Dear Friends,

This entry represents one of the most significant shifts that have ever transpired in my life.  As you know, there are many different “streams” in the Christian faith.  I would define a “stream” as one particular approach to living out the gospel.  Some people swim in the charismatic stream, others in the holiness, social justice, liturgical, Orthodox, evangelical or fundamentalist stream.  Each stream has a portion of the truth of the gospel that characterizes them.  On their own, however, they are incomplete.  We need each other.  There’s that great contemporary song we sing “Did you hear the mountains tremble – did you hear the oceans roar when all the streams flow as one river . . .”  In other words there’s a day we can look forward to when all the streams in the Church will merge together and there will be one Church under the Lord Jesus Christ.

The stream that Washington Church is most closely affiliated with is what we would call the evangelical stream.  The particular contribution that the evangelical stream makes in the life of the Church at large is our appreciation of the centrality and authority of God’s Word.  Hence, one of our key core values is to be a biblically focused Church.

At the same time there are also other important core values in the kingdom that are not necessarily emphasized by the evangelical stream.  For decades I’ve had a desire to be responsive to the leading of the spirit in my life in a daily basis.  Jesus said, “My sheep hear my voice.”  Paul said, “All that are led by the Spirit are children of God.”  The evangelical stream by in large believes that in a token way but feels its too risky to rely on something as “subjective” or “touchy-feely” as the inner movement of the spirit.  As a result, we fall back on total dependence on God’s Word.

Over the years I’ve come to the solid conviction that this is not an either/or scenario but a both/and.  Being led by the Spirit and being guided by the word of God are like two parallel railroad tracks, both are needed.  This conviction brings me to what I want to share with you in this blog.  A couple of years ago I began placing myself under the tutelage of Ignatius of Loyola, the 16^th century founder of the Jesuit order.  When Ignatius started his walk of faith he was almost biblically illiterate.  In his day the only copies of the Bible were written in Latin and he could not read Latin.  He was a Spaniard.  Therefore, he had no access to reading the word on his own.  As a result he was forced to navigate through the early part of his Christian life learning how to rely on the Spirit of God.  For the last 400 years he has been affectionately known throughout the Church as “the father of spiritual discernment.”

Over the past 12 months I’ve been meeting on a weekly basis with Father Tom Pipp (who is the President of St. John’s Jesuit High School in town) for spiritual direction.  He has been leading me through Ignatius’ discipleship manual called The Spiritual Exercises. The disciplines of doing the exercises involve not only a study of the scripture in a “lexio divina” approach (which I’ve spoken of elsewhere) but also an hour of prayer each day. 

I must say in a very gentle way this discipline has worked its way into my life.  It has made all the difference in the world.  For years I’ve wrestled hard to deepen my prayer life not only so I can draw closer to Jesus but that I can do a better job representing Him to those whom I love.  Now, without what it seems to be any effort at all on my part, an hour or two in prayer seems to fly by and I hate to leave that precious time with our Beloved in order to meet the challenges of the day.

I thought you might want to hear about what’s going on “underground” in my life.

Love – your friend,

Don

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