![]() ![]() Rather, Middleway, is about forming a community of people so they can find the living God in themselves alone, while being in community with others doing the same. Middleway will not have people living there. “Monastery” comes from the Greek word which means to live alone. Some of the local spiritual directors put their idea of a ministry for people who are “spiritual but not religious” together with their knowledge of what monasteries and retreat spaces can offer a person and formed Middleway Urban Monastery in 2020. With that in mind, a seed fell on fertile ground. Spiritual directors are trained to “listen with a holy ear” without judgment and without trying to fix someone. That was happening prior to the pandemic and might even be more so in post-vaccination time. ![]() Most think of Bryan-College Station as a big church town, but a look around on Sunday mornings will point to a lot of neighbors, perhaps family members, who are not getting up and going to church. Some of the spiritual directors also dug into the county-by-county data and found that the religiously unaffiliated in Brazos County account for about 135,000 people-more than half the county's population. Those kinds of statistics are similar throughout most counties or areas in the nation, which accounts for more than 100 million religiously unaffiliated people. ![]() Sometimes these people are referred to as “spiritual but not religious”, and sometimes they are called the “nones and dones” because they either have no church or they are done with church. The study revealed that more than 100 million Americans reported that they do not feel a connection with a religion, yet at the same time, the majority of this population also reported believing in God or praying regularly. In 2019, a Pew Research Institute study on religion in America opened the eyes of an ecumenical group of about 25 spiritual directors in the Bryan-College Station area. ![]()
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |