Holiness and Risk

A few hours after touching down back in Scotland from The International Mentoring Network’s Immersion experience in Orlando, I found myself in a conversation about a Methodist Church initiative called Holiness and Risk.

Is it okay if I tell you a little about this? It’s a really intriguing kind of thing that can emerge in a denominational church from time to time.

Holiness and Risk is being promoted as an exploration of discipleship and vocation, but I think it can be so much more.  I mention it because it’s one of those things that opens up new ways in the most unlikely of places.  I see it connecting with the ideas being explored in the other world I live in – that of The International Mentoring Network.

In many ways, these really are different worlds – denominationalism and M – that’s why we’re calling this series Navigating the Maelstrom.  However, I see real traction here for missional thinking and living, made possible by what Alex McManus has dubbed God’s twin trajectories towards the human event – what I also want to call the purpose of God.

Here’s an overview of these trajectories:

The source of the first is found in Genesis 1:26-27 where we witness God’s creation of  human beings as bearers of his image: ‘“Let us make human beings in our image, in our likeness … “.  So God created human beings in his own image, in the image of God he created them; male and female he created them.’

In this line from Psalm 139 we hear the words of a person who gets this, as they declare back to God: ‘I praise you because I am fearfully and wonderfully made; you works are wonderful, I know that full well’ (verse 14).

The source of the second trajectory is found in Genesis 12:1-3 where we find God calling Abram and Sarai to take a risky journey, as the first generation of those who will be a people of blessing to all the people groups on earth: ‘The LORD had said to Abram, “Go from your country, your people and your father’s household to the land I will show you.  I will make you a great nation, and I will bless you; I will make your name great and you will be a blessing … and all the peoples on earth will be blessed through you.”’

We catch the most complete expression of this risky journey when Paul includes these words in Philippians 2 about Jesus Christ: ‘Who being in very nature God, did not consider equality with God something to be used to his advantage; rather, he made himself nothing, by taking the very nature of a servant, being made in human likeness.  And being found in appearance as a human being, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to death – even death on a cross’ (verses 6-8).

I believe that whatever we are about must lie along these trajectories, and if it is not, we are in danger of misrepresenting the purpose of God as something less than it ought to be – like making Christians or opening churches.

I see in the heritage of my denomination many facets of these important trajectories, espoused as personal and social holiness – now being re-explored.  But I think I’m most grateful for how Scottish Methodism’s Holiness and Risk initiative is free to find expression in different ways.  So, I’m wanting to suggest that holiness is not about becoming better Christians but is the aligning of human lives with the first trajectory: holiness is about becoming fully human as we were intended, bearers of God’s image, fully expressed by Jesus.

This opens the need for the second trajectory, understanding that we are not the special ones, but that we have found a special message that every human needs to see and hear.

So risk is about leaving what we know and feel comfortable with in order to share what we are discovering with others, wherever they are less than human.  (Through this lens I have come to see that some of the least human environments can be religious ones.)  Risk is the journey Jesus Christ took in order to become fully human, the most complete and potent expression of which is servant-hood.  It has also been said that the apostles didn’t intend planting churches in the cities they went to, so much as to take good news.

I share these things because I believe it’s upon these trajectories that all manner of churches and communities of faith can meet and mutually support one another, even though, on the surface these might look as if they come from different worlds.  Also, there might just be more hope than we often imagine in traditional churches and denominations for rediscovering the movement of God’s purpose through history.  Thirdly, I have found it so important to immerse myself in the company of others whose ideas enlarge my experience and understanding of God and his ways among humans.

If you are some kind of traditional church leader, where do the twin trajectories connect or bear up what your church is about?

If you are in no way connected with a traditional expression of church, then how we can share these things together in ways that provide the necessary human momentum to the trajectories?

This is a very vulnerable thing; there is so much more that needs to happen.

Tags: Featured, Navigating The Maelstrom