Just to recap from the last article, here I am, seeing and experiencing things more humanly and more missionally, but I’m part of a traditional denomination (namely Methodism), so what do I do?

I imagined this as a “Who Wants to be a Millionaire?” question so I could use my “phone-a-friend” option. Here is the million pound/dollar question again:

• As Geoffrey becomes a more missional and less institutional, being, should he:
A) Leave the denomination and begin something new?
B) Stay in the denomination and learn to expect less?
C) Try to live in both worlds?
D) Create something bigger than A, B, and C?

Thanks to those who took my “call” – I see that “B” was definitely not an option for you.

Before I tell you what my preference is, let me share some of my thinking.

First up, here’s something that caught my attention as I was shaping my question, this from the closing of Len Sweet’s book, So Beautiful, in which he describes the MRI life (Missional, Relational, Incarnational):

We were made to be more than men and women. Through the Spirit, we can become a force of nature.

I like this a lot.

Secondly, here’s how it joined up with some of my other reading and thinking. I’ve been slowly reading through Jeremiah, following the prophet through his many years of not being listened to by his own people. Finally, the things that he has warning the people of Jerusalem and Judah about happen. The city falls and the people are taken into exile, and the only ones left in Judah are the poorest of the poor.

The Babylonians heard his message, though, and quite liked it (Jeremiah 40:1-6) and they offer the prophet his freedom. His options are: to leave his people; stay with them in Judah; or, leave with those you are going into exile.

What would you recommend he does? It’s not unlike the question I asked, above.

I was intrigued by Jeremiah’s choice. Of the two groups of Judeans, the one he picked were the least hopeful of the two: he decided to stay with the poorest of the people in Judah. (It was hardly the easy ride, being taken into

When I chose the title of whispering in the wind for the last article (what is a whisper in the presence of the wind?), I was thinking of Elijah on the mountain of God, after fleeing from Jezebel and her threats. Hiding in a cave, God promises to pass by and there follows a powerful wind, an earthquake, and a fire.

Apparently Elijah doesn’t hear God in any of these, but then, ‘After the fire came a gentle whisper’ and Elijah went out to meet with God.

The Hebrew, often translated as “gentle whisper” is more accurately translated as thin silence, but just what is this? My imagination wonders about a tear between heaven and earth, a place where two worlds meet and become one, and perhaps the thin silence is like the quietest breathing of God’s name: Yod, Heh, Vah, Heh. (We may return to Elijah to explore something more that he discovered.)

We too are whisperers of God’s name, thin silences, sometimes almost inaudible in the institutions we are part of. We sense that we are part of these but do not belong. We do not wish to, nor dare we play by the rules of organisation or institution. We are not rule-breakers either, but we breathe the deeper, more primitive sounds and consonants and vowels of faith, love, and hope to all we meet and through all we do. We know that if we are silenced in these God-rhythm breathings, then we become a part of that which we are called to change, and we may become only wind or earthquake or fire.

There is no archetypal missional leader; there is only one thing we hold in common: to discover and to be (fully) the person God has made us to be (I want to explore this more in my next article). We long to live in dynamic relationship with God with every breath we breathe; we understand ourselves to be fearfully and wonderfully made and are humbled by this; we intuitively follow our dreams; and our daily aim is to immerse all we are into the Spirit, that our life might become a force of nature.

We then increasingly see life as one; we make the invisible visible, and the visible invisible. It is not about church and world, it’s not about reaching the church and reaching the world; it is about reaching the human, wherever the centredness of their lives are found – whether ideology, consumerism, me-ism, idolatry, addiction, church, or whatever.

We know it is in reaching out beyond ourselves we feel most alive, but more: we are experiencing more for ourselves of what it means to become more human (the process we traditionally call salvation).

I therefore choose “D” – largely unimagined and not well known, but I hope bigger and more hopeful as a dream than A, B, and C.

What do you think?