Step 2: Finding your anchors
The great thing about church is that it puts on lots of things and should be giving you what you need to maintain your faith.
1) Find Gurus: A guru (for this exercise) is just a wise Xn person. They don’t have to be someone you know personally so authors (books, blogs, podcasts etc…) historical figures can all be guru’s. In some sense gurus take place of pastors.
2) Find Rituals: This can be as simple as going for a prayer walk once a week, reading your bible every Friday afternoon or whatever. In some sense Rituals take place of going to church every week.
3) Find Fellow Travellers: Get together and talk with about faith and spirituality with other people in similar places to you.
4) Find Parachurch organisations: These can be great places to live out your faith, wether it’s feeding the homeless running kids camps or whatever your passion is. These are also great places to meet fellow travellers.
If there is any interest I'll expand on these in future posts...
The great thing about church is that it puts on lots of things and should be giving you what you need to maintain your faith.
1) Find Gurus: A guru (for this exercise) is just a wise Xn person. They don’t have to be someone you know personally so authors (books, blogs, podcasts etc…) historical figures can all be guru’s. In some sense gurus take place of pastors.
2) Find Rituals: This can be as simple as going for a prayer walk once a week, reading your bible every Friday afternoon or whatever. In some sense Rituals take place of going to church every week.
3) Find Fellow Travellers: Get together and talk with about faith and spirituality with other people in similar places to you.
4) Find Parachurch organisations: These can be great places to live out your faith, wether it’s feeding the homeless running kids camps or whatever your passion is. These are also great places to meet fellow travellers.
If there is any interest I'll expand on these in future posts...
3 comments:
how are these 4 things different to 'church' Chris?
Hi Hamo, they're kind of not.
After having more conversations with people who chucked in church but not their faith I thought I'd post something that would split 'church' up into little bits (which I feel are the good bits of church) and look at ways of finding these things outside of a regular church structure. I think people still find it really hard to be Xn without going to church. I was hoping to start to address this somehow.
As flattering as it has been to be at parties and other places and have people introduced to me as a disenfranchised Xns and therefore someone who'd enjoy talking to me, I've started to feel the need to reconstruct the Xn faith in a meaningful way outside of the bounds of a typical church, none the less as church is a an expression the same Xn faith the 4 things I’ve come up with will look a bit churchy.
Hi Katherine,
A mentor can be a guru but a guru isn't necessarily a mentor. Mentors are great but not always easy to find which would make a great hurdle if added to the list.
Also if the "ouch...disenfranchised christian. poor kid." was about me. I consider myself a disenfranchised church goer rather than disenfranchised Xn. :)
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