What happens to our life when we turn the volume down? Who are we apart from the noise and distractions to which we’ve become addicted? What would we discover if we returned to silence, stillness, contemplation, and solace? What happens to us spiritually when we become free of religion, and begin experiencing a living faith?
The Old Stone Chapel is not a thing.
The Old Stone Chapel has been in my heart to bring you for a very long time, but I didn’t know the best way to offer it to you.
You see, The Old Stone Chapel is not a building that exists anywhere, yet it exists everywhere that you exist. I’m not creating a NEW THING for you to do, or a place to go, and I have no desire to make this into any thing at all. However, over the last decade many of you have asked me to provide some way for people to experience what I’ve been talking about for so long. This is my attempt to provide a minimal framework to support your own spiritual discovery.
Any THING is the problem. None of us need another thing. We are not better off by experiencing Reality as an object that is distinct from every other object in the cosmos. The goal of The Old Stone Chapel is to free ourselves from relating object to object and begin relating subject to Subject. You could say The Old Stone Chapel is NOT A Thing… it’s a NO-Thing… but it’s definitely not nothing. Meister Eckhart would frame this by saying God is not what consciousness knows, God is what consciousness is. God is beyond our human conceptions, and we need help and training to break through. The Old Stone Chapel is such training and experience.
You and I are each…The Old Stone Chapel. We are the temple of the Holy Spirit (1 Corinthians 6:19). We are the dwelling place of God. We are God’s image bearers. We are invited to be adopted as God’s own children. We are each His creation. This is why finding God cannot be subscribing to any religion. We will not find God in any perfunctory ritual, God is not a jeanie in a bottle and not a transactional vending machine. God isn’t out there, in there, over there, or up there, since there doesn’t truly exist. What exists is here…now… the Presence of God is God’s ontological existence, existing itself within each and every present moment. This Presence of God exists within us…evidenced by our own existence (in our nothingness apart from God). This presence is found not be doing anything, but by learning how to be with God…in God.
“Be still and know that I am God…” (Psalm 46:10)
“And I will give you a new heart, and a new spirit I will put within you. And I will remove the heart of stone from your flesh and give you a heart of flesh.” (Ezekiel 36:26)
So what exactly is The Old Stone Chapel?
The Old Stone Chapel is envisioned as an online contemplative experience, and hopefully we can also gather together in person in the future.
Is it an online church?
You can call it an online church but that might be profoundly misleading. I hope it represents the purest form of church community, without all the cultural conditioning and religious overreach. It is an ecclesia (gathering or assembly) but it differs from the modern church model. The Old Stone Chapel is a training experience where we are (built up) to see Beyond Everything with spiritual eyes It’s a way to gain “the mind of Christ” experientially and to discover the wisdom of God through the context of friendship. If it follows the path of my un-coaching sessions, then I expect that many people will find healing, deliverance, freedom and a radically new life.
Do I have to belong to a particular religion?
When I was a “company man” employed by the Religious Industrial Complex I firmly believed that “going to church” and the modern model of (greeting, songs, offering, sermon, song) was the way to help people spiritually. Like so many believers, I thought conversion to the Christian religion was how a person found salvation. In my last ten years of podcasts, I’ve proven that the Bible does not support this assumption. The Christian religion doesn’t exist anywhere in the bible. Faith in Christ or “Christ following” exists in both the Hebrew Scriptures and the New Testament, and we see people of all faiths, trusting this “Anointed One”, while not forsaking their religious structures. There is no conversion to Christianity in the Bible, only completion in Christ by trusting Jesus is who He said He was.
As I observe the modern church, it appears to have become a noisy marketing machine. There are 25 times more churches than Starbucks and it has morphed into a $1.2 Trillion earth evacuation business that is desperately trying to be relevant. As I engage with people, I see an awakening and a readiness of people to strip off everything that is not Holy and explore spirituality. Some of the stuff that’s out there is misleading or not helpful, but I envision The Old Stone Chapel to be a lighthouse of calm wisdom in a noisy world that can’t stop scrolling. If you are part of a great congregation, congratulations, but a true solemn assembly is pretty impossible with a fog machine, Jumbotrons, a light show, and a band.
Can we agree that modern Church and all religions are businesses, and if you are helped by these institutions, nothing I do here will ask you to stop or change. Just know that my ministry has some similarity to John the Baptist who stands 20 miles outside of the shadow of religious power in an isolated desert. I might be a bit weird or unorthodox, but my heart is to point all comers directly to God, and invite everyone to truly contemplate Christ’s life and message. That’s when we discover that our very life, is a fresh retelling of this eternal love story.
A word to pastors and spiritual teachers:
I served for 25 years in pastoral ministry. I know how the sausage is made. I’ve experienced the full range serving a community, and I know how challenging it is. It also struck me how so many of my peers, pastors, and spiritual and lay leaders, who are all giving time to produce the Sunday church experience, were also the ones who often needed a church of their own. In other words, where do pastors go to church? When you are planning and providing the service, it’s just not the same as having a place to be served.
The Old Stone Chapel is my vision of pouring life and inspiration into pastors, spiritual leaders, and lay leaders. Everything is accessible in a time and in a way that will allow you to heal, grow in your connection and love of Christ, and you might even gain inspiration for truly transforming your own communities.
Here’s how it works:
- Sign up to The Old Stone Chapel so that you can receive each invitation.
- Open the invite: It will contain instructions that the virtual audience will use for each experience.
- Find a comfortable chair, in a quiet place, during a quiet time, and put on a set of noise cancelling headphones.
- Your downloads will include PDF’s that you can print off, or refer to. They will include art images, song lyrics, notes and transcripts, links to licensed material, websites, etc.. which will be referenced and aggregated as part of the experience.
- There will be instruction, guidance and training in contemplation, stillness, and reflection. The experience will include music, video, art and photo images, poems, biblical instruction and prayer. It is a fully integrated, immersive experience that challenges our assumptions, awakens us to divine inner experience, trains us to see God’s revelation, and re-connects us to embody our love for one another in ways that will seem foreign to those who are used to modern religion.
- This is NOT entertainment. The goal is to remove anything that would stand in our way of experiencing the love of God. The training to learn how to sit still, and just be. It’s my hope and assumption that this will allow us to be as James Finley says: “completely taken over by the oceanic love of God that is welling up within us.”
- In simplest terms I aspire to lead all who will come toward three things:
- Zeal for God’s house (Us as The Old Stone Chapel)
- Communion with God in our most secret room (within our Old Stone Chapel)
- Self-emptying and serving all others motivated by genuine love (Other Old Stone Chapels)
What does this cost?
There is no financial cost to you. You pay with your time, but I believe it will be an investment that pays you back in ways you cannot fathom. We all have busy lives. I have a job just like each of you. This practice of resting in God has transformed my life, my marriage, my parenting, my friendships, my career, and everything I touch. If the Spirt who fills me, fills you in like manner, You will receive far more than you ever put in.
Some final thoughts on the The Old Stone Chapel
The Old Stone Chapel is you and me. The Kingdom of Heaven is here, now, in the midst of us and religion still wants to place it on the end of a carrot for us to chase until we die. I seek not to convert anyone, but for all comers to be completed by experiencing Heaven’s bliss anytime and anywhere we pay attention to it.
I lose nothing if no one comes. I gain nothing if many do. I am nothing and nobody here. I’m just your concierge pointing you to what is Real and True as best as I am able. I want us to discover how oblivious we are to the omnipresent, omniscient love of God that animates every particle of the Universe, and to transform our hearts of stone into soft, receptive, alive hearts of flesh…where we esteem others as greater than ourselves.
Contemplation gets us beyond religion. In fact, all religions have a form of this practice at their deepest levels, every tradition is welcome here. I will respect all and ask that you respect that I come from the Christian Contemplative tradition. As scripture says, every nation, tribe, people & tongue gathers around the throne (Revelation 7:9). In the end, the Bible reveals we all somehow get over our tribalism, our denominations and otherness, our duality, and find unity along side of complete diversity. I pray we taste that here.
The Old Stone Chapel seeks to return each of us back into our lives with an embodied spirituality and faith, that makes all things new.It’s in my heart NOT to offer something different, and this is certainly NOT new, but I aspire to repatriate what has existed all along.
Not everyone will be able to receive this, but if you are one of those who can… who longs deeply in your soul, like a deer panting for water, then I invite you to come and take a big drink. Taste and see that the Lord is good.
