Dar­ing to Fol­low the Spirit’s Lead

From the Renovaré Newsletter Archive

The selection below is from a May 2005 Renovaré newsletter. Download a PDF of the original newsletter.

Dear Friends,

What is the future for Ren­o­varé? An excel­lent ques­tion and I’d like for you and I to think about it togeth­er in this pas­toral let­ter. Of course, the most true and hon­est answer we can give to such a pen­e­trat­ing ques­tion is, ​“We real­ly don’t know!” No one knows, save God alone. We do our best think­ing and plan­ning. We study the cur­rents of con­tem­po­rary cul­ture and con­sid­er how we ought to respond and what we might do to nur­ture a more life-giv­ing soci­ety. We prayer­ful­ly lis­ten and wait for the Divine Whis­per. We step out when we feel the time and the action is right. But where it will all lead we sim­ply do not know.

To illus­trate: I recent­ly received a let­ter from a per­son I believe has a gen­uine prophet­ic gift. She shared an encour­ag­ing and chal­leng­ing prophe­cy about Ren­o­varé. ​“Encour­ag­ing” because it remind­ed me that God tru­ly is in charge of the good ship Ren­o­varé. ​“Chal­leng­ing” because it called us to ven­ture out into the spir­i­tu­al unknown bold­ly, con­fi­dent­ly. How­ev­er, if I were to con­dense the prophet­ic mes­sage itself into one phrase it was sim­ply this: ​“Things are going to change.” Well, yes, okay, but: How? When? Who? What? Where? These are mat­ters unknown to us. You see, even the most spir­i­tu­al­ly astute of us still peer through a glass dark­ly. Even so, it is incum­bent upon us to do every­thing pos­si­ble to look ahead and con­sid­er the future face of Ren­o­varé — ten, fif­teen, even twen­ty years from now.

A Look Back: The Mes­sage and the Messengers

Look­ing for­ward is almost always sharp­ened by look­ing back. Fif­teen odd years ago Ren­o­varé start­ed out with no mate­r­i­al ​“things” … just a mes­sage ham­mered out on the hard anvil of our expe­ri­ence with God.

• A mes­sage about the good news of the avail­abil­i­ty of life in the king­dom of God, here, now.

• A mes­sage of Jesus alive and here to teach his peo­ple himself.

• A mes­sage of gen­uine form­ing, con­form­ing, trans­form­ing life in and through Jesus.

• A mes­sage of God’s grace-filled invi­ta­tion for us to coop­er­ate in this trans­form­ing work through spir­i­tu­al dis­ci­plines appro­pri­ate to our need and growth.

• A mes­sage of break­ing down the old walls that sep­a­rate and iso­late us.

• And more .…

From its incep­tion Ren­o­varé has been an eccle­si­as­ti­cal­ly pos­i­tive move­ment. We are inter­de­nom­i­na­tion­al and mul­ti-denom­i­na­tion­al, and at the same time trans-denom­i­na­tion­al. Rather than bypass­ing or avoid­ing denom­i­na­tion­al life, we want­ed to gain from the best insights of all the denom­i­na­tions. Instead of a reli­gion of the least com­mon denom­i­na­tor we urge the denom­i­na­tions to bring us their most dis­tinc­tive spir­i­tu­al insights. We have found that the great spir­i­tu­al trea­sures are almost always ​“loan­able,” espe­cial­ly when our com­mon core in Jesus Christ is firm. We want the Pres­by­te­ri­ans to teach us about God’s sov­er­eign­ty and the Bap­tists to teach us about evan­ge­lism and the Men­non­ites to teach us about com­mu­ni­ty life and the Nazarenes to teach us about holi­ness and the Methodists to teach us about social jus­tice and the Luther­ans to teach us about jus­ti­fi­ca­tion by faith alone and Roman Catholics to teach us about litur­gi­cal life. And so on.

Fur­ther, we have always been an intra-church move­ment. We have no inter­est in doing an end-run around the church­es. Far from it, we are com­mit­ted to the Church of Jesus Christ in all her mul­ti­fac­eted expres­sions. We believe in local con­gre­ga­tions, even with all their imper­fec­tions and frus­tra­tions. And we know that new, cre­ative expres­sions of the Peo­ple of God will con­tin­ue to burst onto the scene, and we are for them too.

That has been, and is, our mes­sage. The mes­sen­gers in those ear­ly days were few in num­ber: myself and Dal­las Willard and Mar­ti Ensign and Jim Smith and Bill Vaswig and Gayle With­nell and Roger Fredrik­son and a few oth­ers. Even then, though few in num­ber, we decid­ed to work in teams when­ev­er pos­si­ble. Peo­ple need­ed to see our mes­sage embod­ied in the love we had for each oth­er. With­out this fleshed-out love the mes­sage would be under­cut and of lit­tle effect for the form­ing of lives into Christ­like­ness. In the ear­ly days when peo­ple asked me to speak, I always insist­ed on the inclu­sion of oth­er team mem­bers as well, and that insis­tence helped to devel­op us as a com­mu­ni­ty of love. Far from per­fect, to be sure, but always deep­en­ing in our love for each oth­er and for all people.

And Today: Two Sig­nif­i­cant Changes

Two sig­nif­i­cant changes have occurred since those ear­ly days. First, the num­bers of indi­vid­u­als who ​“get” the Ren­o­varé mes­sage of spir­i­tu­al for­ma­tion has increased dra­mat­i­cal­ly. All over this coun­try peo­ple real­ly are step­ping into this ​“life that is life indeed.” The Ren­o­varé vision has become embed­ded in the con­scious­ness of mul­ti­tudes and we thank God for it. Fif­teen years ago folk were ask­ing for me and I was urg­ing them into Ren­o­varé style events; five years ago prob­a­bly 60% were ask­ing for me and 40% were ask­ing for the mes­sage of Ren­o­varé; today maybe 30% ask for me and 70% are look­ing for the Ren­o­varé mes­sage and are glad for any num­ber of mes­sen­gers who can right­ly embody and artic­u­late the mes­sage. For exam­ple, our ini­tia­tive into Africa last fall was done entire­ly with­out me, and at the Inter­na­tion­al Con­fer­ence in June we will be hav­ing key lead­ers from Africa with us — lead­ers that are capa­ble of speak­ing the Ren­o­varé mes­sage into African cul­ture far bet­ter than I ever could. The same could be said for our Korea and Britain and Ire­land ini­tia­tives. For this change I thank God. It gives us high hopes for the future, for, as we all know, a day will come when I will not be able to give the same vis­i­ble pres­ence to Ren­o­varé that is now the case.

The sec­ond change (and it is sig­nif­i­cant) is the vol­ume of lit­er­a­ture now sur­round­ing and rein­forc­ing the Ren­o­varé mes­sage. Since Cel­e­bra­tion of Dis­ci­pline was pub­lished there has come Devo­tion­al Clas­sics and Spir­i­tu­al Clas­sics and Free­dom of Sim­plic­i­ty and The Spir­it of the Dis­ci­plines and The Divine Con­spir­a­cy and Prayer and Streams of Liv­ing Water and Ren­o­va­tion of the Heart and A Spir­i­tu­al For­ma­tion Work­book and Wilder­ness Time and a host of oth­er writ­ings. Beyond this is a ton of lit­er­a­ture out there now; it all needs sift­ing, of course, but many fine works can be found among a lot of silli­ness. And I must not for­get The Life with God Bible that has just been released. It will give us a sol­id bib­li­cal foun­da­tion for all the spir­i­tu­al for­ma­tion work we have been doing. This Bible, I pre­dict, will take on a life of its own. The Bible is God’s book and we can be con­fi­dent that God will take care of it. It will win its way into the hearts and minds of hon­est seek­ers. And it is ful­ly capa­ble of stand­ing on its own in the open mar­ket of ideas. I expect this new study Bible to be a fan­tas­tic aid in our ongo­ing engage­ment with con­tem­po­rary cul­ture. In addi­tion, I just yes­ter­day signed con­tracts with Harper­San­Fran­cis­co for six­teen sup­ple­men­tal books to sur­round The Life with God Bible. One is a ​“uni­ty of the Bible” book and the oth­er fif­teen will be study books designed to help peo­ple walk through the entire Bible with spir­i­tu­al for­ma­tion themes in mind.

And Into The Future: Four Dar­ing Proposals

The future is bright. Renovaré’s begin­ning efforts have reaped a sub­stan­tial har­vest and now it should be con­sid­ered the major move­ment with­in the field of spir­i­tu­al for­ma­tion. A sol­id foun­da­tion has been laid. But now we must look to the future, and not just the imme­di­ate future. To that end allow me to cast a vision for per­haps the next fif­teen to twen­ty years in areas I believe God would have Ren­o­varé move into, con­fi­dent of divine lead­ing and undergirding.

1. I long to see the gath­er­ing togeth­er of mul­ti­plied num­bers of ​“spir­i­tu­al for­ma­tion based con­gre­ga­tions” through­out the US and beyond. In the begin­ning days it was impor­tant for us to cast the vision of spir­i­tu­al for­ma­tion as broad­ly as pos­si­ble. We have done this and mul­ti­plied thou­sands of indi­vid­u­als have respond­ed. We thank the Lord.
   Now it is time to see this vision find root in con­gre­ga­tion­al life. We are link­ing efforts with oth­er groups like The Spir­i­tu­al For­ma­tion Forum near Chica­go and Springs of Liv­ing Water near Philadel­phia and the Jesus Con­nec­tion near Kansas City that are work­ing with many of the same con­cerns. At the Inter­na­tion­al Con­fer­ence, we will have a con­gre­ga­tion­al spir­i­tu­al for­ma­tion work­shop track, and we hope to learn much from that expe­ri­ence. What future ini­tia­tives we will be tak­ing is yet to be deter­mined. The oper­at­ing idea is to see a sub­stan­tial increase in the num­ber of church­es that val­ue spir­i­tu­al for­ma­tion as the orga­niz­ing prin­ci­ple of their con­gre­ga­tion­al life. And to see them work­ing togeth­er; shar­ing resources, shar­ing suc­cess­es, shar­ing fail­ures, shar­ing staff … shar­ing, shar­ing, sharing.

2. I long to see the nur­tur­ing and deep­en­ing of the spir­i­tu­al for­ma­tion life of the glob­al house church move­ment. This is a non-tra­di­tion­al church expres­sion that has been explod­ing, par­tic­u­lar­ly in Africa, Asia, and South Amer­i­ca. (It has had only lim­it­ed suc­cess in the West­ern World in pock­ets of the Pacif­ic North­west, Cana­da, and Eng­land.) Think of it this way: In the tra­di­tion­al church mod­el we have a church with small groups; in the house church mod­el the church is small groups.
   In the West some are now speak­ing of this as the ​“home church­ing move­ment” and Ren­o­varé has much to give this bur­geon­ing effort. In their vast expe­ri­ence, our Ren­o­varé Spir­i­tu­al For­ma­tion Groups have sub­stan­tive insights to bring to the table. We can enhance the move­ment with a dis­ci­ple­ship ele­ment that is rich in his­tor­i­cal per­spec­tive. In addi­tion, we have an eccle­si­as­ti­cal empha­sis of net­work and con­nec­tion that stands in stark con­trast to the inde­pen­dent, stand-alone mod­el of many house church­es. In some respects the glob­al house church move­ment is akin to the emer­gent church move­ment that is being talked about so much in the US; in oth­er ways the two are quite dis­tinct. We want to encour­age and give depth to both. To learn more on this top­ic I would direct you to Dr. Rad Zdero’s book The Glob­al House Church Move­ment.

3. I long to see new and cre­ative mis­sion­al efforts to seek­er move­ments every­where. These seek­er groups — not yet Chris­t­ian but deeply inter­est­ed in spir­i­tu­al­i­ty — rep­re­sent our largest mis­sion field. They are post-mod­ern in think­ing and near­ly all are aller­gic to insti­tu­tion­al reli­gion. Because Renovaré’s his­to­ry and struc­ture allows us to func­tion with­out either build­ings or hier­ar­chy we are ide­al­ly suit­ed to reach out in ser­vant min­istry toward these many seek­er groups. But to do so will demand of us new cross-cul­tur­al think­ing, writ­ing, and out­reach. It will become our great­est chal­lenge in the future. But, also, per­haps our great­est oppor­tu­ni­ty. As West­ern cul­ture con­tin­ues to deep­en in its sec­u­lar out­look and to hard­en in its anti-estab­lish­ment, anti-reli­gious sen­ti­ments, Chris­tians will need to find non-insti­tu­tion­al ways to flourish.

4. I long to see a sol­id finan­cial foun­da­tion under­gird­ing all Renovaré’s efforts. It may sound strange to con­clude a vision­ary list of future min­istry oppor­tu­ni­ties with harsh finan­cial real­i­ties, but with­out seri­ous resources our most vision­ary dreams sim­ply will not get off the ground. We are so thank­ful for the won­der­ful, sac­ri­fi­cial sup­port that has come from pre­cious peo­ple over the years. In addi­tion to this, how­ev­er, the time has come to estab­lish sol­id, depend­able fund­ing resources for what we hope to accom­plish. Frankly, many of our most longed-for hopes and dreams have remained on the draw­ing board because we have lacked the resources to bring them to pass. Now is the time to work to solve this impasse. Last year we began ​“Part­ners in Renew­al,” a small group of folk who have proven to be gen­er­ous toward Ren­o­varé in their giv­ing or in their pray­ing or in their vol­un­teer efforts, and often in all three. But we must do more, much more. We need com­mit­ted month­ly givers we can count on. We need to form a Ren­o­varé Foun­da­tion that can lay a last­ing finan­cial base under what we do. We need to estab­lish an endow­ment for Ren­o­varé. And more. Already one cou­ple has giv­en us $20,000.00 as seed monies to begin a Ren­o­varé endow­ment and in the months ahead we will be work­ing to build upon their gen­eros­i­ty. So the time has come for us to build a strong finan­cial base that is equal to our dreams.

Dar­ing pro­pos­als? Per­haps. And yet, I am remind­ed of the evan­gel­i­cal cry of William Carey so long ago, ​“Expect great things from God; attempt great things for God!”

Peace and joy,

Richard J Foster