Passionate Conversations

"Passionate Heart", by Marco Schmitt

Hey all!

We are glad to be back up and running with our conversation group again, now meeting on Thurs. at Southern Roast Coffee Co. in Holly Springs from 7:30-8:40 pm.

We are continuing to meet this week with a spicific topic in mind. We want to discuss what you are passionate about! What are the things lin life that you feel strongly about and what do you do about it. How are we each living out our passions?

This will be a good open topic that can go in endlsee directions. It will also open up the door for some other things that the group may do and discuss later on.

Hope to see you there!!!!

Meeting Again (Finally) This Week!!!

We apolojize for the delay in getting restarted after the holidays. We ran into some slight problems with our usual location. The good news is that we will begin meeting again on the 21st of Feb. Many people mentioned that thurs. nights would be better for them than wed., so we are moving to thurs. nights.

We are also moving locations. we will still be in holly springs about a mile or so from our previous coffee house spot. we will still meet from 7:30-8:30, so please try to get there before 7:30 so you can have your order filled and we can begin on time. Our new location is called Southern Roast Coffee. It is beside the Moravian Ch. in Holly Springs. Here's the website with address and you can get directions.

http://southernroast.com/

Thanks for your patience, and again we apolojize for the problems. But we are excited to get going again and perhaps have some new people join us as we continue to discuss where our spirituality meets reality!

INFO UPDATE

Hey all,
hope you guys had a wonderful holiday season.

Just wanted to let you all know that we will not be meeting this week (wed. Jan 9). We have run into a couple of issues with our location that we are trying to solve. We will get back together soon even if it happens in the basement of a house!!! Our conversations will get back on track soon.

In addition, we are looking at moving our meeting nights to Thursdays instead of Wed. Several people have mentioned that this would be a better day for them. Please leave some feedback on that idea!

Stay tuned, and we'll keep you updated on what's going on. Thanks for your patience and we can't wait to see everyone again.

Peace and Love,
admin

Announcement: Thanksgiving and Christmas

We aren't meeting this week!!!!
But will be back on the 28th! Recap is below from last week and feel free to add your thoughts on there someone mentioned continuing that conversation on the 28th, but that's up to you guys if we stay on that topic. I think that it was stated that we would like to get more of your thoughts from those that couldn't be there!

We talked this past week about having a Christmas/holiday get together before all the college students had to go home. We will continue to meet in Dec. and those that return home can keep up with us on line! We talked about having instead of like a Random Gift Exchange Party (some of us are broke and jobless...yes, me!) but instead having a Random CHANGE Party. We can host it at our place, but the idea is to begin collecting random change and bring that to the party instead of a gift. We will have food and fun stuff going on, but will collect All of the change and decide that night one place/orginization/charity/w/e to send it all to! It's our gift to each other...giving back to our world! So, if you have a suggestion of an orginization print up some info and bring it that night!

We're looking at Dec. 5th. we need some feedback on that since we don't know exam schedules and such! Let us know, I'll post the info as soon as we decide. All are invited. Email us if you have any questions!

Sin: Easy To Do, Not So Easy To Define?

Last night we bagen a discussion on the topic of Sin. We began by going around and listeing to people define sin personally.

-"Something that keeps you from a the Higher Power (being)."
+Evil?
-Immorality
-That which hurts God

-"Anything that tetracts from, or fail to hold to God's vision for the world.
+Is this more than moraility?

-"Anything that falls short of 'Love God/Love Neighbor'".

-"NOT working towards/being true to the person into whom God is making you."
_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_

Other comments:

-Sin originates from 2 places: Pride (ego) and Apathy (failure to act)
+The assumption then is that himility was the prefered motivator enacted out of love?

-Sin is not a "list" of spicific "no-no's"
+The Church has focused on a "list" of what is sinful to teach it's followlers.
+This leads to the inevitable Hiarchy of sins, even though we claim that all "sins" are equal if there were/is a list
+This also leads to leagalistic and binding faith!
___________________________________

We Asked, "if love is the standard for how to live sinless/not commit sin(?)" Who decides what is "loving"?

-Quote from Frederick Buechner: "sometimes love is doing something for someone, and sometimes its leaving them alone"
-It was stated that something like killing is always a sin
+Then it was brought up that the theologian, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, was part of an assasination attempt on Hitler because he thought that was the most loving thing to do!
+Brought up the question about how subjective love/sin can be perhaps?

_____________________________
SOMEONE then got in an imaginative segway about cults:) you know who you are!
This SOMEONE (with some additions of another fellow sidetracker) made us all laugh for a wonderful amount of time! It was nice to be reminded that serious conversations doesn't always mean we have to be solomn and serious in our talks! Thanks SOMEONE!!!!!

-There was an interesting closing comment off of the sidetrack:
--"There seems to be a fine line between the ritualistic cults, and the ritualistic Church????? Any "truth" to that?

and that's where we left off...

NOT MEETING NEXT WEEK: Nov. 21
Happy Thanksgiving
Leave comments and continue conversatoin, we would love to hear from those who weren't present...

Possible Topics: 11-14

The thing we ended on this past week was what do we do with John 14:6 in relation to our discussion of "truth".

Another possible topic that was sparked by a portion of the conversation last week could be a discussion on SIN and what that means to us. please see previous post (recap) for a couple of statements.

What is Sin?
How do we Define it individually?
What about us being "fallen", or what about the "fall" story?
In this topic, we might consider 1 Cor. 10:23-33 (focal on v. 23).

These are just some suggestions, as always they are subject to be thrown aside if anyone has anything they would like to share/discuss with the group from their own lives!

Enjoy and see you tomorrow!

Absolute Truth...Or Perhaps Not So Absolute

This week was an offshoot continuation of our previous conversation.

We began talking about other religions and Christianity being the "only way" (where we left off), and quickly transferred into a different lane on a similar road. Some comments:

-Doesn't all religions claim "absolutes"?
+ The main 3 (Christianity, Islam, and Judaism), yes, others (Buddhism, Hinduism, Wicca, etc..)not as much.

-It was pointed out that the famed apologeticist, Josh McDowell mentioned that Absolute Truth seemed to be taking a shift.

-"The problem with "Absolute Truth", is that by definition, everything else is "wrong".
+That causes discomfort in some people.

-The question was asked, "When did 'truth' stop evolving like everything else?"
+"Perhaps that's what is happening now? Like the reformation, someone needed to be the plow to uproot the status quo, perhaps now we (as individuals and a community?)are the plow!"

-We stated that we valued new perspectives on God, Esp. since that is a stated goal of this group, but was stated beautifully that, "We can't get a new perspective on God standing still."

-We began speaking about responsibility of Christians.
+A lot of this centered around issues with the earth/Environment
2 VERY thought-provoking Comments I Caught:
+"I endorse a pantheistic view which sees God reflected in all things. God is revealed in and made up the full panoply of Creation and the creatures on it. I don't worship Creation but rather see God within and to harm it or the organisms that make it up, to not be proper stewards, is to blaspheme against God and almost the very definition of sin."
+"Christianity has strayed away from its counter-cultural roots and now serves the status quo and to prop up the interests of corporations. Christianity itself is operating almost as a corporation that is more interested in marketing itself and getting more numbers than truly acting as the positive force it should be. I find all religions to be a beautiful thing and I hate to see Christianity reduced to such a role."

-A comment: "do we show (communicate) the message death and forget about [the message] of hope and life [in our actions]?"

-Tim Conder came to Campbell and made a rattling comment that was mentioned: "Christians are way to nice! The Ch. should be the enemy of anyone or anything that takes advantage of others!"
____________

We ended with the Question: "What do we do with John 14:6--'I am the way, the truth and the life, no one comes to the father except by me.'"?

sorry for the delay on the recap!