Atlanta Trip

I am grateful for the opportunity last week to participate in the ElderLink Conference in Atlanta. Elders from various congregations across our country attended this event. The focus was on spiritual formation and leadership.
So many good speakers presented very challenging and insightful lessons. But here is one main theme that seemed to come through:

“We need to grow more like Jesus in the context of being with our brothers and sisters. The Sunday morning assembly, along with the practice of other spiritual disciplines, positions us to be in an open and submissive posture to receive the love and power of God’s grace to be Jesus for others. Genuine, open, authentic leadership is steeped in the aroma of Jesus.”

As you can see from the above, it would take a life-time of articles and conversation to fully draw out the implications of this summary. However, I believe that church leaders, and the other couples who went, were challenged to go deeper in their relationship with God. This is so that their spiritual resources and personal motivation to walk with others in their spiritual journey can define who they truly are. Ask those who went and get their impressions of what they experienced.

As is normally the case when I am in Atlanta, I got lost coming home! I went north on highway 400 assuming it would cross and let me on to I-285. If it was supposed to, I never saw the entrance ramp. After enjoying a ride of about 45 minutes going northeast (when I should have been going northwest toward Chattanooga!) I realized my mistake and had to cut over west to hit I-75. I was in a part of Georgia that most Tennesseans probably never get to see!

Interestingly, the trip back gave me time to think about, pray, reflect, enter into conversation with myself and other imaginary conversation partners, and rest in God’s presence to soak up the weekend. Trying to be sensitive to the impressions and guidance of God after such a rich and rewarding weekend is a demanding task indeed.

One speaker, Earl Lavender of Lipscomb University, challenged us to see where our own life story is a continuation of God’s ongoing story in the world. This is not easy to do. It encompasses a willingness to see the world through the eyes of God, be near God enough to know the divine heartbeat, and discover the nuanced stories of others as they too are searching for God’s will and direction in their lives.
This week as you go about your own tasks of duties assigned, deadlines imposed, projects needing completion, and individuals encouraged to get on board with you, just remember that you and I are privileged to see God working in the lives of others as we, like Paul, are in agony like a woman in childbirth until Christ is formed in them (Galatians 4:19).

In Christian love, Curtis

SPIRITUALITY & MATERIALITY

I have been intrigued as of late regarding the connection between materiality and spirituality. I find it fascinating that God, who is Spirit, would have the desire, or even the need, to create a material world. Why did He not create a spiritual world and leave it at that? This biblical view of the world, where spirit and material are woven together, has profound implications for the Christian life.

Meredith McGuire maintains, “our material bodies come to be linked with spirituality through social senses and the ritual restructuring of our sense of space and time. Bodies matter, because humans are not disembodied spirits. Individuals’ religions become lived only through involving their bodies, as well as minds, and their emotions, as well as their cognitions. Spirituality is developed by just such embodied practices” [McGuire, Meredith. (Spring 2003). ”Why Bodies Matter: A Sociological Reflection on Spirituality and Materiality.” Spiritus: A Journal of Christian Spirituality. 3.1: 1-15]

If McGuire is correct, this may explain why our grandparents knelt in prayer in the assembly. It may explain the kinesthetic movement regarding drama in worship. It may also explain the explosion of material and practictioners pursuing holistic health, where body, mind and emotions, along with the soul and heart are all brought together for the healing process.

Also, I believe this is why Christianity proposes that there is, indeed must be, a redemptive aspect to suffering. Christ suffered in his body. The pain was real. The agony was felt deeply. The misery was palpable.

We are body/spirit linked in fellowship with other bodies/spirits and through that fellowship there is a “ritual restructuring of our sense of space and time.” Just think how the rhythms of the year in the Christian calendar, the rhythms of the week and the first day of the week, Sunday, are experienced in such a way as to reframe our perspective of space and time.

Often we find ourselves thinking about this when we notice other people and other families do not experience fellowship and Sunday the way we do. That is when it dawns on us how powerfully our material world and experience of it is shaped by the church, the activities we bodily engage in, and how we actually live out our faith in a human body.

I am not sure that our traditional view of the body has served us well. The apostle Paul says, “For while we are in this tent, we groan and are burdened, because we do not wish to be unclothed but to be clothed with our heavenly dwelling”(2 Cor. 5:4). Our desire is not to get rid of the body; rather in our bodily existence, we desire to be clothed with a heavenly body. Could this heavenly body include a glorified material body? For instance, like Jesus when he arose from the dead and appeared to the Eleven disciples in the closed room before his ascension?

Our bodies are the temple of the Holy Spirit and our spirit. May we honor the material as a way of glorifying the God who is Spirit and created the human body in the first place!

In Christian love, Curtis

MAINTENANCE REQUIRED

Orange. Not red. So nothing to worry about. But the more I told myself not to worry, the more I worried!

MAIN
REQU

“Maintenance Required.” The words in orange on my dashboard would not go away. I thought perhaps if I ignored them they would disappear. No such luck!

So, after a couple of days I was forced to reach in the glove compartment and pull out my Owners Manual. It was not the nightmare I was dreading. It only indicated that my oil needed changing. But I had just changed it, so perhaps there is an internal mechanism that automatically comes on at certain miles no matter when you get it changed.

This reminded me of spiritual maintenance. My heart, mind, soul and body need maintenance. It would be nice if we all had an orange light on us to light up when attention was needed spiritually. Paul’s prayer wish for his readers in Thessalonica was: “May God himself, the God of peace, sanctify you through and through. May your whole spirit, soul and body be kept blameless at the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ. The one who calls you is faithful and he will do it” (1 Thess. 5:23, 24).

Allowing God himself to sanctify us through and through is an ongoing maintenance issue. But how do I know my inner being and body need attention?
Fair enough question. Answer: Spiritual laziness & lethargy. Tensions and conflict in all my relationships. A sour attitude. Finding fault constantly. Fear replacing a joyful outlook on life. Neglect of Bible reading, meditation, prayer, and other spiritual disciplines. Giving in to temptations. Thinking that stinks and is evil at its core. We have to constantly ask God to help us monitor and maintain ourselves.

There is a purpose for all this—that we will be kept blameless at the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ. We do not know when Jesus will return. But we keep ourselves tuned and maintained by the power and faithfulness of God who is vitally interested in our present state and our eternal destiny. We must never forget how much God has at stake in our daily condition and our ultimate state.
Remember: “God is faithful and He will do it!”