4 weeks in

Time is flowing far too quickly.

After our week on justice, Chris Whitler stayed with us for a week and shared his experience with Evangelism. The stigma this word carries left me unsure of what to expect. The way Chris approached sharing the gospel was refreshing and beautiful. We talked mainly about what the gospel is, reaching back through time to view the earlier parts of the story. We spent a full day discussing and exploring the covenant God made with Abraham. That he would bless him and bless all nations through him essentially. Chris painted this as the foundation that all evangelism must rely on. We watched a video called cosmic voyage which takes you on a journey from the inner workings of an atom to the furthest reaches of space. Even with the outdated effects, the serene voice of Morgan Freeman blows your mind as he narrarates the complexity of this design we exist within and exists within us. We touched on the ways that evangelism is perceived and dialogued about the face value methods which have been used in the past and are still being used today. Essentially, Chris described the purest and most authentic evangelism as living in the tension between relationship and intentionality. He was careful to use the word tension as opposed to balance because nothing is balanced when it comes to this kind of stuff. In that tension, Chris thought that constant prayer was fundamental. Just being present with people and engaging in relationship without an agenda was the message of it all. Throwing out our ideas of what people must become, and simply relating to them as fellow broken broken people, while not shying away from sharing our whole self, which of course includes our believing that the spirit of the living God indwells us and is our life. If we truly believe this, it will come up pretty quickly when in genuine relationship.The idea that love begets love and Gods relationship with us is a circle of love eager to invite more dancers is one of the ways he described it all. Chris was a joyful and hilarious man that I will not soon forget.
This past week, we had Jamie Arpin-Ricci, who is married to the director, speak about Missional Community, or as he puts it, the Community of the Gospel. One of the first things he said in lecture was "Unless truth is an expression that transforms our lives, it is not the fullness of truth". These seperations between intellectual consent and how we spend our hours have built many walls between Christians and the fullness of life. I have been heavily influenced by these illusory seperations, and it is wonderful to feel the poison beginning to leave my thought processes and ideals. Jamie said so many elightening things about community and the gospel, I am finding it hard to pick and choose what to share with you, my friends and family. One thing that hit me was the idea that not being racist is not enough. An active embrace and recognition of the necessity of diversity is the standard set for us by our gospel. This applies to more than just racism of course, however, I found it an impactful example for myself. The root of this ideal goes into the nature of sin. Sin, it its original form, simply meant missing the mark. An illustration of archery was used by Jamie to express the idea that, often, Christianity has exhausted itself instructing people to not do things. Don't hit the tree, don't hit the seagull, don't hit the squirrell, in contrast to the freedom of the true gospel which directs people towards the mark that we are missing. Moving from condemnation into conviction was how Mister Ricci put it. We walked through a pattern that repeats itself through out the gospel, and dug deep into its rhythms. It goes something like this...Hidden nakedness, The cross, The tomb, The resurrection, Pentecost. As we talked of hidden nakedness, we compared jumping behind a bush with the metaphorical masks we choose from. These masks cause a pseudo community, as Jamie puts it, built on pretenses that are simply not true. Nobody really knows how broken we are, and evil has a myriad of ways to shape you. In darkness he dwells, and false pretenses inevitable cast shadows over our true being. This hiddenness is based on conflict avoidance among other things. As we ignore differences and conform to false pretenses, it allows for generalizations and individualism to find a home, working against the interdependance and diversity of a Body. The rest of the parts of this pattern were equally insightful, and made it clear that community does not just become a resurrected state without the painful vulnerability, mutuality, and commitment that make up the process. We were given a project yesterday, which is to engage in all of those steps as a community, and than as pentecost (metaphorically speaking), to design a project where we can be an incarnational body expressing our individual gifts to love people. Very open project, and I am excited to see what comes of it. Yesterday, us students decided to start by sharing our stories and our struggles from the past and present, which opened people up as we began to realize how broken everybody really is. It was a big step for our community, and we are going to try and honor eachothers vulnerabilty, as it is a very fragile thing to be.
I am really enjoying my time here so far. There is a good amount of free time which I have spent reading, doing my mandatory journal (which is alot of fun), forming friendships with people outside of the DTS, and just unwinding, usually with music in the air. God is good, and blessing me in many ways. I hope you can see how he is blessing you as well!
Feel free to write me if you wanna chat about anything I mentioned here, or anything in general.
Adios Amigos