SPIRIT BLOG
Click on any of the stories below to read the words from our founder and those who have shared their God gifts with others.
On Healing, Headaches, Feeling Better and Finding God
Our extensive research study on Spiritual life in mainstream interfaith congregations contained both quantitative and qualitative questions about spiritual life. The results of our analysis of the quantitative data revealed three critical findings:
READ MORE...
Praying With Mind, Spirit and Body: It Will Change Your Life!
I have the privilege of being the grandparent of an incredible granddaughter, Shannon, who is deaf, and her husband, Brent, who is also incredible and deaf. And the richness of their lives and the deaf community we have met through them have changed our lives entirely
READ MORE...
New Prayers, New Spirit
At most churches, prayer is a pretty standard experience. We have certain prayers we say at different times in the worship service. We generally pray before and sometimes after a meeting. We pray when someone is ill and needs our prayers. We pray when there is an emergency and we know that prayer is our most direct line to God’s Presence.
READ MORE...
Men & God: A Beginning Inquiry into Male Spiritual Life in a Small Group Setting: Part I
Over the fifty years of my ministry, I’ve encountered questions about gender differences when talking about spiritual life, often including statements about men not being as spiritual as women. I’ve always thought that men and women had different spiritual lives, not defined as more or better.
READ MORE...
Love is Where You Find It: The power of Love in Spiritual Life
Designing a research study to understand spiritual life in mainstream, interfaith congregations called for an approach that would reach a variety of people from different backgrounds, educational opportunities, interests and abilities who shared an interest in spiritual life.
READ MORE...
MEN & GOD: A Beginning Inquiry into Male Spiritual Life in a Small Group Setting - Part II
This is the final post in the two-part series: Men and God. You may review part one here. The participants in this inquiry were members of two churches: A large church in the northern…
READ MORE…
Ministry is Always Complicated. But You May be Surprised by What People Say They Really Want From Their Minister!
In most churches, prayer is a pretty standard experience. We have certain prayers we say at different times in the worship service. We generally pray…
READ MORE…
The Amazing and Unexpected Power of Prayer
Sometimes, God simply walks into your life and says, “Surprise!” It was on one of those occasions that I found myself asking a question. “What happens to people who pray for other people?” Does anything happen to ME when I’m…
READ MORE…
Spiritual Life in the Aging Process: The New Spiritual Frontier – Part I
Old Age is coming of age as our Baby Boomers enter old age. Now in their middle 50’s to their early 70’s, this illustrious group of post World War II babies are facing the realities…
READ MORE…
Spiritual Life in the Aging Process: The New Spiritual Frontier: Part II
We began our extended study of spiritual life after sixty when people in our original study described fewer God experiences in their later years. We wondered why. As we met with a variety of…
READ MORE…
Spiritual Life in the UCC & Beyond
This original study of Spiritual Life in the UCC raises two questions: (1) What are the words you associate to the words Spiritual Healing? (2) What are the stories you tell in relation to your understanding of Spiritual Healing? One Hundred UCC churches were chosen…
READ MORE…
Building Spiritual Life Teams: A Program For Lay Spiritual Leadership In Your Church That ALWAYS Works!
Imagine this picture in your church: Six to eight lay people sitting around a table. One member of the group reaches out her hands to the member on either side and says: “Who wants to start?”…
READ MORE…
Trust: The Critical Entrance into the Sacred World of Adolescent Spirituality
After completing our study of Spiritual Life in mainstream Interfaith traditions, we had a range of participants from their mid-twenties to late sixties but were missing a younger…
READ MORE…
Two Words That Could Change Your Life: Just Listen!
In these times when the country is being torn apart by violence, hate, and destruction it is easy to feel helpless and frightened…
READ MORE…
On Being Alone And Isolated During The COVID Crisis: The Profound Effects Of Social Isolation!
My moving into a multi-level retirement facility coincided with the new reality of quarantines in this COVID crisis…
READ MORE…
When Stress Doesn’t Stop: The Real Cost Of Unrelenting Stress In Our Lives
When you take a world-wide killer pandemic and mix it with the rage of violent social injustice, you get a situation that is terrifying and out of control…
READ MORE…
Celebrating Fifty Years of Ministry: An Amazing Adventure of God Surprises!
Fifty-five years ago, I was an ordinary member of a Methodist church when I had a powerful God experience and a sudden, unexpected call into ministry…
READ MORE…
Reverend Bobbie McKay ’53 ’70 MS, ’74 PhD
Obtaining a PhD from Northwestern was a validation of my life as a minister, researcher, and writer…
READ MORE…
Spirituality is...
Spirituality is knowing that God exists in a form we cannot create but can know; cannot elaborate but can take into heart and spirit and body…
READ MORE…
Podcast: Conversations of Spiritual Life #1
Open your spiritual eyes and say “yes” to God is the passionate and persistent message of the Rev. Bobbie McKay…
READ MORE…
Podcast: Conversations of Spiritual Life #2
In episode two, Bobbie McKay tells about the powerful and compelling spiritual experiences she has witnessed…
READ MORE…
DISCOVER GOD – SHARE THE GIFT – CHANGE YOUR LIFE – CHANGE THE WORLD
DISCOVER GOD:
Let God become REAL in your life – not an intellectual understanding or an emotional support but entirely real, experienced, known, a constant presence; available 24/7, a felt reality, never separated.
SHARE THE GIFT:
Talk about God to anyone… everyone… friends, family, neighbors, coworkers, strangers! (I talk to my Uber drivers all the time about God and they get it.)
CHANGE YOUR LIFE:
Let God become an essential/necessary part of your life. 24/7, never absent, available every second of every day, start and end the day with God as a presence with you and you will will find yourself becoming more loving, more attentive, more attentive to others, more open to learning more about God from other people and from your experiences.
People in my study said they became less angry, lived more in the present rather than the past or the future and most significantly, they “felt better”… undefined better but real.
CHANGE THE WORLD:
God is not a secret relationship. Find a way to talk about God first to people you think will be receptive, and then anywhere! When God is real for you, God will become real to anyone you come in contact with.
As your behavior changes – and it will, because you are now connected go God, people will see you differently. Look at your own experiences now shared when God became real to you. How have you changed? What’s different about you and your life? What’s different about your relationships with others?
That’s where we can help make God real for others because God has become more real to you.
God is the most powerful source for change in the world. (It beats psychology every time! Spoken by a licensed psychologist, Reverend Bobbie McKay, Phd.)