Grace

Jon Boyd is bringing us monthly updates from the Council’s process of strategic discernment about the future of Grace, and here’s the second one, as delivered in Sunday worship on May 9, 2010, along with the visual presentation so you can follow along.

As most of you know, we at Grace have been working for a long time on some kind of mission statement. But lately a light bulb went off that we seek not a mission statement but a statement of response. Our hope is to be able to hear God speaking to Grace clearly enough that we know how to respond together — to know how to say “Yes!” to him as a church. That’s what we’re after this summer.

Please don’t take this the wrong way, but we don’t actually care what you think. When it comes to the future of Grace, there’s really just one person whose opinion we’re seeking — and that’s the Lord.

Now don’t get me wrong: God can bring his wisdom to us through each of you. It might be that a word you have for Grace is in fact a word from him. That’s why we’re continuing to talk with one another — a lot — about the future of Grace.

Not all of our thoughts are from God (isn’t that obvious enough?) — ah, but some of them are! There is a difference between our thoughts and his thoughts, between our ways and his ways (that’s biblical, by the way) — but a miracle of God’s work is sharing his thoughts and ways with us, so that they do become ours. In the meantime, though, because of that difference, we need what’s called “discernment” — which is just a five-dollar word for “perceiving clearly.”

“Discernment” is our middle name these days. Or at least it’s the middle name of the Strategic Discernment Initiative, and that ongoing initiative is a centerpiece of what we’re tackling in 2010 at Grace. First things first, and that’s making a concerted effort to listen — and respond — to God’s vision for Grace. You might well call it the Strategic Listening Initiative.

How in particular can you join in? Well, listening is both the easiest thing in the world — and the hardest. Here’s one thing about listening: you have to stop humming your own tune. We have plenty of tenacious, passionate people in this congregation. (I resemble that remark!). And we know you have lots of great ideas! But it might be that the most spiritual thing you can do is hold your most precious idea loosely, more loosely than you’d like, as we all listen for the Lord.

I bet many of you know how to listen to God already.

• Read the Bible
• Talk with friends about the big questions (without either selling your own point of view or buying theirs)
• Go for a walk
• Listen to music.

And all that with the future of Grace in your prayers.

Here are some other things we’ll do to help us listen together, to keep the question before us, “What is God’s invitation to Grace, and how can we respond with a ‘Yes!’?”

• An immediate one: prayer time in Sunday services. In fact, Bruce Giffen is going to come up right now, as soon as I’ll let him, and pray over and with us for listening ears.
• Later in the summer, Pastor Mandy is planning a sermon series that’s going to take us through Acts with especially keen ears for ways the first churches responded to God. We hope they’ll be a model of listening for us.
• And how about a challenge? Fasting. A student I know once said (and I’m not making this up), “I don’t like to fast: it makes me hungry.” True enough, but you can’t beat it for focusing your attention on God. Not everyone can fast from food (for health or other reasons), but from now through June, we’d like to ask you to fast on Fridays for the future of Grace, in one way or another. Some may take only water for twenty-four hours. Some may just skip lunch — or you may give something else up on Fridays, like TV, music, news, driving, or going out in the evening. Fasting can be like silence for our spiritual ears. Shall we fast on Fridays together?

Well, what if you actually do hear something? We want to learn about it. It might be big or small, specific or vague, active or visual or musical or whatever, that you hear — but please pass it along. We want to collect all these snippets, pray over them, and digest them. So if you will, please email a note to future{at}gracechurchchicago{dot}org. (If you don’t do email, you can send a note to the church office.)

And at any rate, remember the question: What is God’s invitation to Grace, and how can we respond with “Yes!”?

This entry was posted on Monday, May 10th, 2010 at 7:48 pm and is filed under News.