Spirituality
The Four Needs
The spirituality Christians practice constantly uncovers the reality that Christ lives in each Christian. When Christians relate to each other, their relationships are more than merely social. They experience God through one another. It is not just person relating to person, but Christ in them relating as well.
The theological term for this is [...]
Spirituality
The Four Needs
A congregation attentive to the spiritual needs of its members ultimately is concerned about stewardship. This is at the heart of spirituality. Who gives what to whom? God first, last, and always is the giver and the people are the recipients. As John wrote:
See what love the Father has given us, that we [...]
Spirituality
The Four Needs
The Jerusalem Bible wonderfully translates Ephesians 2: 10: “We are God’s work of art . . .” it begins. How apt! God the Creator as artist, God’s creation as works of art.
Art and the Christian faith have always been intimately connected. In the human effort to respond to God, all the senses and [...]
Spirituality
The Four Needs
Teaching has been a crucial element of the church through the ages. The church would never have lasted if God had not endowed some with the gift of teaching the faith. Christian education includes Bible study and topics that deepen members’ faith and ready them for ministry.
Christian education cannot be restricted to certain [...]
Spirituality
The Four Needs
Disciplines of a devotional life are named by Richard Foster: meditation, prayer, fasting, study, simplicity, solitude, submission, and service. [Richard J. Foster, Celebration of Discipline: The Path to Spiritual Growth (New York: Harper & Row, Publishers), 1978] These disciplines, though practiced for centuries, are not common nowadays. They make excellent subjects for instruction [...]
Spirituality
The Four Needs
Prayer is conversation with God. It is being invited to join the conversation of love that is God. It is communion with God.
But it is yet something else to say that God is a conversation. . . . Our prayer is not making conversation with God. It is joining the conversation that is [...]
Spirituality
The Four Needs
It has been asserted that up to half of the theology that people are exposed to and remember after worship is the music sung and played. Music has the power to uplift and exhilarate. Music can teach and reinforce the truths of the gospel. Johann Sebastian Bach has been called the “Fifth Evangelist,” [...]
Spirituality
The Four Needs
The great majority of Christian churches celebrate the sacraments, which are often defined as “an outward and visible sign of an inward and spiritual grace.” Differing traditions accept different sacraments. As of 1439 A.D., Roman Catholic Christians accept seven: baptism, confirmation, holy communion, penance, extreme unction (last rites), orders (ordination), and matrimony; most [...]
Spirituality
The Four Needs
Worship is the chief way that congregations address the need for spirituality. In worship a congregation gathers to hear God’s word, to express adoration and thanksgiving, to confess their sins, to share in the sacraments, to give offerings, to receive spoken blessings, and pray.
In its English roots, the word worship has to do [...]
