Each of us needs to be understood and supported through the pain of life. Equal participation is particularly important in sharing and support. Each mission group has adopted structures that allow each participant part of the available time to share their life experience with the mission group. There is normally some time at each meeting to share from recent experience. Many groups schedule longer meetings (weekend retreats or half days during the weekend) to give them more time to share their stories and build the bonds of community. The moderator must be sensitive to each participant's need to share, and provide time for all.
The life of commitment to Christ is neither simple nor free of pain. Why should we expect a comfortable, trouble-free life, living as Christians in this time in history? As Dr. Stanley Hauerwas, Professor of theological Ethics at the Divinity School, Duke University, suggested in an interview in The Wittenburg Door:
Life is not about freedom... Christians are called to faithfulness and obedience so we can be free from the tyranny of those who would enslave us in the name of freedom. Salvation isn't what liberals or conservatives in this country think it is. It's about getting my life straight. It's not about ultimate significance. Salvation is about an adventure that was made possible through the death and resurrection of Jesus of Nazareth, through which I am made part of a community who tell me who I am. You are not free to make up your life as a Christian. Your life is not like a gift, your life is gift. That is a very important grammatical point. Until you receive your life gift, you are lost.
In Seekers, the mission group is a primary place to deal with the choice of commitment over freedom.
We believe that a mission group is the place within the community where we are most intimately known. In order to be open and vulnerable to each other within the mission group it is essential that each participant have the assurance that, when something sensitive is shared in the group it remains there. Members of the mission group agree that each participant's story remains hers or his, to share as desired with others.
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