Meeting place

The meeting will be held in my place!
The address is

1115 College Ave.
APT10

Thanks guys!

The Fifth Meeting

Dear Whinklings!

How are you guys? Wow two weeks have passed since the last meeting.

We will have the fifth meeting not tomorrow (due to the logistics issue) but the coming week.

The topic of the discussion will be defining human being from.............. me~ lol

I feel that therapists need to have a biblical concept of human being.

I am sending y'all my paper via email so that you could look and think of some 'positive' criticisms! :)

The time will be the same as usual: 7:30 on Wednesday.

About the place, I will inform you soon!

I pray that many of you will enjoy and get a lot out of the sex therapy class!

God bless~

ps Yay Korea is going to the next round of the World Cup!!!

Conference

Hey guys!

I found this conference that I'm interested in going to and thought I would see if any of you are also interested. Let me know if you are. I'll try to remember to bring it up at the Whinklings meeting sometime.

http://christianpsych.org/wp_scp/conferences/scp-academic-conference/

A Topic without a Title?

Hey y'all,

For the Whinklings meeting this week we'll be at Karsten's new place at 7:30.
(See my email for address, details.)

I would like to talk about discernment of God's will, decision-making and the role of the Holy Spirit. I figured this topic applies to both us and probably many future clients we'll have who are seeking God's will for their life.

I read a book a while back called "Decision-making and the Will of God" by Garry Friesen that has really gotten me thinking. The book essentially argues that the "traditional view" of God's will (that there is a destiny, a "center of God's will" for each individual Christian's life, planned by God, that we each must seek out and discern) is not biblical. He suggests, instead, that Christians need only to seek out God's moral will and wisdom, revealed in His Word, to remain inside God's will. As for the "center of God's will," Friesen believes that this concept has been invented by well-meaning Evangelicals, and that it robs the Christian of God-given freedoms that we have to decide things for ourselves using God's wisdom and our own desires.

The off-putting "reductio ad absurdums" (to quote Hovis...haha) of Friesen's theory are that the concepts of destiny/fate, vocational calling, soulmates, etc. have no basis in Scripture. The idea that God has no specific plan for our lives goes against what I've been told all my life, so I'm a little disturbed by it, but then, some very good points are made in the book. I'm excited to discuss it with y'all and see what you think!

Lauren

6.2.2010 Grace, Truth, and Perpetrators

This week, we discussed the Christian response to perpetrators, both within the church and therapy. It was a fascinating conversation made even better by Lauren's smores. Karsten started the discussion off with an excerpt from "What's So Amazing About Grace", a book that is highly recommended for all to read. A few of the questions that emerged during our discussion were:

- What is Grace? And what is Truth?
- How are Christians to respond to sin with Grace and Truth?
- Is there a difference between sins?
- Can you hold forgiveness and anger at the same time?
- Is it okay, based upon individual experiences, for Christian counselors to turn certain clients away?
- How do we hold the tension of God's love for the person who committed the crime and the victim?

It was a challenging and thought provoking discussion. I was greatly blessed by each person's thoughts and questions (even the numerous Devil's Advocates). Since Joon was gone, I took the role of note taker and did not do it justice. The conversation would engross me and I would forget to take notes.

Next week, Lauren will prepare a topic and post it here on the blog. We will not meet at my house next week- Ryan and I both have an internship requirement that evening.

The Topic for the Third Meeting

Dear fellah Whinklings~

Our tomorrow's topic will be working with the perpatrator.

the questions that Karsten suggested are:

1. How do you show compassion to and help violent or sexual offenders?

2. How much mercy should be shown and what should it look like?

3. Should we take equal time to help those that hurt others or should we spend more time with the victims?

Good luck with hammering out with good responses or if possible absolute answers??? lol

God bless!!

The Third Meeting

Dear fellow Whinklings,

what an awesome Wednesday night it was! :)

I am so grateful that our God has provided us this opportunity to discuss frankly about our thoughts on Ryan's topic: Sexuality and Christianity.

There were a lot of questions that appeared during the meeting and I provided you some of them.

Theological Questions

1. Is homosexuality born with or not?

2. Can God, through His supernatural power, eliminate homosexuality?

3. Can men reach the point where they become completely free from being sinful, that is homosexual?

4. I homosexuality different from other sin? (In the meeting, some people believed that homosexuality touches the core party of human being as it involves relationship)

5. Is there a hierarchical structure of sin? In other words, is one sin worse than the other or do all sins weigh the same?

6. Can true love be established through homosexual love?

Psychological Questions

1. How would my perspective on homosexuality influence my clinical practice?

In the third meeting, we mainly focused on the theological implication in homosexuality. We hope that in any of the upcoming meeting, we could focus more on the psychological implication.

My respectable Whinklings!

Here are the things that you should remember to do before the next meeting.

1. Our next meeting will be held in Karisa's house on Wednesday 7:30 pm.

2. We need your mission statement! Please think of one to share in the meeting.

3. Our next topic will be Karsten's I dunno yet~ :) Once I receive the topic, I will post it in the blog.

Thank you so much for being such wonderful supporters!

Truly, God is working through you and we, as a community in Christ, praise for His marvelous work through us!

From the Whinklings.