Tag Archives: silence and solitude

Australia (Pilgrimage Reflection #7)

Geri and I finished our one month tour with a full week in Australia, speaking in Perth, Melbourne, and Brisbane to over 550 pastors/leaders. Each consisted of an all-day Emotionally Healthy Leadership seminar and an Emotionally Healthy Marriage seminar in the evening. How did God come to me/us? We found Australians warm, winsome, hospitable, direct (like good New Yorkers), and immediately responsive to us. We were deeply appreciative and humbled by the great privilege of speaking to so many pastors here. We also found that Emotionally Healthy Spirituality meets a profound felt need for deep, beneath the surface spiritual formation here. A great sense of God’s presence permeated the meetings, even when we found ourselves tired from the travel. A number of denominations (e.g. The Salvation Army) and churches were already deeply engaged with EHS before we arrived. A number had done the EHS Church-Wide Initiative. The Emotionally Healthy Woman book and DVD course along. Read more.

Reflections on Singapore and Southeast Asia

As with our time in New Zealand, we experienced a very full 7 days in Singapore, teaching 3 different seminars to over 500 pastors/leaders, and speaking to 1600 people at a plenary session. We had the privilege to interact and learn from leaders from China, Singapore, Thailand, Indonesia, Vietnam, Myunnmar, Malaysia, the Philippines, and Brunei. How did God come to us? 1. The groundswell of the life of God in Asia is quite distinct from our 35 years of leadership in the United States. There is an aliveness, a power, a passion, a creativity, and a movement of the Holy Spirit that is impossible to miss. The sheer number of Christians in China (estimates put it at 100 million) dwarfs North America. The center of Christianity truly has moved away from North America and Europe to Asia (along with Latin America and Africa). 2. Emotionally Healthy Spirituality seems to meet a profound felt need. Read more.

Singapore and Southeast Asia (Pilgrimage Reflection #6)

As with our time with Willow Creek New Zealand, we experienced a very full 7 days in Singapore, teaching 3 different seminars to over 500 pastors/leaders, and speaking to 1600 people at a large plenary session. We had the privilege to interact and learn from leaders from China, Singapore, Thailand, Indonesia, Vietnam, Myunnmar, Malaysia, the Philippines, and Brunei. How did God come to me/us? The groundswell of the life of God in Asia is quite distinct from our 35 years of leadership in the United States. There is an aliveness, a power, a passion, a creativity, and a movement of the Holy Spirit that is impossible to miss. The sheer number of Christians in China (estimates put it at 100 million) dwarfs North America. The center of Christianity truly has moved away from North America and Europe to Asia (along with Latin America and Africa). Emotionally Healthy Spirituality meets a profound felt need of. Read more.

New Zealand (Pilgrimage Reflection #4)

How is our trip going? It is a bit complex to give an easy answer, but the following are a few ponderings. 1. We have deep rhythms of silence and solitude that we need to acknowledge. See my previous blog for more on this. What does an “emotionally healthy, global partnership tour” look like? What are the unique factors that have to be built in – at least for us? How does the gift of limits apply to Geri and I as we step into this new arena? 2. We cannot develop and release a movement of EHS abroad – it must be God’s doing, not ours. There is great expectation for the movement of EHS as it continues to spread. We will continue to offer our few loaves and fishes, (Ps. 127) as a mustard seed and let Him take care of the rest. It is a wonder that a number of churches and denominations were. Read more.

Church History & Emotionally Healthy Spirituality

I am finding that I need to speak more frequently about why a proper understanding of our church family history is paramount for growing spiritually. (click to see a larger version) I emphasize three critically important, major truths: 1. There was only one church for the first 1054 years. The first major split happened between the Eastern and Western church then. This was followed by the split of the Roman Catholic church in 1517 when Protestantism was born. Since then we have had over 200,000 other splits with countless Protestant and independent churches. So my particular tribe (evangelical) is finds itself far up into the upper right of the above chart. This is not a bad thing but I/we come from a family genogram. We are not the whole church by any means. And the church did not start with Luther, Calvin and the Reformers. 2. We need to learn from other traditions of. Read more.

Ten Distinctives of Emotionally Healthy Preaching

I remain firmly committed to doing our study/exegesis of texts that we preach, basing our sermons firmly on having dug deep into Scripture. Eugene Peterson says it well: “Exegesis doesn’t take charge of the text and impose superior knowledge to it; it enters the heart of the text and lets the text “read” us. Exegesis is an act of sustained humility. There is so much about this text I will never know.” (Eugene Peterson, Eat This Book). However, the following are ten questions to which I return over and over again – both for myself and our Teaching Team at New Life: 1. Is my “heart at rest?” This is a phrase out of the famous Lao Tsu poem “The Woodcarver“. It parallels Jesus’ time with the Father before His own preaching. This is about slowing down enough to ensure my life and teaching is flowing from the love of God. 2. Have. Read more.

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