PING!
Ping Is Coming!
By now we’ve all heard of the growing segment of our population that identifies itself as “Spiritual, but not Religious.” Do you ever wonder if that group keeps attracting more members because those of us who have chosen to make church a central part of our lives have become the sort who are “Religious, but not Spiritual?” We can change that! In fact, you could say that, at FirstPres, it’s our mission to change that!
The mission of our church is to help ALL people build life-transforming relationships with God and each other. One of the tools required to fulfill that mission is: Spiritual Engagement. We desperately need opportunities where can intentionally and purposefully engage and develop our spirituality. And since Christianity is present only in community, never individually (Matthew 18:20), in order to fully and meaningfully develop and engage our spirituality, we require getting together in groups; we require each other.
For that purpose, we have “PING: Programs of Spiritual Engagement”
Ping is a new batch of programs and get-togethers designed with the intention of developing our spirituality by helping each other see God in whatever we do and wherever we are. As a verb – whether you’re talking computers or submarines – ping means “to get the attention of” or “to check for the presence of” another party. Ping Programs will seek to build life-transforming relationships with God and each other by drawing us out and getting us together to have some fun, and to make ourselves aware of how God’s Spirit is present among us when we do that.
Our first Ping Program will be Meaning In Movies, or “MIM” for short. MIM is a spirituality discussion group disguised as watching movies together and having fun. In this program, launched through New Beginnings, we’ll get together to watch a movie (or scenes from a movie) and we’ll look for and discuss the spiritual imagery and messages we see in the film… whether or not they were intended by the movie makers themselves.
And by the way, we’re not talking about those saccharine or cultic religious movies out there; we’re talking about the summer blockbusters and hit movies we all love to watch with our families and friends!