with others. Some of us have forgotten what did work.
Developed by a hospital chaplain, this journal gives us all the experiences that can help.The journal runs from November 29 (the first Sunday of Advent) through December 31, one entry every day. It can be completed alone or as part of a family or other group conversation.
Advent is a season to help us get ready for Christmas. By spending time slowing down our busy schedules, we can prepare our hearts and minds to remember Christ's first coming and to anticipate the second. Or we can open calendar boxes with chocolate.
That's in a usual year.
In 2020, all our routines have been disrupted. We could use some help with making sense of the year. And Advent is a perfect season for looking back and looking forward.
Giving a Year Meaning: A Healing Journal for Advent 2020 walks you through this Advent with reflections and activities designed to help you find meaning and healing. Rather than wise sayings or interesting stories this is a journal that will invite you to reflect on things we may have missed during the year and then take steps to remember and recover those things.
For example, some of us have forgotten to smile. Some of us have missed out on comforting others in their pain because of our own distraction. Some of us have gotten pretty upset with others. Some of us have forgotten what did work.
Developed by a hospital chaplain, this journal gives us all the experiences that can help.The journal runs from November 29 (the first Sunday of Advent) through December 31, one entry every day. It can be completed alone or as part of a family or other group conversation.
Other Formats:
Paperback
$2.99
Are you feeling disillusioned this Christmas? Do you need help to focus on what really matters? What if you could talk with a friend of Jesus and ask how he feels about Christmas?
In Saint John of the Mall you will experience 26 conversations with Saint John, a white-bearded man at a shopping mall, that will lead you to peace and ease your frustration.
Like you, Dr. Jon Swanson, a pastor and professor, has often been frustrated by Christmas. Let him (and Saint John) help you find hope and rest this Christmas. Click Add to Cart for this Advent devotional like none you have read before.
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Paperback
Anticipation: An Advent Reader
Dec 4, 2012
by
Jon Swanson
$0.99
When people think of the Christmas story, they often go to the book of Luke in the Bible. Years of hearing Linus recite the story of the shepherds put the words of Luke in people’s hearts. And for some people, it isn’t Christmas until they hear Linus.
And they wait with great anticipation. They check the TV listings. They clear their schedules. Even though they can watch the recording over and over again, they wait eagerly for the coming of the “Charlie Brown Christmas.”
If you are like those people, then Luke wrote about you. He wrote about that kind of anticipation, that kind of looking forward, that kind of longing.
For the 25 days of Advent, this collection of reflections will remind us of people who were anticipating, some even craving, the arrival of the Christ.
And they wait with great anticipation. They check the TV listings. They clear their schedules. Even though they can watch the recording over and over again, they wait eagerly for the coming of the “Charlie Brown Christmas.”
If you are like those people, then Luke wrote about you. He wrote about that kind of anticipation, that kind of looking forward, that kind of longing.
For the 25 days of Advent, this collection of reflections will remind us of people who were anticipating, some even craving, the arrival of the Christ.
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