Your Church Looks Exactly The Same

 "Anyway. Sometimes people will ask me about a certain church we went to, and I find myself having to dig pretty hard to pluck the particular church they wanna know about out of the mess of services in my head. -- This is not because I've been to so many churches recently, but because they're almost all exactly the same...like EXACTLY...and they all smoosh together in my mind like peanut butter and jelly on suburban white bread.  

My favorite part of this overarching sameness is how every church is dying for the person walking in on a Sunday morning to think they're different from all the other churches. While they're so similar, it's almost comical."

- Jamie Wright

Trivial Drival Preaching &Teaching Inspires Nothing!

Such a trivial level that we think we have heard it all. I've had leadership say as much. What about Teaching that reminds us every week we have a lifetime of study and learning and we still won't learn it all? Reminds me i have much to more to know and grow into? I remember  leading a group in Charlottetown  about ten-year  ago and a life long church leader at first was very very frustrated and a bit angry. Becuse he was struggling with the material and reading assignments. I did not know why. Then about five nights in he said that he had never heard much of this stuff (i was teaching Kingdom themes) before. He said i read a paragraph and it is so profound that i have to read it over three or four times. It turns out the anger was he was angry he had never been taught this stuff before, and wondered how come at 65 he has not encountered so much of this teaching,and he could have been digging more in these themes. He was convinced at 65, that doing more than the average church member, he had a good handle on most things.  Then he learned themes he did not know existed.  I said i dont know... but we have a lifetime to study and still don't know it all. I said let it wash over you.... just be exposed. 

I love it when secularists talk to me like  they have the church and theology all figured out. Yes.... it happens weekly to me.  They dont ask my opinion, they talk to me to correct me based on their assumptions... they trully do feel they have a good handle on what faith people  think. I dont have conversations there.  Every week  a church should be taken deep enough in some aspect of teaching they can't say "i heard it all before." A good shock as to what they don't know is required very regularly.... or we forget we have something to aspire to.... for a lifetime. 

My 2 cents.

"Even kids at a pretty early age get bored if they are not exposed to maybe things they can't completely apprehend, or things that are in some way held out for them something else to attain. 

But when it is the drivil, and trivia, and game playing that becomes the focus of your activity….  What i see happening among adults with boredom and passing through the back door. Oh they're prepared for that as children.  Because that sort of thin engagement i think ultimately  is not going to, first of all, disciple anyone, and probably won't hold their attention into highschool and beyond.

- Paul Axton

Never Sing A Lesser Piece

"You must not sing the Haters
song," the Father-Spirit cried,
Be very careful, for I love you,
Troubador.

"Now," cried the World Hater,
"Let's do this tune at once.
I'll pipe, you sing. Think of
the thousand kingdoms that will
dance about our feet."

"No, Hater, I'll not sing your melodies,"
the Troubadour replied.

What then Singer will you sing?"

"The Ancient Star-Song of the Father-Spirit."

"Alone, without accompaniment?"

"Yes, Hater, all alone if need be."

"You need my pipe, man."

"You need my song instead."

"The music of your song is far
beyond this tiny pipe."

"Then, go! For I shall never sing
a lesser piece."

- The Singer. Calvin Miller 

Mission Is Standing Close To Evil

Hate sometimes
stands quite
close to love.

God too stands
often near to
evil-like silent
chessmen - side by side.
Only the colour
of the squares
is different."

- Calvin Miller. The singer

When You WILL Be Made To Pay

"She was breathless. She had perhaps intended to express her idea with more dignity, art and naturalness, but her speech was too hurried and crude. It was full of youthful impulsiveness, it betrayed that she was still smarting from yesterday’s insult, and that her pride craved satisfaction."

(About Katerina Ivanovna)

- Fyodor Dostoevshy -

The Brothers Karamazov 

Worship Makes Costly Demands

"In our fallenness we continually turn in upon ourselves to seek fulfilment without self-offering. Worship makes costly demands on our time and energy. It calls us from the inertia of self-centeredness."

- The rule of the Society of St John the Evangelist. 

"Left to our own devices we will develop a comfortable spirituality that fails to challenge us. Perhaps it will be perfectly crafted for our own needs, but leaves out those of others." 
- Debra K. Farrington. Living Faith Day by Day. 

Mankind Will Shake An Unfamiliar Hand, And Find It Wounded

"And those who know the ancient star song
watch with singing for the sign of footprints in the galaxies,
through which the little planet rides
in routine cycles of despair.
But Joy seldom sleeps for long.
And someday, in a lonely moment,mankind will shake an unfamiliar hand,and find it wounded."

- Calvin Miller. The Singer: A Classic Retelling Of Cosmic Conflict

The Gospel of Intellectuals and Farmers

"The fourteenth chapter of the book of Acts puts Paul in Lystra. Now Lystra was an uneducated Agrarian community. And Paul's message was identical there as it was in Athens, but not as labored. He expected uneducated farmers to understand the same message that he expected the Greek intellectuals to understand. Now he didn't say it the same way, but he did say the same message."

- Dr James D. Strauss. 1990. LCS Chapel Service.

Futile Top Dredge the Graveyard For A Messiah

"Habeas Corpusis a weak and futile law. But earthlings never seem to learn that it is futile to dredge the graveyard for a messiah."

-Dr James D. Strauss. LCS Chapel Sermon "1990

You Have No Other Control But Response.

"Audiences do not determine the message.

Only how to respond to it.

But Audiences do not determine the consequences of how they respond to it.

So, the last word is not in an audiences hands.

It's in God's hands."

- Dr. James D. Strause. 1990 LCS Chapel Sermon.

"A vision is too often "done" to institutions by a leader, making it a passive rather than participatory process. In some ways we need to learn how not to have a vision, even to make things purposely vague, which allows everyone space to shape the vision so that they are not being treated as objects......"

- Leonard Sweet. Nudge.

No Vision!

"A denominational executive always asks his clergy, “So, what’s your vision?” When he saw me one day in an elevator, we chatted and sure enough, “So, Sweet, what’s your vision?” I replied, “Sir, I don’t have a vision.” He was incredulous: “What! How can you possibly say that? You must have a vision. Aren’t you one of the church’s visionaries? You‘re a leader, aren’t you?”

“No, Bishop. I’m not a leader. I’m a follower. I’m following a vision, but it’s not my vision. The vision is Jesus. I grew up singing a hymn I take literally: ‘Be Thou My Vision, O Lord of my life.”

- Nudge. Leonard Sweet 

Let's Call Church what Church Is

“Let’s make a pact to use the term church only the way God uses it, not for humanity’s faltering institutions, but for the living, breathing family that thrives in the earth.”

- Kevin Smith

I Don't Know Where the Bulldozer Has Buldozed their Bones

"I am one of the few Holocost surrivers still left......  I am really moved that I have this opportunity to be here (pause), for my family. 

Because i don't know where the wind has blown their ashes. And I don't know where the bulldozer has buldozed their bones."

- Dr. Eva Olsson. 91 year old Holocaust Survivor speaking in Edmonton at the Rememberance Day Ceremonies.

Forbidden To Sew Of Study Law

"The center where they work is named after Amel Zenoune-Zouani, once a twenty-two-year-old law student with the same dreams of a legal career that I had in the nineties. She was killed at a faux barrage outside the town in January 1997 because she refused to abandon her studies. I try to find her family in Sidi Moussa in 2010 but am unable to locate them. I think of Amel Zenoune dead in the street when I look at the covered heads of every one of the teachers today in Sidi Moussa. Her death was meant to make them all obey. But Amel lives on in every small act of female resistance here, like going out to sew when going out to sew is forbidden."

- Karima Bennoune. Your Fatwa Does Not Apply Here. 

Busy With Gossip

"Moscow is chiefly busy with gossip," he continued. "Just now they are talking about you and your father.""

- Leo Tolstoy. War and Peace 

Are You One Of Us Or Not? Communion

In the little tin church in Page the desert sand serves as the floor. Bert Layman , the iron-worker cum preacher who built the church, prays over the rough hewn communion table he has crafted in his own rough hewn image. Grandma Yakashigi, Nakagawasan, Nishikawasan, from Japan are there. Cecil, who baptized me when I was 13, the most gentle of souls, is kneeling up front. Some way Pastor Sheets from the Baptist Church has strayed in – Bert will not be happy. The ordinary folk, the only kind I know, fill the little house of worship.  The journey from dust to dust does not seem so far in this dusty crowd melding into the sand floor. Roy, the local prison guard, comes bearing the emblems and as he bends down he brings me fully awake, I look at Roy who is silent but I hear the question from the emblems: “Paul, are you one of us or not?”[2

[2] The title and ending are from a Fred Chappell novel with a different meaning worked out here.

https://paulandfaithwalking.wordpress.com/2015/01/24/i-am-one-of-you-forever/

Simplistic Morality

"The example of Bonhoeffer indicates that moral insight arises with intellectual depth.  On the other hand, moral inanity was clearly connected to an intellectual banality."

Www.PaulandFaithwalking.wordpress.com

Quite Fools and Active Fools

"What would you have me do?" he said at last. "You know I did all a father could for their education, and they have both turned out fools. Hippolyte is at least a quiet fool, but Anatole is an active one."

- Leo Tolstoy. War and Peace 

Empty Promise

"And what have they promised? Nothing! And what little they have promised they will not perform!"

- War And Peace. Leo Tolstoy.

Source of Proper Doxology And Praxis

".... the study of Scripture properly results in doxology and praxis -  that is, in praise to God and practical application in the lives of believers."
 
- Richard D. Phillips - Philip Graham Ryken. Editors of Reformed Expository Commentary

A Diverse Church?

" A divided nation needs a united church...... People a lot of times will ask me, "Why do you care about unity?"It's  not that i just want people to come together to sing Kumbaya or hosanna.

I care because, one, my generation is growing up with diversity, the most diverse generation. It's just normal to see diversity. We go to Walmart, we see diversity. We go to the highways, we see diversity.  We go to the mall we see diversity.  We can go to the bars and club and there is diversity.

So how can the ministry of reconciliation of the church not have diversity?"

-Grant Skeldon

Unhappy Faith

"You can tell adult and authentic faith by people's ability to deal with darkness, failure, and nonvalidation of the ego - and buy their quiet but confident joy! Infantile religion insists on certitudes or "light" every step of the way and thus is not very happy."

- Richard Rohr. The Naked Now. 

Immature Faith Without Reasoning

"Immature religious faith is usually prerational, and has not yet passed through the rings of fire...."

- Richard Rohr. The Naked Now. 

"God has always been willing to work with a remnant, a critical mass, or what Genesis calls "ten just men.""

- Richard Rohr . The Naked Now 

Small People

"Small people make everything small."

- Richard Rohr. The Naked Now 

Make It Up - Real Good!

".... if one is going to concoct, 

one must really concoct, 

.... if one is going to expose expose someone, 

one should really expose him." 

-Nikolai Krylenko

Nikolai Vasilyevich Krylenko was a Russian Bolshevik revolutionary and Soviet politician

Saving Humanity To Be King?

"The urge to save humanity is almost always a false front for the urge to rule." 

H. L. Mencken

Eldership Has Been Erased By Leadership

"I don’t believe any doctrine of Holy Scripture should be neglected or defined out of existence. Yet this is precisely what many churches have done to the doctrine of eldership. Even among churches that claim to practice eldership, the elders have been reduced to temporary church board members, which is quite contrary to the New Testament, apostolic model of pastoral eldership. Although such churches may have an eldership, it is not a biblical eldership." --Alexander Strauch, 1995.

Let God "Wow" People

"If I may put it bluntly and clearly, what is needed is not a stunt, but the action of God that will stun people."

--Martyn Lloyd-Jones

You CAN'T Supress Truth If You Don't Know It

"One can only suppress something of which one has knowledge." 

--Douglas Moo, Commentary on Romans, NIVAC, 2000.

Romans 1:18 (ESV): For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men, who by their unrighteousness suppress the truth.

Breaking The Back Of The Church

"..... all valuables were to be requisitioned from the churches for the starving!....

From the distance of a half a century, it is easy to reproach the patriarch. Of course, the leaders of the Christian Church ought not to have been distracted by wondering whether other resources might not be available to the Soviet government, and who it was who had driven the Volga into famine....

Bishop Antoine Granovsky, a member of the Central Committee of Pamgol: "The Believers fear that the church valuables may be used for other purposes, more limited and alien to their hearts." .....

The petrograd Metropolitan, Veniamin, was similarly impelled by a mood of trust: "This belongs to God and we will give all of it by ourselves." But forced requisitions were wrong. Let the sacrifice be of our own free will. He, too, wanted verification by the clergy and the believers to watch over the church valuables up to the very moment when they were transformed into bread for the starving..... 

Veniamin announced: "The Orthodox Church he is prepared to give everything to help the starving." It's a sacrilege only in forced requisition. But in that case requisition was unnecessary.....

The Metropolitan said: "The heaviest burden is division and enmity. But the time will come when the Russian people will unite. I myself, at the head of the worshippers, will remove the cover [of precious metals and precious stones] from the icon of the Holy Virgin of Kazan. I will shed sweet tears on it and give it away."  .....

The newspapers began to howl about the "evil pastors" and "princes of the church," and the representatives of the church were told: "We don't need your donations! And there won't be any negotiations with you! Everything belongs to the government - and the government will take whatever it considered necessary."  ....

 All of which went to prove that what was important was not to feed the starving but to make use of a convenient opportunity to break the back of the church."

- Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn. The Gulag Archipelago 

Stamp Our Houts With Seals of Commitment

"The clear intent of our law is to enable a man to live in the world and yet hold his faith close to his daily thoughts. The Lama and the Monk withdraw from society to keep a religious vision bright. Our faith teaches us to stay in the world, but to stamp our hours with seals of commitment. The result is, in a way, a troubled life."

- Herman Wouk.  This is my God. Pulitzer Prize or fiction. Jewish Heritage. 

Pride's Beauty and Elitism

The British Carmelite nun Ruth Burrows cautions that this same dynamic holds true in terms of our motivation for prayer and religious practice. Again, sometimes our motivation has more to do with our own pride than with real faith and generosity. Thus, she writes: "The way we worry about spiritual failure, the inability to pray, distractions, ugly thoughts and temptations we can't get rid of..... it's not because God is defrauded, for he isn't, it's because we are not so beautiful as we would like to be."

"And pride, invariably, brings with it a harsh or condescending judgment on others. We see this later aspect, pride as a harsh or condescending judgment of others, most strongly perhaps in the peroid shortly after first conversion; when young lovers, recent religious converts, and neophytes in service and justice, still caught up in the emotional fervour of the honeymoon, think they alone know how to relate to one another, to Jesus, and to the world. Their fervour is admirable, but their pride and judgement of others invariably spawn and arrogance and elitism. But God and nature conspire together to ensure that the grind of the years will eventually restore humility."

"This side of eternity, we never can fully rid ourselves of our faults. They simply take on new and subtler guises, but they never fully disappear. There are always more moral battles to be fought."

- Roland Rolheiser. Sacred Fire 

Water Does Not Purify From Evil

Dead Sea scrolls. Reading a translation document of the Qumran community.  The "Manual of Discipline" from the Essene community. speaking of  myriad of ceremonial washings common in the day (not to be equated with Christian Baptism)....

"No one is to go into water in order to attain the purity of holy men. For men cannot be purified except they repent their evil. "

- Manual of Discipline.

Essenes of Qumran.

Body and Soul United

Remarkable statement about ancient world views.

"Nevertheless it is true that the Jew maintained a sense of the unity of being which is not native to us,  ..... The remarkable feature of this is not that the Jew or later Judaism could not distinguish between outer and inner but that he would not separate them when he did understand the distinction."

- G.R. Beasley-Murray.  Baptism in The New Testament 

Put In The Right Place

“As long as we continue to live as if we are what we do, what we have, and what other people think about us, we will remain filled with judgments, opinions, evaluations, and condemnations. We will remain addicted to putting people and things in their "right" place.” 

~ Henri Nouwen

To Become Presence We Risk Absence.

"Of course I’ll hurt you. Of course you’ll hurt me. Of course we will hurt each other. But that is the very condition of existence. To become spring, means accepting the risk of winter. To become presence, means accepting the risk of absence.” 

- Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, "The Little Prince" 

Reality Will Leave You Behind Without Knowledge

"..... why do people perish for lack of knowledge? Well, they perish - to make it very short and sweet - because, if you don't have knowledge, reality will run over you, or desert you, or leave you out.

Whereas if we act with knowledge and truth, our actions harmonize with reality. Otherwise, not, or they do it just by chance."

Dallas Willard. 

Prayer Happened, And I Was There.

"Without prayer, the best you can do is know by comparison, calculation, and from the limited view point of "you." Prayer is very traditionally understood, knows reality in a totally different way. Instead of presenting a guard itself to the moment, true prayer stops defending or promoting its ideas and feelings, let's go of any antagonistic attitudes or fears, and waits for, expects, and receives guidance from Another [God] ..... 

Most simply put, as we've seen, prayer is something that happens to you (Romans 8:26 - 27),  much more than anything you privately do. It is an allowing the Big Self [God] more than an assertion of the small self. Eventually you will find yourself preferring to say, "Prayer happened, and I was there" more than "I pray today." All you know is that you are being led, being guided, being loved, being used, being prayed through and you are no longer in the driver's seat. God stops being an object of attention like any other object in the world and becomes at some level your own "I am." You start knowing through, with, and in somebody else. Your little "I am" becomes "We are."

- Richard Rohr. The Naked Now 

The Prayer Tuning Fork

"The word is "resonance." 

Prayer is actually setting out a tuning fork. All you can really do in the spiritual life is get tuned to receive the always present message. Once you are tuned, you will receive, and it has nothing to do with worthiness or the group you belong to..... "

- Richard Rohr. The Naked Now 

Religious Love Affair

"Let your religion be less of a theory and more of a love affair."~ G.K. Chesterton

Don't Die Bitter - Is The Religious Imperative

"As we age we need to forgive -forgive those who hurt us, forgive others for our own mistakes, forgive life for having been unfair, and then forgive God for seemingly not having protected us - all of this so that we do not die bitter and angry, which is perhaps the greatest religious imperative of all."

- Roland Rolheiser. Sacred Fire. 

Our Most Active Years Are A Gift

"Many are the persons who deeply regret that during the healthiest and most productive years of their lives they were too driven and too unaware of the richness of their own lives to appreciate and enjoy what they were doing. Instead of privilege, they felt burden; instead of gratitude, they felt resentment; and instead of joy, they felt anger. 

- Ronald Rolheiser. Sacred Fire. 

Something Worth Doing

"There is something worse than having too much to do, and that is having nothing to do or too little to do of importance."

- Roland Rolheiser. Sacred Fire

The Who God Isn't Immune To Pain

"I could never myself believe in God, if it were not for the cross. . . . In the real world of pain, how could one worship a God who was immune to it?" 

-  John Stott

What Kind Of UNITY?

"..... we must not speak of "unity OR truth." We must not speak only of "unity AND truth," or "unity WITH truth," or "unity IN truth." We must pursue the UNITY OF TRUTH."

- Jack Cottrell. The Unity Of Truth

Agenda

“Systems and institutions move at the speed of agenda, family moves at the speed of the slowest.”
~ Wm Paul Young

Seperating Ourselves From The Church Universal

"But if the church is something we are, not someplace we go, how can we leave it unless we abandon Christ himself? And if I think only of a specific congregation as my part of the church, haven’t I separated myself from a host of other brothers and sisters that do not attend the same one I do?"

- Wayne Jacobsen 

Language of The Head And Heart

"My unexpected discovery was this: facts are the language of the head; story is the language of the heart. The language of the head encourages debate. The language of the heart encourages friendship."

-Tony Kriz, 'Neighbors and Wise Men'

My Friends Try Me So

"The friend that visits them tires their patience, And yet they do not like him to depart."

- Ion of Greece -

(Ion was believed to have founded a primary tribe of Greece, the Ionians)

You Go With Change

"..... so changes of life do not remove the sorrows and troubles of the soul; which proceed from want of experience and reflection, and from inability or ignorance rightly to enjoy the present."

- Plutarch. Plutarch's Morals. First Century Greek Philosopher.

Avoiding Honeymoons

"Classical spiritual writers warn us, after we have broken the Pleasure Principle and reached a mature level of discipleship, the old temptations will resurface with a Vengeance, just in subtler forms....

Their first warning concerns the danger of reverting to immaturity because of the longing for another honeymoon ........  One of the demons that we must wrestle with after we have made lifelong commitments is the powerful temptation to experience yet another honeymoon."

- Roland Rolheiser. Sacred Fire

Four Ways God Speaks - But One Message, One Voice

"There are four ways in which God reveals His will to us through the scriptures, through providential circumstances, through the convictions of our own higher judgment, and through the inward impressions of the Holy Spirit on our minds. 

We're these four harmonize, it is safe to say that God speaks. 

For I laid lay it down as a foundation principle..... that of course his voice will always be in harmony with itself, no matter in how many different ways he may speak. The voices may be many, the message can be but one. If God tells me in one voice to do or to leave  undone anything, he cannot possibly tell me the opposite in another voice. If there is a contradiction in the voices, the speaker's cannot be the same."

Hannah  Whitall Smith

Trusting FOr Today Or The Future?

"It is generally much less difficult for us to commit the keeping of our future to the Lord than it is to commit our present."

- Hannah Whitall Smith 

Kicking Out Way Into Maturity

"... maturity is often imposed on is by conscription, as the circumstances and responsibilities of our Lives drag as protesting into generosity and adulthood."

- Sacred Fire. Ronald Rolheiser 

Only Church Left Was The Heart.

"We have already had an opportunity to observe that the separation of church and state was so construed by the state that the churches themselves and everything that hung in them, was installed in them and painted in them, belonged to the state, and the only church remaining was that church which, in accordance with the Scriptures, lay within the heart."

-Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn 

What If We Don't Stop Exisiting?

If I am just my brain and everything I'm thinking and doing is chemistry, I want to know that.

I'm not trying to hide from that. 

I mean the the big issue is not "if you're going to stop existing". If you're going to stop existing you're out. It's like going to the dentist, it's unpleasant for a while but it'll be over. The real problem comes if you're not going to stop existing."

- Dallas Willard 

The Burden Of Proof Is Always Mine

"...the burden of proof is always mine, because i am the one who wants to know. 

I'm not in this discussion to put you back on your heals. I'm here to determine the truth, and the burden of proof is mine. I'm not trying to win an argument. 

I think it is one of the most important things especially for christians to understand. They're  not here to try and duck and dodge. If you can find a better way than what Jesus Christ  offers, he would be the first person to tell you to take it. If you don't  believe that about him,  you can't be his disciple becuse you could never trust him. "

- Dallas Willard. 

You Can Not Live Without A World View.

"You "world view" consists of your assumptions about the realities and values that goveren you and the world in which you live..... Thats an important thing to understand about worldviews: is that you don't have to  think about them in order for them to determine your behaviour. We need to let that soak in. 

You can't live without a worldview. 

It is a biological reality, built into your usual actions and responses.

It's built right into your body. Its built right into your life. Built into your body. Your body responds in terms of your world view, whether you think about it or not. Your world view is most clearly  seen in the things you don't  think about and talk about. 

-  Dallas Willard -

- DallasWillard 

"People often asked me, "Since you're so smart, why are you still in church?" and I say to them, "Well, you know, Christians are supposed to love their enemies and they will find a few of those a church. But actually that's true."

- Dallas Willard -

When The Mind Goes Wrong

"When the mind goes wrong, the will is enslaved."

- Dallas Willard -

If Do Nothing, I Do It With Jesus

I understand where Jesus says, "without me you can do nothing". That's granted.  But we need to think the thought that if you do nothing it will be without him. 

And now the questiion is, "What am I to do?"

-Dallas Willard 

"Being a disciple is not an "advanced" spiritual condition.

Thank God for that.  We come into discipleship to Christ with no credentials except our need and our understanding that he has welcomed us to life in him in the kingdom of God.....   you are in a position of a student of Jesus Christ."

- Dallas Willard 

Who Put Out More Effort?

A second reaction to all of this is, this is works, not Grace. and it's very cmmon when the topic of spiritual formation comes up, and you get into the discussion of actually doing something, then people are apt to say, "Well that's works and not Grace." And, unfortunately, it's a pretty harmful understanding of Grace.

 Grace is not opposed to effort. iIn fact, you won't see anyone put out effort like someone who's been touched by grace."

- Dallas Willard. 

"The problems caused by the idea of full-time Christian service, and the view that ordinary occupations are not full time-time Christian service. This  is one of the greatest problems that we have. It's a very old problem."

- Dallas Willard 

Sleazy Moralizers

"In our rhetoric, our politics, and our media, we are a nation of grand moralizers. In the reality of everyday life, we are in one of the most immoral periods of history, and it seems to be getting more immoral, more sleazy, more grimy every day."

- Leonard Sweet. AquaChurch 

In The House Of The Angery

"...... for in the house of an angry man "The only music ever heard is wailing,""

- Plutarch. Plutarch's Morals. 1st Century Greek Philosopher 

My Good Temper

"Good temper on the other hand is useful in some circumstances, adorns and sweetens others, and gets the better of all peevishness and anger by its gentleness."

- First Century Greek Philosopher, Plutarch. Plutarch's Morals 

My Own "Class", First

"In our own time we built our army on the basis of a healthy feeling of class enmity; in its name, we do not entrust even one responsible position to people who do not belong to our camp, without assigni g them.... a comnissar.  (Krylenko)

- Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn. The Gulag Archipelago. Vol 1. 

Growing The Law?

"Who was that young woman flashing past?That was Tolstoi's daughter, Alexandria, Krylenko asked her: "What did you do during these conversations?" And she answered: "I attended the samovar." Three years of concentration camp!
And that's how the son of our freedom rose.
It was as just such a well-nourished little imp that our Octobrist child - Law - began to grow. Today we don't remember this at all."

- Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn. The Gulag Archipelago. Vol 1. 

To Enjoy Growth

To come to enjoy what you have not 

you must go by a way in which you enjoy not. 

To come to the knowledge you have not 

you must go by a way in which you know not. 

To come to the possession what you have not 

you must go buy a way in which you possess not. 

To come to be what you are not 

you must go by a way in which you are not 

- John of the Cross. Spanish Mystic

The Silent Blesser

"His (John of the Cross, Spanish mystic, in "The Ascent of Mount Carmel") fourth Council invites us to relativize ourselves by no longer giving into our natural instinct to seek to be the centre of attention. For John, we move toward maturity by striving to be a listener rather than the one seeking to be listened to, by striving to give our attention to others rather than seeking to be the centre of attention, and by striving to be the one who is blessing others rather than being the one seeking the blessing. "

- Ronald Rolheiser. Sacred Fire 

I Deny My Inner Suicide Bomber

"To be a saint is to be fuelled by gratitude, nothing less. Christian discipleship is as much about having a mellow and forgiving heart as it is about believing and doing the right things. But this is not an easy thing to accept. Irrespective of our ecclesial or political ideology and Ethos, liberal or conservative, we all tend to write off this demand as a non-negotiable in regards to Christian discipleship. Invariably, we tend to rationalize it away by pointing to the weight and urgency of our causes, be they dogmatic or moral. We see this, in its worst example, in suicide bombers, who are religiously convicted that their cause is so important that they can be martyrs, for God, by destroying dozens or perhaps even thousands of innocent lives. When the case is this extreme, we see more easily what misguided religious fervour looks like and how important religiously it is to have a mellow and forgiving hurt. But we are not as perceptive in seeing the rationalizing suicide bomber inside ourselves when, for the sake of God and Truth, our own religious and political discourse is laced with bitterness, anger, jealousy, demonization, lack of respect, lack of graciousness, and lack of elementary Christian and human charity. We also tend not to recognize in the embittered moralizing that sometimes emanates from our ecclesial communities.  A mellow and gracious heart is not a negotiable Christian virtue. It is an essential demand of Christian discipleship."

- Roland Rolheiser. Sacred Fire 

Dealing With The Insubstantialy Of Me

"A man I know who likes playing the court jester is fond of lamenting: "Life is hard for me because I have to deal with the magnitude of me!" I cite this quip because for all of us the opposite is forever true; we have to deal with the insubstantiality of me. We are not born into this life with a clear sense of who we are, an easy sense of self-worth, a solid sense of security, and a sure conviction that we are wanted, love, and lovable. In biblical terms, we are born anxious."

- Roland Rolheiser. Sacred Fire 

But You Didn't Change Hearts!

"The social struggle in my day was very lively and intense, almost, I should say, as much so as in your own times. Everywhere there arose groups of men and women professing poverty and preaching poverty in the church and the renewal of society. But nothing changed, because these people did not change hearts. 

No, brothers and sisters, it is not enough to change laws. You have to change hearts. Otherwise, when you have completed the Journey of your social labour you shall find yourselves right back at the beginning only this time it is you who will be the arrogant, the rich, and the exploiters....."

You can reproach me, go ahead. But I saw, in the gospel, a road beyond, a path that transcended all cultures, all human constructs, all civilization and conventions. I felt the gospel to be Eternal; I felt politics and culture, including Christian culture, to be in time. I was made always to go beyond time. 

- Carlo carretto.  "I Francis"

Did You Spend The Night With God.

Throughout this friendly meal, I think about how she has described contemporary Algeria, where fundamentalist social attitudes are on the rise again. “Women will attack you and say, ‘How do you not wear the scarf? Didn’t God show you the good law?’ ” Cherifa Kheddar remains defiant. “I say to them, ‘Did you spend the night with God so you know what God wants?’ ”

- Karima Bennoune. Your Fatwa Does Not Apply Here. 

A Life Lie

"A naively formulated goal transmutes, with time, into the sinister form of the life lie. A forty-something client told me his vision, formulated by his younger self. "I see myself retired, sitting on a tropical beach, drinking margaritas in the sunshine." That's not a plan. That's a travel poster. After eight margaritas, you're fit only to await the hangover. After three weeks of margarita-filled days, if you have any sense, you're bored stiff and self-disgusted. In a year, or less, you're pathetic. It's just not a sustainable approach to later life."

- Jordan Peterson. 

Competency

"Socrates teaching was critical of democracy. He illustrated his problems with democracy by an analogy with a ship. On board everyone tries to get control of the ship, but this does not mean that the most competent person in steering that ship will actually get to steer. It is the one who is best at getting control of it, be it due to intrigue a physical might that will actually get to steer and influence the ship. But what is needed in the steering of a ship is someone who knows the tides, can plot a course and so on, and the fight for control does not mean that the one who wins actually got skills in controlling the ship."

- Hazel Clementine

Truth is A Way Of Existing

"Taking the easy way out or telling the truth - those are not mearly two different choices. They are different pathways through life. They are utterly different ways of existing."

- Jordan Peterson. 12 Rules For Life. 

Having Meaning Is Best

"To have meaning in your life is better than to have what you want, because you may neither know what you want, nor what you truly need."

- Jordan Peterson -

12 Rules For Life: An Antidote To Chaos. 

Lies Made Hell

"And, above all, don't lie. Don't lie about anything, ever. Lying leads to Hell. It was the great and the small lies of the Nazi and Communist states that produced the deaths of millions of people."

- Jordan Peterson. 12 Rules For Life: An Antidote To Chaos. 

Self Initiations Price!

"For example, anthropologists who study initiation rites in tribal cultures tell us that in some of those cultures the rights are so severe and demanding that sometimes a young man or woman does not survive the rights, but dies during the initiation. Our present sensibilities are horrified by that. We cannot imagine allowing something like this to happen, Elders subjecting their adults to trials and ordeals that can lead to their deaths. Yet they lose few young people during those initiations, while, in our own cultures, thousands of young people die every year trying to self initiate, trying to find their own way into adulthood. There is a tragic irony here: we are horrified by what seems to us primitive and cruel, even as thousands of our young people died on necessarily in prematurely because they have no one to help them sort out the meaning of their own Energies. But that is the struggle, and none of us is exempt."

-Ronald Rolheiser. Sacred Fire. 

"Accident in history is Rife; unintended consequences and perverse outcomes are the rule."

- Stephen Kotkin. Stalin. Paradoxes Of Power.

Declining Courage

"A decline in courage may be the most striking feature which an outside observer notices in the West in our days. The Western world has lost its civil courage, both as a whole and separately, in each country, each government, each political party, and, of course, in the United Nations. Such a decline in courage is particularly noticeable among the ruling groups and the intellectual elite, causing an impression of loss of courage by the entire society. Of course, there are many courageous individuals, but they have no determining influence on public life."

- Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn. Harvard Address, June, 1978

Accepting The Defects Too?

"The real picture of our planet’s development is quite different and which about our divided world gave birth to the theory of convergence between leading Western countries and the Soviet Union. It is a soothing theory which overlooks the fact that these worlds are not at all developing into similarity. Neither one can be transformed into the other without the use of violence. Besides, convergence inevitably means acceptance of the other side’s defects, too, and this is hardly desirable."

- Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn. Harvard Address, June, 1978

Despising Values

"How short a time ago, relatively, the small, new European world was easily seizing colonies everywhere, not only without anticipating any real resistance, but also usually despising any possible values in the conquered people’s approach to life."

- Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn. Harvard Address, June, 1978

Truth Is A Meddlesome Bitch

"Harvard’s motto is “VERITAS.” Many of you have already found out, and others will find out in the course of their lives, that truth eludes us if we do not concentrate our attention totally on it’s pursuit. But even while it eludes us, the illusion of knowing it still lingers and leads to many misunderstandings. Also, truth seldom is pleasant; it is almost invariably bitter."

- Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn. Harvard Address. June, 1978

Riddles and Suprises For Western Thinking.

"There is the concept of “Third World”: thus, we already have three worlds. Undoubtedly, however, the number is even greater; we are just too far away to see. Any ancient and deeply rooted, autonomous culture, especially if it is spread on a wide part of the earth’s surface, constitutes an autonomous world, full of riddles and surprises to Western thinking."

- Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn. Harvard Address, June, 1978

The Bible Is A Window.

The Bible is not a painting to be looked at, but a window to be looked through, and through that window we see Jesus.

- Bruxy Cavey

More Than A Life Empty Of Sin

"Jesus’ goal for his followers is never just a life without obvious sin, but a life filled with genuine love." 

 - Bruxy Cavey

They Cannot See The Bird

But beware: No one is stranger than a person who “sees” in a community that is “blind.”

- Leonard Sweet. 

"....Bob Olmstead....one busy afternoon driving on a Reno, Nevada, city street when a small, wounded bird wandered out into the highway. It huddled on the pavement as the cars whizzed past it and over it, tires somehow missing it. I glimpsed the bird just as the tires of my car straddled it. At that moment I made a rash decision. I decided to rescue the bird. I stopped the car, jumped out, and held up my hands to stop traffic. If I could “shoo” the bird over the curb and into the hedge of bushes, it would be safe, at least from traffic. When I approached the bird it scooted away, but it didn’t scoot in a straight line. Whether it was too young to fly, whether its wing was injured, I do not know. But every time I bent down and waved my arms the bird would half hop, half fly in a crazy circle and end up back in the middle of the road. I could not catch it and I could not get it to run into the bushes. By this time I had a considerable amount of traffic backed up. The close drivers were watching me with quizzical or suspicious expressions. Farther back, horns were honking. I kept thinking, “Just another minute and I’ll catch the little bird or it will run off into the bushes.” So I continued running around in the street, stooped over, flapping my arms, chasing that little feathered thing. It was only then that I realized the other drivers could not see the bird!

 Visionaries are like that. Others cannot see what they see."

Praying Violin

"During World War II, Christians in Princeton held a prayer meeting to intercede for Jews in Germany. When Albert Einstein heard about it, he left his house at 112 Mercer Street, walked to the prayer meeting, and asked if he might join them. He had brought his violin with him, and wondered if he might “pray” with his instrument."

- Leonard Sweet. AquaChurch 2.0

The Sacred Struggle

Essential Discipleship - the struggle to get our lives together.

Mature Discipleship - the struggle to give our lives away.

- Ronald Rolheiser. Sacred Fire. 

An Actor In Our Own Home

"I know someone who has twice cheated on his wife, whom I don’t know. He told me this over coffee because I was telling him how I thought, perhaps, man was broken; how for man, doing good and moral things was like swimming upstream. He wondered if God had mysteriously told me about his infidelity. He squirmed a bit and then spoke to me as if I were a priest. He confessed everything. I told him I was sorry, that it sounded terrible. And it did sound terrible. His body was convulsed in guilt and self-hatred. He said he would lie down next to his wife at night feeling walls of concrete between their hearts. He had secrets. She tries to love him, but he knows he doesn’t deserve it. He cannot accept her affection because she is loving a man who doesn’t exist. He plays a role. He says he is an actor in his own home."

- Donald Miller. Blue Like Jazz 

I Rage At Injustice But My Own Heart Is Selfish

"I talk about love, forgiveness, social justice; I rage against American materialism in the name of altruism, but have I even controlled my own heart? The overwhelming majority of time I spend thinking about myself, pleasing myself, reassuring myself, and when I am done there is nothing to spare for the needy. Six billion people live in this world, and I can only muster thoughts for one. Me."

- Donald Miller. Blue Like Jazz. 

Where Is The Problem.

"The problem is not out there; the problem is the needy beast of a thing that lives in my chest."

- Donald Miller. Blue Like Jazz.

Building Churches Of Sound, Not Only Sound Churches.

"If community is that which is created by shared experiences, communities of faith are built from the sound up. Sharing the same mission, eating the same food, and singing the same melodies result in the experience of community. Melodies are the creative scaffoldings that help structure unique church cultures and cohesiveness. Music tells the story of a congregation better than anything else, hence the need for ministers of melody and ministers of poetry."

- Leonard Sweet. AquaChurch 2.0

Free Books

"....Gugel. He had been a publisher. And what intellectual food had he been offering the workers and the peasants? He was "nourishing the broad masses with low-quality literature," not Marx but, instead, books by bourgeois professors with world famous names."

(Taken before a tribunal in early revolution days)

- Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn. The Gulag Archipelago 

Bribery

"It may seem strange to us now, but it is a fact that in those thunderous years bribes were given and taken just as tenderly as they had been from time immemorial in Russia and as they will be in the Soviet Union from here to eternity."

- AlexsandrSolzhenitsyn. The Gulag Archipelago. 

Innocent Today But Kill Him To Protect The Future?

"That was the way it was in those years: people lived and breathed and then suddenly found out that their existence was in expedient. 

And it must also be kept in mind that it was not what he had done that constituted the defendant's burden, but what he might do if he were not shot now. "We protect ourselves not only against the past but also against the future.""

- Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn. The Gulag Archipelago. 

Phone Law

"All of this, Krylenko explains, "shows the superiority of our system over the false theory of the separation of powers," that is, the theory of the independence of the judiciary. (True, Sverdlov also said: "It is very good that the legislative and executive power are not divided by a thick wall as they are in the West. All problems can be decided quickly. Especially on the phone.")"

(Concerning sentencing  and convicting people)

- Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn. The Gulag Archipelago 

Resisting War As Christians

"If everyone was like you, brother, how good it would be! There would be no war, and no whites and no Reds!"

Arresting police officers after the trial of a "non-resistance" Christian who refused to take up arms and kill other men.

- Alexsandr Solzhenitsyn. The Gulag Archipelago. 

No Cold Guns In War

"In those dramatic years, the sabers of War were not rusting in their scabbards, nor did the executioner's revolvers have time to grow cold in their holsters."

- Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn. The Gulag Archipelago 

Who Is Your Wosdom Coming From?

by George Brahm

John Cooper, lead singer for the rock band Skillet, responded to the litany of recent apostasies among young Christian leaders. In a Facebook posttitled ‘What in God’s Name is Happening in Christianity?’ put up on Tuesday, August 13, Cooper directly addressed the reasons given by Hillsong songwriter Marty Sampson for renouncing his Christian faith, before highlighting the need for Christians to stay grounded in a truth-driven faith over an emotion-driven one. Here is the text of the post in its entirety (not corrected for spelling or punctuation):

“Ok I’m saying it. Because it’s too important not to. What is happening in Christianity? More and more of our outspoken leaders or influencers who were once “faces” of the faith are falling away. And at the same time they are being very vocal and bold about it. Shockingly they still want to influence others (for what purpose?)as they announce that they are leaving the faith. I’ll state my conclusion, then I’ll state some rebuttals to statements I’ve read by some of them. Firstly, I never judge people outside of my faith. Even if they hate religion or Christianity. That is not my place and I have many friends who disagree with my religion and that is 100% fine with me. However, when it comes to people within my faith, there must be a measure of loyalty and friendship and accountability to each other and the Word of God.

“My conclusion for the church (all of us Christians): We must STOP making worship leaders and thought leaders or influencers or cool people or “relevant” people the most influential people in Christendom. (And yes that includes people like me!) I’ve been saying for 20 years(and seemed probably quite judgmental to some of my peers) that we are in a dangerous place when the church is looking to 20 year old worship singers as our source of truth. We now have a church culture that learns who God is from singing modern praise songs rather than from the teachings of the Word. I’m not being rude to my worship leader friends (many who would agree with me) in saying that singers and musicians are good at communicating emotion and feeling. We create a moment and a vehicle for God to speak. However, singers are not always the best people to write solid bible truth and doctrine. Sometimes we are too young, too ignorant of scripture, too unaware, or too unconcerned about the purity of scripture and the holiness of the God we are singing to. Have you ever considered the disrespect of singing songs to God that are untrue of His character?

“I have a few specific thoughts and rebuttals to statements made by recently disavowed church influencers…first of all, I am stunned that the seemingly most important thing for these leaders who have lost their faith is to make such a bold new stance. Basically saying, “I’ve been living and preaching boldly something for 20 years and led generations of people with my teachings and now I no longer believe it..therefore I’m going to boldly and loudly tell people it was all wrong while I boldly and loudly lead people in to my next truth.” I’m perplexed why they aren’t embarrassed? Humbled? Ashamed, fearful, confused? Why be so eager to continue leading people when you clearly don’t know where you are headed?

“My second thought is, why do people act like “being real” covers a multitude of sins? As if someone is courageous simply for sharing virally every thought or dark place. That’s not courageous. It’s cavalier. Have they considered the ramifications? As if they are the harbingers of truth, saying “I used to think one way and practice it and preach it, but now I’ve learned all the new truth and will start practicing and preaching it.” So the influencers become the voice for truth in whatever stage of life and whatever evolution takes place in their thinking.

“Thirdly, there is a common thread running through these leaders/influencers that basically says that “no one else is talking about the REAL stuff.” This is just flatly false. I just read today in a renown worship leader’s statement, “How could a God of love send people to hell? No one talks about it.” As if he is the first person to ask this? Brother, you are not that unique. The church has wrestled with this for 1500 years. Literally. Everybody talks about it. Children talk about it in Sunday school. There’s like a billion books written on the topic. Just because you don’t get the answer you want doesn’t mean that we are unwilling to wrestle with it. We wrestle with scripture until we are transformed by the renewing of our minds.

“And lastly, and most shocking imo, as these influencers disavow their faith, they always end their statements with their “new insight/new truth” that is basically a regurgitation of Jesus’s words?! It’s truly bizarre and ironic. They’ll say “I’m disavowing my faith but remember, love people, be generous, forgive others”. Ummm, why? That is actually not human nature. No child is ever born and says “I just want to love others before loving myself. I want to turn the other cheek. I want to give my money away to others in need”. Those are bible principles taught by a prophet/Priest/king of kings who wants us to live by a higher standard which is not an earthly standard, but rather the ‘Kingdom of God’ standard. Therefore if Jesus is not the truth and if the Word of God is not absolute, then by preaching Jesus’s teachings you are endorsing the words of a madman. A lunatic who said “I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one comes to the father except through me.” He also said that he was alive before Abraham, and to see him was to see God because he was one with God. So why then would a disavowed christian leader promote that “generosity is good”? How would you know “what is good” without Jesus’s teachings? And will your ideas of what is “good” be different from year to year based on your experience, culture trends, poplular opinion etc and furthermore will you continue year by year to lead others into your idea of goodness even though it is not absolute? I’m amazed that so many Christians want the benefits of the kingdom of God, but with the caveat that they themselves will be the King.

“It is time for the church to rediscover the preeminence of the Word. And to value the teaching of the Word. We need to value truth over feeling. Truth over emotion. And what we are seeing now is the result of the church raising up influencers who did not supremely value truth who have led a generation who also do not believe in the supremacy of truth. And now those disavowed leaders are proudly still leading and influencing boldly AWAY from the truth.

“Is it any wonder that some of our disavowed Christian leaders are letting go of the absolute truth of the Bible and subsequently their lives are falling apart? Further and further they are sinking in the sea all the while shouting “now I’ve found the truth! Follow me!!” Brothers and sisters in the faith all around the world, pastors, teachers, worship leaders, influencers…I implore you, please please in your search for relevancy for the gospel, let us NOT find creative ways to shape Gods word into the image of our culture by stifling inconvenient truths. But rather let us hold on even tighter to the anchor of the living Word of God. For He changes NOT. “The grass withers and the flowers fade away, but the word of our God stands forever” (Isaiah 40:8)”

I am glad to see one of these ‘influencers’ come out in defense of the authority of Scripture and the importance of a robust faith that can outlast even the harshest of challenges.

dangerous place when the church is looking to 20 year old worship singers as our source of truth.

We must STOP making worship leaders and thought leaders or influencers or cool people or "relevant" people the most influential people in Christendom. (And yes that includes people like me!) I've been saying for 20 years(and seemed probably quitejudgmental to some of my peers) that we are in a dangerous place when the church is looking to 20 year old worship singers as our source of truth. We now have a church culture that learns who God is from singing modern praise songs ratherthan from the teachings of the Word. I'm not being rude to my worship leader friends (many who would agree with me) in saying that singers and musicians are good at communicating emotion and feeling. We create a moment and a vehicle for God to speak. However, singers are not always the best people to write solid bible truth and doctrine. Sometimes we are too young, too: ignorant of scripture, too unaware, or too unconcerned about the purity of scripture and the holiness of the God we are singing to. Have you ever considered the disrespect of singing songs to God that are untrue of His character?"

- John L. Cooper (2019 when a few prominant singers and authors announced their leaving the faith)

Where Pastors Are Made or Marred

"We regarded the Seminary as the key institution in the church, because it's in the Seminary that the future pastors of the church are either made or marred, either equipped and inspired, or ruined."

- John Stott. Interview 

Tuning Fork Leadership

"Leaders are imperfect tuning forks of the eternal, sounding forth as best we can the vibrations of Jesus the Christ—God’s Perfect Pitch—which beckon all into a relationship with God."

- Leonard Sweet. AquaChurch, 2.0 

An Authority We Must Forever Bow To

"The church is not over the holy scriptures, but under them. In the sense that the process of canonization was not one where by the church conferred Authority on the books, but one we're by the church acknowledge them to possess authority... . And why? The books were recognized as giving the witness of the Apostles to the life, teaching, death, and resurrection of the Lord Jesus and the interpretation by the apostles of these events. To that apostolic authority, the church must ever bow."

- Anglican Church's Lamberth Conference Statement. 1958

First We Must Agree How To Agree

Epistomology really is the first question. Always has been. And it isbwhybwe have sensless fights and shalkow conversations. 

"One of the most important questions in every religion is the question of authority. 

By what authority do we believe what we believe, and by what authority do we teach what we teach? 

You cannot agree about anything until we have first agreed how to agree."

- John Stott.  

- 

Music Clears The Dust From The Soul

"Music washes away from the soul the dust of everyday living."

- Leopold Stokowski

We "Hear" A Vision Beore We "See" It?

"For leaders, it is never too often to be reminded of this verse—or to remind others of it: “Faith comes from hearing” (Rom. 10:17). When Jesus said in Matthew 6:22 “If your eye is sound, your whole body will be full of light,” I like to think that the “sound eye” is more than just my play on words. Followers of Jesus have vision that is voice-activated. They hear a vision before they see a vision."

- Leonard Sweet. AquaChurch 2.0

Music Chases The Devil Away

Sent this interesting fact to my ethnomusicologist friend today.

"Not insignificantly, the liturgy of the church is seen as Christianity’s first theology. Martin Luther made a liturgical suggestion that sometimes a hymn or hymns be substituted for various segments of the litany on occasion because “[Music] drives away the Devil and makes people cheerful; one forgets all anger, unchasteness, pride, and other vices. I place music next to theology and give it the highest praise.… I would not change my little knowledge of music for a great deal.…Experience proves that next to the Word of God only music deserves to be extolled as the mistress and governess of the feelings of the human heart.”

- Leonard Sweet. AquaChurch 2.0. He sights his source as follows 

(From Martin Luther’s Table Talk. See Robin A. Leaver, Luther’s Liturgical Music (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2007), 100; note 153 contains additional source information about this passage. See also a variation of the quote in Roland Bainton, Here I Stand (New York: Abingdon, 1950), 341.)

Ungodliness Precedes Injustice

"The primary human failure is a failure of worship. In Romans 1:18-25, "ungodliness " precedes "injustice": those who worship that which is not God will inevitably produce distortions in the world."

- N.T. Wright. The Day The Revolution Began. 

Deeper Than A Sin Problem?

"The Bible, then, offers and an analysis of the human plight different from the one normally imagine. "Sin" is not just bad in itself. It is the Tell-Tale symptom of a deeper problem; and the biblical story addresses that deeper problem; it includes the sin problem but goes much further. The problem is that humans were made for a particular vocation, which they rejected; that this rejection involves a Turning Away From the Living God to worship idols; that this results in giving to the idols - "forces" within the creation - a power over humans and the world that was rightfully that of a genuine humans; and that this leads to a slavery, which is ultimately the rule of death itself, the corruption and destruction of the good world made by the creator."

- N.T. Wright. The Day The Revolution Began. 

Buy A Deeper Walk With God?

"You can’t buy a deeper walk with God. But you have to pay for it."

- Leonard Sweet. AquaChurch 2.0

New Trails

"Do not go where the path may be. Go instead where there is no path, and leave a trail."

 — Ralph Waldo Emerson

Bedridden Christianity

"Our ancestors’ zeal for God has given way to another kind of zeal: a zeal to seek immunity from life’s prosecutions. We are more concerned about the question “what are your securities?” than the question “what are your ministries?” Our pews are occupied by people who want to be moved, but who don’t want to move. It is not just a few people who are bedridden all of their lives—we are becoming a church of, for, and by the bedridden and beached."

- Leonard Sweet. AquaChurch 2.0

Hardened Enemies And Lukewarm Defenders

"There is nothing more difficult to take in hand, more perilous to conduct, or more uncertain in success, than to take the lead in the introduction of a new order of things. Because the innovator has for enemies all those who have done well under the old conditions, and lukewarm defenders in those who man do well in the new."

 — Machiavelli, 1516

We Didn't Send Any Ships

"Unless you have sent one out, it’s no use to wait for your ship to come in."

— BELGIAN PROVERB

I love Calvin a Little!

“I love Calvin a little; 

Luther more; 

the Moravians, Mr. Law, and Mr. Whitefield far more than either. I have many reasons likewise to esteem and love Mr. Hutton. 

But I love truth more than all.” 

- John Wesley. Wrote these words to Elizabeth Hutton in 1744.

Lord, We Went!

This was poweful... 

"When archaeologists were finally allowed to dig in what some call Christianity’s holiest site, the Church of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem, they were astounded to discover on a wall beneath the church a red and black graffiti of a boat, with the Latin words under it “DOMINE IVIMUS”—“Lord, we went,”

- Leonard Sweet. AquaChurch 2.0

Inviting Google To Church

"The Gutenberg to Google shift, the transition from representation to participation, requires a transition from performance modes to participatory modes of worship. How would this work? The Google world needs to be offered an opportunity to make decisions, choices, and commitments in worship."

- Leonard Sweet. AquaChurch 2.0 

No Confusion About Who Killed Them All

"(Cherifa Khedda), .... on the ground during the darkest years of the dark decade. “The day after the massacres, we went to the places where they happened and people not only described the terrorists, but they knew who was a member of the Islamic Salvation Front. They recognized the terrorist of the neighborhood who was there killing.” Without hesitation, she calls out those who do not have her firsthand experience. “Now if people who were not there want to testify in our place, that is something else. If they meet the affected families, the one whose son was killed by the Islamists will tell you he was taken by the Islamists.” In the small villages where abuses often happened, everyone knows everyone else’s business. She recounts what local people would tell her on the ground in the Triangle of Death after any given atrocity in the 1990s. “When we go to a village and talk to a woman, and ask, ‘How do you know it was the Islamists?’ she will say, ‘The cousin of my husband was with them and the cousin of my husband was a terrorist.’ When, for example, I had friends whose children were taken by the security services, they say, ‘I knew my son was taken by the security forces.’ There is no confusion in the minds of these citizens (Like in western minds). Why is there so much denial elsewhere that fundamentalists killed here?

 Cherifa Kheddar in

- Karima Bennoune. Your Fatwa Does Not Apply Here.

Algeria’s Slaughter in The 1990's

"To Cherifa’s dismay, and that of her fellow advocates, there has never been a thorough inventory of the crimes of the 1990s in Algeria. Here in the Triangle of Death, where everyone can tell stories of slaughter, it is easy to see how the international press arrived at a figure of two hundred thousand dead in the conflict.15 But no one really knows how exact it is. I ask Cherifa about this statistic. “It is just a supposition because until now the Algerian state did not give real numbers.” She ponders for a moment. “I think that number is about right. I think about two hundred thousand people were killed by the Islamist armed groups.”

- Karima Bennoune. Your Fatwa Does Not Apply Here. 

Why Can't We Get A Fatwa Where We need On

"Cherifa Kheddar, Djazairouna’s president, is one of Algeria’s most important human rights advocates. When I meet her, she wears a gray suit and black pumps. Her hair is chin length and jet-black and she looks tired, having worked a long day before our grueling discussion begins. I receive her in the salon that Fayza’s family has given over to me. It is furnished with backless couches, and low tables with lace covers. In this serene environment, we relive some of Cherifa’s most difficult moments. “My mother went to Mecca on pilgrimage in 1996. She went with a group of Algerians to see the imam of the Grand Mosque and asked for a fatwa against what was happening in Algeria. The imam replied: ‘No, that is politics and we are not involved in politics.’ ” Why can’t you get a fatwa when you actually need one? Forty days later, armed thugs came to the Kheddar house in Blida and shot Cherifa’s mother and niece (who survived) and her sister Leila (who did not), and tortured her brother Mohamed Redha to death."

- Karima Bennoune. Your Fatwa Does Not Apply Here. (Algerian)

Is The Womb A Safe Place?

"God commanded Hosea to marry a loose woman. She had three children (but not by Hosea--see 1:2 & 2:4). The second, a daughter, was to be named, "lo ruhama" לֹא רֻחָ֑מָה "no mercy."

The Hebrew term for mercy is rahamim, רַחֲמִים which is from the root word, rehem, רֶ֫חֶם which is the term for "womb."

The emotion of love, the "sensation of love," and mercy itself stem from the Hebrew term, "womb." The womb is a place of mercy. 

How damning it is that there is a vast number of "lo ruhama" today. These are those who are denied mercy in the "rehem" (the womb), the first place of mercy.

In the place where mercy is defined, mercy is denied to millions of unborn children."

- Scott Jacobsen 

The Problem Of Peasant Worker Rebellions In Socalisam.

"And if these scrolls - of both the extrajudicial executions and those by tribunal - are unrolled for us someday, the most surprising thing will be the number of ordinary peasants we find on them. Because there is no end to the number of peasant uprisings and revolts from 1918-1921, even though they did not adorn the colored pages of the offical "History of the Civil War", and even though no one photographed them, and no one filmed motion pictures of those furious crowds attacking machine guns with clubs, pitchforks, and axes and, later, lined up for execution with their arms tied behind their backs - Ten for one!.....

We learn from Latsis the number of peasant rebellions that were suppressed during that same year and a half in twenty provinces - 344. From 1918 on, peasant revolts were already being called "Kulak" revolts, for how could the peasants revolt against the workers' and peasants' power!"

- Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn. The Gulag Archipelago. Vol 1, pg 303

The History of Liars

"We forget everything. What we remember is not what actually happened, not history, not merely that hackneyed dotted line they have chosen to drive into our memories by incessant hammering. 

I do not know whether this is a trait common to all mankind, but it is certainly a trait of our people, And it is a vexing one. It may have its source in goodness, but it is vexing nonetheless. It makes us an easy prey for liars.

Therfore, if they demand that we forget even in the public trials, we forget them. The proceedings were open and were reported in our newspapers, but they didn't drill a hole in our brains to make us remember - and so we've forgotten them. Only things repeated on the radio day after day drill holes in the brain."

- Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn. The Gulag Archipelago.

When Women Do Not Choose Love

"But I feel that the greatest destroyer of peace today is abortion, because it is a war against the child, a direct killing of the innocent child, murder by the mother herself. And if we accept that a mother can kill even her own child, how can we tell other people not to kill one another? How do we persuade a woman not to have an abortion? As always, we must persuade her with love and we remind ourselves that love means to be willing to give until it hurts. Jesus gave even His life to love us. So, the mother who is thinking of abortion, should be helped to love, that is, to give until it hurts her plans, or her free time, to respect the life of her child. The father of that child, whoever he is, must also give until it hurts. By abortion, the mother does not learn to love, but kills even her own child to solve her problems. And, by abortion, the father is told that he does not have to take any responsibility at all for the child he has brought into the world. That father is likely to put other women into the same trouble. So abortion just leads to more abortion. Any country that accepts abortion is not teaching its people to love, but to use any violence to get what they want. This is why the greatest destroyer of love and peace is abortion."

- Mother Teresa

- Remembering When Mother Teresa Left Hillary Clinton in Stunned Silence on Abortion.
In 1994 Mother Teresa delivered a no-hold-barred pro-life speech at the National Prayer Breakfast in front of Clinton, her equally pro-abortion husband, then-President Bill Clinton, and Al and Tipper Gore.

Unsheltered Spirituality

"Not long ago a priest told me that he canceled his subscription to the New York Times because he felt that the endless stories about war, crime, power games and political manipulation only disturbed his mind and heart and prevented him from meditation and prayer.

That is a sad story because it suggests that only by denying the world can you live in it, that only by surrounding yourself with an artificial, self-induced quietude can you live in a spiritual life. A real spiritual life does exactly the opposite: it makes us so alert and aware of the world around us, that all that is and happens becomes part of our contemplation and meditation and invites us to a free and fearless response."

- Henri J. M. Nouwen. Reaching Out.

We Are Not In A Game Of Chance

"Take away the sadness from our faces. We are not in a game of chance....

Beyond the crushing of our bones, now has begun the eternal "alleluia!""

- Jesuit, Luis Espinal, assinated March 22, 1980, in La Paz, Bolivia by paramilitary forces, one of his last known writings, 

Bad Relationships Matter

"It seems a tad hyperbolic, but bad human relations do have a way of wrecking everything else."

-Former Prime Minister, Stephen Harper. Right Here Right Now.

Why Is Serving Drugery?

"If you don’t love somebody, it gets annoying when they tell you what to do or what to feel. When you love them you get pleasure from their pleasure, and it makes it easy to serve. I didn’t love God because I didn’t know God."

-Donald Millar. Blue Like Jazz 

Distracted And Time Wasting

"I believe that the greatest trick of the devil is not to get us into some sort of evil but rather have us wasting time. This is why the devil tries so hard to get Christians to be religious. If he can sink a man’s mind into habit, he will prevent his heart from engaging God."

- Donald Millar. Blue Like Jazz

ONLY Two Kinds Of Sinners

"There are only two kinds of men: the righteous, who believe themselves sinners; the rest, sinners, who believe themselves righteous."

   

... Blaise Pascal (1623-1662), Pensees

Living As A Man In The World

During the last year or so, I have come to appreciate the "worldliness" of Christianity as never before. The Christian is not a homo religiosus but a man, pure and simple, just as Jesus was man... It is only by living completely in this world that one learns to believe. One must abandon every attempt to make something of oneself, whether it be a saint, a converted sinner, a churchman, a righteous man, or an unrighteous one, a sick man or a healthy one. This is what I mean by worldliness--taking life in one's stride, with all its duties and problems, its successes and failures, its experiences and helplessness... How can success make us arrogant or failure lead us astray, when we participate in the sufferings of God by living in this world?

   

... Dietrich Bonhoeffer (1906-1945), Letters and Papers from Prison

Who's Your Center?

“When Jesus asked people to ‘repent and believe’ the gospel, he was not asking them to be sorry for their sins and embrace an orthodox theology. He was asking them to forfeit their own agenda and embrace his. That’s the invitation to the kingdom. It is not whether we want to go to heaven or hell, but whether we want to trust God or continue trusting ourselves.” 

~ Wayne Jacobsen

How About A Different Mind?

"Most people have not been offered a different mind, only different behaviors, beliefs, and belonging systems. They do not necessarily nourish us, much less transform us. But they invariably secure us and invalidate us where we already are. They are what I and others have called "the task of the first half of Life."

Required behaviors and beliefs are good and necessary to get us started. But when we invest in them too heavily, they soon become places to hide.... If we hold on to them too tightly and for too long, we never internalize values and strengths - we never grow up.

- Richard Rohr. The Naked Now.

When I Am Fooled

"The ego as such is not evil, but it can lead us to do evil without realizing it. To succeed, evil somehow has to look like virtue. It leaves you blind to your own Illusions and convinced that you see perfectly."

- Richard Rohr. The Naked Now

Disappointment

"The youth gets together his materials to build a bridge to the moon, or, perchance, a palace or temple on the earth, and, at length, the middle-aged man concludes to build a wood shed with him."

- Henry David Thoreau

Growing Up

"The Process of growing up is rarely serene." 

- Roland Rolheiser. Sacred Fire

Difference Between Tradition And Bad Habits

 "One of the biggest problems in this first step is discerning the difference between “tradition” and “bad habits.” A helpful metaphor in making the distinction is that of scaffolding. When we construct a church building we use scaffolding. But when the church is completed, we take down the scaffolding. How ridiculous it would seem if ten, twenty, or thirty years later the scaffolding was still up. Unfortunately, a lot of churches refuse to take the scaffolding down, clinging to it as if it were the church. They have confused the “scaffolding” of institutions with the “tradition” of the saints."

-Leonard Sweet. AquaChurch 2.0

Transcultural Truths

"Trust combines exegesis with ethnology as one tracks the transcultural truths of the faith. The AncientFuture Christian lives out of the past, not in it."

- Leonard Sweet. AquaChurch 2.0

Self Assembled Spirituality

"To a culture where “any place can be a church, any song a prayer, and any person, a priest” (as one Gen Xer put it), popular culture becomes even more important as spirituality is self-assembled."

- Leonard Sweet. AquaChurch 2.0

Contemporay Static

"To avoid becoming an obedient lapdog or a rebellious hippie, leadership that is missional, relational, and incarnational must learn to distinguish between that which aids in the transmission of the gospel and that which is merely contemporary static.

 A missional, relational, and incarnational church gladly uses all the technological advances of culture to help it witness more effectively to a technological world. The only authentic inculturation is “inculturation from below,” in which “below” includes whatever is on the streets, from the poor and oppressed to popular culture."

- Leonard Sweet. AquaChurch 2.0

Want to Study Evil Power Stalin Wins???

"Joseph Stalin is what we would call the gold standard of dictatorship. Obviously we are not talking about morality here. We are talking about accumulating and exercising power. If you are interested in power, where it comes from, how it works, and what are the consequences when someone exercises such power, then Stalin is your guy. There are very few people in his category. Hitler, Mao, snd that is about it. Hitler was in power for just twelve years. Stalin was in power for three  decades. Mao was also in power for an etended peroid of time but didn't have the military industural power complex "super power" that Stalin built. So Stalin really stands out, even in his peers."

- Stephen Kotkin, author

of Stalin: Waiting for Hitler, 1929-1941

 

What Is A "Royal" Priesthood?

"The Priestly vocation consists of summing up the Praises of creation before the Creator; the Royal vocation, in turn, means reflecting God's wisdom and justice into the world."

- N.T. Wright. The Day The Revolution Began. 

When Do You Shower?

"My ministers and I regularly talked about the importance of our economy of those who shower after work, not just those who shower before it. We wanted Working Class People and those who wish to pursue a career in the trades to be respected and valued."

- Stephen Harper. Right Here Right Now 

The Church Through Time

"The incarnational Christian realizes that the gospel travels through time not in some ideal form, but from one inculturated form to another. In the words of one theologian, the “fiction” of a “‘pure’ and ‘naked’ Christianity” has done much damage. What missiologists call “the culturally indigenous church” is the aim of the incarnational church. Max Stackhouse makes a distinction between the “textuality” of the church—its faithfulness to the gospel—and its “contextuality”—its faithfulness to the world in which it finds itself. That distinction is absolutely critical." 

- Leonard Sweet. AquaChurch 2.0

The Gospel is Supranational

"Lesslie Newbigin rightly insists that the gospel only retains “its proper strangeness, its power to question us … when we are faithful to its universal suprarational, supranational, supracultural nature.”

- Leonard Sweet. AquaChurch 2.0

Jesus Dressed, Spoke, and Lived The Culture

"When Jesus dressed, he did not dress in a generic, cultureneutral way or put on clothing that set him apart from everyone else of his day. He dressed himself in the customary garb of the day where he lived. He spoke the language of the day in which he lived. He fully inhabited the cultural space of the first century."

- Leonard Sweet. AquaChurch 2.0

Are We Really a Church Above Our Times?

"The problem with the countercultural model is that it creates an artificial wall between Christians and the world God loves—a love so deep and wide that God sent Jesus to die for it. Jesus did not ask God to take us out of the world. In fact, Jesus’ opposition to the temple-based religion of his day, which led more than anything to his condemnation and death, was precisely because he opposed the temple cult’s concept of holiness as separation. We are not somehow grandly “above” the political, economic, scientific, technological, or artistic influences of our times."

- Leonard Sweet. AquaChurch 2.0 

The New Spirit Or The Now Spirit?

"These churches become so painfully “politically correct” that any attempt to articulate a transcultural value judgment, a moral absolute, or a biblical truth is quickly shuttled away to a committee or task force (a representatively correct one, of course) instead of witnessed to the world. 

The church is to identify with the world’s needs, but not its desires. As St. Augustine pointed out, “We move spiritually not by our feet, but by our desires.” When our desires are shaped by the culture and not by the Spirit, we become children of the times, not children of the Spirit. The “new spirit” promised by the Scriptures becomes a “now” spirit. We are to be “at home” but not “at peace” with God’s chosen place and time for us. There is a basic incompatibility between the church and whatever time in which it lives.

- Leonard Sweet. AquaChurch 2.0 

Golden Retriever Churches

"Everyone knows these “golden retriever” churches. If the culture throws a stick, “golden retriever” churches go bounding after it, slobbering and eager to please. Even those who happily own these indiscriminately accepting animals bemoan the fact that if a burglar broke in, the dog would just hold the flashlight for him. Too many inculturated churches are holding too many flashlights for too many burglarizing forces and figures."

- Leonard Sweet. AquaChurch 2.0

Off The Mountain!

"Like the top of a mountain that provides a great view of what has been and what might be but is no place to live, the past must not be dehistoricized or abstracted from the real world. Stay on the mountain, and you don’t hear the robin’s song or the loon’s haunting cry; you don’t see the fields of clover or smell the fragrance of flowers. To live, one must go down and enter the world. One must “enflesh” the world for it to be claimed by God."

- Leonard Sweet. AquaChurch 2.0

Barking Tingue

"When anger's busy in the brain Thy idly-barking tongue restrain."

- Sappho. 7th Century BC Greek Lyric Poet 

Has Time Removed The Good Ones?

"Now since a human being cannot so separate himself from himself for a time, and make a break in his continuity, and then approach himself again—and that is perhaps the chief reason why a man is a worse judge of himself than of others—the next best thing will be for a man to inspect his friends after an interval, and likewise offer himself to their scrutiny, not to see whether he has aged quickly, or whether his bodily condition is better or worse, but to examine his moral character, and see whether time has added any good quality, or removed any bad one."

- Plutarch. Morals. 1st Century Greek Philosopher

You Need Not Go Contrary To Your Convictions

"I find it by no means hard, or bad manners, to listen silently, and not to be so illiberal as to praise contrary to one's convictions. For if in such matters you are not master of yourself, what will you do if your friend reads a poor poem, or parades a speech stupidly and ridiculously written? 651 You will praise it of course, and join the flatterers in loud applause. But how then will you find fault with your friend if he makes mistakes in business? How will you be able to correct him, if he acts improperly in reference to some office, or marriage, or the state?"

- Plutarch. Plutarch's Morals 

Talebearers

"Indeed tyrants themselves, who must know all things, are made unpopular by no class more than by their spies and talebearers."

- Plutarch. Plutarch's Morals 1st Century Greek Philosopher 

The Moral Disease Of Curiosity?

"One such mental disease, that immediately suggests itself to one, is curiosity, the desire to know other people's troubles, a disease that seems neither free from envy nor malignity. 

"Malignant wretch, 

why art so keen to mark 

Thy neighbour's fault, 

and seest not thine own?"

Shift your view, and turn your curiosity so as to look inwards: if you delight to study the history of evils, you have copious material at home, "as much as there is water in the Alizon, or leaves on the oak," such a quantity of faults will you find in your own life, and passions in your soul, and shortcomings in your duty."

- Plutarch. Morals. 1st Century Greek Philosopher