Next Sunday we begin a new series based, in large part, on Personhood: The Art of Being Fully Human, by Leo Buscaglia, PhD.
We often talk about salvation as beginning with spiritual rebirth. More importantly, the results of spiritual rebirth is seen by others as we change our focus from ourselves to others.
A downside emerges when our enthusiasm results in losing ourselves. However, while Jesus often asks us to leave our baggage behind, He never asks us to leave who we are behind.
Dr. Buscaglia’s life passion was for all of humanity to reach our full potential of personhood. Because of his focus and training, the context he knew was psychological science. The foundational understanding for much of his view of humanity came from the works of Abraham Maslow’s hierarchy of needs.
Buscaglia writes in his book’s forward:
Loren Eiseley describes our world as a place “where even a spider refuses to lie down and die if a rope can still be spun to a star.” Like the spider, there are those of us who refuse to stop spinning, even when it would appear to be far more sophisticated to be without hope. Our rope, though perhaps frail, can still be spun with optimism, curiosity, wonder, love and the sincere desire to share a trip to the stars. Our goal is worth the struggle, for in this case, the star to which we aspire is full humanity for all.
My context comes from my knowledge and passion for following Jesus Christ. My own experience of rebirth is direct correlation between spiritual awareness and self-actualization.
No one can see the Kingdom of God without being born again…
John 3:3
Our theme text for this series comes from the 3rd chapter of John’s Gospel which begins with the story of Nicodemus. He is confused when Jesus begins their conversation with the idea of spiritual rebirth.
Likewise, I’m guessing that most persons are confused by the idea of self-actualization.
Here is the outline if you want to read the chapters from our companion book as we progress through our series:
| June 30 | Chapters Intro-I |
| July 7 | Chapter II |
| July 14 | Chapter III |
| July 21 | Chapter IV (through Connectiveness) |
| July 28 | Chapter IV & V |
I pray that you will join us each Sunday morning at 10:30 am. We share our weekly episodes on Facebook and our YouTube channel. We go live at 10:30 am. You can find these links along with more information about us, or join our live broadcast on our website at FlintAsburyChurch.org.
Pastor Tommy
Leo Buscaglia. Personhood: The Art of Being Fully Human. NY: Random House,1986.