Following God from our past into His future
Shaping new ecclesial identities around a fresh kingdom vision of the future
God constantly calls us forward, never backwards. We often want to go backwards, but God is not there. God is always directly in front of us. God was ‘back there’ but is now ‘right here’ calling us to himself and towards bigger and better things.
The biblical story depicts this calling forward by God. God called the biblical characters to an ever-growing, ever-expanding, yet gradual progression forward, to embrace Him and His grand vision for the world.
Shaping New Ecclesial Identities
Churches have often been known for shaping much of their identity around a particular idea, theme or significant moment in their past; a moment that fewer and fewer people seem to relate to the greater distance away they are from that moment. In fact, it would be safe to say that many people who currently attend a particular church are no longer defined by the idea and moment at all.
What so often happens, in an attempt to maintain ecclesial identity, is that churches try to reignite this controlling theme by re-emphasizing it through a campaign, accompanied by related literature and social media blitzes, in an attempt to recapture their roots, but this rarely works.
In these cases, I wonder if a better approach would be to revisit the idea or theme in question and to look for new ways of moving it forward by either reframing it, or in some cases, abandoning it altogether.
The latter may sometimes prove to be the better option when the level of disconnect between the initial idea and those in the pew is so great that no amount of resources will ever be able to rekindle the flame.
Most churches seek to protect and preserve the past. Their primary orientation is often backwards towards an idealized past, rather than forward towards a new vision of the future.
However, this backwards orientation can disable us from being able to fully embrace our place, role and responsibilities in the place where we live now.
Churches often look backwards to an idealized past than forward towards a vision of the future. Click To TweetChurches driven by their past, rather than a fresh Kingdom vision for the present and future, too often become inflexible institutions whose true lord is an inherited tradition rather than a fresh understanding and vision of the future.
Yet, God is constantly calling us forward, never backwards. We learn from the past, but we do not live there.
Moving Forward with the Spirit
God’s story is one that calls us forward towards newness of life and experience. The Spirit beckons us from the future to embrace new gifts for today.
We often want to live on the vestiges of a gift from the past. However, anchoring ourselves to the past will inevitably cause us to lose sight of the present and future. While we can and should glance backwards, we must always live and move forwards.
As Soren Kierkegaard once said,
Life can only be understood backwards; but it must be lived forwards.
We look back to remember and learn from the past, but we can only live in the present. We don’t try to re-live our past, but use it to enable us to live better today and tomorrow.
Let's go.
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