Join us for a Lenten Adventure in Developing the Spiritual Life

A seven week study for individuals and small groups including a weekly facilitated on-line discussion forum for learning and growing together

When : Lent 2012
February 26 – April 8

Study Content : Developing the Spiritual Life by Len Thompson and Dayna Mazzuca

From the forward to Developing the Spiritual Life:

As Christ followers, we recognize the spiritual life we live, but do we really know what it is, or even how to see it develop in our lives? In our desire to be successful, do we just try harder or broach different methods in hopes of bringing about spiritual growth? Unfortunately, instead of spiritual transformation, we discover that we retreat behind legalism or experience stunted development only then succumbing to disillusionment, faking it or simply giving up…

In preparation to go on a trip to a major city, I always pick up a travel book. At the most basic level it provides me with maps. To further enhance my stay, I use it to gain suggestions for hotels and restaurants. But to make the most of my journey I look to this guide to give me information on the museums, parks, and area attractions that are perhaps less well known, and yet represent the majestic beauty and hidden treasures of that city.

These sessions are really a travel guide for a journey into spiritual transformation that will take you beyond the surface, and perhaps trite explanations you may have received in the past. Developing the Spiritual Life will lead you through the process of coming to know God, yourself and others better through exercising a life of listening and obedience.

Becoming a disciple of Christ and experiencing the development of a deep and strong spiritual life will never be completed until we reach heaven. But while we are earth bound, becoming students of Scripture and biblically sound material, such as this book, will further us on this journey towards Christ-likeness.

Weekly Schedule

Week One: A Story of Disappointment

Week Two: Listening to God – here’s how

Week Three: Mucking about in the shallows

Week Four: Listening to others – here’s how

Week Five: Lost and far from home

Week Six: Returning our lives to God – here’s how

Cost $20.00
includes:
• weekly facilitated online forum
• hard copy (PDF copy on request) of Developing the Spiritual Life

Contact: smallergroups@urbanbridgechurch.com or Kelly Schmidt Ks.maier@hotmail.com

In cooperation with the Urban Sanctuary – urbansanctuary.ca

Ok Theologizers, time to delve back into the deep end. We’re starting our next book in four weeks and it’s time to see which one it’ll be. Two selections have been nominated. They are:

Economy of Love, explores being the hands and feet of Jesus in a broken world. Economy of Love is a 5 week video series with Shane Claiborne. http://www.theworkofthepeople.com/lp/eol.html

Starts: Sunday March 20 1 pm and every second Sunday after at the home of Kelly and Russ Schmidt

contact  Kelly Schmidt :Ks.maier@hotmail.com

Lawrence Wright of the New Yorker recently published an in-depth article covering the gradual break between the Church of Scientology and well-known screenwriter Paul Haggis. For those who don’t know Paul Haggis, he is the creator of the television series ‘Due South’ and has written and adapted numerous screenplays including Million Dollar Baby, Crash, and the two most recent Bond films, Casino Royale and Quantum of Solace. In the New Yorker article, Haggis recounts his 35 year relationship with Scientology from disaffected youth searching for a means of overcoming his demons, to more or less full blooded adherent, to proud father of Scientology Kids, to incredulous elder, to apostasy and public schism. Here’s a snippet:

In previous correspondence with Davis, Haggis had demanded that the church publicly renounce Proposition 8. “I feel strongly about this for a number of reasons,” he wrote. “You and I both know there has been a hidden anti-gay sentiment in the church for a long time. I have been shocked on too many occasions to hear Scientologists make derogatory remarks about gay people, and then quote L.R.H. in their defense.” The initials stand for L. Ron Hubbard, the founder of Scientology, whose extensive writings and lectures form the church’s scripture. Haggis related a story about Katy, the youngest of three daughters from his first marriage, who lost the friendship of a fellow-Scientologist after revealing that she was gay. The friend began warning others, “Katy is ‘1.1.’ ” The number refers to a sliding Tone Scale of emotional states that Hubbard published in a 1951 book, “The Science of Survival.” A person classified “1.1” was, Hubbard said, “Covertly Hostile”—“the most dangerous and wicked level”—and he noted that people in this state engaged in such things as casual sex, sadism, and homosexual activity. Hubbard’s Tone Scale, Haggis wrote, equated “homosexuality with being a pervert.” (Such remarks don’t appear in recent editions of the book.)

I would encourage anyone who is interested in the subject to read the full article, which runs to 26 pages, but if you’re looking for a redux, Slacktivist does a good job of pulling some of the salient points with special emphasis on some of the similarities and differences to Christianity. An excerpt:

I don’t really know what to make of this strange scale, but it seems — like so much of Scientology as described to Wright by both current and former adherents — to commend the goal of attaining and amassing power. On this point Scientology and Christianity would seem to be wholly incompatible and in total disagreement. The whole point of our weird story about God giving up God-ness to become human and then allowing Godself to be executed is that power, ultimately, is nowhere near as powerful as its opposite: Love. Scientology’s obsession with Power seems to me, as a Christian, to be at the root of its Confusion and an extreme Liability. I suppose that response might lead the authorities of the Church of Scientology to regard me as an Enemy. And by their standards, that’s probably accurate. By my standards, too. That means, of course, that I am — weirdly — compelled to love these people. I will try to do so. But loving them doesn’t rule out, and may even require, agreeing with Paul Haggis that it would be a Good Thing if the exploitative, cruelly manipulative and deeply dishonest institution described in Wright’s article were “taken down.”

Via Slacktivist, a transcript of President Obama’s speech on the victory of the Egyptian people. An excerpt:

Egypt has played a pivotal role in human history for over 6,000 years.  But over the last few weeks, the wheel of history turned at a blinding pace as the Egyptian people demanded their universal rights.

We saw mothers and fathers carrying their children on their shoulders to show them what true freedom might look like.

We saw a young Egyptian say, “For the first time in my life, I really count.  My voice is heard.  Even though I’m only one person, this is the way real democracy works.”

We saw protesters chant “Selmiyya, selmiyya” — “We are peaceful” — again and again.

We saw a military that would not fire bullets at the people they were sworn to protect.

And we saw doctors and nurses rushing into the streets to care for those who were wounded, volunteers checking protesters to ensure that they were unarmed.

We saw people of faith praying together and chanting – “Muslims, Christians, We are one.”  And though we know that the strains between faiths still divide too many in this world and no single event will close that chasm immediately, these scenes remind us that we need not be defined by our differences.  We can be defined by the common humanity that we share.

And above all, we saw a new generation emerge — a generation that uses their own creativity and talent and technology to call for a government that represented their hopes and not their fears; a government that is responsive to their boundless aspirations.  One Egyptian put it simply:  Most people have discovered in the last few days…that they are worth something, and this cannot be taken away from them anymore, ever.

Via, Christianity Today:

Chuck Colson laments the lack of doctrinal fidelity in Young Evangelicals and suggests that modelling discipleship training after Marine Corps Boot Camp is the answer. While I have no trouble with the notion that we need to instill a certain respect for orthodoxy in new and young Christians, I would prefer to see us model discipleship after the lives of the Disciples rather than after a military organization’s new recruit training programs.

Personally, I think it’s lamentable that Chuck would like to see armies of Evangelicals whose minds are so thoroughly broken that they accept doctrine without reflection and take the teaching of their elders as Gospel. Personally, I’ll be taking Colson’s teaching with a grain of salt.

- SMD

I am beginning to believe that addressing the injustices, both ecological and human, in our food system is the most pressing moral issue of our generation. A selection of recent news on the topic:

http://www.euronews.net/2011/01/25/food-crisis-warning-from-fao/http://www.huffingtonpost.com/robert-walker/a-global-food-fight_b_815050.htmlhttp://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2011/01/10/the_great_food_crisis_of_2011http://ca.reuters.com/article/businessNews/idCATRE70R3EY20110128http://www.edmontonjournal.com/opinion/Canada+must+take+lead+solving+food+crisis/4182907/story.html

I’ve been reading a lot of the Slacktivist blog lately and came across this recent post on paths to God. An excerpt:

I want to address a question I’m asked quite a bit by catechists here in comments or, occasionally, via e-mail. I call them catechists because it doesn’t seem that they’re asking the question because they want to learn the answer, but because they already know the correct answer and they’re quizzing me to see if I know it, too.

I don’t. I don’t even understand the question. I can’t make sense of it.

The question is this: “Do you believe that all paths lead to God?”

I have a hard time figuring out what this could possibly mean given what I know about paths and what I think I know about God.

We Christians believe that one of the attributes of God is omnipresence. It’s hard to know what to make of a question about paths leading or not leading to someone who is, by definition, everywhere.

“You hem me in, behind and before,” the Psalmist says:

Where can I go from your spirit?
Or where can I flee from your presence?
If I ascend to heaven, you are there;
if I make my bed in Sheol, you are there …

That whole omnipresence thing really wreaks havoc with spatial metaphors like “all paths lead to God.” But even apart from that, the question makes no sense not just because of the nature of God, but because of the nature of paths.

It could not be true that all paths lead to X even if there were only one single path, because the same path that leads to X would also, by virtue of being a path, lead away from X. That is how paths work.

I find myself constantly looking for something interesting, something to stimulate my mind, an immediate and easy response for “nothing to do.”

Kathleen Norris writes, “Is it not a good joke that when God gave us work to do as punishment for our disobedience in Eden, it was work that can never be finished only repeated, day in and day out, season upon season, year after year. It is precisely these thankless, boring, repetitive tasks that are the hardest for the workaholic or utilitarian mind to appreciate, and God knows that being rendered temporarily mindless as we toil is what allows us to approach the temple of holy leisure.”

Our lives are lived in the mundane doesn’t it make sense that we make peace with the ordinary, the boring; accepting the inconsequential as good in itself and worthy of our attention. If it is so that  God pays attention to and finds pleasure in our lives then we are most like him when we too find joy in ordinary.

“Do not forget that the value and interest of life is not so much to do conspicuous things…as to do ordinary things with the perception of their enormous value.” Teihard de Chardin.

Richard Foster in this meditation suggests writing the word “play” on a 3×5 card  and placing it to remind us that our work can be our play

Sadhu Sundar Singh

How is your Christmas week going?

Singh says that it is difficult to explain the deep experience of the inner life but it can be enjoyed and put into action. Wanting to go to a village to share this deep experience but feeling conflicted because he was ill he “dragged my sick body and told the people of the village what Christ’s presence had done for me”. The villages were touched by his effort and some had been helped”

I appreciate that Sadhu Sundar Singh recognized that difficult circumstances are not the measure of our relationship with Christ and that he expressed this faith from a position of weakness - Neat Guy.

10Now there was a believer  in Damascus named Ananias.The Lord spoke to him in a vision, calling, “Ananias!”

“Yes, Lord!” he replied.

11The Lord said, “Go over to Straight Street, to the house ofJudas. When you arrive, ask for Saul of Tarsus. He is praying tome right now. 12I have shown him a vision of a man namedAnanias coming in and laying his hands on him so that he cansee again.”

13“But Lord,” exclaimed Ananias, “I’ve heard about theterrible things this man has done to the believers in Jerusalem!14And we hear that he is authorized by the leading priests toarrest every believer in Damascus.”

15But the Lord said, “Go and do what I say. For Saul is mychosen instrument to take my message to the Gentiles and tokings, as well as to the people of Israel. 16And I will show himhow much he must suffer for me.” Acts 9: 10-15 NLT

If someone were looking at our life and not just our words what would it be telling that person?