Pursuing God's Will Together E-Book

Ruth Haley Barton

• Herausgeber: IVP Formatio
• Kategorie: Religion und Spiritualität
• Serie: Transforming Resources
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2012

Seitenzahl: 382

Beschreibung

Logos Book of the Year Creating Leadership Teams Led by the Spirit Meetings can sap our energy, rupture community and thoroughly demoralize us. They can go on forever with no resolution. Or they can rush along without consensus just to "get through the agenda." What if there was another way? Church boards and other Christian leadership teams have long relied on models adapted from the business world. Ruth Haley Barton, president of the Transforming Center, helps teams transition to a much more suitable model—the spiritual community that discerns God's will together. With Pursuing God's Will Together, you'll find: - Personal and group practices that will lead you into a new way of experiencing community and listening to God together. - Appendicies with a Leader's Guide and notes on a biblical perspective on spiritual transformation - Additional videos and bonus material from Ruth Haley Barton on ivpress.com to extend your learning.

Leseprobe

“Pursuing God’s Will Together is a much-needed corrective to our headstrong individualism today. It drills down deep into rock-bed practicalities for any community seeking to discern the will of God together. I recommend it highly.”

Richard J. Foster, author, Celebration of Discipline and Sanctuary of the Soul

“This book needs a warning label: ‘Content may be disruptive to your understanding of Christian life, leadership and community.’ Ruth Haley Barton has provided every Christian with an invaluable resource for discerning and fulfilling the purposes of God. In a world where Christians and Christian leadership and communities have largely succumbed to secular processes for decision making, Barton brings a clear, challenging and compelling call for a radical alternative. This book is not the product of a ‘theorist,’ but the mature distillation of Barton’s own journey into a life hid with Christ in God for the sake of others. This is a must-read for every Christian leader and leadership group, and a primer for every Christian.”

M. Robert Mulholland Jr., professor emeritus, Asbury Theological Seminary, and author, Invitation to a Journey and The Deeper Journey

“Ruth Haley Barton knows only too well that discerning God’s will requires a personal commitment to transformation as well as an openness to engage in a group process. InPursuing God’s Will Together,she shows us in a systematic way how it’s done. Every Christian leader will benefit from such a practical approach to such an ancient practice.”

Albert Haase, O.F.M., author, This Sacred Moment

“It’s impossible to overstate how needed, valuable, timely and timeless this book is. It is as wise as Methuselah and as practical as a slingshot. Ruth has rendered a massive service to church leaders everywhere, and to all the churches they lead. Herein lies the remedy for the sad but common malady we see today: otherwise godly men and women pursuing God’s kingdom with worldly navigational equipment. I plan to buy a case of Pursuing God’s Will Together upon its release and make it mandatory reading for all of our leaders. It can hardly come soon enough.”

Mark Buchanan, pastor, New Life Community Baptist Church, and author, Spiritual Rhythm and Your Church Is Too Safe

“InPursuing God’s Will Together[Ruth Haley Barton] weaves her own wisdom with others in bringing forth a beautiful tapestry of spirituality in community.”

Chuck Olsen, founder, Worshipful-Work, and author, Transforming Church Boards

“Ruth Haley Barton has identified an important issue in spiritual leadership and in how we make decisions, revealing where our integrity as leaders lies. Do we really believe that God has something to say, by his Holy Spirit, in terms of what direction we take? Ruth does a great job of describing practices that can help teams become more adept at hearing God’s voice in the practical areas of leading and serving.”

Doug Nuenke, U.S. director, The Navigators

“I like this book. It is wise, thoughtful, gracious and a little bit disturbing—Ruth will surely upset some of your preconceived notions. If you are like me, you believe in the guidance of the Holy Spirit, but you want to be wise and not presumptuous about knowing God’s will for your group. This book is a real gift to folks like us. It provides us with much more than simply a plan of action. You can use it yourself, but it will also be quite useful to you with your fellow decision makers, so that discerning God’s will together becomes an experience in spiritual growth for the whole team.”

John Yates, rector, The Falls Church

“Ruth Haley Barton is a gifted distiller of historic best practices for community discernment and direction. Exercising her counsel on the rare ‘vow of stability’ would by itself rescue multiple organizations from broken strategic trajectories. I highly recommend Pursuing God’s Will Togetherfor leaders, teams and organizations.”

Dr. Bruce McNicol, president, Truefaced, Inc.

“Pursuing God’s Will Together is a powerfully convicting and timely book for those of us who are fully aware that we are incapable of effective leadership apart from God’s wisdom and direction. How to discern God’s purposes individually and as a dynamic team is the genius of this compellingly creative call to kingdom movement. Ruth Haley Barton presents us with a proven—if at times painful—practice that can ultimately take our finite efforts to where our infinite God wants them to go.”

Harold B. Smith, president and CEO, Christianity Today International

“I have been grateful for Ruth Haley Barton’s wisdom in the past on spiritual disciplines so crucial for the soul of a leader. I am sure her latest work will be of great benefit to those who seek the grace of discernment in their work and ministries.”

Gary Haugen, president and CEO, International Justice Mission

“While there has been a revival of interest in spiritual disciplines for some time, there is precious little available about how to practice them in community. More specifically, there is almost nothing about helping Christian leaders discern God’s presence and activities together. That is, until now. With Pursuing God’s Will Together, Ruth Haley Barton—a recognized leader in spiritual formation—fills this need admirably. This is an important, unique book that will be sure to transform Christian corporate leadership from a pure business model to a more spiritually integrated approach. I highly recommend it.”

J. P. Moreland, professor of philosophy, Talbot School of Theology, Biola University, and author, The God Question

“Fabulous! I look forward to giving copies to our staff and elders. Ruth provides a practical, powerful road map so we can discern the most important question as a leadership team: What is God’s will for us on a particular issue?”

Pete Scazzero,pastor, New Life Fellowship Church, and author,The Emotionally Healthy Church

Pursuing God's Will Together

A Discernment Practice for Leadership Groups

Ruth Haley Barton

Copyright

InterVarsity Press P.O. Box 1400 Downers Grove, IL 60515-1426 World Wide Web: www.ivpress.com E-mail: [email protected]

© 2012 by Ruth Haley Barton

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form without written permission from InterVarsity Press.

InterVarsity Press® is the book-publishing division of InterVarsity Christian Fellowship/USA®, a movement of students and faculty active on campus at hundreds of universities, colleges and schools of nursing in the United States of America, and a member movement of the International Fellowship of Evangelical Students. For information about local and regional activities, write Public Relations Dept. InterVarsity Christian Fellowship/USA, 6400 Schroeder Rd., P.O. Box 7895, Madison, WI 53707-7895, or visit the IVCF website at www.intervarsity.org.

Scripture quotations, unless otherwise noted, are from the New Revised Standard Version of the Bible, copyright 1989 by the Division of Christian Education of the National Council of the Churches of Christ in the USA. Used by permission. All rights reserved.

The closing prayer for chapter one is from J. Philip Newell, Celtic Treasure: Daily Scriptures and Prayers © 2005 Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, Grand Rapids, MI. Reprinted by permission of the publisher; all rights reserved.

The closing prayers for chapters two and three are from Guerrillas of Grace by Ted Loder copyright © 1984, 2004 Ted Loder, admin Augsburg Fortress. Reproduced by permission. All rights reserved.

The closing prayers for chapters four and seven, as well as the third and fourth lines of “A Prayer of Commitment” at the end of chapter eight, are adapted from © 2001 The Iona Community. Taken from The Iona Abbey Worship Book, Wild Goose Publications, Glasgow. Used by permission.

While all stories in this book are true, some names and identifying information in this book have been changed to protect the privacy of the individuals involved.

Cover design: Cindy Kiple

Images: © Steve Deer/Trevillion Images

Interior design: Beth Hagenberg

ISBN 978-0-8308-6978-7

To my grandsons

Gabriel Anthony, Thomas Ryan and Finley Brant

May you grow up to be young men who are ever-committed to discerning and doing the will of God.

And to the leadership community of the Transforming Center

You have given me a place to fully live into the realities and practices described in this book.

I am forever grateful. This one’s for you.

The question is deceptively simple to ask and exquisitely difficult to answer: Am I truly seeking to do Thy will . . . or mine?

Gerald May

Contents

Introduction:The Heart of Spiritual Leadership

PART ONE:Becoming a Community for Discernment

1. Learning to See

2. Beginning with Spiritual Transformation

3. Leaders Who Are Discerning

4. Community at the Leadership Level

5. Values That Undergird Community

6. Practices for Opening to God Together

7. Practices for Listening to Each Other

8. A Covenant That Protects Community

PART TWO:Practicing Discernment Together

9. Get Ready: Preparing for the Discernment Process

10. Get Set: From Decision Making to Discernment

11. Go! Discerning and Doing God’s Will Together

12. But Does It Work?

Gratitudes 

Appendix 1: Leader’s Guide

Appendix 2:A Biblical Perspective on Spiritual Transformation

Appendix 3: Lectio Divina

Notes

Introduction

The Heart of Spiritual Leadership

Decision making has its limits. We make decisions. Discernment is given. The Spirit of God, which operates at the deepest levels of the human psyche and within the mysteries of the faith community, brings to the surface gifts of wisdom and guidance which we can only discover and name.

Danny Morris and Chuck Olsen

It was a conversation similar to many I have had with Christian leaders. An associate pastor from a large church was telling me that his church was going through a major transition as its leaders tried to respond to its growth. They had outgrown their facility (a good problem to have!), so the obvious question was, Will we add on to our facility or will we start another church?

As we talked, it became clear that this question was only the tip of the iceberg. Beneath the surface larger questions lurked: What should be our emphasis now? Does our mission still capture what we feel called to? Is our leadership structure effective for what is emerging now? Can we keep going at this pace, or will we burn ourselves out by adding a building campaign and more people and activities to our plates?

Sensing the weight this pastor was carrying, I probed a little deeper and asked, “How are you going about answering these questions together? Do you have a clearly articulated process for discerning God’s will in these matters?” A look of disorientation crossed his face as he realized that the answer to the question was no. After recovering a bit, he added, “But we always have a time of prayer at the beginning of our meetings!”

It was awkward, to say the least.

This pastor, like so many Christian leaders, had a vague sense that our approach to decision making should be different from secular models—particularly when we are leading a church or an organization with a spiritual purpose.[1] The problem is that we’re not quite sure what that difference is. In the absence of a clear consensus, that difference often gets reduced to an obligatory devotional (often viewed as irrelevant to the business portion of the meeting) or the perfunctory prayers that bookend the meeting. Sometimes even these well-meaning attempts at a spiritual focus get lost in the shuffle!

Leadership Discernment

Discernment, in a most general sense, is the capacity to recognize and respond to the presence and the activity of God—both in the ordinary moments and in the larger decisions of our lives. The apostle Paul says that we are to be transformed by the renewing of our minds so that we can discern what the will of God is, that which is good, acceptable and perfect (Rom 12:2). This includes not only the mind of each individual but also the corporate mind.

Discernment literally means to separate, to discriminate, to determine, to decide or to distinguish between two things. Spiritual discernment is the ability to distinguish or discriminate between good (that which is of God and draws us closer to God) and evil (that which is not of God and draws us away from God). There are many qualities that contribute to good leadership, but it is our commitment to discerning and doingthe will of God through the help of the Holy Spirit that distinguishes spiritual leadership from other kinds of leadership.

Corporate or leadership discernment, then, is the capacity to recognize and respond to the presence and activity of God as a leadership group relative to the issues we are facing, and to make decisions in response to that Presence. Spiritual leaders are distinguished by their commitment to discern important matters together so they can affirm a shared sense of God’s desire for them and move forward on that basis.

It is hard to imagine that spiritual leadership could be about anything but seeking to know and do the will of God, and yet many leadership groups do not have this as their clear mandate and reason for existence. This raises a serious question: If we are not pursuing the will of God together in fairly intentional ways, what are we doing? Our own will? What seems best according to our own thinking and planning? That which is merely strategic or expedient or good for the ego?

Discernment together as leaders, on the other hand, opens us to an entirely different reality—the wisdom of God that is beyond human wisdom and is available to us as we learn how to open ourselves to it (1 Cor 2:6-16). This approach to leadership presents unique challenges because it requires us to move beyond reliance on human thinking and strategizing to a place of deep listening and response to the Spirit of God within and among us. This is not to dismiss what human wisdom and strategic thinking have to offer us. Our ability to think things through and apply reason to our decision making is a gift from God; however, the Scriptures are clear that human wisdom and the wisdom of God are not the same thing. Part of becoming more discerning is the ability to distinguish between the two (1 Cor 1:18-31).

One of the challenges to leadership discernment is that it can seem somewhat subjective and even mystical, which doesn’t always go over too well with hard-nosed business people and pragmatists—those who often make up boards and other leadership groups. It is one thing to rely on what feels like a more subjective approach when it pertains to our personal life, but it feels much riskier when our decisions involve large budgets, other people’s financial investments, the lives of multiple staff, reports to high-powered boards and serving a “customer base” (congregation or organization) with varying levels of expectation. And yet many leaders today are longing for a way of leading that is more deeply responsive to the will of God than to the latest ideas from a New York Times bestseller. We wonder, Is there a trustworthy process that enables Christian leaders to actively seek God relative to decisions we are making?

The answer is a resounding yes! and it is why I have written this book—to provide practical guidance for leaders and leadership teams who want to enter more deeply into the process of corporate discernment as a way of life in leadership.

Personal Reflection

How do you respond to the idea that discernment is what distinguishes spiritual leadership from other kinds of leadership? How would you describe the way your leadership group makes decisions currently?

A One-Stop Shop for Leadership Groups

While there are many books on personal discernment and a few resources on corporate discernment, this book is designed to be a one-stop-shop guide for leadership groups who wish to become a community for discernment. The process involves (1) preparing individual leaders for discernment, (2) becoming a community for discernment at the leadership level and (3) engaging an actual process for discerning God’s will together as leaders. This integration of spiritual transformation, community and discernment is based in part on Romans 12:2, in which Paul establishes a strong cause-and-effect relationship between spiritual transformation and the ability to discern and do the will of God in the context of the new community of believers gathered in Rome: “Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your minds, so that you may discern what is the will of God, what is good and acceptable and perfect” (emphasis added).

For the purposes of this book I have not made a strong distinction between churches and Christian ministry organizations because I believe that whenever and wherever Christians gather in Christ’s name to carry out his purposes in the world, we are the body of Christ. As an expression of Christ’s presence on earth there should be something about what we do and how we do it that is distinctly spiritual. Thus, when I use the word church or community, I am referring to any group of Christians who gather in the name of Christ and are seeking to be responsive to Christ’s purposes in the world. Whenever Christians gather we are, at the deepest level of reality, the community of Jesus (Mk 3:34-35), and we have the opportunity to make decisions in a way that reflects this reality. This book is intended, then, for leadership groups in churches and Christian organizations who are ready to be more intentional about becoming a spiritual community that exists to discern and do the will of God.

Preparation and Process

One of the things I have learned in my own practice of corporate discernment, and also in working with others, is that the preparation is actually more important than the process. If leaders and communities of leaders are prepared at the levels put forth in this book, discernment will happen even without a process. Conversely, if leaders are not prepared on the levels described here, there is a good chance discernment won’t happen even when they engage the process; there are too many human dynamics that will get in the way. That’s why two-thirds of the book is about preparation and one-third is about the actual practice of leadership discernment. It is also why the book is designed to function on two levels at once—to create space for each person’s personal journey of transformation and growth in discernment, while at the same time providing guidance for the group process of leadership discernment. Thus, you will find questions for personal reflection throughout each chapter, indicated by a gray box; then, when you convene as a group, there is an exercise for processing and practicing together at the end of each chapter.

Becoming a community for discernment at the leadership level will not happen by accident because there are so many internal and external forces at work pulling us in other directions. What exactly is involved in shaping a group of leaders into a group who can together discern God’s will?

First, a leadership group needs to have a shared understanding of what discernment is, a shared conviction that discernment is the heart of spiritual leadership, and a shared affirmation that discerning and doing the will of God is how they intend to lead. This in itself is no small thing.

Often, when individuals are invited to serve as elders, deacons or board members in churches and organizations, the definition of spiritual leadership is assumed or (at best) it is very general, and the expectations for what that means are unclear and ill-defined. That is why it is important to take time to establish a biblical understanding and vision for discernment as the heart of spiritual leadership. This includes understanding what the inner obstacles to such an approach might be, which is the focus of chapter one. If you take time with this chapter, you can establish commitment to discernment as a group norm that will serve you well in the long run—far beyond your current leadership group. Even if your leadership group has rotating terms, the group identity, norms and expectations will have been clearly established so that those who rotate on know what they are joining and are shaped by that reality.

The rest of the book is structured in two parts: becoming a community for discernment, and exploring an actual practice for leadership discernment. Chapters one through three focus on the spiritual preparation of each individual leader. Chapters four through eight address the preparation of the leadership group as a community for discernment. And chapters nine to twelve describe the process of leadership discernment, giving you a chance to begin exploring it together.

To flesh out what the process of becoming a community for discernment looks like in the life of a group, I have included (starting in chapter two) the story of a group of leaders from Grace Church as a thread running throughout the book. The group itself is fictitious, and yet it is all true; everything that happens in the group is based on experiences I have had facilitating leaders from various churches and organizations in preparing for and practicing leadership discernment. This group discovers what we all have a chance to discover: that corporate discernment, like all spiritual disciplines, is a concrete practice that opens us to the surprising activity of God in our lives. And that, friends, is when leadership gets exciting!

A Word of Pastoral Concern

I know that leaders today are tired. Tired from within because their ministry leadership is often carried out in the context of schedules that are too full and barely sustainable. Tired from without because of the continual burden of responsibility and expectation others place on them, and which they accept. Tired from beyond because current models for ministry get them ramped up to do and be more than they can realistically do and be, and yet they are still trying.

This book is not meant to add to the exhaustion. Instead, it is meant to provide hope that there is a way of doing life in leadership that is not so complicated and heavy—a way of making decisions that does not have to rely on our own brilliance and ability to think hard, a way of being involved in God’s work that ends up being more about God’s work than our own. Discerning and doing the will of God together is that way.

So I invite you to relax. Read the book with your spiritual heart first, and start discerning now. Don’t let your first question be, Will this work in my setting? as though the particularities of your setting—your organizational structure, your church polity, your problems, your people—are the norm against which all reality is to be measured. Instead, ask, Is it good? Is there a sense of rightness to it? Does it draw me (and us) toward the good—toward God? If your group can agree on that much, the rest will come.

Yes, there will be some new steps to learn, some new things to practice. Feel free to do something before you do everything; pick the one thing you think you can do, and do it with all your heart. God faithfully comes into any bit of space we create for him, and pretty soon the one thing you do before you do everything leads to another thing and another, until you find that leadership is not the burden it once was. It is a dance in which God leads and you follow. It is a wave that God sends, and you ride it. It is the breath of God, and you are the feather that floats upon it. It is a wind of the Spirit that blows, and you lift your sail to catch it. It is a powerful current that is already flowing, and you are in that flow.

Part One Becoming a Community for

1 Learning to See

Most people do not see things as they are; rather, they see things as they are.

Richard Rohr

Several years ago I had Lasik surgery—a pretty big deal for someone who has worn glasses or contacts since fifth grade. I had heard about Lasik surgery for years and had thought of having it done, but it was expensive and I couldn’t really believe that it was as good as it sounded. Well, at some point I got tired of how complicated seeing had become for me, and I decided to do it. And guess what? It was as good as it sounded! I walked into the surgery center not being able to see without glasses or contacts, and I walked out being able to see everything with my own eyes. No glasses, no contacts, nothing. Whether it came at the hands of a skilled doctor or Jesus himself touching my eyes, it felt like a miracle to me. What an amazing feeling it was to be able to see in a way I had never seen before! “Once I was blind, but now I see” took on a whole new meaning.

The Trouble with Seeing

One of the miracles Jesus most commonly performed while he was on this earth was the healing of blind people. The reason this particular miracle was so common might have to do with the fact that it is a metaphor for the spiritual journey itself—the movement from spiritual blindness to spiritual sight. In fact, the spiritual journey can be understood as the movement from seeing God nowhere, or seeing God only where we expect to see him, to seeing God everywhere, especially where we least expect him.

Ignatius of Loyola, founder of the Jesuits and best known for developing a set of spiritual exercises intended to hone people’s capacity to see and respond to God in all of life, defined the aim of discernment as “finding God in all things in order that we might love and serve God in all” (emphasis added). Discernment is an ever-increasing capacity to “see” or discern the works of God in the midst of the human situation so that we can align ourselves with whatever it is that God is doing. Every Christian is called to this kind of discernment (Rom 12:2). It is a mark of Christian maturity (1 Jn 4:1), and it is also a spiritual gift with which some individuals in the body of Christ are particularly graced (1 Cor 12:10).

Discernment together as leaders takes us beyond the personal to an increasing capacity to “see” what God is up to in the place we are called to lead. It calls us to be courageous in seeking the will of God and then making decisions that are responsive to that will as it unfolds in front of us. There is a great deal of biblical precedent for discernment together as leaders. Acts 6:1-7 records a situation in which the apostles needed to discern God’s heart and mind regarding the complaints of a minority. Acts 15:19-20 describes a major decision involving doctrine and practice that needed to be discerned. Acts 21:10-14 records a situation in which an individual in the group (Paul) was contemplating a personal decision that would affect the leadership group he was a part of, and so he opened up that decision to a shared discernment process. All these passages recount situations in which believers in the New Testament church, through the presence of the Holy Spirit, discerned God’s will regarding important decisions; this, however, is not always as easy as it sounds.

John 9 records the account of a group of very religious people who were unable to recognize the work of God in their midst and thus missed the opportunity to be a part of what God was doing. In fact, the religious leaders were most guilty of thwarting and eventually dismissing the work of God taking place among them. In this particular story the bulk of the attention is given to the varying levels of spiritual blindness among those who witnessed the healing of a blind man. Everyone in this story saw the same man healed (or saw evidence of it), but all of them had difficulty recognizing and naming it as the work of God. What should have been a day of uproarious celebration for the healed man deteriorated into a day of controversy, debate, fear and expulsion. What prevented his family, friends and neighbors from recognizing and responding to the presence and activity of God in their midst is not all that different from what prevents us from seeing God’s work today.

Asking the Wrong Question

The story begins with really good news: Jesus saw the blind man, and being seen by Jesus opens up tremendous potential for healing. However, the story goes rapidly downhill from there because those who should have been seeing spiritual reality most clearly were the most blind and undiscerning. Sadly, those who were most “spiritual” were the ones who were most out of touch with God’s heart for this situation.

The disciples who were with Jesus saw the blind man too, but they used this man’s misfortune as an opportunity for theological and philosophical discussion. “Who sinned, this man or his parents?” There was no love, no compassion for this man’s situation, no concern for his well-being. Instead they turned him into an object lesson, reducing him to a specimen in order to satiate their own intellectual curiosity. They distanced themselves from the raw humanity of the situation and from their own calling as Christ followers to make a compassionate response. Instead of seeing this as an occasion to care for another human being and to wonder about the spiritual possibilities present in the situation, they added insult to injury by asking the blame question: Whose fault is it that this happened?

The disciples, for all of their closeness to Jesus, were caught in a kind of blindness that was more limiting and debilitating than physical blindness. It was a structural blindness embedded in the belief system they adhered to. The question they asked was shaped by their outdated religious beliefs and cultural superstitions—the commonly held assumption that human misfortune had to be someone’s fault. And it framed the situation so narrowly that it only allowed for two outcomes, neither of which was positive. Either the blind man sinned or his parents sinned. The only way they could have seen beyond these assumptions and their implications would have been to somehow stand outside the system and the limits of their shared way of thinking.

Jesus responded by saying (in effect), “You are asking the wrong question. Neither this man nor his parents sinned. That is an old way of seeing and interpreting reality, and has nothing to do with spiritual reality as it is unfolding right now. This man was born blind so the works of God could be revealed in and through his life.” This possibility hadn’t occurred to them because their systemic way of thinking had produced the wrong question in the first place. The right question, according to Jesus, was, What is God doing in this situation, and how can I get on board with it? Now that is a much better question. In fact, it is the best possible question in the face of the brokenness and impossibility of the human situation.

Jesus was not trying to sugarcoat the situation or to avoid dealing with the harsh realities of life. Yes, there is evil in the world. Yes, there is sin with all of its tragic consequences. Yes, there is a complex web of cause-and-effect relationships at work in the human experience. But what good does the blame question do? The real question is, What is God going to do with it? Jesus engaged the heartbreak and the complexity of the human situation by pointing out that such situations create the most amazing possibilities for God to be at work. He said, “Let’s learn how to notice that and then get involved.” Which is exactly what he did.

One of the first lessons we learn about discernment—from Jesus, anyway—is that it will always tend toward concrete expressions of love with real people rather than theoretical conversations about theology and philosophy. Such conversations are valuable only if they eventually lead us to more concrete expressions of love for the real people who are in need around us. If such conversations don’t move us toward concrete action in the world, we become the proverbial noisy gong and clashing symbol. The disciples’ blindness to the work of God in their midst is sobering because it demonstrates that even those who are closest to Jesus and on a serious spiritual journey can still miss things—especially if we are living and breathing the same cultural influences together.

Stuck in Old Paradigms

The blind man’s neighbors were the next group of people given the opportunity to recognize the work of God in their midst. They had seen the blind man every day and were intimate with the situation. Perhaps some of them were even friends of the family who had been there the day he was born and shared his parents’ grief when they discovered he was blind. They had pretty strong ideas about what the situation was and were stuck in their paradigms. A blind man who could now see—particularly this blind man, whom they knew so well—just did not fit what they were accustomed to seeing, so they couldn’t “see” it.

The neighbors were afflicted, as we all are, with cognitive filters that helped them categorize and make sense of reality. The problem of course is that these unconscious filters, developed over years of interacting with the situation in the same way, prevented them from seeing anything new or allowing any new data into their consciousness. They found ways to talk themselves out of this new possibility by questioning whether the healed man was their neighbor, even though the man himself was right there saying, “Hey, it’s me!” If the situation wasn’t so sad, it would be comical.

The neighbors’ predicament points out another difficulty we have with seeing: we only see what we are ready to see, expect to see and even desire to see. And we’re even more stuck when we are with others who share the same paradigms. How desperately we need practices, experiences and questions that help us get outside our paradigms so that we can see old realities in new ways!

Preserving the System at All Costs

By now the situation had gotten so confusing the neighbors didn’t even trust themselves; they brought the man to the Pharisees to seek help in making sense of it all. The Pharisees were the most committed followers of God in their day. Their job, which they took very seriously, was to uphold and restore a deeper piety and holiness to the Jewish people in the only way they knew how—through a meticulous observance of the law. The Pharisees were by-the-book people. They were determined to be right. But, as I once heard Dallas Willard say, “It is hard to be right and not hurt anyone with it!”

On the day of the blind man’s healing the Pharisees had only one concern: the preservation of the religious system (as represented by the issue of sabbath keeping) and their place of power within it. As long as the system remained clearly defined and everyone was functioning according to its rules and expectations, they remained safe and in control.

The religious system also afforded them an easy, straightforward way of evaluating themselves and others—by the externals of laws and rituals, religious beliefs and loyalty to the powers that be. Their strict adherence to this way of evaluating people made them judgmental and uncaring in the way they wielded the power of their position. The Pharisees did not hesitate to use their power to intimidate, exploit and exclude those who didn’t toe the line wherever they chose to draw it. So on this most amazing day not one of them jumped up and gave the blind man a high five. Not one of them said, “How exciting for you!” No one was the least bit curious about what it was like to be able to see for the first time ever. No one asked to hear the details. Instead, they fought, and they fought hard, to preserve the system and to dismiss anything that threatened the system the way they understood it.

Getting caught up in preserving the system gave them a convenient way to avoid dealing with who Jesus was, the miracle he had performed and the fresh wind of the Spirit of God that was blowing among them. The Pharisees used the issue of sabbath keeping as a smoke screen to prevent them from facing the ways that Jesus’ presence was messing with their system. Jesus clearly brought a different kind of authority than they had, and he was responding to a different set of priorities. In a desperate attempt to regain control of the situation, they attacked Jesus’ character as a way of dismissing him; no matter how hard they tried, they couldn’t get the healed man to back down from his story or to parrot the party line.

Afraid of the Ramifications

By now the interest of the whole community was piqued. The religious authorities refused to believe that a blind man had actually received sight, so they called in his parents for an “interview.” But the parents knew better. They knew this was really an interrogation and that those asking the questions were not really seeking the truth. The whole community was colluding now to protect the status quo and to avoid having to confront what was beyond the limits of their own knowledge and experience.

The healed man’s parents were common folk, the defenseless poor who were simply trying to survive in a religious system that was oppressive, punishing and at times even exploitive. When the Pharisees called them to testify about what had taken place, they were afraid, and rightly so. They had seen and they knew what was real, but they were afraid to answer truthfully for fear of punishment and expulsion from the spiritual community that was their very lifeblood. So when the Pharisees asked, “Is this your son, who you say was born blind? How then does he see?” they said, “Yes, he is our son. Yes, he was born blind. But how is it that he now sees? We can’t answer that on grounds that might incriminate us. Ask him; he is of age. He will speak for himself.”

The parents’ fear was not a figment of overactive imaginations; they answered this way “because the Jews had already agreed that anyone who confessed Jesus to be the Messiah would be put out of the synagogue” (Jn 9:22). They knew that even though the Pharisees acted like they were asking a real question and seeking the truth, they were really just setting a trap. They had already decided who Jesus was—and who he wasn’t. They had already agreed on the limits of what they were willing to see and know. Anyone who challenged what they already thought they knew would be put out. They did not want to be bothered with the facts, which left the parents needing to tap dance around the truth as best they could. On a day that should have been one of the happiest of their lives, they were afraid to name and celebrate the work of God in their family.

This is how paradigms, systems of thought, rigidly held categories and unquestioning loyalty to systems function. On the one hand, they help make sense of our lives so that we can function. But on the other hand, they have a powerful tendency to filter out any new information—including anything new God might be doing. They can filter out God himself!

A Tale of Two Journeys

Meanwhile, the healed man was having his own experience. He was on a journey from blindness to sight on multiple levels. The healing of his physical sight happened in a moment, but the real journey—the journey from spiritual blindness to spiritual sight—gradually unfolded in the story. While everyone around him was asking all the wrong questions, arguing, posturing, maneuvering and trying to trip each other up, the healed man was on a journey of increasing spiritual insight into who Jesus really is. The light of the world was dawning in the man’s heart:

Early in the story he calls Jesus a “man” (v. 11).Then he calls him a “prophet” (v. 17).Then a “man . . . from God” (v. 33).Then Jesus calls himself the Son of Man (v. 35) and the blind man makes a full confession of faith, saying “‘Lord, I believe.’ And he worshiped him” (v. 38).

Now that’s a good journey! The only problem is that it gets him thrown out of the religious community because the religious leaders were not on the same journey; they were moving in the opposite direction, descending further and further into spiritual darkness. Afraid to face their own inner darkness, their spiritual powerlessness, their lack of true knowing, they remained firmly entrenched in the outer darkness of their religious system. They neither recognized nor were ready to welcome the light of the world shining in their midst. Infuriated by a situation they could not control, they drove the blind man out.

The power to “drive someone out”—to dismiss, to denigrate and undermine what a person brings, in one way or another—is a power that we as leaders have. We can use that power irresponsibly when we are faced with truth that is unpleasant, inconvenient or challenges us in some way. Because of our place in the system, we can shut someone down or drive a person out without even being conscious of what we are doing or why we are doing it. Even if we are conscious of what we are doing, we can come up with ways to rationalize it—which the Pharisees probably did. We can even surround ourselves with those who are blind in the same ways we are, so we get caught up in the power of groupthink and cannot see things differently. When groupthink takes over in a leadership setting, we all miss the work of God. But since we have done it together, we have no idea that we missed it and might even congratulate ourselves on our excellent leadership!

It is easier to belong to a group than to belong to God. . . . Group-think is a substitute for God-think—[it is] the belief that God is found only by our group. The next step is to establish that identification with our group as the only way to serve God.

Richard Rohr, Everything Belongs

The healed man in this story, however, stays quietly faithful to his own spiritual journey. He is learning that there is a powerful difference between belonging to a group and belonging to God. It is easier to try to fit in with the group than to be true to what you know. When we have encountered Christ’s healing presence in ways that do not fit existing paradigms, we might find ourselves on the outside. That’s the bad news.

Making Sense of It All

The good news is that even though the healed man lost his place in the group, he found Jesus—or to be more accurate, Jesus found him—which is one of the most beautiful parts of the story. When Jesus heard that the Jews had driven him out of their community, he went to find the man. This was a great kindness because even though this man had been given the gift of restored sight, his good fortune and his spiritual clarity had now isolated him. He needed to understand what had happened and where he stood in relation to the community he had been a part of all his life. He needed to understand why, on this miraculous day, he found himself outside the religious community for being honest about what had happened to him.

While finding oneself on the outside can be traumatic at first, the healed man discovered it can also be a place of encounter. Away from the soul-numbing clamor of the religious community and all the ways they wanted to interpret and manipulate his experience, the healed man was finally able to reflect on all that had happened to him. He was able to touch the ground of his being, name the truth of his own encounter with Jesus and clarify what it meant to him. And Jesus, who knew what an unsettling day it had been, was there to help him piece it all together and take him the rest of the way on his journey toward full faith. In fact, Jesus seemed to think that those who have been expelled in this way actually have a head start in understanding his message because they had been expelled from what was unreal anyway.[1]

“Do you believe in the Son of Man?” Jesus gently asked.

“And who is he, sir? Tell me, so that I may believe in him.”

“You have seen him (such good news!), and the one speaking with you is he.”

After such a long and wearying day, and after waiting so long for a place to rest his soul, the healed man simply and finally gave himself over to his deepest knowing. “‘Lord, I believe.’ And he worshiped him.”

Then Jesus gave him one more gift—helping him to further interpret the events of this day. He said, “I have come into this world to give sight to the blind and to make blind those who see.” It was pretty clear that the healed man was in the first category, but the Pharisees were more than a little concerned about where Jesus’ comment put them in the whole scheme of things. “Surely we are not blind, are we?” To which Jesus replied, “You know, it would be better for you if you were. If you were blind, you would not have sin. But now that you say, ‘We see,’ your sin remains.”