A Sojourner’s Thoughts

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Renovare Reflection, Day 3

Yesterday was a day to slow down and begin to digest the things that I have begun to ponder. I gave myself permission to miss a session or two so that I could slow down, slow down, and reflect. I will be posting more about these reflections and ponderings later. For now I want to share with you some thoughts about the general sessions I attended.

The first one focused on this idea of holiness. The speaker was pastor Robert Gelinas. The question that he posed was this, “What does it mean to be holy just as God is holy?” He pointed to Jesus saying He is our model of holiness. The way of the cross is the way of holiness. Eugene Peterson defined holiness as happening when “the ways and means of how God works penetrate the ways and means of how we work.” When we act, think, and respond the way God would we are reflecting God’s holiness. This is what Jesus did. Look at the Jesus narratives to see how He responded when confronted, when criticized, when crucified. How do you respond in these settings? I know how I respond, it’s not always with holiness.
The second session I attended dealt with the idea of Words. Richard Foster was the speaker. He spoke of the overshadowing of words by the visual arts; the trivialization of words by the blogoshpere (not always the initial postings, rather the often unreasoned responses); the corruption of words by doublespeak. These are all great thoughts and as I am in the blogosphere I am being careful about the words I use to share my message. Foster came to this conclusion about words, they must be grounded in and grow out of silence; they must be significant in content; they should be crisp, clear, and imaginative. These are things that I need to work on when I use my words.
Day 4 brings a conclusion to the conference, but not my pondering on the things that I have heard. My prayer is that after bouncing around in my head for awhile those things that I truly need to apply to my life will begin in me the transformation process, to grow in holiness, to be more careful with the words I use, ideas I present, to become more like Jesus and as the theme of the conference says walk in the Jesus way.
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Renovare, Day 2

There is a lot that still needs to be processed from day 2. My workshop track prompted a number of great questions to follow up on in my DMin work. Definitions, ideas, and practices that need to be deconstructed and then reconstructed so that I can better understand them.

The general session created there own series of great thoughts to ponder. Rev. Joshua Choonmin Kang, a Korean pastor and writer posed this thought based on the story about Abraham and his willingness to sacrifice Issac, he stated that “we can’t see the best God has for us until we give up what is most presious to us.” Abraham was willing to give up his son, and then he saw the ram. Are there things you are hanging onto in your life that is preventing you from seeing what God may be wanting to give you?

In another session pastor Randy Frazee we were challange to take an honest assessment of our spiritual walk, using the Fruits of the Spirit + humility as our criteria (on a scale 1-6). This is a two part process, first there is a personal evaluation and then you are to invite three people to also assess you. We don’t need to fear that these evaluators will learn some deep dark secrete about you, they already know where you are at, the fear we need to lean into is our willingness to hear their words and embrace a plan to move toward our standard in this are who is Jesus Christ.

In the final general session Dallas Willard spoke on a subject that I have a passion about, servanthood. Dallas put a twist on the old WWJD, instead asking HWJDI (How would Jesus do it?). His answer, Jesus would do it as a servant. He went on to say that servanthood as Jesus lived it was more than just participating in a couple of service projects, but rather it is living a life of service.

I am looking forward to day 3.

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Winnie-The-Pooh Spirituality

Last night at the Renovare conference Eugene Peterson spoke about how for many our spirituality is not unlike that of Winnie-The-Pooh. Now I must admit it has been some time since I have read about Pooh and the company of characters that surround him, but I could relate to what Peterson was saying. You see Pooh would often come up with some rather unique thoughts or ideas that were then accepted by his friends as true. For the children reading the story or having the story read to them they to would find Pooh’s observations plausible and accept them as well, while we being the mature adult would look upon this with a bit of skepticism at the very least.

Peterson pointed out that as a culture, we are often falling into this Winnie-The-Pooh mentality when it comes to spiritual things. Someone comes up with an idea, revelation, inspiration, or theological position and then gathers around them a group who buy into what they are proclaiming and you have a “new” type of spirituality that will cure your problems and bring you happiness. Some of these new ideas are easy to spot and debunk, but others may be much more subtle and harder to identify.
It is one thing for the culture to deal with these different forms of spirituality, but what about when they creep or leap into the church. Are we ready to call them out? Are we even ready to identify them? Jesus said that “I am the way, the truth and the life…”
This will take a lot more pondering than I have given it here, but I will return to it. What are some pieces of Pooh spirituality that you have seen or heard?