“Without the discipline of community, solitude
degenerates into self-absorption and isolation;
without the discipline of solitude, community
generates into codependency and enmeshment…
the community of faith is where we
learn the language of love.”
from Journeymen by Kent Ira Groff
The “turning the world upside down” faith (or turning the world the right way up) was not just a matter of adopting new ideas, joining a new organization, and singing up for a new vision. Nor was it primarily a matter of fresh experience. Rather it was uprooting and upending of conventional structures of life, as they know it, to live in a new way in Christ. As T. R. Glove declared about the the early church: “The Christian ‘out-lived’ the pagan, ‘out-died’ him and ‘out-thought’ him…He beat him hollow in living. Preaching opens up new ways of living and dying. This compliment unintentionally expresses how preacher/leaders should be seen–as spiritual agitators, subversive pastors, un-settlers of old ways, and embodiers of the new Way.
~ Michael Quicke, 360 Degree Leadership: preaching to transform congregations
HT: Worship.com
