Practices for Faithfulness

As we have been reflecting on our journey, our callings, and what we need together to be faithful, I thought it would be good to identify some essential practices that we have been using to some degree or another. Some of these certainly need more attention than they have had, but I think we are at a place where they need to be named. To me, these practices seem to be the baseline practices for shaping a people who have the capacity for honoring authentic mission, developing a biblical imagination, and embodying the life of the reign of God. Of course, each of us will need other practices for our particular challenges and gifts, and those will need to be sorted out together, but I propose that we identify these (or something like these) as practices we will share with intentionality and resolve.

We make space to pray together.
Throughout our gathering, we will speak to God and listen for God to speak to us. We give voice to our prayers in song, in spoken words, and we give attention to God through our prayers of silence and listening.

We make space to share our joys and struggles.
This time is an opportunity to share what you need to share. Some questions we are asking each other now are: What was the best thing you experienced last week? What was the toughest thing you faced? Where did you see beauty? Where did you see people in pain? What has Jesus been teaching you lately?

We make space to reflect on the world around us.
In this time, we learn what to look for in the world around us, and how to identify and engage in the work of the kingdom in the places we find ourselves. We consider questions like: What is really happening? Where are people in pain around me? Where do we see the need for the presence of God's reign? Where do we perceive the kingdom coming around us? What opportunity does our presence bring into these places? What are we powerless to do? What is God calling into being around us? What is rebelling against God around us?

We make space to listen to God through the scriptures.
This is a time for us to rehear the story of God and the people of God; to develop a biblical imagination, to reflect on the meaning of the text, and to listen to the direction of the Spirit through the meditation on the scriptures.

We make space to identify and discern our calling.
This is an opportunity, not an obligation, for people to voice: a sense of calling, requests for direction, and reports on missional engagement.

We make space for service together.
This is not necessarily a formal action, but often it will be. Service together may take the form of mutual service in prayer, sharing a meal, listening, rejoicing and sorrowing. It may take the form of cooperative service to others in serving food, cleaning, building, praying, listening or other actions.


Our lives are shaped by the things we make space for--the things we regularly engage in or disengage from. Because of the many forces at work in our culture that would claim that space from our lives (and thereby shape our lives for us in ways that are counter to the reign of God), we need to engage in specific practices to shape our lives according to the call of God, directed by the Spirit in the way of Jesus. These practices are not just for us, but for the sake of the world God loves--to enable us to be a people who easily and naturally love our neighbors and our enemies, who do justice and mercy, who announce in word, and embody in action, the reign of God.

Lenses for Acts

I mentioned last night a few lenses that we might look through as we approach the Acts of the Apostles. Here they are again.

1) Kingdom Lens 1: Inauguration & Implementation:: Pay attention to the ways in which the church continues the mission of Jesus. How is the church to implement what Jesus started? How does the church do the "greater things than these" that Jesus talked about?

2) Kingdom Lens 2: the Church as Agents, Colonies, and Heralds:: Look for the ways in which the believers act as agents (doing the work of the kingdom), colonies (embodying the life of the kingdom), and heralds (announcing the kingdom).

3) Culture Lens: Israel mission, Gentile mission:: Pay attention to who is being addressed, and why it matters what is said, what stories are told, and how people respond.

4) Salvation Lens: Kingdom Coming & the Spirit as the Guarantee of God's Future:: Pay attention to what salvation looks like as the kingdom arrives in each situation. How did the prophets understand salvation, and why did the disciples see the events around them as the initial arrival of what the prophets hoped for?

5) Exodus Lens: Hearing the Echoes of the Exodus:: Pay attention to the language of exodus. If the believers then understood what was happening as a New Exodus, what do you hear in Acts that sounds similar to stories from the first Exodus? What is fresh and new? What is rooted in Israel's story?

6) Character Lens: Finding the Character of Obedience:: (I think this is Jon's lens. He'll correct me if I missed it.) Try reading Acts, not looking for a blueprint for organizing an institution, but to see people who were being surprised by God, directed by God, and stumbling forward in the power of God and in spite of themselves.

Sunday, August 6

THIS Sunday we will be keeping with our rhythm of meeting in the morning on the first Sunday of the month. We will meet at the water’s edge space at 10 a.m. for breakfast.

Worship will follow the food and coffee.

Have a great weekend!
Randy

P.S. The Buist Group will be bringing pancake stuff.