On the Other Hand…

In closing my last post, I included the following:

“…for the moment, this new place outside the walls might look like a wasteland, just more wilderness. But look at it through a different lens, and it becomes wide-open spaces, a place with amazing potential–potential far greater than we could ever hope for inside the walls.”

I’d like to elaborate on this idea just a little.

Without trying to sound like some kind of motivational speaker/writer…sometimes all it takes to shift something from a negative to a postive is a change of perspective. I’m reminded of the difference between Greek thought (which is how most westerners think) and Hebrew thought (which is how most of the writers of the Bible thought). Greek thought is linear–everything adds up, one plus one always equals two. Hebrew thought tends to look at things more three-dimensionally, from different angles–which would explain why two passages in the Bible that seem contradictory to Greek thinkers are perfectly compatible to Hebraic thinkers.

We could learn a lesson or two from the Hebrews. By this I mean we need to learn to look at things from multiple perspectives.

Take this situation many of us are now in–embracing difficult truths, and as a result, finding ourselves in various stages of walking away from institutional church structures. For all the crap that we’re walking away from…we had friendships in those structures, many of which might not survive our transtion. We had things to do (even if it was cleaning toilets). We had an infrastructure supporting us if we wanted to do some sort of ministry project. These are things many of us are now doing without. And as I’ve mentioned before, some of us are even wondering what we need to do with our gifts, because we mistakenly defined our gifts by the system in which we were working.

But let’s try looking at this from a different perspective….

• Outside the walls, we might not have as many friendships with believers. On the other hand, we have more opportunity to make new disciples, and the potential of creating organic communities with new believers who have not been inoculated by our religious systems.
• Outside the walls, we might find fewer ways to keep busy for God; on the other hand…some of us need a break; and when we do want something to do, we have the potential for God to show us something creative that hasn’t been thought of before. After all…in a church structure, most ministry is pre-defined for us. (Part of our problem is we’ve been conditioned to have someone else do our thinking and praying on our behalf.)
• Outside the walls, we lack some measure of infrastructure (read: financial support and manpower) for ministry projects. On the other hand…how much of that do we actually need? And not that this is wrong…but who said every ministry endeavor had to be a project? There is so much that can be done person to person, without the business-like corporate sponsorship we’ve grown so used to in our church organizations. We probably need to re-learn this, anyhow.
• Outside the walls, we may not know what to do with our gifts. On the other hand…our gifts haven’t died. There are probably a dozen other applications for our gifts that we haven’t even thought of, because we were so conditioned to the parameters of institutional church.

I’m kind of new in this field of possibility, too…so I’m sorry I can’t give more specific ideas. On the other hand…I don’t know if I’d want to. 🙂 What is in my heart to say today is that there are endless possiblities out here. People who find themselves outside the box need to learn to have vision outside the box. An infinitely creative God has led us to this place. Certainly He has some fantastic ideas about what we can be doing out here.