Christian identity

I’ve been thinking. What does it mean to be a Christian on an everyday level? When you’re washing the dishes, when you’re looking after children, when you’re driving to and from work, when you’re hanging the laundry, when you’re trying to save your pennies – how is life different because you’re in relationship with God? Because it has to matter on that level, on the ordinary level, or it can’t matter at all.

For many of us, our identity as Christians lies in our ministry role, or in our theological position. But who is Christ and who are you when that is taken away, or takes a back seat?
These questions have been raised because I’ve found myself in a whole new context – a new province, new church, job hunting, making new friends, setting up a new house. I’ve finished theological studies (for now) and I don’t have a ministry position. It’s easy to pine for those things, for the familiar ways in which my Christian life made sense and had purpose. So it’s easy to think that just getting involved more in church again will make the problem go away. But I think I could be missing out on an opportunity to explore the Christian life on a different plane.

These are my questions:

How is God involved in the daily rhythms of ordinary life?
What’s so great about salvation in this life, in this house, in this family?
How do I experience the life of God in Christ in the mundane?
Should I try to look beyond the mundane or look deeper into the mundane?
What does it really mean to have a relationship with God? What is prayer?
Can I even make sense of the Christian life as an individual?


~lg

The Spirit and the physical

What is the relationship between the Holy Spirit and the physical world? Are the two opposed? Does one get in the way of the other? Does the Spirit work through the material realm or in spite of it? Do we see the Spirit as an invisible force, a supernatural airstream moving through the spiritual realm? Or is the Spirit involved in matter, bodies, the stuff of life on earth? Does the Spirit lift us up out of material weakness, or does he sanctify our material existence? Are these either/or questions or both/and questions?

Where have Pentecostals typically located the Spirit’s presence?

I think these pneumatological questions are also related to how we view the church, or our ecclesiology. If the Spirit is a co-creator of the church, the one who builds us into Christ’s body, the Spirit who indwells and empowers the church, then what we believe about the Spirit affects what we believe about who we are and what our mission is.

~lg

the way in

The way into Christ is through a sacred door of body and blood, broken open by the Spirit’s breath.
Hear him whisper from the cross, through his pain and through his loss, “come up here.” Through his broken hands and side we may find a place to hide; plunge your soul in blood and water, sinners become sons and daughters. The only way up is in, into the sacrifice, into scarlet love, crawling into Christ’s heart through his brokenness. You are in him and he is in you when you eat and drink, by faith entering the narrow path through Calvary’s splinters. Here is intimacy, here is love.


~lg

So what are we afraid of?

When Pentecostals say they don't like tradition, what do they mean? What are they getting at? Because I think there is a valid point in all the reactionism, and values worth holding on to.

So what are we afraid of? Some ideas:
- Formalism
- Letting traditions take the place of true faith and a real relationship with God
- Getting weighed down by detailed arguments over side issues
- Obscuring the core message of the gospel
- Becoming content with the status quo
- Not giving the Spirit freedom to blow where He wills
- Works righteousness


Now these may or not be valid fears when it comes to the idea of Tradition, but I think these are the kind of objections that come to mind.

Other ideas?


~lg