Does anyone leading in the emerging church world have first-hand experience of extended time out from leading community?
I guess in the inherited church paradigm, you just keep leading until retirement, punctuated by three-month paid sabbaticals which are taken as study leave; or, you leave leadership entirely, as a result of burn-out or disillusionment...
We didn't step down from leading community for either of those reasons, but because we felt that was what God was leading us to do at the time. Leading community is the call on our lives, so I know we'll be leading communities again in the future; though they may well be very different from the communities we've led in the past. But for now, we aren't. Again, under the inherited church paradigm, I guess that makes me a theorist as opposed to a practitioner right now; but I think I am a practitioner - just that what I am practicing at the moment is, essentially, the Sabbath Year. But I've not been here before...
Any insights?!
I worked in an inherited church for a number of years. Eventually a time came that I needed to move on. (no hard feelings) So I left professional ministry to start a house church experiment. That lasted for about 18 months and was an awesome experience. Now I am working in a 10 year old church that is somewhere in between hi-modern and emergent and wrestling with that paradigm.
ReplyDeleteI guess I have just felt that I will always be using my skillset in community but the practics of what that looks like aren't all that important to me. Whether it was 8 friends meeting in my house or the several hundred in my community now.