Thursday, March 25, 2010

Forgotten Ways V

Tuesday I had the joy of sharing with our Residency (clergy in the commissioned process working toward ordination as a deacon or elder) group. I spoke on the topic of Rediscovering Apostolic Witness. My thesis is a farily simple one. Lay people assume clergy know how to share their faith. Clergy by in large don't and are often resistive to even doing so. I found the group both stimulating and exciting. They were all over the board on faith sharing; some wonderfuly active, others covertly opposed. Such witnessing is one of the crucial forgotten ways we must recover. The hunger which Hirsch (and others) write about is a direct hunger to experiece the lving Lord. People want to do more than know about God. They want to know God! In The Forgotten Ways HIrsch reaches to the heart of Apostlic Genius with this observation: "All geniune Christian movements involve at their spiritual ground zero a living encounter with the One True God 'through whom all things came and through whom we live' (I Cor. 8:6). A God who in the very moment of redeeming us claims us as his own through Jesus our Savior." (p.84) My hunch is that the popularity of such songs as "In Christ Alone" comes from their ability to help us embrace the real presence of the living Lord. Ultimately this hunger calls us into worship and leads us to the cross and beyond. Recovering apostolic witnessing is about sharing such an experience with gracefilled (and gracefull) effusive joy. It is an Easter experience.