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| Battery Park, NYC, the Statue of Liberty in the distance |
"If you want to build a ship, don’t summon people to buy wood, prepare tools, distribute jobs, and organize the work, rather teach people the yearning for the wide, boundless ocean.” (Antoine de Saint-Exupery)
For too long the church has attempted to build ships (the methods of ministry) before they have adequately learned to yearn for the wide, boundless ocean ( the vision of the God's kingdom). Dallas Willard, in The Divine Conspiracy, points out that Jesus' eyes envisioned a God-bathed, God-permeated world. Jesus craved to sail the high seas of His father's kingdom. The desire to bring others on this adventure drove all that he said and did. Given this desire, ship-building comes naturally.
Our greatest task in spiritual formation is bringing people back to that place of yearning for the wide, boundless ocean. In this regard the current problem in most churches is one of vision. I've seen people transformed by the power of the Holy Spirit and begin to catch Jesus' vision of the kingdom, only to be encouraged by the church “to buy wood, prepare tools and distribute jobs." Ship-building then becomes more of an obligation than a delightful joy.
We must, within our churches, re-imagine what God's own life is like, and then just sit there for a while and bask in the reality of His vastness, goodness, justness, and love. We must recognize how indispensible this yearning, this ferocious desire to explore the vast, boundless ocean, is. Everything begins and ends here.
