A Gospel For Hungry People

This Sunday at Capitol Hill Friends, we looked at Luke 10:1-24, the story of when Jesus sends out 72 of his disciples to go ahead of him into Samaria and share the good news: The kingdom of God has come near to you.

 Jesus sends his followers out in utter vulnerability. He instructs them to take nothing with them for the journey – no money, no supplies, not even shoes! We know from the previous chapter that Samaria is not a safe place for the Jewish disciples. Rejection – possibly even violence – is a realistic expectation for these missionaries being sent into cross-cultural ministry. Jesus sends them out in pairs, so at least they have each other, but they’re basically defenseless.

 As disciples of Jesus who find ourselves called to live in the midst of Empire, there is a great temptation to look for ways to protect ourselves. We live in a culture that is constantly retelling the story of domination: Money makes the world go ’round. Might makes right. You get what you deserve. It is an enormous challenge to remain open, to see the signs of the kingdom of God in our midst. And even when we can see it, the way of peace that we find ourselves called into by Jesus is so intensely counter-cultural that we have to wonder: Does following Jesus mean becoming a social outcast?

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Are You Lonely?

I recently read a post by Suzannah Paul, in which she reflects on her own experience of living in a culture of isolation. She describes the present era as one in which our common experience is intense loneliness, where genuine community seems always out of reach. Of course, most of us have become quite adept at hiding our anguish. Judging by photos on Facebook, one would imagine that almost everyone has dazzling social lives! The illusion that everyone else is doing great only intensifies the alienation we feel. Paul writes:

I suspect that there’s more of us [lonely, isolated folks] than we realize. Digital connection bridges some divides while camouflaging–and widening–others. Is loneliness the ironic, invisible thread connecting so many?

In my city, we are constantly surrounded by people, and yet the social emptiness can be almost palpable. Most of us self-medicate, in one way or another – typically with a burnout-enducing cycle of overwork and substance abuse. It doesn’t help that many DC residents are transient professionals who expect to be in the region for only a few years. Why bother putting down roots if they’ll all be ripped up the next time you switch jobs?

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Disciples Beyond the Classroom

By the end of my first semester in college, I was convinced that learning a foreign language was out of my reach. Though I had done alright in high school, my first college-level Spanish course knocked me flat. It got so bad, in fact, that I ended up taking it pass/fail, and I barely squeaked by with credit. Clearly, I was no good at learning languages!

The following year, however, I spent seven months living and studying in Mexico. It was one of the most formative experiences of my life, exposing me to a culture totally distinct from my own. I fell in love with the people, places and heritage of Mexico, and I will always carry them with me.

Not to mention that my Spanish language proficiency improved dramatically. My semester abroad began with several weeks of intensive language instruction to bring me up to a passable conversational level, and for most of my seven months abroad I spoke almost exclusively in Spanish. By the time I returned for the fall semester in Kansas, I was ready to take – and pass! – Spanish literature classes. I realized that I was actually quite good at learning languages!

So what changed? 

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Growing In Any Weather – Micah’s Ministry Newsletter #53

Dear friends,

Spring took its time arriving this month in DC. We experienced several major shifts in weather – from the high eighties several weeks ago, down to the forties more recently. The climate here has shifted back and forth: We have seen hot and cold; muggy and dry; overcast days and others full of light. Sometimes, when things got really cold, misty and gloomy, it was hard to believe that we were in springtime and headed towards summer.

The trees knew, though. Despite all the ups and downs of an increasingly unpredictable weather cycle, the plants knew the signs of the times. Even in the midst of bitter cold, the trees began to bud; flowers bloomed and leaves slowly began to emerge. While I entertained doubts about whether we would ever see spring, the trees lived in hope.

The quiet hope and determination of the trees serve as a sign to me. This is how I am called to live: not being blown about by every change of conditions, but instead rooted in faith that God is sending the rain, sun and temperature I need to grow and thrive, even if I can’t quite imagine it yet.

Just like the trees, Capitol Hill Friends is a living, growing organism. As a community following Jesus, we live in hope. Though the outward conditions of life here often run counter to the loving relationships that we sense God calling us into, we persist in trust that the rain will fall, the sun will shine and the Spirit will blow among us.

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Leaders: Can We Grow Our Own?

As a new Quaker, whenever I had a question about my faith, more experienced Friends at my Meeting would recommend a book or pamphlet I should read. I was inspired by stories about the profound awakenings and prophetic ministry of my spiritual ancestors, and over time I came to trust my sense of spiritual intuition, developing an increasingly deep relationship with God. I grew a lot just by waiting in the silence and listening for the inward voice of the Spirit.

Yet at the same time, I felt something was missing. There was this yearning that could not be filled by pamphlets, nor even the weekly training of silent worship. What could answer this aching need to lead a life of faithfulness like the ones I read about? What did I have to do to live in the light, life and power that I saw glimmers of in worship?

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Get Out Of The Way!

In the Quaker tradition, knowing when and whether to speak during worship is an important practice. Sometimes, for example, as I wait in silent worship, a good idea comes to me. It might be a great thought, but if it is not something that God is calling on me to share with the group, I need to let it go and leave space for someone else who is inspired by God to speak.

In the old days, Friends called this phenomenon damaging another’s service. The greatest risk in ministry is not that we will say the wrong thing, but instead that we might prevent another person from delivering the inspired, God-breathed message for that particular moment.

We all mess up sometimes, of course, and occasionally a person will rise and speak when they really should have remained silent. Usually, this poorly-discerned contribution in worship is not particularly harmful. A spiritually grounded group of worshipers can handle unhelpful speaking quite well, without it unduly affecting the quality of the worship.

The most important reason that we must have discernment when speaking is not the risk that our speaking might upset the group; instead, it is because our poorly-timed words might get in the way of the true message that God wants us to hear. For example, there have been times that I have had a clear message from the Lord to share, yet just as I was about to deliver it, another individual stood up and shared a good idea. Though it was certainly not their intention, they unknowingly blocked the work of the Spirit in the group.

The traditional Quaker meeting for worship is sort of like a spiritual fire drill. It is a rehearsal in discernment, learning when to speak and when to be silent; when to act and when to be still. These same principles of discernment apply in the rest of our lives, in the work that we do out in the world and in the roles and relationships that we live in. Do I take care to be discerning about how both my action and lack of action impacts the life of my community?

Am I damaging another’s service by taking on tasks that are not mine to do? Do I block the work of the Holy Spirit by interjecting my own ideas when it would be better to listen?

Learning to Shine

Gathered in the heart of the capital of the greatest empire the world has ever known, Capitol Hill Friends is a community rooted in a unique time and place in history. Many of us work for governments, non-profits, and other institutions that seek to influence the course of national and international events. All of us live within a cultural space where busyness is touted as a virtue, overwork is the norm, and transience is a fact of life. I often refer to our environment here in DC as being a pressure cooker, and the description seems accurate to our experience. Whenever I describe our city this way, my friends and neighbors nod their heads in agreement.

Over the long-term, many of us cannot withstand the pressure. There are many reasons people leave the DC area, but the unrelenting intensity of our city has to be a factor. To live in Washington is to partake in an atmosphere of driven ambition, power games and unrelenting busyness. This is true regardless of your job is or your general attitude towards life. The heartbeat of Empire resounds, and it is nearly impossible to avoid being infused with some of its rhythm.

In this context, we at Capitol Hill Friends have a special role to play. We dwell in the epicenter of power, but we feel an invitation to focus on the margins. We are hearing the cry of those who are buckling under the stress of this unsustainable way of life. We are responding to the longing of those who want justice but are often forced to settle for expedience. We are creating a space for transformation - open ground where we can gather together in the name of Jesus.

As unlikely as it may seem, I sense that our calling is to carve out a space of refuge in the heart of Empire. We are called to create and expand a dynamic, life-giving, encouraging environment where we can grow together and slowly break the habits of our over-burdened, anxiety-filled lives. In a city that can often be filled with so much darkness, we are called to be light.

It only takes a little bit of light to push back the darkness, and as we help others to shine, the radius of our radiance will only grow wider. What does it look like to become a community where we equip one another to shine? How can we inspire hope, joy and peace in one another? Are there ways that we can be training so that the peace and love that we have experienced together becomes infectious? How can we spread the light of Christ throughout our families, social circles, workplaces and neighborhoods?

Gift-Based Community

I used to feel alone in the world. I felt cut off from the kind of human relationships that I wanted - a group of people who would love me for who I really was, and not simply because I conformed to their expectations. I yearned to be part of a community. I had all sorts of ideas about what this imaginary community should look like and how it would fulfill and complete my life.

Something remarkable about my early visions of community is that none of these fantasies required me to change at all. I wanted others to fulfill me as I was, not to transform my perceptions, actions and character. I could not see it at the time, but my ideas about community were largely an idol. I had turned community into a product that would fulfill me as I was, rather than shake me to the core.

Idols die hard, and I clung to this one for many years. Slowly, however, I started to see that my own attitudes, habits and ways of treating others were keeping me outside the circle of community. I began to understand that I was not going to find a magical solution out there unless I was willing to be changed in here.

It is no wonder that I clung to my ideas of the perfect community for so long. With my false images of community firmly in hand, I demanded that the world love me, even though I was doing very little to show love to the world. The truth was, I often hated others - hated them for not giving me what I wanted, for not loving me, for not seeing me for who I was. In the height of silliness, I blamed them for not loving me, when I hated them. How could I ever have expected others to return love for my hatred?

And yet, this is exactly what Jesus did for all of us. Though we hated him, spit on him, tortured and murdered him, he loved us with every fiber of his being. He was secure enough in his Father's love that he could return good for evil, love for hate.

In this, we discover the secret to authentic community. Real community requires me to make myself vulnerable to others, even when I have no reason to expect to receive anything good in return. Genuine relationships are built on the foundation of the self-giving love that is a pure gift from God. We cannot produce it, we cannot sustain it - we can only allow this abundant life and power to flow through us and fill our lives and relationships.

Is this all sounding too mystical, too theoretical? In practical terms, true community demands that we make ourselves available to people that we do not always like. It means renouncing the right to shut down the conversation. These kinds of relationships are made possible because our trust is not primarily in other people, or even ourselves, but in the living presence of Jesus in our midst. In a mature community, we love one another because Christ loves through us.

Without the presence of Christ in the midst, community cannot endure, because our relationships are based on fulfilling the needs of each individual through transactions. When we try to live in relationship through our own strength, community ends up becoming a marketplace for unfulfilled desires. This marketplace-community breaks down quickly when some of its members have nothing to sell.

The Kingdom of God stands in sharp contrast to this brittle, transactional style of community. In the kingdoms of this world, we haggle and trade; but in the Kingdom of God, we share gifts. In merely human communities, we each seek our own fulfillment; but when we are gathered by Jesus, we become capable of laying down our lives for each other.

What challenges do we face in a world where most of our communities are based in the idea of exchange, commerce and transaction? What might it look like for us to live in the gift-based community of Christ? Where can we find the encouragement we need to start giving to others without thought of being paid back? How can we speak to the deep loneliness and anxiety of our neighbors, freely giving the love that we have received from God? What would it be like to create a loving environment where real transformation can begin to take place?

Our Words & The Living Word

One of the greatest strengths of the Quaker tradition is that each of us is encouraged to discover the risen presence of Jesus for ourselves. It is not enough to read about Christ in the Bible, or to recite theological statements. Our faith is not based in our ideas about God, but in our lived relationship with God. This kind of faith is an encounter that comes through the daily practice of dwelling in God. We learn to say together with the apostle, "No one has ever seen God; but if we love one another, God lives in us and his love is made complete in us."

Through this lived experience of Christ's indwelling love - and through the practical application of his love in community - we come to know who God really is. Through this process of growing and maturing in faith, we come to believe and share the core teachings of the New Testament. As we grow in love, we are drawn together in the reading of Scripture, the retelling of the gospel story, and the application of biblical principles to our lives.

But the experience of the risen Jesus, and the power of his love in our lives, must come first. We love because he first loved us, and we trust his words in Scripture because he first spoke his word into our hearts. When we claim to believe certain ideas about God, this is not simply because we have been told these things or read about them in the Bible. Instead, our starting place is this living experience of God. Our intellectual beliefs are simply an outgrowth of a life lived in relationship to God and the community of those who are seeking to follow Jesus and love one another.

Our beliefs are testimony to those things that we have experienced first-hand - that which we have seen with our eyes, which we have looked at and touched with our hands. The words that we speak and the beliefs we hold are meant as a reminder of and invitation to the full-bodied experience of God's Spirit. Such beliefs are the fruit of a life lived in God's love. How could we not want to share that kind of beauty, grace and power?

Are there weaknesses to this approach? Absolutely. Individuals and even whole communities often deceive themselves. We easily become too subjective, allowing our personal feelings, assumptions and interpretations to dominate when we should be listening to the reasoned witness of others. This is why it is so important for each of us to live in relationship with a rooted community, and for each community to be in humble conversation with the wider body of Christ.

Despite the dangers of subjectivity, Friends believe that the lived experience of Christ's power must be the foundation of our faith. Without his presence and love, all our religious rituals, all our beautiful words, charitable actions and correct beliefs are nothing but empty forms. We trust that, as we dwell in the love of Jesus, the Holy Spirit will move within us and among us, gathering us together into lives of faithfulness that fulfill the New Testament witness - not according to the legalism of words, but by the grace of the Spirit.

The Radical Within

Last week, I posted an essay entitled, Should We Give Up God For Lent? The piece was a critique of what I saw as some serious problems with the message of scholar, speaker and community-founder Peter Rollins. I took issue particularly with his campaign, Atheism for Lent, which provocatively asks Christians to give up God for Lent. I was especially concerned with Rollins' apparent assumption that belief in God is primarily a matter of intellectual assent.

Because I am grounded in the highly experiential Quaker tradition, and also due to my own personal experience of transformation through a direct encounter with the living presence of the Holy Spirit, it felt important to lift up another perspective: That while belief in God can be idolatrous when borne out of fear or an unexamined desire for existential security, belief can also emerge from a profound encounter with Christ within.

I write as someone who has lived through the process of deep existential doubt, a felt sense of abandonment by God. Ultimately, it was through fully engaging with my doubt that the Holy Spirit freed me from the false conceptions of God that held me in shackles. Far from being the form of idolatrous escapism that Rollins describes, this encounter is a profoundly humbling experience, one that strips away layers of pretension, self-centeredness and delusion. It is precisely when we are faced with the reality of who God is, when we stand in the light and beauty of the Spirit's presence, that we are empowered to strip away the false images we have created to control God and impose order and certainty upon our world.

I was glad that Rollins was able to make time to respond to my concerns in a blog post of his own. Unfortunately, as some very perceptive observers have noted, we seem to be talking past one another. Rollins spent much of his post analyzing me from the perspective of a Liberal vs. Radical dichotomy, concluding that I am a Liberal. In effect, he positioned me as being outside the realm of the kind of analysis that he wants to do. He also seemed to assume that I am uninterested in theory and analysis. Instead, I gather that he views me (and, more importantly, those with an experience and worldview similar to mine) as a reflexive doer, a do-gooder who acts immediately and without sufficient consideration for the structural consequences and context of my actions.

I understand this aspect of Rollins' critique, but I disagree. His evaluation of my stance is unnecessarily reductionist, and I question his decision to create two camps and assign me to one and himself to another. (Given Rollins' deep awareness and appreciation of Girard's scapegoat mechanism, I am surprised by this move.) As an alternative to this us-versus-them dichotomy, I would like to suggest that both Peter Rollins and I are holding up an important aspect of the faith/doubt journey that we are called to walk in together as friends of Jesus.

In many quarters of my own tradition (Quakers), there is a problematic reluctance to engage with deep theory. At times, this can result in exactly the kind of behavior that Rollins describes - knee-jerk reaction to circumstances, action for its own sake without thoughtful regard to context and consequences. I am grateful for this critique from Rollins, and I hope that Quakers will take it to heart (and mind!).

Yet, my observation is that Rollins' own perspective is also presently unbalanced. Our lived human experience is important, too. I find Peter Rollins' dismissal of personal and communal experience of God's presence and action to be deeply problematic. This represents an amputation of the heart, which is just as devastating as the intellectual lobotomy that he warns against.

I argue that the answer to an unreflective faith is not to cease action, but rather to engage in action that is informed by reflection. The proper response to a religious life that is overly dependent on individual experience is not to deny experience, but rather to hold that experience in dynamic conversation with theory. If we are to live out the full gospel, a balanced and complete gospel, we must wed faith and action, experience and analysis.

Besides this basic message of dynamic tension and balance, I would also like to briefly speak to the final portion of Peter Rollins' response, in which he addresses my own experience of and relationship with God. Rollins concludes that I "admit that I need God in order to gain meaning and work for justice." He identifies me as someone "whose belief in God... is not something they can question without the sense of destruction that would result." In effect, if I understand his overall critique properly, he concludes that I worship an idolatrous God of my own making, and that I have not yet been through the process of purgation required to release what he calls the God-object, the human-created image of God that one clings to in order to escape reality.

While I understand how Rollins could come to this conclusion, he is mistaken. Though it is easy to read my words as expressing a terror at the loss of God, what I am actually communicating is an awareness of a deep ontological reality that is, in my experience (and that of my community), inescapable. I could no more give up God for Lent than I could give up gravity. I say this because, for me, at this point in my faith/doubt journey, the God whom I worship is not a thing out there. On the contrary, my (and my community's) experience is that of a thou in here.

This living and visceral experience of the Holy Spirit comes unbidden, is uncontrollable and calls us into unpredictable lives of relationship with Jesus. Rather than a fetish object out there, this mysteriously personal Ground of Being draws us into lives of deeper trust, greater humility and community with others who also live in relationship with God. With this understanding, I do experience my own faith collective as a community where, as Rollins puts it, "people encounter this depth-dimension precisely by breaking the sense that there is some thing that is needed like air (for reducing faith to the affirmation of a thing renders the sacred into an object to be placed alongside other objects)."

In our experience as a community, we recognize that there are so many idols competing for our allegiance. It is by seeking after the deepest reality, the amazing divine Spirit that breathes in us and grounds our entire life together, that we are liberated from bondage to the many things that demand our loyalty and draw us into destructive patterns. In this, I perceive that Peter Rollins and I share a common mission, even if we still disagree on the best way to get there.

Lest there be any doubt, I would like to state clearly that I value the work that Peter Rollins is engaged in. I think that unmasking idolatrous conceptions of God is a crucial task that we must undertake as followers of the ultimate revealer, Jesus. Insofar as Rollins provides an analysis that allows us to strip off the false vestments of human-constructed deities, I stand in solidarity with him.

I am grateful that Peter Rollins has been willing to engage in this conversation with me. I think that being able to publicly discuss these questions of faith/doubt and life is crucial, and I am glad to have Rollins as a conversation partner as we seek to build up the Body of Christ. Moving forward, I hope that we can find ways to hold the tension between faith and action, experience and theory. What are ways that we find the synthesis between faith and doubt, reflection and action, rigorous analysis and reckless love?

-

PS: I have felt so blessed by the passionate conversation that has arisen around last Thursday's post, and I want to extend my thanks to all the bloggers and commenters who have engaged with these questions. I have gained a lot of insight from all of the bold, scholarly, imaginative and curious people who have added their own critique, asked questions and pointed out where they saw Rollins, me or both of us missing the point. Here are some links to some of the key sites where this conversation took place:

• Brian Merritt: "Why I Support Micah Bales" - Indefinite Definiteness
• Jeremy John: "Waiting for God in the Dark Night of the Soul" - Glass Dimly
• Dale Lature: "Social Media & Conversations..." - Theoblogical
• Matthew Recla: "Atheism For Lent" - Even the Bravest
• Facebook: 1, 2, 3
• Red Letter Christians
• Reddit

The White-Hot Gospel

The early decades of the Christian movement were infused with a radical sense of a new Kingdom that turns the whole world upside down, but things changed as the Church began to settle into life in Empire. It is tough to swim against the current of the dominant culture. As time went on and the expectation of Jesus' second coming gradually diminished, the followers of the Way began to adapt to the expectations of Greco-Roman society. Decades passed, and Jesus still had not returned to establish his outward reign on earth, so the Church began to develop a meantime theology, seeking to live peaceably - and unobtrusively - within the Empire.

This made all kinds of sense. After all, Rome regularly carried out persecutions against those who refused to submit to the cosmopolitan religion of the Empire, to worship the Emperor as a god. Christians were already in very serious trouble much of the time. Under such circumstances, the temptation to blend in and do as the Romans do must have been huge.

But this decision to compromise with the surrounding culture came at a price. The white-hot gospel of Jesus upended the social hierarchies that were so integral to the internal logic of Empire - master above slave, lord above servant, husband above wife. Yet, as the Christian community struggled to get along in the Empire, all of these harmful dynamics reemerged in the life of the Church. Why?

The radically counter-cultural gospel of Jesus simply could not coexist with the Church's compromise with the unjust culture of the Mediterranean world. The only force that was able to hold this explosive witness together was the intense experience and expectation of Christ's presence and coming Kingdom. A new Order was coming that would replace the old ways of Empire.

But the years passed. Decades went by without the outwardly visible return of Jesus that the community had assumed would take place. Jesus did not come riding on the clouds, taking his seat on the throne of David and establishing a millennial kingdom for all the world to see. Gradually, much of the Church lost a sense of Christ's immanence. Jesus became someone out there, beyond the sky. His Kingdom became a distant reality, something that would eventually take shape at some point in the future - but certainly not today. For much of the Christian community, Jesus became a myth rather than an experienced relationship.

This feeling of distance from the Kingdom of God has made it even more difficult to resist the relentless pressure of Empire. It may be precisely because the Church has experienced and proclaimed God's Kingdom as existing only in a far-off heaven that we have been so susceptible to the distortions and compromises of a long succession of human kingdoms.

As long as the followers of the Way had a sense of Christ's living presence and power in the world, miracles happened. The sick were healed, the dead were raised and the poor had good news preached to them. Men and women entered into their originally intended state of full equality, just as they had been before the Fall. Jesus - not as mythical figure in some distant heaven, but as a viscerally present Teacher and Lord - broke down the divisions between Greek and Jew, slave and free, male and female. In this imminent experience of his Kingdom, all became brothers and sisters, functioning together as a living and growing body.

It is this astonishing reality that the early Quaker movement tapped into. Rather than looking to a distant Kingdom in the clouds, they experienced and proclaimed that Jesus had come to teach his people himself. The Kingdom of Heaven had come near, and all bets were off.

It was in this way - through the experience of Jesus himself, living within each believer and in the midst of the gathered community - that the Quaker movement was able to re-discover the radical equality of Christ's Kingdom. In an age of deep patriarchy, Quakers spiritually empowered women just like the earliest church did. Women served as elders, apostolic ministers and evangelists. Women and men labored side by side for the radical gospel of the Risen Jesus, and all were free to preach as the Spirit gave the words.

This powerful experience of Jesus is available to us today. It is this personal and community experience of God's life and presence that can break us out of our fallen addiction to racism, patriarchy, homophobia and all the many ways that this world encourages us to marginalize one another. When we walk in the light of Christ's Spirit, God gives us power to resist the injustice and false assumptions of our present culture, this current manifestation of Empire.

Are we ready to embrace the white-hot gospel of a present and living Kingdom? Are we prepared for the subtle and radical ways that the Holy Spirit calls us to live in contrast to the dominant culture? Do we have the courage to embrace the love that raises up the lowly and humbles the proud? Is today the day when we will meet the Risen Lord for ourselves?

Pope Benedict XVI Resigns: What Does It Mean?

I could not quite believe my eyes this morning when a New York Times alert flashed across my phone: "Pope Benedict Resigns." This is probably the biggest single news item in the worldwide Christian Church in my lifetime. The spiritual leader of 1.2 billion of my brothers and sisters in the Roman Catholic community is doing something that has no real precedent. While it is true that there was a pope who resigned back in 1415, that resignation came amidst one of the greatest scandals in Church history, with three different popes vying for control!

This resignation is clearly different. Though Benedict has certainly been a controversial pope, presiding over an increasingly firm turn to the theological right, he has not been personally embroiled in scandal to the same degree. Certainly nothing that would indicate that he should resign from an office that until now has essentially been considered unresignable.

And yet, here we are. Benedict has announced his retirement from the papacy on the basis of his advanced age and his own personal judgment that he is no longer able to fulfill the role of spiritual father to the Roman Catholic community. Declaring his retirement date as 28 February, 2013, Benedict is giving a little more than two weeks notice. Assemble the cardinals: It is time to select a new pope!

I am sure that there will be a great variety of reactions to Benedict’s resignation. Some – especially among the Roman Catholic community’s progressive wing – will cheer. Some will be appalled, and many others will be confused. I understand all of these reactions, but I have a different one. I feel awed and grateful.

In this unexpected act, I feel like I am catching a glimpse – perhaps for the first time – into the real character of this pope. This is a spiritual leader who has the humility to set aside his official authority and admit that he no longer has the strength or the divine calling to serve as the apostolic guardian of more than a billion souls. That takes some guts!

I cannot see into Benedict’s heart, and I am in no position to judge him. Nevertheless, I must say that I am deeply impressed by this act. It inspires me to be more willing to reevaluate my own spiritual gifts and sense of divine calling. Benedict’s resignation reminds me that I must be open to laying aside even the most importantwork that I do in order to be faithful to the One who calls me. By laying down the splendor, power and authority of the papacy, Benedict challenges me to follow his example, releasing my own privileges and reputation in order to become a more faithful, loving servant to the whole body of Christ.

In this one decision, Benedict reveals himself to be truly apostolic. As he lays down all his worldly crowns and honors at the feet of Jesus, he can say with integrity, “Be imitators of me, as I am of Christ.“-

For another Quaker’s reaction to Benedict’s announcement, check out Dan Randazzo’s blog, A Closeted Radical.

Spiritual Gifts: They Do The Body Good

Now there are varieties of gifts, but the same Spirit; and there are varieties of services, but the same Lord; and there are varieties of activities, but it is the same God who activates all of them in everyone. - 1 Corinthians 12:4-6

It may seem counter-intuitive, but I have found stepping into visible leadership roles to be a deeply humbling experience. In a culture that often expects our leaders to know everything and often blames them for anything that goes wrong, being put in the position to actually practice public leadership can be terrifying! As a leader, the contrast between who I am and who I would like to be is brought into sharp relief. I come face to face with my own inadequacy, all the ways that I am weak, ignorant and unfit to lead. It may be that I seem confident to others, but on the inside I wrestle with the fact that I do not have all the gifts that my community needs.

Then again, who does? It has been my experience that God offers each community the gifts we need to be whole, healthy and a blessing to the world. Our giftedness - whether in compassionate care for others, inspired preaching, practical helps, administration, evangelism or work for social justice - are distributed throughout our community gathered in Jesus. Does any one of us have all the gifts necessary for a vibrant, fruitful community? If we did, would we even need community?

The role of authentic, affirming leadership is to encourage, strengthen and empower the gifts of each individual, so that together we can become one living organism, growing to full maturity in the Holy Spirit. Rather than looking to an individual or group of leaders to provide everything we need, we must instead look within and discover what gifts God has given each one of us. How we are called to use these gifts to build up the body of Christ, the communities where we find Jesus alive and at work?

As we look to the health of this body, there are two very real obstacles that we confront: One is our potential for individual pride. We can become so enamored with our own gifts that we fail to realize how partial and contingent we are, how much we rely on our sisters and brothers to shore up our weakness and make us whole. If we elevate one person's spiritual gifts - or one type of spiritual gifts - above others, we mutilate the body. After all, if the body were only an eye, where would the hearing be? If we had only an ear, where would the sense of smell be?

Another obstacle is our false sense of humility: We may downplay our own gifts and expect other, more extraordinary, people to carry the weight of the community. While this kind of false modesty can seem very "spiritual" at first glance, it is actually part and parcel of the same mutilating dynamic that elevates some gifts over others. None of us benefit if part of our community is withholding its gifts. As long as we defer to the limited perspective of only certain individuals and gifts, we cannot become fully whole.

If we are to embrace the full array of spiritual gifts that God has granted us as a community, we probably need to develop a better awareness of what our gifts actually are. How can we as communities in Jesus become more intentional about discovering the giftedness of each person? How can we raise awareness of how each of us fits together into one living organism - one body with many parts?

A New Year, A New Vision for Capitol Hill Friends - Micah's Ministry Newsletter #50

Dear friends,

Late December is a very special time for me. The churning of the holiday season crowds out my normal routines, and my attention shifts dramatically. In this season, personal transformation seems especially within reach. Between Christmas Eve and New Year's Day, my life is put on lock down and the relentless silence of dark winter nights strips me bare. This fallow time takes a hold of me, forcing me to cease my constant activity and to reflect on the choices I have made.

It is also a season to become more aware of God's faithfulness. As I recall everything that has happened in the last year - not to mention the last decade! - it is so clear to me that I could never have made it to this moment without ongoing divine intervention. With the 20/20 hindsight of late December, I see more clearly how the Spirit has been present with me throughout the highs and lows. Even in the times when I felt abandoned, God never left me.

The last year has definitely had its share of lows, both for me and for Capitol Hill Friends. For the last three years, we have operated under a model which focused on the weekly worship event as the heart of our community. Beginning in late 2009, we extended an invitation for those in the DC area to join us for waiting worship, Bible reading, singing and a home-cooked meal. Our times together were powerful, and the worship was almost always deep.

Yet, after almost three years of ongoing effort, Capitol Hill Friends never grew into the kind of sustainable community that we hoped for. Our attendance fluctuated according to the seasons, but never grew very large. The formal membership of our group held fairly steady, too - three core members, plus one Friend who sojourned with us for a year, and two others who sojourned for a summer. Despite the power of Christ's presence in our times of worship, the community failed to gel.

We finally reached a crisis point this fall. Our attendance fell greatly near the end of the summer - a normal seasonal fluctuation - but it did not recover in the fall. At the time of year when we had come to expect renewed energy and vitality in our meetings, we were averaging 4-6 people. It was increasingly clear that our way of operating had become unsustainable.

What needed to change? Were we being unfaithful? Were we even still being called to engage in this ministry? We put everything on the table. More than anything, we wanted to be faithful to how the Lord was guiding us.

After extensive prayer and consideration, we felt clear that we had not been released from the work of planting a new Quaker community in the Washington, DC region. But we also saw that we would have to let go of many of our assumptions about how a Quaker Meeting was supposed to be. We were still clinging to many patterns that kept us in our Quaker comfort zone, but which held us back from speaking to the needs of our city.

We have emerged from this period of discernment with a commitment to do whatever it takes to emerge from the Quaker hedge* and reach the DC area with the love and power of Jesus Christ. We are convinced that God is more concerned with growing a community gathered in discipleship than with the purity of our Quaker pedigree. We feel that God is calling us into partnership with the work of the Holy Spirit, to become a living body in Christ - an organism that learns, grows and adapts as God shapes us to speak to the condition of our city.

God is blessing us. This Saturday, twenty-five of us gathered for dinner at the William Penn House to hear about the plan for the next phase of Capitol Hill Friends. We shared about the cell church model that we are experimenting with, and invited folks to participate in the first cycle of our base group (small group), which will be meeting from the last Sunday in January to the first Sunday in March.

Our base group meetings will last for about an hour and a half, and will focus on three main activities: personal check-ins and building community; reading the Bible and applying it to our lives in practical ways; and exploring how to experience the Holy Spirit through vocal prayer and silent waiting. The base group is meant to be a living organism - the basic unit of Christ's body - that will multiply over time. Our vision is to establish a growing number of base groups in locations throughout the DC metro area, so that our community will be easily accessible to anyone who wants to participate.

Base groups will be the heart - the base! - of our community, with everything else we do flowing out of the life of these groups of 6-12. Yet, we also think it is important to gather together in larger numbers, and so we intend to hold larger worship events. As we begin this new experiment in community, we will aim to have one worship event every month or so. As we grow in numbers, energy and spiritual maturity, we may increase the frequency of our larger worship event, but once a month seems plenty for the time being.

It has taken some time, but I am hopeful that we are finding our way to be a healthy expression of Christ's body in the Washington region. We know that it is the power of the Holy Spirit that gives life to the body, not human models of organization. Nevertheless, I see signs that this new model has the potential to remove barriers to the Holy Spirit's work. I pray that we will remain open to removing all of the many barriers to God in our lives, so that Christ's Spirit can flow freely.

Please keep praying for us. Please ask your church/meeting to pray for us. The next couple of months are going to be critical as we seek to raise up leadership and multiply this first round of base groups. Please pray for those who are providing leadership for this first base group cycle, and for everyone who participates. May the Lord draw us into authentic community in his name, finding the support and encouragement we need to lead lives of faithfulness and joy.

Your friend in Truth,

Micah

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*The "hedge" is an old Quaker term, which refers to a whole complex of shared practices that help to distinguish and separate the Friends community from the wider world.

Grassroots Quaker Revival - Micah's Ministry Newsletter #49

Dear friends,

This fall has been a time of crisis, reflection and transformation, as we at Capitol Hill Friends have sensed God calling us to move outside the comfortable forms of 20th-century Quakerism and embrace the ways that the Holy Spirit is working and wants to work in this present generation. At the same time, we are being knit together into a wider community - the Friends of Jesus Fellowship - a dispersed yet cohesive community of like-hearted sisters and brothers who are committed to living and sharing the gospel in the world today.

In the past month, I have been able to participate in a concrete expression of this new movement, working with a number of fellow ministers to organize a revival meeting in Philadelphia. The decision to hold a public meeting for worship - and to call it a "revival" - was the result of a long period of discernment in community. Over time, it became clear that God was calling us to do this bold thing, inviting others into an opportunity to deepen our walk with the Spirit, and to open ourselves to the life of Jesus.

There were about eight of us on the team that helped to plan the revival, five local residents and three visitors from Michigan, Baltimore and DC. We laid the groundwork for the revival meeting in a series of weekly conference calls over a period of about a month, finally meeting together in person the night before the event. This process of planning, discernment and prayer was deeply beneficial for us as a network of like-hearted friends. Over the course of our preparation, we came to know one another better, and I sensed that new depths of leadership were being developed among us. The planning process was at least as worthwhile as the event itself.

We gathered for the revival meeting on a Thursday night, in a home in West Philadelphia. The evening began with a potluck dinner, and by the time worship worship started at 7:00, there were about fifty people present. The meeting commenced with a period of singing, led by a couple of the local planners. When the music concluded, it was announced that we would be entering into waiting worship, and that our three visiting ministers would be speaking out of the silence.

This ended up being really awkward for me, because the Lord gave me very little to say. My two fellow ministers delivered outstanding sermons, and it was clear to me that the Spirit had used them to take us in the direction that we needed to go. For a while, I thought that I would remain silent the whole meeting - which was uncomfortable, since I literally had people turning around and looking at me. They wondered when I would speak, since it had been announced! Mercifully, the Lord did give me a few words to deliver - totally unrelated to the message that God had been preparing within me for the weeks leading up to the revival.

This process was really hard on me. It took me days to recover from the raw sensation of being broken down in this way. Yet, this experience was a spiritual baptism for me, teaching me greater reliance on the power and guidance of the Holy Spirit, weaning me away from my tendency to trust in my own strength.

Though the meeting was hard for me on a personal level, I felt that the revival was blessed. There were no big explosions, no apparent mass conversions, no gaudy altar calls. But I did sense that hearts were being moved and that the risen Lord Jesus was among us, teaching. As I said to a fellow worker immediately after the worship, I feel that we did the best we could with the faith, gifts and condition of all who were present. I believe that we were faithful, in measure.

Following the revival meeting, six of us from the Friends of Jesus Fellowship ended up attending a Christ-centered Friends gathering held at Manhasset Friends Meeting House on Long Island; four of us came up from the Philadelphia event, and two others traveled from New Jersey and New England. The time on Long Island was covered by Christ's presence. All of us felt that there was a "sweet spirit" among the group, and it was comforting to be able to rest in the Lord after such an intense effort in Philadelphia.

I was very impressed by the spiritual depth and grounding of Friends at Manhasset and the other Friends who attended the Christ-centered Friends gathering. We made many good connections over the weekend, which I hope we can continue to nurture as we move forward as Friends of Jesus.

It is phenomenal to feel how the Lord's work is moving forward at this time. Over the course of the last several years, we have experienced many setbacks. This ministry that we are engaged in is a marathon, not a sprint, and we know from experience that there will be highs and lows. But at this time, there is a sense of expansiveness and serendipitous blessing. Our spiritual ancestors would probably have named this experience as one of divine providence.

God is indeed providing for us, opening the way forward to be gathered together as Christ's body. On the big-picture level, we sense the Holy Spirit knitting us together as a new people in the Friends of Jesus Fellowship. We are developing organic leadership remarkably quickly, and we are trying to stay adaptable as we incorporate new individual leaders and groups into our network. In Washington, DC, we are experiencing the Lord's grace in providing us with the faith, insight and spiritual gifts that we need to become a maturing community that bears the marks of Jesus' character.

The next several months will be crucial for our development as a community. The Friends of Jesus Fellowship is experimenting with ways to support one another at a distance as we seek to build strong local groups. Electronic tools - email, video chat and conference calls - help connect us between gatherings, and we make efforts to visit one another in person as often as possible.

Here in DC, we plan to launch a new program of small group(s) and monthly public worship beginning in the first quarter of 2013. By placing our emphasis on disciple-making and developing new leadership at the local level, we pray that God will unlock a grassroots revival of the Holy Spirit that goes far beyond occasional worship events.

We know that true revival does not consist in an evening of worship. Rather, we are being revived through ongoing transformation into the image of Christ. This extended process involves heart, soul, mind and strength, and it is through spiritually grounded and mature communities that we develop the capacity to be transformed and produce leadership that is transforming. This is the work of the coming year, and of the rest of our lives.

As we engage in this effort, I am so grateful for all of you who lift us up in prayer. Though I cannot explain it rationally, I am convinced that prayer has real power to change the course of events. Your prayers strengthen me, and all of us who are participating in this generation's great revival movement. I hope that you will continue to pray for us in the months and years to come, so that we may all be transformed by the renewing of our minds, knowing what the will of God is - what is good, and acceptable, and perfect.

Your friend in Jesus,

Micah Bales

Should Quakers Be Laying On Hands?

Now when the apostles at Jerusalem heard that Samaria had accepted the word of God, they sent Peter and John to them. The two went down and prayed for them that they might receive the Holy Spirit (for as yet the Spirit had not come upon any of them; they had only been baptized in the name of the Lord Jesus). Then Peter and John laid their hands on them, and they received the Holy Spirit. - Acts 8:14-17

Have you received the Holy Spirit?

The Book of Acts describes how the first disciples in Jerusalem experienced the coming of the Spirit, and this outpouring quickly spread to thousands of others. It was not long before the Church in Jerusalem was scattered by persecution, but this just spread the gospel message more widely.

One of these scattered disciples, Philip, shared the good news in Samaria. The Samaritans were the red-headed stepchildren of the Jewish family. They were outsiders par excellence, widely considered untouchable heretics by their Jewish neighbors. Yet, perhaps because of their shunned status, Samaritans were eager to embrace the news about Jesus. They heard the message and accepted it.

The new believers in Samaria took the first step, being baptized with water as a symbol of their whole-hearted embrace of the message that Philip had shared with them. But there was still something missing. The leaders of the Church in Jerusalem knew in their bones that the people of Samaria needed more than human belief in the message about Jesus: They needed to experience Jesus for themselves. They needed to taste his very Spirit.

What does that even mean? Why weren't the apostles satisfied with the fact that the Samaritans had become "orthodox Christians"? What compelled some of the apostles in Jerusalem to venture out to Samaria and lay their hands on the new believers? And why did the Holy Spirit wait for the apostles' touch before indwelling the new church? If the Spirit blows where it will, what need is there of human intervention?

There is a reason that our spiritual ancestors used such rich, diverse language to describe the Spirit: A dove descending from the sky, rushing wind, tongues of fire, living water, the sound of silence. All of these words offer a window into the mystery of the Holy Spirit, the source of a Life and Power so magnificent that our faith is incomplete until we receive it.

It is my experience that the Spirit is beautifully mysterious and unpredictable. Any attempt to pin her down and force her to obey human regulations will fail. And yet, this story of human involvement in the work of the Holy Spirit rings true to me. It fits with my own experience of receiving the Holy Spirit into my life.

When I first became a Quaker in 2004, I did so because I was convinced at a very deep level, far beyond simple intellectual assent, that the testimonies of Friends were true. I could sense that there was a ground of truth that was solid and immovable. I sensed that God was real, and that my life needed to conform to that Truth. Yet, there was something missing. While I had begun to accept Friends principles and could sense God's hidden presence, I did not experience God as an actor in my life. In reality, I was still in the driver's seat. I was "exploring God," like the famous old blind men who could each feel a different part of the elephant.

But when the Holy Spirit came on me, it was as if that elephant reached out and grabbed me with her trunk! No longer was God an object of my personal study; I came face-to-face with a divine Presence and Personality that had plans for me, and who would guide me if I opened myself. I was shown, in a deeply personal way that can never be fully explained, that God is not an "it," but rather a "thou."

And how did I come to have this experience? What was the catalyst for this encounter with the divine Thou? While for me there was not a literal laying on of hands, the circumstances surrounding my reception of the Holy Spirit bore great similarities to the experience of the Samaritan church.

I was at the World Gathering of Young Friends, in Lancaster, England, together with hundreds of other young Quakers from around the world. During the gathering, we heard sermons from a variety of ministers. One of these, a fiery preacher from Philadelphia, challenged us to know who we were and to accept the mantle of prophecy that the Spirit was calling us into. Early on in her sermon she warned us, "you didn't ask me, but I'm about to give you a double portion of what I have." At one point - referencing the words of Jesus in John 15 - the minister exclaimed, "you're cleansed!" She spontaneously grabbed a container of water that was sitting up at the podium and began sprinkling those of us sitting closer to the front.

The sermon was riveting. It was the most explosive, powerful vocal ministry I had ever encountered. She spoke directly to our condition that evening, and the Spirit was palpably present in the room - though I was not consciously aware of it at the time.

It was later in the evening that it happened. I was sitting on a bench with another young Quaker, and we spontaneously fell into silent worship together. Suddenly, the Holy Spirit was upon us, bathing us with wave upon wave of light, power, love and tender mercy. There simply are no words. But every true word I have spoken since that night has flowed from this Source.

I am convinced that the presence of apostolic authority and blessing that night were instrumental in the work of the Holy Spirit. The faithfulness of this minister from Philadelphia played the same role for me as Peter and John did for the new believers in Samaria. It is enough to make me wonder whether we Quakers should put more emphasis on the importance of human participation in the gift of the Holy Spirit.

Has this happened to you? Has someone laid hands on you - literally or figuratively? Have you received a blessing from another person that has allowed you to plunge far deeper into relationship with God than you ever had before? What do you think the role of human agency is in the ministry of the Holy Spirit? Could it be that we Quakers need to be more open to sharing the gift of the Spirit by the laying on of hands?