Still seeking?

I think we all want to live significant lives. The question for most of us is how. For people of religious faith they frequently turn to God, seeking his guidance and direction to answer that question. Kovach (1999) in his PhD dissertation proposed that at the deepest level “seeking to know the will of God may reflect a desire to be accountable to Christ with a profound concern to accomplish something significant for Christ and his kingdom” (p. 2). He argued that finding the will of God has been a preoccupation of evangelical Christians since the 1960s and cited a wealth of literature that offered guidance in finding guidance. When I quickly surveyed Bowker’s Global Books in Print (January 15, 2009) I found sixty books published after 1999 for the Canadian market alone on the subject of discerning God’s will. The majority of these works are written for the popular market with titles like Handbook for Discovering God’s Will (Jackson, 2008) and God has a Plan for your Life (Stanley, 2008). The authors include such evangelical heavy-weights as Charles Stanley, J.I. Packer, Elisabeth Elliot, R.C. Sproul, Henry Blackaby, and Tim LaHaye, best known for his apocalyptic fiction series, Left Behind. Best-selling evangelical author Rick Warren’s Purpose Driven Life (2002) and Purpose Driven Church (1995) discuss “what on earth am I here for” (2002, p. 15) and “God’s purpose for your church” (1995, p. 393). A survey of print literature only hints at part of the explosion of interest. A search of the online video sharing site GodTube (now Tangle)(January 17, 2009) offered over eight hundred of videos that discuss the “will of God”, and a search of podcasts on ITunes (January 17, 2009) on the “will of God” found one hundred fifty podcasts submitted by local churches and international organizations like Jimmy Swaggart Ministries. This preoccupation has not yet abated and is taking on new dimensions in the digital age.

So where would you look if you wanted to know the will of God? What would you read? To whom would you talk?

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Virtual Church Part II

Interestingly, the topic of virtual church came up on Dr. Heidi Campbell's blog (see "There is no virtual ekkelsia (?)". Two Pastors associated with the emerging church movement have argued that there can be no virtual community by the very definition of community. I am somewhat inclined to agree except that there are people in cyberspace who are finding their church needs met online. I recommend Campbell's book "Exploring Religious Community Online" (Peter Lang, 2005) if you are curious about some people's online experiences. Does community require a physical presence? Is the growth of online churches a symptom of the failure of many real life churches to build authentic communities? Could you be satisfied with a spiritual home online? Why not?

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