Getting ready for the Spiritual Activism Summit

[Brant]

Hey folks, as the summit gets closer, I thought it might be cool to hear what different people are thinking about. For example, many of you might be looking through the book of acts in preperation for the summit.

This weekend I started reading "Thirty Years That Changed the World: The Book of Acts for Today", which I found to be really good. It gives some really good historical scene-setting for why Christianity flourished in the years after Jesus' resurrection, as well as the challenges they had (the answer to both is usually The Romans). I was able to get a digital copy off of Amazon and am reading that until my paper copy arrives. The author (Micheal Green) makes a bunch of good connections to our modern day church and challenges. Good stuff - I'll share more as I read.

Also, I was over at the Mary Baker Eddy library the other day and was reading her association address from 1888 (written on March 14 in case you want to go look it up for yourself). She starts it off with this cool couple of sentences that I scribbled down in my notebook, "The ancient worthies gained heaven, harmony, through the 'Testimony' of the saints not by the 'Silence' of saints. Maliscious mesmerism is bidding you to be silent. God calls on you to speak."

[imabkpr]

the Summit!!

Oh man, it sounds so cool, and its in my state too. But no car. :( But I hope to be able to contribute in other ways.

Interestingly enough, the society I attend here has a bible study group on wednesdays. We just go straight through a chapter each week and then bring ideas. And we are studying Acts 3 and 4! It is really cool. At my old church we had testimony meetings. But this works too because it is a smaller group. I am not quite finished, but am working on it.

[Inge]

Hi All!

Looking forward to seeing some of you at the Summit in a week. . I've been gradually making my way through Acts, which admittedly I haven't really done in a complete way before so I'm excited to dig into it a bit. But (revealing my total Bible history ignorance here) can anyone give a bit of background on Acts to put it in context a little bit? Beyond "The Acts of the Apostles" I don't know a whole lot about the times/places/setting.

[Inge]

Just wanted to share a quick thought that I stumbled onto in doing some prep work for next weekend. Since the theme for the Summit is Spiritual Activism, I decided to look up activism. The definition from Merriam Webster is:

activism: a doctrin or practice that emphasizes direct vigorous action especially in support of or opposition to one side of a controversial issue.

The definition got me thinking about a few questions-- what is the controversial issue we're focusing our direct vigorous action on? What kind of direct vigorous action are we taking, and what does it mean to be direct and vigorous actors? What side of the controversial issue are we supporting? And what are the qualities of an activist?


Looking up activ* in Concord brought up a lot of really interesting references.

looking forward to hearing other peoples thoughts/seeing some of you next weekend!

[Ariana]

Hey Inge. Thanks for your posts about the Spiritual Activism Summit.

The Book of Acts begins shortly after Jesus' ascension. Initially there were 120 followers of Jesus who come together for the Day of Pentecost. On this day, they were filled with the Holy Spirit. They were moved, they were on fire, and they went out and shared what they had freely and fearlessly. They met a lot of opposition along the way. But they didn’t back down. They knew that they had to share with the world what Christ Jesus had taught them and nothing was going to stop them from that.

We are studying the Book of Acts to learn from these early Christians. In the Church Manual, MBE states that the purpose of this church is to “reinstate primitive Christianity and its lost element of healing.” The Book of Acts is a good resource for gaining a deeper understanding of this primitive Christianity and for models of spiritual activism.

The TMC Youth team is reading a book right now called “Thirty Years That Changed the World: The Book of Acts for Today” by Michael Green. I highly recommend it. Plus it gives some of the background of the Book of Acts and

Thanks for your research on the word activism as well! I hope all of our participants are as diligent in preparing for this Summit. We use the term "activism" not in the sense of supporting something controversial, but as being proactive. Valuing Christian Science doesn't just mean using it for ourselves. We need to be actively sharing it with the world.

You look at the news on any given day and the world seems full of problems--war, poverty, chaos, disease, etc. There are many human theories and solutions that bring some relief, but they are so temporary and limited. We need to recognize what we as Christian Scientists are bringing to the equation—bringing healing to situations around the world.

See you at the Summit!

[Brant]

Hey folks, a bunch of us are now at CedarS (yes, you need to capitalize the S) and getting ready for everyone to arrive. That means stuffing welcome packets and getting familiar with the place. I've never been here before and I'm really impressed with all that's here.

I want to thank Inge for bringing up that definition of activist. On the van ride from the airport we were talking about this book that two of us had been reading. I forget the title, but it was all the evangelical youth groups springing up around the United States. It made me realize that there is a type of activism that can breed intolerance. We also talked about the difference between compassion and sympathy - where compassion is being firm in your understanding, but still reaching out to others; while sympathy is going down to their level. I think Paul really had compassion in the book of Acts and I think the type of Spiritual Activism we're talking about is full of compassion. This is a half-developed thought, but I need to go assemble some more welcome packets.