Monthly Archives: February 2012

I once read that icons of the Orthodox tradition should not be thought of as paintings, but as windows to heaven… they shed an illumination of the Holy for our ears to behold. Last week in Belgrade at Saint Sava’s church…

I prayerfully pondered several icons… in a series of posts today and tomorrow, I give you some windows into heaven.

Oh, it was not on purpose… but, my now-deceased Canon did not grab the clearest of images due to lack of mono-pod, inability to do settings for various reasons, etc… BUT, I kinda like the softness that the bit of a blurred effect gives, kinda like we’re looking through a glass that is smudged… get it?

Recently I sat with a couple who are planting churches in a place where churches are neither strong nor easily found. They are using a set methodology which makes sense to me but I will not discuss here… What I want to do in this post is to do a bit of contextualizing (how’s that for a word?)… I want to use the questions in my work (you know: riding trains, drinking coffee and asking questions…

1. What are you thankful for today?

2. What are you struggling with lately? -or- What is causing stress in your life?

3. [after reading a text] What does this story teach me about who God is?

4. What does this story teach me about what humanity is really like?

5. What will I do differently in my life as a result of this story?

6. What should we do together to obey this message from God?

7. Who could you share this story with?

Now, I sat and took notes from my friends, and then another friend from another city typed them up after we talked about the ways that these questions could help us and others in knowing God and living life better for Him. I have made some further modifications to some of my scribbling of the questions to make them shorter and am seeking to make them clearer.

What are ways you would further edit these questions?

Please note that these questions are designed to be used in conjunction with reading passages of Scripture in a small group setting. Can you see how they could be helpful to you in understanding God and life a little better? But I can also see how these questions could be used in a lot of other ways to pull understanding of God out of lots of things (General Revelation does exist).

I’m excited about how these simple questions can help create an ethos of making disciples… What do you think?