We’ve been talking about “Hineni” for quite a while, so most of you know this by now, but just in case, “Hineni” means “Here I am” in Hebrew, with the connotation of “Here I am, ready and willing to do your mission.”
We began our focus on discerning what our mission is by praying together. This is part of becoming internally strong in order to become externally focused. Several people who are able to meet together and pray are called the Hineni Team, and we have had 3 sessions so far.
We are learning about and practicing different types, or methods, of prayer at each session. We all know that having a good prayer life is vital to our relationship with the Lord, praying at least once a day, in reality praying all day. Like with many other things, the way you are most able to pray -- the way that the prayer seems meaningful, that you feel the connection between yourself and God -- differs according to your personality, to what fits in your routine, to what feels natural, and so on. Therefore, we are exploring some various methods of prayer and our hope is that one (or more) will become a habit -- and that our prayer life will help us become internally strong.
Praying together is a big piece of this process. You’ve heard the saying, “The family that prays together stays together.” That applies to church families, too! Personal prayer is vital, and so is “corporate” prayer -- praying together. We hope and trust that as we pray together, we will become closer to each other and to God, a true community of believers.
I have found the Jesuit spiritual practices helpful to me, so we are learning about and practicing some of those. There are all kinds of ways to pray so we could keep trying different ones for a long, long time. I picked a few to start, and have invited the Hineni team and all of you to suggest others. Here are the sessions we have completed and have planned so far.
- Session 1 - Praying in Color - Doodling and decorating while holding thoughts and prayers in mind.
- Session 2 - Examen - A Jesuit practice of reviewing your day with God, noticing what comes to mind, asking yourself whether each experience brought you closer or away from God, and looking toward tomorrow.
- Session 3 - Lectio Divina - A Jesuit practice of reading a Scripture passage 3 times, meditating and praying about it, noticing what words and phrases strike you and why.
- Session 4 (this Sunday, 5/20) - Ignatian Contemplation - A Jesuit practice of “imaginative prayer,” reading a Scripture passage and imagining being in the story it tells, noticing how God is bringing you closer to him through what you envision and think.
- Session 5 (Sun. 6/24) - Praying with Scripture - Using the words of Scripture, with our own names or names of our loved ones, as a personal prayer.
Our next phase of discerning God’s will for the church will be looking at what we can do to be externally focused. We will use the book The Externally Focused Church by Rick Rusaw and Eric Swanson. This book comes highly recommended by our interim pastor, Vance Hayes. I will keep you updated as to when we begin that second phase.
ANYTIME you wish to give suggestions, ideas, feedback of any kind, please email me at mavis@sanjosecrc.org or call or talk to me! Also, ANYONE can join the Hineni team or come to the sessions ANYTIME!
I keep a blog about the Hineni process at http://sjcrcchurch.blogspot.com/. Please feel free to sign up to follow it and receive notifications as I add to it.
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