How can we live as citizens of an inter-connected global society with people who are not like us?
How can we make wise and ethical choices in a world with an increasing number of options?
How can we address multi-faceted problems which have no simple solutions?
Transforming congregations allow themselves to be changed by the power of the Spirit into new creations capable of telling an old story in a way that is relevant to a new time.
Those transforming congregations do not focus on the church’s survival; they look outward to the needs of the community around the church. They do not try to escape into simple certainty that ignores the complexity of the 21st Century world. Like Fe y Esperanza, they engage in mission with their neighbors. They connect with the power and the presence of the Spirit in order to see in new ways. They connect with a purpose that is larger than their own self-interest, aligning their will with God’s vision of the new creation. They create a safe place where a diversity of people can learn and grow together. They connect with earth and with the global community in all its complexity and messiness in order to make a practical difference in the life of the planet.
Questions for Reflection
1 How do the conditions which characterize the present affect those living today?
2 Where have you seen evidence of those conditions in your own community?
3 Can you describe a time when your congregation adapted how they were doing things in order to meet a new need? What happened?
4 What might the Spirit be calling your congregation to do now in order to become a new creation that is relevant and responsive to your neighbors’ needs?
Connecting with the Spirit Within
Spiritual Habit 1
Praying
The exquisite risk is twofold:
the risk to still our own house so that Spirit can come through
so that we might drop into the vital nature of things,
and the risk to then let that beautiful knowing
inform our days.11
– Mark Nepo
“The greatest change took place in our congregation when we started praying.” The man had been asked to share at a gathering about his church’s journey as a transforming congregation. “Oh, we’ve always said prayers as a church; but now we’re really praying. Our leaders gather once a week to pray for our ministry, to pray for people in the congregation, and to pray for each other. It’s helped us connect with each other and with God in new ways.”
“We all felt a little awkward at first,” another woman from the same congregation said. She turned to another woman sitting next to her in the circle. “I guess that sounds awful, doesn’t it? That praying was so awkward for church people? But it was. Then our pastor taught us several different ways we could pray at home. Last Lent, we each committed to thirty minutes of prayer every day. I couldn’t imagine what I would find to pray about for that amount of time, but I gave it a try. Sometimes I journaled. Sometimes I read something inspiring, or listened to music, or prayed while I walked, or just meditated in silence. The time was up before I knew it!”
“Learning to pray sure was the first step for our congregation.” A leader from another church spoke up. “I don’t think we could have taken all the other steps we’ve taken as a congregation if we hadn’t begun with prayer. Now the church feels … I guess I would say less religious and more spiritual.”
Another woman from the other side of the circle joined in. “I would say we’re calmer too. The little things don’t stir us up like they used to. It all started for our congregation when we installed a labyrinth in our church hall. People from the neighborhood started coming in to walk it during their lunch hour and we’ve used it for several prayer services.”
“On Wednesday nights, we have a worship service that’s just quiet music playing for a half hour. I come because it’s a place of rest and it makes a difference in the rest of my week,” a younger woman added. “Our church feels more peaceful than it did a few years ago. Even our business meetings seem to have a different tone. We’ve shifted from an organization which talks about God to a community which connects with God.”
Transforming congregations learn to rely, not on their own power, but on the power of the Spirit that runs like sap through the core of their being. Like a tree planted by water, those who pray send out roots by the stream of God’s life-giving love.
It shall not fear when heat comes,
and its leaves shall stay green;
In the year of drought it is not anxious,
and it does not cease to bear fruit. (Jeremiah 17:7-8)
Prayer provides transforming congregations with the resilience they need to thrive even in stressful times.
Coping with Anxiety
Change in the cultural landscape creates anxiety for North Americans. Grief due to a loss of status, members, and support causes anxiety in the church. Anxiety is the automatic reaction to a threat, real or imagined.12 Anxiety in the human body makes muscles tighten and jaws clench. It creates the feeling of being bound up and weighed down. Anxiety in the Body of Christ causes narrow-minded thinking, irritability, and hopelessness. Over time, it can become disorienting and debilitating.
In order to cope with anxiety, people living today often fall back on two coping strategies their cave-dwelling ancestors used when their stress level was raised by the threat of a large beast: fight or flight. When people are anxious, they may work harder, believing that success is all up to their own efforts, or they may give up, believing that they can do nothing to change the situation. On the one hand, they try to ease anxiety by controlling it; on the other, they try to flee anxiety by escaping it.13
Some people fight anxiety by trying to micro-manage those people, places, or things over which they believe they still have influence. They construct a sense of order amid chaos by reducing growing complexity into simplistic categories. To keep intact those categories, however, requires disregarding the growing diversity in the world by limiting their relationships to include only those who are like them. Eventually, they may begin making a habit of avoiding contact with people, events, or ideas that challenge their way of thinking and ignoring conflicting information by mentally categorizing it as unimportant.14
Control can also take the form of blame. Rather than engage in thoughtful reflection that leads to responsible action when anxiety appears, people divide themselves into political camps of like-minded people and alienate those who do not share their same beliefs. They view only the network that gives them the news with the slant that matches their own ideology. They read only read the books and visit only the websites that confirm beliefs they already hold. They look for scapegoats to impute—all for the sake of maintaining the illusion that they are in charge of what is happening.
Escape is the second way people try to ease anxiety. They flee to the private realm in order to isolate themselves from the distress of the public arena. Ironically, they insulate themselves from the unpleasantness of the changing world by becoming consumers of its products. They invest in a large number of diversions the technological industry makes available
