Arquivos Coronavirus (Covid-19) - OTPB - Ordem dos Teólogos e Pastores do Brasil

mar312020 by @prflavionunesNo Comments

How Forced Withdrawal Might Further the Mission

ATUALIDADES

Acts 29: Churches Planting Churches So much has changed. And rapidly. Most of us have been required to make unprecedented adjustments in our work, travel, worship, finances, and social arrangements. With COVID-19’s march across the globe, the unified call has been to temporarily withdraw from the lives to which we’re all accustomed. It was only a few years ago that Rod Dreher’s The Benedict Option caused a splash in the Western church by calling for a strategic withdrawal to rebuild a deep, devoted counterculture within the church that would be able to weather the growing storm of secular hostility. Dreher’s argument was that we should “stop trying to meet the world on its own terms and focus on building up fidelity in distinct community.” In this way, a backward step that gains format...

mar312020 by @prflavionunesNo Comments

Parenting Anxious Kids in an Anxious Time

ATUALIDADES

In the midst of the fear and uncertainty we are experiencing with COVID-19, I want to offer some brief, even basic and practical ideas for managing your own anxiety, as well as your children’s. In many ways, how we manage our own anxiety will transfer to how we are (or are not) able to appropriately care for and shepherd others, including our children. 1. Remain informed through trusted sources. Strive to consult trusted news and information sources rather than media that is sensationalized and headline-focused. Examples of such trusted sources include: 2. Limit media exposure. It’s necessary to stay informed, and it’s also wise. However, it’s incredibly tempting (speaking for myself) to become too consumed and too drawn in by the next headline. Set a limit on when and how you will che...

mar312020 by @prflavionunesNo Comments

Follow This ‘Third Way’ for Resilient Faith

ATUALIDADES, podcast

The church will always face external threats. The gospel will always incite opposition. What if our biggest problem, then, isn’t hostility from the world but compromise inside the church? Gerald Sittser marshals that argument in his new book, Resilient Faith: How the Early Christian ‘Third Way’ Changed the World, published by Brazos. He writes: “The problem we currently face is not primarily political or ideological. The problem is the compromised identity of the church itself and the compromised message of the gospel.” Vague messages of spiritual uplift that demand little in discipleship don’t hold up in a world gripped by a deadly pandemic of COVID-19. But the early church shows us a different, better way. In fact, as Sittser points out in this interview, these courageous Christ...

mar312020 by @prflavionunesNo Comments

Leaders, Pace Yourself During the Quarantine

ATUALIDADES

I still remember when it caught me. Hurricane Harvey had devastated our city in August, it was now October, and I’d been working around the clock for six weeks. Exhaustion just ran me down. I had sprinted into a marathon. Many leaders are doing the same thing right now as a worldwide disruption demands urgent decisions, adjustments, communication, and a different kind of energy. The relentless work is noble and understandable, but be warned: it’s not sustainable. I ended up taking a four-day trip to Galveston, holing up in a rental on the Gulf, taking long walks on the beach, eating in random restaurants, sleeping whenever I wanted, reading Ecclesiastes over and over, and brain-sweeping into my journal. My mind, body, and spirit had conspired to demand a shutdown, and there was no nego...

mar302020 by @prflavionunesNo Comments

Family Worship Starts Now

ATUALIDADES

Millions of schedules just slowed down. Schools are closed, churches are online, and many are hunkered down with streamed movies and lots of toilet paper. For those of us quarantined with our families, now is the perfect time to begin (or intentionally continue) habits of worship together. As parents, we must take an active role in shaping the spiritual climate of our homes in the coming weeks. Worship with Your Church As millions of Christians prepare to worship this week, many will be staring at a screen. Such technology is a wonderful gift that allows us, the body of Christ, to encourage one another, and we should be thankful. But we should beware of reducing the import of message because of its medium. Worship is a participatory response to the glorious acts of redempti...

mar302020 by @prflavionunesNo Comments

Social Distance, Don’t Social Isolate

ATUALIDADES, Technology

“Social distancing” is a term used by epidemiologists to refer to a conscious community effort to reduce contact between people in order to slow the transmission and reduce the impact of disease. In the face of the current global pandemic, it’s a necessary short-term measure intended to protect and preserve humanity, particularly those who are most vulnerable. It’s necessary, but it’s not easy. Humans were made for physical presence, so it’s natural to feel disordered when this presence is taken from us. The thought of social distancing brings a sense of loss—we worry we’ll lose spiritual vitality, stabilizing routines, interpersonal relationships. It’s scary. I understand this fear. I’ve spent the last five years battling chronic medical conditions that have kept me home l...

mar302020 by @prflavionunesNo Comments

The Fright of Death: How Conscience Makes Cowards of Us All

ATUALIDADES

“. . . that by his death he might break the power of him who holds the power of death—that is, the devil—and free those who all their lives were held in slavery by their fear of death” (Heb. 2:14–15). Death is the Great Interruption, tearing loved ones away from us, or us from them. Death is the Great Schism, ripping apart the material and immaterial parts of our being and sundering a whole person, who was never meant to be disembodied, even for a moment. Death is the Great Insult, because it reminds us, as Shakespeare said, that we are worm food. [We are] literally split in two: [Man] has an awareness of his own splendid uniqueness in that he sticks out of nature with a towering majesty, and yet he goes back into the ground a few feet in order to blindly and dumbly rot and disappear f...

mar302020 by @prflavionunesNo Comments

Watch Your (Knowledge) Diet in the COVID-19 Crisis

ATUALIDADES

The last few weeks have removed any remaining doubt: we are living through an epistemological crisis. Among the many distressing aspects of the COVID-19 global pandemic is the stress of information overload. Everyone has something to say about it. Millions of self-proclaimed experts chime in online, crowding out or contradicting real experts. Our minds are spinning because of this article we read, that tweet thread we saw, or any number of other charts, graphs, scenarios, and projections we’ve picked up on our streams. Meanwhile, the existing crisis of politicized “news” has worsened. “Alternative facts” proliferate, plenty for every side to marshal for whatever opinion they wish to perpetuate. Incessant commentary and clickbait leave our heads spinning. When something as biologically ...

mar292020 by @prflavionunesNo Comments

Quarantine Is Hard. God Is Good.

ATUALIDADES

During the last week of January, my family and I were relishing the end of a lovely vacation in Thailand and watching the news closely. We were considering what to do in light of the coronavirus chaos unfolding in China, where we currently live. As we prepared to return, though, I was just as concerned about the quarantine time as I was about the virus itself. I did the math: (4 very active young kids) + (1,600-square-foot apartment on the 25th floor of a high-rise building) x 8-plus weeks = potential insanity Fast forward almost two months and we’re still intact, but it hasn’t been easy. The question I’ve repeatedly asked is, What does it look like to depend on God during these uncertain and stressful times? Medicine from a Cave Enter Psalm 57, a psalm of David, written in a cave...

mar282020 by @prflavionunesNo Comments

When You Fear Not Being in Control

ATUALIDADES

Households across the world are aglow from screens delivering coronavirus updates. They’re also replete with fear. Leslie worries about her aging husband, whose health has been in slow decline since he turned 65. Tom knows he has no control over his pregnant wife’s health (or their baby’s) and goes to sleep nervous every night. Jessica is scared about her kids’ safety when they have to run to the grocery store, and Ron fears contracting the disease when he goes to work at the nursing home. Brittany can’t seem to control her anxiety over the virus, but it comes on full force at random moments, and she fears the next unexpected attack. Then there are fears surrounding policies and quarantines, as people anxiously await the choices their leaders will make, choices that are out of th...