Sunday, September 2, 2007

sustainable spiritual disciplines

One of the keys to healthy emerging churches is sustainable spiritual disciplines. Too many (unhealthy) emerging churches are so hyped up about growth they burn people out in a few years. We can learn a lot from sustainable emerging churches over the centuries about the importance of meditation, the "Jesus prayer", and other monastic-like practices that everyday Christians can practice in the midst of hectic urban life. The Renovare approach of Richard Foster has helped many- See http://www.renovare.org/

4 comments:

TAPSAAC said...

Please excuse my ignorance, but what is an emerging church?

Eleanor Burne-Jones said...

Good to find your blog! Will keep an eye on it.

Mark said...

"One of the keys to healthy emerging churches is sustainable spiritual disciplines" -- exactly.

Please write more.

Fr. Dr. John N D'Alton said...

Saidiot, "emerging church" is the term used for various efforts at creating new churches outside or alongside the mainstream, e.g. see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emerging_Church or http://emergingchurch.info/
Some people use it to mean starting new churches that incarnate Christ into new places, like the church has done for 2000 years, while others use it to mean a very post-modern/relativist approach (e.g. Brian McLaren). To distinguish what I'm saying from the McLaren style, I'm using "healthy" as an adjective, and pointing back to the best of the 2000 years of praxis.