Leadership Team Retreat 1/10

This posting is the first of what I intend to be periodic glimpses at life together in our presbytery through the moderator’s experience. Last Thursday, Jan 21, Leadership Team met at First Pres Lansing for a retreat. We reflected on Phyllis Tickle’s book the Great Emergence before continuing discernment of our priorities shared at previous meetings this past year.

Tickle chronicles periods of great change our Christian church in the sixth and eleventh centuries, then the Great Reformation (16th c.). And we’re living through another similar period of change that we feel in our own lives and congregations. Or at least that was one question we discussed – how do we see these stresses and dramatic shifts in our sense of community and common story, in our spirituality, morality and the way we embody faith everyday? Tickle says that amid all these realities are questions of authority. It’s not so much a question of power politics, though polity is affected. It’s more about how people are empowered to live faithfully – How do we make sense of God in our world? How do we sense the Spirit guiding us to live in Christ’s presence and loving purposes? How do we tell our story? In our Reformed heritage, we’ve found that authority in the Bible – sola scriptura. And that authority has been buttressed with clear understandings and experiences of what it means to be Presbyterian, among other Christian expressions of faithfulness. Enter … all the developmental changes and challenges in our world over recent decades; coupled with cross-fertilization among denominations. And friends, now we see, we feel, we lament, we excitedly search for direction amid the break-down of prior assumptions, boundaries and even the assumed authority itself.

At this point other leaders of presbytery joined us for our discernment. All other leaders of ministry teams, committees, etc. were invited and many were able to make it. We discussed how the proposed priorities that arose out of previous presbytery meetings really connect with work of the various groups. It was informative to hear about others’ work. Our horizons were broadened beyond what can seem the limited scope of our perspective and experience. We told stories and shared questions. It was inspiring to envision how we can collaborate around common efforts. We broke into smaller groups again to identify one or two strategies for addressing each goal in the next couple of years. The priorities, goals and strategies identified are not necessarily intended to take the place of other work being done. We spoke about how much other important work continues all the time. Among those gathered for our retreat, there seemed great openness to how the Spirit will move us; and trust that our goals will enhance and clarify other efforts. Leaders of the Task Force who have been guiding this discernment process will present these goals and strategies at our next presbytery meeting.

Oh, and we shared a great meal together along with the hospitality of other snacks and drinks provided by members of First Presbyterian Lansing!

In the end, Tickle suggests, authority in the emergent church lies in some combination of scripture and the community. And I was struck by how our retreat exemplified what Tickle observes happens under that authority. The Church, she says, is not so much a thing as it is a network – a bit like the Internet or the World Wide Web – “a self-organizing system of relations [between various groups that] themselves form subsets of relations within their smaller networks, etc., etc. in interlacing levels of complexity.” The operating assumption of this dynamic structure is that no one person or group holds the entire truth (hmmm, seems pretty Presbyterian!). Each is a working part that is sustainable as long as the whole interconnection remains intact. “The duty, the challenge, the joy and excitement of the Church and for the Christians who compose her, then,” Tickle concludes, “is in discovering what it means to believe that the kingdom of God is within one and in understanding that one is thereby a pulsating, vibrating bit in a much grander network. … It is how the message runs back and forth, over and about, the hubs of the network that [authority and leadership] is tried and amended and tempered into wisdom and right action for effecting the Father’s will.” (Tickle. The Great Emergence. 2008. especially pp 150-153.)

Our message is the gospel of God’s love in Jesus Christ. Our authority will be in how people sense and feel inspired by that love amid the network of our congregations and presbytery. So may it be.

Explore posts in the same categories: Uncategorized