Discernment and Community

Whenever I have to make a hard decision, I always feel some accumulation of personal strain and pressure. What if I make the wrong call? What if my ability to discern God's voice is impaired by ambitions, entitlements, short-sightedness, or fears?

In reflection, I often chide myself for my tendency to forget the role of community in discernment. My experience in the last few years is a constant reminder that we hear God in community — we interpret the contexts of our personal lives, our culture, and the Scriptures best in community. My experiences with community and discernment have been so positive that it reaches the level of sad humor that my predisposition seems so oriented toward taking the pressure of decisions and making decisions individually.

The work of the vision community for our church's emerging culture initiative provides a powerful case in point (and provokes today's posting). This community gathered in February and we have been meeting every two weeks with the expressed goal of proposing an emerging culture ministry plan for the Chapel Hill Bible Church. Over the last five months, I have watched this diverse group (diverse in interests, faith stories, age, gender, and life situation) become a community that listened to each other and remained committed to listening to God — despite my efforts to the contrary. As usual, I showed up ready to explain rationales, prod for opportunities, and to guide us to a "decision" (all the while, feeling strong pressure to come up with "the plan" that all would accept and even eagerly join). But this community constantly offered these words to me (and to each other):
• "Let's make sure that we sacrifice and lead as a community!"
• "Let's be careful not to orchestrate our own agenda without discerning God's agenda and patterns of God's ongoing work in this endeavor.
• "Let's make sure that we consider other communites who share this burden."
• "Let's also consider communities who fear the emerging culture and a ministry agenda directed toward the emerging culture."
• "How will concerted effort in the emerging culture affect other unrelated initiatives in our fellowship and community."

The results of our time together have not been surprising (based on past experience) but have been confounding (in respect to my utter determination to lead individually). When we first met, the group shared their personal hopes and passions about an emerging culture ministry. As I heard these thoughts expressed, my first reaction was that we would never reach a consensus. But, once again, I have experienced a community committed to the spiritual disciplines of community being guided to not only near consensus but also enthusiasm for the process and potential outcomes. Once again, community operates as a recipient of God's presence and guidance and as an interpretative balance to our personal understandings of God's will. Given my predispositions to individualism, I'm sure this will be a lesson I continue to learn.

The good news (already implied) is that the Emerging Culture Team is almost ready to make a recommendation to our leadership. We will meet on July 15 to hopefully complete a proposal and ministry plan that we would then take our church's leadership. We are eager to share our thoughts and visions with you and we are eager to include many of you in this vision. Thanks for your patience and your interest.

Comments

[Paul Marchbanks]

Good morning! I thought that I’d post just a thought or two in response to Tim’s blogs on the Emerging Church initiative and the forms it might take. His entry yesterday sounds like a particular plan/recommendation is already coalescing, so what follows may end up being a bit irrelevant, depending on what that recommendation becomes. I’ll take the risk!

I’ve really been attracted to what Tim and others have expressed about reaching out to other local communities and ministries. While adjusting to Mark’s very different teaching style upon his introduction a few years ago, one thing that did immediately hook me was all his talk about inner-city outreach in the church he’d previously pastured. He painted a very colorful picture of a growing community that accepted and encouraged participation from individuals of all kinds of cultural and socio-economic backgrounds. I think this kind of diversity to be very important, and you all obviously do too.

I’ve attended a number of churches in the last 15 yrs or so (in Wichita, Austin, Savannah, Temple TX, etc.) that have felt largely like country clubs. Very comfortable, beautiful people who have a vibrant worship and community environment within their building, but whose excursions into their nearby, often low-income neighborhoods are too infrequent and initiated by only a few. I love that CHBC has a solid connection with an African church. I love that we helped out with housing some of the homeless a few months ago. I love that Mark, Tim and others are pursuing connections with other Christian churches and traditions in the area. I’d love to see that spirit of community and outreach became a PRIMARY focus of CHBC, or at least of a good portion of its body.

I like some of the ideas I’ve been hearing: partnering with another church in Durham to expand outreach effectiveness, creating *lasting* programs in low-income neighborhoods, injecting some of ourselves (and our families & homes) into certain demographic areas so that we can replace door-knocking, 15-minute evangelism with daily, visible relationship building and sustained expressions of faith and love.

I can’t wait to see what you all are coming up with!

Love in Christ,
Paul

[Briana Webster]

I definitely agree with Paul. However, I feel as if we don't even have to go as far as Durham to accomplish this task. There are neighborhoods right here in our back yard that are in need of help. I believe that we need to try to grow to and reach out to our own neighbors before we focus our energies on other countries. Don't get me wrong, I think that that sort of outreach is wonderful and is a blessing to those we help, but I also know that there are things that we can do on a more local level, that are sure to have lasting results.

If we all just took a minute to look around ourselves we would see hudrends... even thousands of people in need of God's love. It is our responsibility as Christians to love them and show them the love of God. I know of many other churches in the area which have succeeded in this effort. I wish that we could learn from their example and make their accomplishments part of our own. Some of us need to step out of our comfort zone in order to fulfill a much greater reward. Yes, this would involve risk taking, but someone told me that if you aren't willing to take a risk, then you won't go anywhere.

I believe that we possibly need a position within the church that is specifically focused on local outreach, in fact there already could be one that I'm not familiar with. But, I just know that regardless, it takes much more than a few people to accomplish this type of task. If we, as an entire church body, really tried harder to love our neighbors, I know that the outcome would be great.