A Couple of New Church Perspectives on May 21st

First, here's a little snippet from the Nunc Licet Bible Study, where Rev. Jonathan Rose explained briefly (before May 21st) why the end of the world wouldn't happen on May 21st. (Over 5000 views so far - not bad!)



And then here's another great video from Curtis Childs. This one is about the desire to to say, "Ha ha! I told you so!" to the people whose predictions about May 21st didn't come true. Honestly, you should just subscribe to his channel (offTheLeftEye) already.

A New Church Bible Study Website Project That's Gaining Some Steam

Back in March of last year I first heard from Brian David about a concept for a New Church Bible study website that he was working on with a couple of other people. One of the early experiments with the concept from around that time was internalword.com.

The project has now had a lot more thought put into it and they've done some presentations to try to get funding for it. And so now, rather than have me try to explain the concept behind the site, I can just tell you to watch the fun, short, RSA Animate-Style video that they put together.



You can also find a bunch of documents about the project on PittsburghNewChurch.org, including some images of what the user interface might look like. A note about those images: they look like a bad site from the 90s but, never fear, Brian assures me that they were just to try to explain the concept and, when they make the site for real, they'll get professional design and UI help.

Anyway, I think it's a cool idea and I hope that they get the funding that they're looking for so that they can give it a try. It's definitely one of those projects that will only work if a lot of people get involved so, if it sounds interesting to you, be sure to like the New Christian Bible Study page on Facebook.

P.S. They also entered into the debate that Rob Bell's book has stirred up with a little video about the New Church idea of heaven and hell.

Help With Writing a Book Proposal

It's less than a month till the February 1st deadline for submitting a book proposal for the Bridge Book Awards.

To help people with their book proposals, back in December there was a webinar in which Rev. Grant Schnarr, author of a number of books, talked people through writing a good book proposal.

You can download the audio from the webinar here. The webinar is about an hour and 10 minutes long. The file is 52.3 MB so it takes a little while to download. It's in WMV format so, if you have a Mac (like I do), you'll need something to convert it so that you can play it. I used a free program that makes it so that you can play it in QuickTime called Flip4Mac WMV. This particular copy of the file expires on January 11th but I'm guessing that, if you ask nicely, I could probably get another one put up or you could just contact Kristine Medley directly (Kristine.Medley@newchurch.org, 267-502-4901).

I hope that there are lots of people working on book proposals. I wish that I had the time to submit something myself.

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.

Caring for Marriage Named in List of Top 10 Marriage Blogs

Back in March I told you about Daily Marriage Emails, written by Lori Odhner (of Caring for Marriage) called “Marriage Moats.”

Caring for Marriage has now been listed at #5 in a list of "The Top 10 Marriage Blogs of 2010"! (The list is put together by Stu Gray of TheMarryBlogger.com.)

The listing is well-deserved in my opinion. Frankly I'm amazed that, even though it's been months since the program started, every day there's another email in my inbox with an interesting image and yet another thoughtful insight, quote, tool, or anecdote about some aspect of marriage.

Congratulations Lori!

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Sign up for “Marriage Moats” or view the archive of past emails.

Book Proposal Competition

As a collaborative effort to generate dynamic book proposals and publications from aspiring authors, the General Church of the New Jerusalem and the Swedenborg Foundation, publisher of the theological works of Emanuel Swedenborg, are pleased to announce a new competition, called the Bridge Book Awards. The authors of the winning proposals will receive a cash award in the amount of $1,500, be honored at an awards ceremony, and be guaranteed a review by the Swedenborg Foundation Press editorial board with the possibility of publication.

There are 4 categories you can enter: The Afterlife, Living a Spiritual Life, Biblical Commentary from a Swedenborgian/New Church Perspective, and Swedenborg for Dummies.

Entries are due on February 1st, 2011 and must include an entry form, a query letter, a chapter outline or synopsis, and one to three sample chapters.

You can read more about what's required in the Entry Form (PDF) or in the news item about it on newchurch.org.

I'm excited to see what comes of this.

New Church Christmas Readings

There are 2 ways you can get New Church Christmas readings this season.

The pastors of the Glenview New Church have put together readings on the theme of “Walking with the Lord.” You can read a description of the program, sign up to receive the readings in daily emails, or download a PDF of all the readings.

The pastors of the Olivet New Church have also put together daily readings. Their theme is “A New Birth.” You can read a description of the program or sign up to receive the readings in daily emails.

Both daily email programs start sending emails tomorrow so sign up today if you want to receive all of them.

Results of Swedenborgian Thought Survey

About a month ago I wrote a post about some surveys that Wendy Soneson put together to study present day thinking about Swedenborg's Writings. The results and her conclusions are now available on a website called Swedenborgian Thinking Today.

On the site there are the "Defining Faith" survey results and the "That's me in the Corner" survey results. For both Wendy gives some explanation of her thinking behind each question and how people tended to respond. She also provides some background on the survey and her thoughts about the implications of the survey results for evangelization.

The most interesting thing on the site to me, though, is a page where she describes the groups of believers that she observed in the survey results.

Based on the survey and communications related to the survey questions, I here group the respondents into categories. As an artist, I often turn to the arts, and now, songwriting, to help give a flavor of the group’s thinking. I use songs, loosely interpreted and with apologies to the writers, to give a right brain slant to these left-brain studies. Each group formed when I felt more than ten people fit the description. Surely there are more groups to come.

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.

Everything to Do with "Pause: Make Space for God"

The most recent New Church spiritual growth program, "Pause: Make Space for God" just launched last week so I thought I'd let you know about all the different resources that are available for this program.

The main URL for all things Pause is newchurchpause.org. Almost everything is there I just want to highlight some of the things that you might not find otherwise. In particular I want to let you know that there are ways that you can participate even if you're not near one of the participating congregations.

Videos

First, here's a little video introduction to the program:

Help Create an Accurate Picture of Present Day Thought on Swedenborg's Writings

Wendy Soneson is working on an article about what people these days think about Swedenborg's Writings. To this end she's created two short surveys to get input from people about what they believe. I took the "Defining Faith" survey and found it an interesting exercise and I'm even more interested to read the article that she writes. (I'll be sure to post a link to the article once it's written and published.)

Here's an introductory note from Wendy and links to the 2 surveys.

Dear Friends of Swedenborg,

I am collected data from two anonymous surveys for an article on present day thinking and belief among those familiar with Swedenborg’s Writings.

If you like to think about questions concerning your belief system, and have five minutes for either of these anonymous surveys (you would only be able to qualify for one), I would so much appreciate the information for my article. I will not know the names or emails of anyone who participates, or if you participate or not. Thank you.

Defining Faith
This survey is for those who are familiar with the Writings and think of themselves as generally in the category of a main stream General Church thinker.

That’s Me in the Corner
This survey is for those who are familiar with the Writings but do not think of themselves as mainstream General Church thinkers.

Contact Wendy with any questions at wendysoneson@mac.com.

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

General Church Marketting Survey

The General Church has a new marketting consultant, Alicia Simons. One of the things that she's done is build an online survey to find out where current "members and friends of the New Church" are before she surveys people outside of the church. Here's her explanation of the survey:

We are presently launching an online survey for current Friends and Members of the New Church and are very much in need of your help and support to make this a success. This survey is the beginning of a multi-step process to help us learn how to better talk to people in our move towards a million meaningful contacts. In this case we are talking to people who are currently friends and members of the New Church in North America. Later in the process, with a different methodology, we will also talk to people who are less aware or unaware of the New Church. The point in this phase is to understand how friends and members are feeling about their New Church experience, and how the Church is fitting into their lives today. It is also to understand what people who love the New Church love about it. Why do they come? The thought is that this is likely a good reflection of why other people who don't know about the New Church may also want to come. We hope the information we obtain will help us both to understand the thoughts and behavior of current friends and members and also help us on the path to talking to potential new friends or members in the most meaningful language. Please know, in no way can respondents be identified personally, or even by congregation.

Obviously, the more people who take the survey, the better the results will be. If you want to take the survey you can find it here. You need a password to access it. I can't just post it here but you should be able to get it by contacting any General Church pastor or administrator.

The survey takes about 20 minutes. You'll be able to take it up until June 13th, I believe.

Why You Might Want to Invest in a Latin Copy of True Christian Religion

Freya Fitzpatrick has been working for a couple of years on a new Latin edition of Vera Christiana Religio (the book that's called True Christian Religion or True Christianity in English). The new Latin edition is now available and I wanted to share with you a little advertisement / explanation of why having new Latin editions is important that Freya wrote.

Extra! Extra! Read all about it! A new Latin edition of True Christian Religion is available now at the low price of just $45 for a handsome red-bound, gold-lettered set of two volumes.

Well, OK, so you haven’t been sitting on the edge of your seat just waiting for this new release. And, maybe you’re wondering why you’re even being told about this when you can’t read a word of Latin – well maybe one or two words, but no more.

This project is important to you, and to me, and to the whole world because the Latin editions of the Writings are the foundation upon which translation into every other language depends.

Why can’t we just use existing Latin editions? Well, the first editions, published by Swedenborg himself are out of print, and extremely expensive if you could find them. The next editions were done in the 1800’s in Germany. They’re out of print too. The third Latin editions were edited and published in the USA in the early 1900’s, and these can still occasionally be found.

Newly edited editions (rather than reprints of older editions), however, are urgently needed because of the emergence of a new field of study called Neo-Latin. Neo-Latin generally describes Latin from the 1500s on, in other words, the Latin of Swedenborg’s day. Up until just about 1960 or so, Neo-Latin was not a recognized field of study. Scholars certainly knew that Latin was used during this period of history, but scholars had not studied the Latin of that era as unique in its own right.

This means that even the editions of the Writings from the early 1900’s are edited by people who “corrected” Swedenborg’s Latin to fit patterns of classical Latin – which are often very different in rules of spelling, grammar and punctuation than Neo-Latin. Also, Neo-Latin contains words that certainly didn’t exist in classical times, and in some places in older Latin editions, editors have attempted to suggest “correct” words to replace the words Swedenborg used – which as it turns out are legitimate Neo-Latin words.

This means new Latin editions are vital. But as you can imagine, the readership is infinitesimally small! We can sell less than half of the minimum number of books required for a print run.

You can support this use by purchasing a set of Vera Christiana Religio for: $45 plus shipping ($5 domestic, $30 international).

You can:

1) Display this Latin work with pride.
2) Designate it to be donated to a Latin student at Bryn Athyn New Church College (www.brynathyn.edu) or a minister.
3) Designate it to be donated to a Neo-Latin scholar.

If you would like to support this use at less than $45, send a check in any $5 increment and specify whether it is for donated set for a student, minister or scholar.

Checks should be made out to:

Academy of the New Church, memo: Publication Committee
And mailed to: Publication Committee, Leslie Alden, PO Box 45, Bryn Athyn, PA 19009

The Next Journey Campaign

There's now information available about the next Journey campaign. (Journey campaigns are spiritual growth programs that involve sermons, small groups, and readings.) The title of the campaign is "Pause: Make Space for God." You can read a summary of the program on the Welcome page. You can also watch a 6 minute video in which Anna Woofenden and Rev. Mac Frazier introduce you to the program. And there's also a Program Overview page where you can get an overview of the content of the program week by week.

If you're new to the idea of Journey campaigns I recommend that you take a look at some of the other campaigns listed in the Spiritual Growth Program Materials section. If you go to the Program Materials page for last year's campaign, "Living Courageously," you can download a PDF of the workbook, listen to sermons, and look at Sunday School materials for it.

"Pause" is going to launch October 3, 2010 and January 30, 2011.

Martin Luther King Jr. Didn't Actually Write that Statement About Swedenborg

A little over a year ago various people announced that Martin Luther King Jr. was inspired by Swedenborg. (You can find various reports of this if you Google Martin Luther King Jr. Swedenborg.)

What happened was in 2006 King's library was sold at an auction to Morehouse College in Atlanta. During the auction some of his books were displayed, one of which was Emerson's A Modern Anthology. Edward R. Bosley (a director of a National Historic Landmark) was at the auction and he found this written on the front page:

Swedenborg enables us to understand why we were created, why we are alive, and what happens to us after our bodies die. Swedenborg enables us to have the best possible understanding of God’s message as it exists in those Bible books which constitutes God’s Word.

Bosley assumed that this was written by King and told others and the news spread. However, in February Rev. Ray Silverman, chaplain of Bryn Athyn College, contacted the people working with the collection and received this response from Courtney Chartier, the Processing Archivist:

Dr. King’s volume of Emerson does have extensive notes on Swedenborg. However, the handwriting is not his. There is an inscription that reads “Rev Wm Fairfax (colored) Swedenborgian minster”, with an address in New York. He is the likely author of the notes.

So that's the news. It's disappointing but it's good to have the facts straight. I suppose that there's a chance that as they analyze the collection more they'll find other things to connect King and Swedenborg but for now we can't say that Martin Luther King Jr. was inspired by Swedenborg. ---

UPDATE:

Thanks to Jim Lawrence we now have a picture of Rev. William Fairfax and his wife, taken at the 1959 General Convention. Jim also did a little more research about him and found this much out:

William E. Fairfax was ordained by Convention in 1937 and he served until his death in 1964. His church was in Harlem. .... Basically, what we know is that he probably identified in important ways with MLK, and thought he might interest MLK in his favorite theologian as a fellow "colored" Christian minister in the U.S.

I also asked Jim where someone should start if they were interested in doing more research about Rev. Fairfax. He said, "Someone wanting to dig further on Fairfax would probably best start in our own collection here in Berkeley and the archives in Boston associated with our headquarters, which keeps a lot of records on the various societies past and present."

Daily Marriage Emails

Caring for Marriage (www.caringformarriage.org) has just started offering a free, daily marriage support email called "Marriage Moats." Here's the welcome message that you get sent when you sign up:

Welcome to Marriage Moats!

My son Benjamin's latest recurring question is about moats. He asks "What is a moat?" eager to hear again what he already knows.

"A moat is water that surrounds a castle and keeps it safe from enemies."

He smiles, and asks what enemies are.

"They are people who want to hurt you."

He wanders off into a memory about moats in movies he has seen, and laughs about bad guys who fell into them.

People sometimes say that a person's home is his or her castle.
Marriage can be a castle, but that does not mean it is never under attack.

I am intrigued by the idea of a moat, as a deterrent for flame flinging masked marauders.

This daily message is called Marriage Moats, because it is a modest obstacle to those influences that undermine marriage. It will offer a puddle of protection in the form of a quote, or anecdote, or book blurb. Some mornings it will slip into your inbox, and you will hurriedly delete it sight unseen. Other days you will open it, as you invite in those few sentences that may surround your mental fortress with a waterway that keeps you safer. Water is like truth, in that it keeps you clean and quenched, and paired with a boat, gets you to places you would be hard pressed to find otherwise. Truth can transport you to resorts as well, places of refuge, and beauty.

Marriage Moats is one wet barrier you can create to stave off the armies of negativity and apathy that incessantly bash on your door.

You may even find it funny to watch the critical thoughts splashing and thrashing, unable to reach you, while you watch from a turret in the clouds.

I'm on a couple of different lists that email me inspirational stuff daily or weekly (e.g. Daily Inspiration from www.newchurch.org and the weekly newsletter from Gary Chapman (www.5lovelanguages.com)). Like Lori says, often I delete them or archive them immediately but sometimes I find them really useful. To sign up for "Marriage Moats" go to www.caringformarriage.org. Currently you can sign up for the program right on the homepage. Eventually it will probably be relegated to the Online Programs section. (Techie note: If you use an add blocking addon like Adblock Plus you'll need to disable that to see the sign up form.)

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 New Online New Church Magazine

I've been really meaning to tell you all about New Church Perspective (www.newchurchperspective.com) and now I'm finally getting around to it. It's a really exciting, New Church online magazine project.

Here's a bit from the About page:

New Church Perspective is an online magazine celebrating the understanding and application of New Church ideas with weekly essay publication.

More than a discussion forum, New Church Perspective is based on essays from a wide variety of writers on a wide variety of topics. However, this is a two-way conversation. Discussion and response to the weekly essays are warmly encouraged. We ask only that people are respectful of each other, the Bible, and the theological writings of Emanuel Swedenborg referred to as the Heavenly Doctrines.

(For more about the idea behind New Church Perspective I recommend reading the launch day post from Brian Smith, the Editor-in-Chief.)

Every Friday morning a new essay is published with some perspective on the New Church or New Church perspective on some topic. It was launched on January 1st and so far 10 essays have been published. I'm now going to list them and give a summary of what they're about to give you the flavor of New Church Perspective so far.

• "4 Reasons Most New Year's Resolutions and Other Habit Changes Fail and What You Can Do to Succeed" by Derrick Lumsden - The title pretty much says it. I particularly recommend the "Further Reading" at the end.
• "Growing Up in The Park: Reflections on My Sub-Culture" by Freya Henry - Using the theories of various developmental psychologists, Freya analyzes her development growing up in a New Church congregation.
• "Even as We are One" by Isaac Synnestvedt - This is my favorite article so far. If you only have the time to read one article, make this one it. It is an impassioned and humbling exploration of who is part of the New Church and an exhortation to try to see the Lord in all people.
• "Meaning-making and the Power of Writing" by Chelsea Rose Odhner - This is a chapter from Chelsea's undergraduate thesis and so it incorporates a number of scholarly sources. But don't let the word scholarly make you think it's boring; it's a fascinating, well written, careful exploration of the act of writing.
• "Are You Happy?" by Ronald Schnarr - Ronnie looks at what can keep us from being happy and encourages us to ask the Lord for real happiness.
• "Spiritual Body Image" by Pearse and Taryn Frazier - This article looks at the spiritual meaning of being human.
• "Buddhism and the New Church" by Ian Chapman - Ian's article is a short and interesting comparison of a couple of Buddhist teachings with New Church teachings.
• "Marketing the Writings" by Coleman Glenn - In this article Coleman imagines what could happen if someone launched a huge, year-long marketing campaign for the Writings.
• "Protecting Ideals and the Reality of the World in which We Live" by Stephanie King - In this heartfelt article Stephanie expresses both her strong ideals and her desire to understand and love people who don't. She raises a lot of good questions with no easy answers.
• "We, Distinct from Our Teachings" by Derek Rose - In this article Derek encourages us to think carefully about what we mean when talk about the New Church—the teachings, the organization, or the culture?

Hopefully this makes you want to read some of these articles and subscribe to receive updates every Friday and, most importantly, inspires you to submit an article yourself.