The Pilgrim Road: Welcome to our Blogspace

Welcome to our Blogspace

The Venerable Bede
672 - 735
Probably the first person to Blog
in the English language.

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New Blog Channel: the Oyster Man
by nathanielkidd on 1247789740|%B %e

For those of you interested in my (Nathaniel's) ongoing thinking and writing, I've started a new blog: the Oyster Man. The Oyster Man is going to be a miscellany from all the diverse things that I am studying, reading, and thinking about, and updated in proportion to the amount of free time and energy that I have.

Why another blog channel? This project flows out of a need that I feel to be writing about and interacting with new ideas that I am processing in a semi-public format. I think of it as an experiment in blogging ascetics. These particular thoughts did not seem appropriate for the Pilgrim Road forum and format.

I have been doing some work over at the Oyster Man, and I am pleased with the outcome that far. Go check it out!

You can also sign up for email updates.

Just to be clear, however, we are going to be keeping up with this blog for life updates and personal news, as well as our ongoing reflection on our time in India, probably posting around once or twice a month. There will also be links to the Oyster Man on the Pilgrim Road page that should be sufficiently easy to find, in the event that you lose track of this particular post.

Thank you for your patience. The internet is a powerful medium, but the rules and etiquette are still quite fluid and unpredictable.

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Pilgrim Road Retooled
by nathanielkidd on 1246409114|%B %e

Some of you may have been wondering what the fate of this website will be now that we have come back to the US. I am glad to report that, while we are no longer traveling in the subcontinent, the pilgrimage is far from over. In the spirit of that ongoing pilgrimage, I have been doing some work over here at our homepage. Here's a quick update on what's new and what's coming up.

India Reflections

Our reflection on our experiences in India is still ongoing. Indeed, who knows if it will ever really be finished! For most of our friends, an hour of conversation and a look through our pictures will satisfy their curiosity. But for us, the journey was a formative experience, and one that will continue to define us and inform our choices and directions.

We've reorganized our India project home page to reflect our ongoing process of thinking through our pilgrimage. We would love your input, and it would bless us to have ongoing conversation about this! You can find our reflections here.

Vision and Vocation

We've come back from India with a (somewhat) clearer sense of who we are and where we are going. The first step is seminary. We have put down our deposit at Nashotah House, and, God willing, we'll be heading there this fall.

In a few days, we will be sending out a letter with a full update and ways that you can support us in prayer. We've also done some work to outline our vision for our season in seminary. You can read more about that and converse with us here.

^{Contemplating the road ahead.}

What to Expect

As we adjust to seminary life in the coming months, we will plan on making an significant update at least once a month, with perhaps a few other updates with photos and for special events. There may be activity in other parts of the site as well, depending on our level of interest and energy.

A Second Blog Channel?

One possibility for upcoming expansion is a second blog channel. I have been doing a fair amount of reading this summer, and some writing as well. But it can take a while to work through new ideas.

I am quite glad I haven't made a lot of attempts at keeping up with this blog through the summer. My thoughts have been oscillating chaotically between a number of very large and not always uplifting topics, due in part to the stresses of our time of transition. While my reading has been interesting, and my thoughts perhaps provocative, and my process possibly instructive, I do not feel that it would have been appropriate to hoist on an unsuspecting digital public.

So, in this coming months, this space will be preserved for mostly personal reflections, while a new channel will likely emerge to discussing the things I have been reading and vignettes on thinking about. More details on this will be forthcoming.

Thank you all for your love and prayers through the last phase of our pilgrimage, thank you for your continued support, and for your anticipated witness to our ongoing journey. We are ever grateful to have such a wonderful extended family in Christ.

Nathaniel and Sarah

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Americans Confused about "Spiritual Maturity"
by nathanielkidd on 1242227103|%B %e

The Barna Group has just released an interesting study that gets to the heart of something I have felt about American faith for some time: a lack of clarity on what it means to “be” or to “make” a disciple.

According to the study, the biggest challenges to spiritual growth are lack of clear definitions, expectations, and guidelines, and a tendency to equate spiritual maturity with "following the rules."

I would add to this list the challenging fact that a lot of groups that are actually promoting spiritual growth or maturity often promote more of a “weirding” than sustainable growth. It is absolutely important to connect your faith to your everyday life, but that needs to happen in a way that draws people in, rather than in a way that makes outsiders feel alienated and judged.

Personally, I have tended to make a four-fold equation: spiritual growth = discipleship = becoming more like Jesus = becoming more human. Facilitating spiritual growth, then, has more to do with coming along side the work that Jesus is already doing in a person's life, rather than trying to convince them to adopt a particular practice or behavior.

I have some sense of the mechanisms involved in this process—off the top of my head, community, solitude, the Bible, and the grace of God all play an indispensable part.

In any case, it’s probably a topic worth more deliberate thought.

What do you think? What is spiritual growth, and how should we pursue it as Christians? What is your practice for spiritual growth?

Here is a link to the article, if you missed it above: http://www.barna.org/barna-update/article/12-faithspirituality/264-many-churchgoers-and-faith-leaders-struggle-to-define-spiritual-maturity

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A Day in the Life of a Child
by nathanielkidd on 1240467798|%B %e

Here is a draft of the short movie I put together for the PEB. I follow a day in the life of a child in a Pakistani village.

My intention in making the film is to connect the audience (mostly young Sunday schoolers) with what it is like to be a child in Pakistan. I want to get away from the terror and poverty that we typically associate with Pakistan, and just show what it is like to be a kid — both struggling, and having fun.

It's been fun and informative to put together. I hope it is also reasonably enjoyable to watch!