RENEWAL WEEK
Renewal Week Bonfire at Crown Point- Thursday, Sept. 24th from 6-8pm.
Renewal Week Speaker September 21-25, 2009 - Deirdre Brower Latz
Deirdre Brower Latz works part time as team leader and Pastor of the Longsight, Community Church of the Nazarene in Manchester, England. She is also head of the Pastoral and Social Theology department at Nazarene Theological College. She is particularly interested in issues relating to contextual and practical theology and the area of social justice. She likes change. Her passions involve reading, music, allotment gardening, sports of all sorts (watching and occasionally participating), travel and people. Deirdre is married to Andrew – he works with 16-19 year olds with Autism and is working on his PhD in spirituality and consumerism.
Deirdre holds an M.A. and B.A. Hons in Pastoral Theology from NTC, Manchester and is in the final stages of her PhD (one way or another!).
Videos from Renewal Week:
Monday's Chapel Service
Wednesday's Chapel Service
Wednesday's Time Out Service
Friday's Chapel Service
Often our office is asked questions about Renewal Week.
What is the meaning?
What are we hoping will occur?
What makes this week “different” from any other week?
Who are we to mark this week for “renewal” over any other week?
These are good questions. Let us at least make a stab at answering those questions:
Renewal Week is first and foremost a time set apart on the PLNU campus to reconnect with God, with each other and with our mission to the world.
Our goal is to lower the activity level of the campus to a slower pace where each member of the community might find spaces and places in chapel, in the prayer opportunities, in quiet, to hear anew from God.
Therefore, we prayerfully believe that if we as a people seek God, God in his mercy and love responds. This may mean very different things in lives of the participants and in the life of the community.
There are seasons where we need….
… to be revitalized.
…to be restored to a right relationship with God and others through Jesus Christ
….to recover lost spiritual zeal and fervor
…..to confess
…..to be healed
….to receive new direction
Therefore there will be a variety of experiences and expressions in response to God’s stirring among us during weeks of renewal. At its simplest, Renewal Week is a time to practice creating space as a community to hear, listen and respond to God. Much like the church year has the seasons of Advent, Christmas, Lent, Easter as a community rhythm, the community response will vary. It might be joyful celebration, sorrow, confession, stillness and/or awe.
Renewal or revival is supremely an act of God.
Ways in which this week is different:
Having the same speaker across at least four gatherings gives that person an opportunity to prayerfully develop the message they have received from God for the PLNU community in this season.
We have asked faculty and staff to lower the activity levels for the week to help each member of the community find extra space to participate in Renewal Week gatherings and opportunities.
We want the emphasis to be on listening to God over any particular personality or speaker.
We create space and time for prayer. Our office spends time on prayer, the faculty, staff and students are invited to prepare in prayer, the speaker prays. While this occurs across the semester the intentionality and focus is increased significantly.
We have asked our speakers to consider three things in their preparation.
1. What is God stirring in their heart as they prayer over their time ministering on campus?
2. How might they engage in the overall chapel theme (this year “on earth as it is in heaven”)?
3. Explore spiritual practices and themes with either an emphasis on inward or outward life as Christ followers. The September Renewal Week will reflect on inward practices which enhance this journey of faith. The January Renewal Week will reflect on outward practices which would enhance the journey of faith.
A short explanation of Spiritual Practices would be, it is another way of talking about spiritual disciplines.
Ortberg offers these definitions:
“Disciplines that are spiritual are simply those that help me live in the fruit of the Spirit."
“Spiritual Discipline: Any activity that can help me gain power to live life as Jesus taught and modeled it.”
The Life You’ve Always Wanted, John Ortberg, 48
We use the language of inward and outward to create large categories of engagement with the work of God. An inward spiritual discipline would have a more internal focus. We explore ways in which God might want to work by his grace in our innermost beings. The outward spiritual disciplines have an external focus. We explore ways in which God might work through our changed lives to be instruments of grace and mercy for our world. Clearly it is difficult to talk about one without the other so the themes will touch back and forth while exploring the particular emphases.
Ultimately our goal is that we would all be a people who offer your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and pleasing to God. And that we would not conform to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind (see Romans 12).
As the deer pants for streams of water, so my soul pants for you, O God. My soul thirsts for God, for the living God.