Author: David Ellis

I wonder if the article below brings us any insights on the question of community? The pilgrims seem to experience a sort of emptiness and silence at the very height of the festival cacophany. I have to say, having visited India and seen it first hand, that India does a laudable job of maintaining a…

Don: We have been talking about the transition from pseudo community to true community, through a phase of emptiness. We’ve studied it in part with reference to the transition that took place in the early Christian church, when its Jewish founders were told by God to welcome in the gentile. (Acts 10.) There followed much…

by David Ellis This essay seeks to outline science’s potential contribution to an understanding of the “Emptiness” stage of M. Scott Peck’s four-stage  process of community building, which we began discussing in Community, Kingdom, and M. Scott Peck (January 12, 2013. The four stages are : Pseudo community, Chaos, Emptiness, and True community.) This essay…

Don: We’ve talked about community in the context of Matthew 18, and of M. Scott Peck’s analysis of the phases of community, and of the Book of Acts. In the first part of the latter, the church is pretty much of one mind, and was quite functional until “other sheep not of this fold” started…

In connection with the proposed new class blog, Don remarked that more than 30 years ago, his church leaders approached him about ways to deal with church members who would raise issues or make statements in bible class that others found discomfiting. He was asked to lead a class whose principle criterion would be openness…

I had a slight brush with the first chorus from Eliot’s pageant decades ago (my master’s thesis discussed distinctions among data, information, knowledge, and wisdom — you may see the connection if you read the lines below.) I had occasion to look up those distinctions just now, and in so doing found (only some, I…

Don: It’s very clear that in the narrative of the lost sheep, the consequences of isolation from the community are very great., The shepherd’s pursuit of the errant individual to bring him or her back to the fold, back to the community, gives one a sense of how much is at stake; of how great…

Don: In Matthew 18 (the story of the 99 sheep and the one lost sheep) we saw that Jesus is in the business of bringing lost sheep back into community, and it seems safe to assume, therefore, that there is value in so doing. Jesus clearly regards individualism as a state of incompleteness. The idea…

Jay led the meeting. Jay: Having just read M. Scott Peck’s book, The Different Drum: Community-Making and Peace, I thought today we might explore some of the principles and stages of community Peck talks about. Are there any parallels between the assertions in the book, on the one hand, and what God might be doing…