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go here to buy my stock photography Alan Creech
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aaron klinefelter
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What has happened is something like this: We have started these communities with somewhat idealistic notions of how they will operate. They will free us to be instruments of the Kingdom! They will facilitate real and thriving relationships among God's People! Well, eventually I believe that, but for the moment, even this moment years after we've been doing this, we're still struggling a bit. Of course, this is reality. This is the nature of dealing with people, especially, in this instance, with people who, for the most part, have come out of one way of being the church into this foreign land. That, if you didn't know it already, is a difficult situation. I think it, as I said before, is far more difficult than we had previously imagined. I have experienced this in our own little community - still do. There are probably many reasons for this kind of thing, as many as there are people in the room usually, so I won't try to totally pinpoint "one reason" for this lack of vulnerability. I'm not sure there is one. I think, though, that there are some commonalities involved. I'm not sure I've quite gotten to my point. Here it is: people are not very open about themselves. They aren't willing to be vulnerable. Even in settings like a small, intimate community of people who meet in a living room, there is still a good bit of "come to church" mentality among us. It may be on Tuesday night, but we "come to church" and then we go back to our normal lives. It happens that way sometimes. I am being a bit vulnerable here as I'm sharing about my own context, literally. I do it too, so nobody get nervous here. I hold back. I don't say things about myself that I ought. I don't trust my siblings to be instruments of God's Love and Peace and Grace to me. Therefore, I do not receive God's Love, Peace, or Grace as fully as I could. That's not good. Not good at all. Part of this - I said part - is due to having a certain way of being the church poured into our minds. I know not everyone's experience is just like that, please don't get off on that tangent. We just don't do that. You don't open up like that unless you want to get hurt. Now, of course that's whether you've ever been part of the church or not. That's a cultural thing to some degree. We are afraid. We're deathly afraid of people actually knowing who we are and what we think. God forbid anyone know how weak we are or how stupid. For that matter, we would never want to seem prideful and tell people what we know either. We may just be goofy, I'm not sure. Yeah, I'm sure - we're goofy. This is going to be one of the harder things we experience as we cultivate these new faith communities. We will go through much pain as we wait for one another to open up. Now, there is the other matter of people who open up constantly and have expectations of being fixed when they do. That's not what I'm talking about. That's the other end of the funky stick. Again, we're dealing with twisted expectations - those which, I believe, we have a duty to untwist. We need to say both "I can't fix you right now" as well as "I can be a part of fixing you believe it or not." We probably need to realize that getting to the balance of these things is going to take a long time, with everything else. We need to realize it though. We can't just sit and do whatever we do and not realize what needs tweaking. We are a part of each other's transformation. That bit about encouraging one another to do good works - I think that's kind of sacramental. I think that's about God's Grace for being renewed, to a degree, being located in the encouragement of our siblings in Christ. It's not just about being nice and saying nice things to somebody to make them feel good. And it's not about pushing people to do the right thing by making them feel guilty. Neither of those will do. It's about us being Christ to one another and allowing the Grace of God to flow through us to the other, as well as receiving it from them to us. In order for that to happen properly, though, we have to sort of lay ourselves open and be who we are, so that then, who we are can become Who He Is. ::: ::: permalink ::: e-mail me :::
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> today
three quotes |:: "Then, if we cannot as yet think alike in all things, at least we may love alike. Herein we cannot possibly do amiss." "Keep your eyes on the crucifix, for Jesus without the cross
is a man without a mission, and the cross without Jesus
is a burden without a reliever." "...I am deeply convinced that the Christian leader of the future is called to be
completely irrelevant and to stand in this world with nothing to offer but his or her own vulnerable self."
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