Endurance

In the biblical vision, those who seek wholeness do not flee the pain that comes upon them. They endure…Those who endure draw their capacity to endure from two primary sources: the community of faith and the living God in whom they ground their life.
-- Steve Doughty, To Walk in Integrity

Transformational Church

Is it any wonder then that people live in a state of confusion over the identity and calling of the church? Loren Mead says that the church today exists within a context of ambiguity. The culture is a mixture of openness, indifference, confusion, and hostility toward the church. It is my experience that most people enter the church not knowing just what the church is and its purpose—its identity and calling—or the notion they have is misinformed. That we live in an age of ambiguous cultural perceptions toward the church within a reality of religious pluralism means that the church has to work very hard at being clear about its own witness to the world.

The task of a transformational church in a consumer culture is to assist people to discover their gifts, assume greater ownership of the congregation’s life and mission, and do what works for them. Discipleship is not to exhaust people or fragment families because they spend too much time doing “church work.” Discipleship is putting one’s passions to work in ways that promote wellness and wholeness in the whole of life and in all arenas, in the church and the world, for the sake of Jesus. From the days of the infant church until now, the baptized live in the world among all walks of life.
--Rick Barger, A New and Right Spirit

Walk with Integrity

Those who walk with integrity heed the call to repentance. Their longing for wholeness will not let them do anything else. They know their own weaknesses. They understand that even if they have committed themselves to an upright life, the old capacities for lust, greed, sloth, and pride remain. Their honest humility is in no small part born of knowing that they, like all others, have fallen short of the glory of God and, no doubt, will continue to do so.

Those who walk in integrity act with humility. In the midst of crisis, the completeness that speaks through their lives sounds a very different tone in our world than the arrogant boast, the power-asserting threat, and the proud claim to absolute righteousness.

To act with humility is in no way to cower or to hold back. Indeed, when it comes to acting on difficult issues, the humble often become the boldest. Knowing their limitations, they stand free of any need to pretend to be more than they are. Knowing their finite place in relation to the One who reaches toward all, they open to God and others in a way that pride will never allow.

--Steve Doughty, To Walk in Integrity