Tag Archives: domestic church

Redeeming Your Time

I recently held a local workshop focusing on how to rightly order the important things amidst urgent tasks in daily personal and family life, and one of the topics we discussed was our misuse of time. We often claim that we don’t have enough hours in a day, and we also seem to believe that just a little bit more time would relieve the pressure that we feel to accomplish all we need to do. I’m going to free you of the wishful thinking for the impossible — these beliefs are false!

We don’t need more time; we need to prioritize the time that we have. More time wouldn’t diminish interruptions and distractions; it would just create more. One of the reasons that our domestic churches aren’t thriving is because we are making poor use of our hours and minutes in daily and weekly life.

Author Charles Hummel wrote, “…everyone has all the time there is — twenty-four hours a day. But what an astonishing variety in our use of that time and the results of our choices!” He goes on to say that, in the end, “how we use our time depends on our goals. We make the hours count for what we think is important” (The Tyranny of the Urgent).

What I think that he is hitting upon is this: we might say that certain things are our priorities; but ultimately, our use of time reveals the things that truly are most important to us. I think that we are mostly unconscious of this, letting urgent needs or what is most compelling at the moment be the thing to which we turn our attention. The good news? We can begin redeeming our time at any moment. I have a couple of general principles for doing just that, as well as a tool that I think can help us. Continue reading →

“Rightly Ordering the Urgent & the Important:” A Local Workshop

For awhile now, I have had the inspiration to create a series of workshops that actually help people with the practical aspects of living as a “domestic church.” We all have the desire to be thriving domestic churches: schools of spiritual formation for our families and signs of life to a world hungry for the tangible Gospel message. But we have a lot of barriers and distractions in our lives that stand in the way of such a goal; some of these we voluntarily place there, and others force themselves upon us in this busy and hyper-mediated world.

Well, I’m excited to announce the first workshop in a series that I’ve branded “The Organized Domestic Church.” This is a local workshop — so if you know anyone in the Washington/Baltimore area who would be interested, please spread the word. I hope to see some of my local blog readers there and connect with you in person! Here are the details:

WORKSHOP TITLE:

“Rightly Ordering the Urgent & the Important”

WHERE:

Sacred Heart Church (Bowie, MD) in Whitemarsh Hall

(at the top of the hill by the historic chapel)

WHEN:

Saturday, April 22, 2017 — 9am until noon

(Refreshments, coffee, and tea will be provided.)

COST: $8

HOW TO SIGN-UP: REGISTER HERE by March 15th

Prayer in Your Domestic Church

 

familio_schumacher_katholisches_religionsbuchlein_002

Philipp Schumacher [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons

A thriving domestic church — your family home and life of faith — is central to the faith formation of you, your spouse, and your children. One of the most important elements of family faith life is prayer. Family prayer time is the space where everyone in the home learns how to enter into the prayers of the whole church, and through this family ritual little children are exposed to “the Church’s living memory” (CCC 2685).

Perhaps prayer time has not been part of your family life; it’s never to late to start. You may be a young family with little ones, and you want to establish a growing family prayer routine. Or, you may be a family with older children who aren’t used to corporate prayer. As with various spiritual disciplines of the domestic church, many people are a bit overwhelmed about where to begin. It is easy to look at all the possible expressions of family prayer time and do one of two things: give up completely or try to do everything.  Continue reading →