What is your favorite part of a worship service?
Is it the Call to Worship? Is it Prayers of the People? The Sermon? Or maybe the Children’s Message?
For me, it is the Benediction.
Our Common Experience with God: Beyond Buildings
The Wesleyan Quadrilateral, Week 7
by Adam White
“The church is not a building, the church is not a steeple, the church is not a resting place, the church is a people.”
We all have heard this familiar song.
Ironically, and let me know if I am off base here, we only hear this song sung in churches. Today, as a collective body seeking to experience Christ together, the “church” is having an identity crisis.
Our Individual Experiences: Landscapes or Flowers?
The Wesleyan Quadrilateral, Week 6
by Adam White
One of my favorite things to do is going to visit museums. Now that I am married, I get to drag my partner Blair along with me. Recently we visited the Amon Carter Museum of American Art, which, if you are ever in Fort Worth, you should go and check out (fo’ free!).
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The Tradition Behind our Tradition
The Wesleyan Quadrilateral, Week 5
by Adam White
Traditions, we all have them—the understandings, practices, events, and so on that can be passed down from generation to generation. Maybe you have a tradition of singing certain songs with your family around Christmas time. Perhaps you have a tradition of eating specific dishes that have been handed down from your family. Or, it could be that you are in the process of creating your own traditions , like taking a trip with friends someplace new every year.
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A Common Story for the Church
The Wesleyan Quadrilateral, Week 4
by Adam White
Stories are important; they help inform us about who we are and where we are going.
Any good story will likely have dynamic characters, a strong plotline, interesting subplots, a visually captivating setting, and well crafted details.
Foundational Issues: The Wesleyan Quadrilateral
The Wesleyan Quadrilateral, Week 1
by Adam White
We all need foundations to build upon. This exists physically for the construction and repair of houses and buildings, emotionally for establishing relationships with each other, and spiritually for our faith.
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Model Trains and Tadpoles!
What Does Missional Mean?, Week 11
by Adam White
What do model trains and tadpoles have in common? This newsletter article!
This week we are looking at two stories of missional living from two different communities of faith, a local church and a neo-monastic community.
Who We Are and Who We Represent
What Does Missional Mean?, Week 10
by Adam White
“Remember, who you are…” These words awaited us every time we as the youth group at New World United Methodist Church traveled anywhere.
The words came from our Youth Director, Sherry Womack. Sherry would always turn and look at us, sometimes just me directly, and, before we could get off the bus, say “Remember, who you are!” and then we’d respond with a glib symphony of pubescence and reluctance, “and who you represent.”
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Divine Synergy:
What Does Missional Mean?, Week 6
by Adam White
“The whole is greater than the sum of its parts.”
Most of us probably understand the concept of synergy and how it helps to have complementary parts of something working together for a desired outcome rather than separate parts attempting a goal. Last week we discussed how segmented we can be and how living missionally, in light of scripture, calls us to un-segment ourselves. The next step, after un-segmenting, is to missionally bind together. This step involves entering a divine synergy with one another through the Holy Spirit.
Un-Segmenting Mission:
What Does Missional Mean?, Week 5
by Adam White
We lead segmented lives.
We divide our time, presence, and energy depending on where we are, who is in front of us, and how much time we allot to a given situation.
Whether it is segmenting our home life from our work life; how we interact socially between family, friends, and acquaintances; or even what mode of communication we invest in, be that in person or through social media—our lives have become and continue to be segmented.
Reordering Normal:
What Does Missional Mean?, Week 3
by Adam White
“It’s not normal!”
I usually hear this phrase when I confide to people that growing up I not only liked to dip french fries into a Wendy’s chocolate frosty…but also proceeded to let chicken nuggets join the party. I know, you are probably thinking,
“It’s not normal!”
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God's Missional Initiation:
What Does Missional Mean?, Week 2
by Adam White
What Does Missional Mean?
What comes to mind when you hear the word “initiation”?
For me, I can not help but think of people being initiated into a Greek collegiate society or social club. It seems like persons being initiated are willing to go to great lengths so that they might be accepted into whatever group they are wanting to become members of.
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Receiving the Spirit with Humility:
The Active Presence of the Holy Spirit, Week 9
by Adam White
Which do you prefer, giving or receiving?
For me, I would much rather give than receive. I have gotten better with this over the years, but my preference to giving and my aversion to receiving are two issues I still wrestle with every so often. It is not that receiving something from others, be it help, complements, or a gift, is above me. I get that we all need help, remember?
Freedom from Failure:
The Active Presence of the Holy Spirit, Week 8
by Adam White
Nobody likes to fail.
Even just reflecting on the words “fail” or “failure” bring back memories from school assignments, sports performances, and life moments that still find ways to linger in my mind. You have heard of a cloud of witnesses; I think of this as a cloud of failures. I think we each have our own cloud of failures that arise and follow us around during certain periods of time. This cloud can stay with us for quite a while if we let it hover over us and pour down things like doubt, insecurity, and fear.
One in the Spirit:
The Active Presence of the Holy Spirit, Week 7
by Adam White
It may be hard to admit, but I have not always paid the closest of attention to the lyrics and meanings behind the hymns and songs that are sung in church. However, in the last year discovering their meaning has been a practice I have attempted to grow as a form of prayer. Regarding our missional relationship with God’s Spirit, I don’t think there is a song that better captures that dynamic than the hymn “They’ll Know We Are Christians by Our Love.”1
It has everything! Within the hymn text we find the unity of our identity within the Spirit and a prayer that our worldly divisions might be restored...
Living In, Guided By, and Bearing Fruit of the Spirit:
The Active Presence of the Holy Spirit, Week 6
by Adam White
We all need help.
I do not know specific predicaments you may face, but needing help is a truth for all of us. I don’t think I truly embraced the reality that I needed help, holistically, until I met, and committed my life in sacred union with my partner, Blair.
Hear me out—I knew I needed help before that time and sought support from others for certain issues that surfaced throughout my life. For instance, I desperately needed help with math during high school and sought out a tutor—Thanks, Mrs. Pyle, for making sense out of Algebra for an ADHD teenager, no easy task! Or when I struggled with the pain of my mother’s suffering due to dementia, I needed support from friends, family, and ultimately a counselor.
A Life and Death Matter of the Holy Spirit
The Active Presence of the Holy Spirit, Week 1
By Adam White
“Theology is truly a matter of life and death.”
This is what my then-professor, Dr. Joerg Rieger, said to all of us students on the first day of our Systematic Theology class at Perkins School of Theology in the fall of 2012. My immediate reaction was thinking – “I don’t think I signed up for the right course…I wonder if there is enough time to still swap classes. I hear Prayer and Spirituality is being offered this semester.”
The Importance of Witness
The Rule of Life, Week 15
by Adam White
We will share the redeeming, healing, creative love of God in word, deed and presence as an invitation to others to experience the transforming love of God
-From the MWF Rule of Life
You are a witness.
Really, you are! For instance, you are currently giving witness by way of reading a weekly devotional, for which we are very appreciative.
Pursuing Justice
The Rule of Life, Week 14
By Adam White
We will pursue peace with justice
-From the MWF Rule of Life
If you could live at anytime in history, when and where would it be? Who would you want to see? What would you do? Why?
As a once-student-of-history, these are the questions I still find time to dream about. Me? What period of time and location in history would I want to visit? Be careful asking that--this newsletter is supposed to be short!
Reflecting the Light Inside
The Rule of Life, Week 13
By Adam White
We will practice racial, gender, and other forms of reconciliation wherever we find sinful and destructive walls of division between people
-From the MWF Rule of Life
The first toy I ever remember playing with as a child was a glass triangular prism. I used to lie on the ground by the window on sunny days and play with the prism, refracting the light that was coming through the sun onto different surfaces. Sometimes, I’ll admit, I would shine the light into the eyes of my older siblings and parents. What captivated me most about this tiny, seemingly insignificant glass object was how the light could be refracted and present an array of colors that could change shape.