Tag Archives: community

The Heart of Good Dialogue

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“Let the peace that Christ gives control your thinking. You were all called together in one body to have peace. Always be thankful.” Colossians 3:15 (International Children’s Bible)

After something like fifteen hours of intense dialogue this past weekend during the Discerning Retreat, I felt like I needed a silence transfusion. But that need did not diminish my joy over the radical thing I got to do. We were definitely called together in one body – for real, not just in theory. And we had remarkable peace.

Commission launches the dialogue with European social partners on a review of the EU sectoral social dialogue - Employment, Social Affairs & Inclusion - European Commission

The art of dialogue

Dialogue is not easy. It is easy to talk (or at least think of what you would talk about if you dared to talk); it is harder to listen. It is easier to speak inauthentically– playing a part, following a line of thinking; it is harder to take oneself and others seriously as expressions of God’s Spirit. In this day, it is hard not to succumb to the prevailing thought that “everyone has a right to their own opinion” and merely “agree to disagree,” as if that thought and action were somehow supremely moral.

In Paul’s thinking, I think he would say, “The good news is that everyone has a restored right to God’s word of truth.” And, “For the sake of living in the peace Christ gives I would gladly give up all my so-called rights.”

A partner came up to me after the retreat was over and was so happy that we managed not to fight. It was the first time she had been involved in our discerning process directly. She had never seen a group of believers talk about difficult things with mutual understanding, patience and hope like we did. Another person said a similar thing. She was amazed that we could disagree so well.

I hope they didn’t think we just had a remarkable affection for each other. That is true. But we have to agree on some basics things in order to disagree well — like the scripture that heads this post. We can’t accept what we discern as practical application of our faith unless we do agree on some foundational realities of that faith. As in the words Paul wrote to the Colossians above, we have to agree that the peace of Christ is more important than our latest brainstorm or our latest desire to rise to the surface. We have to agree that we have been called together in one body and that our fears won’t protect that or our brilliance create it. We do need to be alert for what can destroy us, and we do need to passionately exercise our gifts to be the body, but, at the bottom of it, being called together and lead by God is the basis of any discernment we might have.

Basic thankfulness

I have to admit that when I entered the retreat time, I was at peace, but I was not very thankful, yet. I was more anxious about what was going to happen. The pastors ran out of planning time and wished there had been more; we didn’t get our logistics right and ran into last-minute glitches; significant partners were absent or indisposed – there is always something. But during the prayer walk in the neighborhood, about when I was buying old china from a neighbor’s yard sale (which Gwen actually liked, even though it did not match what she already had, as I’d hoped), I was moved with a great feeling of gratitude. It hit me.

I managed to let Jesus rule the situation. I let my joy over being called into the body and having a real one to live in rise to the top. I listened to the hearts of my prayerwalking buddies as they prayed. I admired the burgeoning neighborhood into which God has plopped us. I realized I was astounded.

Maybe always be thankful is even more the essence of discerning dialogue. Conversation with someone who is grateful for what they have been given and grateful for who they have been given to be is a pleasure. Their receptivity to God’s grace makes them the most able discerners. I long to be one of those kind of followers of Jesus.

BEING Built together as living stones: And a lament for the lack

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As you come to him, the living Stone—rejected by men but chosen by God and precious to him—you also, like living stones, are being built into a spiritual house… 1 Peter 2:4-5

As we come to our Discerning Retreat We find ourselves in the sometimes-absurd-feeling position of taking the verse above with radical seriousness. Let me rephrase that, we are not just seriously considering being living stones; the event presumes that we are living stones being built into a spiritual house. There is a huge difference between merely aspiring to be something and seeing if it works out, and actually assuming one is something and working it out. It takes some courage to be so presumptuous.

Let me lead us in a lament on why it is hard for many of us to presume we are what Peter is talking about:

 

1) Some of our best potential partners “hover” over the church.

Good people can’t abide denominations; they go parachurch for their mission; they can’t stand relating too long without getting to do exactly what they want. So they hover over the rest of us, dipping in periodically to abscond with what they like and leaving the rest of us to be the church. I compare them to free-radical atoms that cause organisms to deteriorate. They are like high-end shoppers who periodically hold an extravagant fair where they get their goodies; the rest of the time they cast their nets into various groups and scoop up whatever they want to consume and discard the rest.

2) People who were once radical enough to be a member of the “tribe,” no matter what, have a tough time maintaining that once they have children.

It is hard to imagine your child’s needs being met among the living stones when they are in the process of being indoctrinated by the school and their peer group. When your child is having trouble relating or participating, it is hard not to adapt to their leadership.

3) We have quite a few ex-dating, even ex-marriage partners cordoning off sections of the fellowship.

If I am upsetting you right now because I said this, I probably mean you. I feel your pain, but if we organize around you, worry about how your despair is driving you out, or are drawn to see the world in terms of being on your side or not, we are not being constructed; we’re expanding your sense of being destroyed.

4) On the same subject, we have numerous mixed marriages or mixed faux-marriages among us. I mean that people are built together with mates who don’t follow Jesus.

The mates are usually open to faith (at least to their mate having some), and are likely to be nice people. But they often take their mate out of the building materials storehouse. It is hard to be a living stone if you are not really available to be built into the building.

5) Some of the partners really keep their faith in their head.

That’s not all bad – there are intellectual issues to be had. But being built together is physical, emotional and mainly spiritual. We can’t just argue all day. We don’t want to live in a relationship that is like a bad marriage, in which the partners are just out for some kind of justice that matches what they are thinking or meets their demands, instead of being out to build the love of the relationship.

It’s a lament

Don’t take this the wrong way. This piece is kind of a “lament” based on my longing to be all that Peter is talking about – a living stone built into a spiritual house. I am a living stone and I do experience life in the spiritual house. It would have been easy enough to write a psalm of praise about how people are doing the exact opposite of what I have enumerated above. And I could have written a psalm of praise for how people in the conditions enumerated above are dealing with them faithfully. I have plenty of well-founded hope. Besides, the church depends on what Jesus is building. We are being built, Peter says. We, and millions of living stones all over the world, are being built by God into the typically wild array of diverse expressions of grace.

But I like the reality of the stark contrasts that also permeate Peter’s letter.  I think Peter wrote the exhortation I’m riffing on today because he was facing the same kind of stuff we face. People in his day, like in ours, just didn’t get the facts of their new lives in Christ or they didn’t accept them or they wouldn’t/couldn’t live out of them. They had any number of good reasons to not be built together into a spiritual house. We have the reasons our world tempts us to apply, too.

The Discerning Retreat is one of our radical antidotes to all that. It gives us a chance to take Jesus and one another seriously, in hope that we won’t be something in our head, just a theory, or merely a prospect. It calls us to be a people in real time, in love with each other, with the living Lord at the center. The retreat is far from the only thing we do, of course, to live out our lives in Christ. But it is such a good opportunity to come to the Living Stone and be built, as living stones, into a great place for him to live.

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Do You Get Harry Potter?

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As of today Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince has grossed $461,318,990 worldwide. Gwen and I contributed to that last week at the over-priced Bridge Deluxe near Penn (but how nice to walk to the theatre!). Do you get what is going on here? Just what is selling all these tickets? I have not been able to get into the books and I have been caught looking at my watch during the movies. What is the attraction?

Unseen evil

There is something going on. A bazillion people are concerned that another youngster is threatened by unseen forces and fighting overwhelming evils. Is every movie required to have this plot this year? — By use of some kind of magic (a transforming car, the Starship Enterprise, etc.) young people enhance their developing, misunderstood awesomeness to overcome the evil with the help of their friends, but not at the expense of their own self-esteem and uniqueness.

This propaganda is getting to be old hat. But, if the trailers are any evidence, the expression of it may be getting darker and even more dire. I felt quite educated by the previews before Harry Potter started lumbering into its 2-1/2 hours. I can’t remember them all. The next Twilight was one of them (Bella leaves vampire boyfriend with werewolf boyfriend; danger ensues, but will true love save even the undead?). 2012 was another (John Cusack and Woody Harrelson survive global catastrophe). And there was a creepier, Potteresque something I can’t remember. I was not encouraged, but perhaps enlightened.

Where is my happiness?

This generation has some high expectations of success and happiness and it secretly blames insurmountable, possibly evil, forces for the inevitable shame they feel about their deprivation. That is my lesson du jour. Voldemort gets Dumbeldore killed. My boyfriend wants to suck my blood. We’re all about to be killed by a natural disaster and only John Cusack will survive. Anxiety. Fear. Unfulfilled dreams. Pass the prozac.

Or please! Pass the gospel. You people need a savior! Harry Potter’s wand is not making it (and it is make-believe, anyway, btw).

The other strand that might be running through these movies is this (OK, this is lesson du jour deux): “I really want someone to love; I want community.” Life-long school chums who are as weird as I am and know me, and accept me, as I am; the boyfriend who is wild and crazy but who will resist killing me (he’s so awesome) and may kill others for me; the brave survivors who restart the world from their little tribe.

Connection, Hope. Restoration. Pass the church! (Not make-believe, btw).

What Holds this Church Together?

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I’ve come to love the “how” questions. But for whole segments of the population, I answer them rather poorly. The other night at “rabbi time” one of my favorite people (Jeff not only thinks and sings well, he plays the accordion!) asked one of my favorite questions about the church. “How does it hold together?” I didn’t get all of the back story, but I think he’s seen a few places fall apart. It took him a while to join in, since he was skeptical about Circle of Hope’s staying power! It does not seem to have enough mechanisms for survival; it just kind of is.

My answer received a funny response that I have been pondering since. “Every time you talk about this, you use the words relational, love, incarnational, but I end up not knowing a lot more.” (I felt a bit like Jimmy Carter being humored by Ronald Reagan). That reply echoed a much more incoherent protest by a blogger who objected to the chart I was explaining on the Circle of Hope blog a week ago. (Just how did you come across that blog, Courtney?).

So I thought I would try again.

Most of what I think is better summed up by Paul in his letter to the Ephesians: “[Jesus] gave some to be apostles, some to be prophets, some to be evangelists, and some to be pastors and teachers, to prepare God’s people for works of service, so that the body of Christ may be built up until we all reach unity in the faith and in the knowledge of the Son of God and become mature, attaining to the whole measure of the fullness of Christ.
Then we will no longer be infants, tossed back and forth by the waves, and blown here and there by every wind of teaching and by the cunning and craftiness of [people] in their deceitful scheming. Instead, speaking the truth in love, we will in all things grow up into him who is the Head, that is, Christ. From him the whole body, joined and held together by every supporting ligament, grows and builds itself up in love, as each part does its work.”

What holds us together? Here are five applications of the scripture we are trying to make, with just one example each that demonstrate how we are trying. (Want to comment with more?)

1) We assume people are not infants

(Or at least are not destined to be so). They are gifted and relevant. Jesus is in them to bring fullness and unity.

We expect our Cell Leaders to work out our agreements and follow our very general plan. We do not tell them what to do each week; they are not given a curriculum.

2)  The pastors and other leaders are relentless about contrasting the deceitfulness of the philosophies of the age with Jesus.

We know we are a “ship of fools” as far as the deluded world is concerned.

You may have noticed that we are not an “emerging church,” we are not “postmodern.” We tend to rail against modernism, too, and a couple of weeks ago I took a swipe at Facebook and the immortality of the soul in the space of a few minutes.

3) Dialogue is practiced.

Speaking the truth in love is an organizing discipline; not just a personal aspiration.

Our yearly Map-making is an extravagant exercise in taking what people say seriously and encouraging them to say it.

4) We think of ourselves as a body with Jesus as the head,

Not a mechanism with a set of instructions for “how it works.”

The hardest think to understand is being an organism. Right now we have planted the seeds of another congregation and we are watching to see if it will grow. We also have a congregation in Camden that is stretching out roots. We have methods, but they won’t replace Jesus causing the growth.

5) We assume that we will fall apart if people do not love each other, and promote such dissolution.

Some astute historian told me that such an idea is so 70’s — well, 90’s, too. I think it is central to what Jesus is giving us. As Paul says elsewhere, “Nothing matters but faith working itself out through love.” People come to the leaders quite often with a great idea for mission (and I mean often and great). We send them back to create a mission team. If you can’t team, your idea can’t matter. Sometimes teams don’t have the devotion and want the “church” to take over their idea, we let them die.

My dear friend was in wonder that we do not fall apart. Now that I have sketched out why we don’t, so am I. Jesus must be behind it. On a human level, it doesn’t make a lot of sense.

Community requires presuming the “WE” doesn’t it?

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I had a couple of moments last week when I realized I was acting out of an assumption that was just not warranted. I presumed there was a mutually understood “we” my fellow believer and I lived in — but it just was not there. I am trying to talk more about my assumptions rather than just bump into the reality that they are not shared – and feeling bruised. If you are still alone in the crowd, I hope you will enlighten me.

I have always lived in the church. As a child I somehow got the impression that I ought to be “one of those people.” When I went to college I ended up quite consciously living in community with other believers — by the time I was a senior it was eight guys living in side-by-side apartments holding a Bible study for 70+ people every Monday. By the time I was 26, or so, I was living in an intentional community based on Acts 2 that included up to 20 people at a time for over eight years. As God focused my gifts toward forming and leading congregations, I continued to find my identity as part of a missional community animated by life in Jesus.

So sometimes I can be slow on the uptake or kind of flabbergasted when I meet up with Christians, especially people trying to lead me, who don’t run in the deep ruts of my instincts. For instance:

1) I can torment some of our Cell Leaders and the staff because they don’t really know much about building a team.

I forget sometimes that a lot of people just wear themselves out doing jobs for Jesus because no matter how much it is said, they still don’t see themselves as part of a body — they are interchangeable parts of some abstract process. Especially if they can see the “big picture” of what the church is all about, a lot of leaders will feel that the whole job is theirs to complete, alone – so they get overwhelmed pretty fast and expect sympathy.

They aren’t on God’s team (the One who does most of the work and has lots of sympathy); and they don’t presume that we’re all in this together — so they proceed to do it all by themselves. It is nice that they own the mission; it is just strange that they think the job belongs to them. They don’t work out of a team, and they don’t think to form one to get things done – they are struggling just to be a part of a “we” at all!

2) I can be a pain because I have a pain when the Brethren in Christ leaders are holding forth.

The other day at our Regional Conference, our dear, new bishop got up to introduce the “business” section of the agenda and confused me again with an attitude that has been prevalent among my denominational leaders for quite a while, now. The first thing he started with was a funny/sarcastic/endearing remark, something like, “Now we are going to get to what we are all looking forward to” (wink). We were going to hear the reports about our mutual mission and make any decisions we had to make as the delegates from the churches who make up the conference – the “we” of the Atlantic Region of the BIC.

As usual, I and several of the Circle of Hope crew, didn’t really understand why this was supposed to be so boring or distasteful, since inclusion in the process, making mutual decisions and being the “we” of the BIC was the only reason we drove two hours from Philadelphia. The leaders dispensed with the most interesting and dignifying thing we had to do as quickly as possible, and made it pretty plain that causing any dialogue about it was relatively out of order, since no one wanted to do it, anyway. Circle of Hope’s polity is so focused around dialogue, and lots of it, that I was hard-pressed to explain how we think our process is connected to the BIC at all.

3) I can get frustrated and be frustrating when people committed to being the total integers produced by U.S. political and educational philosophy try to relate to me.

For instance, I’ve been doing a lot of personal pondering about why sexual morality is so irrelevant to quite a few of my believing friends these days. I think part of it is because their faith has no context. They “drank the kool-aid” of the propagandists who say that sexuality is just about what feels good to us in the moment. Now sex is just an impulse that doesn’t even need a relationship, much less is it anyone else’s business in the family or the church. Their faith is purely personal/private/theoretical – it can be aided by “church offerings,” but being the church is not crucial to having it.

So all the parts of the New Testament in which leaders are trying to form a group identity and protect it are relegated to second-tier thoughts, if they are entertained at all. Some of my friends are so alone, they ease into a one-to-one “we” by hooking up with strangers while drunk, having a relationship with someone in another state, or relating virtually. Should they cohabit with an unbeliever in the same city, it might be considered progress; if there is love involved, that is deep. They have capabilities I am trying to figure out. I got married; I had children of my own eight years after I left my parents, I stayed married. So sometimes I have to ask people to translate and explain a lot about what they are doing and why.

I hope I am not just damning people because they aren’t like me – the original sin of postmodernity. But I am wondering if I am right enough about Jesus to justify the problems I have and be the problem I am. Let me know.

Intentional household conference

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The intentional household conference was a great time. I was surprised at how many people showed up without a lot of recruiting and without a good idea of what they were getting into. I was also forewarned, so to speak, by the several households who didn’t want to get involved simply because they smelled commitment on the horizon and their “rule” is marginal-commitment – to Jesus or to one another. The ideas behind the conference, in my mind, were rather broad. I want to see households have a healthy life and I would like to see more of them. I would like them to be conscious of the fact that, healthy or not, they are very influential. I would like them to bear responsibility for what their “rule” perpetrates, whether they have a conscious one or not.

Most of the people present were working seriously and sincerely on who they are and what they would like to be and contribute to the church. They serve us well.

But some that were there and not there serve us less well. It seems to me that the households that have the worst impact on us are those who have some kind of concept that allows them to be ambivalent – kind of connected to the church, kind of connected to Jesus, kind of connected to each other. I think “on paper” people are being inclusive and gracious (which is good, and realistic most of the time) but what can happen, in fact, is that their lack of definition leaves their household open to domination by a person, or personal whims, or worse,  and makes them confusing and atomizing to the people the household influences (and households influence people whether they think their life together is anyone else’s business or not).

Another small thing I have found interesting for the last 30 years also presented itself during the morning. When people who were raised evangelical get communal, they often retain their semi-gnostic theology and live by holding to a principle they don’t necessarily work out, even when they live in an intentional community that is supposedly all about working things out. The illusions can be quite harmful – you’re all about love and sharing, but that’s mostly in theory, and no one can tell you otherwise because you’re mostly about personal principle, not relating.

We talked a bit about households making some kind of covenant with the church, like individuals do. It just seems right not to be so individualistic. It also seems right to acknowledge the value and place of intentional households among us. I ended up undecided about this. It had the danger of making some people feel out and some in, in a bad way. We’ll have to consider this some more before we fall into something that is less than we have in mind.

A wonderful stimulating morning — it went too fast, I wanted a couple of more hours before everyone got away. We’ll probably need to get together again, soon. I went away very grateful for the love and commitment represented in the room. What great people and communities God builds!