Title: "Growing Good Fruit"
I was very pleased to receive a copy of The Message 100 by Eugene Peterson for review a while back. I'm happy to recommend it, first and foremost because The Message version itself is hugely beneficial for reading, and second because the new arrangement of the books of the Bible that you find in The Message 100 has some valuable features as well.
"A recent question here asked about time spent on sermon prep. Eight hrs/week was mentioned, as was the "1hr per minute" rule. MLK Jr. apparently clocked in at 15hrs. I confess, this makes me wonder about the stewardship of time. What if, say, even once a month, you took 6 hours and spent them with a group of three people instead. Maybe 2 hours at a time on Monday, Wednesday and Friday. Talk with them about their lives and faith, pray and study scripture together to see what Jesus is saying to them these days. Then on Sunday, the four of you spend 20 minutes in worship as a group sharing with the congregation what God has been up to among you over the past week. Question: would that be more beneficial to the Kingdom than the usual 8 hours and a sermon from you? Be sure you factor in the value of life-change experienced by the three people (and you!) over the week. What do you think?"
When you read Matthew 18:20 - "For where two or three are gathered in my name, there I am with them" - how does it sound to you?
I made a little billboard of sorts to go on our table as a reminder with a complete set of fruits on sticky-notes tucked inside so we can swap them out from week to week. We're also going to use this to help us all memorize the set of 9 in order by the end of Lent. (I set up the billboard so you can hide the list while you try to put the notes in order, then open it up to see if you're right. How slick is that?!)
The critique of "sequentialism" resonated with me. It's like the traditional way of navigating where you have a map and a route and just go step by step. But that only works if the terrain stays put! These days I think navigating as a faith community is more like flying your moving spaceship through a field of randomly drifting asteroids. There is no "path," and if you start trying to chart one the asteroids will have moved before you get it finished so it's obsolete before it's done. Navigating in this environment is, I think, done by quick orientation followed by incremental movement, then repeat. And orientation means knowing what's right next to you as well as where you ultimately are trying to go.
In practice, I think that calls for the listening to God and each other that others have mentioned. We Refresh our awareness of where we are and where we are going, then Respond. So the path forward isn't laid out in advance as a sequence A to B to C to D etc. Rather, the sequence is replaced by a discipline: "(Refresh, Respond) Repeat."
I think, if we do that, then the original question about community vs. mission gets answered over and over as God leads.
I think the idea that a shared faith life can strengthen your marriage is pretty common, but I've been musing about the reverse:
Part Advent craft for the family, part spiritual autobiography - how's that for a multi-purpose blog post?How to Make a Manger from Timothy Thompson on Vimeo.
A Facebook group I belong to associated with Luther Seminary recently started a discussion on this question:What are the sticking points of your community of faith that keep you all from becoming a missional congregation?
The sticking point? If only there were just one! I see a host of impediments to the emergence of a missional culture - everything from clericalism and Biblical illiteracy to the hyperindividualism and consumeristic ethos of our civic culture. But there does seem to be one factor that exacerbates all the others and is the place I keep coming back to when I try to decide where to invest my energies.
There is a general lack of substantive relationships.
You can easily unveil this by looking at the one-anothers that describe healthy Christian community. For example, how common are relationships in our churches that are substantive enough to allow people to actually "admonish one another?" Not very.
Culture change - like faith itself - travels from person to person like a virus. You can stop a virus cold (so to speak) by isolating people from each other. Similarly, our community relationships are generally too distant to support a culture-change epidemic. We don't "breathe each others air" enough to transmit anything.
Our primary gatherings may look like good places to catch something - Sunday services are something of a crowd scene. But there is very little relational contact that can take place in that setting. You may catch a cold by passing the peace, but you won't catch a missional culture that way.
Invest in small groups? Of course. But that's typically done as an add-on to Sunday services, as icing on the cake of everything else that's already entrenched in conventional congregational life. Most of our time & energy goes towards the large gathering which tends to have a small impact on a large number of people. Small groups, that have a larger impact on a smaller number, get the leftovers. That's a fundamental mis-alignment. (To see it graphically as a napkin diagram, go here: http://bit.ly/Misalignment.)
To switch metaphors from infection, think in terms of a nuclear chain reaction. To make that take place, the atoms have to be at a high density, packed very tightly together. Then as the neutrons fly, they release even more and the reaction multiplies.
Our "social density" is not high enough to support a "chain reaction" of missional culture change. In contrast, that's just what you see when the Church is "packed very tightly together" under persecution, often resulting in "explosive" growth.
So if I had to pick one factor above the others to focus on, I guess it would be social density. That's why I continue to be drawn to the house church movement - an eminently Lutheran expression and a subject for another time!
S - ScriptureSimple enough. On the blank pages of the journal, you write down a verse or passage of scripture that hits you in some way. Make a few observations about it - maybe the context of the verse, or questions it raises - whatever you'll need later to recall what was going on and why it caught your attention. Then you write about how this applies to your life. That's the kicker... it keeps you mindful that you're not just reading to read, but to be changed. This is underscored (literally) by the phrase printed lightly at the bottom of each page of the journal;
O - Observation
A - Application
P - Prayer
"How will I be different today because of what I have just read?"
Christine Sine has collected a whole set of posts from people about "What is a Spiritual Practice?" It includes reflections on a whole host of things from running and throwing parties, to smoking, sex and yes, driving.Just found your wonderful post by way of Christine Sine’s collection on spiritual practices.
I stumbled into driving as spiritual practice first by way of confession.
I noticed that when I merge onto the freeway, I often get irritated if people don’t make at least some effort to let me in. Then when I’m in the right lane, I get irritated by people trying to merge if they don’t take the initiative and end up making me speed up or slow down! I am totally self-centered, and change my sense of the “rules of the road” so that it’s always the other person’s job to make the merge work!
What a sinner.
I thank God I can laugh at my self-centered self.
But since then, as I’ve made it my job to intentionally facilitate other people’s merges, I’ve started to hear a phrase from John 14:2 “I go to prepare a place for you.” The phrase is curiously out of context, but even so it has become a part of my spiritual practice of driver’s hospitality.
And, lucky me, I get to engage in this practice over, and over, and over, and over again… every day!!
And blessedly, I am generally less irritated now.
Please note: since this post was originally put up the organizers have decided to re-scheduled the Greenhouse training. Please let me know if you'd like to be informed directly when a new date has been set. FP)
