verse4today: "Be joyful in hope, patient in affliction, faithful in prayer" (Romans 12:12).
Posted on 2010-07-29 via Twitter
A friend recently pointed me to The Holy Longing: The Search For A Christian Spirituality by Ronald Rolheiser, a contemporary Roman Catholic author who writes for those followers of Jesus who struggle with following Jesus. In this book, Rolheiser, among other things, writes about the current struggle with spirituality, as well as some of its essentials. In the process, he pens a chapter entitled "A Spirituality of Eccesiology." In this chapter, he speaks to my situation as the pastor of … Read More …
A few years back, Stephen Covey published his incredibly popular Seven Habits of Highly Effective People, a self-help book now published in 34 languages. The success of Covey's book has led to copy cats like Seven Habits of Highly Effective Parents or Teens or Freshmen or Consultants or _____________ (you fill in the blank). This past week, while preparing for my "Hope for the Home" series of messages, I ran into an unusual copycat: Seven Habits of Highly … Read More …
I bought into it - hook, line and sinker. I am referring to the 7/24 model of church life which proposes that the church, like a gas station, be open for business seven days a week, twenty-four hours a day. In this model, we measure congregational vitality by the number of cars that drive in and out of the church parking lot each week, and also by the number of volunteers corralled to sustain the ministries … Read More …
This past Sunday, 53 pioneers gathered on the campus of Trinity Christian College to pray and think about the emerging Living Hope Church, a suburban, multi-ethnic congregation in the Calvinist tradition with dreams of embodying four specific goals: passionate worship, relevant teaching, authentic community, and dynamic partnership with God. Each one of those goals holds its own set of challenges. In the coming weeks, we will look at each one of them. Last Sunday we … Read More …
Last night I met with 50 people in the Van Namen Recital Hall on the campus of Trinity Christian College in Palos Heights to talk, sing, pray, and dream about a vision for a new kind of church in the southwest suburbs of Chicago. We had a great night. During our time together, which included Pastor Karen Williams (photo) leading us in worship, Pastor Pagel Williams leading us in prayer, Darryl Petty and the band … Read More …