Journey Class ~ 4 ~ Transformation & Life in the Spirit

In our class in week 4 we focused our attention on how transformation happens in our lives through the abiding presence of the life-giving Spirit. We spent some time reflecting on the focus of transformation. We used Scot McKnight's imagery of transformation being the process of being restored from broken eikons to whole eikons.

As we explored the Scriptures we came to realize that transformation into the likeness of Jesus happens in the presence of three factors ~ human effort, the power of the Holy Spirit, in the context of community. Taking away any of these three factors and we miss transformation.

We also took time to explore the Classical Christian understanding of steps on this journey of transformation ~ Awakening, Purgation, Illumination, and Union. We concluded with this quote from Adele Calhoun, "Spiritual practices exist to open us into God. They are never the "be all and end all" of discipleship. The "be all and end all" is a loving trust of and obedience to the God who is within us yet beyond us and our very best efforts."

Journey Class ~ 3 ~ The Gospel and Transformation

In Mark 13:10, Jesus said "The gospel must first be preached to all nations." Whatever, the Gospel is, apparently it is so important that it must be announced to all people groups before the Kingdom will be established in its fullness. If the Gospel/Good News is this important to Jesus, then it is worth our time to find out what the good news was that he was bringing.

We spent time in Class 3 looking at the ways we commonly define or describe the Gospel. To that end, we looked at what Dallas Willard calls 'The Gospel of Sin Management,' and how that myopic view of the Gospel leaves us with an incomplete understanding of what Jesus was doing as he announced the arrival of the Kingdom of God.

In contrast to the Gospel of Sin Management, we read these words from Jesus in Luke 4:43. "I must preach the good news [gospel] of the kingdom of God to the other towns also, because that is why I was sent." The Gospel of the Kingdom was Jesus' message which speaks good news into the situation in which we find ourselves - a life of fractured relationships with God, Self, Others, and the World.

We concluded our class by asking this question: "What part does transformation play in the Gospel?" to that end we looked at Jesus call to become his disciples, to be born again, to become lovers of God and people, to be renewed as image bearers, and to live lives in union with God ~ Father, Son and Spirit.

As we conluded our time together, we came away with a realization that the Gospel which Jesus announced is so much more than simply where we go when we die. While that is certainly a good question, it is not the sum of the Gospel.

The late Robert Webber wrote in his book Ancient-Future Faith, "When I discovered the universal and cosmic nature of Christ, I was given a key to a Christian way of viewing the whole world, a key that unlocked the door to a rich storehouse of spiritual treasures." I believe that today we were issued our key!

Journey Class ~ 2 ~ The Mission of God and Gospel

We laid a foundation for the remaining classes with our topic for class 2. We spent time reflecting on this question, "What is God doing in our world?" We really covered a lot of Biblical material in this class - beginning with God's good creative work in Genesis 1 & 2 and wrapping up with a sneek peak of a restored creation in Revelation 21 & 22.

I left our group with a question to answer during the week. "What is the Gospel?"

The sheer volume of the material in Class 2 left our heads swimming, but in those feelings of being overwhelmed we interestingly found new space to reimagine the Mission of God in our world. It can be a challenge to pry open spaces in our thinking in order to create incubators for new life to be born - and that was the challenge of Class 2.