I hope you enjoy this conversation from the Missional Journey…
Craig Van Gelder: “What is God doing in this world? This requires discernment to recognize what God is doing in our neighborhoods, schools, businesses, etc.”
Larry Chouinard: It is this aspect of a missional vision that needs more development and training to enable the church to discern God’s missional presence in a cultural context. Are we looking for explicit expressions of Kingdom values that signal the Divine presence? I don’t think Western churches are accustomed to looking for God in the every-day-ness of life.
It would seem such a way of “seeing” demands a radically different lens through which we see the world. I know how Jesus trained his disciples to see the world through a different lens, how do we do that today. “Joining God in mission” sounds incredibly compelling, but identifying with certainty “what God is doing in my neighborhood, schools, and local businesses” is not as easy as our rhetoric implies.
Jonathan Brink: “Much of our discipleship is simply Bible study which is the learning of Scriptural content. It’s not bad but it doesn’t prepare the individual to follow the Holy Spirit in the moment to where God is already working. Jesus didn’t leave us with the Bible to memorize. He left us with the Holy Spirit to follow.
I would suggest that we’re afraid to follow the Holy Spirit into mission because it might just change our world. And that could be painful. ‘-)
Demonstrated in this video posted by Fred Peatross:
