{"id":357,"date":"2019-01-20T17:30:05","date_gmt":"2019-01-21T00:30:05","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/drbobewell.com\/?p=357"},"modified":"2019-01-20T14:51:43","modified_gmt":"2019-01-20T21:51:43","slug":"lets-open-our-windows","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/drbobewell.com\/?p=357","title":{"rendered":"Let&#8217;s Open Our Windows!"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p style=\"text-align:center\" class=\"has-small-font-size wp-block-paragraph\">[To follow <strong><em>The Ewellogy<\/em><\/strong>, please click on <strong><em>Leave a Comment<\/em><\/strong> above, fill in your name and email, and check the box: <strong><em>Notify me of new posts by email<\/em><\/strong>. If your comment is, &#8220;Notify me,&#8221; it won&#8217;t post publicly. If you don&#8217;t start to receive the blog by email right away, please write to me at bob@ewell.com, and I will see that you get on the list.] <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">\n\n\nI\u2019ve just read two books by men who were active in fairly dogmatic, rigid environments (different environments, ironically!) and jumped into a different fairly dogmatic, rigid environment. The purpose of the books was to convince us of the truth they had discovered.&nbsp;It seems that we have four choices:&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\"><li>Stay with our original, pure <g class=\"gr_ gr_37 gr-alert gr_gramm gr_inline_cards gr_run_anim Style multiReplace\" id=\"37\" data-gr-id=\"37\">method \/ <\/g><g class=\"gr_ gr_37 gr-alert gr_gramm gr_inline_cards gr_disable_anim_appear Style multiReplace\" id=\"37\" data-gr-id=\"37\"><g class=\"gr_ gr_20 gr-alert gr_gramm gr_inline_cards gr_disable_anim_appear Style multiReplace\" id=\"20\" data-gr-id=\"20\">theology<\/g><\/g><g class=\"gr_ gr_20 gr-alert gr_gramm gr_inline_cards gr_disable_anim_appear Style multiReplace\" id=\"20\" data-gr-id=\"20\">\u00a0\/ <\/g><g class=\"gr_ gr_54 gr-alert gr_gramm gr_inline_cards gr_run_anim Style multiReplace\" id=\"54\" data-gr-id=\"54\"><g class=\"gr_ gr_20 gr-alert gr_gramm gr_inline_cards gr_disable_anim_appear Style multiReplace\" id=\"20\" data-gr-id=\"20\">church<\/g>\u00a0\/ tradition<\/g>\u00a0(pick one), and if it is challenged or if we have doubts, just double down in our convictions and make our window even smaller.<\/li><li>Jump, as these men have done, into a different but equally dogmatic tradition. \u201cNow I\u2019ve found the real truth!\u201d<\/li><li>Abandon the faith or the ministry altogether.<\/li><li>Open our window a bit. To recognize there is truth in many different traditions and effectiveness in different approaches to ministry. <ul><li>For example, as a Navigator, I am firmly committed to a relational, disciple-making ministry, accessible to everyone. I&#8217;ve written about that before. I have materials that I like although materials don&#8217;t make disciples, people make disciples! But a lot of good <g class=\"gr_ gr_26 gr-alert gr_gramm gr_inline_cards gr_run_anim Grammar multiReplace\" id=\"26\" data-gr-id=\"26\">ministry<\/g> is done by people not practicing relational disciple-making, and people are helped by books and materials that I wouldn&#8217;t use or even endorse.\u00a0<\/li><li>As a lifelong believer and Bible student, I have certain theological convictions, but I often work with pastors who have different convictions. And these pastors are gracious enough to work with me even if we don&#8217;t believe exactly the same in the details. <\/li><\/ul><\/li><\/ul>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">My friend and fellow-Navigator Bill Mowry has just written an excellent piece on this very thing. You can access it here: <a href=\"https:\/\/drive.google.com\/file\/d\/13cB63eYE3ri9vjfGY-NEPkYCjIY8BP_e\/view?usp=sharing\">Gray Hair Chronicles #4<\/a>.&nbsp;&nbsp; <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\" style=\"text-align:center\"><em>&#8220;Knowledge puffs up, but love builds up.&#8221; 1 Corinthians 8.1<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I\u2019ve just read two books by men who were active in fairly dogmatic, rigid environments (different environments, ironically!) and jumped into a different fairly dogmatic, rigid environment. The purpose of the books was to convince us of the truth they had discovered.&nbsp;It seems that we have four choices:&nbsp; Stay with our original, pure method \/ &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/drbobewell.com\/?p=357\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading <span class=\"screen-reader-text\">Let&#8217;s Open Our Windows!<\/span> <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-357","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p8X9bo-5L","jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/drbobewell.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/357","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/drbobewell.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/drbobewell.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/drbobewell.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/drbobewell.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=357"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/drbobewell.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/357\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":362,"href":"https:\/\/drbobewell.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/357\/revisions\/362"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/drbobewell.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=357"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/drbobewell.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=357"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/drbobewell.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=357"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}