Scripture & Prayer in Community
One of the hardest things about being a christian in suburban america is the pace of life that we live and trying not to let that overtake basic christian disciplines.
One of the hardest things about being a pastor in suburban america is encouraging and give space to allow the basic christian practices to happen together in community not just as an individual.
In an effort to make this a little more practical for us at The Well so that we can be shaped together by the same scriptures and be praying together on a regular basis. Now, in a perfect world we would do this in person all the time. But, since life is what it is, we’re making efforts to do this “together” while not being “together.” (hopefully that makes sense).
Anyways, we have put together a daily, weekly and monthly reading list for our community that will go out each week. It includes the sermon for the upcoming week, a psalm for each day and a passage for the month.
We will now have a Sunday morning reading group that meets before church and discusses and reads aloud the texts.
We’ll also begin sharing how these texts have shaped us at our quarterly midrash. This will actually make the midrash more like a real midrash where in Jewish history Rabbi’s would gather together to interpret the text.
As far as prayer goes, we’re starting a prayer e-mail group that commits to praying at least once a day for our community and our world. I’ll send out a prayer list each week along with a link to the daily offices for the week (using the new link in the sidebar) so people can pray with the church too.
I am hoping this can begin some basic practices in our community that allow us to be led by the Spirit a little better. I figure, you can’t go wrong when your community starts praying together more and reading scripture together…
If you are not from The Well, what do you do to be shaped together with your community?
gabrielle said...
109/5/06 8:55 AM | Comment Link |
Todd I am very very very excited to see this all happening. You are walking up next to what you were talking up at the midrash. I really respect you. I feel blessed to be apart of the Well.
Todd said...
209/5/06 12:35 PM | Comment Link |
Gabby, I’m excited about this as well. What makes me more excited is that i know from our meeting last week that you all are excited about it too! i am sure it will take some time for us to learn to do this well, but its a fun journey!
carol h said...
309/5/06 5:49 PM | Comment Link |
I am part of a spiritual formation group at my church here in the north shore suburbs of chicago. We had a series this summer that included readings on “spiritual inventory”, “What do you want spiritually?” and “what does God want?” And finally, “what happens when what we want and what God wants meets in community.” Each week we journaled on selected readings/topics. and we shared our journals…as in, read from them. we were asked to read what we wrote, not just talk about what we wrote. it was a group that trusted each other and we were all honest and open. what a powerful, life changing summer it was.