Alpha to Beta

Keith Miraldi, Dave Runion and I are in CA for the wrap up of the alpha phase of the Monvee project and the launching of the beta phase. The Monvee people are footing the bill for this trip. :-) Monvee is a spiritual formation approach and online based-program that's in the development stage. (I wrote about Monvee her e or go to Monvee.) We have been one of twenty-five churches in the alpha phase that included Saddleback and Menlo Park (where John Ortberg now pastors). On election day about twenty of our staff spent the day with the Monvee team on our stie as part of the alpha, development phase.

Ortberg is one of our speakers here and Dallas Willard will be with us too. They are two of my favorite writers, and Willard is one of the most recognized voices in the world on spiritual formation. So this is quite a treat, and it's exciting to be a part of all this from the early stages. The roll out date is this fall, if all goes as planned, so we'll be launching it at Five Oaks at that time.

Anyway, here's the view from Keith and Dave's room at the hotel (mine faces a parking lot). Unfortunately, we're inside except for breaks just about the whole time we're here. John Ortberg is the one in the middle in the last picture below. In that same picture is Eric Parks, the guy who came up with the whole Monvee idea and is leading the development of it.
Keith Miraldi, Dave Runion and I are in CA for the wrap up of the alpha phase of the Monvee project and the launching of the beta phase. The Monvee people are footing the bill for this trip. :-) Monvee is a spiritual formation approach and online based-program that's in the development stage. (I wrote about Monvee here or go to Monvee.) We have been one of twenty-five churches in the alpha phase that included Saddleback and Menlo Park (where John Ortberg now pastors). On election day about twenty of our staff spent the day with the Monvee team on our stie as part of the alpha, development phase.

Ortberg is one of our speakers here and Dallas Willard will be with us too. They are two of my favorite writers, and Willard is one of the most recognized voices in the world on spiritual formation. So this is quite a treat, and it's exciting to be a part of all this from the early stages. The roll out date is this fall, if all goes as planned, so we'll be launching it at Five Oaks at that time.

Anyway, here's the view from Keith and Dave's room at the hotel (mine faces a parking lot). Unfortunately, we're inside except for breaks just about the whole time we're here. John Ortberg is the one in the middle in the last picture below. In that same picture is Eric Parks, the guy who came up with the whole Monvee idea and is leading the development of it.

 

Listening to a Sermon as a Spiritual Discipline

Craig Brian Larson has written an interesting article on sermons and spiritual disciplines. Here are some highlights:

• Read books on spiritual formation and you will be hard pressed to find anyone who lists listening to the preaching of God's Word as a first-order spiritual discipline.
• Contrast this with the important description of the early church's spiritual disciplines in Acts 2:42–47....In addition, the importance that the apostles placed on preaching (in passages like Acts 6:1–4; 1 Tim 4:13; 5:17; 2 Tim 4:1–3) suggests that listening to preaching was a first-order spiritual discipline. Certainly the leaders of the Reformation felt that way...
• Good preaching rescues us from our self-deceptions and blind spots...done in community, covering texts and topics outside of our control.
• This is a uniquely corporate discipline that the church does together as a community, building up individuals and the community at the same time.
• ...a uniquely embodied, physical act. It literally puts us into the habit of having "ears that hear." 
• Good preaching does what most Christians are not gifted, trained, or time-endowed to do: interpret a text in context, distill the theological truths that are universally true, and apply those truths in a particular time and place to particular people in a particular church—all this with the help of resources informed by 2,000 years of the Church's study that average Christians do not own. 
• ...it is doable by the masses.
• ...people don't naturally know how to listen to a sermon. They listen for the wrong reasons: to be entertained (Mark 6:20), to justify their wrong actions (2 Timothy 4:3), or to earn God's favor (John 5:39). They seek knowledge rather than transformation (Romans 12:1–2; 1 Corinthians 8:1–2). They listen without paying careful attention (Mark 4:23–25). They listen without prayer (James 1:5). They listen without an awareness of the deceitfulness (James 1:22) and hardness of their own hearts (Mark 8:1–21), or with an attitude of selective obedience (Matthew 23:23–24). They are not regularly warned of the dangers of a rebellious attitude (Hebrews 3:7–16) and unresponsive hearing (James 1:21–25).
• ...little attention has been paid to training preachers to train Christians to listen properly to a sermon.
• Transformation through preaching depends 100 percent on God, 100 percent on the preacher, and 100 percent on the effort of the listener.