my first sunflower, Sabrina StashOn beggining of his book "
Finding Faith" Brian McLaren starts to define how faith does grow:
1st stage - Simplicity - at the beggining things are right or wrong, black or white and the follower see things in a very dualistic view, following the authority will make him be in the good side while others would be at the bad side, identifiying who's the enemies is the great deal;
2nd Stage - Complextity - faith gains complexity and the follower try to be effective in his faith and to get independance on getting trained by his authorities, he identifies other alternatives to do things and looks for the best way, he tries to be more pragmatic at this stage;
3rd stage - Perplexity - Here he makes more judgements and tries to find autenticity at relationships, the follower recognizes that he does not own the Truth when accepting other point of views, he tries to be fully honest with others and with himself and allows himself to question about his faith. Though, he run of being controlled as it was at previous stages.
4th stage - Humility - He recognizes other stages, recognizes weakenesses of others at previous stages of faith, but try take advantadge of his journey to help others and to fullfill all his potential.
Beside to think about what stage am I, I was wondering about how the churches close to me deal with this kind of faith growth. Here in Sao Paulo you can find lots of churches in all paths you choose, but I believe the great majority (about 80%) are more likely to recieve people from the first stage of faith and works to their followers stay at this level, they like to works with fear, to set enemies and to disencouraging questioning when tell that questioning might be the tool of devil to start new heresies; also, I can see most of the traditional churches working with stage 2 of faith, stimulating a more pragmatic view , training followers to be more effective but not as far as to free stimulating ideas. Some people will get accomodated, but some will have their faith growing, and when it happens, they will look for another place if their church does not receive their growth with genuine interest.
This kind of evolution is also reflection of our history, once we were very well prepared studying
Evangelism Explosion or taking with us the booklet
Four Spiritual Laws to evangelize, but today many people will not accept these tools as much as they accepted before.
As long as we are preparing for the starting of a church I wonder: Are we prepared to receive people from 3rd stages on? Will we be prepared to foster and encourage this kind of growth of faith?
World Cup excitement begun here two weeks ago and since them it's all that have been talked so. 
Orbiting the Giant Hairball, Gordon Mackenzie - This book was strongly recommended to me by Pastor Sandro Baggio, this is a book mostly about creativity, not with techniques, but with lots of stories and reflections about how the contemporary thinking, very standarlized by our industrial and economic system, is eroding our capacity to create and to be original. He compared most of our business systems like a Hairball, you have an idea and start make money with that and you have a hair, in order to have more control of your new company you starts a culture, and attaches policies, procedures, benchmarks, each of that is another hair unit that is tied to your idea and origin a hairball, but once you are at the hairball, you cannot think anything new outside the hairball, you can only get anything new when you start to orbitate the hairball in the space of ideas, but not far enough to loose touch with the hairball and starts to be etereal and your ideas loose reality.
Finding Faith, Brian McLaren, I felt very interested about this book when McLaren himself recommended at his another book "More Ready than you realize" as one of the rare postmodern apologetic books. I was told this book as very like Mere Christianity, from C.S. Lewis, and I found a very good book about spirituality search. I liked the honest way McLaren discussed and walked on the spirituality way. It would be a book I would recommend to a friend with a search for God, but it would be after Mere Chrisitanity. I liked very much how McLaren defined faith and how he recommended a church, as long as I am very concerned about the kind of church I would like to plant here in São Paulo, those chapters helped me in a lots of issues that I should value to reach people today at my city. I planned to read this book aside with Mere Christianity, but after the pastor of our planting group lended me The Contemporary Christian, I will set a chance for rereading Mere Christianity later.
WebMuseum Paris - Bosh Hieronimus: The Temptation of St. Anthony
Skype:lfbatista
