Over the next several weeks we’ll be reflecting on how congregations and other ministry contexts serve as spaces of trust-building, mending social fabric, and faith formation that joins people in hope across difference.
Here, I want to consider for a moment what an expression of prophetic witness might look like in our age of enmity and mistrust.
More relationship, less being “right.”
More spiritual formation, less weaponized information.
More freedom in the Spirit, less fear of the powers and principalities.
More epistemological humility, less ideological puritanism.
More leveraging where we’re on the “edge of inside,” less in or out, insider vs outsider.
More telling our stories honestly, less assuming the story of “those people.”
More I’m sorry, less I’m certain.
Less “this is how it is,” more “I need the perspective of others.”
More conviction and faithful compromise, less false equivalence and avoidance.
More restorative justice, less justifying oneself.
More contemplative activism, less wielding the sword.
More fellowship in suffering, less empty posturing.
Less “us and them,” more “it’s possible I’m wrong.”
More listening for common ground, less pouncing on perceived weakness.
More courage to change our minds, less dishonestly doubling down.
More empathy, less distancing.
More beholding oneself in the other, less “othering.”
More “I don’t know,” less “eye for an eye.”
More presence in the discomfort, less reinforcing bias from afar.
More dialectic, less ideology.
More living in holy tension, less looking through an “either/or” lens.
More faith working through love, less fear working through labeling and lashing out.
More vulnerability, less retreating to our tribes.
More grace, less law.
The way is the way of humility, of bearing a cross, not the way of domination or winning. Truth is a person, not a weapon. And life is more abundant and beautifully complex than we dare admit. True koinonia is messy as hell; let’s give it a shot anyway. What else is there?
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