In Tom Steffen’s new book, The Facilitator Era, he relates a number of case studies that seek to provide models of facilitation. A comment in one of those studies kind of jumped off the page at me: “Here and in other M villages scattered around the continent, the church is being born, and the instruments God has chosen are young South American Christians committed to a radically incarnational lifestyle among people they have come to love in Jesus’ name.”
What he means is that these young people were willing to back up their words with concrete actions in their relationships with one another (as a team and
community) and with those in the culture around them. As another person described it, “for the person who is abiding in God, loving obedience overflows into love for others.”
Why is this lifestyle stance so unique? Why do we often describe it as ‘radical’ when it should be, as we just read, the natural overflow of our relationship with God? I often hear that the number one reason why cross cultural workers leave where they serve is because of other workers. Something is amiss. We need to ask some hard questions about our lifestyle stance in light of the Gospel.
The Gospel regularly calls us back as a community to humility, integrity and simplicity. Paul wrote: “Complete my joy by being of the same mind, having the same love, being in full accord and of one mind. Do nothing from rivalry or conceit, but in humility count others more significant than yourselves. Let each of you look not only to his own interests, but also to the interests of others.” (Philippians 2:2-4)
How does this challenge you?
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