Spiritual disciplines

I'm not sure the current Christian sub-culture in America understands the spiritual disciplines. I'm not sure they want to know what the spiritual disciplines are or what they entail. My experience with Christian sub-culture in other parts of the world is that they don't need as much to grow at a greater rate than we do. Experiencing their Christianity makes clear to me that how we Americans view spiritual growth is, at best, skewed.

A contributing factor is that, in an attempt to engage people in spiritual disciplines, the marketing arm of every American denomination (especially mine) has attempted to create a nauseating amount of studies for every imaginable demographic. I'm thinking about writing the study notes to a new Bible called "The Anorexic, Single, Chemically Dependent Parent of Hyperactive Children Study Bible." Only in America.

Ubiquitous technology is also huge factor in our failure to engage in the spiritual disciplines. Technology is supposed to simplify our lives but it usually provides more clutter. I still love technology. I love iTunes. I love podcasts. I love the Internet, my cell phone, my bass guitar, my PowerBook G4, iPod, coffee pot with timer, WiFi, DSL, T1, satellite TV, TiVO, YouTube, and my garage door opener.

I heard a church leader in North Africa say that the cell phone was the 11th plague on Egypt. I think technology may be a plague to end all plagues, at least in America. Too much of a good thing is, well, too much of a good thing. Take frogs for instance. Frogs are okay. Frog legs are even tasty when they're cooked properly. Frogs eat pesky insects. Frogs are useful and make great National Geographic pictures. Frogs are great except when there's so many you have to pile them up and their decomposing carcasses stink to high heaven. Let me have frogs, but let me have them in moderation. Likewise with technology.

Getting your devotion on an RSS feed to your cell phone that you read during a boring meeting might qualify as engaging the spiritual disciplines. Maybe. It could happen. Or maybe you could open your Bible for 30 minutes instead of surfing the Internet, or checking email, or texting, or writing on somebody's Facebook wall, or watching season three of The Office...again.

Me? I'm going to end this post and pick up my copy of "The BIBLE in 90 Days; Cover to Cover in 12 Pages a Day" that I was enticed to buy when an endcap caught my eye at my local Lifeway Christian Store. Hey, it works for me. Do whatever works for you. Just engage in a spiritual discipline.

Alexa.com...go kill some time, but not too much

I found the website Alexa.com while I was reading a book for work about search engine optimization (SEO). It's a great site that shows current rankings for the most popular sites on the Internet. If you have a website, you can see where it's ranked. I downloaded the toolbar widget so I can see how popular sites are when I come across them.

Go kill some time at Alexa.com, but not too much time. Mindlessly entered into, it really deteriorates our relationship with God. More in a later post and a sermon at CMC on Jan. 27th.

People still checking simplyken out

Oddly enough, people stumble onto my blog. It's amazing. People are finding me with some pretty bizarre searches. Anyway, thanks to those who read...I guess. I'm definitely not trying to get ranked on Alexa.com, for sure.

So about the moniker thing...

Since it's been SIX MONTHS since I posted the last time, do you think I'm gonna remember? I've got other theology crankin' my brain right now.