Renewal

Reading Soul Crisis is like reading a diary -- which in fact it is. Sue Nathanson takes the reader into her home and heart as she faces a welcome but unplanned pregnancy, which she aborts to please her husband, and comes to grips with the agonizing aftermath. Thought provoking, intimate, and a must read for prolife and prochoice alike.

The Soul of Tomorrow's Church: Weaving Spiritual Practices in Ministry Together by Kent Ira Groff, (Nashville, TN: Upper Room Books, 2000), 181 pp.

Reviewed by David Nash

Kent Groff gives us the book that many of us parish pastors have been looking for. He offers us not a new program but an ancient calling to recover the soul of the church, and, in the process, to find a renewal of our own calling to ministry.

I recommend the book highly, though it is not an easy book to live and work with, for the reader is called into self-examination and commitment while at the same time receiving encouragement and hope. Groff calls the pastoral leader and the believing community to the contemplative life style of practicing the presence of God in order to love God, others and self, especially as it works itself out in the functions of ministry. The aim is to recover the integrity, passion and wholeness of Christ within the believing community in order to re-present Christ to the world. To answer such a call means a long-term commitment and serious soul work.

What moves Groff to write this book is his deep concern for the spiritual life of the pastoral leader; the need for clergy and laity to be joined together, especially to work through crises; and how the common ventures of ministry and church life can become the opening for God's presence . this book is for laypersons and clergy together. It "is written for (our) interactive learning, reflection, prayer, and retreat" together in a contemplative spiritual journey.

Groff functions as a spiritual director for those who choose the contemplative path. He sees the vital ministries of worshipping, administering, educating, caring, and reaching out being woven together with the "spiritual aptitudes" of prayer, discernment, faith stories, silence-presence, and hospitality all for the purpose of Christ being formed in the believer and believing community for the sake of the world.

The creative image of weaving suggests possibilities of a variety of patterns of minsitry. It is a powerful image which could have been made stronger for us by a brief description of the weaver at work to help us see the loom and feel the excitement of the movement of the shuttle back and forth carrying the variety of threads to create a pattern. Still, the image comes through with careful reading.

Not a book of theology or theory, but building on both, the focus is on practicing the presence of God. In five chapters, Groff briefly describes the "soul" of the church and suggests how to weave the contemplative attitudes throughout each ministry of the church. Groff offers a variety of "leavening the liturgies" spiritual exercises for each function of ministry. And there are "resources" of spiritual practice included in the appendix.

The spiritual exercise are not gimmicks, techniques, or quick fixes. They are, however, interactive and participatory and suggestive. The intention is to make deeper connections with God and with one another. Indeed, Groff encourages the reader to create one's own exercises. The purpose is to place one's soul and the soul of the believing community before God and to be open to where God's Spirit leads. Each congregation, obviously, will be led into different expressions of God's love of the world through the functions of ministry.

Groff writes our of his rich experience of contemplative practice. In particular, I like the way in which each of the first two chapters on "The Soul of Tomorrow's Church" are enriched by a meditation on 1 Corinthians 13 as is also the next five chapters on "Weaving Spiritual Practices in Ministry together" are each nurtured by a meditation on Romans 12. Groff begins each chapter with an original Taize-like chant. And he includes his own poetry throughout the book. I found these gifts of his soul opening my own spiritual awareness as I read the book. And I felt our souls touching in sharing common concerns.

This book will make you want to get out into the places beyond the artifacts of civilization and spend some time in the beauty and quiet. Some of our best poets (Wendell Berry, Gary Snyder) and writers (Robert Bly, Matthew Fox, Terry Tempest Williams) tell us eloquently why they go to the wilderness to be closer to themselves and their God. Inspiring!

This is the best Bible I've ever had & it saddens me that it was taken out of print. I have bought many of these Bibles & given them away as gifts & have had many people tell me how this Bible has blessed them so much spiritually. The added notes & how it the scriptures can be applied to your own life is truly a Spiritual Renewal experience.

I got this Bible about a month ago, and it has truly blessed me. It contains book introductions and notes, as many study Bibles do, but this one goes deeper. It outlines seven keys to spiritual renewal, such as seeking God, prayer, fasting, study, relationships, and more. It has shown me so much, and has helped me to deepen my relationship with God. I would highly recommend this Bible to anyone who feels that there is something lacking in their faith, who needs to be renewed and strengthened in their walk with Christ.

David Bryant's groundbreaking work of decades ago, called In the Gap, has matured into one of the most important works about practical Christianity ever crafted. His exegesis of Ezekiel 22:30 goes so deep and so broad that one can forget that the whole work is exegetical in its foundation though it is pure and sweet praxis in its exploration. Stand in the Gap is the best answer I've found yet to the question "Why am I still here on earth after I am saved?" It is complicated and deep, because so is its subject matter: shallow pithy brevity would be giving a starving man a carrot stick. Bryant's feast invites, even requires, a lot of coming back for 'seconds'. The small-group questions tied to each chapter are a great help: i.e. actually study this book with a small group of folks ready to hold each other accountable to acting on what God shows you through it. I use it as a textbook in a class I teach about having a heart for God in a lost and hapless world.
Anyone who has ever looked for meaning in life: here it is. There is work for us to do. There is a role we must play. There is a purpose for each of us. Yours can be found right here, "in the Gap."
In a word, this book is... indispensable.

Strategic Renewal offers a new, fresh perspective on contemporary strategies and competitive marketplace. It leaves behind the traditional and somewhat outdated strategic tools of Porter or Hamel, and introduces fresh concepts and ideas, which are more current and valid in today's economies. Mische has done a great job in exploring the common components and qualities of the great companies and, in great depth, goes into studying their strategies and keys to becoming and remaining high performers and market leaders. Strategic Renewal certainly makes for an insightful executive read; but with its case examples and illustrative stories complementing its conceptual content, it is an excellent resource for any MBA student.

Bruce Joyce believe that the world of education need staff development for school renewal. The purpose of this book is to development for the teacher and curriculum to creating environments for learning and improved student achievement. The staff development is fundamental to effective instructional materials and learning sources and this book describe the best teaching practice for this purpose. In my judgment, this book is excellent for inexperienced and experienced teachers and university profesors will find to improve student achievement for all levels.

Clement is a Russian Orthodoxer; he teaches at the Orthodox Theological Institute of Saint Sergius in Paris, and is a prolific theological writer. One of his primary interests has been a striving for greater understanding and sharing between Eastern and Western Christianity, an interest I deeply share. Being located in Paris, he is near the Taize community, another embodiment of the twentieth-century hope for greater cooperation and communication among the Christian communities.

--The Community of Taize--
The community of Taize is a monastic group founded by Brother Roger in the aftermath of World War II. Brother Roger recognised that, in the course of barely a generation, the Christian world had involved the entire world in two tragically devastating conflicts, and the potential for more was very apparent.

Beginning in Eastern France, Brother Roger called together men of differing faiths, called upon them to retain the distinctiveness of their faiths while binding together in the community with each other. They worked in various professions, were self-supporting, and humbly went about their tasks. In doing so, their mission became noticed such that today, fifty years or so later, Taize is a major pilgrimage site for people, particularly young people, of all faiths, who seek the unity Taize reflects. A Roman Catholic order of sisters lives nearby, and assists in the necessary tasks of welcoming and hospitality to the pilgrims. Church leaders from all major faiths, including the Pope, the Archbishop of Canterbury, senior Lutheran and Presbyterian leaders, and Orthodox archbishops and metropolitans, have all visited the site with prayerful and reverent devotion and gratitude.

Various aspects of Taize add to the spiritual dimension; perhaps the most commonly known is their distincitive musical style. It was Augustine who is supposed to have said that those who sing, pray twice. Taize chant, a modern simplified plainchant that can be done in parts or in simple lines, has been adopted by people, again particularly youth groups, of every denomination the world over. At the actual community of Taize, the singing in done in Latin; this is not because Roman Catholic chant was done in Latin for so many centuries, but rather because all people in the chanting can come together in Latin, for Latin is no one's first language.

The brothers at Taize seek to live and seek share 'in the spirit of the beatitudes: joy, simplicity and mercy.' Today there are Taize cells in New York City, in the Caribbean, and various other places of need around the world. They strive to reflect the simplicity and unity of the Christian message to all they encounter, without dogmatic or denominational overlays, without insistence or oppressive intentions.

--Clement's Book on Taize--
This book is not so much a story of Taize or a philosophy or theology of ecumenism, but rather Clement's personal reflections on his encounters at Taize. There is a growing understanding among theologians that all theology, while striving toward and recognising the ultimate and absolute, still remains for each of us an intensely personal and subjective enterprise. Thus Clement's questions become questions for all of us, and our own answers, which we are called to find, can be shaped by his strivings.

This is a short book, a mere 80 pages of loosely printed text. However, do not be deceived by this. The shortest parable can contain the deepest of meanings; the simplest of actions can have the most profound impact. Clement is embodying in his text the simplicity of the place. He begins by discussing what the title speaks to -- the meaning to life.

There is what Clement describes as an unselfish listening in the community that draws people to it. Using the idea of communion as a parable, Clement describes his feeling and reflections on what community should be, and how that is reflected in the community of Taize, and what others strive to carry forward from this place into their own lives.

The phrase A Meaning to Life I find very significant. So many people strive to find the the meaning of life; how many of us, and I fully include myself in this lot, work to put a meaning to life? Here perhaps the reflection of the French language pokes through with a profundity easily lost; the translation of Clement's thoughts from the French mindset, from the Orthodox perspective, into the English Western framework leads to mysteries well worth pondering.

Clement's final reflections are powerful, too. Perhaps the greatest tragedy of Christianity is the concept that, to convert people, one must threaten with punishments and fears of hell; much evangelism has been done throughout 2000 years based not on the love of God, but rather the fear and hope of avoiding damnation. We need only look at the world around us to understand the concept of hell. Hell is most noticed when the love of God and neighbour are absent from out lives. It is the prayer of the community of Taize, and the prayer of Olivier Clement, that all will, in their own unique ways, open themselves to reflect this love in their own lives, so that all may be instruments of peace.

Through the silence and the singing, through the simplicity and the crush of thousands of pilgrims, through the vision of the founder to the practices of people who cannot locate Taize on the map, the hope for a community of the world reflecting the unity of God permeates the people at Taize, and shines forth on every page of Clement's book.

As the angel said to Augustine, 'take and read'. It can change your life.

In this book, my teacher Dr. Saso illuminates 'the various themes and rituals which the Taoist makes use of in his role of ritual functionary for the believers in the Chinese religion.'(p.5) The 'rite of cosmic renewal' refers to the 'Chiao festival', a ritual occuring only once every 60 years. Those familiar with lunar astrological calendars will recognize the sixty-year cycle of elements and animals symbolic of the energetic shifts and changes of the world around us.

This first in-depth look by a Westerner at such a normally closed-door ritual is divided into five chapters. First, the yin-yang theory is explained as the basis of Chinese religion. Then is a description of the ritual from the viewpoint of an outside observer. Chapter three describes the philosophical basis of the ritual of renewal. The next chapter is perhaps the rarest of all, an EXPLANATION of the Chiao festival from the inside, through the eyes and understanding of a Daoist priest, which the author is. Saso is perhaps the only non-Chinese to have a 'register' or 'lu', a record or list of spirits the person has been taught to summon and control. Chapter five rounds out this unique study with a look at the state of Daoism as it currently exists in modern China.

It is highly unlikely that such a 'view from the inside' of this arcane, once-in-a-lifetime event will be available until after the next cycle begins, in the year 2030. Serious students of religious Daoist practice will learn much from this study.