POST REBELLION

Thanks Jim Thwaites for the line' we have to get post rebellion - where we are driven by what we are moving towards - not what we are moving away from'. I have to say this is an incredibly important issue if we are to avoid repetition and pocess filters and discernment which enable us not to ressurrect the dead which God wants to stay dead.
Post Rebellion? sounds a bit harsh............. but what moves us on into new things is often a sense of discontent, inner or external crisis, all of which we need not have guilt over as many times these are God permissioned crisis - intended to move us on. BUT it does mean we move away at times like its a divorce, and in divorce what helps us cope with the trauma and complicated feelings is an over emphasis on what was wrong / dysfunctional / the other / or guilt around self.
Most of these feelings mean we spend a considerable amount of time / years even, looking over our shoulder.

What happens next is very simple, we birth something which is seasoned by all of those things, and often in the very early stages of our 'where to next' with self and often with those new builder types - we define ourselves by 'WHAT WE ARE NOT ANY LONGER' - not what we desire in Christ to become. In this is the seeds of Separatism, the stain of Elistism and superiority (for context - look at how we brits birthed church in america, and ask yourselves if this has any effect on the condition and dna of the church there today?
When we sit and define ourselves, our frame of reference is what we have been in, thats ok and necessary, but it can condition us to spent too much time on developing THE NEW 'WE', and before long there is a 'THEY' and we repeat the cycle of being a detached limb, a self invoked curse, and we struggle to ever stand as a biblical body in a place. In where we are going as church, some of what is rising up from the ground, we have to see this nailed, or we will remain microcosm church where there is no biblical reference point (Family cannot thrive asside from living tranference with tribe, tribe cannot truly embody...body... asside from its dual identity as Isreal - for an ot metaphor - then we can at least draw from that context.....we can only enter the land together, which sounds nice).
Oh, now ive said family cannot live without connectivity with tribe, some reading this will have seen that as meaning, new things cannot have life without the permission or covering of the hierachy in the construct - thats not what i mean, that stuff needs to die, its just control by another name....HEY, MANY TIMES WHEN I HEAR THE WORD SUBMISSION, THEY SPELL IT ....S - L - A -V -E -R - Y. submit to one another out of right relationship, if there is no genuine mutual life laying down loving relationship, where we prefer other over self, there is no context for biblical submission..... as unto christ /as christ loved the church....so being for others, even unto death.

It takes five minutes to one week, to sow the seeds of the next institution into a new move of God. usually in our first team meeting and that frightening oh so obligatory mission statement we feel we have to produce...... often to recruit transfer growth (albeit unconsciously - at the end of the day, non believers dont really give a rats arse about many of the defining things you spend time over - heck, they walk past a hundred of your buildings every week without so much as a sideways glance.)

GOOD HEALTH?
The body is the body, we cannot disregard or dishonour old wineskins from our new wine skin standpoint, we have to get deep inside us that whatever the skin is, WE ARE ALL WINE.

see next blog for a provoking paradigm shift for new landscape folks.