Sometimes when I look at our WT community, I see a multicultural network of workers driven by the same purpose and vision. Sometimes though, when I look at our WT community, I see an innumerable series of silos or towers that are all located on the same paddock, but have no connectedness one to another.
Living and ministering out of a silo mentality can foster all sorts of troubles, not the least of which is a critical spirit. When you can see nothing but what surrounds your own silo, it is quite easy to question or criticize what others are doing, even when they belong to the same community as you.
Verses such as Ephesians 4:29 can become lost to practical application when we choose to live disconnected from the larger community: “Let no corrupting talk come out of your mouths, but only such as is good for building up, as fits the occasion, that it may give grace to those who hear.”
Phrases such as “Well, he just decided that without asking us,” or “There’s no use sharing what I think because she doesn’t listen to me anyway” are nothing less than gossip, the evidence of a critical spirit. True heart change will require more than just a renewed emphasis on community. Something will have to ‘displace’ that critical spirit.
Several hundred years ago, Jonathan Edwards wrote this: “For as long as a man or woman is not emptied of himself/herself and of his/her own righteousness and goodness, he/she will have a legal spirit.” The only remedy is if God and His amazing grace and free righteousness ‘displace’ me out of the center of my life. Only then can I truly begin to live as part of an interconnected community.
Maybe you need to ‘pick up the phone’ and talk with the Father about your heart, and as a natural outflow, pick up the phone and talk with someone with whom you are struggling with, or of whom you have spoken poorly.
Filed under: Communication, Community | 1 Comment »
The conference started yesterday. Here are just a few short impressions of the time together so far:
