Staff Retreat

On Tuesday our church's staff went on a retreat at the Still Water Centre in Toowong that involved fasting, solitude and silence, followed by some serious feasting and celebration.  I really valued the opportunity to share such a significant experience with my colleagues outside of a work environment.  

The following lines from Leonard Cohen's 'Anthem' were quoted by the facillitator and have prompted much reflection:

Ring the bells that still can ring

Forget your perfect offering

There's a crack in everything

That's how the light gets in.

Imagine

After just under three years at Westside Church of Christ, I'm now at Arana Hills Church of Christ. The two churches are very different so any comparisons would be unfair to at least one of the churches, and are therefore something I won't bother with. God has been good to me in the past and continues to be good to me into the future, so the move has made me both sad and hopeful; it has been difficult, but worthwhile.

For all of February the usual ministries of the church have been suspended so that as many people as possible can particpate as much as possible in the church-wide Imagine 07 conference. I was mentionaing to a Catholic colleague today that this has had much the same pilgrimage function as Lent: to (1) simplify life in order to (2) seek God's guidance and begin to (3) undertake a journey of transformation.

This reminded me of a recent e-mail article I read from Christianity Today, suggesting that the growing importance of Lent to non-Liturgical traditions is in recovering the aspect of imagination. The article (I'll try to find a link) suggested that for many, imagination has bee crowded out by the over-emphasis on pragmatic technique. This supports a short quote (attributed to Marva Dawn) from Mike Erre's The Jesus of Suburbia: Have We Tamed the Son of God to Fit Our Lifestyle?:

The most critical issue facing Christians is not abortion, pornography, the disintegration of the family, moral absolutes, MTV, drugs, racism, sexuality, or school prayer. The critical issue today is dullness. We have lost our astonishment. The Good News is no longer life changing. It is life enhancing. Jesus doesn't change people into wild-eyed radicals anymore. He changes them into nice people.