Spirituality & The Formation Of The Worship Leader InResponse

This term, our One Year Diploma students at the Institute Of Contemporary & Emerging Worship Studies are engaging with the riches of spiritual formation literature throughout the ages of the Church. We are also engaging together in a Spiritual Formation Group, based on Richard Foster and Renovare’s model, and participating with resident SSU Spiritual Director Lorna Jones in Ignatian Prayer activities.

To become present to God, to His activity in history, to His word, to ourselves and to one another inside and outside of community – this is a primary goal for this course.

Anyone is welcome to join in these InReflection blog posts on spiritual formation, which will be for our course participants to reflect on ideas they have been reading about and applying from historic spiritual formation literature.

Our first reading, done today in class and due on each Tuesday, is focused on Bernard Of Clairvaux’s Four Degrees Of Love.

INRESPONSE QUESTION:

Reflect on the key ideas presented in this writing, and reflect on how do they personally apply to your life as a follower of Jesus, as a spiritual influencer and as a creative leader. (300-500 words).

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Sheltering Mercy: Prayers Inspired by the Psalms

Sheltering Mercy, along with its companion volume, Endless Grace, helps us rediscover the rich treasures of the Psalms—through free-verse prayer renderings of their poems and hymns—as a guide to personal devotion and meditation.

The church has always used the Psalms as part of its prayer life, and they have inspired countless other prayers. This book contains 75 prayers drawn from Psalms 1-75, providing lyrical sketches of what authors Ryan Smith and Dan Wilt have seen, heard, and felt while sojourning in the Psalms. Each prayer is a response to the Psalms written in harmony with Scripture. These prayers help us quiet our hearts before God and welcome us into a safe place amid the storms of life.

This artful, poetic, and classic devotional book features compelling custom illustrations and foil-stamped hardcover binding, offering a fresh way to reflect on and pray the Psalms.