LPC has a long tradition of evening gatherings during the Lenten season that nourish and encourage Christian faith. This year’s programming begins on Tuesday, March 3 and continues on March 10, 17 and 24. Each evening will begin with a “happy hour” at 6:15 p.m. followed by the program at 7:00 p.m.
March 3 · 7pm · Sanctuary
Lenten Concert · Kenyon College Chamber Singers
LPC welcomes the 47-member choral ensemble from Kenyon College.
March 10, 17 & 24 · 7pm · Wright Chapel
“Christian Parameters of the Paranormal”
LPC Pastor Jim Butler will lead a three-part presentation that explores the various human experiences that do not fit within normal, “materialist” human experiences. These include extrasensory perception, telepathy, precognition, near-death experiences, mystical encounters with the dead, “hauntings,” telekinesis, and all manner of esoteric phenomena such as spirit mediumship, “dark” magic (sorcery), and Ouija boards.
Christian faith can inform these experiences. There can be no doubt that the three great Abrahamic faiths (Judaism, Christianity and Islam) acknowledge non-material reality co-residing with the physical world. In fact, the scriptures and church history include multitudes of stories about paranormal experiences, some of which have been categorically forbidden. On the other hand, it has been argued that many of the spiritual experiences Paul called “gifts of the Spirit” such as tongue speaking, healing and “knowledge,” fit the definition of paranormal or supernatural phenomena. Is there a difference and what is it? Except for hardened materialists and most atheists, most of us have a sense that the universe is stranger than meets the eye. And some of it, according to the scriptures, mystics, and even modern secular psychologists, is not friendly or life-giving.