Hier ein paar sehr inspirierende Zitate aus Doug Pagitt´s 'Church re-imagined. The spiritual formation of people in communities of faith' (und hier gibt´s noch einen Ausschnitt aus dem Buch auf Deutsch):
"One notion we are seeking to re-imagine is the whole concept of spiritual formation - how people become
Christian and live in faith. In the 19th century it was believed that the most
effective way to deepen a person´s spiritual life was to increase her knowledge about God. People behaved -
and still behave - as though the spiritual part of a person is a separate
component that can be worked on and developed in isolation from the rest of the
person. [...]
Our efforts are built upon the
assumption that we are able to imagine and create something of greater beauty
and usefulness if we move away from
speaking of spiritual life in dualistic tones, as if the spiritual part of
person is a separate component that can be worked on and developed in isolation
from the rest of the person. We are
working with a view of spiritual formation in which we forget about working on
a part of a person's life and instead work with people as if there is no
distinction between the spiritual emotional, physical, social, professional,
and private aspects of life."
"The question that haunts me is
not, "Do people like our church?" but "Is there any real
formation happening?" Two decades from now, will our efforts at human
formation show a contribution to the lives we have led for the past 20 years? Will
they have helped us live as blessings to
the world, or will we simply living the kind of self-absorbed
"personal" Christian lives that are so common today?"
"We feel called to vulnerability. [...] We are trying to open our
lives up in such a way that others do not simply keep us on track, but become
actual agents of redemption and change."
"What was the Good News Jesus was referring to all those years
before his death, burial, and resurrection? Could it be that the Good News
Jesus talked about was less a call to
believe in the things that happened to him or would happen to and through him
than an invitation into Kingdom life?" (34f)
"At
the same time, it is inspiring and even life-giving to imagine an approach to
spiritual formation that can impact us in a pervasive, deeply life-altering
way. At Solomon's Porch we are seeking a spiritual formation that, in its
essence, is not about individual effort
but communal action involving a spirituality of physicality, centered on
the way we lead our lives, allowing us to be Christian in and with our bodies
and not in our minds and hearts only; a
spirituality of dialog within communities where the goal is not acquiring
knowledge, but spurring one another on to new ways of imagining and learning; a spirituality of hospitality that is
not limited to food before or after meetings, but is intended to create an
environment of love and connectedness where people are formed and shaped as they
serve and are served by one another; a
spirituality of the knowledge of God where the Bible is not reduced to a
book from which we extract truth, but the Bible is a full, living, and active
member of our community that is listened to on all topics of which it speaks; a spirituality of creativity where
creative gifts are not used as content support but rather as an invitation for
those so inclined to participate in the generative processes of God; a spirituality of service, which is the
natural response of all seeking to live in the way of Jesus and is not reserved
for the elite of the faith."
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