Featured Family Friday

We began to value the spiritual discipline of simplicity after reading Richard Foster's The Challenge of the Disciplined Life, in which he contends that simplicity should be the faith community's response to the temptation to worship money. We are quick to give in to the forces of greed and materialism, and we quickly fall prey to our culture of consumption. The discipline of simplicity, while not an end in and of itself, is a means to maintaining a focus on Jesus, who taught about the dangers of riches more than almost any other topic. Also, as we've become more aware of the issue of local and global poverty, the grace of simplicity has helped us remember that we have no right to indulge ourselves while so many are in need.

We learned three tips for simple living from Dr. Matt Hearn. First, stay small. Live in as little space as possible, and resist the temptation to buy a bigger house, which you'll need to fill with more stuff. Second, drive your car until it breaks. Third, turn off the TV. Marketers constantly tell us via the media that we need newer, bigger, more advanced stuff. Turning off the TV will keep some of their messages out of our heads.

-The Shipp Family