Category Archives: Christian Disciplines

Community Disciplines: Community Disciplines: Romans on Discipline, Part 2 (chapter 14b)

Romans 14 is quite controversial in the Churches of Christ today, because it runs so contrary to much of our preaching. (Rom 14:6 ESV)  6 The one who observes the day, observes it in honor of the Lord. The one … Continue reading

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Community Disciplines: Community Disciplines: Romans on Discipline, Part 3 (chapters 13 and 14a)

We turn now to Romans 13. You know, one of the sad truths of church life is that we rarely make it this far in Romans. We start in chapter 1, and two quarters later, we’re still worrying over original … Continue reading

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Community Disciplines: Romans on Discipline, Part 2

In the last post, we began to see how the Holy Spirit is God’s solution for our hard hearts. That’s the teaching of Romans 8, and Paul stands on the shoulders of the prophets when he teaches this. We skip … Continue reading

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Community Disciplines: Romans on Discipline, Part 1

As mentioned in the last post of this series, Willard argues for the necessity of ascetic practices based on the difficulty of bringing our fleshly natures under control as described in Romans 7 — (Rom 7:5-10 ESV) 5 For while … Continue reading

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Community Disciplines: Dallas Willard on Asceticism

My thinking on spiritual disciplines is affected by some bad experiences. I have to admit it, you know. I guess the most significant experience happened back in the 1970s when my church was under the influence of the “Crossroads Movement,” which … Continue reading

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Community Disciplines: A Little Help?

For a while now I’ve argued that the spiritual disciplines movement over-emphasizes individual, solitary disciplines. Consider, for example, this from Dallas Willard — Three practices or spiritual disciplines are especially helpful in making Sabbath real in the midst of our … Continue reading

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Seven Circles of Community

At church, the elders and ministers are working through a visioning process based on the book Church Unique — which I really like because it combines some of my favorite ideas from some of my favorite books. And we were talking through the … Continue reading

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