Listening to God
Sometimes (ok, often) my posts are kind of pointed and overly mission focused. I guess that is why I named this the rant. I wanted to speak freely - but sometimes it may be too much.
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So that is to say, that the massive key to this whole thing is transformed lives and listening to Jesus. All the missional goobly garp in the world aint gonna make a hill of beans if this is not happening. This is the essence of discipleship (in my book).
On transformation - unfortunately we (the west) have gotten ourselves into program / attendance bind. We measure spiritual growth by who is showing up and how sweet the event went. I was a church planters conference recently and one of the key questions batted around in the halls was . . . 'how many you running?' They joked about this up front . . . but it is painfully how we have learned to keep score in western Christianity.
On listening to Jesus - there is a subtle but destructive force in the west that says that God ONLY speaks through scripture. What a bummer. Now I agree that he is not going to say anything that contradicts scripture, but to say that he cannot speak to me directly really undermines the whole idea of a relationship with him. What a bummer if my wife wrote me a letter when I married her and it contained all the information I would ever get in regard to her communication with me. No, I believe that it is key that we know, understand and practice listening to his voice. Then he will guide us in real time toward what we need to do.
Can you think of respected person in scripture, major or minor, who did not HEAR from God? . . . . me either. I believe this is key to what it means to be a disciple.
Dangerous and possibly hard to learn and teach . . . but absolutely key. If the young people get a hold of hearing his voice and doing what he says . . . all this talk is pointless and the craziness of a Jesus movement will blow us away.
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I had to come back on and add this. If we taught this, we would never have to do placement again. We could allow the HS to place staff simply by telling them where he wanted them to go. You may think this is crazy, or would not work, or that the whole USCM would end up in Ohio . . . but this is exactly what we do internationally. No one gets placed in Kazakstan! You have to hear from Jesus and then you work the system to get there. It would be cool to set that system up for the whole of the US.
