Thomas Merton opens his book New Seeds of Contemplation with a chapter titled What is Contemplation? The following excerpts are worth considering:
Contemplation is the highest expression of man’s intellectual and spiritual life. It is that life itself, fully awake, fully active, fully aware that it is alive. It is spiritual wonder…. All is summed up […]
Every religion has its mystics and Christianity is no exception. I titled this article Why I Am a Mystic but a better desciption may be that I lean toward mysticism (the longer title would have messed up my series though…). I’m probably not a true mystic but I do lean that way. The term mysticism […]
Emergent and emerging are not easy terms to define. Emergent sometimes refers to a specific subset of the emerging movement (www.emergentvillage.com) but the two terms are used often used interchangeably.
There are key differences between the emerging church movement and other recent church renewal movements. One distinction lies in the emerging church’s integration of the old […]
I started using the term post-denominational in the early 1990’s while I was still in Bible College. I had never heard the term but coined it because it described the cultural situation I was witnessing. I was shifting away from my denominational roots and beginning to question the value of denominational affiliations. Churches around the […]
This is the counterpart to yesterday’s post, Why I Am liberal. I was raised conservative and that is a tradition I carry on despite coming to find certain agreement with my more liberal brothers and sisters.
I am conservative but not a Conservative. What I mean is that my worldview leans conservative but I do not […]
OK, I will say it up front - I’m not Liberal but I am increasingly becoming liberal. Being liberal is something of a dirty secret if you hail from conservative Baptist roots like I do. Being called a liberal is quite an insult to a conservative. However, even we conservatives could use to learn a […]
Failure to be missional is to deny the gospel. Strong words? Perhaps, but if we believe the gospel at all we must be missional.
What is meant by being missional? Emergent Village defines being missional this way, “Missional: Because we believe that the call of the gospel is an outward, apostolic call into the world.” Every […]
In a literal sense the word catholic simply means universal. The Scriptures are quite clear that there is one ekklesia - that is, one assembly or body of God’s people. You are either a child of God or a child of Satan; you are in the kingdom of darkness or the kingdom of light. Perhaps […]
The Protestant Reformation played a vital role in the history of Christianity at a time when the organized church was largely corrupt, stale and let’s face it, quite dead. When Martin Luther nailed his 95 Theses to the door of Castle Church in Wittenburg in 1517 he arguably initiated what would later be called the […]
I found this quote atttibuted to Henri Nouwen (I do not know where it was originally published):
“…I am deeply convinced that the Christian leader of the future is called to be completely irrelevant and to stand in this world with nothing to offer but his or her own vulnerable self.”
An interesting thought and certainly quite […]
