Learning from life

This blog is bi-lingual; it has a twin in Spanish. Most of the time I write in English and translate to Spanish (Yes Google is a part of it *blush*) But this time I did the other way around because I wanted to describe a tool we’re using in our work. It’s called the Circle, and is a part of the Lifeshapes developed in an Anglican church in England and now spread over the world. More info on www.weare3d.com.

There are excellent summaries of the Circle on-line so I’ll be brief. It’s basically a learning circle, like Kolb’s, which has been cross-pollinated with the notion of discipleship in the teaching of Jesus. A disciple was of course a learner, and the Circle is a tool to keep us learning from the things that happens in our life.

The process has two sides; I often use the parable of the two houses in Matt 7 to illustrate them. One person hears the message of Jesus and acts on it, and gets a stable life; another hears but does not act and have fragile life, basically. One side is called Repentance, because it’s most often about changing direction or thinking. The basic question on this side is “What is God saying to me thru this?” 

The first side has three steps: Observe, which basically means realizing that something special happened; Reflect where we ask what this means for me, pray, think and listen; and the third, Discuss, where we check what others can contribute with.

When we feel like we sense what’s the message we can move over to the left side where the first step is Plan. We need something concrete to do as a response. Easy and preferably just one thing. Because we so easily fool ourselves we need to make ourselves accountable to someone that can ask us the question “How’s it going?” And finally, the cruncher, Act. To do what we planned.

If we go through the whole Circle our lives will change a little according to will of God. If we do it regularly it will change a lot :-)

We realize that to keep the dynamic part of our relationship to God we need to keep on learning, changing and listening. The Circle helps us with that. Nothing new really, just an easy form. It actually coincides with the first chapters in the material we already use for new Christians.

Together before going out

I am blessed with a wonderful wife, who very often see things that I don't. We were praying the other day and I was thinking about how to relate more to the people around us in the town. So far we have been working mostly with the people in the church, some that used to be in the church and their friends. I don't want to get stuck there, and it's easy to do that. Especially I'm interested in the Catholicism here and how to relate to it. No doubt subject for another post.

As we were talking however my wife cautioned me saying that "we need somewhere to bring people to". That somewhere doesn't have to be a building or meetings, but more like an environment, relationships, a community. Being married for over 20 years I recognized the wisdom.

Today I bumped into this blogpost where Ben Sternke argues for "centralization-before-decentralization". He writes: "Discipleship is the “intense centralization” process that happens before the “decentralization” of mission. Discipleship is where the core values are hammered out, where people are socialized into a new way of life before being “turned loose” to join Jesus in the renewal of all things."
 
That is probably where we're at. We have to build more internal first, disciple as it were. Especially here where the system hasn't really been geared for mission and growth, more for attendance.

The challenge is that often we teach and preach about these things, we give information, but that rarely changes peoples lives. I'm doing a course with 3DM and the have a illustration of this:

The point is that information must be followed by imitation, practice with someone, before we get a life that reaches other lives. And that's the challenge folks, living a life worth imitating and sharing that.