Growing Churches
We mostly get it backward today. Our primary question is: How do we grow the church? The real question is: How does the Holy Spirit grow people? As a consequence, we have nearly mastered the art of growing churches that don’t grow people. We get people busy in all manner of Christian activity, but when it comes to measuring the maturity of people, we have no metrics. And, as they say, we manage what we measure.
What if, instead of asking how we get people to come to church or how we get people to come back or how we get people involved or assimilated or tithing or in a home group or in Sunday school or going on a mission trip or what we want people to know . . . what if we asked much deeper questions, the kinds of questions Jesus might ask? Who do we want people to become? How would we know if we became it? What are the markers of mature faith? Who in our midst shows forth the qualities of perfect love in their lives?
J D Walt
Evangelicals
2015 NPR story demonstrated just how much. It turns out that the “true” percentage of Americans who are evangelicals ranges from 35 percent if identity is based only on self-identification, to 25 percent if identity is based on denominational affiliation, to a mere 6 percent if identity is based on agreement with a series of core evangelical beliefs.
David French
Shame
In confession, the energy of shame becomes energy against the passions. As for a definition of shame, I would say it is the lack of courage to see ourselves as God sees us. (from The Enlargement of the Heart). Fr Stephen Freeman
GOSPEL
While the gospel is a message, it cannot be confined to messages. While the gospel is the truth, it cannot be captured by a series of propositional truths. Before the gospel is anything else, the gospel is God. Gospel means “good news,” and the good news is God. The good news is not that God loves us. It is that God is love. The good news is not that Jesus saves. It is that Jesus is himself salvation.
We think we truly comprehend God and the gospel because we have some comprehension of what God has done for us. This is good, as far as it goes, but it does not go anywhere near far enough. When our understanding of the gospel is limited to what God has done for us, our understanding of sharing the gospel will be limited to telling others what God has done for them.
To be sure, the gospel is the message of what God has done for us in Jesus Christ, but in a far greater sense, the gospel is who Jesus Christ is to us and in us and through us for the world.
The gospel is not a body of knowledge about who God is and what God has done. It is actually knowing God. Jesus prayed, “Now this is eternal life: that they know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom you have sent” (John 17:3).
J D Walt
How did the number of deaths per year from natural disasters change over the last hundred years?
?A: More than doubled ?
B: Remained about the same??
C: Decreased to less than half
This number includes all fatalities from floods, earthquakes, storms, droughts, wildfires, and extreme temperatures, and also deaths during the mass displacement of people and pandemics after such events.
The number of deaths from acts of nature has dropped far below half. It is now just 25 percent of what it was 100 years ago. The human population increased by 5 billion people over the same period, so the drop in deaths per capita is even more amazing. It has fallen to just 6 percent of what it was 100 years ago.
If I love and care for you only if you agree with me, I don’t love you at all…you’re simply a mirror I can use to worship myself… Phoenix Preacher
Piety
I think piety–a fiercely held and courageous moral integrity that does no harm and takes personal responsibility for making the world a better place in light of sacred values and commitments–is one of the greatest things in the world. I wish we all would become more pious. Richard Beck
Obscurity – a new spiritual discipline:
“Obscurity may very well be the spiritual discipline the American church needs to practice the most in the coming century.”
And these lines speak up and speak out:
“In order to go up, we have to go low.”
“None of us need another fan.”
“None of this is new,” she observes.
She’s right because she’s right.
Katelyn Beaty https://amzn.to/3bBiINi (Scot McKnight)
Healing
I have noted through the years, that some people (including some priests) are convinced that a soul can only be saved with disciplinary slaps and corrections from time to time. If there are such corrections needed in a human life, then it is likely only God who has the wisdom to know when and how such correction should take place. My experience as a priest and confessor is that I simply need to be consistent in sharing God’s love and be patient with what might be a process of healing that takes years. Fr Stephen Freeman
View from the front porch
The front porch and our house have a new look. The red front door is now green and we have new siding on the house. Shutters painted. Getting cooler, porch time is waning.
Getting older:
Kathleen Dowling Singh, The Grace in Aging: Awaken as You Grow Older
Opening deeply to the truth of our own aging is wise. Opening deeply to the truth of our own impermanence is wise. Although such opening may not come easily at first—we all know how the ego tends to resist vulnerability—it is important to do so if we wish to mindfully use the time remaining to us. . . .
To live a life of an elder is to ripen into being that is more than simply elderly, more than just old. It involves ripening into clear-eyed acceptance of the way things actually exist. That ripening involves, for each of us, many difficult reckonings in the multifaceted, multidimensional understanding that everything that can be lost will be lost. . . .
Grey hair and shagginess notwithstanding, many of us still cling childishly to so much that is unreal and inessential. Many of us still cling to reputation, to imagined security, to unexamined habits of attitude and behavior, and to self-image. We have deep aversion to having all of our cherished illusions stripped away by life-in-form’s seeming indifference.
We all have reservoirs of fear, some large and some small and subtle, around entering this new terrain of unknown and mystery: our last years. What will aging to do me? To my body? To my mind? . . . Will I matter to anyone? Will I be a burden? How will I die?
We do not know. We have no clue what these years will hold for us. We have no clue what will happen tomorrow. The “moment that changed everything” usually arrives unannounced.
STILL ON THE JOURNEY
George,
We have electricity and water! When we were waiting in the storm, we had so much to think about, little that needed to be said out loud, and much that needed to be directed vertically. I was closer to my husband, closer to God, close in heart to all I love and care about. It truly was the best of times, even though it was the worst of times. I hope and pray that I am forever changed- for the better.
Love you and Ann.