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Tag Archives: Community

The Church of the Future

I just finished reading A Friendly Letter to Skeptics and Atheists:Musings on Why God is Good and Faith Isn’t Evil by David G. Myers. Worthwhile read filled with valuable nuggets. What I appreciated most was his invitation to a “humble spirituality”, a third alternative to a purposeless scientism/rationalism and a narrow fundamentalism so prevelant in my own tradition of contemporary evanglicalism. I don’t agree with all he has written, but I believe he is in the right direction. We do need a more profound spirituality rooted in biblical wisdom and history, one that connects us in supportive communities and offers genuine hope in the face of adversity and death. We need to learn from the larger “one, holy, catholic and apostolic church.” The following is the rich content of a moving letter sent to me from my mentor Leighton Ford this past week. It is a portion of an email message he recently received. Read more.

New Monasticism and the Community of Transfiguration

I just finished reading Community of the Transfiguration: The Journey of a New Monastic Community by Paul Dekar. It is the story of a 25 year journey of a small, missional, evanglical Baptist church in Australia moving from a church to a community to a monastery within their denomination! Can you imagine an intentional monastic community within an evangelical denomination today in North America? Paul Dekar, the author, is a professor at Memphis Theological Seminary. He presents a strong argument in his opening chapter that every 400 years in the West there is an upsurge in monastacism, and we are now living in the beginning of such an new movement. What makes this unique, in his opinion, is that it seems to be emerging within Protestantism and not Catholicism or the Orthodox church. I am not sure about these trends of church history, but I am sure that something radical is desperately needed and that monastacism holds a. Read more.

Integrity

For the past few weeks I have been reading, pondering and praying about what integrity actually is. Consider this definition : Integrity is when who I am on-stage is the same as who I am back-stage. It is when there is no separation between what is going on inside of me and what I am expressing outside of me. There is no separation of my inner and outer life. Easier said than done! I realize how easy it is for me to get so concerned with what is going on outside of me (my activity) that I lose touch with my soul. There becomes a gap between the inner ground, the center, my values and beliefs, my being and the actual life I am living. I can easily preach and write things I am not living!! To live congruent and internally consistent is difficult. This is integrity! This is what Parker Palmer has called. Read more.