Activity: Our Network

(Note: This exercise is taken from Ivana Franovic, et al., Reconciliation?!: Training Handbook for Dealing with the Past [Belgrade/Sarajevo: Centre for Nonviolent Action, 2014], 54.)

Objective(s): to discover our network connections

Time: 15 minutes or more

Materials: none

First, instruct a student volunteer to stand in the middle of the room. Then have this student invite someone else into the middle and briefly explain what connects them. Both individuals remain in the middle of the room. Now the second person calls out to the next and gives a brief explanation of what connects the two of them. The third person calls the fourth one and so on—until all participants are connected through a single chain in the middle of the room or time runs out. You can also begin again with a different person who may point to a new connection. Thus the entire process can be repeated several times, if there is a need for it. Each new chain reveals unexpected connections between people who may have thought they had little connection with others in the room.

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Assignment Set 1

1. Awakening Your Inner Prophet

“Follow the way of love and eagerly desire gifts of the Spirit, especially prophecy” (1 Cor. 14:1).

After Paul outlines for the Corinthian church a theology of spiritual gifts and Christian unity (1 Cor. 12) and finishes his masterful discourse on love (1 Cor. 13), he turns in chapter 14 to make the application: What does a Spirit-led love look like in the context of Christian worship gatherings? His exhortations?

• Follow love
• Desire spiritual gifts
• Especially prophecy

For Paul, the gift of prophecy is a Spirit-led contribution of love for the sake of the edification of the body of Christ and the advancement of God’s kingdom. This is clearly the New Testament counterpart to Ezekiel, whom the Spirit lifted up (Ezek. 3:12) and who followed the Spirit’s leading by speaking—and acting—what the sovereign Lord had to communicate.

Where are the prophets in the church today?

Prophecy is a gift from God and cannot be manufactured. One can, however, improve one’s predisposition for God’s work in this area (expressing our “eager desire”) by developing a few skills and sensibilities. I like to summarize these skills and sensibilities with six words.

1. Open: Generally, prophets are open to God’s speech. How can we hear if we are not listening? Part of this openness is a simple receptivity to God’s leading in our hearts. Yet often the development of the prophetic gifts requires a practice of literal, physical, periodic stillness and waiting on the Lord.
2. Perceive: We must also perceive the Spirit’s movements. We are aware, and then we notice. There is a thought, a feeling, an inclination that appears in our consciousness. We see an image. We hear a “voice.” Or there may be more. We may, like Ezekiel, be “taken away.” The practice of prophecy requires the prophet simply to admit what is perceived.
3. Discern: But is what we perceive of God or not? Perhaps what we perceive is only our own personal agenda (this happens). The gift of prophecy, like all gifts, is clarified in the midst of doctrinal, personal, and corporate discernment. “Do not quench the Spirit,” Paul urges the Thessalonian community. “Do not treat prophecies with contempt but test them all” (1 Thess. 5:19–21). Perhaps the simplest step of discernment is just to ask, “Does this sound like the God I know?”
4. Consent: It is one thing to hear from the Lord. It is another to consent to act or to deliver the word. It may be easier to follow Jonah’s example and flee or, like Ezekiel, to sit down in a funky depression (see Ezek. 3:14–19). But the prophet is one who is willing in the end to follow God’s lead. I find it helpful at this stage simply to state your intention: “OK, God, I will.”
5. Act: The natural step after consent is action. We deliver the word. We act the communication that needs to be acted. We contribute what needs to be contributed. Yes, a prophetic contribution may be as dangerous as confronting a leader with a divine warning. But we can just as easily receive a divine nudge to give a lonely brother or sister a hug. And who knows? The second may be as significant as the first.
6. Consequences: Then we live with the results. Our job is faithfulness. The results are God’s business. We feel it deeply when God shares his heart and permits us to share that with others. We may be praised. We may be persecuted. Our word may be completely ignored. Often prophets are given images and words for the body while others are given wisdom regarding how the images and words are to be applied to the body. Part of the ministry of prophecy is learning to “let go.”

So how do we make our “eager desire” to serve the body of Christ in love through prophecy practical?

Here is my suggestion. Just keep these six words present with you every morning, noon, and evening. Just look at them three times a day. Then wait. Ask yourself: Am I open? Have I perceived anything? What am I discerning about this matter I have perceived? Where is my consent? When/how should I act? What consequences am I facing? Tell the Lord that you are especially desiring the gift of prophecy.

Then see what happens.

Your assignment is simply to take my suggestion for five days (Monday through Friday). Along with taking my suggestion, you are also to write a brief journal entry each day documenting what you notice.

• You need not say something about all six words each day, but you should have said something about each of them by the end of the five days.
• The point is to notice how you interact with these six words. You may embody “openness” different than others. God’s voice might sound different for you than for others. It will take some sitting still and “being with” your feelings, thoughts, images, and such through the week to be able to articulate these matters. We don’t often talk about this stuff, but you can learn this kind of awareness if you practice. Just do the best you can.
• My hope is that somewhere through the week you are actually led to some prophetic action or to deliver some “word.” If this happens, please report what went on and reflect on your experience of prophetic contribution. If nothing happens, just say so and reflect on your experience in general. You will be evaluated not on whether you “receive” a prophecy but on the care you take in your own attention to the six words and how you interpret your experience in general.
• Conclude with any ideas, thoughts, lessons, or questions you have gained from this exercise regarding the meaning of the prophetic for personal or corporate Christian spiritual formation. Particularly attend to the role that prophecy may play in being formed together. In this final section you should incorporate material from this week’s resources and perhaps other weeks as well.

2. Fieldwork

Your fieldwork assignment is designed to help you gain something of an appreciative perception of Christian worship. You will invest into this kind of appreciation by visiting different worship services and making participant observation reports on those visits. For more information on participant observation research, see the article “Participation Observation as a Data Collection Method” by Barbara B. Kawulich. The idea is to gain experience at perceiving what community worship services might be like somewhere else. The steps of your assignment are as follows:

• First, locate and confirm a context or event where you can participate and observe worship services cross-culturally. You may choose a worship tradition different than what you are familiar with (liturgical, Pentecostal, Quaker, emerging, mainline, etc.). You may choose an experience of worship in a culture that is different than what you are familiar with (African-American, Hispanic, Asian, Russian, etc.)—by the way, you might be surprised how much you can observe and receive from a worship service even when you don’t understand the language. I am aware that perhaps a few of you might have difficulties locating such a context. Try your best and let’s work it out together if you need help. Yet in order to receive full credit for this assignment, you must choose contexts that are as different as possible. (Choosing Presbyterian or Methodist when you are Lutheran is just not enough variety.)
• Second, do some homework and prepare in advance for your visit. Check the congregation’s website. Look up the history of the denomination. If you are really ambitious, you might want to arrange for an interview or two. Then, write yourself an outline of what you intend to observe, to “look for” in this cross-cultural worship experience. This outline may differ somewhat with each group you visit. Yet as an exploration of worship you will want to observe the key structural, interpersonal, and spiritual characteristics of worship as appropriate to this particular context. To what forms, what rites, what persons, what moods, what images or sounds will you attend? You may or may not be able to take notes during the actual experience, but having an outline in advance will help you to be aware as you enter the experience.
• Third, visit and experience. There is always a bit of a tension between participation and observation. On the one hand, it is nice to just let go and encounter it all. On the other, this is an assignment, and you will need to make a report in the end. I imagine you will attend the service with Kawulich’s stance of observer as participant. You will join in and receive from this service, but you will join the gathering primarily as an observer.
• Finally, write a report of the experience. Your report should include the date, time, and location of the event. It should also summarize your preparatory homework and provide the outline that guided your observation. The report should document both what you did and what went on at this occasion. Briefly describe the venue. Describe sights, sounds, events, actions, and so on as appropriate to the event. You do not have to give me a minute-by-minute description; just present the event clearly, particularly as it relates to the characteristics you intended to observe. Also, as a report of an appreciative perception of worship formation, you should identify where you sensed the presence of God in the corporate gathering most. The final portion of this report should include an integrative summary. Draw from your readings, lectures, wiki resources, personal experience of the event, and so on, evaluating your experience as an experience of formation together.

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Assignment Set 2

This week we will learn about being formed together. God’s intention is not simply the formation of persons, but also of a people—a single united, community of the king that embodies the values of their Lord and exhibits the relationships of the Trinity in their life together. We will return to the categories of household, congregation, network, and new monastic expressions that were introduced in the chapter on context. You will see how the Spirit bonds believers into unity. You will discover the value of hospitality and reconciliation. By the end of the chapter you will begin to think of Christian spiritual formation as not just a matter of your own personal improvement, but of the mission of God through the Spirit for the re-creation of a family of Christ.

1. Academic—Ecclesiology and Formation

Being formed together in Christ ushers us into the discussion of ecclesiology: the Christian doctrine of the church. What is the church? An informal family of converts, a local body, a historic guardian of the faith, or something else? We proclaim in the Nicene Creed that we believe in the church: one, holy, catholic, and apostolic church. But what does this mean? What should it mean for today, for our own formation together? Is the “institutional church” an antiquated relic that should be abandoned in favor of other formation venues? Or is it the mother ship, without which we shall not make it to shore?

Howard Snyder, an author and explorer of ecclesiology for many years, has surveyed various ways of looking at the church in his article “Models of Church and Mission.” He evaluates the models he surveys from his own perspective, but it is a very helpful review. It is dense but only twenty-four pages. While he doesn’t discuss community formation directly, a number of the models bear on our discussion of being formed together and also give us a peek of some of the ideas we will cover as we discuss being formed into mission.

Your assignment is to review Snyder’s article with our presentation of Christian spiritual formation in mind. Simply read, summarize the gist of what Snyder is trying to say (the fruit of all his surveys), share what you learned from this article, and then (drawing from your learnings from the text and class thus far) tell me something about how our view of church (our ecclesiology) influences our practices of being formed together.

2. Personal Assignment—My Network

In this assignment you will simply get a chance to look at your own networks. Whom do you know, and how do they influence your formation in Christ? What resources do you regularly turn to, and how do they influence you? What are their influences? Whom do you influence, and where does that lead? We live in a networked society, and if we are to understand this world, we must also begin to understand the networks of ourselves and others.

To get an idea of what a network chart is all about, take a look at some charts online (see, for example, https://thehcdgroup.files.wordpress.com/2015/05/sna_chart_02.gif [simple]; https://olimould.files.wordpress.com/2009/01/network-diagram-1.jpg [more complex]).

Then draw your own network chart. You can include people, organizations, media resources—anything. The idea is to get a visual picture of your own networks of spiritual formation. Have fun playing with this. When you are finished, spend some time summarizing what you learned from the exercise.

3. Spiritual Practice—Hospitality

As we mentioned in the section on congregation, perhaps one of the key practices of congregational formation is the practice of hospitality. I asked in my final “Going Deeper” question what you might experiment with in order to take further steps of growth in the virtue and practice of hospitality as a congregation. Now is your opportunity to experiment.

Your assignment is simply to participate in, or to create, a hospitality event (not an “entertaining peers” event, but a hospitality event as I describe hospitality in the chapter). Include all the elements of hospitality mentioned in the chapter: a welcoming space, a welcoming ear, and a shared conversation in an atmosphere of love and care. See if you can stumble into an event like this, or perhaps you want to bring snacks to the poor (see Luke 14:12–14) and create your own hospitality event. When you are done, write up a little summary of what you have learned.

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