“Genuine intimacy is always life-giving—romantic or nonromantic. The “reciprocal communication of selves is the most humanizing and life-giving activity, and it is the lifeblood of friendship—whether it be friendship with God, the special friendship of marriage, or friendship with others.” http://danbrennan.typepad.com/my_weblog/
A number of years ago I went to a prayer meeting at the church I was attending at the time. While the meeting was open, it was primarily attended by the leaders of the church (including both staff and lay leaders). The monthly event typically saw probably 100-200 people in attendance. This particular night, one of the ministers got up and with tears confessed to some unmentioned sin and said that he was resigning from his position. Naturally this seemed pretty scandalous to me and seemed like big news. I found the elders reaction (they had previously met with this minister) to be interesting. They said that “We’re going to tell people he resigned but just not talk about it more than that.” I must admit I didn’t get it at the time. How Continue reading
(Note: After having written this and gone back and reviewed it, I realize that it feels that once again I have not communicated as clearly as I wish. One recognized problem is that I am attempting not to make a single point, but a series of related points. Basically what I’m getting at is this: Our actions (which sometimes includes words) show our true character. The actions I’ve observed recently have made me question if people are really following Christ, and whether Christianity is real at all. After that I suggest ways in which we can follow Christ.)
Last Sunday was the day known as Palm Sunday. This commemorates the day Jesus entered Jerusalem to much fanfare. A large crowd came out and literally gave Jesus the welcome of a Continue reading
Recently I’ve been thinking about my life’s priorities as a way of understanding decisions I make regarding how I spend my time. This has a lot to do with the fact that I’m now working full time and my time is therefore much tighter. My first priority that I’ve identified is survival. Of course put this way, it’s not surprising. This translates into putting top priority on eating, sleeping, working at a job and such things as hygiene, laundry, grocery shopping and paying bills.
My second priority is people/friends/being social/church. Since I’m single and live by myself, I don’t have anything social “built-in” to my everyday life. So this requires me to be proactive and go out, attend events, meet up with people, etc. As a side note, by Continue reading
Apparently this article from the Internet Monk (Michael Spencer) has garnered a significant amount of attention and sparked a good amount of discussion (especially online) since it was published a few weeks ago. I agree with most of what he has said, and it’s something that I’ve felt for years. I grew up in the conservative evangelical camp, but became quite frustrated with much of the extra “baggage” that has been made core to its identity. Not to say that nothing good is being done in conservative Christianity, but it is almost completely irrelevant, and I think may be doing as much harm as good.
It has been said, “Be in the world but not of it” but it seems that conservative Christianity has gotten it completely backwards, being of Continue reading
For those who are interested, this past week in our house church we looked at two blogs. The first one, “poultrygeist”, encourages us to not think that we can’t serve God because of some limiting factor in our lives. The second article (“Have You Heard?”) is great for starting discussions and making us think about gossip and slander. I think it’s something we could continually look at, because as the article points out, it can be subtle and unintentional, but nonetheless harmful.
We have been discussing what church is and what it should therefore look like. In doing so, we have contrast it with the institutional church. Many people have difficulty with the criticisms of the institutional church, which is of course not surprising if we have been closely tied and committed to it. A natural route for many is to say, “All your saying about organic church is fine, but I think the institutional church is ok too.” In other words, people look at organic church as just another option that isn’t better or worse than other churches, just different, and that some people will may like that more, but some people may like institutional church better, and it is no worse—perhaps even better than—an organic church. I grant that Continue reading
From Advocates for Self-Government:
An extraordinary 71% of Americans support an investigation into the possible misuse of the Department of Justice (DOJ) for partisan political purposes by the Bush administration.
63% of Americans support investigating the Bush administration for engaging in illegal wiretapping.
And 62% believe the Bush administration should be investigated for the use of torture.
That’s according to a Gallup poll released this week.
I am also quite upset by a number of cases were it seems the Bush administration blatantly violated U.S. and international laws and principles. I think we should investigate these matters, rather than turning a blind eye or dismissing it as being in the past.
I understand that there are indicators predicting that the country will be out of this recession by the end of the year. I have been noticing some signs of things turning around already myself. So, don’t panic!
I’m pleased to know that President Obama is concerned about the national debt, even in the present situation. I heard expert say something that seemed to make sense. He was saying that one of the problems with the economy overall currently, is that people have gotten into too much debt. So the problem of trying to stimulate the economy by leaving more with people is that they are using extra money to pay down their debt, rather than spend it. This expert suggested that the government should spend more now to make up for this, but Continue reading
Our the past couple of weeks in our fellowship, we’ve been discussing how the church is organic, a living thing, born out of the Spirit of God, not an organization or machine we build ourselves. I won’t go into this much more here, as I have already blogged about it relatively recently. I will say that I’m really looking forward to the coming weeks. We are going to start getting in to the “meat” of figuring out what the church really looks like. I’m hoping people’s eyes will be open and they will begin to see the vision. Prepare to take the red pill, if you will, and join Zion.