Here's a summary of the Common Ground leadership retreat that four of our leaders went on:
On February 19-22, over forty leaders of Common Ground housechurches gathered at Camp Allendale, just outside Trafalgar, Indiana. We gathered for the purpose of stepping back and taking a look at the big picture of God's work in human history, and although we certainly did that, the Holy Spirit had much bigger purposes for us. We found ourselves challenged by the powers that hold us hostage and also catching a new vision of what it means to be God's people. One of the most striking aspects of those three days was the unity that Spirit forged in our midst. We covered many topics that would be deeply divisive in most church settings, and although we didn't always agree on everything, we had a tendency to stand united on the major issues, affirming and re-affirming these points, and to let the points of disagreement fade into the background. What follows is a summary of the whole retreat, with an emphasis on those major points that we affirmed.
The stated theme of our gathering was "Telling the Story," which reminded us that we participants in something much bigger than ourselves, namely the Scriptural story of God's work in human history. Thus, we launched the retreat on that note, discussing the importance of stories, and the key role that stories play in shaping cultures. We were reminded that God's people, a distinct (holy) culture, are shaped by the Scriptural story. However, we are tempted by the narratives of the cultures that surround us, and in many cases are indeed formed by Scripture *and* other stories. We named some of these other stories that tempt and often ensnare us, particularly individualism and materialism/consumerism. Our struggles with these "powers" would emerge as a theme of the gathering.
After setting the stage for the structure of our retreat, we spent some time discussing hermeneutics or, in simpler terms, the question of how we approach and interpret the Scriptural narrative. We affirmed the importance of covenant in understanding Scripture. God is working in the world through the people of God and the relationship between these two parties is, and has always been defined by a covenant. We examined the different covenants in the Scriptures, and eventually set our focus on the "new covenant" that was laid out for us in Christ. We heartily affirmed that this new covenant is depicted in the beatitudes (Matthew 5:1-12). In this passage, from Jesus' Sermon on the Mount, we see a progression, which begins in poverty of spirit and ends in persecution. Poverty of spirit, mourning, meekness/humility, hunger and thirst for righteousness indicate for us how we are to come to God, to enter into the new covenant. As we come in our brokenness (or in other words, repentance), and are baptized into the new covenant (baptism being our signature affirming the covenant), we become part of the Holy Spirit-empowered people of God, and as we continue to remember our brokenness, confessing our sins to one another, the Spirit begins to work the "terms" of the covenant out in our lives; it is not us doing these things but rather the Spirit working them through us. In general, we can say that the terms of the new covenant can be summarized as Christ-likeness, but in reference to the beatitudes these terms are specifically mercifulness, purity of heart and peace-making. However, the fruit of the Spirit's work in these ways is persecution and the final two beatitudes remind us that obedience to Christ will stir up opposition, and that we should be prepared to patiently face that opposition just as Christ did. We affirmed that the new covenant is God's plan for reconciling the world. Thus, we also affirmed the words of John Howard Yoder: "Those who bear crosses are working with the grain of the universe." In other words, the promises of the new covenant, particularly "Blessedness," "Happiness" or "Fulfillment," are realized through our obedience to the terms of Christ's covenant. We are fulfilled, or blessed, because we are participating in God's plan (rather than resisting it) for reconciling our fallen world.
We emphasized that – because the covenant between God and the people of God is central to our understanding – living as the community of God's people is important. We named many different ways in which the individualism of American culture serves to breakdown the Church community. We discussed at length how we could be more intentional in being the Church community and how that community could serve to break down some of the other powers that bind us (particularly consumerism). We also talked about the ideas of "binding and loosing" (Cf. Matthew 16:13-20) and how they, forming a sort of sub-covenant under Christ's new covenant (i.e., under the confession of Jesus as Lord), help us to develop deep covenant communities. Binding ("committing ourselves to certain practices") and loosing ("providing freedom for ourselves in certain areas") help to provide a clear vision of how Christ's covenant will be lived out in a particular community.
Having named the new covenant of Jesus Christ as our lens and having described the facets of that lens, we could then use that lens to examine and understand the life of the Church. We began with the Church described in the New Testament. We saw how the Holy Spirit was poured out at Pentecost upon those gathered in Jerusalem, and also how the social barriers had been broken down in the Church. There was no longer slave or free, Jew or Greek, etc (Gal 3:28). We recognized confession and truth-telling as important practices of the Early Church. We proceeded to look at the Early Church (from the death of the Apostles to the time of Constantine), and this discussion was guided by the images of water (baptism), faith (the life of the gathered community) and wood (persecution and martyrdom). We saw that these images are another way of conveying the new covenant as expressed in the beatitudes, as baptism is intimately tied with repentance, and coming to God in brokenness (poverty of spirit, mourning, etc). One of the important points that was drawn out in our discussion of the Early Church, was the importance of prayer. The Early Church was inclined to see prayer as a fundamental way in which the served their neighbors (or in other words, acted politically). A lengthy quote was read from Origen, in which he states that the Church does not serve the King by fighting in his army, but rather they serve the king's role (the protecting of justice) through their prayers. One striking line of that quote was "with our prayers we vanquish the demons that stir up war," and the question was posed to us: "Do we really believe that this line is true? Do we really believe in God's power that is made manifest in prayer?" If we do believe in God's power to resolve international conflicts, how much more should we be convinced that God can resolve conflicts in our churches, and communities.
We then looked at the history of the Church from the time of Constantine to the present. We noted that God's people from the times of Israel to the present have a tendency to go in cycles of obedience and disobedience, or alternately in cycles of holiness (being set apart) and domestication (not being set apart). Constantine was an ideal starting point because he symbolized a complete domestication of the Church. Of course, this domestication had its roots long before Constantine, probably driven to great extent by the Church's tendency to institute a class of priests rather than seeing the whole Church as set apart for priestly ministry. We pointed to St. Benedict as the beginning of a movement back toward holiness, of communities that were set apart and that recognized the priestly roles of all members. We also saw St. Benedict's RULE, as an example of binding and loosing. We mentioned other groups, for instance the Waldensians, who despite living in the era of the domesticated Roman Catholic Church, demonstrated a life guided by the new covenant of Christ. We also pointed to the Anabaptists, as another example of modeling the values of the beatitudes within a holy community. Then turning to American Church history, we noted how our land has always been such "hard ground" for movements towards holiness. We did however name some movements that achieved some success including the Restoration movement in which our churches have their origin. The time is ripe, we agreed, for God's people in the United States to return to holiness, as God has likewise been building up such communities around globe in practically every corner except the U.S.
We were then reminded of how God has guided our congregation and deepened us, and had a challenging discussion of where we are headed. We also focused on the unity of the Church and how that is (or at least should be) made manifest in our communities. We also talked about the work (or mission) of the Church, and the many diverse ways in which this work is carried out. This discussion was structured around Richard Foster's book STREAMS OF LIVING WATER, which describes the roles played by different streams of tradition in the Church (social justice tradition, evangelical tradition, incarnational tradition, etc.). We were reminded that these traditions describe a multitude of gifts that might be latent in our communities and that it is healthy to explore and balance the benefits provided by each of these traditions.
The final day of our retreat was spent discussing the role that we as individuals play in God's story, as members of the people of God. We began by returning our focus to the powers that bind us and by examining the detriments that our being enslaved to these powers can have on our church communities, on the world and in our own lives. This discussion emphasized our need for repentance – that is, turning from these idolatrous powers. We also focused on the disciplines of study, meditation, prayer, fast, simplicity and hospitality. Our discussion focused on the fact that we have been called to these disciplines, not to make us better people, but rather to serve the Body of Christ, and to further God's reconciling work in the world. We conclude the gathering with a time of singing, sharing and prayer. As so many of the songs we knew were individual-focused, we were led to change the words "I", "me" and "my" to "We", "us" and "our." This proved to be quite a challenge, and it emphasized to us how little we thought about the meaning of the words that we sing.
I can't speak for everyone, but here are some impressions that I got about what we were taking away the key points of our gathering. I think the primary point was the importance of community and of taking intentional steps to build that community, and along with that even those who came in with a burden for community have a more thorough understanding of why community is important within the big picture of God's work in the world. Another key point was the reminder of "the priesthood of all believers," that we are all called to minister and indeed have been given gifts for the building of God's people. Along with this point, I think there was a strong push toward assessing what our gifts are within our church communities and inspiring people to use those gifts toward the further of God's Kingdom. As mentioned earlier, we repeatedly affirmed the importance of prayer. We saw that in the early church, prayer worked both internally gradually conforming disciples into Christ-likeness and it also worked externally, as we saw in the quote from Origen above. It seems to me that we all have a clearer vision now of the beatitudes as central to the new covenant, and I think we have a better understanding now that these values are the lens by which we should be understanding and evaluating, not only the Scriptures, but all our experiences. I also believe we left reminded of God's power which is made manifest in prayer. Another key point was the reminder that we should be prepared for persecution. Christ and all of the Apostles faced persecution, and we should not expect that persecution will always be absent. Finally, it is not a stretch to say that this gathering was successful in reminding us that we are a part of a story that is much bigger than we are, and thus that we were inspired to immerse ourselves anew in that story. Pray that Spirit's work at this gathering would continue in power in our housechurches and that it would bear fruit, guiding us all to a deeper and fuller experience of Christ-likeness.
