Thursday, June 2, 2011
Brian Mclaren on Spirituality
In Brian's latest book, "Naked Spirituality: A Life with God in 12 Simple Words," he discusses the four stages of spirituality. The first stage is simplicity. A person desires to please an authority figure and believes that there are easy answers to every question. People in this stage want to know what is right or wrong, good or bad. Some people never leave this stage and their identity is in their leader or group. So preach with confidence.
The second stage is complexity in which there is more than one way to do things. They see authority figures as coaches and focus on effectiveness or ineffectiveness. Their identity comes from a cause or achievement. People in this stage want knowledge, historical context, lists, steps, reason, goals, and examples. So preach with intelligence.
The third stage is perplexity in which everyone has an opinion and they are not sure which view is correct. The people in this stage focus on honesty or dishonesty, authentic or inauthentic. Authority figures are seen as controllers trying to impose easy answers on the naive. When preaching to this group give both sides of the issues, share struggles, and preach with transparency.
The forth stage is harmony in which the person focuses on the grand essentials. The focus of this group is whether something is wise or unwise. Their motive is to serve, contribute, and to make a difference. Their identity comes in mutual relationships. God is knowable in part, yet mysterious, present yet transcendant, and merciful to hold all the parts in tension. Preach with humility and depth.
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I got this one!
ReplyDelete“The forth stage is harmony in which the person focuses on the grand essentials. The focus of this group is whether something is wise or unwise. Their motive is to serve, contribute, and to make a difference. Their identity comes in mutual relationships. God is knowable in part, yet mysterious, present yet transcendant, and merciful to hold all the parts in tension. Preach with humility and depth.”
ReplyDeleteI appreciated McLaren’s fourth stage of spirituality. By focusing on essentials, as opposed to minutia, our faith can have a wide embrace. Far too often we allow the little things of our faith be the big things. As McLaren suggests spiritual maturity helps us see beyond the “little things. I also appreciated his comments pertaining to the knowablity of God. To suggest that we can know everything about God is a gross over simplification of our faith. At some point, a mature faith is characterized by ones ability to say that “I do not have all the answers and I am ok with that”. To relate this to pastors is an easy one. Far too often pastor fall into the trap of believing that they need to be a “super spiritual answer man” or woman. This not only serves to make people feel inferior, but it is completely untrue. Until Christian leaders can be honest, and humble in the light of unanswerable questions, we will always be missing the point.