Charis

So tell me, what practices has the church lost, and why call ordinary Biblical prayer by a new name if nothing has changed?

contemplative prayer is not a “new name” as far as I know. It is a description. contemplate means “think”, “meditate”

I was in evangelical churches of many flavors for 25 years, and the corporate prayers were pretty much laundry lists of what we want from God….

That is my experience.

And while I am at it, I will “out myself” some more into the company of your “heretic” list. I like my present church very much. It is very refreshing and spirit filled 🙂 We had a sunday school video series taught by Pat Robertson. The young adult Sunday school which my daughter attends is reading “Velvet Elvis”, and last quarter they read “Blue like Jazz”. We have a woman elder who often delivers prophetic messages. Yet my pastor- with whom my husband and I are engaged in marriage counseling- used the distasteful and unbiblical (to me) term “servant-leader” about my husband. ((((yuck!!!))))

Let me add to my black sheep credentials by bragging about my adult son and daughter- who moved away before we switched churches… My son read “Blue Like Jazz” 4 times and said it is the best Christian thing he has ever read… so I had to read it and I like it. My son is the one who first attended our present church (with a former girlfriend). My daughter called me up to send her copy of Foster’s “Celebration of Discipline” (which was a text at her Christian college) because she is going to study it with a group of friends. I haven’t read that one yet, but I would never refer to my christian brother as a heretic. And I have the utmost confidence in my daughter’s spiritual maturity and discernment to be able to hear and respond to God’s voice from a frail human vessel (after all, she was raised by ME- the chiefest of frail human vessels :p)

There we go.
Are you all sufficiently alienated, suspicious, and fearful of anything and everything I say?
YIKES!!!