Family Discipleship

This is part of our series where we are discussing James K. A. Smith’s book You Are What You Love. Please check out or review part 1 and part 2 to get caught up. We are skipping chapters 3 and 4, though they are quite good, to get to more immediate application for family discipleship.

Chapter 5-Guard Your Heart: The Liturgies of the Home

In the first two chapters we discussed how our lives follow what we love, which is formed by “liturgies” in which we engage. We then saw how our world is full of rival stories (liturgies) to the gospel that cause us to love other things other than God. Often mundane, seemingly neutral activities are loaded with alien visions of the good life, the human problem, and our salvation that draw our hearts away from loving God. Continue reading Guard Your Heart: The Liturgies of the Home →

In part 1 of the series, we explored how it’s not what we cognitively believe that directs us but what has captures our love and imagination. As Christians, we know the right answers for what we should love: Jesus, His Kingdom, etc. The problem is that this often doesn’t match reality.

Smith argues that what we truly love is “manifested by [our] daily life and habits” (29). Put simply, we have habits of behavior that reinforce or change what we love, how we view the world, and how we behave despite the fact that we’re often completely unaware that they are affecting us. The “formative practices that do something to you, unconsciously” (37) Smith calls “liturgies” because of how they wrap the practitioner into an (alternative) ultimate story with rival visions of obtaining the good life. Continue reading You Might Not Love What You Think: Learning to Read “Secular” Liturgies →

James K. A. Smith is a well respected philosopher and theologian. His new book You Are What You Love: The Spiritual Power of Habit provides a less technical version of a previous work Desiring the Kingdom, which calls Christians to change our approach to discipleship. This series will provide the foundation for our discipleship. Each week I will draw out some of the main points to focus on how they affect the discipling of our children. I then hope to help bring questions that will guide your family in implementing it. Readers of this series are encouraged to read the book for themselves as we will only scratch the surface of the content. Continue reading You Are What You Love: Re-Envisioning Christian Discipleship →

Our Pursuit of Happiness

Felix Jameson was a very successful man.

Let’s pause a moment to analyze how we picture Mr. Jameson. Wealthy? Powerful? Behind the desk of a huge company? Or perhaps on a baseball field or basketball court? I’ve noticed that when people talk about someone being “successful” these are the images that pop into my head. Why is that? I believe it’s because for 30 years I’ve been discipled by a culture that prizes wealth, power, business acumen, and athletics. Continue reading Success: An All-American Dream →