Blog - Page 28 of 318 - John H Armstrong

Gospel Call – A Unique Event for Local Congregations

By John Armstrong|2021-07-02T06:14:14-05:00October 2nd, 2014|Categories: ACT 3, Gospel/Good News, Missional-Ecumenism, The Church, Unity of the Church|

My friend Fr. Tom Ryan, C.S.P, partners with me in helping to facilitate an event three times each year that is co-sponsored by three or more local congregations in a town or city in the U.S. or Canada. The event is offered in both two-day and four-day versions. Please see this agenda outline for more information about the schedule, topics, and agenda offered in each version.

Available dates for 2015:
January 18-21
May 30-June 3
November 15-18

– Read feedback from Gospel Call participants

Objectives:

Provide Christian believers with an opportunity to discover, experience, and express our unity in Christ. The overarching objective of this event is to respond to the Gospel call to reconciliation with God and one another. Whole congregations of believers from different traditions are invited to experience afresh our unity in Christ through worship, spiritual growth, and mission.
Deepen Christians’ sense of solidarity with one another. By engaging together in an experience of prayer, faith-sharing, and fellowship over four days, people come to know one another better and perceive each other as belonging to the same body of Christ. By providing people with […]

An Account of the Lausanne Catholic-Evangelical Conversation

By John Armstrong|2021-07-02T06:14:14-05:00October 1st, 2014|Categories: ACT 3, American Evangelicalism, Missional-Ecumenism, Protestantism, Roman Catholicism, The Church, The Future, Unity of the Church|

Many of you already know that ACT3 facilitated the recent Lausanne Catholic-Evangelical
dialogue. One of the participants, Fr. René Constanza, wrote a report of our meeting for the website of the Paulist Fathers. Fr. René’s clear and accurate repot follows. Continue to pray for the follow-up of this significant gathering. If you would like to help ACT3 cover the expenses from this event we are still about $3,500 below budget. (We paid for some to attend who could not otherwise have participated.) A video of the public meeting will soon be available on this site.

This gathering was held at the University of St. Mary of the Lake in Mundelein, Illinois on September 11-13, 2014. This was a gathering of 13 Catholic and 13 Evangelical Protestant leaders to discern ways in which the Lord is leading us to foster evangelization and His mission. This dialogue is part of the Lausanne Global Conversation—a catalyst in creating partnerships and alliances among Christian leaders committed to pray, plan, and work together in proclaiming the life-giving gospel in a contemporary and culturally appropriate […]

Pope’s Address to the Focolare Movement (Revised)

By John Armstrong|2021-07-02T06:14:15-05:00September 30th, 2014|Categories: Missional-Ecumenism, Personal, Roman Catholicism, The Church, The Future|

The Focolare Movement, which has had a very significant role in my journey over the past three years, gathered in Italy for their annual General Assembly last week. Pope Francis used the occasion to send a special address to the members of friends of the movement. I share the English translation and encourage you to get to know this work better and to pray for the Focolare. The members of the movement have been an immense blessing to me personally.

This translation has been revised and edited by Focolare member, and ACT3 Network board member, Tom Masters. Tom is also editorial director for New City Press, the publishing house for the Focolare in the United States. The first edition of the pope’s address that I posted earlier today had some inaccuracies that Tom has now graciously corrected. An “official” translation from Italian has not yet been offered by the Vatican.

* * *

Pope’s Address to Focolare Movement

* * *

Dear Brothers and Sisters,

I greet you all, who make up the General Assembly of The Work of Mary, and seek to […]

The Reformation of the Vatican – The Sad Case of Józef Wesołowski

By John Armstrong|2021-07-02T06:14:15-05:00September 29th, 2014|Categories: Culture, Current Affairs, Ethics, Pastoral Renewal, Personal, Renewal, Roman Catholicism, The Church, The Future|

Vatican watchers, especially non-Catholics who love the Roman Catholic Church as I do, watch and pray for further reforms that are needed inside the Church. I was pleased to read this week of the Vatican putting Józef Wesołowski, its former nuncio (ambassador) to the Dominican Republic under house arrest on Tuesday, September 23.

Archbishop Józef Wesołowski was born in Nowy Targ, Poland, on 15 July 1948. He was ordained a priest in Kraków on 21 May 1972 by Cardinal Karol Wojtyła, the future Pope John Paul II. He was appointed as nuncio to Bolivia on 3 November 1999. On 6 January 2000 he was consecrated Titular Archbishop of Sléibhte by John Paul II. During the course of 2002 he was appointed as nuncio to the Central Asian countries of Kazakhstan, Tajikistan, Kyrgyzstan and Uzbekistan. On 24 January 2008 he was appointed nuncio to the Dominican Republic. In 2013 he was identified by a 13-year-old boy as the man who took sexual lurid photographs of him on his cell phone. He was removed […]

ACT3 September Forum on Friendship in Diversity

By John Armstrong|2021-07-02T06:14:15-05:00September 25th, 2014|Categories: ACT 3, Missional-Ecumenism, Orthodoxy, Personal, Protestantism, Reformed Christianity, Roman Catholicism, The Church, Unity of the Church|

On Tuesday, September 2, 2014, ACT3 hosted its first fall evening forum. Our subject was Christian diversity and deep friendship. I invited an Orthodox priest, Fr. Wilbur Ellsworth, and a Catholic author and editor, Tom Masters, to join me for a dialogue about how we share deep friendship and still remain committed to very different Christian traditions: Catholic, Protestant and Orthodox.

Fr. Ellsworth was a Baptist minister for decades before entering the Orthodox Church about seven years ago. He has been my friend for decades and is the former chairman of the ACT3 Network board of directors. He now pastors Holy Transfiguration Orthodox Church in Warrenville, Illinois. Mr. Tom Masters is a life-long Catholic, a former teacher and the editorial director of New City Press, the publishing house of the Focolare a lay-Catholic movement I have shared a great deal with in recent years. Tom currently serves on the ACT3 board.

I, as most of you already know, am an ordained minister in the Reformed Church in America (RCA). I do not currently pastor a stated congregation but […]

Love Alone Is Eternal (Part Eleven)

By John Armstrong|2021-07-02T06:14:15-05:00September 24th, 2014|Categories: Biblical Theology, Love, Mysticism, Personal, Spirituality|

One of the greatest contemporary spiritual writers I have happily encountered in the last few years is Carlo Carretto (1910-1988). Carretto was a member of the Little Brothers of Jesus, the order inspired by the spirituality of Charles de Foucauld. Through his best-selling Letters from the Desert, and more than a dozen other books, Carlo Carretto gave to Christians a joy-filled spirituality centered deeply in God’s love. Carretto showed us that it was possible to live a contemplative life in the midst of a very busy, modern world.

One of Carlo Carretto’s most moving reflections, which includes translations of his original Italian, reflects the sense of where I hope you will go with me as we discover that our love is too small.

Like God

If we are not capable during our lifetime of falling in love with God, we are lost.

Without love we are incomplete, immature, bored, missing paradise.

We would be doubtful and formulate the following equation: love of God equals peace, joy, bliss, fecundity, exultation, paradise; lack of love equals […]

Love Alone Is Eternal (Part Ten)

By John Armstrong|2021-07-02T06:14:15-05:00September 23rd, 2014|Categories: Biblical Theology, Discipleship, God's Character, Love, Personal, Spirituality|

Most of us realize that life is more than our limited experience of day-to-day activity. We believe there is a God we believe that it is he who sustains the world. We further believe that it is God who made us. But moments of wonder and transcendence do not mean that we know God really loves us. Explaining the world, and especially our own lives, without a personal, sustaining and loving God seems impossible. The alternative is an accident, or worse yet, pure fate!

When John says “God is love” we are prone to think, “That’s really nice.” Then a dozen popular and cheerful songs flood our minds about love, sweet love, what the world needs a little more of we say. We conceive of someone who cheers us up by being sunny and happy. But the biblical writers didn’t sing these kinds of songs or conceive of this kind of sunny personality. They surely didn’t have these ideas in mind when they spoke of God being love. Love, for the biblical writers, is the will to do good for another person, even at great cost to […]

S. Truett Cathy: RIP – What Can the Church Learn from the Same-Sex Debate?

By John Armstrong|2021-07-02T06:14:15-05:00September 22nd, 2014|Categories: American Evangelicalism, Culture, Current Affairs, Evangelism, Gospel/Good News, Love, Marriage & Family, Missional Church, Personal, Politics, Roman Catholicism, Sacraments, The Future|

Last Thursday I noted the passing of the controversial Irish Presbyterian minister, Rev. Ian Paisley. In the same Sunday newspaper (September 14) there was also mention of the passing, at the age of 93, of S. Truett Cathy. Cathy, as many will know by the mention of his name, is the founder and billionaire who built the famous restaurant chain, Chick-fil-A. The chain is known for many reasons, one of which is that it is closed on Sunday. The other, at least in the images and thoughts of millions who view the popular culture, is the amazingly funny commercials that are aired on television with cows telling us why we should “Eat More Chikin.”

Cathy opened his first restaurant in an Atlanta suburb in 1946. His boneless chicken sandwich would propel the franchise to more than 1,800 outlets in 39 states. By 2013 the company said that its annual sales topped $5 billion. The company is family-owned thus it is the Cathy family who seem poised to continue to hold to the core values that their father promoted. Cathy’s personal fortune […]

Rev. Ian Paisley: RIP

By John Armstrong|2021-07-02T06:14:16-05:00September 18th, 2014|Categories: Current Affairs, Death, Ideology, Love, Personal, Politics, Protestantism, Reformed Christianity, The Church, Unity of the Church|

I was reading the “Notable Deaths” page in my Sunday newspaper (September 14) and came across the news of the passing of the famous Irish Presbyterian minister, Ian Paisley. The AP report said: “Paisley [was] the Protestant firebrand who devoted his life to thwarting compromise with Catholics in Northern Ireland only to become a pivotal peacemaker in his twilight years.” Paisley was 88 when he passed away last Friday.

Ian Paisley was bigger than life in so many ways. (He was a big man and his voice and size could intimidate you very quickly!) I never heard Paisley preach in person but I listened to him a number of times via audio tape, online audio and television. He was a marvelous orator.

Oddly enough I was browsing in a Christian bookstore in suburban Toronto (Ontario) about twenty years ago when I heard this distinctive voice and turned to see if it really was Ian Paisley. It was the real Ian Paisley in the flesh. My first instinct was to draw back and avoid him. (Like I noted, he could intimidate one […]

Love Alone Is Eternal (Part Nine)

By John Armstrong|2021-07-02T06:14:16-05:00September 17th, 2014|Categories: Uncategorized|

In this series of posts called “Love Alone Is Eternal” I earlier referred to what one writer calls “the art of unknowing.” This idea is taken from the title of a classic medieval book, The Cloud of Unknowing. This anonymous work comes from the fourteenth century but it expresses something about the Christian faith that was more widely known in the Christian East for centuries.

In the East “dogma” is never understood as doctrine which explains or defines the truth. Dogma defines or explains what is not true. It was used, as we saw earlier, to explain heresy and error. Simply put, this means that in order to understand the mystery of the faith we must let go of errors and rest in the Truth, who is not a series of dogmas but a divine person.

In The Cloud of Unknowing the author makes a statement that shall guide me throughout this book. “But now, you put a question to me asking, ‘How shall I think about him, and what is he?’ And to this, I can only answer, ‘I […]