The Boar’s Head Tavern

“The Church must be free to be poor in order to minister among the poor. The Church must trust the Gospel enough to come among the poor with nothing to offer the poor except the Gospel, except the power to discern and the courage to expose the Gospel as it is already mediated in the life of the poor…When the Church has the freedom itself to be poor among the poor, it will know how to use what riches it has. When the Church has that freedom, it will know also how to minister among the rich and powerful. When the Church has that freedom, it will be a missionary people again in all the world. When the Church has the freedom to go out into the world with merely the Gospel to offer the world, then it will know how to use whatever else it has–money and talent and buildings and tapestries and power in politics–as sacraments of its gift of its own life to the world, as tokens of the ministry of Christ.” -William Stringfellow (HT to Nate Spencer)

February 27, 2006

Throwing the baby out with the bath water

Lent saved me. Actually God used Lent to get my attention and focus on Him. In 1996 I knew I was living far from God. Something was stirring within me and Lent was soon approaching. In my dorm room I made a bargain with God. I laugh at myself now that I was trying to bargain with God but it was an honest and sincere effort on my part. I prayed �God I have been living far from you. I will dedicate this season of Lent to you. Just take my life over.� What is awesome is that he did and I have not turned back since. I grew up in the PCUSA. We recognized and somewhat followed the liturgical calendar. Now it makes me sick because every year I have to explain to my Baptist friends what Lent is. Michael, Wyman and other Baptist can correct me if I am wrong but I believe us Baptist�s have made too much of an effort to rid ourselves of the Christian calendar because we want to distance ourselves from Catholicism.
Lent is a great time to focus, fast, reflect, sacrifice, and renew our commitment to Christ.

Posted by: aaron arledge @ 10:05 pm | Trackback | Permalink

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On February 7th, 2002, a diverse group of Christians started a wide-ranging weblog conversation. Today, that conversation continues and you're invited to pull up a chair. Welcome to the Boar's Head Tavern.

“It is better to think of church in the ale-house than to think of the ale-house in church.” - Martin Luther

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"The things I thought were so important - because of the effort I put into them - have turned out to be of small value. And the things I never thought about, the things I was never able to either to measure or to expect, were the things that mattered." --Thomas Merton
"Jesus came to raise the dead. He did not come to teach the teachable; He did not come to improve the improvable; He did not come to reform the reformable. None of those things works." --Robert Farrar Capon

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C S Lewis
Another guy who could really put it away

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February 27, 2006

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