A month or so ago I wrote a blog post called “Embracing all Streams of our Spirituality.”

I talked about how almost all of the healthiest people and church communities I’ve run into have integrated parts of all 6 of the streams of our Christian heritage (Holiness, Charismatic, Evangelical, Contemplative, Social Justice + Incarnational). The idea is completely stolen from Richard Foster’s book Streams of Living Water.

This seemed to be a good post for a lot of people, so I thought I’d add just a bit more about my personal experience with each of these. (If you think about the UP/IN/OUT triangle, this is simply how I’ve integrated the UP with these 6 streams. There are ways of integrating it into IN and OUT as well). Here are some of the basic spiritual practices I’ve integrated into my own life and/or church communities I’ve led:

• HOLINESS (this is the tradition I grew up in)

1. Regular interaction with John Wesley’s 21 questions for small groups.
2. Consistently seeking to Repent and Believe (change my mind towards a Kingdom orientation, live in that new reality)

• CONTEMPLATIVE (this is the tradition I came to faith in)

1. Lectio Divina as a way of meditating on the scriptures and letting them sink into me/our community
2. Taize worship
3. Regular practices of sitting in silence and listening

• EVANGELICAL

1. Daily personal devotions. If you grew up in evangelicalism, it seems strange that there are traditions that don’t push this as much. But if you consider that the printing press wasn’t invented until the 14th Century, you begin to realize that for the majority of the church’s existence, personal or family bibles is a new reality!
2. Large congregational worship through singing. Again, another thing that’s interesting is that singing as a whole congregation (at least after the 4th to 5th century) is actually a fairly new practice. For the longest time, it was listening to the choirs, monks or priests sing and letting the songs wash over you as absolution, often in languages that you don’t understand.

• SOCIAL JUSTICE

1. Songs of exile. This is an important one in that if you grew up in the United States, there is a strange blend of nationalism with Christianity. But singing songs of exile remind us that the world as it is currently is not our home. We are an exiled people.
2. Reading the scripture through the eyes of the oppressed. Like the one above, it can be easy to approach our faith and scripture through the lens we bring to it and not the lens it was written. The history of the people of God is largely that of an oppressed people; not people in power. When you begin to see scripture through this lens, it orients your heart around giving a voice to those who have no voice.

• INCARNATIONAL

1. Prayer Walking. If you’re called to a specific place, there is a spiritual history, tone, battle and opportunity that is at work. Prayer walking in that place is a great way to listen and respond to the Lord. Here’s a blog post I did on this with some basic instructions.
2. Contextual worship. Leave your preferences for worship “style” at the door. Look at the community you’re trying to reach and let the style of worship emerge out of the missional context. Missional Community worship is a great example of how incarnation can affect the way we worship.

• CHARISMATIC

1. Praying for healing. Our family and the communities we’ve led have taken on a basic principle: If someone isn’t feeling “normal”, we will pray for healing. Doesn’t matter if it’s just a headache. We will pray for God’s Kingdom to come on earth as it is in heaven because in heaven, there is no sickness of any kind. People exist as they were created and even headaches aren’t in heaven!
2. Listening to God for the sake of others. As a family and as a community, we regularly are listening to God and sharing with others what we think God might want them to have (though they weigh whether it’s from the Lord or not). Almost always, this is something we give to encourage them and to build up the body.

How about you? What are some of the practices that you’ve integrated into your personal life, family life or community that are coming from different streams?