Marks of a Good Homiletic Idea

1/28/2014 0 comments

Marks of a Good Homiletic Idea:


1. Simple to remember

2. Catchy and memorable (like a slogan)

3. Keep it connected with a response

4. State it so that it sounds like you are talking to them (your audience)

5. Keep it positive (not negative)



Examples:

exodus 13:14-17

Cor 12:17
Did I take advantage of you through any of those whom I sent to you?

What is my purpose?
What is my target? 
Sanctification to the saints


Apply to word of God
Life translation

Apply 1) head 2) heart(feeling something) 3) hands(doing something)
How we practically live?

Purpose of sermon = purpose of passage
Building a bridge - audience & text?
Find eternal truth- what audience connection
Everybody has a need Lord?
Life is empty without Christ
Most of people carry  a lot of guilt
Many people in your congregation have bitterness
There is universal …. death



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Rule of Life

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Rule of Life 


 What is a rule of life?
A pattern of spiritual disciplines that provides structure and direction for growth in holiness
- Patterns : attitudes, behaviors, or elements that are routine, repeated, regular
- discipline: training and practice
- The purpose: to help us grow into holiness; image and likeness of God; a caterpillar into a butterfly
- 20m of spiritual reading in the morning 15 m of self-examination in the evening…...


 Making choices
What am I deeply attracted to, why? -seem natural to our personality?
Where do I feel God is calling me to stretch and grow?-a strong negative reaction?
What kind of balance do I need in my life? A balance exercise for spirit, mind, and body / The rule of benedict: prayer, study, labor(3H prayer, 3H labor, 3H study…..)


 Spiritual Discipline:  
Spiritual reading, Prayer, worship , fasting , self-examination, spiritual direction, hospitality


 Realistic commitment is an expression of humility. 
Personal circumstances 
- a parent staying at home
- A demanding job with long hours of work
- Retired 
- A chronic illness or disability
- A full-time student


 Keeping ourselves accountable
- write it down 
- Choose one person to share your rule with
- Seek support from your faith community
Spiritual life is a joint intention
- The personal and the corporate
- The inner and the outer
- The divine intent for us and our own intent to love and serve God




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The Spiritual Yearning

1/27/2014 0 comments

The Spiritual Yearning



Signs of spiritual yearning
An emptiness; something is missing
Spiritual hunger: needing a transcendent compass
Older patterns of religious life seem antiquated : worship, Bible
"Spiritual" but not "religious"
A social phenomenon: a sea change; temple stay, retreat centers


Reasons of spiritual yearning
* Cultural factors
The worldview of rationalism
Technological adnavces: rapid change, internet
Superficial values: consumerism, idol groups
Fear: violence, disaster, survival, competition

*Personal factors
Suffering and trageedy: new forms of suffering
Dissatisfied with the language of faith in church
No place to share experiences of God

*Spiritual factors
Desire for a transcendent wellspring of meaning and purpose in life(e.g., "Into the Great Silence")


What is spirituality?
Piety: moral rigidity
Devotion: lack of objectivity; potentially superficial and external exercise
The spiritual life: the increasing vitality and sway of God's Spirit in us; a magnificent choreography of the Holy Spirit in the human spirit, moving us toward communion with both Creator and creation.
"Conformation to the image of Christ by the indwelling of the Holy Spirit"
Reshaping(sanctification): conformation, reformation, and transformation

Spirituality
The universal human capacity to receive, reflect, and respond to the Spirit of God
The way we realize this spiritual potential
It involves conscious awareness of , and assent to, the work of the Spirit in us.
It points to a path - to choices of belief, value commitments, patterns of life, and practices ….

The character of the spiritual life
A process of transformation in the life of a believer: sanctification
A process of growing in gratitude, trust, obedience, humility, compassion, service, and joy(and      freedom)
Initiated and sustained by one who lives both within and beyond us
Not a task of self-reformation; no fix-it-yourself kit
Relationship between divine grace and human free will: e.g. a sailboat

The role of Spiritual disciplines
Practices that help us consciously to develop the spiritual dimension of our lives
Choose them only if we have a strong desire to grow
Simply means of grace
Garden tools: stones, weeds
Windows onto grace: transparent, opaque
Our motives are almost always mixed to some extent: so just begin practicing

Finding spiritual nurture: tradition
When we are severed from our roots, we are like plants without nourishment.
Scripture, creeds and confessions, writings of great theologians, mystics, and reformers from the early church to…

Hesitations, reservations, resistance


Share your own stories of spiritual yearning.

Rule of life

Communion with God. Body posture
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What is worship?

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What is worship?


Worship form the Heart
▫ Heart : the seat and center of the whole person, the core of personal character (thought, emotion, will, intuition, imagination); motives, desires, intentions
▫ Respond to God's glory and love with our entire being : feeling, intellect, body
▫ Joins inner reality with outward expression
The nee to Gather
- Individualism
- Rooted in community(cradle)
- Support personal disciplines
- Prayers of others
- The body of Christ
- Remember who and whose we are
- The Lord's table: a family of believers
- Rites and sacraments; the most fundamental of all christian practices
- The seasons of J 's life and the life of the early church
- A united front to overcome the corporate power of darkness, deception ,and destruction in this world
- Challenge: the physically disabled, homebound parishioners.

Keeping Sabbath
- Keep it holy: 'set apart' time to respond
- Sunday: "little Easter", the Lord's day
- Commanded to rest from ordinary labor and activity
- Relevant to contemporary life: need rest 
- To free us inwardly for full-hearted worship
- Mini-Sabbaths, extended Sabbaths

Worship as Problem
- A source of frustration
- Passive recipients of the limited worship forms of particular churches and leaders
- People: bored, preoccupied, uninterested in visitors, eager to escape from fellowship -> feel unaccepted
- The preached word: meaningless, dull, exaggerated, a heavy does of ideology, preacher's personal view, endless 
- anecdotes; speaks down, harangues, fails to connect to daily experiences -> feel weary
- No space for our prayers
- Non-sacramental tradition; Holy Communion
- Other sources of dissatisfaction


Practice for deepening worship
- Preparation: daily meditational, daily prayer; self-examination; weekly bible study with the same passage for sermon
- During worship : come 10' early; pray for worship; be prepared to hear God speak; listen to the words of hymns and Psalm; "Amen" in prayers; pray silently; bring individual concerns; freedom to respond; simple gestures; reflect symbols of faith.
- Beyond worship: talk your experiences and suggestions; feedback

For worship leaders
The overall integrity of the service is your responsibility
Scripture reading
The place of our physical senses
 How your people participate physically 
Sung Psalm responses, simple chants
Experience worship when leading it: ask S.O. …

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Relationship with God : journey from illusion to prayer

1/23/2014 0 comments

Relationship with God 

- journey from illusion to prayer



Meditation
-Psalm 119:9-16

 9 How can a young man keep his way pure? By guarding it according to thy word.
10 With my whole heart I seek thee; let me not wander from thy commandments!
11 I have laid up thy word in my heart, that I might not sin against thee.
12 Blessed be thou, O Lord; teach me thy statutes!
13 With my lips I declare all the ordinances of thy mouth.
14 In the way of thy testimonies I delight as much as in all riches.
15 I will meditate on thy precepts, and fix my eyes on thy ways.
16 I will delight in thy statutes; I will not forget thy word.

 11 hidden God's word in mind?

Illusion of immortality = idol
- Giving an eternal value to the things we own, the people we know, the plans we have, and the successes we "collect."
- Sentimentality : when we load our fellow human beings with immortal expectations, separation or the threat of it can release uncontrollable sentiments.
- Violence : when the hidden illusion of immortality becomes dominant in our intimate relationship, it does not take much to turn our desire to be loved into a lustful violence.
To reach a really nonviolent intimacy
-  we have to unmask our illusion of immortality, fully accept death as our human destiny and reach out beyond the limits of our existence to our God out of whose intimacy we are born.



The importance of prayer
- All that has been said about solitude and hospitality points to someone higher than our thoughts can reach, someone deeper than our hearts can feel and wider than our arms can embrace, someone under whose wings we can find refuge(Ps90) and in whose love we can rest, someone we call our G
- Prayer as a loving intimacy with G is the ground I which solitude and hospitality are rooted. 
- A spiritual life without prayer is like the gospel without Christ

How to pray
- "Make yourself a rule always to be with the Lord, keeping your mind in your heart and do not let your thoughts wander; as often as they stray, turn them back again and keep them at home in the closet of your heart and delight in converse with the Lord." - Theophan the Recluse(19C, Russia)

What prayer is…
- Gift: we have to learn how to pray while we can only receive it as a gift
- Breath: prayer is God's breathing in us, by which we become part of the intimacy of God's inner life, and by which we are born anew. 
- Presence and absence: the mystery of God's presence can be touched only by a deep awareness of his absence; e.g. lovers
- A patient waiting
Challenges
- Absurdities of life: a crisis of war, sudden poverty, illness or death
- We are reminded of our illusions and asked to convert our protest into prayer

Three rules for prayer
- A contemplative reading of the word of God; "we should be willing to let them penetrate into the most hidden corners of our heart"
- A silent listening to the voice of G: need quiet time in the presence of G: slowly, very slowly, we discover that the silent time makes us quiet and deepens our awareness of ourselves and God
- A trusting obedience to a spiritual guide: our G is greater than our own heart and mind, and too easily we are tempted to make our heart's desires and our mind's speculations into the will of G. - (mentor system)
The prayer of heart 
- The prayer of the heart requires first of all that we make G our only thought. 
- When we have localized in the center of our inner being the empty space in which our G-filled mind can descend and vanish, and where the distinctions between thinking and feeling, knowing and……

Prayer and community
- Prayer is the language of the Christian community
- When prayer is no longer its primary concern, and when its many activities are no longer seen and experienced as part of prayer itself, the community quickly degenerates into a club with a common cause but no common vocation.
- Without community, individual prayer easily degenerates into eccentric and eccentric behavior, but without individual prayer, the prayer of the community quickly becomes a meaningless routine.


Discussion
- Did you notice the illusion of immortality inside of you? What kinds?
- What did you newly learn about prayer from the reading?

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Christian Education : Contemplative Listening

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Christian Education : Contemplative Listening
- "A long, loving look at the real"(William McNamara)
- A full bodied, loving presence to the person before you, as well as to what is said and what as yet 
           remains unsaid.
- Seeks to honor the presence of the HS in the speaker and between the listener and speaker.
- Warm, loving, engaged, and prayerful silence

Bracketing
- Putting oneself aside to attend fully to the othre: self-forgetfulness
- Your own pearls of wisdom: "Let me tell you how I dealt with this same kind of thing-it worked really 
           well"
- Your own similar stories….

Contemplative responding: sounding box
-  I heard you say….
- "It seems that you…. 
- "I noticed that you….
- "there seems to be a pattern…..

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CHRISTIAN EDUCATION_Relationship with others_Henry Nouwn

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CHRISTIAN EDUCATION 

 Relationship with others

 Hostility
- Strangers : people who are unfamiliar, speak another language, have another color, wear a different type of clothes and live a life style different from ours, make us afraid and even hostile.
- Assumption: that strangers are a potential danger and that it is up to them to disprove it. 
- Back-stage hostility: doctors, priests, lawyers, social workers, psychologists and counselors.


 Hospitality in the Bible
- Ab received three strangers at Mamre(Gen. 18:1-15)
- The widow of zarephath offered food and shelter to Elijah(1kings 17:9-24)
- The two travelers to Emmaus invited the stranger(Luke 24:13-35)


 Henry Nouwn said….
- Friendship for the guest
- The freedom of the guest
- The creation of a free space where the stranger can enter and become a friend instead of an enemy
- Not a fearful emptiness but a friendly emptiness
- Not to change people, but to offer them space where change can take place 
- Stumbling blocks 1) occupation     : busy 
                               2) preoccupation : worries and concerns
- "we can offer a space where people are encouraged to disarm themselves, to lay aside their occupations and preoccupations and to listen with attention and care to the voices speaking in their own center."
Forms of hospitality
- Parents and children: children can ask questions without fear and can experiment with life without taking the risk of rejection
- Teachers and students: fearless communication with each other; revealing and affirming
- Healers and patients: diagnosis as knowing by listening their life stories


 Good Hosts
- Need boundaries and confrontation
- The poverty of mind: a learned ignorance; recognizing the incomprehensibility of the mystery of life 
- The poverty of heart : not filled with prejudices, worries, jealousness; humbleness
Discussion 
How do I experience hostility?
How do I experience hospitality?
Have I experienced the journey from hostility to hospitality? How?

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Bible Exegesis 6 tips

1/21/2014 0 comments
Bible Exegesis 6 tips 

 1) Translation

 2) Lexical analysis 

 3) Textual criticism

 4) Grammer / syntex issues - Gesaresu, Juon, William, Waltke and O'conner

 5) Structure - scene 1, 2, 3….

 6) Historical-literary context 

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