Tag Archives: spiritual disciplines
“A Hoary Head:” Navigating the Announcements at NRCC
When I was a kid, I got rewards for memorizing the ancient proverbs. Here’s one that is still stuck in my head… A hoary head is a crown of glory, if it is found on a man or woman who … Continue reading
Posted in Individual Lesson
Tagged ancient spiritual paths, Christian Meditation, community, contemplation, learning, Scripture, service, spiritual community, spiritual disciplines
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Spiritual Friendship: The Skills (1)
Skill #1: Growth.
Stands to reason doesn’t it? If we don’t have a learning and growing posture, we don’t grow into the skills, competencies, and emotional framework to do spiritual friendships well. Look around if you don’t believe me. As a society, we feel deeply alienated, and as a society, our spiritual, emotional, and relational skills are atrophying at alarming rates.
So, we’re talking about rebuilding them. Continue reading
Posted in Community in a Mid-Size Church
Tagged ancient spiritual paths, community, grace, relationships, spiritual disciplines
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Don’t Waste Your Time Going to Church (part 3)
We’re looking at the exercises we’ve been doing together on Sundays for centuries and centuries. As anything we do for an extend period, they can become rote, and we can begin to practice them without understanding or without a vested interest.
So we’re thinking together about the ancient practices, the ancient spiritual exercises.
Today, we think about the radicalized version of hospitality practiced in the first few centuries of the church, and how it served as political and social dissent against the norms of Roman society. Continue reading
Longings for God
by Robin Camu What Do We Really Want? The deepest longing of the human heart is to connect with God. Yet, many of us go through lives unconscious of this fact. When we feel the yearning for Divine companionship, we … Continue reading
Don’t Waste Your Time Going to Church (part 2)
Today, we begin looking at the exercises that in aggregate, constitute the Sunday morning Christian experience. Looking at the word “liturgy,” we realize that what we’re doing is closer to going to a gym-for-the-soul, than it is to many of our understandings of “going to church.”
So have a listen. Today we talk about two exercises Christian people have been doing Sunday mornings for centuries; getting ready, and getting there (there’s more to it than you would think). Continue reading
Don’t Waste Your Time Going to Church (part 1)
Notice, I did not title this lesson; ”Don’t go to church. It’s a waste of time.”
No, a better title would have been, “When you go to church, don’t waste your time.” (But it’s not nearly as catchy, is it?)
The exercises many Christians do on Sunday mornings have an ancient heritage. They wouldn’t have lasted this long if they didn’t have a profound power to transform us. However, many people find organized religion and Sunday services in particular, to be decidedly un-transformative.
So, in this lesson, we’ll look at the ancient communal practices we Christians do on Sunday mornings, and see if we can’t find the life and vitality that has been in them all these years. Continue reading
Why We Train Our Souls
We’ve been talking about a series of soul-training practices all Fall. In this lesson we pause from these content-dense lessons, to reflect on why we want to train our souls in the first place. I determined to teach this lesson to myself as I focus my soul this Advent, and decided to let everyone else listen in. Continue reading
Fighting for Freedom: Interior Freedom
In this 4th of July weekend message, we talk about the importance of Liberty, especially interior liberty. The freedoms enshrined in the Bill of Rights don’t mean much if we don’t have an attendent interior freedom to go along with them. Continue reading
Posted in Individual Lesson
Tagged freedom, Meditation Practicum, spiritual disciplines
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