Its now almost a week since Pete Rollins left our shores. There is always a mix of feelings within me after one of Petes tours. The first sense is one of relief! Petes stays with my family are always an intense few weeks wherein a lot of important things shift at many levels for me. My personal faith structures... and then also what that means for me as I fulfill my responsibilities as a pastor... and then there are the further implications for the future of church in our culture and the potential outworking in my beloved institutional expression of church (UCA)... and ultimately a further clarification regarding what I am willing to commit myself to in this journey of following Jesus. Then there is excitement... There is the excitement of being able to see more than I did before. I am more aware of myself. More aware of the violence in my life and the systems I participate in. More aware of the ways in which satan casts out satan and the call of Christ to take responsibility and live according to embodied love rather than disembodied ideology. I get excited about this profoundly good and liberating news... News I am excited to share with any who shows interest. For while this good news challenges/threatens the established power structures, it invites a more profound engagement in all of life for any who respond to the vulnerable call of Christ. Perhaps most of all Im left with a sense of loss (you get the irony?). I miss Pete. I miss him being around me and my family. I miss his sense of humor and fun (and how much my daughters laugh with Pete). I miss Petes gentle honesty and his openness. I miss the benefits of the bullshit meter his presence activates in our household and the level of honest conversation that is welcomed. Petes robust capacity to interrogate his own faith journey and his willingness to share the fruits of that labour mean that any authentic contribution to the conversation is valued and anything that is not authentic... well, not so much. I miss Petes grace that allows me to open up about anything important I am wrestling with and know that I will be taken seriously but not shut out. That there is a kind of companionship in the lonely (unspeakable) bits of the journey. And the exposé that there is always more going on in any given interaction than those involved are aware of. As I look back over the 24 months that include 3 of Petes visits with us, I can see exponential change in the way I do life and understand my faith. To the more fundamentalist minded, Pete can sometimes appear a little coy in relation to how precisely Christian is the way he does his faith. Yet Petes influence in my life has opened to me fresh appreciation of the nature of the power of the person of Jesus and a more profound appreciation of the meaning of Jesus death on the cross. Pete has helped me shift from an emphasis on self-protecting ideology/theology to an embracing of the values and desires I see illustrated in the Gospel stories of Jesus. It is a way of grace. Not the idea of grace but the lived experience of grace. Thats why a group of us want to gather and keep this kind of conversation going. It takes us further into life. It strengthens us to live our faith. It is a conversation that seems difficult to foster in our established church groups but one which has potential to spook and enliven the church. Thanks Pete. David
Posted on: Thu, 04 Sep 2014 20:40:27 +0000
Trending Topics
Recently Viewed Topics
© 2015