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Tag Archives: emerging church

The Local Church and Monasticism… a Growing Learning Curve

We move our membership at NLF a few years ago to a Rule of Life in order to focus more clearly and succinctly on how we do spiritual formation. The commentary on our NLF Rule of Life can be read online.  The image of our need for a “trellis” or structure to provide rhythm to our days and order to our lives has been immensely helpful. At the same time, we continue to look for ways to communicate our DNA and clarify the pathways to help people in our community move towards greater Christlikeness. The following reflect, of course, our local church and context. Any feedback is greatly appreciated. We call them the 5 M’s.(the values and foundations of NLF) Monastic – slowing down to be with God.   Growth in this area includes learning about silence/solitude, Daily Offices/prayer, Sabbath-keeping, Scripture, the examen. Multiracial– bridging racial,cultural,  economic and gender barriers. Growth here includes learning about. Read more.

Is the Term "Evangelical" Obsolete?

A friend of mine from Singapore was visiting NYC recently. He is well-respected Christian leader in that part of the world. Over lunch I asked him his view of the American church and evangelicals in particular. He was reluctant to answer, but after some prodding on my part used the following words to describe us- reductionistic, black and white (resistant to nuances and mystery), and more of a civil religion tied closely to culture, than biblical.  I wanted to explore more but our lunch table with family had other more fun topics to talk about.     David Wells was one of my professors I had at Gordon-Conwell in the mid1980’s. In his book, The Courage to Be Protestant, he recommends we abandon the term evangelical because it has outlived its usefulness, arguing that it is now sagging and disintegrating.  He writes: “There have been just too many instances of obnoxious empire-building going on, too much in evangelicalism that is partisan and small,. Read more.

New Monasticism and the Community of Transfiguration

I just finished reading Community of the Transfiguration: The Journey of a New Monastic Community by Paul Dekar. It is the story of a 25 year journey of a small, missional, evanglical Baptist church in Australia moving from a church to a community to a monastery within their denomination! Can you imagine an intentional monastic community within an evangelical denomination today in North America? Paul Dekar, the author, is a professor at Memphis Theological Seminary. He presents a strong argument in his opening chapter that every 400 years in the West there is an upsurge in monastacism, and we are now living in the beginning of such an new movement. What makes this unique, in his opinion, is that it seems to be emerging within Protestantism and not Catholicism or the Orthodox church. I am not sure about these trends of church history, but I am sure that something radical is desperately needed and that monastacism holds a. Read more.