Years ago I got to know KT through a Christian community called
Immanuel that had committed itself to a "way of life." That way of life
was a series of simple commitments that we made together in order to
grow in discipleship and become more like Jesus.
Now I'm part of a different faith community called Servant Church, and we're in the process of trying to create a similar tool that our life groups can use. As a church, we frequently articulate that we're trying to be "inviting, becoming, and demonstrating" the love of God -- so these are rhythms of inviting, becoming, and demonstrating that we're trying to develop together in our lives. This is just a draft, and we'll almost certainly keep revising it over the next few months. But I wanted to share it with all of you in case you also want to try practicing some (or all) of these rhythms with folks in your life. (If this blog is the only Christian community you have right now, then feel free to share with us how your life with God is going, and we'll pray for you and brainstorm with you; putting on rhythms of discipleship was never meant to be figured out in isolation).
Now I'm part of a different faith community called Servant Church, and we're in the process of trying to create a similar tool that our life groups can use. As a church, we frequently articulate that we're trying to be "inviting, becoming, and demonstrating" the love of God -- so these are rhythms of inviting, becoming, and demonstrating that we're trying to develop together in our lives. This is just a draft, and we'll almost certainly keep revising it over the next few months. But I wanted to share it with all of you in case you also want to try practicing some (or all) of these rhythms with folks in your life. (If this blog is the only Christian community you have right now, then feel free to share with us how your life with God is going, and we'll pray for you and brainstorm with you; putting on rhythms of discipleship was never meant to be figured out in isolation).
We are introducing these rhythms to our life group for the first time tonight, and we would certainly appreciate prayers that God's Spirit would show up in surprising and life-giving ways as we begin to take a few baby-steps together toward becoming more like Jesus.
In Christ,
Melissa Jerkins
Melissa, I really like what y'all put together there. How did you present that to your life group? Did you have specific suggestions for how these might play out in individual lives, or did you leave it pretty open/broad (of course, both of those two things can happen at the same time).
ReplyDeleteI would love to hear more about how the presenting and conversation afterwards went!
Servant Church life groups are structured such that half of our time is spent discussing a passage of Scripture, and half of our time is spent answering the question, "How is it with your soul?" (which we stole from John Wesley). So we're used to talking about how our spiritual walks are going, but sometimes it's hard to know exactly how it is with my soul ... and if it's not all that well with my soul, it's hard to know what kinds of seeds we can start planting now so that it might be better with my soul in a few months. We presented these rhythms as being a helpful tool for thinking/talking about how it actually is with our souls. Our church says every week that we're trying to be "inviting, becoming, and demonstrating of the love of God," and these rhythms help flesh that out. On the first night, we asked everyone to talk about where they had encountered God in the past week, and we asked them if there was a particular rhythm that they are trying to put on in the coming week that we can be praying about for them. That's probably how we're going to proceed for the next few weeks: we'll ask folks to share where they are encountering God in these rhythms and where they are struggling in these rhythms. When people share rhythms with which they're struggling, then others in the group can help them brainstorm when/how to practice that rhythm ... the life group then becomes somewhat of an accountability group but even more a source of spiritual creativity and encouragement. So a lot of the "specificity" gets fleshed out as people share -- when someone starts talking about wanting to grow in "serving and becoming tangible good news," then the group starts brainstorming with that person about what that might look like, what's getting in the way now, how other members in the group might be able to do that together with you, etc. Similarly, when someone shares a specific story about encountering God through an experience of shared hospitality with their neighbors, then other people in the group tend to find inspiration for how they might apply that in their own lives (which then leads to their own stories, and the cycle reinforces itself). With any sort of "rule of life," the trick is to be specific enough that people can easily answer whether or not they are practicing that rhythm, but to be general enough to leave room for the creativity of the Holy Spirit. This is just a draft for us, so I'll let you know over the next few weeks/months if we decide to make changes. We're definitely still right in the middle of figuring out how this is going to work in our group, but I was really happy about how our conversation went on the first night.
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