parables of a prodigal world

I ran across this interesting chart of a 6-stage journey of a Christian life. It kind of rings true. Like any other attempt to condense massive truths into bite-size nuggets (like doctrine, for example), the truth is not in the condensed nugget itself. The beauty of the nugget is how well it encapsulates the larger, sometimes-inexplicable truth itself. In this case, its not that we're always either in one stage or the other. Sometimes, one facet of our life is in one stage and another somewhere else. But I do get the sense that, for the most part, most of us can identify which stage we're at, by and large. Is that definitive enough? So, what stage are you at? Grace and Peace, Raffi P.S. If you have trouble navigating through the chart below, you can see the full-page version here . stages-of-faith - Upload a Document to Scribd Read this document on Scribd: stages-of-faith

Have you ever given any serious thought to the usually selfish reasons for our initial turning to God? It's an issue that many Christians don’t contemplate much, but many non-Christians do—the correct perception that most people who have come to accept Christianity do so at a time in their lives when they have little to loose, when they are at the end of their rope. Non-Christians see this fact as evidence that Christianity is for the weak, the desperate, and the broken. In a sense, a very important sense, they are right. The reason that we Christians tend to downplay this reality is that it reflects poorly on us, back within the standards of the real world where weakness, desperation, and brokenness are states to be pitied, to be avoided at all cost. They are states to be pitied and avoided at all costs. But that’s not the point. The fact that God comes to meet us at the precise moments when we selfishly ask Him to save us from our own demise is a fact that should be relished, sh...

David Dunbar, president of Biblical Seminary, has written a pretty significant article (judging by the all the talk it's generating around the blogosphere) called Missional, Emergent, Emerging: A Traveler's Guide . Scot McKnight has commented on it over at Jesus Creed , as has Steve Knight over at Emergent Village , regarding its discussion of the terms "Emergent" and "Emerging." Knight's post caught my attention. In it, he says, quoting the Dunbar piece: "Dunbar encouragingly writes, '[Emergent leaders] are quite explicit in their agenda to find a middle way between what they regard as the extremes of the 20th century church: liberalism and fundamentalism. Both ‘isms’ were responses to modernity—and postmodernity has undermined both. ... I think what the emergents desire is possible and I hope they will succeed. At this point the signals are mixed.'” There may, in fact, be some Emergent leaders who are trying to find a middle ground betwe...

Michael Spencer has an open thread at Jesus Shaped Spirituality on the issue of what Jesus would think about rising gas prices . It's a complicated question. And I'm not necessarily talking about the economic/social/political complexity of the gas price issue. Yes, that's complex as well. But what I'm talking about is the specific theological complexity of the question "What would Jesus think about X?" In one sense, and in a very important one, Jesus would think nothing about it. The minute we ask, about any issue, "What would Jesus think?" or "What would Jesus do?," we're taking a very dangerous step. The danger lies in taking Jesus out of the context in which He has already lived, acted, thought and died. Jesus was sent to a particular people in a particular stage in history to perform a particular task in a particular manner which would entail particular types of consequences in order to bring about a particular result. We do not l...