Rahner & Ratzinger @ Vatican 2

Prayer for Ministry (Inspired by Karl Rahner)

Lord God;

As I listen to the many problems and concerns weighing so heavily upon the hearts of Your children, it is my sincere prayer -- my most heartfelt prayer -- that I do not listen alone; but that Your Spirit abides with us.

And that we might know this because You sent your Son into the world to die upon a lonesome cross not so that we might solve every problem or posess every answer; but as a mysterious sign that even in our darkest hour that You, Lord, are never far from us. That even our sorrow and loneliness is never far from You.

Help us to know the cross not as an answer, but as a sign of your mysterious and abiding presence.

Community: The Shape of Tomorrow's Church

Consider the millions if not billions of dollars spent every day aimed at captivating our attention… Think about how much money, time, talent, and technology goes into producing a single TV show, movie or video game. Even a 30 second TV commercial can cost millions of dollars.

That's where the bar for our attention currently rests.

Contrast all those resources with those of the average pastor, trying to put together a Sunday service; who after all, is trying to capture the attention of that very same audience…

Churches that will be successful in the future will recognize that this is the reality of our time, and respond not by playing the same game (for which it is out-matched) that is, by offering slickly produced multimedia services, but by offering what is lacking. Our attention-consuming media environment can offer everything except that which is most crucial to being human: and that is human encounter and community.

On the 'Religious vs Spiritual' Debate

We often hear people define themselves not as 'religious', but 'spiritual.'

What does this mean?

In my own ministry, I have found this to mean that their general spiritual world view and values have been intrinsically shaped by Christianity. However for various reasons, they are not churchgoers, nor do they identify with any particular denominaion, i.e., 'Non-practicing Anglican.'

So rather than defining themselves by the absence of religious identification, it is far more common to turn a negative into a positive; For instance, the person who is more accurately something like a 'Non-practicing Anglican' self-identifies as 'Spiritual' instead.

The misnomer however is that the Non-practicing Anglican is often not someone dabbling in Wicca, Athiesm or Zorastrianism. Rather by and large, this hypothetical 'Non-practicing Anglican' is usually an Anglican in core beliefs and values, but who has simply stopped going to church. This is something I have learned through extensive ministerial conversations with such individuals, and here is a snapshot of what I usually encounter:

1) That they believe in some form of Higher Power.
2) That they recognize something special about the teachings and person of Jesus that sets him apart from all other holy persons.
3) And finally, that meaning in life derrives from being good and helping others.

This is not at all different from what people who regularly attend church would say.

So my point then is that by and large, the difference between someone who self-identifies as 'Religious' vs. someone who self-identifies as 'Spiritual' is predominantly church attendance.

Perhaps then a more accurate way of understanding this trend in North American culture is to say that the divide is not so much 'Religious' vs 'Spiritual', but 'Formally Christian' vs 'Informally Christian.'

Grace Before a Mess Dinner

“Almighty God

We give thanks for this gathering, this meal, and the freedom in which we enjoy it.

We especially give thanks for those who earned this freedom for us.

We commend to your care all the men and women of our Forces at home and abroad.

Strengthen them in their trials; give them courage to face their perils; and grant them a sense of your presence wherever they may be.

Bless us, we pray, that we may be a blessing to others.”

Amen”

Prayer of Rev William Coffin Jr

"May God grant you;

the grace to never sell yourself short,

the grace to risk something big for something good,

the grace to remember that the world is now to dangerous for anything but truth

and too small for anything but love."



-Rev William Coffin Jr.

Love and The Wrath of God

"I used to think that wrath was unworthy of God. Isn't God love? Shouldn't divine love be beyond wrath? God is love, and God loves every person and every creature. That's exactly why God is wrathful against some of them. My last resistance to the idea of God's wrath was a casualty of the war in the former Yugoslavia, where I come from. According to some estimates, 200 000 people were killed and over 3 millon displaced. My village was destroyed. My people shelled day in and day out. Some were brutalized beyond imagination. I could not imagine God NOT being angry.

Or think of Rwanda in the last decade. 800 000 people hacked to death in 100 days! How did God react? By doting on the perpetrators in a grandfatherly fashion? By refusing to condemn the bloodbath but instead affirming the perpetrators basic goodness? Wasn't God fiercely angry with them? Though I used to complain about the indecency of the idea of God's wrath, I came to think that I would have to rebel against a God who WASN'T wrathful at the sight of the world's evil. God isn't wrathful in spite of being love. God is wrathful BECAUSE God is love."

from Free of Charge, by Miroslav Volf

Paul Evdokimov once wrote...

"God is the beggar for love at the door of the human heart."

On Ministry and Anxiety

One prerequisite for ministry is to genuinely care for those in crisis. Becoming overly concerned with one's role, intervention techniques, or other personal responsibilities, that one loses sight of the mission to love others might cause a caregiver to miss seeing the person in crisis as inhereintly valuable.

I have found that holding the person in prayer has always helped me focus on the other's needs rather than my own issues. This aspect of preparation seems so obvious that it need not be mentioned, but sometimes it is remarkably easy for counselees to become cases, problems or challenges, rather than unique and precious human beings.

-Howard Stone

Tolstoy: On the Struggles of Christian Life...

“Do you practice what you preach?” This is the most natural question of all and one always asked of me. And it is usually asked victoriously, as though it were a way of silencing me.

And I answer that I do not preach, that I am not able to preach—though I passionately wish to. I can preach only through my actions, and my actions are vile… And I answer that I am guilty and vile and worthy of contempt for my failure to carry them out.

At the same time, not in order to justify, but simply in order to explain my lack of consistency, I say, “Look at my life today compared with my former life and you will see that I do attempt to live out the Gospel; and I am ashamed to this because I have not lived out a thousandth of it. But I failed not because I didn’t wish to, but because I was unable to. Teach me to escape from this net of temptation surrounding me—help me and I will live it out, even without help I wish to fulfill it…

Attack me, I do this myself, but attack ME rather than the path I follow and which I point out to anyone who asks me where I think it lays. If I know the way home, and am walking along it drunkenly, is it any less the right path because I stagger side to side? If it is not the right way, then show me another—but if I stagger and lose the way, you must help me, you must keep me on the true path, just as I am ready to support you. Do not mislead me, do not be glad I have got lost, do not shout joyfully, “Look at him, he was going home but now crawls in a ditch!” Do not gloat, but give me help and support.

-Leo Tolstoy

A Prayer for Hard Times

Lord God;

Even though we come before you today with heavy hearts, seemingly surrounded by darkness and confusion, we nevertheless continue to give you thanks.

Thanks for this day, thanks for our lives, and thanks for our brother/sister who is suffering. And we thank you for creating in us spirits that are resilient, spirits that are strong.

And should we feel overwhelmed by our difficulties, let us know that we are constantly surrounded by your light and loving presence.

We ask this through Christ our Lord,

Amen

On Faith and Happiness

And trickier still is a more philosophical question of whether the purpose of faith is to make you happy. “That’s a Western, modern aberration of religion – what sociologist, Christian Smith calls ‘moralistic, therapeutic deism,’” says Phil Reinders, pastor at River Park Christian Reformed Church in Calgary, Alta. “I advise people, ‘Don’t come for happiness. Yes, you’ll find the deepest existential joy you can know, but as a by-product of something bigger, a worldview that makes sense of injustice and evil, that makes joy plausible within the onslaught of irritations, struggles and wrongs of today.’”

from "Happiness and the God spot" by Sarah Hampton
Globe and Mail, Dec 12, 2010