disruptive grace

I’ve been thinking about vocation recently. I would say ‘calling’ but I find that word often gets used in a way which has more to do with an obsession with self. Having said that, I have this phrase ‘calling is context’ spinning round my mind at the moment, and I’m going to explore what that could mean.

Peterson reminds use (in ‘Christ Plays in Ten Thousand Places’) to remember our primary context is God and his action and intention.

“Most of the Christian life involves paying attention to who God is and what he does; but not only the who and the what but the how and the means God employs to accomplish his ends. If we get too interested in what wedo and are, we go off the rails badly”

As I’ve been thinking about this I’m exploring who the story God instigates is then our first context. As a designer and being slightly geeky I’ve been playing around with a diagram to help me think through this.

vocation and context

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[Hopefully the title provides you with enough of a warning. This one is going to sting.]

The last post on a ‘life of mission’ referenced some great talks from the US 2008 Northwest Leaders Gathering. One sentence, from one of those talks has set off bombs in my heart and mind. Todd Hunter, mentioned that: what we measure determines our focus. His example being that the ‘church-growth-movement’ which measured success by the number of people through your doors (and there is benefit to much of that movement). But that measurement brings with it a certain focus and preoccupation. So what about if we have other quantifiers? Todd quickly listed off three examples, off the top of his head. These were: ‘becoming apprentices of Jesus’, ‘rethinking the nature of their actual life’, & ‘to what degree are we at the places of pain in the world?’. Its the last one which really hit me:

‘To what degree are we at the places of pain in the world?’

I’m convinced that asking the right questions is key to us being able to evaluate our lives and live appropriately. This is one of those questions.

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I keep coming back to missional thinking again and again, and some of that thinking has been recorded on this site. By ‘mission’ I mean, to embody/announce/demonstrate/enact the Kingdom of God.

Mission isn’t just another word for an ‘outreach program’ (which tends to have the mind set of reaching out to grab and pull people in), but rather seeing what God is doing in a place and acting accordingly. It comes from an imagination that is caught up with a conviction that ‘the earth is the Lord’s’ and ‘the Kingdom of God’ is happening (come/coming/now/not-yet). It’s emphasis is less ‘come and see’, but more of a ‘go and be’ attitude. Again we embody, announce and demonstrate, and this links back to the last two posts on Energizing Visions and the Prophetic Imagination. For a follower of Jesus, this is something that becomes part of our everyday lives, not adding more things to do to already busy lives, but being fully present to every moment, and cultivating an attentiveness to the Kingdom in that space.

Thanks to Rose Swetman I found these talks from the 2008 Northwest Leaders Gathering in the US. [And thanks to my friend Nick I discovered Rose's blog]. A wonderful collection of talks, I was naturally drawn to Todd Hunter’s talks – but they’re all great, and makes me happy to be part of that extended family.

[note: after hearing the talks you'll notice where I've taken a lot of ideas for this post]