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A Prayerless Church?
One of the books I am reading about prayer is by the late Stanley Grenz called, “Prayer The Cry for the Kingdom.” I am only about 36 pages into it so far (I started reading today) and I can already say that is going to be worth the time.
Grenz says something that is a great addition to my post yesterday, he writes,
my claim that prayer is our greatest challenge arises from an honest appraisal of the …
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iusethis
This is a great site for mac users where you list all the applications you use and can see which ones others use. Kind of a social networking thing.
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My Brother is a Smartie
My brother, who makes my brain hurt when I read his thoughts on theology is in the midst of some very interesting discussion on Justification and Augustine with a number of Catholics on his blog and an obviously well-read blog called Pontifications. 39 comments later and the discussion seems to still be going strong. If you think you are smart, or want to feel dumb. Go and have a looksie.
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Lord Teach Us To Pray Part I - “We Have a Problem”
Of all the things God is challenging me with these days is the issue of prayer. There have been a number of people in my life (books, mentors, friends, family) who have been really calling me out on my prayer habits (or lack-there-of). So, I’ve taken it upon myself to begin a journey that starts with the posture of the disciples in Luke 11:1 where they say to Jesus, “Lord, teach us to pray.”
Other than just diving into the practice of regular/daily prayer times and asking God to teach me along the way I have been buying and reading as many books as I can on the subject.
I think the following quote by Dallas Willard in his book “The Spirit of the Disciplines” is a great start to this topic:
“The ‘open secret’ of many ‘bible believing’ churches is that a vanishing small percentage of those talking about prayer and Bible reading are actually doing what they are talking about….” (p. 186)
I have to be honest. This is true of every church I have ever been a part of. Prayer (and scripture reading) have always been major topics of discussion and a major emphasis. Apart from a poorly attended weekly prayer meeting, the nice and eloquent pastoral prayer in the middle of each service and the obligatory prayer before each meeting, prayer did not play a central role. (In case you think I am picking on my past church experiences, I have to confess this is generally true of our community as well at this point – which I hope will begin to change).
I think there are two different ways we need to look at this issue….
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New Archives Page
I have been playing with a new archives plug-in for WordPress that I implemented on a site I just got done redesigning called “Church Rater” (go and check it out, its a pretty interesting concept). The plug-in is called Clean Archives and is really nice because it lists every post by title and month. So, if you want to see some of my earlier blog posts (from December 2003) you can view them really …
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Masturbation (a.k.a “The M-Word”)
You might be wondering what in the world brought on this post. Well, my wife is addicted to the TV show “Friends” and she recently bought one of the seasons on DVD. We have been watching them together every so often after our son Cole heads to bed.
In a recent episode, Monica walks in on her husband as he is masturbating. Not surprisingly the show makes this one of the main jokes of the episode …
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Books on Prayer
Keeping in the theme of prayer, I was wondering what other books Scot McKnight might recommend on prayer. Recently he posted a list of his favorite books on prayer on his blog. Now I just have to find some cash to buy them all…here’s the list.
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What is the Missional Church with Scott Collins-Jones (mp3)
At The Well, I am helping lead a group we are calling H3. This group basically exists to give those who are interested a chance to get a good survey of four main topics: 1) Theology 2) Missional Ecclesiology 3) Servant Leadership and 4) Spiritual Formation. These four topics are being covered by inviting in some “experts” in each field.
For the first month, we had …
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Praying with the Church
Prayer has always been a struggle for me. I’ve grown up in a tradition that highly values personal prayer and personal scripture reading as the most basic means of Spiritual Formation but if I am being honest, I have struggled my whole life with both of these.Over the past month, I have become more and more convicted about the lack of depth and consistency in both of these things, especially …
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Afro
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.flickr-caption { font-size: 0.8em; margin-top: 0px; }Afro,
originally uploaded by hiestand24.Who says a white man can’t have an afro. I haven’t cut my hair for more than 8 months. Trying to make it to a year. Why? Because its cool. That’s why.