The Quest for Holiness of Heart and Life

Welcome to the seventh year of the current millenium (go ahead, count them)! It has been awhile since I posted on my blog...I appologize to my regular readers.

This first offering of the new year was not written by me, but by the pastor of an emergent church in San Diego, California, Ken Hensley and is reprinted here with his permission. I came across it recently and was intrigued by what it had to say about the "feeling tone" of church. It points out for me the disparity between the intimacy that we seek in Christian community and the difficulty in finding it in the mainstream churches. Please comment on this article, I think we can get a good conversation going.

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We all have dreams. They are the things that motivate us, give us courage, and provide purpose to our lives. We often hear people talk about "God's Grand Plan". Too often we frame the vision of that plan in terms that are so esoteric as to make it unreal and not part of our day-to-day existence. The following reflection puts a different spin on "God's Dream".

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As Christians confront the challenge of the dynamism and relevance of the Church in the Post Modern era new forms of being community are being experimented with. Some of these experiments have been more successful than others. As we continue to "push the envelope" of how the church could be structured in the most effective way it is important to keep before us why the Christian community exists. This article suggests that the mission of the church needs to be thought of in the context of a "community of memory".

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If your life is as hectic as mine you often say to yourself, "stop the merry-go-round, I want to get off". Every minute seems to be a mad dash from one place or activity to another - often appearing random and pointless. At the end of the day we often ask ourselves, "what did I accomplish of meaning today?" We need a break. Within the Judeo-Christian tradition we have been provided a respite from the dizzying schedules we keep, if only we take the time to appropriate it. It has been said that the great gift of Judaism to Western civilization is the concept of sabbath. This issue of Basin and Towel explores that concept. Relax and enjoy...

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If you have been reading these little monographs you might be asking yourself, "why are these entitled Basin and Towel? What is the significance of that name?". The following article explains the meaning of the symbolism of basin and towel.

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