St. Andrew’s own, Meghan Smith, daughter of Mary & Kurtz Smith (Kurtz is our Men’s Ministry Leader), was officially announced as the first ever Levi’s Girl. Well done, Meghan, congratulations!!

Here’s what’s on my mind as I sail into sumer vacation:

What constructive and distinctly Christian offering do I/you/we bring to the emerging cultural conversation?

A few weeks ago, after worship, one of our members gave me an article entitled, “Love in the time of hooking up.” The article, descriptive of emerging young adult practice, observes, “for young people, the trend is sex first, dating (maybe) later.” Then it wonders, “is this healthy?”

What do you say beyond “no?”

Seriously, what would you say? What framework of faith would you draw upon to have a conversation – in a pluralistic society – about the destructive consequences associated with this practice? Where would you start? What resources might you draw upon or point to? And here’s a further challenge – changing sexual mores and norms are simply one of many aspects of our changing culture.

For some Christians I know it’s all too overwhelming and the temptation to retreat is too great and so they’ve withdrawn. For some Christians the temptation to become legalistic moralists is too great and so when they engage the engagement tends to be judgmental, detached and somewhere in the “conversation” they lose sight of the fact they’re speaking to someone created in God’s image and for whom Christ died, and they alienate others.

Some Christians, recognizing their own sinful condition and the hope afforded them in the Gospel, wish to share their story of encounter with the One who knows everything about them and yet did not condemn, but lack a language of faith with which to speak.

So what do you do?  What do we, as a community of faith, do? Where do we find wisdom in this age?  How do we attain to maturity?

Discuss.

to the next generation:

What do you think?

Mary from St. Andrew’s Church on Vimeo.

Here’s where I’ll be for the next few days as part of the leadership team:

A few weeks ago, at Christendom College, Dr. Charles Rice, professor emeritus, Notre Dame Law School, gave the commencement address.  It was magnificent.  On a side note, our (St. Andrew’s) Financial Controller’s son was the Valedictorian at Christendom and his address followed Dr. Rice’s – how’d you like to do that?

Here a snip from Dr. Rice’s address:

So what can I tell you? This is a time of crises. The economy is a mess, the culture is a mess, the government is out of control. And, in the last three years, Notre Dame lost 21 football games. But this is a great time for us to be here, especially you graduates of this superbly Catholic college. This is so because the remedy for the general meltdown today is found only in Christ and in the teachings of the Catholic Church. Let’s talk bluntly about our situation and what you can do about it.

Here’s the rest.

Last week I spent a few days with a bunch of 40-something year old men who, by-and-large, haven’t given a whole lot of thought to the state and quality of their spirtual lives for quite a while.  Almost to a man they had checked out of church.  ”Irrelevant,” “offers answers to questions I’m not asking,” “everything in my life – and the world - has changed – except the church, it’s locked in a different age.”  I would suggest that the stagnant nature of most churches that these men had rejected is the primary reason (surpassing even theological liberalism)  for the decline in church participation – and, seeing Jesus and church as a package deal, the baby and the bath water go out the door.   In a conversation with a couple of the guys one of them asked me if I really believed the Bible.  I told them I did – I believe the Bible, I believe the table of contents, I believe the maps, I believe the whole thing.  I told them that more than anything else Scripture has shaped my spiritual life; reading Scripture, studying Scripture, thinking through Scripture and memorizing Scripture – I have learned to love it all. 

John Piper writing about the topic of memoring Scritpure noted that one of the reasons Martin Luther came to his great discovery in the Bible of justification by faith alone was that in his early years in the Augustinian monastery he was influenced to love Scripture by Johann Staupitz. Luther devoured the Bible in a day when people earned doctorates in theology without even reading the Bible. Luther said that his fellow professor, Andreas Karlstadt, did not even own a Bible when he earned his doctor of theology degree, nor did he until many years later (Richard Bucher, “Martin Luther’s Love for the Bible“). Luther knew so much of the Bible from memory that when the Lord opened his eyes to see the truth of justification in Romans 1:17, he said, “Thereupon I ran through the Scriptures from memory,” in order to confirm what he had found.

So here are a few reasons why so many have viewed Scripture memorization as so essential to the Christian life:

Read the rest.

We will have the pleasure of having Vicky Beeching join us for a few days this summer.  And, rather than a one-off concert she will lead us in worship for the New Wine USA Summer Conference (June 24-26) as well as offering a workshop on the subject of worship/worship leadership.

For more information on the New Wine USA Summer Conference follow this link.

For more information on Vicky Beeching, enjoy:

Why don’t you join us for this great event?