Blog - Page 96 of 318 - John H Armstrong

The Promise of Rivers

By John Armstrong|2021-07-02T06:17:05-05:00December 14th, 2011|Categories: Contemplation, Prayer, Spirituality|

In John 7 our Lord visits Jerusalem for the Feast of Tabernacles. John 7:1-10:21 covers a period of only eight days. But what an amazing eight days it was in terms of our Lord’s mission and what he revealed. People had all kinds of responses to Jesus during these days of his flesh. Some thought him mentally deranged (7:20) while others thought he was the promised Messiah (7:31, 40). Verse 1 says the religious leaders sought to kill him. We should not read this as if all the Jews, in some general way, wanted him dead. Jesus taught in the temple and attracted a great deal of public attention. The response was truly varied as the text indicates.

The Feast of Tabernacles was an eight-day harvest festival commemorating the time when Israel walked in the wilderness of Sinai and lived in tents. Along with Passover and Pentecost this was one of the big three in Israel’s liturgical remembrance. In later times water would be mixed with wine and poured at the base of the altar, both as purification and as a remembrance of the water flowing from […]

A Story of Missional-Ecumenism in Action

By John Armstrong|2011-12-12T04:00:00-06:00December 12th, 2011|Categories: Missional-Ecumenism|

Joshua Lichter is a young man who has a unique mission in Auburn, California. (The only Auburn I knew as recently as a few years ago was in Alabama. It is the home of my biggest football rival. I’ll save that story for another time!)

Josh and his wife (Rachel) are good friends. Josh was recently ordained in the Reformed Church in America. He understands missional-ecumenism in a unique and powerful way. I saw Josh a few weeks ago when I spoke to the Central California Classis of the RCA. Josh later sent me an account of one aspect of his unique mission. With his permission I post part of his story to demonstrate how one visionary church planter is engaging modern mission realities with clarity and openly following Jesus into the world where he actually lives and serves. Here is Joshua’s account:

Once a month, I have been participating in a book reading/ discussion club with several local clergy, most of whom are Episcopal priests. Most are quite liberal in their theology.
This past week, we met and discussed a book called The Meaning of Mary Magdalene by […]

God’s Love Brings About Real Change

By John Armstrong|2011-12-09T04:00:00-06:00December 9th, 2011|Categories: God's Character, Love, Mysticism|

I was taught, like most, that God loved me if and when I changed. Simply put, if I repent then God will love me. But 1 John 4:8 and 16 says, “God is love.”

Love is the supreme revelation of the Christian faith. Divine love is the chief characteristic of living faith. Other religions know something about a God who is compassionate (to varying degrees) but no other religion has known the dynamism of divine love, a love that moves the entire creation toward the Creator. This God-Love is the most distinctive quality to be discovered in true Christianity. But listening to much of what I hear Christians say about God and faith you’d never know this to be the case.

Because God-Love is who God is we are loved. God loves you and me so that we can change. Richard Rohr says, “What empowers change, what makes you desirous of change is the experience of love. It is that inherent experience of love that becomes the engine of change. If the mystics say that one way, they say it a thousand ways. But because most of our […]

Missional-Ecumenism: A Lecture on Video

By John Armstrong|2021-07-02T06:17:05-05:00December 8th, 2011|Categories: Uncategorized|

I recently taught a group of Chicago church leaders on missional-ecumenism. If you would like to watch this presentation it lasts a little over an hour and a half. (I believe it is 94 minutes long.) I offer it to readers of this blog who have the time and interest in watching and hearing my message on mission and unity in a very human and interactive context. You can acccess the video file at: http://vimeo.com/32636755.

Poustinia: Encountering God in Silence, Solitude and Prayer

By John Armstrong|2021-07-02T06:17:05-05:00December 7th, 2011|Categories: Mysticism, Orthodoxy, Roman Catholicism, Spirituality|

Before I found the book, Poustinia: Encountering God in Silence, Solitude and Prayer, I confess that I had never heard of Catherine Doherty. She was a remarkable lady who sought to translate Eastern Christian insights (sometimes called “desert spirituality”) into the context of Western life. More than a half century ago Catherine arrived in Canada as a Russian refugee. She used her background in Russian Christianity to give her a matrix for responding to the needs of Christian life and work in the busy, modern West. Catherine became “poor to serve with the poor Christ” among the poorest people in Toronto and Harlem. But the work that led to my finding her moving book was the establishment of a spiritual lay center, the Madonna House Apostolate, in rural Ontario.

The title of this book bears the Russian word for “desert.” At the center of Catherine’s lifelong journey was her experience of the desert. She writes, in the opening chapter, “For the mystery of men in the midst of […]

The Unity Factor: One Lord, One Church, One Mission

By John Armstrong|2021-07-02T06:17:05-05:00December 6th, 2011|Categories: ACT 3, Missional Church, Missional-Ecumenism, Personal, Unity of the Church|

Some months ago my board asked me to prayerfully consider writing a new, small book on missiona-ecumenism. I finally finished this in the fall and today the book is available for purchase.

I determined to not write the same book as Your Church Is To Small by simply making a short version. I wrote an entirely new book on the same subject but with a different audience and purpose in mind.

If you would like copies of the book for distribution we can offer you a very inexpensive price if you will use them to reach others with this message.

For the next six days the book is available as an E-Book for free. Check this out at: https://www.facebook.com/clpress?sk=app_201143516562748. If you want to read it get it now as a free download.

Your response will help us get this vital message to a growing number of Christians who need […]

Climate Science and Evangelicals

By John Armstrong|2021-07-02T06:17:05-05:00December 5th, 2011|Categories: Current Affairs, Environmentalism, Politics, Science|

One of the true hot-button issues conservatives routinely debate is climate science and global warming. I have listened to some of the strangest and most confusing debate over this issue. Some of the worst debate over this issue is routinely endorsed by evangelical Christians who laugh at climate science and demonize those who take it seriously. Some even produce impressive looking papers on what is wrong in the ciimate science debate. Much of this makes Christians look rather foolish to those who do rigid research on this problem.

What must be understood in this debate is that there is no doubt that global warming actually exists. The question is not, “Is global warming real?” The question is what causes it and what can, or should, we do about it?

Republican presidential candidate Rick Perry recently suggested that the flow of grants has led to a growing body of research arguing for human causes of global warming. In the September 26 issue of USA Today, Republican Bob Inglis, a two-time member of […]

Why We Still Need Career Politicians

By John Armstrong|2021-07-02T06:17:06-05:00December 2nd, 2011|Categories: Politics|

In every election cycle we hear a great outcry about why we don’t need politicians who make a career out of serving the public in elected office. If you’ve heard it once you’ve heard it a hundred times: “I think the answer to our problem is to remove the incumbents and start all over.” We go through this again and again, yet the fact is this—most of the current members of the U.S. House of Representatives are career politicians. The same holds true for at least half or more of the Senate. And most presidents serve two terms unless they are truly ineffective or reap the whirlwind of a reaction against their one term in office.

The recent passing of Senator Mark Hatfield reminded me of the value of a genuinely good and decent career politician who had courage and served his state and the nation well. Though Hatfield was often on the wrong side of issues within his own party he expressed moral fortitude in many ways.

While […]

Marriage Is Difficult

By John Armstrong|2021-07-02T06:17:06-05:00December 1st, 2011|Categories: Love, Marriage & Family|

I rarely pay attention to celebrity gossip and the daily news about Hollywood marriages and divorce. The media seems interested and based on the interest of a good number of people it seems warranted by our culture’s preoccupation with the private lives of the rich and famous.

This is why I was so surprised that I ended up reading the story of the divorce of Ashton Kutcher and Demi Moore. I would hardly have known they were married in the first place if so much attention had not be given to Demi Moore and Bruce Willis, her previous husband. Moore, for the record, is 49 years old while Ashton Kutcher is only 33. I suppose this in itself caught the attention of many when they married. This really was an older woman-younger man marriage. Would it work? How does it work? Curiosity about the bizarre and unusual reigns in pop culture.

Well, now that this famous couple is breaking up who actually cares? I don’t care I can assure […]

Africa and the Free Market

By John Armstrong|2021-07-02T06:17:06-05:00November 30th, 2011|Categories: Economy/Economics, Poverty|

I’ve engaged more than a few Christians in public forums on the problem of poverty in Africa. No continent has more problems with true poverty and caring for the desperately poor than Africa. It has, up to now, resisted almost every effort to change this situation. But the times are changing, slowly but surely.

A new report from the African Development Bank says that Africa’s middle class will triple to more than one billion people in the next half century. This will not close the huge gap between Africa and Asia but it will bring good news for huge numbers of Africans who presently face a very grim future.

This same report provides a bright outlook on African growth—it predicts the gross national product of Africa will expand by more than 5% per year.

Understand that Africa has never experienced such economic optimism. It has been no more than an afterthought in the global economy until recently. This is now clearly, slowly changing. If the leaders of African nations, and […]