New Church Perspective is 1 Year Old

A year ago, on January 1st, an online magazine called New Church Perspective (www.newchurchperspective.com) launched. The goal was to publish a new essay every Friday and now, 52 Fridays later, 52 essays have been published, by 36 different authors.

If you want to get a sense for the range of topics covered, I'd recommend looking at the digest posts that take 10 essays at a time and provide short blurbs about each of them. Here are the digests for essays 1-10, 11-20, 21-30, 31-40, and 41-52.

Towards the end of the year New Church Perspective expanded beyond just publishing weekly essays. On October 15th the editors announced the launch of a podcast called ChapmanCast and a column called Meditate. Here are the blurbs about each of these:

ChapmanCast – A New Church podcast about religion and life, featuring discussions and interviews. New episodes publish weekly on Wednesdays and last for about 15-20 minutes. The ChapmanCast is hosted by Pearse Frazier and guests. (Subscribe in iTunes)

Meditate – Meditating on the Word is a powerful way to expand your spiritual life and deepen your awareness of the Lord in your daily living. This column is updated weekly with passages I have chosen to meditate on and the insights that have resulted. I invite you also to meditate on the Word and share your insights with the readers of New Church Perspective.... What is here is shared with humility and I hope it may be a blessing to you. Chelsea Odhner, Editor

You can subscribe to any or all of these features for free by email or using a feed reader.

As Brian Smith, the Editor-in-Chief, puts it, New Church Perspective is intended to be “A Collaborative Adventure for the Sharing and Spreading of the Lord's Wisdom and Love” and there are lots of ways to get involved. One of the best ways is to submit an essay. The requirements are not too demanding (even very short articles are welcome) and the process can be pretty rewarding. Here's an excerpt from an invitation to write from Brian:

I'm writing to you now to invite you to commit to writing one (or more essays) in 2011. Writing is not always easy, but I believe it is always a valuable process. There is a value to the type of thought-leadership which trained priests can offer to spiritual communities. But there is also tremendous value in the musings, questions, conclusions, research and reflections which people from all walks of life come to in their efforts to understand God and live a heavenly life.

...

We only have three guidelines: be respectful of sacred scripture and the Writings of Emanuel Swedenborg, address spirituality/religion in some way and avoid commenting on individuals and current, specific decisions in the denominational organizations of the New Church.

Even if writing is not for you at this point, please share this invitation with anyone who you think may be interested by the opportunity. We are not looking for orthodoxy so much as we are looking for the heartfelt.

I hope that that whets your appetite to write, read, listen or otherwise participate in some form.

P.S. If you check back on Friday, you'll be able to read an essay that I wrote.

General Church Websites Get Shareable

A couple of General Church websites have recently gotten features that they should have had for a while—sharing tools and subscription tools.

If you go to newchurch.org, and you scroll down to the bottom of the homepage you'll see that you can now subscribe to the news feed, either by RSS or email. That means you'll be updated whenever there's new content on the homepage of newchurch.org. And if you click on one of the items, you'll see that you can now share it with other people via email, Facebook, Twitter, or a bunch of other services.

These features are also being rolled out to individual society sites like BrynAthynChurch.org. So if you want to stay up to date on a particular local society, or you want to promote an event that's happening at a local society, you now have more methods at your disposal.

The sharing features have also been implemented on NewChurchAudio.org so it's finally easy to send people a link to a sermon that you really liked. I happen to know that other improvements are also in the works for NewChurchAudio.org. I'll let you know when they've been implemented.

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While we're on the topic of subscriptions, I'll mention that I recently made it so that you can subscribe to New Church Thought by email. If you scroll down on the right you'll see "Get New Posts Emailed to You" and a box where you can put your email address and hit subscribe. And you might just want to subscribe (if you haven't already) because New Church Thought is about to get an exciting overhaul and you'll want to keep up. (If you do subscribe there's a chance that you'll receive some nonsense posts as I work on revamping things. Just think of it as finding a couple of 2x4s in your inbox—part of the excitement of remodeling.)

Audio from Swedenborg Colloquium on the Future of the New Church

On October 9th there was an awesome event. It's lengthy title was “‘Behold I Make All Things New’ — How? The Future of the New Church, Swedenborg Colloquium.” The advertisements for the event simply said,

The public is cordially invited to hear 12 Swedenborgian speakers present a variety of visions for the future of the New Church.

If you couldn't be there, the best way to get a sense for what the event was like is to listen to the recordings of the speeches. To listen to or download the audio recordings, go to Independent Voice for the General Church Community (ivotgc.org), specifically to the Swedenborg Colloquium Audio page. The files are all in MP3 format.

I'm also going to put links to the individual talks below with a few scattered notes from me. If you were at the event (or just listened to one of the recordings) and want to add some comments, please do. My notes do not adequately represent what each speaker said.

Listen to Bishop Louis King's Service Online

Bishop Louis Blair King passed into the Spiritual World on June 21st, shortly before 6am. There's going to be a resurrection service for him tomorrow, June 23rd at 7pm EST at the Bryn Athyn Cathedral.

If you want to listen to the service online, you can try going to the Listen Live page on BrynAthynChurch.org but, because they're anticipating a lot of people wanting to listen, they've also made it so that you can listen by using GoToMeeting. Click on this link to register: https://www1.gotomeeting.com/register/795951673 and then after registering you will receive a confirmation email containing information about joining the online service.

In memory of Bishop King you might want to listen to one of the 758 recordings of him on NewChurchAudio.org. Or you might want to read the sweet, short article that Louis wrote for New Church Connection a while ago about marriage continuing after death.

My Statement of Faith and Purpose

I got inaugurated into the first degree of the priesthood a couple of Sundays ago. In the service each of the people getting inaugurated made a statement of faith and purpose. You can listen to the service online but I also wanted to post a text version of my statement of faith and purpose here.

Before I get to that I want to mention a couple of other things. One is that I thought that the sermon that Bishop Tom Kline gave after the ordinations was really good. He used the Lord's example to illustrate the principle that priests should lead people but not compel them. I also want to mention that the Sunday after I got ordained there was another ordination service for Thane Glenn and Jay Barry and after their ordinations Thane preached a good sermon about what to do when we feel spiritually hopeless.

The final thing I want to tell you is that you can find other statements of faith and purpose in New Church Life. Every time a General Church minister gets ordained he makes a statement of faith and it eventually gets published in New Church Life. This means that you can find your favorite ministers' statements of faith and purpose on HeavenlyDoctrines.org. Select "New_Church_Life" and "all of the words" and in the search box put "declaration* of faith and purpose" [minister's name]. (Don't include the [] but do include the quotation marks.) If you don't find what you're looking for you could try "statement* of faith and purpose" [minister's name]. In either case the * is important because sometimes multiple declarations or statements of faith are published together.

Anyway I hope you enjoy reading a couple statements of faith and listening to some ordination services. Here's my statement of faith and purpose:

I believe in the Lord—Jesus Christ—the Savior of the world.¹ He is my Lord and my God.² He is God with us³—the infinite and Divine made visible⁴—Jehovah and Jesus—the Word made flesh who dwelt among us.⁵

I believe that He came into the world to subdue the hells and to glorify His Human and that without this no mortal could have been saved, and all people who believe in God and live according to what He teaches are saved.⁶

I believe that the Lord teaches people most clearly and completely in the Old Testament, the New Testament, and the heavenly teachings of the New Church. I believe that the first and great commandment is to love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your mind. And the second is like it: to love your neighbor as yourself. And that on these two commandments hang all the Law and the Prophets.⁷ I believe that the Lord has shown us what is good and what He requires of us: to first shun evils as sins against Him⁸ that we may do judgment, love mercy, and humble ourselves to walk with our God.⁹

I believe that, of ourselves, we are poor, broken, imprisoned, blind, and oppressed. I believe that the Lord is present with each person, urging and pressing to be received.¹⁰ And that He has come to preach the gospel to the poor; to heal the brokenhearted, to proclaim liberty to the captives and recovery of sight to the blind, to set at liberty those who are oppressed; and to proclaim the acceptable year of the Lord.¹¹

I believe that good priests teach truths and lead people by means of them to the good of life and so to the Lord.¹² I pray that I may cooperate with the Lord in this work and be a good shepherd of His sheep.¹³

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¹ Arcana Coelestia 14
² John 20:28
³ Isaiah 7:14; Matthew 1:23
⁴ True Christian Religion 787
⁵ John 1:14
⁶ True Christian Religion 2; Divine Providence 330:5-6
⁷ Matthew 22:37-40
⁸ True Christian Religion 435-438; Doctrine of Life 24, 108
⁹ Micah 6:8
¹⁰ True Christian Religion 766
¹¹ Luke 4:18-19; Isaiah 61:1-2
¹² Arcana Coelestia 10794; New Jerusalem and Its Heavenly Doctrine 315
¹³ John 10:1-18

New Church Podcasts

Do any New Church podcasts exist? Up until today I would have guessed the answer was no. But I just found out from Rev. Dave Lindrooth (www.newchurchweblog.org) that Rev. Ethan McCardell at the Light for Life New Church (www.lightforlifenewchurch.org) has just started publishing his sermons as a podcast. You can find the podcast here.

It's free to subscribe and I recommend that you do because then the podcast will have more subscribers and, more importantly, then you'll have a couple of good sermons on your iPod when you need one. I haven't had the chance to listen to the podcast yet but I've gotten a lot out of other sermons I've heard by Ethan so I look forward to taking a listen.

On the subject of New Church podcasts, while looking at Ethan's podcast, I discovered that the Pittsburgh New Church had a podcast in 2008, though it doesn't look like it's been updated in a while. (You can find it here). And, I happen to know that another New Church podcast project is in the works so stay tuned for news about that.

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For more information about Ethan, check out his blog (www.ethanmccardell.com) and for more of an idea of the services at Light for Life New Church watch this short video that Dave Lindrooth put together.

A Great Sermon on the Prodigal Son (and the other son)

Since the fall, Rev. Grant Schnarr has been leading contemporary style services at The Lord's New Church. You can find out more about these services at inewchurch.org. I finally got around to going to one of these services yesterday but Grant wasn't preaching.

Rev. Michael Cowley was preaching about the parable of the prodigal son (Luke 15:11-32) and it was one of the best sermons I've heard in a while. It was heartfelt, totally relevant and applicable, and also doctrinally satisfying. Contemporary style services are sometimes accused of being fluffy, emotional, and without much substance but that wasn't the case with this service. Michael didn't quote piles of passages but he did reference a lot of relevant ideas from the Heavenly Doctrines that, for me, provided a strong frame for the rest of the message.

One thing that I particularly appreciated about this sermon was how he explained the other son in the parable—the "good" son who hasn't done anything wrong. So far in my life I've related more to this son than the prodigal son (we'll see if that changes over the course of my life) and so I didn't want to just hear about the meaning of the prodigal son but also the other son and Michael didn't disappoint. In fact, he argued that the punchline of the parable really is about that son, not the prodigal one. You'll have to listen to the sermon to find out what else Michael said about that son.

To listen to the sermon go to the Current Sermon Series page on inewchurch.org (it will probably eventually move to the sermon archive under the Mission of the Church series) and scroll down till you see "With Welcome Arms – The Prodigal Son – by Michael Cowley – February 14, 2010." If you have time, listen to the children's talk first and then the sermon.

Sermon Series for Valentines Day

At the last 2 Bryn Athyn contemporary services Rev. Mac Frazier did a 2 part series on men and women in preparation for Valentines Day. First he gave a talk "For Men" (start at 17:30 to skip the singing) and then he gave a talk "For Women" (start at 9:30 to skip the singing).

Both talks have a good combination of teachings from the Word and practical advice. They're not particularly focused on just one point but it means that there are a bunch of different useful ideas about men and women and marriage to consider.

I was especially impressed that, in preparation for his talk for women, Mac made sure to talk to as many women as he could about what to say. As a result I think both talks were balanced and useful.

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If you live within driving distance of Bryn Athyn, you might want to consider attending the Caring For Marriage marriage conference that's happening tomorrow and the next day. It's not just for married people and it has some great speakers, workshops, activities, and entertainment lined up.

Sermon About Seeing the Lord in Other People

This Sunday at the Bryn Athyn Cathedral Rev. Grant Odhner gave a thought-provoking sermon about seeing the Lord in other people. The title of his sermon was "You Have Done it to Me" and was based on the parable of the goats and the sheep where the king says to the sheep, "inasmuch as you did it to one of the least of these My brethren, you did it to Me" (Matthew 25:31-40). He used that text and a number of other interesting texts to explore how, without our awareness, the Lord is present with us all the time.

The text that I found most interesting, though, was a narrative account that I don't remember reading before about a conversation that Swedenborg had with some people sitting under a laurel-bush (True Christian Religion 461). They have a conversation about "how a person can do good coming from God, and yet do it exactly as if of himself." Grant wove this into the sermon as part of a broader discussion of how we can make progress in acknowledging that the Lord is the One Source of Life—in us and in other people.

What's Grant Schnarr Doing Now?

Have you been wondering what Rev. Grant Schnarr has been up to recently? One thing he's been doing is writing really interesting notes on Facebook telling the story of his life and reflecting on the ups and downs of his evangelization work. He's now started a blog (grantschnarr.wordpress.com) and put them on there too. See "To Be or Not to Be: A Swedenborgian" part one, part two, part three, and part four.

He's also been preaching around Bryn Athyn. He preached at Ivyland New Church a couple of weeks ago. He preached at the Cathedral 2 Sundays ago. And he preached this past Sunday at Bryn Athyn Contemporary service. (There isn't a recording up yet but you should be able to find it here soon.)

The sermon he preached at the Cathedral, "Lifeline", was about the internal meaning of the story of Jeremiah being thrown into cistern and then later raised out (Jeremiah 38:1-13). I've heard a number of people say that it was the best sermon they've heard in a while. I got a lot out of it. Grant is really good at expositional sermons. He goes back and forth between the literal story and the internal meaning in a seemingly effortless and usually compelling way. One of the simple things that he pointed out was that all the characters in the story are part of us, not just Jeremiah. And he talked about how certain parts of us want to push the truth out of sight but that we need to identify with those parts of us that will lift the truth back up into the light.

In that sermon and the one he preached at the contemporary service there was a refreshing, back-to-the-basics feel and focus. We don't always want the truth because the truth can be hard to deal with and because it asks us to change but it's totally worth it. Amen!

Grant is also planning something for the fall. On page 2 of the August 27 Bryn Athyn Post he's asking for help with an independent contemporary service he's going to be during the "Living Courageously" campaign at the Social Hall of the Lord's New Church.

He's also starting another blog sort of thing next Monday.

I wrote a book two years ago called Guardian Angel Diary, about a girl named Nicole who, being diagnosed with brain cancer, began writing to her guardian angel and listening hard, wrote what she heard as a reply in her head. Soon a conversation and a friendship developed which helped her to the end, or perhaps to the beginning. On Monday, September 7th, Nicole will begin her diary for all to see, at nicolebealert.wordpress.com.

What can you know about other people?

Recently I happened to listen to an episode of the radio show This American Life and got into a discussion on Facebook that connected with each other.

The episode is called "Got You Pegged" and it has a couple of stories about the problems with pegging people incorrectly and one story about how we have to peg people in certain circumstances.

The discussion was about how much we can know about someone and how we have to use what we can see. Here are some passages about this.

Whoever does not distinguish the neighbor according to the quality of good and truth in him may be deceived a thousand times, and his charity become confused and at length no charity. A man devil may exclaim, "I am a neighbor: do good to me." And if you do good to him he may kill you or others. You are placing a knife or a sword in his hand. (Doctrine of Charity 51)

The Lord says, "Judge not, that you be not condemned" (Matthew 7:1). This cannot in the least mean judging of someone's moral and civil life in the world, but judging of someone's spiritual and heavenly life. Who does not see that if people were not allowed to judge of the moral life of those dwelling with them in the world, society would collapse.... ... But to judge what the inner mind or soul is like within, thus what a person's spiritual state is and so his fate after death - of this one is not permitted to judge, because it is known to the Lord alone. ...

A general judgment is allowed, such as the following, 'If you are in your inward qualities as you appear in your outward ones, you will be saved or condemned.' But a specific judgment - as for example to say, 'You are of this or that character in your inward qualities, therefore you will be saved or condemned' - is not allowed." (Conjugial Love 523:1-2)

Where charity does not exist self-love is present and consequently hatred towards all who do not show favor to self. As a result they see in the neighbor nothing except his evil. Or if they do see anything good they either perceive it as nothing or else place a bad interpretation on it. It is altogether otherwise with those with whom charity is present. ...[W]ith those who have no charity, a feeling of hatred is manifest in every single thing; they wish to try everyone and indeed to pass judgement on them. Their one desire is to discover what is evil in them, all the time having it in mind to condemn, punish, and torment. But those who have charity hardly notice the evil in another person, but instead notice all the goods and truths that are his; and on his evils and falsities they place a good interpretation. Of such a nature are all angels, it being something they have from the Lord, who bends everything evil into good. (Arcana Coelestia 1079:2)

The Road to Emmaus and Church Growth

A couple of Sundays ago I heard Rev. Stephen Cole preach at the Bryn Athyn Cathedral. His sermon, "Burning Hearts," was about the story of the road to Emmaus (Luke 24:13-35)—particularly the part where the disciples say to each other, "Did not our heart burn within us, while He spoke to us in the way, and while He opened to us the Scriptures?" (Luke 24:32). (To skip the music click on "Lessons & Sermon Only" and then click the play button.)

He talked about how the disciples were so excited that they walked all the way back to Jerusalem and said,

This kind of infectious enthusiasm fired up the early converts to Christianity and spread the gospel of the Lord’s Advent. This kind of infectious enthusiasm can inspire us as well in spreading the gospel of the Lord’s Second Coming.

He tied this story in with the teachings about why the New Church will only be with a few people at first in Apocalypse Explained 732.

Why I liked this sermon:

• I feel like there's a perception out there that conservative ministers aren't interested in the church growing but here's Stephen Cole, a conservative minister, talking about how the church will grow.
• He makes an interesting point about how to understand Apocalypse Explained 732. You'll have to listen to the sermon, though, if you want to know what it is. :P
• I also liked his explanation of what it is to have our hearts burn within us and what we can do to make progress in having that experience.
  

You can read a summary of the sermon on page 9 of the July 2nd Bryn Athyn Post (PDF).

See May Our Hearts Burn Within Us for another great recent sermon on the road to Emmaus.

A Prayer Challenge

Rev. Mac Frazier started a Facebook group called "A Holy Conversation" with this description:

John Burke of Gateway Church came up with an idea: pause to connect with God every 60 waking minutes for 60 days. It's been bouncing around in my head to try this, and this past week I decided to just jump in. ... I'm trying to make prayer in my life less like a ritual and more like a conversation. I want to get to know the Lord, the Divine Human, in a way I don't feel I currently do. In Secrets of Heaven it says that prayer is speech with God. I want to start having a conversation. ...

Here's how it works: Create reminders for yourself--sticky notes, pop-up reminders on your computer, hourly beeps on your watch, alarms on your cell phone, or whatever works for you--so that you are regularly... reminded to pray.

Now, the way I'm doing it, I'm not necessarily praying FOR anything, and I'm not "saying a prayer". Every hour, what I do is say silently to myself, "The Lord is always with me," and then taking a second to reflect on my current thoughts, feelings and behavior. I share with the Lord whatever's going on with me, no matter how silly, embarrassing, painful, wonderful--whatever--it is. And then I LISTEN. I still my mind and wait a bit.

That's how I'm doing it. You can do it any way you like! AND, if you like, you can use this FaceBook group to share reflections, experiences, joys, discoveries, etc., with others who are doing this experiment.

Mac talked about this at contemporary service yesterday. I decided to take the challenge after that.

UPDATE: Mac's talk is now available online. You can listen to it here. Jump to 13:46 for the talk itself.

Also, I've discovered that you don't have to have a Facebook account to view Facebook groups so I added a link to the group. Click on "A Holy Conversation" here or above.

A Good Explanation of the Reason for Having a Priesthood

At the ordination service this past Sunday, Rev. Andy Dibb, dean of the Academy of the New Church Theological School, gave a great sermon about the priesthood. Why are priests necessary? What can they do? What can they not do?

I really liked the readings he chose from Malachi 2, Matthew 10, and Divine Providence 154 and 171. And, in the sermon, I thought he did a good job of explaining the background information necessary for understanding why priests are needed.

Listen to the sermon, "The Salvation of Souls", online at the new New Church Audio web site or download it from there and listen to it on your MP3 player.

New Web Site for the Sunday Night Thing

The Sunday Night Thing now has a web site, sundaynightthing.org. What is the Sunday Night Thing? Ah, well you can now read about it on the About page. The most exciting thing, though, is that you can also listen to some past services now on the Audio page.

Just this morning I put up recordings of Rev. Eric Carswell's talk about different responses we can have to evil and Rev. Lou Synnestvedt's talk about worry. Eric talked about trying to integrate statements like "I will fear no evil; for You are with me...." (Psalm 23), on the one hand, and teachings like "Everyone is regenerated by abstaining from sinful evils, and shunning them as anyone would on seeing the hordes of hell seeking with torches in their hands to attack him and to throw him upon a pyre" (True Christian Religion 510), on the other. And Lou talked about understanding feelings of worry as the influence of the spirits that are with us and dealing with worry by working on believing in the visible God (see True Christian Religion 339:3). Good stuff.

A Great Mother's Day Sermon

Rev. John Odhner gave a really interesting and useful sermon yesterday on "The Wisdom of Woman". He talked about Jehovah's words to Abraham, "Whatever Sarah has said to you, listen to her voice..." (Genesis 21:12) and about the teachings from Conjugial Love about how the wisdom of women exceeds that of men (e.g. Conjugial Love 208), and about how contempt destroys relationships.

It was "choir Sunday" so there's lots of singing in the recording of the service. If you want to just listen to the lessons and sermon, jump to 24:48 for the lessons and 40:31 for the sermon.

Listen to Brother Miller's Radio Show Online

Back in March I alerted you to the fact that the Church of Truth has a web site. However, I've heard that, if you really want to experience the message of the Church of Truth, you need to listen to their radio show. Rev. Jonathan Rose just sent me instructions about how to do that:

Brother Miller's show starts at 6:30pm on Saturdays. It usually runs for an hour, but the second Saturday it runs for two and a half hours. The address is www.myspace.com/1240wllv. If the system is working correctly (which is most of the time) you should hear a brief burst of sound as soon as you go to the site, then twenty seconds of silence, followed by continuous sound. That silence is a function of the 20-second delay the radio station puts on the signal, apparently.

May Our Hearts Burn Within Us

I didn't make it to the adult service at the Cathedral on Sunday but I heard from at least 3 people that Rev. George McCurdy gave a great sermon. I listened to it this afternoon and it was well worth the time.

The title of the sermon is "May Our Hearts Burn Within Us", which is a reference to the story of the road to Emmaus (Luke 24:13-35). In the story, "beginning at Moses and all the Prophets" the Lord "expounded to them in all the Scriptures the things concerning Himself" (27), and, in the sermon, McCurdy suggested some of the scriptures that the Lord might have talked about with the disciples. George McCurdy is well known for his great study guides to the minor prophets (which are all available for free at dovepress.org) and many of the scriptures he talked about were from the minor prophets. You can hear his knowledge and love for these lesser known scriptures in his explanation of them.

In the sermon he also talked about the importance of reflection (read a previous post about reflection) and he wrapped it up in a way that I found really hopeful and inspiring. I'll stop describing it now and let you just listen to it.

Rev. Grant Odhner on Discouragement

Last night at the Sunday Night Thing Rev. Grant Odhner gave a talk about discouragement. He focused on the story of the bronze serpent from Numbers 21:4-9 and talked about how when we're discouraged it's often because we no longer feel delights in higher things (the people loathe the manna) and so we try to make up for it by finding other things to make us feel good (the Lord sends fiery serpents that bite the people). Maybe that doesn't sound all that compelling the way I put it but it really resonated with my experience of discouragement and I really liked Grant's explanation of how the Lord healed the people from the serpents' bites. If you want to know what it is you'll just have to listen to the talk.

During the talk Grant brought in selections from Arcana Coelestia 995 and 997 and John 3:1-17, where Jesus refers to the story from Numbers.

Thane Glenn on Compassion

Last Sunday Thane Glenn gave a talk on compassion at the Sunday Night Thing. I missed it because I was out of town but someone recorded it so I just listened to it this afternoon and it was really useful to me.

The main passage he was working from was Arcana Coelestia 6737, which is just a great passage. Thane really brought it to life by touching on lots of cool examples of compassion from the Old and New Testaments. He suggested a useful approach to trying to be more compassionate but what I particularly appreciated was how, at the end, he talked about the Lord's compassion and mercy.