On March 17, 2008, The New Yorker, published a photograph never before shown – Nazis at leisure at Auschwitz. It was part of a larger collection of 116 photos released in 2007 showing officers and guards relaxing and enjoying themselves — as countless people were being murdered and cremated at the nearby death camp. In some of the photos, SS officers can be seen singing. In others they are hunting and laughing, and in another a man can be seen decorating a Christmas tree.
“These unique photographs vividly illustrate the contented world they enjoyed while overseeing a world of unimaginable suffering,” museum director Sara Bloomfield said. Among the people in the photos are Josef Mengele, the medical “doctor of death”, Rudolf Hoss, who had supervised the building of Auschwitz and been its commandant, and Otto Moll, the head of the gas chambers.
I ask myself as I look at these pictures: “How many of these men were baptized and were connected to churches? How many listened to the Scriptures being taught during those years?” I suspect the answer is, “A lot.” These pictures are a sober reminder of our need to engage in the serious, hard work of discipleship with those we lead.
As a result of over 20 years of research and development in Emotionally Healthy Spirituality, we have developed two core courses that have proven to move people, and churches, from a traditional to transformative discipleship model. They are a big answer to a big problem.
On June 9th, we will be running an event from 9:00am-3:30pm at New Life Fellowship in Queens, NYC. Click HERE for more information. Let me encourage you to prayerfully consider making this kind of paradigm shift in your church.
And I pray God may deliver us from one of the great dangers facing the church today – the globalization of superficiality.
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