faith & deliberation initiative
a formation project
What would the world look like if our churches came alive?
And became the peacemakers and bridge builders that Jesus dreamed we might become?
What this looks like in our world today is a beatitude-shaped life of peacemaking by building civic capacity within our communities and becoming hubs of civil discourse, discipleship, discernment, and deliberation.
In a world of conflict, divisiveness, and fragmentation, we are called to be healers, weavers, and bridge builders.
Our world teaches us to weaponize our words and go to war with our communication. In contrast, both Jesus and Paul teach us to build bridges of peace by disarming our weaponized words of war. Both Jesus and Paul teach us to discern and deliberate carefully with each other as a part of our discipleship together. Both Jesus and Paul teach us that our communication is a spiritual practice. As Paul says, if our communication is not infused with love and compassion, then it’s just noise – a banging gong or a clanging cymbal (1 Cor. 13).
The goal of the Faith & Deliberation Initiative is to explore innovative and strategic ways to approach discipleship in more deliberative, dialogical, conversational, and relational ways through trustworthy processes. Because discipleship is a process.
And, as we already know, a main piece of discipleship is expanding our vision and understanding of who belongs within the love of God. How do we reach out to others and share the good news of that love? To do this, we must first ask ourselves this question, “How can we love our neighbors and share the good news if we don’t know how to get to know our neighbors?” How can we communicate our good news and God’s love for our neighbors if we don’t know how to share in meaningful dialogue and conversations with those around us?
How do we transform our churches into Living and Learning Communities as we live and learn into the shape of Jesus’s life and teachings…together?
This is a question of how we approach our neighbors, and how we approach and communicate with our neighbors (and enemies) was something Jesus cared about very deeply. We do not often frame Jesus’s teachings in this way, but he is often teaching us about how to communicate with one another and with God in more meaningful ways. He is asking us to learn to love beyond our comfort zones and to communicate compassionately with “those people over there” who usually make us uncomfortable.
And so, we are called to deliberate with one another. We are invited to begin changing the world…one conversation at a time.
Formation 