2025-04-01 - Forum 5 - Discernment
Post by Monday, March 31 what you are comfortable in sharing with your colleagues about your Discernment Question and the process you engaged in utilizing a Liebert book. What was challenging? What proved helpful? Where are you now in relation to your discernment question? What have you learned about discernment?
Origianl Discernment Questions: “how can we, as a local church, be generous without expectation of return, but also inviting others into relationship with God and our local church?” Current Discernemtn Question: What abilities and skills do I have to provide a safe space for others to experience a relationship with God?
What Was Challenging?
The most challenging aspects of these exercises is trusting the process of exploration and growth. With each of the exercises, there seem to be endless questions that, when allowed, will force me to engage with my own thought processes. While most of the exercises are communal, I often found myself reflecting and going through individually, despite our pastoral staff being deeply committed to the presence of God in our gathering and meeting times. By that I mean, just as most of the exercises form Liebert start with acknowleding the presence of God.
But out of those reflections has come formation and further discernment with my colleagues. It has shaped the way I engage with topics and the neighborhood around me. This is a struggle at first because it feels like I already had what I thought the question was, but digging deeper I have to look at the actions I can take in any situation to create a space for people to experience God. So the question isn’t then how do we as a church accomplish that, it’s how do I as an individual and a leader accomplish that in a way that others want to follow.
Finally, to be practical, putting these thoughts into words or writings that make sense to those around me can be somewhat challenging. Thankfully my friend is committed to these types of questions and formations, so there is some equal ground there, but to be able to convey that to other people required much more distinction in thought than simply my feelings.
What Has Proved Helpful?
Though I said that it seemed like there were too many questions in the last section, it has been very helpful to have a format and structure to follow when thinking about these topics. As an individual it helps to keep me focused, as a community the same is true, and it also lends itself to something worth trying because someone has already written about the benefits.
Focusing each listening session to the presence of God is one of those things that I think I would say I do regularly, but to see it written down as an intentional first step was helpful.
Permission to allow the process to take a wihle has been helpful as well.
What Have I learned about Discernment?
Discernment is hardwork sometimes. It’s hard in that there are rarely any quick answers, hard because I think I know better sometimes, and hard because it may actually cause me to act. Also, discernment is time consuming, or rather, it can take much time. That can be from even finding the right question all the way to recognizning God in the situation to which I am pondering. Finally, and I’ve always known this but these exercises reaffirm it, discernemnt is better in community. Being able to share out loud my thoughts, hear them back as they are conveyed and heard, and then being asked to go deeper will always be more beneficial than simply writing things in a book.