Lent: Encounter God’s grace
Lent is the season in our church year when we focus on practices and exercises that will help strengthen our faith and draw us closer to God. But has our observance of Lent been too negative? Reframing Lenten practices may help us experience Lent anew.
Your download includes four pages of exercises and discussion questions, plus a copy of the article from The Lutheran.
Exercise 1: Lent is a downer?
Exercise 2: Love and fear of God
Exercise 3: Repent—that is, change
Exercise 4: The river of God's grace
Exercise 5: God's water 'works'
Exercise 6: More mystery
Exercise 7: Reframing disciplines
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What can a Lutheran learn from visiting a monastery?
Our lives in 21st-century North America couldn’t be more different from monastic living. Most of us live helter-skelter at breakneck speed, driven by too many demands to reasonably fit into a 24-hour day. Every waking hour we bombard our brains with information via texts, email, video, newspapers, books and magazines. We intoxicate our souls with entertainment — sports, movies, music and video games. We accelerate our tasks, settle for speed over quality and stressful accomplishment over quiet satisfaction. What can a Lutheran learn from visiting a monastery? Plenty!
Your download includes five pages of exercises and discussion questions, plus a copy of the article from The Lutheran.
Exercise 1: Stressed out
Exercise 2: Stop the information!
Exercise 3: The still, small voice of God
Exercise 4: Hospitality
Exercise 5: Scripture 'in your bones'
Exercise 6: More prayer and devotion
Exercise 7: Schedule a 'one-hour retreat'
Exercise 8: Discipline to be a disciple
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Economic disruption and an evolving church
We're still feeling the aftershocks from the near meltdown of our financial system in 2008. The economic storm has disrupted our way of life and devastated our institutions, including the church. Even before 2008, our denomination's three expressions (churchwide, synod and congregations) were facing slow decline. Now the downturn is forcing us to consider new ways of being and doing church.
Your download includes four pages of exercises and discussion questions, plus a copy of the article from The Lutheran.
Exercise 1: Your congregation’s trend
Exercise 2: Mission support
Exercise 3: Unemployment’s ripple
Exercise 4: Silo or network?
Exercise 5: The pastor’s role
Exercise 6: A church with purpose
Exercise 7: A mission church
Exercise 8: Your neighbor’s view
Exercise 9: The mother of invention
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Be it resolved…
Lose weight, read more books, eat healthily, get more sleep, stop smoking, spend more time with family, exercise regularly — these are all traditional resolutions Americans make for New Year's. While looking at ways to improve your life, be sure to include your faith and spiritual life.
Your download includes four pages of exercises and discussion questions, plus a copy of the article from The Lutheran.
Exercise 1: My New Year's resolutions
Exercise 2: Resolutions? Or wishful thinking?
Exercise 3: Personal vision
Exercise 4: Goals and resolutions
Exercise 5: Being more spiritual
Exercise 6: Seek, ask, knock
Exercise 7: 'Resolve' the greatest commandments
Exercise 8: Biblical resolutions
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Gifts to remember
Gifts are still one of the best ways to tell people you love them. But gifts come in a wide variety, don't they? Whether elaborate or simple, pricey or inexpensive, homemade or store-bought, their value reflects your feelings. Some of the best gifts are gestures or acts of service we do for one another.
Your download includes four pages of exercises and discussion questions, plus a copy of the article from The Lutheran.
Exercise 1: More blessed to give
Exercise 2: Favorite gifts
Exercise 3: What makes a gift?
Exercise 4: Christmas gift mania
Exercise 5: Christmas ads
Exercise 6: Cost of Christmas
Exercise 7: My gift = my love
Exercise 8: Not needed, unwanted
Exercise 9: It's the thought that counts
Exercise 10: The meaning of Christmas
Exercise 11: Alternative gifts
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Save the date
Christmas! Faithful Christians wait for it every year, and yet the commercial interests of the world push the preparations earlier and earlier, and the emphasis is more and more on shopping. Do we follow the leadings of the world? With our lives, yes, but Christians with our worship can also reclaim the power of the Christmas story: how God came to us to rescue us.
Your download includes five pages of exercises and discussion questions, plus a copy of the article from The Lutheran.
Exercise 1: Christmases past
Exercise 2: The meaning of Christmas
Exercise 3: Priorities
Exercise 4: Commercial Christmas
Exercise 5: Christmas spending
Exercise 6: Worship
Exercise 7: Have yourself a radical little Christmas
Exercise 8: Reclaim Advent
Exercise 9: Reclaim the Christmas season
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Getting creative
Even before the economic meltdown of 2008, many Lutheran churches were having difficulty meeting budgets and maintaining membership, but the continued recession has certainly worsened matters. It's challenging us to find new and creative ways to survive, first, and then to thrive.
Your download includes four pages of exercises and discussion questions, plus a copy of the article from The Lutheran.
Exercise 1: The 'good old days'
Exercise 2: Vital signs
Exercise 3: Community shifts
Exercise 4: Coping with stress
Exercise 5: Mission minded
Exercise 6: Your church's purpose
Exercise 7: Community anchors
Exercise 8: Congregational collaboration
Exercise 9: Asset-based ministry
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It takes a community to raise a pastor
Like a fruitful plant that rises from fertile soil, good church leaders rise from congregations rich in spirit, worship, community and education. Such a church can help encourage, nurture and equip their gifted sons and daughters to become pastors, associates in ministry, diaconal ministers and other leaders in the church. How is your congregation doing?
Your download includes six pages of exercises and discussion questions, plus a copy of the article from The Lutheran.
Exercise 1: Marks of a leader
Exercise 2: Duties of a pastor
Exercise 3: Who, me?
Exercise 4: 'Lord, let our church be good soil'
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Living with words
Writers capture the deepest expressions of the human experience. Poets distill in spare words the essence of what it means to be alive. Novelists explore the human condition by creating characters and a world in which they live. Nonfiction writers gather important information and compile it in understandable, illuminating ways. Each writer brings a perspective to bear in his or her work, and Lutheran authors can speak both of the Christian faith and our relationship with God.
Your download includes four pages of exercises and discussion questions, plus a copy of the article from The Lutheran.
Exercise 1: The Bible is art
Exercise 2: The poetry of Psalms
Exercise 3: Write your own psalm
Exercise 4: Autobiographies
Exercise 5: The story of a searcher
Exercise 6: Write your faith story
Exercise 7: Stories of faith
Exercise 8: Faith writers
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Harnessing the force of godparents
Remember those children’s stories where the “fairy godmother” flies into a youth’s life and magically solves all her problems? Real life godparents have the power to work miracles — it’s called love, prayer, faith in God and relationship. Though the job is ceremonial for far too many godparents, the adults in these trusted roles can play a big part in the lives of the children for whom they take a sacred oath.
Your download includes three pages of exercises and discussion questions, plus a copy of the article from The Lutheran.
Exercise 1: Godparent memories
Exercise 2: Sacred oaths of godparents
Exercise 3: We are godparents all
Exercise 4: Peer-to-peer godparents
Exercise 5: Sacred oath and covenant
Exercise 6: Job description for a godparent
Exercise 7: The ministry of godparenting
Exercise 8: Adult mentors needed?
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