In Discernment, the third artform of the Public Church Framework, we move into the space between our neighbors’ stories, God’s story, and our story. In this movement we learn how to listen for who God is calling us to be and what God is calling us to do in light of the present reality and God’s promises.

Why is it important? 

Discernment is important because our neighbors’ realities matter, our realities matter, and because we believe God has something to say about all of this. God is actively and continually trying to teach us how to live an abundant life together. 

The opportunities to practice discernment are abundant, ongoing, and mundane. Without intentionally, the moments of discernment might appear as simple decision making.  Many people desire to live their lives with more intentionality: to make informed decisions about how they show up in community, how they steward their resources, how they participate in their families, neighborhoods, and societies. etc. We believe God calls us into a thriving, abundant life together and we believe God has uniquely gifted us and called each of us to participate in bringing that abundance into a lived reality for our neighbors. Discernment teaches us to be attentive to and responsive to that call and that good work.

What is it?

Discernment is a communal process of listening to God’s spirit for the next most faithful step forward. 

It is a prayerful, communal practice of critically seeking to determine how to respond to opportunities God has placed before us. It is different from decision making. It involves an intentional process that includes listening to three threads: God’s Spirit, the neighbors’ reality, or demands, and your reality. These three threads have been the stories and themes that have emerged from practicing Accompaniment and Interpretation. Discernment is the movement where we take stock of what’s emerged and what we’re being called towards. Which must include a realistic assessment of our own realities. What gifts do we bring? What limitations do we have?

How does it fit with the other artforms? 

It may be helpful to think about it in a metaphorical way. 

Imagine that there are a variety of stories tangled into a web of thread. Accompaniment, the first artform, is the movement into the web, and then we tug on the thread that is the neighbors’ story. For this artform, we pay particular attention to our neighbors’ story. What is bringing life? What gets in the way of abundant life?

Then, in the next artform, interpretation, we tug on a different thread, God’s story, we spend time reflecting on the things we believe about who God is, what God does, and what God hopes for. We look at the two threads we’ve tugged on in relationship with one another. How does our neighbor’s story influence who we believe about who God is? And how does God’s story influence the way we hear our neighbor’s story? 

Then discernment is returning our attention to the jumble of threads, looking for the places that the threads intersect. In returning to the jumble of threads, we also pay attention to the “Our Story” thread. What are our unique gifts and limitations? What are we good at? What is outside of our capacity right now? What might need to die in order for us to be a part of new life?  

What is happening at the jumble of threads, and what is our unique call in that intersecting place?

How do we do it? 

The answer the the “How” question is entirely dependent on the strands of the stories, meaning it’s unique to you and your context. Like all of the artforms of the Public Church framework, it isn’t prescriptive, there is no formula. And this might be frustrating because it’s squishy, and there’s no checklist to mark things off. However, we can offer some resources to help guide your discernment.

Resources

Liturgy for Discernment:

an outline to guide an gathering time, from Contemplative Youth Ministry: Practicing the Presence of Jesus by Mark Yaconelli

Reflection Questions:

• Where do we see death and resurrection in our neighborhood?

• Where are we hearing lamentation in our neighborhood?

• Have we been part of the problem? What do we need to confess? To whom? Where? How?

• Where and with whom do we sense the Holy Spirit pleading with us to linger, to pay more attention, to listen more closely?

• What questions do we still have? Where might we learn more about these questions or with whom do we need to visit?

• What are the passions and strengths of our faith community that seem to present themselves as assets in light of what we have seen and heard in our accompaniment and interpretation? (For example, space, people, finances, vision, relationships, etc.)

• If the gospel is good news, what is the good news that needs to be proclaimed in our neighborhood in order to liberate people from the bad news we have heard in the neighborhood?

• How are we equipped to proclaim this good news? How are we not?

• Given what we have seen and heard in our neighbors’ stories, God’s stories, and our stories – who is God calling us to be? What is God calling us to do? What might God be calling us to sacrifice or risk? How is God calling us to show up in this community?

Mix It Up

Discernment happens best when we move a little outside of our norms, here are a few practices to shake us up as we reflect on the questions above: 

• Charades: take the prompt question, “What is God calling us to do? How is God calling us to be?” and respond in the form of charades. Pay particular attention to the energy. 
• Dwelling: look backwards at the listening you’ve already done, through those experiences, where was there energy, what did it feel like in our bodies? 

Example:

Congregational example from a previous learning community and their experience with discernment: “From Decision Making to Discernment”

The post The Artform of Discernment appeared first on Bernhard Christensen Center for Vocation.

In the second artform of the Public Church Framework, Interpretation, we move into listening to God’s story and we spend time articulating our faith community’s core biblical and theological commitments. 

How do we do it?

We’ve categorized interpretation into four different layers:

1. Identify the most important things we heard in accompaniment.
2. Identify our most important theological themes.
3. Connect what we heard in accompaniment with theological themes that are similar.
4. Ask ourselves how these theological themes help us understand what we heard in accompaniment and vice versa.

This blog post will focus on steps one and two, identifying the key themes from accompaniment and identifying the theological themes of our faith community.

1. Identify the most important things we heard in accompaniment.

• First, spend time as a team sharing about your experiences practicing accompaniment.
  • Who is our neighbor?
  • Who did you talk to? What did you hear?
  • How are our neighbors experiencing hope & joy?
  • How are our neighbors experiencing anxiety, fear and heartache?
  • What are our neighbors’ hopes, dreams and desires for our shared neighborhood?
  • Who cares about the things and people our faith community cares about?

• Second, what key themes are emerging as your team is sharing?

Additionally, it’s also possible that you are curious to hear from others in the neighborhood. We will continue to practice Accompaniment even as we’re adding in the next layer of the Public Church Framework, interpretation. Take note of any other people or places you want to hear from, and whose voices may be missing from the story.

2. Identify our most important theological themes.

There are two main questions we ask to help us begin to identify some of the theological themes that are most important to us.

What are some key components of the biblical narrative that shape our understanding of “God’s Story?”

What are our faith community’s core theological commitments?

For a variety of reasons, it may seem difficult to parse out your faith community’s theological themes or reflect on the biblical narrative. You may not want to make claims about what other people believe. You may feel like you don’t know the right words to talk about God. Your beliefs about who God is may be continuing to develop, deepen, change. For all of those reasons, and many more, this artform, Interpretation, may feel uncomfortable or scary. 

Here are some additional sets of questions that break those two bigger questions down into smaller ones. 

Additional Interpretation Reflection Questions

• What are some of your favorite bible stories? 
• What are some of your favorite hymns or songs? 
• What are some of your favorite names or images for God?
• What do this stories, songs, and names say about who God is and what God does? 

• How is the Biblical Narrative used (or not used) in our faith community? Why?
• What are some songs, art pieces, poems, or readings that this community thinks is important?
• What are the narratives that our faith community gathers around?
• What do they reveal about who this community is, or who this community wants to be?

• What are some of the shared values and commitments that this faith community holds?
• What do the ministries of our church reveal about what we believe is important to God?
• What does our churches budget reveal about what we believe is important to God?

You could use things like Mentimeter, Jamboard, Google Docs, or post-it notes to gather responses to these questions.

Manna and Mercy

Another resource that we used to help us reflect on the biblical narrative was Manna and Mercy, by Daniel Erlander. This book  a short summary of the narrative arc of the bible that highlights some  important themes, like God is relational, God is a God of abundance, God cares about justice. While each person and faith community in the project may have a different relationship with the Bible. And there may be a variety of ways that they use it (or don’t use it) in their congregational life together, the Bible has been one of the primary sources in the Christian tradition and because of that it influences how people understand who God is and how God acts. It directly, or indirectly, shapes our “God Story.”

To learn more about this book, and other related resources, check out their website at. This book and these questions are some ways to begin articulating who we believe God to be, and what we believe God does. There may be other ways to name these things as well! We’d love to hear from you if you’ve got other ways of naming your communities theological commitments.

What’s next?

After we’ve spent time reflection on the key themes of accompaniment, and we’ve begun to articulate our communities core theological beliefs, we begin to put those two in conversation with each other. First where do we see connections between them, and then second how do they help us understand each other.

The post The Artform of Interpretation appeared first on Bernhard Christensen Center for Vocation.

This following blog post shares some resources to practice accompaniment in your context. To read more about why we practice accompaniment, read this blog: “Accompaniment It’s Who We Are (You Got This!)”

We’ve simplified and categorized accompaniment into four layers, or four different practices to hear the neighbors’ stories: demographic data, neighborhood prayer walk, listening posts, and one to ones. 

Practices of Accompaniment

Demographic Data

Demographic data helps tell the story of your neighborhood. Demographic Data can help you know more about the
challenges our neighbors face — and the assets that are available in a community. A pitfall to avoid when learning about demographic data is the assumption that knowing about the neighborhood is the same and knowing the neighbors. 

• ARDA: Community Profile Builder Guide

Neighborhood Prayer Walk

The practice of a neighborhood prayer walk is a prayer exercise that invites you to walk through the neighborhood with particular attention to moments of desolation and moments of consolation. Moments of desolation are times of sorrow, brokenness, fear, anxiety, etc. Moments of consolation are times of hope, healing, courage, peace, etc.

• Public Church Practices: Neighborhood Prayer Walk – RIH Blog Post 

Listening Posts

Listening posts are places in the neighborhood where people gather to hear and share stories. Some examples of listening posts include soup lunches, local schools, neighborhood businesses, parking lots, local bars, neighborhood association meetings, open mic nights, bike shops, libraries, rivers and parks, neighborhood gardens.

One to One Relational Meeting

A one to one is an intentional, curiosity-driven conversation with someone you want to know, or get to know more deeply.  The primary purpose of a one to one conversation is to build or deepen relationships.

• Public Church Practices: One to One – RIH blog Post 

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