A Quote by Ambrose Bierce
HOMILETICS, n. The science of adapting sermons to the spiritual needs, capacities and conditions of the congregation.
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When the congregation becomes the norm by which sermons are measured, a minister has put a mortgage on his soul.
Recent breakthroughs in science show we have just the capacities we need to face our planet's challenges. We're "soft-wired" for cooperation, empathy, fairness, along with a deep need to "make a dent," as social philosopher Erich Fromm put it. My hunch is that one reason depression is a global pandemic is that the dominant mental map denies so many of us expression of these deep needs and capacities.
The world does not need sermons; it needs a message. You can go to seminary and learn how to preach sermons, but you will have to go to God to get messages.
I see this in the way that sermons are preached. How would you give a Black Nationalist speech or campaign for the Republicans when you're an integrated congregation? It doesn't happen.
The key thing is knowing how to adapt. Adapting to the group that you have at your disposal; adapting to the place where you're working; adapting to the local environment. This is crucial: adaptability.
Confusion conditions activity, which conditions consciousness, which conditions embodied personality, which conditions sensory experiences, which conditions impact, which conditions mood, which conditions craving, which conditions clinging, which conditions becoming, which conditions birth, which conditions aging and death.
That is what Test cricket is about, adapting to different conditions around the world.
Jesus has given me ample resources to meet the spiritual needs of others because He has given me Himself and He has give me His Word. But in order to meet the spiritual needs of the multitude, I have to spend hours alone with Him in the prayerful meditation of His Word so that my spiritual needs are met.
We hold in our arms the rising generation. They come to this earth with important responsibilities and great spiritual capacities. We cannot be casual in how we prepare them. Our challenge as parents and teachers is not to create a spiritual core in their souls but rather to fan the flame of their spiritual core already aglow with the fire of their premortal faith.
We view Sufism not as an ideology that molds people to the right way of belief or action, but as an art or science that can exert a beneficial influence on individuals and societies, in accordance with the needs of those individuals and societies ... Sufi study and development gives one capacities one did not have before.
The spiritual differs from the religious in being able to endure isolation. The rank of a spiritual person is proportionate to his strength for enduring isolation, whereas we religious people are constantly in need of 'the others,' the herd. We religious folks die, or despair, if we are not reassured by being in the assembly, of the same opinion as the congregation, and so on. But the Christianity of the New Testament is precisely related to the isolation of the spiritual man.
Labor force needs and economic conditions are disregarded in our policies. Many aspects of our current policies and procedures are patently wrong. For example, legal immigration has almost no link to U.S. employment needs or economic conditions.
I think there's definitely a potential there for a congregation to survive without the Crystal Cathedral. The congregation is the people. It's not the building.
When you come to the spiritual needs, the emotional needs, the needs of our inner life, then politics and business and technology are completely impotent. They are completely unable to meet and address the needs of human beings.
The conclusion forced upon me in the course of a life devoted to natural science is that the universe as it is assumed to be in physical science is only an idealized world, while the real universe is the spiritual universe in which spiritual values count for everything.
Children are more influenced by sermons you act than by sermons you preach.
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