January 5, 2022 Weekly Update
Happy New Year friends! I hope these early days of 2022 have been a blessing to you and your loved ones. Maybe you’ve had some extra time to play in the snow, connect with loved ones, dwell in the beauty of Christmas décor, or pick up an old book and a cup of warm tea. Find that thing that fills your soul and do it, because it’s shaping up to be a long winter.
I’m starting 2022 on a mission to read the books that I’ve purchased but have yet to read or finish before I buy or borrow any new books! One book that I started last summer is, “Enhancing Christian Life: How Extended Cognition Augments Religious Community.” Did that title just put you to sleep? Haha, me too when I first read it. But a friend invited me to read it, and I’m so glad I did. It’s a neuroscience and academic approach to why spiritual community is essential, and why ‘lone-ranger’ Christianity is failing the church and the world.
If there was one sentence I could share with you, it would be this: “It takes a church to raise a Christian.” So often we think of our faith from the starting point of our individuality. But we fail to see the many ways our hearts and minds are formed by outside influences – other people, and (as this book argues) tradition, scripture, inanimate objects, our memory, and even the memory of others. We are shaped as Christians, primarily, by our participation in spiritual community – not the other way around. Perhaps this is why the Apostle Paul spends so much energy writing about the Body of Christ for early Christian communities.
This thought reminds me of how vital it is to place myself in the community of CFUMC. I am being shaped by your love and witness, even on difficult days, low energy days, or Sundays where I may not feel “fed” – as the popular saying goes. Your presence blesses and shapes me, and my presence does the same for you.
I look forward to your presence – in person or online – each week. Stay warm out there!
Blessings,
Pastor Jared