Hello and welcome to the John Mark Cormwood Teachings podcast.

My name is Yinka and I'm your host.

Each week we feature teachings by John Mark or other voices in the formation space,

and it's great to have you with us.

We're continuing to learn about how we change.

This week, John Mark delves into the role the practices, also known as spiritual disciplines,

play in our transformation.

These are often neglected in the post-enlightenment West, but they are essential tools

on the journey to become more like Jesus.

Here's John Mark.

We live in a fascinating cultural moment. They're thinking about this a lot lately over the last year or so, in particular the last few months. I grew up in the church. Some of you know that. My dad was a pastor, so I've been kind of behind the scenes of church leadership ever since I was a little boy. I remember sitting in the back of an elders meeting and, you know, drying as my dad was there late at night.

And I've been in some kind of church leadership myself ever since I was in high school.

So now what is that?

Upwards of two decades.

And I feel like leading a church is harder now than it's ever been, at least in my lifetime.

I think we're living in this perfect storm of at least four cross currents. And here's

kind of a visual representation. First, we're living in a post-Christian culture. We did a lot of

work on this over the summer in the creative minority series. But we all know this, in particular

in a city like Portland, which we love, the gravitational pull to the city is just so dang strong. The pull to just, man, why

go to church? Let's just like go out for beers and have fun and hang out. The pull to slide on what

Jesus and the writers in the New Testament have to say about sexuality and marriage. The pull to just

give in to rampant consumerism and buy jacket number 13 that

...