Archive for the ‘Uncategorized’ Category
The Christian, The Church, The Culture
Wednesday, June 23rd, 2010
I have been thinking lately about the combination of church and culture in the hearts of American Christians. Actually, as a pastor, you might say this issue is ingrained in what I do on a weekly basis, but nonetheless, it has been on the surface in recent days. Where does church fit into our priorities and schedules? How are we acculturated to view our spiritual selves? How much of that do we bring into our weekly church habits? Is church (as we know it) really all that important in the long run? So, as any decent blogger, I thought I would think out loud about a few things.
There are no major, publicly accepted institutions that enforce the importance of the spiritual.
The biblical view, which I believe is the accurate anthropological view, is that everything is spiritual (with apologies to Rob Bell). Though we are accustomed to a view in which our normal, day-to-day lives are lived in a non-spiritual and wholly “secular” world, it is more accurate to say that there is nothing that is not God-soaked.
Tags: Church, Culture, Discipleship
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Funerals Are A Pain
Thursday, June 10th, 2010
Funerals are a pain. And I don’t mean that in the sense that they are an annoying inconvenience – they are pain. They mark the passing of family or friend, and they stand as that public moment when we all grieve, love on each other, and make steps toward a new normal without the one we loved. As a pastor I sometimes get to watch as families deal with their loss while the pain is very fresh and sometimes the members of families are all at very different places at all the same time. One thing I have never appreciated about some is their immediate tendency to try and brush aside the grief with something like, “at least they are in a better place.” Though that is true for those who die with Christ, and though that truth is part of the healing process, we ought not to short-circuit the process of death and grief so quickly.
A recent article in CT deals with the new book, The Art of Dying: Living Fully into the Life to Come, by Rob Moll. In the article we are encouraged to think more about funerals as an act of spiritual formation and even community formation under Christ. We are, after all, people of a crucified and risen savior living in inevitable physical decay. We ought to therefore embody a community of resurrection – and remember that resurrection implies death. Rob Moll notes:
We live in a culture that has forgotten how to help people measure their days. Through medicine and science, we know more about death and how to forestall it than ever before. Yet we know little about how to prepare people for the inevitable. The church is a community that teaches people how to live well by teaching them how to measure their days. Put another way, when the church incarnates a culture of resurrection—one that recognizes the inevitability of death but not its triumph—it teaches people how to die well.
Have we become so obsessed with living well or living comfortably that we have lost sight of dying well as part of the spiritual act of the believer? If we have neglected this, does it betray a lack of confidence in the providential guidance of God in all seasons of life?
Tags: Culture, Discipleship, Spiritual Formation, Theology
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It’s Alive!
Tuesday, May 25th, 2010
Much has been made of a recent technological breakthrough in which the researcher, Craig Venter, assembled a fully synthetic strand of DNA. Such announcements tend to come with some rather grand claims, as evidenced by the article’s headline in The Economist, “And Man Made Life” and this opening paragraph:
TO CREATE life is the prerogative of gods. Deep in the human psyche, whatever the rational pleadings of physics and chemistry, there exists a sense that biology is different, is more than just the sum of atoms moving about and reacting with one another, is somehow infused with a divine spark, a vital essence. It may come as a shock, then, that mere mortals have now made artificial life.
A good collection of reactions and analysis by biologist Jonathan Wells of the science can be found on the blog, Evolution News & Views. As it turns out, nothing too spectacular has happened, despite some of the implications of some of the reporting. All Venter and his colleagues have done is take some life apart, and recreate just DNA (which is not a living organism).
But what is going on in the desire to report this as “life-creating” or even the desire to recreate life in our own image? Two vast questions indeed, but here are a couple of thoughts.
Tags: Culture, Science
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District Council Ordination Service
Thursday, May 6th, 2010
We had our annual District Council last week and our General Secretary, Dr. Jim Bradford, was the main speaker. There are several links to great talks on this page, but his ordination service sermon is especially worth listening to. (Under the “General Sessions” link.)
Tags: Sermons
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What do Christians Believe?
Thursday, May 6th, 2010
This survey was reported in USA Today last week, and it highlights a set of
problems we see more and more in studies about the beliefs and spiritual lives of Christian people. Some excerpts:
Most young adults today don’t pray, don’t worship and don’t read the Bible, a major survey by a Christian research firm shows.
If the trends continue, “the Millennial generation will see churches closing as quickly as GM dealerships,” says Thom Rainer, president of LifeWay Christian Resources. In the group’s survey of 1,200 18- to 29-year-olds, 72% say they’re “really more spiritual than religious.”
Among the 65% who call themselves Christian, “many are either mushy Christians or Christians in name only,” Rainer says. “Most are just indifferent. The more precisely you try to measure their Christianity, the fewer you find committed to the faith.”
And further:
Many are unsure Jesus is the only path to heaven: Half say yes, half no.
“We have dumbed down what it means to be part of the church so much that it means almost nothing, even to people who already say they are part of the church,” Rainer says.
What do you think about these trends? What is the responsibility of the church family in response to findings like these?
Tags: Church, Discipleship
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A Prayer
Saturday, April 24th, 2010
I have been reading and rereading the book of Colossians recently, and was struck this morning by part of Paul’s prayer near the beginning of the book. From chapter 1:
9 And so, from the day we heard, we have not ceased to pray for you, asking that you may be filled with the knowledge of his will in all spiritual wisdom and understanding, 10 so as to walk in a manner worthy of the Lord, fully pleasing to him, bearing fruit in every good work and increasing in the knowledge of God. 11 May you be strengthened with all power, according to his glorious might, for all endurance and patience with joy, 12 giving thanks to the Father, who has qualified you to share in the inheritance of the saints in light. 13 He has delivered us from the domain of darkness and transferred us to the kingdom of his beloved Son, 14 in whom we have redemption, the forgiveness of sins.
Tags: Bible Study, Prayer
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Pastor on Belief in an Age of Skepticism
Tuesday, April 20th, 2010
If you have the time, this is a wonderful and thoughtful talk on belief in God.
A Conversation with Tim Keller: Belief in an Age of Skepticism? from The Veritas Forum on Vimeo.
Tags: Apologetics, Jesus
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Praying the Ordinary
Wednesday, April 7th, 2010
Last night in our Tuesday evening study, we talked about what Richard
Foster calls, the Prayer of the Ordinary. In short, this kind of prayer takes the normal and ordinary things in life, turns them into prayer, and finds God in them. I find this to be both an extremely challenging and helpful form of prayer.
It is challenging because my ordinary life is often so repetitive, simple, sometimes taxing, and full of things that seem so far from God. What does prayer have to do with feeding the dogs? What does prayer have to do with filling the car with gas? These are the normalities of daily life, and have nothing sacred built into them, right?
Tags: Discipleship, Prayer, Spiritual Formation
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Seekers vs. The Sought
Thursday, March 25th, 2010
I have been reading through our missionary guest’s book, Off-Road Disciplines (by Earl Creps), and ran across an idea I like very much. In a chapter about spiritual friendship and witness, he says:
“I suggest that we might refer to lost people not as seekers but as the sought.” (pg. 58)
In other words, instead of looking at them through what they might want to find in us, we ought to look at them as those we are actively seeking, praying for, and looking for.
A very healthy way of looking at things!
Tags: Book Review, Culture, Discipleship, Witnessing
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Why Would I Come To Church?
Wednesday, March 24th, 2010
A great video done by one of our sister churches in Layton, Utah.
Why don’t you go to church?
Tags: Church
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