Journeying Out - 02: Community Ministry

I am not sure how you relate to my former blog about this book. When I read it back it doesn't look all to coherent to me. I apologise! Hopefully this excerpt will be easier to read!

In the second chapter of this book Morisy focusses on the necessity of honest thinking and reflection. Going into the ‘Adaptive Zone’ head over heels could risk betraying the primary task of the Church: that of helping people to discover the scope of relationship with God through Jesus. (Morisy, 2004:23)

It is interesting and also stimulating to read her ideas about changing the focus of mission from ‘needs meeting’ to the way Jesus did mission in a coaching kind of way.

The radical, missionary activity of the Church cannot, like liberal, secular, social policy, aim at the transformation of the poor. In the new adaptive zone we have entered, the aim must be the transformation of the secure, the well-meaning and the well-endowed of this world. The processes that Jesus teaches and demonstrates invest potential in the most unlikely, not in the well resourced. Focussing on ‘needs meeting’ is at odds with the coaching and urging that we receive from Jesus to take seriously the reality of Gospel reversals. The ways of Jesus are not the ways of the world, but they are not a fairy story either. Gospel reversal are to be taken seriously. The challenge is to have the imagination, trust, expectation and capacity to facilitate situations where the upside-down nature of God’s kingdom can prosper. (Morisy, 2004:28)

Another really important aspect of this chapter is the idea of ‘grace cascades’. If you help others in this way it reflects on a lot of people. The grace that fuels and comes from helping others reflect on the people that are involved with helping, but also the ones that are helped. By changing lives, the lives changed can change others.

I believe on the other hand that the opposite of grace has its own cascade, that might be even more influential sometimes. We can battle this ‘curse’ crusade effectively by focussing in our mission on Jesus. He was in the business of turning people and ideas upside down and by that developing a relationship with them. He did not focus on the things that were wrong, but he replaced them by stories of grace. An example that I want to follow wholeheartedly.


Bibliography
MORISY, A. (2004) Journeying Out, Harrisburg, Morehouse.

Journeying Out - 01: Entering an Adaptive Zone

Last week this book arrived and I am almost half way through now. It occurred to me that it might be interesting to write a blog for every chapter. So here is the first one!

Holistic mission
In the first chapter Morisy focusses on the explanation of the subject of holistic mission, using one of the most influential books written about this subject: Transforming mission by David Bosch. Since this book came out social action gradually came back into the hearts of christians as being an integral part in ‘spreading the Gospel’

Ann Morisy also emphasises on the radically different approach that Jesus had with regards to mission: Jesus focusses not just on the poor, but even on the poor that in our human understanding deserve to be poor! When Jesus teaches us about ‘blessed are the poor’ in the Beautitudes He uses the word ‘ptochos’, the word for the poor that are not respectable.

The lesson we have learned over the last twenty years is that obedience to Jesus begins in relation to the poor and marginalized. (Morisy, 2004:8)

Obliquity
An interesting idea that the writer poses is that we should not focus on mission but on the journey out into the “Adaptive Zone”, the area where the church meets the ‘other’.

Effective mission is not achieved by giving it focal awareness. Effective mission is a fruit - a gracious outcome of other factors working effectively and appropriately. This upends all our habits and assumptions. It means that effective mission is something that emerges as a result of looking and journeying outward rather than by means of a self-conscious and self-regarding process. (Morisy, 2004:17)

Bibliography
BOSCH, D. J. (1991) Transforming mission : paradigm shifts in theology of mission, Maryknoll, N.Y., Orbis Books.
MORISY, A. (2004) Journeying Out, Harrisburg, Morehouse.