June 2012
Audio files from the Christopher Hall Worship Seminar, Worshiping with the Church Fathers,
are posted below.
Click here to see pictures from the seminar.
Seminar description: Worship and “spirituality” have been hot topics over the past few years. This seminar explores a specific type of Christian worship and spirituality practiced by Christians living from roughly the third to the seventh centuries AD. How, for example, did these early Christians pray? What were the other key spiritual disciplines that formed part of the rhyme and rhythm of their spiritual lives? How did they deal with temptation? What was their understanding of Christian character and how its development is nourished or starved? Who were the desert fathers and mothers? What is their particular contribution to the church’s understanding of worship and the spiritual life? How can the insights of these early Christians be translated into the context of the modern world? What possible mistakes did they make that can best be avoided by later generations of Christians? These and other questions and issues form the heart of the seminar.
Session 1: The Call to the Desert [61:45]
Session 2: Key Words for Understanding Ancient Spirituality [49:49]
Session 3: Silence and Other Spiritual Practices [57:52]
Session 4: Overcoming Sin [65:54]
Session 5: Prayer Patterns of Ancient Christians, Pt. 1 [55:32]
Session 6: Prayer Patterns of Ancient Christians, Pt. 2 [53:23]
Session 7: Challenges to a Life of Prayer [47:56]
Session 8: Applying the Insights of the Church Fathers and Mothers [50:36]