Tag Archives: discipleship

Building Healthy Multi-Ethnic Churches – Reflections

I wrote a brief article recently for Mark Deymaz that will appear in a book he is writing on diverse, ethnic Churches (Zondervan). It forced me to think through our history and what we have learned. The following is most of the what I wrote: Twenty-one years ago, when my wife and I planted New Life Fellowship, we chose Elmhurst/Corona, Queens, as a strategic location for the church due to the fact that individuals from more than 120 nations live in the area. So while we recognized the benefits of such a location and desired to bridge the racial, cultural and economic barriers for the sake of Christ, we underestimated the suffering this commitment would require for all of us of in leadership. For instance, I soon realized that our evangelical discipleship/spiritual formation model was too superficial to bring about the kind of in-depth transformation we would need to live in authentic community. There. Read more.

Sexuality, Leadership and Spirituality

This past weekend Geri and I led another weekend for our small group around sexuality and spiritual formation. Once again, it confirmed to us that our sexuality lies at the heart of our spirituality and walk with Christ. We began this journey in early 1996 when we launched into emotionally healthy spirituality and remain convinced, that “as goes the leader’s sex life, so goes the church.” It is a startling conclusion, especially when we consider the state of discipleship aruond our sexuality in the church today (it is virtually non-existent for married couples). When I read a few months ago, for example, that spouses were encouraged to have sex for 30 days straight in order to improve their marriages, I was aghast. That is very long way from the biblical view of our sexuality, our humanity and God’s purposes. The following are a few thoughts we considered this past weekend: Our sexuality is all. Read more.

Jesus the Lord of Delight

My family growing up was never very good at delight, play, and enjoying the healthy, God-given pleasures of life. Added to this was a Christian formation in my early years that reinforced a subtle theology that the more you suffered for Christ, then the more loved you were by Him. We were to work, to do for Christ, especially among those of us serving in urban centers like New York City. The journey of emotional health and contemplative spirituality have helped me enormously, but it has been a long, slow process of growth. I am slowly getting there, learning to enjoy pleasure, gifts, fun, dance, wine, and celebrating! I’ve just completed The Good of Affluence by John Schneider, a professor of theology out of Calvin College in West Michigan. I do not agree with all he says, but he makes a number of excellent points. One, humans were designed by God to enjoy and. Read more.

Parties, Dancing, Laughter and the Contemplative Life

A hermit saw someone laughing , and said to him, “We have to render an account of our whole life before heaven and earth, and you can laugh?” Sayings of the Desert Fathers This coming, at New Life, we will bring in New Year’s Eve, starting at 6 p.m. with food, a couple of dance lessons, games, a brief time of worship around midnight and then dancing till 2 a.m. We have done this for the last nine years. Each year I struggle with the few nasty e-mails we receive (this year they are national). A voice in my head argues, “Every other church in NYC is praying and you are leading your people to a party!, you worldly compromiser! What are you mad?” Geri is the one who patiently encouraged me to break from the pack years ago and “allow” an intergenerational, pleasureable, clean, fun event as part of our spiritual formation/discipleship here at NLF. Most of us leaders are “pleasure/delight deficient”,. Read more.

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.

Rule of Life NLF Part 3 (with commentary)

I am in the process of re-reading John Cassian’s Conferences (c.365-c.435) and am so deeply affected by the depth and care with which his accounting of the desert father’s concern for purity of heart and for a life of unceasing prayer. What a contrast to the books and writings coming out of the church of today! I am both chagrined for I love the church and challenged to live free from the idols of power, money, approval, earthly security, etc. Cassian encourages me to call both myself and the larger church to a level of “apartness” difficult to understand living in the wealthiest country in the world. But I am challenged to go forward to pressing in here at NLF to go outside the box of contemporary church life and be a community that learns from the riches of the monastic tradition. So here is the third (of four) sections of the NLF Rule of Life we have only. Read more.

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