A long post: Some thoughts I'm thinking these days.

Groups of Jesus’ disciples needed today will:

1. honor the present situation.
-there is a tendency for the institution to serve itself. To do this it paradoxically offers personal enhancement at the expense of negating the value of people’s contribution to the places they already are (workplace, school, home, neighborhood, etc.).

To honor the present situation is to take seriously the joys and pains of the people around you wherever you are. It is to honor the work that one performs, and invites one to see in that work an opportunity to be directed by and participate with the Spirit of God in God’s work in the world.

It does not dismiss or evade even the small nuicances of daily life, for each situation is an opportunity to cooperate with and depend upon the work of God--to become what we will be and to work to see that the world around us is becoming what it will be.

2. develop a biblical imagination
We need an imagination that is formed in the corporate recollecting of the believing tradition. This begins with a familiarity with biblical stories and the practice of listening and responding to God (prayer and worship). It will involve the remembering of the action of God in the past, and the promises of God for the future. It will involve reflection on the present and its cooperation or misalignment with the promised future of God. It will involve becoming familiar with context of the scriptures(both biblical and historical) and the context of our present situation (economics, ethics, politics, etc.).

3. listen for the Spirit to speak
-there is a tendency for us to defer to the expert—to the neglect of the voice of the “non-expert”. We will not seek to listen merely to the expert, but will listen for the Spirit—however the word may come.

To listen in this way requires humility, patience, courage, and mutual submission. It requires humility that seeks the truth without assuming one already has the answer. It requires patience that gives place for others to come to conclusions and decisions as they are ready. Patience is also required with one another when there is disagreement. The will to love must be stronger than the will to win. It requires courage when action must be taken and there are those who still disagree. Such action ought not be taken without regret and gentleness toward those who disagree. It requires mutual submission that sets aside one’s own preferences for the benefit of the others—for the Spirit’s voice to be heard and not merely one’s own.

4. respect the personhood of everyone.
-there is a tendency to grow impatient with others whose development we perceive as slow or retreating. We will not tell others what they ought to do without their invitation to do so. We will pay careful attention to Jesus’ warnings against condemning people for behavior we ourselves are guilty of—and tend first to the logs in our eyes before pointing out the slivers in the eyes of others. We have spent enough time fighting against other people’s wrongs, perhaps it is time we address the wrongs we have done. Such attention will bring patience and compassion for the other and the difficulty of life in this present age.



5. allow others to offer challenge.
If we will not tell others what they ought to do without their invitation (without their permission to have such authority in their lives), what will be required is that we must give that permission to others. This will require trust and vulnerability. It will require that we learn how to obey others so we may obey God. Obedience, not in the sense of being ‘lorded over,’ but in the sense of admitting that we don’t always do what is right and need someone to tell us what the right thing is and to make sure we do it. It is the desire to do right—even when we find that to be the difficult thing.

We will allow others to challenge us because we trust that they have our best interests in mind, and also that they share with us a larger concern for learning together how to become what we will be—to become more fully human, to enter and receive the reign of God, to will and to work God’s good pleasure, etc.

This will require a mutual submission, of course, and that means more than just one person giving permission for others to challenge and direct. Without such mutual permission giving, there will be little formation and much deception. Without such submission, we will not have the opportunity to hear someone tell us, “No, you cannot do that,” and so learn that we cannot do whatever we feel like. Nor will we find opportunities to hear how we might do things differently. Without such submission, we will stand side by side in our personal prisons of denial and deception (lying both to ourselves and to others).