Captain Danielle Strickland posted this recently at her blog ArmyBarmy Remix. It was a very nice devotion and a good time to reflect on Jesus.
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Comment with your thoughts
Archive for relevance
The similarities between Christianity and open source
Being a full time missionary and a certified Linux proffessional I cannot help but watch how similar these two areas of my life are.
The passion and sacrificial nature of the followers and the resistance of the world
Both communities …
- …Are run by a mish mash of volonteers and large companies (denominations).
- …Have highly self motivated volonteers who are giving up on their free time to promote the ideas the communities stand for.
- …Prozelyze, that is both communities try to spread their ideas to others.
- …Believe that their ideas are good news.
- …Battle sceptisizm and biased dissmissals on a daily basis.
- …Go against the trend of the capitalistic society.
- …Are told there is no such thing as a free lunch, when presenting the good news
I could go on forever making the list really long. What is interesting though is that the two communities one very modern and one very old are dealing with the problems in exactly the same way. Both communities try to remake their language to be less threatening, in church we call it seeker friendly in the Open Source community we ditched free software and political language about human rights and freedoms.
And while that has gained both camps popularity I believe both camps have lost something….
The call for contemplative silence
Tuesday night when I was talking at Metro I described the tension between our ministry driven church programs and the call of God to an almost monastic life. It is my firm belief that God is calling us to worship Him before we do any thing for Him. It is also my belief that that worship must start in meditation, contemplation, prayer, praise as we explore our faith inwardly and express it outwardly.
It is clear that there is a need for silence and contemplation in our hyped up, always loud and busy modern world. This is why the Catholic church is still growin, why the Taize movement are captivating young people. While there is a postmodern rejection of religion people are seeking Spirituality like never before.
We must be careful in our efforts to be postmodern and relevant to todays society that we do not loose the mystery of the Christian faith. That we preserve the spiritual disciplines of Contemplation, meditation, silence, fasting, solitude and ritual without loosing the celebration, joy, modern sounds and images of todays society.
