There's no substitute for a congregation making the effort to know itself well and to identify what makes it unique. Effective churches know who they are, and they claim their identity and gifts. from Driven
01710 – Church: Know Thyself
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01579 – A Blessing Hidden in Our Grief
What to do with our losses? . . . We must mourn our losses. We cannot talk or act them away, but we can shed tears over them and allow ourselves to grieve deeply. To grieve is to allow our losses to tear apart feelings of security and safety and lead us to the painful...
01497 – Adaptive Capacity is Applied Creativity
In essence, adaptive capacity is applied creativity. It is the ability to look at a problem or crisis and see an array of unconventional solutions. Adaptive capacity includes the quality Keats found essential to the genius of Shakespeare--negative capability. This...
01492 – Lives Built on Frenzy & Compulsive Busyness
One of the most serious dangers confronting those who minister in the city is that their lives come to be built on frenzy and compulsive busyness. This usually leads to a lack of focus, a tendency to accumulate more and more things, a collapse of reflection, and the...
01448 – True Mindfulness
True mindfulness gets that gift aspect of the world into view. When our intellect learns to recognize the gift aspect of the world, when our will learns to acknowledge it, our feelings to appreciate it, ever wider circles of mindfulness make our world come alive. I...
01272 – Belong without Belonging?
Some people want to belong without belonging. They are the ones whose obituaries read, "Dorothy was a lifelong member of St. John's Church"--except that no one at St. John's can ever remember meeting her, although ninety-three-year-old Mrs. Smith thinks that maybe...
01257 – Much of Life is Pure Gift
If we were to accept large areas of life as pure gift, we would be forced to acknowledge that we are not in control. Were we to live as recipients rather than makers, we might feel dependent and diminished, like clients of some cosmic welfare system that demeans our...
01208 – Simply Gathering for Worship Bucks Societal Trends
By simply gathering on the Lord's day, as Christians have done from the first days, by forming a genuine community not just in word but in deed, the assembly bucks the trend of society. In doing so we are allowing ourselves to be shaped by God, and thereby place...
01205 – A Sacrifice is a Personal Gift
A sacrifice is a gift of the essence or the product of our lives. It may be a gift of our time, a gift of our talent, or a gift of our treasure. Whatever shape it takes, it is a sacrifice given with no regard for a return on the investment.
01195 – All is Gift; All is Grace
What we are, what we have, even our salvation, all is gift, all is grace, not to be achieved but to be received as a gift freely given. God's bias in favor of sinners is so immense that it is said we will be surprised at those we find in heaven whom we had not...