|
A PLACE APART |
|
a teaching community where all types of people can come for a time to break from the world and rediscover the new way of living introduced by Jesus Christ and empowered by the Holy Spirit. |
|
A Place Apart is a 501(c)3 non-profit organization based in Putney, Vermont. © 2008 A Place Apart, Inc. |
|
An open letter to the Church of the Brethren from A Place Apart As we flow beyond what has been, we gain clues as to what must now begin to appear. As Christians, we ask ourselves how we got here. We are consistently coming up with this answer; "It is because of Jesus". He taught to let go of all that got in the way of living fully. There is an increasing recognition among us of the meaning of what He taught. There is a deeper recognition of how He lived and that to which He gave His life being central to a full and meaningful life. There is an increased recognition among us that the abundant life to which Jesus called the world, his deeper message, cannot be embraced without letting go of our false selves and our dependence on the empty religious, social, political, educational, and economic structures that prop up illusions of life. The river within which we are by letting go, flows into the vast ocean of possibility. Navigating this ocean will require all our heart, mind, and spirit. We will finally need to take responsibility for our physical, spiritual, emotional, intellectual and financial well being. As inhabitants of Earth, we must now begin making rapid changes in the way we are living. Our lifestyles are destroying the Earth and the quality of all of our lives. Everything must now change, from the way we eat to the way we practice our religious beliefs. Our rituals must change, from what was worship, through the way the way we have thoughtlessly consumed goods and natural resources to the way this has allowed us to have created and practiced a consumer generated religion. THE FUTURE What is now beginning to happen which calls out to be recognized? As the Church that has been, now rapidly dwindles away, the Church that will be is already forming. It is developing under the radar and will remain beneath the surface for many years to come. Small groups of people who know that they can't go on this way anymore are finding one another. They begin by admitting that they don't know what to do. They give each other permission to not know. They confess to one another that they do not know how to be fully alive; alive spiritually, alive economically, politically, or environmentally. They are gathering in homes for meals together, prayer or meditations, developing new liturgy or rituals for being alive. If Christians, they may come together believing that Jesus holds an answer but at the same time they also understand they do not know what this means. Those who are so sure of what must happen within the church may become a hindrance to what through God's grace could happen. All that will happen now will be from the bottom up. There will be no saving programs coming from the Denomination, the District, or local church. However, these entities can provide nurturing and adaptive environments for the change to more freely take place. Two, three, four, five, six people coming together to listen for and live within the heartbeat of God is now the foundation of new possibility. This will feed the top, rather then the top feeding down. Methods that have previously been employed to measure success or failure determined by numbers, building size, program size, choir size, the pastor's appeal, relevant worship, are becoming and will increasingly continue to become irrelevant to what is now emerging. House churches, monastically styled gatherings of people, prayer groups are forming; seekers are finding one another. |
