Our Journey into for the first part of the year was to explore together “practices for growth”. We have produced sheets on each topic as starter for the conversations. I have now made them available for download. They are:

Practice of Prayer
Practice of Rest
Practice of Accountability
Practice of Submission
Practice of Sacrifice
Practice of Silence
Practice of Hospitality

And of course we have podcasts:
Introduction to the Practices with Mark Norridge
Biblical Meditation with Graham Old
Full Flavoured Spirituality with Simon & Gaynor Shaw
Introduction to Spiritual Formation with Mark Norridge

Our Journey into for the first part of the year was to explore together “practices for growth”. We have produced sheets on each topic as starter for the conversations. I have now made them available for download. They are:

Practice of Prayer
Practice of Rest
Practice of Accountability
Practice of Submission
Practice of Sacrifice
Practice of Silence

And of course we have podcasts:
Introduction to the Practices with Mark Norridge
Biblical Meditation with Graham Old
Full Flavoured Spirituality with Simon & Gaynor Shaw

If you are looking for some tips for the Practice of Lent, you could try some of these:
Count Your Blessings with Christian Aid
Love Life Live Lent
40 Ideas for Lent from Ship of Fools
Grace Lent Community Blog

On Emma’s suggestion I am reading: Bread and Wine: Readings for Lent and Easter, which is great.

[that is the title i like anyway!!]

“40 days” has started, so i thought i would post here my introductory thoughts.

Synchronise with Jesus
Jesus spent 40 days in the wilderness (Luke 4:1-13), right after his baptism, and before his public ministry started. During that period he was tempted, and was faithful to God, and returned in “the power of the Spirit”.
Through a period of 40 days of prayer and fasting, we identify with Jesus, put ourselves into his story, and begin to learn something of his life. In this way we begin to get in step, to synchronise our lives with the life and death of Jesus. This becomes particularly meaningful when we see this as a build up to Easter, and the celebration of Jesus resurrection, his life which is for us!
The reality is that for us we have everything we need. We live our lives full: plenty of activity, plenty of food, plenty of information, plenty to drink. But it is a time to seek God. We can do this by de-cluttering and reprioritising: put aside, trim down, refocus, seek. And as a result to consider trusting in God, to believe in Him that he is the source the means and the goal of life – and to act like it! So it is about re-orientating, re-prioritising life, in the way of Jesus. From self to God, from needing stuff to needing God, from having to giving.

Practicalities
Fasting: Consider going without something for the 40 days in order to experience that refocusing on God.

There are 3 sections: Corporate prayer meeting:
Life with God, 21st Feb – 11th Mar; Thurs 8th Mar
Life Together, 12th Mar – 25th Mar; Thurs 22nd Mar
Life with Others, 26th Mar – 8th Apr; Thurs 5th Apr

Groups Meditiation: Meditate with the church on the passage allocated for each section. [first one is Phil 2:5-11]
Pray: Pray with the church along the lines of our corporate prayer plan for each section. Register for the almost daily e-mail!
Celebrate: Celebrate Easter! 8th April (10:30am @ Parklands)

Downloads
Download 40 days Introductory Leaflet
Download my Article on Easter and Festivals
Take at look at Emily’s research here!

If you are looking for some tips for the Practice of Lent, you could try some of these:
Count Your Blessings with Christian Aid
Love Life Live Lent
40 Ideas for Lent from Ship of Fools
Grace Lent Community Blog

On Emma’s suggestion I am reading: Bread and Wine: Readings for Lent and Easter, which is great.

[that is the title i like anyway!!]

“40 days” has started, so i thought i would post here my introductory thoughts.

Synchronise with Jesus
Jesus spent 40 days in the wilderness (Luke 4:1-13), right after his baptism, and before his public ministry started. During that period he was tempted, and was faithful to God, and returned in “the power of the Spirit”.
Through a period of 40 days of prayer and fasting, we identify with Jesus, put ourselves into his story, and begin to learn something of his life. In this way we begin to get in step, to synchronise our lives with the life and death of Jesus. This becomes particularly meaningful when we see this as a build up to Easter, and the celebration of Jesus resurrection, his life which is for us!
The reality is that for us we have everything we need. We live our lives full: plenty of activity, plenty of food, plenty of information, plenty to drink. But it is a time to seek God. We can do this by de-cluttering and reprioritising: put aside, trim down, refocus, seek. And as a result to consider trusting in God, to believe in Him that he is the source the means and the goal of life – and to act like it! So it is about re-orientating, re-prioritising life, in the way of Jesus. From self to God, from needing stuff to needing God, from having to giving.

Practicalities
Fasting: Consider going without something for the 40 days in order to experience that refocusing on God.

There are 3 sections: Corporate prayer meeting:
Life with God, 21st Feb – 11th Mar; Thurs 8th Mar
Life Together, 12th Mar – 25th Mar; Thurs 22nd Mar
Life with Others, 26th Mar – 8th Apr; Thurs 5th Apr

Groups Meditiation: Meditate with the church on the passage allocated for each section. [first one is Phil 2:5-11]
Pray: Pray with the church along the lines of our corporate prayer plan for each section. Register for the almost daily e-mail!
Celebrate: Celebrate Easter! 8th April (10:30am @ Parklands)

Downloads
Download 40 days Introductory Leaflet
Download my Article on Easter and Festivals
Take at look at Emily’s research here!

Having returned from a lovely little break away with Maddy, I return to the fray that is life. A couple of random thoughts:

1) A nice little post by my older brother at Instamatic Theology called “Lotto as plot-twist”. Not sure whether i agree or not, but liked the Coupland quotes. They link to the mumbo jumbo post, and maybe shed a tiny bit of light?

2) While I was away I read the “Memoirs” section at the start of “The Cost of Discipleship” by D Bonhoeffer [see other quote here]. I don’t know if you know much about him, but he was an amazing guy. He was killed by the Nazi’s for opposing the regime on the basis of his faith, even though much of the rest of the church was supporting it. He was influencial in the Confessional Church for a good while, but then he felt even they weren’t against it enough. There is much going around my head about issues of empire, post-christendom and how the church shouldn’t line up with the dominant system at the moment. If only there were time to blog about it! Anyway a couple of quotes form the memoirs were interesting:

Thus all kinds of secular totalitarianism which force man to cast aside his religious and moral obligations to God and subordinate the laws of justice and morality to the State are incompatible with his conception of life.” p24

“He felt that the Confessional Church was more concerned with her own existence and inherited rights than with preaching against the war and with the fate of the persecuted and oppressed. Thus it was Bonhoeffer who first brought home the full lesson of the Oxford Conference to the Lutheran Church in Germany, namely, that the life of the church must be linked to the life of the people.” p25

I trust you can see there the interesting balance of “difference” and “relevance”; “engagement” and “counter-cultural subversion” in the way the church relates to the wider culture.

3) This links with our conversations on Sabbath [as a day] recently as we discussed “the practice of rest”. It struck me that the early church celebrated “the Lord’s day” on a Sunday to mark his resurrection. However this was a work day. They decided to mark a pattern of life that was out of step with the wider culture. They didn’t expect the rest of the wider culture to shut-down with/for them, nor did they try to fit their pattern with the rest of their culture. I really don’t know quite what to think about that.

And of course Happy Valentines Day!