This past Sunday I finished teaching a three-week series at Church on Tap, titled “Myopia: Spiritual Nearsightedness and the Health of the Church.”  The series was based on ideas from a paper I presented last year at a conference at Houghton College and subsequently developed further in recent months.

In Part I, I lay out my view on how the church-at-large has focused on one aspect of God’s nature to the exclusion of all others (and to our own spiritual poverty) and present an alternative view of God’s nature based on John 14:6.

With Part II, I build on this by outlining “spiritual personalities” based on a strong affinity for a particular aspect of God’s nature.  I also discuss how these affinities in a church congregation can cause conflict and misunderstanding.

In Part III, I diagnose a trend of early career and college-age Christians feeling alienated in the church due to these misunderstandings and perhaps what can be done to reverse this and heal the wounds that have been made.  Overall, the arc of this series was focused on answering questions about my own experience growing up in Christian communities that I loved but felt increasingly alienated from.

In the end, I found a message of hope and life and a grander vision of what that life can mean in the light of Christ.  Each sermon runs about 30 minutes.  There’s a little noise in the recordings, but otherwise they seemed to come out pretty well!  Enjoy!

Myopia I (recorded January 18th, 2015)

Myopia II (recorded January 25th, 2015)

Myopia III (recorded February 1st, 2015)