Articles for tag: Christian Spirituality

September 26, 2016

By Neal Windham I recently took six college students to a state park not far from my home for an afternoon of prayer. It was a dreary spring day. Intermittent rain showers soaked our plans, cooled the air, and beckoned us to drier conditions after we toured the park. So we went to a Dairy Queen””you can always pray at a Dairy Queen””where we celebrated Abbey”s birthday over Blizzards and swapped some great stories. On the drive home, students began to sing. One of them asked if I had a request. “Sure,” I said, “How about something from The Sound

July 16, 2015

Christian Standard

Church & Ministry Leadership Development

Philip D. Kenneson’s Thought Leaders

We asked 35 Christian leaders, “Who is the influencer with the biggest impact on your life and ministry?” Most of these leaders listed severalÂ influential thinkers, writers, innovators, and leaders more of us should get to know. This response is fromÂ Philip D. Kenneson, professor of theology and philosophy at Milligan College, Tennessee. ________ Over the years, I have been consistently challenged, convicted, and unsettled by the work of Stanley Hauerwas, Miroslav Volf, and Rowan Williams, three of the leading theologians of our day. All three not only ground their theology unapologetically in a Trinitarian understanding of God, but each deeply loves

May 27, 2015

Christian Standard

Christian Living

Silence and Socializing

By Jim Tune Susan Cain, in her best-selling book Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World That Can”t Stop Talking, says at least one-third of the people we know are introverts. They are the ones who generally prefer listening to speaking, who innovate and create but dislike self-promoting, and who favor working on their own over working in teams. Cain argues that we undervalue introverts and shows how much we lose in doing so. There is a certain inner work we can do only by ourselves, alone, in silence. Meister Eckhart helps us understand that when he asserts, “Nothing

February 22, 2009

Christian Standard

Discipleship & Spiritual Formation

Just What Is Christian Spirituality?

by Neal Windham In 1993, while returning from a Society of Biblical Literature meeting in San Francisco, I had a deep encounter with the living God. Having picked up Henri Nouwen”s In the Name of Jesus, I was confronted very directly with a question of terrifying significance: Had my life and work counted for anything, anything at all, or was I just playing games? That night, somewhere around 35,000 feet, God used one of the truly great Christian spirituality writers of the 20th century to begin stripping away layer upon layer of my selfishness and conceit. Since then I have