Pathways Church Blog

Got your attention?

I was sent this link tonight in light of our teaching last Sunday.

This is an incredible prayer and I dare us to pray it!

Someone passed along this blog to us this week. It captures the heart of a family who is truly trying to understand how Affluenza has gotten ahold of them and wrestling with what they can do about it. I’d encourage you to read it and consider what you can do as well. Stories like this inspire me.

John did a great job of laying out the Affluenza of the American Dream last weekend. I’m looking forward to the piles of clothes that are hauled in from our closets as we seek to declutter and fight against this idea that “I need more”. I’ve already begun a pile in my closet – which will not include a certain white leather jacket (angels sing as these words are read).

We’re going to continue this fight against Affluenza by taking a look at the 10th Commandment and the role that it plays in our life. What takes place in us individually, eventually begins to pervade a society and we live in a culture that insists that it keep up with the Joneses (Not you, Scott and Nicole). Where does that take us as a culture? What are the big picture ramifications of the violation of this simple commandment? That’s what we hope to explore.

Seeing how much fun we had with last weeks blog, let’s keep it rolling by asking this question: If you could snap your fingers and “have” any one thing (in a physical sense – not world peace) what would you want and why? What is it that has been lurking in your dreams? We’ve all been bombarded by more commercials and advertisements than any society in the history of humankind, so I know we shouldn’t have any problem with this one.

The home group that usually meets at the home of Scott and Nicole Jones is relocating tonight. We will instead be meeting at 7pm at the new Spotted Cow in the Mill Creek Town Center. Hope you’ll come and join us!

I don’t know anyone in leadership there.
I don’t know anyone who attends there.
I don’t know exactly what happened.

I do know that this community of people really need our prayers right now as a young girl has been forever effected. A young man will be forever effected. And God’s name is going to be dragged through the mud within the streets of our community.

Pray for justice. Prayer for this church and for the surrounding community of Mill Creek. Pray Jesus would be seen in spite of the horror of this situation.

The United States has twice as many shopping malls as it does high schools. We live in a time and place where we can pretty much have anything we want if we are willing to work hard enough — or go into enough debt — to get it. Yet, few will argue that having whatever you want will not bring happiness. What does it take to really be content? When is enough enough?

In recent years, the term affluenza has begun to appear. The very term has resonated so well in the hearts of people that it has spread through the media, and been the subject of TV shows and a number of books. Affluenza is the idea that getting all we want leads not to greater happiness, but greater discontent. Spend some time this week reading through the words of Jesus in Luke 12:13-34 as he talks about this very subject.

But…for our discussion on the blog, let’s have a little fun at our own expense. Tell us about something you have sitting in a closet or your garage that you really wanted at one time, but now it is just collecting dust. Or, better yet, if you’re married, go ahead and tell us about something your spouse bought. (I’m just kidding about that one!)

Throughout the past five weeks, Pathways has been exploring what it might look like to live out our Core Values in specific ways. We’ve dreamed about what it could look like to be a community that lives around our values.

This past weekend, we introduced the Pathways Covenant. This is a picture of what it might look like for us to live as a community wrapped around these values. This post is for any questions that you might have about the covenant that we are walking through together. We realize that the concept of covenant is not an overly familiar term in our culture. We want this to be an open forum to wrestle through this idea together. Individually, it is impossible to display unity to the world. Together, we can walk in a way that communicates the true character of God.