Barnabas File

“You also, like living stones, are being built into a spiritual house   to be a holy priesthood, offering spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God through Jesus Christ.” --  1 Peter 2:5, NIV To begin a recent Sunday morning Bible study on this passage, I gave rocks of various sizes and shapes to class members and asked them to reflect on these questions:   ·         What is unique about the rock in your hand? ·         How can a rock become a stone? ·         What can stones be used for? ·         Did you ever think of yourself as a "living stone"? Each person is important in the Kingdom of God with enormous potential to bless others.  The author of the passage in 1 Peter compares believers to “living stones” who are becoming part of the household of God, a holy priesthood.  Each i...

Our Sunday Bible study class is doing a quick overview of Brian McLaren’s book, The Great Spiritual Migration:     How the World’s Largest Religion is Seeking a Better Way to be Christian (McLaren likes long titles).     There are a number of interesting and challenging ideas in the book.     Last week we took a look at McLaren’s challenge to make the theological migration to God 5.0. The author suggests that as we mature from infant to child to adolescent to adult, our concept of God grows and develops with time and experience. Of course, God does not change but our perception of God does.  He suggests several stages to this process: God 1.0--the God you can trust, the way an infant trusts a parent or caregiver.     This God meets our every need. God 2.0--the God who encourages you to be polite and generous and play well with others. This is the Golden Rule God that we hope our children and grandchildren learn about in Sun...

Are you part of a nice church or a great church?     A nice church is where everyone gets along because we never really discuss anything of substance.     We value community and fellowship and fear upsetting what we see as a delicate equilibrium in the congregation.     Nice churches will do well but they will never be great churches because they are unwilling to put the effort into dealing with major issues and needs. Let me be honest up front--I don’t like conflict.  On the various conflict management inventories, I usually score high on avoid and/or accommodate.  Conflict makes me tired and frustrated.  I have learned, however, that very little progress is made if we continue to avoid needed discussions and hard decisions. Speed Leas wrote a classic book titled Discover Your Conflict Management Style [i] .  He includes an inventory to identify your default style or styles of dealing with conflict. ...