As a church, we deeply value the fellowship, the physical contact, and the corporate worship that happens when we are all gathered together in one place on Sunday mornings. The decision to temporarily transfer worship services from a public gathering to an on-line resource was not an easy one prior to recent developments. The diagram below illustrates that one of the key issues how fast the infection spreads. If the same amount of people are infected but at a much slower rate, it is less likely that our hospitals and other medical resources will be overwhelmed. One of the best ways of slowing the infection rate is reducing the number of large group gatherings.

Our church is committed to dealing with the ideas and movements that people are actually talking about in our day. The Enneagram (a way of understanding different personality types) is such a thing. Whether you are excited about the Enneagram or are concerned that this is one more navel-gazing distraction from the gospel at best, or dabbling in the occult at worst, this post is for you.

Self-awareness is crucial knowledge – not only for your own wellness but for the wellness of others AND your obedience to God. Consider this analogy – if you are unware of where you are physically, if you a driving a car at 60 miles an hour but you actually dont know which side of the road you are driving on – you are not only a danger to yourself, you are a danger to everyone else in your path. Similarly, if you lack self-awareness about your own personality and how other people experience you, you are not only going to have a more miserable life, you are going to make other people miserable as well. This means that you are violating one of the many dimensions of the command of Jesus “Love your neighbor as yourself.” If you are oblivious to how your decisions and behaviors impact your neighbor, you cannot love them well.

The Enneagram is not magic, it is not scripture, it is not the final word on what makes human beings tick. Rather it is one of many imperfect man-made tools available for trying to get a handle on the landscape of personalities. Like any other cultural fad, some people are WAY too much into the Enneagram, it can almost become a sub-culture of “my people” and that is no good at all. You can get so obssesed with trying to pamper or figure yourself out, or getting to the next “break through” that you become self-absorbed and so no worldly good to anyone else at all. At the other extreme, some people are highly skeptical of any sort of psychological insight, completely unwilling to being open to the possibility that their own current vision is not 20/20 – and that is no good either. That is simply foolishness and arrogance. If you think you have it all figured out, what need do you have of scripture ? What more does God’s Holy Spirit have to say to you ? How could God ever convict you or take you beyond the horizon of your current sight ?

Whatever the Enneagram means to other groups, and however it is used by other people, we can tell you exactly how we are using it here at Leverington. I remember sitting in a seminary class where the professor was sharing some things I found very helpful, but also saying other things I found downright heretical. After class I was frustrated (OK, angry), and I asked one of my African brothers how he dealt with it. He said “It is like eating fish – I eat the meat, but I spit out the bones.” This is the same stance we take towards the Enneagram – we are sharing the parts we think are helpful and true, which are in keeping with the teachings of scripture, and ignoring the rest. Our focus is not on this particular model, but rather on getting a handle on the wants, needs, desires, fears, and beliefs that actually motivate us. Each Sunday we begin with a biblical character that illustrates a certain tendency and then we end with scripture that can challenge and encourage us to be mastered by God rather than just the default ways of behaving we picked up somewhere along the way.

It is obvious that we are all tempted in different, sometimes opposite directions. One person thinks to much of themselves and needs to learn humility. Another person thinks too little of themselves and needs to learn how precious they are in God’s eyes. All of us drift away from Jesus in different directions. We will use the Enneagram to help us spot the particular ways each of us drift from Jesus and the life he would have for us. We hope you can join us! Please see the schedule on this website.

Are you feeling down and unmotivated, but you can’t put your finger on exactly why ? This podcast and daily exercise present a way to deal with the daily blues. If you are open to being a person of faith, this simple adjustment just might help!

Listen to the Podcast

Do the Daily Meditation

Show me other devotional resources

Our last FRED Talk deals with the hardest question of all:  If God is all powerful and all loving, how could God possibly allow the horrible things that happen in this world ?  Why doesn’t God stop them ?   This talk looks at the various ways people have tried to understand this dilemma and comes to a conclusion that is brutally honest and realistic yet still full of real hope that comes from the Maker of Heaven and Earth.

The Pornography Paradox:

Porn Is Simultaneously More Criticized and More Popular Than Ever

There are so many problems with porn; it’s hard to pick just one.

Some people think it sounds up-tight and old fashioned to make such a big deal about pornography.  But a pastor, I am deeply concerned about this problem that none of us wants to talk about.   I am convinced it is doing far more to damage our minds, our relationships, and even our ability to enjoy sex than than we realize.   We are talking about the potential for life long misery. Just this week I talked with a man (not from our church) that struggles with pornography.  He pointed to his head and said “The images are in here forever.  I have been emotionally distant from my wife for years because of it and I am racked with guilt.  It doesn’t go away.”  For either an audio or video podcast on this topic, google “Surf At Your Own Risk  John Ortberg.”  The following is from an article that was written by Halee Gray Scott in Christianity Today.[i]

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This spring, Utah became the first state to declare pornography a public health crisis, calling on businesses and educators to protect children from it. Around the same time, a Time Magazine cover story story reported that porn causes erectile dysfunction in young men whose minds have marinated in X-rated clips from the time they were teenagers.

Pornography trains the user to seek more extreme sexual experiences to receive the same satisfying flood of dopamine. It’s what researchers call the Coolidge effect—the prospect of a new sexual partner excites males (and sometimes females) so much that normal sexual activity becomes boring by comparison.

Time focused on how porn usage prevents couples from having healthy sex lives. That’s only the beginning of a troubling and growing amount of research and trends. We’re learning more and more about the lasting impact of living in a world wired to a porn-saturated Internet.

When I was a teenager in the 1990s, when the Internet was in its infancy and all cell phones were “dumb,” churches’ major concern regarding sexual matters was premarital sex. In 1993, teens had to steal magazines or VHS tapes to view porn; today, all they need is an Internet connection. While the evidence continues to reveal negative effects of this multibillion-dollar industry, few secular commentators dare to say what many of us see: our porn problem is a moral problem, with drastic consequences for individuals and communities.

Studies have linked porn consumption to depression and higher drug and alcohol consumption. Researchers in Germany found that men who watch porn showed a weaker connection between the part of the brain responsible for decision-making and the part of the brain involved in memory storage and information processing. A wave of “pornified” advertisements, depicting women in erotic poses selling everyday products, lead both men and women to view women’s bodies differently—and certainly not more humanly.

Aside from the neurological consequences, science has unpacked a plethora of sociological effects. Pornography negatively shapes romantic relationships; one study found that women in relationships with men who use porn report being less happy than those with men who abstain. Research in a dozen countries showed that men who viewed pornography when they were boys were less likely to form healthy relationships and more likely to think sexual harassment was acceptable.

At the same time that researchers are unearthing porn’s tolls, Americans have grown more tolerant of it. According to an extensive study conducted by Barna Group, only half of US adults and one-third of teens and young adults thought pornography was “wrong.” Teens and young adults believe not recycling is more immoral than using porn. Barna found porn use is up among Christians, too. Some 41 percent of Christian men ages 13–24 and 23 percent of Christian men ages 25 and up said they “frequently” used porn. (The figures were 5 percent and 13 percent for Christian women in those age groups.)

Porn isn’t just an individual moral problem. It strikes to the heart of what it means to be human.

Porn advocates argue that pornography feeds our innate and uncontrollable instincts, and that healthy adults should explore those instincts freely. Christians know better. We are right to exhort each other to make every thought captive to Christ and to live into our new life in him.

[i] Reprinted by permission from Christianity Today  July/August 2016.

I used to say “I am not religious.”
Now I say “Everyone is religious.”

You already are religious – and so is everyone else.
Being “religious” can’t just mean believing in God.
After all, you don’t need to believe in God to be a Buddhist,
but surely Buddhism is one of the great religions of the world.

Whether you are an atheist,  Buddhist, agnostic, Jew,  Moslem, Hindu,  Christian, or a “Nothing” –
you already have ideas about what is true about the world.
You already place your faith in something or some ideas or someone.

For example, you might believe the universe will exist tomorrow
and that it is wrong to bully other people.
Those are two parts of your “Word View” – how you view the world.  
Religion is just another word for “World View.”

And since everyone has opinions about the world,
everyone is already religious – even if they don’t think they are.
There is no magic divide between religious and non-religious people –
there are just people.

The question is – What do you believe is true,
and who or what do you put your faith in ?

Being a Christian is not about believing
your religion is right and everyone else is wrong…

Christianity says that all of us get some things wrong
and that the only one who gets everything right is God.

Christianity is not about saying  you have all the answers,
it’s about saying that God has all the answers.

Think of it this way…

Everyone is standing somewhere.   From time to time we may move around
– at one time we may be standing over there
and at another time we may be standing over here –
but everyone is standing somewhere.

Christianity is choosing to stand close to Jesus, choosing to stand with Jesus.
It’s not so much saying that you think other people are wrong
as much as saying that you think Jesus is right.

It’s not claiming you have everything figured out and will never change your
opinion, it’s saying you trust Jesus and you want to be loyal to him.

You have to stand somewhere.
It is not close minded to stand close to Jesus,
It’s not that you don’t want to be open to other peoples ideas,
you just choose to stand with Jesus while you do.   

But what about Science ?

Any one who thinks there is a conflict
between real science and real Christianity
either doesn’t understand Science, or Christianity, or both.  

The fact that the head of the human genome project
and many other great scientists through out history were and are Christians
makes this rather obvious.
Christians believe that Science helps us understand the natural world
but that by definition science is limited to knowledge about
the physical world.

 Thus it provides only a subset of what can be known.
It can’t “prove” some of the most important parts of life – like falling in love,
loyal friendships, or our meaning and purpose in the world.
The right equation is not Christianity OR Science,
it is Christianity PLUS Science.

Why do Christians think that Jesus
and Christianity are different than all the other options ?

Most religions of the world are primarily about Good Advice.
“Do this.  Don’t do that.” 

Christianity is primarily about Good News.  

It says that the God who made everybody on the planet and loves everybody on the planet
(regardless of what they call themselves)
came to earth to offer us a new way to live
not based on our ideas but based on his.

Jesus intentionally said things that would make him unpopular.

He was especially unpopular with people who wanted to be in charge
and people who were self-righteous.

( If you think you are fine just the way you are – that means you are declaring
yourself righteous – i.e. you are self-righteous ! )

Jesus says that all of us are precious
but that all of us do wrong things over and over again.

Doing wrong is like digging a hole – if you keep going and going,
you can dig a hole so big that you can get yourself in,
but you can’t get yourself out.

Jesus paid the price not only to get us out of the hole now
but also to carry us with him both in this life and after this life.

If a guy lost in the desert had no news of any hope he might give up and die.

But if he knew that a plane had already taken off
and was on it’s way to save him,
that good news would change everything for him.

Christians believe the plane is already on it’s way – Jesus has already risen
from the dead – and that good news changes the way we look at life.
But it can do more than that.  It can change us.  It can change our lives now and it can change our forever.  If you are interested in finding out more about Christianity, please contact our church office and we will send you resources, or line up someone you can talk to – whatever will be most helpful to you.

The world wide church is a beautiful tapestry of people from all walks of life who have discovered that there is more here than atoms.  There is a Maker of Heaven and Earth who knows you, loves you, and has a calling on your life.   To find out more about what our church believes, click here