I’ve always had a pretty good relationship with non-Christians and have been able to have conversations with them about spirituality and Christianity that a lot of people generally can’t. So, in the spirit of Christmas, I thought I’d share my secrets with you.
Here is my definitive guide to dealing with non-Christians.
These days the term “Spiritual Formation” is thrown around a lot. It is used just enough that we all feel like we should already know what it means and so nobody asks. But most of us really only have a small understanding of what is meant when people say Spiritual Formation.
For Christians, it is the process of being conformed to the image of Christ (Romans 8:29).
But what does that mean?
In Matthew 22, a man asks Jesus what is the most important law.
And he said to him, “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.”
According to Jesus, directing all of your heart, soul, and mind towards the divine is the most important thing for you to do.
Did you know there are more slaves in the world now than there have been at anytime in history? Some estimates say 27 million people are being denied the basic human right of freedom. That is twice as many slaves as there were when the emancipation proclamation was signed. And these aren’t all in foreign countries, there is slavery, called human trafficking now, going on right here in America. It is shocking and disgusting, but luckily there is something we can do about it right now.
This week the completely unsurprising happened: a high profile Christian resigned his position because of inappropriate sexual relationships. This time it was Keith O’Brien, but he wasn’t the first and he (unfortunately) won’t be the last. In fact, if I optimize this post to show up on google as “church guy resigns because of sex” it could very well be my most viewed post ever because this happens so unbelievably often.
In this particular case, O’Brien has had some pretty ugly things to say about the LGBT community. But, as it turns out, he himself has had a few sexual encounters with young priests.
Why does this happen? And why does it always seem to be person who has taken a strong stand against the very thing they are exposed as doing?
That stance is actually exactly why it happens.
As a teen and young(er) adult one of the biggest things I struggled with was anger. This, contrary to what we might want to believe, has never been constructive or righteous, but has always been about my own need to feel secure or in control. Anger is a kind of protected sin in our culture. We have a superhero whose power is fueled by getting (or more recently always being) angry. We’re told not to repress our anger, but to express it. We even read it into the story of Jesus cleansing the temple when the text never mentions that he was angry. But the earliest Christians would have had a different opinion than we do.
I was convicted and motivated when I read Meg Funk‘s summary of the Desert Father’s teaching on the issue.
In The Rule and Exercises of Holy Living, Jeremy Taylor offered 19 rules for how to foster humility. I’ve condensed them down to blog form (since they didn’t have blogs in the 17th century) and italicized my favorites for your easy consumption.
Lent is a traditional time of mourning and repentance in which Christians prepare to celebrate Easter by prayer, fasting, and charity.
Lent begins on Ash Wednesday and Ends on either Maundy Thursday or on Easter Eve, depending on the tradition.
Lent is 40 days, although the time from Ash Wednesday to Easter is actually 46 days. Why? Because Sunday counts as a “mini-Easter” and isn’t considered part of the Lenten fast.
So to determine when the first day of Lent is we count back from Easter 46 days. To do that we have to know when Easter is. That’s easy. First Sunday after the first full moon of the vernal equinox. Not so easy? Check this out
Last week I decided to fast for the first time in almost nine years. Right now Argonia Friends is going through what Richard Foster calls the “inner disciplines,” one of which is fasting. Because I had to preach on it and because I knew almost nothing about it, I fasted last Thursday. I had no idea what to expect, but God used the time to teach me three things about myself.
Growing up two things were for certain: we would play baseball and we would go to church.
Although both of my parents supported and encouraged each of these activities, it became natural for us to identify baseball with Dad and church with Mom. After all, it was my dad who always shared stories about how he struck out a guy who ended up playing in the Series. It was Dad who taught us to sing “Take Me Out to the Ball Game” before we were 2. It was Dad out in the yard with us showing us how to throw a curveball. And it was mom who made sure we were dressed and in the car. It was Mom who encouraged us to sell fundraiser crap to go to camp. It was Mom who bought us the complete sermons of Martin Luther for Christmas (true story).
Andy Stanley’s Deep and Wide: Creating Churches Unchurched People Love to Attend is part memoir and part instruction manual on how to create churches for those outside the church. Deep and Wide is divided into five sections, “My Story” is Stanley’s personal background, “Our Story,” is the story of the planting of North Point Community Church in 1995, “Going Deep,” covers North Points’ spiritual formation technique “Going Wide,” is about how North Point structures its programming for outreaching and “Becoming Deep and Wide,” is about helping churches to transition to the type of church Stanley advocates. My thoughts on what Deep and Wide gets right and what it gets wrong are detailed below.
