We know that Jesus called us to be disciples.
But what does that mean, and how can churches get better at it?
The key is found in the life of Arnold Schwarzenegger.
In a recent interview with the Nerdist podcast, Arnold described the process by which he became the strongest man in the world, an internationally recognized movie star and governor of California.
It may be that the most important thing our churches can do is become more boring.
Being bored in an over-stimulated world is a cultivated practice. The Pray as You Go podcast is one of the best tools I’ve seen to help develop the spiritual discipline of listening to God’s voice in scripture. Over the course of twelve minutes you will chill out to scripture-based music and pray through a passage of scripture twice.
The podcast format combines the slow, multiple readings of Lectio Divina with Examen style questions. According to their website:
A new prayer session is produced every day of the working week and one session for the weekend. It is not a ‘Thought for the Day’, a sermon or a bible-study, but rather a framework for your own prayer.
Lasting between ten and thirteen minutes, it combines music, scripture and some questions for reflection.
Our aim is to help you to:
It should be no surprise that it is produced by Jesuits, who have been developing tools to commune with God for centuries.
If you want to take steps toward a more boring spiritual life and even becoming a boring church, I would suggest using this tool at least once a day. In time you’ll develop a taste for the boring and will be able to dive in deeper.
Earthquakes, angels, women running to and fro, a strange command. A highly unlikely tale. Yes, indeed, and that’s the point. Nobody thought in the first century, and nobody should think now, that the point of the Easter story is that this is quite a reasonable thing to happen, that dead people really do rise if only we had the wit to see it, that it should be quite easy to believe it if only you thought about it for a few minutes.
No. It was always a strange, crazy, wild story. What else would you expect if, after all, the ancient dream of Israel was true? If the God who made the world had finally acted to turn things around, to take all the forces of chaos, pride, greed, darkness and death and allow them to do their worst, exhausting themselves in the process?
If Jesus of Nazareth really was, as the centurion (greatly to his own surprise, no doubt) found himself saying three days before, ‘the Son of God’? What else would you expect? A calm restatement of some philosophical truths for sage old greybeards to ponder – or events which blew the world apart and put it back in a new way?
N.T. Wright, Lent for Everyone: Matthew, Year A
This is the one who patiently endured many things in many people:
This is the one who was murdered in Abel, and bound as a sacrifice in Isaac,
and exiled in Jacob, and sold in Joseph,
and exposed in Moses, and sacrificed in the lamb,
and hunted down in David, and dishonored in the prophets.
This is the one who became human in a virgin,
who was hanged on the tree, who was buried in the earth,
who was resurrected from among the dead,
and who raised mankind up out of the grave below to the heights of heaven.
Check out the Boots on the Ground Facebook page to see all the different posts in this series.
The night it felt like Church to me happened in the Summer of 2002. I was a sophomore in college and I had given my summer to working with Dry Bones: Denver, a newly launched ministry to the homeless youth that congregate to panhandle and roughhouse on Denver’s 16th Street Mall.
My reasons for being there weren’t completely altruistic, evangelistic or justice driven. That was a part of it, but the main reason I wanted to be there was because it seemed pretty cool.
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