Listening Events

God is at work bringing the many and varied parts of his church together for doing the work of and being the people of the Kingdom of God in our communities. It is appearing in many authentic efforts to recapture what it means to be the Body of Christ in community. But, there is a palatable level of frustration on the part of church leaders who are grappling with how to engage their flocks in this movement.

The common approach is to appeal to pastors to get them "on board" so they will sell a particular effort to their churches. Educating and inspiring the leaders in the hopes that actions will be taken to motivate the masses seems to be the primary approach. As one recent speaker at just such a cause event said, "We blow in, blow up and blow out," but does any substantial change occur as a result? Not usually. These hype-events are like roman candles; they are fun and exciting but they are also short-lived with no lasting impact.

We need a process where the movement has "legs." This is much harder to achieve for this requires a lot of messy interactions ... conversations ... arguing and forgiving and "being" with one another until God is formed in us and in our faith communities.

The starting point for this kind of movement is listening to one another. That's the purpose of this discussion. What do you think we need to do?