Second of Three Wed. Night Discussions (Smell Like Sheep)
Lynn’s PET scan was clear – Remission! Praise God! That’s what we’ve been praying for and we will keep on praying for Lynn and his family. We are preparing for Lynn. Our shepherds and leaders are reading his books, watching his training videos and meeting for Wednesday night discussion and prayer. Tonight we finished the 2nd of 3 Wednesday nights. The discussions are going great! Debbie and Becky are our prayer coordinators – you ought to see the prayer room they prepared – it’s called “Mary’s Upper Room”. They named it after Mary Dunford – our dear friend who resides in heaven. Great things are happening at Norway Avenue Church – we’re praying the Psalms and preparing for what God is going to say through Lynn. Visit Lynn Anderson’s Mentoring Network – Below is an excerpt from Lynn’s They Smell Like Sheep (Vol. 2) Lynn wrote “The flock you shepherd deserves—and desperately needs—a shepherd with a heart for the Word of God. So hungering to know and teach God’s Word is a top priority for shepherds.
Faithful shepherds feed on the Word, because as Frak says, “Even when we ‘know it,’ we still ‘need it.’ ” Peter says that the point in studying the Bible isn’t always to learn something new. More often it is to remind us of something old.
More importantly, reading the Bible leads us repeatedly into an encounter with the awesome God!
The shepherd with a heart for the Word uses the Bible to lead his or her flock to encounter the Sovereign One. He longs to help them find light for the journey, to help them manage the day-to-day ethical, moral, and relational challenges of life. He knows that only God’s Word supplies a compass able to show people the way in a world of bewildering questions, unbearable sufferings, and profound mysteries, a world without maps explaining how to make it through life’s insoluble problems.
Good shepherds have the joy—and the responsibility—to know and to teach the Word.”
First of Three Wed. Night Discussions (Smell Like Sheep)
Last night we had the first of three night discussions in preparation for Lynn Anderson‘s “They Smell Like Sheep” workshop. We discussed training session #1. In Lynn’s article “Don’t Give Up on Prayer”, he recommended that Christians practice the spiritual discipline of praying the Psalms.
Dallas Willard (Spirit of the Disciplines) suggests that, “In reaction against asceticism and legalism, and in search of a cheap view of ‘abundant life,’ too many churches call for less and less to be expected as ‘Christ-like lifestyle.”‘ And many evidence a “disdain for the disciplines that would empower us to do what needs to be done when in needs to be done. … To reject the spiritual disciplines wholesale is to insist that growth in the spirit is something that just happens all by itself. But when a believer does reject them, he or she must then assume the responsibility of putting other effective activities in their place.”
Lynn wrote “The most tried and true approach to personal prayer renewal is no mere fad or quick fix. And it is often overlooked in our haste to find short cuts. In fact, for three thousand years virtually all “the real giants of the faith-including Jesus-have one thing in common: They all prayed and sang the Psalms!”
Bible Reading Plans (Print, Email, Web, Mobile, RSS)
If you decided to read through the Bible in 2011 you need a Bible Reading Plan. Reading the Bible is rewarding and these plans can help you stay on track. I listed seven options below. Choose the one you like best.
Option 1 – 5X5X5 New Testament Reading Plan
http://www.navpress.com/uploadedFiles/5x5x5_BRP.pdf
Description: Read the New Testament – 5 days a week, 5 minutes a day This reading plan will take you through all 260 chapters of the New Testament, one chapter per day. The gospels are read throughout the year to keep the story of Jesus fresh all year.
Option 2 – Book-at-a-Time Bible Reading Plan (attached to this email
http://www.navpress.com/uploadedFiles/BRP2.pdf
Description: Read Old and New Testament books in each month’s readings, with the four gospels spread throughout the year. Read the complete Bible in one year. This reading plan has 25 readings per month, which gives you a few grace days to keep from falling behind.
Option 3 – New and Old Testament by Genre
http://70030.netministry.com/images/WeeklyGenresChart.pdf
Description: This Bible reading plan (from Into Thy Word) is set up for you to go through the entire Bible in a year. But with a twist: It divides up your reading into the main types of Genres (literature) such as Gospels, Law, Narrative (History), Psalms, Poetry, Prophecy, and Epistles! That way you can go though the entire Bible by reading the different Genre types. This is a unique plan that will help keep your pace up and prevent you from losing interest and giving up!
Option 4 – Chronological Bible Reading Plan
http://www.intothyword.org/pages.asp?pageid=53493
Description: Take a journey through the entire Bible reading passages in chronological order. Read the events of the Bible as they occurred chronologically. For example, the Book of Job is integrated with Genesis because Job lived before Abraham.
Option 5 = Read the Bible in a year by email
Description: If you would like to receive your daily readings to by email, click here http://www.studylight.org/plan/byemail.cgi or http://www.ewordtoday.com/
Option 6 – ESV’s Bible Reading Plans (RSS, Mobile) http://www.esv.org/resources/reading-plans-devotions/
ESV has 10 different Bible Reading Plans available in five different formats – Web, RSS, iCal, Mobile and you can print a hard copy. If you like the ESV this may be the best option for you.
Option 7 – Biblca’c NIV Bible Reading Plans (RSS, XML Feeds) http://www.biblica.com/bibles/daily-reading/
Description: These feeds can be used to receive the daily Scripture or to display on your web site. The start date for these feeds is January 1 [the start date can not be customized for feeds]. The feeds are provided by Google’s Feedburner and can be used on many services including Facebook, iGoogle, My Yahoo!, Windows Live, myAOL, e-mail, your mobile phone and more. This is the option I chose because I use the NIV more than any other translation. And now the daily readings will appear in my google reader every day in 2011. Pretty amazing!
Like this:
Interesting Facts About the Bible -
The brief paragraph below appears at the bottom of this pdf file. I like how the unnamed author breaks the year-long-Bible reading plan in to a manageable size.
http://www.bibleplan.org/bible-reading-record.pdf
“The Bible contains 1189 chapters: 929 in the Old Testament and 260 in the New. Reading 3 chapters each day and 5 chapters on Sundays will cover the entire Bible in one year. Follow some
plan. Even one chapter each day will cover the New Testament in only 9 months. God’s Word is alive. The more you expose yourself to it, the more it will expose itself to you.”
The Barna Group – New Research Explores How Different Generations View and Use the Bible
The Barna Group – New Research Explores How Different Generations View and Use the Bible
via The Barna Group – New Research Explores How Different Generations View and Use the Bible.
This study is interesting and the findings are important.
About Jeff
My Family
I grew up on Six Mile in Boone County WV. Wonderful parents and sisters, close family and great friends in Madison WV where I graduated from Scott High School in 1981. Moved to Nashville TN and went to David Lipscomb University where I met my wife Kim. We were married in 1985. I did a masters in Agency Counseling at Marshall University (1993) and a Ph.D. in Counselor Education at Ohio University (2004). I serve as a pastor for Norway Ave Church and I am an assistant professor in the Counseling Program at Marshall University. My hobbies include listening to music, playing my guitar and singing. I also enjoy hunting whitetail deer. Kim and I have three beautiful daughters who we love more than life.
