Showing posts with label Baptist. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Baptist. Show all posts

Friday, January 10, 2014

15 Minutes a Day

This past week, a group of my friends in Joel 2:25 (http://www.Joel225.com) started meeting via teleconference each morning to pray Lauds (Morning Prayer: http://universalis.com/). The teleconference line is one that we set up exclusively for prayer and it's available 24/7.

Right now, we have two groups that meet every day: the Compline or night prayer group at 10:30PM CST and the new Morning group. Both of these are traditional liturgical prayers (from the Psalms) and they are awesome, but they are mostly from my own Catholic tradition. Our group is very diverse and at least half of Joel 2:25 guys are evangelical or charismatic and many are from Orthodox traditions. I would LOVE for us to get more daily groups with other forms of prayer / worship. 

Besides the obviously most important aspect of communal worship and praise for our King, there is a practical/ministry benefit. I've been reading a few different books lately on Addiction recovery. They are not specifically related to SSA, but all of them site the importance of "Keystone Habits" and positive community / group involvement and relationship with God as the most important factors for healing - recovery and long term sobriety.

When I first started Joel 2:25 about a year ago, I focused exclusively on deep emotional processing. My biased judgement at the time was that this was the area most ministries neglected. I developed the protocol we currently use for our Small Groups with the intention of creating safe and "sacred" space to enable vulnerability and deep catharsis. Our Small Group leaders are all really skilled in this type of work and I think those small groups are going really well.

At the same time, I'm realizing there is a LOT of value in short DAILY groups - even if it's only 15-20 minutes. It can be a huge help in developing sexual sobriety and spiritual growth. From what many therapists are telling me, this is critical for anyone to get real benefit out of the catharsis work.

Anyway, if anyone here would be interested in participating in or leading a daily group (15-30 minutes) for prayer, worship, scripture study, etc. - please let me know. 

Pax Christi,
Jeremy

Friday, October 4, 2013

Don's Journey into Manhood

Today I'd like to share my friend Don's story. His journey was a little different from mine in that he was married with a family before he began this journey. He is an awesome man of God and now leads one our Small Groups in Joel 2:25 (http://www.Joel225.com )

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In late 2006 I had grown utterly disillusioned with my life.  I had been fighting my same sex attraction through adolescence and my college years and for 25 years of marriage.  I was losing the fight.  I had a deep faith but I had concluded that the Love of God was somehow not meant for me.  I had prayed unceasingly for 40 years for release from this burden without any impact.  The worst part was the loneliness.  I lacked the kind of male friendships that I longed for and found straight men to be so unemotional and disconnected that they seemed incapable of real intimacy.  My wife was emotionally distant and hurt from my general lack of pursuit of her heart and I was facing the prospect of living the rest of my life in emotional isolation.  I could not stand it anymore.