Come and Join us for Living Vision 2011!

Have you ever wanted to be a part of a spiritual community that made sense to you, made a concrete difference in your life, and equipped you to be more present and effective in the world? Here comes your chance...

Living Vision is the brain, soul, and heart child of Toby Jones and his book The Way of Jesus: Re-Forming Spiritual Communities in a Post-Church Age (Wipf & Stock, Eugene, OR, 2010) In that groundbreaking book, Jones offers seven principles that he thinks any group of spiritually-minded people can use to launch their own organic post-church community. His principles include the following:

Open Theology – No doctrine, dogma, nor list of required beliefs, but genuine, thoughtful, inquiring openness to the full range of religious viewpoints.

Discipleship – An emphasis on living/action/service, as opposed to adopting or accepting beliefs.

Rick Taking Adventure – An attitude and approach to life in community that stretches and challenges participants to do good and spiritual things they might not have the faith to do on their own.

Radical Inclusiveness and Hospitality – Everyone is equal and everyone is welcome all the time - PERIOD! All faiths, all traditions, all perspectives, all orientations.

Service Without Strings – Caring for others, particularly the poor and suffering, is done without expectations of reciprocity or gratitude. It is the right thing to do and is a value/practice that is elevated by all religious traditions.

No Building or Real Estate – Owning or renting a place to meet is an unnecessary distraction that too easily becomes the tail wagging the dog. Itis also a huge financial drain that drastically limits a community’s ability to reach out in service and generosity to those outside the community.

No Paid Leader – Originally, spiritual leaders of all religions were not paid. Paul, who wrote two-thirds of the New Testament and founded seven of theoriginal Christian churches, was a “tent-maker,” earning his living withoutasking his churches to support him. Paying a leader fundamentally alters the relationship between participants in a spiritual community and furtherlimits the community’s ability to serve the poor and the downtrodden.

   *Copies of Toby’s book are available at progressiveretreats.org or at Mclean & Eakin

In light of these seven founding principles, Living Vision seeks to be a “community of practice,” that is, a group that gets together not to talk about nor discuss, but to actually do the practices that will deepen our spiritual grounding and make us more present and helpful in the world.

With that conviction in mind, Living Vision is launching its fall/winter schedule of practices on November 8 with an emphasis on ancient contemplative disciplines. We will be meeting three Tuesday evenings a month (every Tuesday except the first one of the month) from 7:30-8:30 at Yoga Roots in Petoskey (located at 444 Mitchell St. in downtown Petoskey). Each gathering will begin with a 5-10 minute introduction to one particular spiritual practice (silence, centering prayer, lectio divina, breath prayers, to name a few), 30-35 minutes of the practice itself, and 5-10 minutes of shared insight from the experience to wrap up and send us on our way. Participants are to bring a comfortable cushion to sit on along with a notebook and pen.

Living Vision gatherings are free and open to anyone who is hungry to practice with us.

For more information contact Toby Jones at tobyjones48@gmail.com See you Nov. 8 at 7:30!

"Here I Go Again" Reflecting on the Evangelical Impulse

I was listening to my i-pod songs on shuffle the other day when a “Christian” song by Casting Crowns came on. It’s called “Here I Go Again.” The song helped me crystallize much of what has always bothered me about the evangelical impulse in so many branches of the Christian family tree.

The story the song tells is of a guy who feels the need to tell his friend the good news of Jesus’ love before it is “too late.” It isn’t quite clear if the unsuspecting friend is dying or just leaving town. But what is clear is that the speaker/singer feels tremendous pressure to tell his friend of God’s love, and yet he is also reluctant to do so because of a chronic and recurring fear.

            “But that old familiar fear is tearin’ at my words

             What am I so afraid of, cause here I go again

             Talkin’ bout the rain and mulling over things

             That won’t live past today

             And as I dance around the truth, time is not his friend

             This might be my last chance to tell him that You love him…”

Now I must confess at the outset that I spent a healthy chunk of my Christian journey feeling this very same tension, and on many occasions I swallowed the fear and forged ahead with the pious, evangelical fire required to say what I thought needed to be said, to give verbal witness of what I understood to be the Gospel. And each time I spoke, I did so out of the strong conviction that it was not only the right thing for a follower of Jesus to do but an actual requirement of true discipleship.

My underlying assumptions in those evangelical days were many:

1)    I knew Jesus and the other person didn’t.

2)    I was “saved” and the other person wasn’t.

3)    If I didn’t tell this other person of Jesus and the divine plan for salvation, it was possible that no one else would, which also meant that this person might be condemned to an eternity in hell, separate from God.

4)    That the only way God could communicate his love to this other person was through words, that God needed me, or someone like me, to reach this person’s heart.

At this point in my spiritual journey, I have found all of these assumptions to be false, arrogant, and completely demeaning to both the other person AND to God. But for now, I’d like to focus on the fourth assumption, for that is what listening to this Casting Crowns song really highlighted for me.

I believe that it is demeaning to the God of the universe to think that God “needs” me or any other human to convey His love. And it’s even more demeaning – not to mention highly unbiblical – to think that Divine Love should or could ever be adequately or accurately conveyed in human words. Does the God of the universe really “need” my words to make Divine Love real for another human being? Was Moses brought to a relationship of faith through human words? What about Samuel, David, or Nebuchadnezar? Was the Apostle Paul brought to faith through human words on the Road to Damascus? What about the twelve disciples? Wasn’t it the case in all of these examples that God didn’t need human words at all to capture the hearts, minds, imaginations, and souls of these people? Can’t God speak through a sunrise or a sunset? Hasn’t God been known to bring humans to faith through experiences like childbirth or suffering or unexpected mercy? What was it in Les Miserables that led Jean Valjean to trade his life of crime for a life of devoted service to the least of these? It was the loving, undeserved action of a priest.

And how can any of us dare to assume that God isn’t already present and at work in the heart and mind of another person, even and especially a person who doesn’t go to church or cop to the right creeds, or read the same Bible that we do? I’ve come to a place in my spiritual journey where the Quaker understanding of the Divine Light within every person makes the most sense to me. In every room I enter and in every conversation I engage I assume that God is already there, already present and at work. How dare I assume that God “needs” me or my words in order to be present in that room or that person!

So to the members of Casting Crowns and the millions of well-intentioned, faithful Christians who share the perspective given voice in “Here I Go Again” I offer the following, unsolicited advice: Try believing in a bigger God. Trust that God speaks even when you don’t and that most often, if the Bible is accurate, God doesn’t rely on words, be they human or divine. By all means love and reach out to your dying or departing friend. But do so with the strong sense that God is already there, loving and interacting with him in sighs and ways that go far beyond words. God doesn’t need nor want you, me, nor anyone else to create, force, or push for some verbal acceptance or response from your friend. God is bigger than all of that. Amen.