How to Embrace the Resurrection While Living In a Broken World
Archived Webinar · Recorded April 6, 2021
With
Richard J. Foster,
Marti Ensign,
Carolyn Arends
We still have some autographed copies left of the An Evening with MadamoCD — you can get yours here.
Here are some resources mentioned in the Joy Strength: How to Embrace the Resurrection While Living in a Broken World webcast conversation between Richard J. Foster, Marti Ensign, and Carolyn Arends.
Comment: Dallas encouraged us to go skipping. I have enjoyed skipping and saying, “I am the one Jesus loves.”
Quote: “The life that intends to be wholly obedient, wholly submissive, wholly listening, is astonishing in its completeness. Its joys are ravishing, its peace profound, its humility the deepest, its power world-shaking, its love enveloping, its simplicity that of a trusting child.” Thomas R. Kelly
Comment: I think Dallas Willard said that, while we can’t be thankful for everything, we can find something in everything to be thankful for.
Quote: “When we feel joy, it is a place of incredible vulnerability — it’s beauty and fragility and deep gratitude and impermanence all wrapped up in one experience.” Brene Brown
Richard J. Foster is founder, past president and current team member of Renovaré. Having studied at George Fox and Fuller Theological Seminary, Foster has served as a pastor and taught...
Learn more about Richard J. >
Marti Ensign
A long-term missionary in Africa, Marti and her husband Len now live in Olympia, Washington. Marti works tirelessly as a conference and retreat speaker, and is former Director of Women...
Learn more about Marti >
Carolyn Arends
Carolyn Arends oversees the Renovaré Institute for Christian Spiritual Formation as well as several other Renovaré initiatives, including the Book Club. She is also a recording artist, speaker, author, and...
Learn more about Carolyn >
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Born in New Mexico in 1942, Richard J. Foster spent most of his growing-up years in Southern California, where he became friends with a group of Quaker youth. He came to faith in Christ in that small Friends gathering, and their ministry was pivotal in Richard’s life. When as a teenager his parents died, his church family provided the funds for Richard to pursue his education. Because of their generosity, he was able to graduate from George Fox College and Fuller Theological Seminary.
Now married to Carolynn and holding a seminary degree, Richard became the pastor of Woodlake Avenue Friends Church in Canoga Park, California. Although he would later describe that church as “a marginal failure on the ecclesiastical scoreboards,” Richard’s time at Woodlake would prove to be deeply formational. Faced with the challenges of pastoring, Richard turned to the devotional classics for soul sustenance. From these writers Richard learned to practice the spiritual disciplines. He also attended the Sunday school class of one of his parishioners, Dallas Willard, with whom be became fast friends. Richard also befriended the pastor of a nearby Lutheran church, Bill Vaswig. Although they were neighbors for just a few years, the friendship of these three men endured throughout their lives.
Richard and Carolynn moved to Oregon in 1974, where Richard joined the pastoral staff of the Newburg Friends Church and the teaching staff of George Fox College. He continued to practice the spiritual disciplines and to teach them to congregants and students. In 1977 Richard wrote Celebration of Discipline, which was published by Harper & Row in 1978.
The success of Celebration of Discipline presented multiple opportunities, including an invitation to join the faculty of Friends University in Wichita, Kansas. Richard, Carolynn, and their two sons, Joel and Nathan, moved to Wichita in 1979. His position at Friends gave Richard freedom to travel and speak about the spiritual life. In many conversations, people asked Richard for a next step beyond what they had learned in reading Celebration of Discipline. Richard discerned a pattern: that people were trying rather than training to become like Jesus, that they held a myopic rather than a synoptic view of the path to Christlikeness, and that they were scattered rather than gathered. How to address those needs became a focus of Richard’s work.
After years of writing, teaching, and traveling, Richard sensed a call to silence. In 1986 he said no to all public ministry and focused on listening to God. During this time Richard felt led to establish a ministry devoted to the renewal of the church. With help from James Bryan Smith, Roger Fredrikson, Marti Ensign, Lynda Graybeal, and his old friends Dallas Willard and Bill Vaswig, Richard founded Renovaré in 1988.
Richard went on to write many other books besides Celebration of Discipline, including PRAYER: Finding the Heart’s True Home, Streams of Living Water, and Sanctuary of the Soul. He also led an editorial team to publish a study Bible focused on spiritual formation. He served as President of Renovaré until 2008 and continues to serve in an advisory role. He and Carolynn now live in Colorado, where they look forward to visits from from their nine grandchildren.
“The heart of God is an open wound of love,” declare the opening words of PRAYER: Finding the Heart’s True Home. For more than 40 years, Richard Foster’s ministry has aimed to help people connect with that tender heart of God. While best known for bringing spiritual disciplines to the modern era, Richard would remind us they are a means and not the end:
…Christian spiritual formation has nothing essentially to do with such practices. Many of these practices are useful, to be sure, and some are more useful than others. But none is essential. What is essential is life with Jesus, interactive relationship with the great God of the universe, inner transformation into Christlikeness.
Marti Ensign is a long-time member of the Renovaré family—formerly serving on the board of directors, and currently serving on the Ministry Team. Over her long, full life in ministry, Marti has served in the past as Director of Women in Medicine and Dentistry for the Christian Medical/Dental Society, and is currently on the board of directors for Mission Aviation Fellowship, the board of governors for Friends in the West (sponsor of the African Children's Choir), and a hostess for international visitors to the National Prayer Breakfast in Washington, D.C.
Few things are more delightful than hearing Marti share stories of her time as a medical missionary in Central Africa (Rwanda and Burundi). We invite you to enjoy her contribution to the oral tradition with An Evening with Madamo.
We're grateful to be able to bring her stories to our 2017-18 Renovaré Book Club members this season as Marti leads us through Corrie ten Boom's masterwork, The Hiding Place. Marti and Corrie were close friends in the last decades of Corrie's life. Marti shares a bit of how their friendship developed:
I first met Corrie TenBoom during our first term in Rwanda at a missionary conference for all denominations and nationalities. She was the speaker, and since we had the largest and most comfortable cabin, she came each day for tea. Everyone wanted to be around her all the time, sit next to her at meals get her anything she wanted.
Later the doctor told her that she must stop traveling all the time into different time zones and having strange food or she would die and not have a long ministry. She established a Missionary Guest house near Kampala and we were often there with her as well as in ministry to prisons and to schools in Burundi. We were at home in Seattle in the late 1970's when she came to retire and stay in the USA.
I was her link to that time in Africa that she loved so much. I was often with her in her home in Southern California and in meetings with her around the west. After she had a stroke and had aphasia it was my joy to go take care of her on different occasions when her regular caretakers needed a break.
Marti's mission statement is simple, but profound: To share Christ and his message with humor and humanity in order to bring persons into a vital and growing faith in Jesus Christ as Savior.
Carolyn Arends is Renovaré's Director of Education.
As a songwriter and author, she is known for messages, songs, and books that stir the soul, and a warm, engaging style that leaves her audiences feeling like they’ve found a new best friend. She has written and released 14 albums and is the author of 3 critically acclaimed books. 15 of Carolyn’s songs have become top 10 radio singles on the Canadian pop and US Christian charts. Carolyn has earned 2 Dove Awards, 3 Juno Nominations, and was recognized as the West Coast Music Awards’ Songwriter of the Year. Her prose has been recognized by The Word Guild, The Evangelical Press Association and The Canadian Church Press Awards.
In addition to her busy touring and speaking schedule, Carolyn has been a regular columnist for Christianity Today and is an adjunct professor at ACTS Seminary, Pacific Life Bible College, and Columbia Bible College. She has a degree in Psychology and English from Trinity Western University and a Master of Arts in Theological Studies from Regent College. She lives in Surrey, BC with her husband, Mark, and their children Benjamin and Bethany.
In her role as the Director of Education for Renovaré, Carolyn oversees the Renovaré Institute for Christian Spiritual Formation, the Renovaré Book Club, and various other initiatives.
She continues to speak, sing, facilitate retreats, and lead songwriting and performance seminars.
