This Week's news - July 30, 2011

It's been a hot week in Wilmore.  The temps are high as well as the humidity.  I returned from a run today and decided that I only needed a bar of soap to go with all the sweat.  No need for a shower, just a bar of soap.

On the 25th Aravis turned 6.  She's been enjoying a week of celebrations which have included two birthday cakes, with another one on the way tonight, a tea set, a barbie radio, some cash, and a movie.  Here's a couple of pics from her birthday fun.

Aravis & her tea cup.

Aravis has acquired the skill of crossing her eyes.  She has fun asking people if they can cross their eyes.

Aravis, Kyrie & Elizabeth Brown had a blast dressing up.  Good laughs.

I was blessed to catch up with a couple of old colleagues, Daryl Diddle & Dwight Winter.  They are both serving at the Wilmore Free Methodist Church and facing the many challenges of ministry with much joy.

The reading for classes continues.  I really enjoyed Richard Foster's, Streams of Living Water:  Essential Practices from the Six Great Traditions of Christian Faith.  Foster is an ecumenist and in that endeavor he writes about Christian Tradition in an unconventional way.  Instead of speaking in terms of Christian Denominations and their contributions to the world he has noticed that Christ followers from every branch, East-West/Protestant-Catholic/Mennonite-Lutheran etc., tend to bring deeper emphases than their denominational labels might suggest.  Foster suggests six strong traditions within the community that follows after Jesus; Contemplative, Holiness, Charismatic, Social Justice, Evangelical, and Incarnational.  He tells stories of biblical, historical and recent figures in each tradition and then speaks to the traditions general framework.  His goal is to help the Church celebrate these varied traditions like the varied gifts of the Spirit.  His work is fruitful to the soul.  A character I discovered an appreciation for was William Joseph Seymour.  He was the instrument God used to begin what we call the Charismatic movement in the 20th Century.  Along with being good for the soul, Foster covers a wide swath of Church History with grand passion.  This would be a great work for a Small Group or Sunday School class to study.

This last Tuesday the 2011 Beeson Pastor cohort  visited a missiological community in Lexington called Communality.  I plan to write about that visit soon.  I can say about that visit, that God is blowing across my mind and heart in ways that I think of as "a good disturbance."