In this episode we sit down to talk about an article written by Andrew on 10 hopes and prayers for the next 10 years. (The original article can be found here.)
I would love to see the church become more spiritual… there is a vacancy of mystery in the church… we reduce everything to five easy steps, and it doesn’t satisfy the deepest thirst of the human soul…
The church needs to not be ashamed of the one thing it can offer that no one else can…
We need to recapture wonder… I think that we’re not surprised enough in church… the Holy Spirit is right here, and right now, which means that anything can happen…
The late Robert Jenson said that the basic difference between a living God and dead god is that a living God can still surprise us, and that’s what we see in the New Testament…
Our services are not unplanned but they are unscripted… we know that there are elements that will always be there, but it is the unscripted element that brings it to life…
Structure can and should have wonder in it… our way of holding the Creed and the Lord’s Prayer ought to be full of wonder…
In order to do this, we are going to have to slow down… I want the church in North America to swear off the haste that has become characteristic of its life…
God takes time, and we can too… sometimes when I am sermon prepping, the most effective thing I can do is just to leave it alone… go for a half hour walk, take some deep breaths, take in the landscape, and remember the Story…
When we are moving too fast, we don’t listen well, and when we don’t listen well, we don’t engage deeply in relationship, and we miss too much…
We are living in a time that is incredibly angry… the volume is so high and so many people are just talking past one another… it is a symptom of the haste that is in our hearts…
The frightful despotism of “I have to win” where life is a zero sum game is so destructive to our commonwealth, and I think that the church can lead the way on (changing) this…