Chap 3 of book of order
Gospel account spoken by Jesus – Matthew 10:39, Luke 14:26-27
Return of the unclean Spirit – Luke 11:24
Luke 12:34
Posted: August 23rd, 2010In the “Movements” of Spiritual Discernment as defined by Chuck Olsen and Danny Morris one of the early movements is “shedding” or “letting go.” I believe this is probably the most difficult of the discernment movements for us in the western world and the United States especially. Our lives have been so grounded in adversarial decision making of debate and convince that we have a most difficult time approaching the most serious and important issues with a “holy indifference.” Because we can’t let go we betray many times over our lack of faith and trust in the very God we worship. We are so programs to find the solution to the problem and convince others that our solution is better than theirs that often leave God completely out of the equation.
Posted: August 23rd, 2010Rodger Nishioka, at synod school, said that our education programs need to move from teaching for information to teaching for transformation. Our education programs focus a great deal on teaching people about God, Jesus, and the Bible. Rodger says that we need to now be teaching to change people’s lives.
Posted: August 23rd, 2010There were several big items voted at the last General Assembly which I am sure most of you have already heard about. There was the New Form of Government, another G-6 amendment, The Belhar Confession, the Middle Governing Body Commission, and the definition of marriage to name a few. There were a lot of other things that went on at the General Assembly as well and I believe some of them were significant. Here are just a few.
Posted: August 3rd, 2010The Power of One – The Story of Mother Steward
Bruce McGraw told the story of mother Steward who was the person who actually got the Harmony Ministries program started. Harmony Ministries was the reason the mission work group was in Haiti at the time the earthquake in January of this year.
Posted: July 29th, 2010One of the buzz words in the church world today is “Boundaries.” It most often refers to ministers or other church leaders who cross boundaries related to sexual conduct of financial malfeasance. In previous times the word we often used was “ethics.” Because of our focus on sexual misconduct and financial malfeasance (we have approved at least two policies in the presbytery in the past year) we overlook how failing to maintain appropriate boundaries in other situations in the church can cause us problems.
Posted: July 29th, 2010At a recent pastor’s lunch we were talking about ways to infuse our discussion at session meetings with scripture and theology. As a part of that discussion we talked about building use policies as one of the areas that might come to play. If we were to consider scriptures about hospitality and welcoming it might change the discussion about charging rent or asking for a donation. That is one of those discussions where we usually look down the street to see what our neighboring churches are doing but forget to consider what God might be expecting of us.
Posted: June 22nd, 2010Missional church thinking encourages congregations to look into their communities to see where God is already active as a means of figuring out where the church should be connecting with God’s mission.
Posted: June 22nd, 2010The “Great Ends of the Church” – there are six of them – are “the proclamation of the gospel for the salvation of humankind; the shelter, nurture, and spiritual fellowship of the children of God; the maintenance of divine worship; the preservation of the truth; the promotion of social righteousness; and the exhibition of the Kingdom of Heaven to the world.”
Posted: June 22nd, 2010
