Communal Discernment
For the last few months, while Rachel and I have been immersing ourselves in discernment, we’ve been able to look not only at discernment in the individual sense, but also at the corporate level. I have always been fascinated by how decisions are made for organizations, especially churches. How do we discern what the Lord is inviting us to as a people and for a people? As we come up on our four year anniversary for CURATE, it’s been fun to see some of these questions and ideas around communal discernment play out for our own ministry.
Ashley Bats, Unsplash
For a long time Rachel and I struggled to know how to implement corporate or communal discernment within CURATE. While we are a ministry, much of it has been just the two of us, and since we are married, we haven’t looked at CURATE through an organizational lens as much as just two spouses do ministry alongside each other. Some of that is understandable. For the first few years CURATE was Rachel's primary ministry and my secondary ministry. Then we relocated, had a child, and jumped on board with a missions agency. In the midst of that, I moved into the driver's seat of CURATE, while it was a secondary ministry for Rachel. It’s been a lot of fun dreaming and planning, but now we’re in a season where we are both deeply involved and that transition, along with still finding our way in Colorado Springs (turns out having a baby in the midst of a pandemic slows down the process of rooting into a community, even it is your hometown!), and it requires some intentionality.
Last week Rachel and I stepped out of our day-to-day and spent two-and-a-half days praying and discerning how the Lord is leading us in this season. It was a rich time, and while we walked away with some good vision and direction, we also enjoyed getting to put some communal discernment practices into play. We would love to share with you a few things that stuck out to us when it comes to discerning communally.
PREPARATION IS MORE IMPORTANT THAN THE PROCESS.
Ruth Haley Barton in her seminal book on communal discernment, Pursuing God’s Will Together, says: “If leaders and communities of leaders are prepared at the levels put forth in this book, discernment will happen even without a process.” While the process is important, it is nothing without the preparation. When she speaks of preparation, Barton is referring more to our own walks with the Lord more than preparing to discern something specific. Preparation is about becoming the kind of person who can discern well.
We actually tried a mini planning retreat back in December without feeling prepared. We walked out of our time together with some good things, but we felt like we missed out on what the time could have been, and everything felt more strained because of how we walked into it.
But this time, we’d been praying a devotional through Lent with some other friends focused on our belovedness in Christ. Our souls felt refreshed. And a few weeks before, Rachel and I attended the tail-end of a retreat with some like-minded folks who were doing their own communal discernment for their organization. We were invited as guests to tag along for their final full day, most of which was spent discerning together where the Lord was leading their community. Our time with them was so rich that we’re still processing that day!
Some of the things we observed from their communal discernment process we then carried with us and factored into our own planning. This group moved slowly and reflectively, which inspired us to slow down ourselves. They paid attention not only to content, but to how they were receiving that content. Even though they were accomplishing specific tasks, the atmosphere was characterized by worship and relationship. There was an air of spiritual hospitality at that retreat that caught us by surprise and stuck with us. All of that affected how we entered into our own planning.
As we entered into our own discernment retreat, we spent the first morning easing in, giving space to rest in the Lord, both together and separately. We prayed and we took communion together, and we went out for a nice meal and enjoyed some time together before we dove into the discernment and strategic planning.
Once we jumped in, we didn’t have a specific process. We had some topics we wanted to discuss and pray through, and we payed attention to what felt like the best place to start, but after that, we just allowed our planning and conversation to ebb and flow. This worked well because we entered in attuned to the Lord and on the same page with one another. Our spiritual preparation drastically changed our experience from what we’d tried to do in December.
DISCERNMENT ISN’T ABOUT GETTING ALL THE ANSWERS.
While we came away from this planning retreat with a lot, it wasn’t some magical time where we got all the answers. There were topics that we spent a lot of time on and didn’t walk away with clear answers or a strategic plan. The conclusion for some of those topics was to keeping listening and paying attention and see what unfolds over time. And that actually felt right because we know the Lord is in it.
I’m learning that discernment isn’t about walking away with all the answers; rather, it’s about walking with God. When we slowed down enough to notice Him, we became more comfortable with the unknowns. We didn’t receive specific yeses or no’s or strategic plans on every topic. We merely received a word of “watch and wait.” Some of these topics were what had been weighing on me more heavily before the retreat, and yet as we arrived at the place of watch and wait, I felt a sense of peace and release. That’s a gift that can only come from the Lord.
INDIFFERENCE IS IMPORTANT.
Indifference doesn’t mean not caring. It means that we hold things open handedly and recognize that the most important aspect is that the Lord is with us and is leading us. Rachel and I were discerning two major areas of investment for the next year. They aren’t necessarily mutually exclusive, but one would definitely become our focus for the next year and the other one occupy a lower place.
I had one particular avenue in my mind. In fact, I had been putting a lot of thought and planning into it and even shaping my current doctoral work around that path. Once we started planning and praying, it became clear that the other route was the one to take. That caught me by surprise, but it wasn’t unwelcome. As we pursued the route the Lord was leading us down, Rachel and I both sensed a lot of excitement and it felt powerful because we both carried the passion for that route. Holding both of those options open handedly was important. Even though I had in my mind that we would take one route, it was held loosely enough to pivot when it became obvious that we should focus on the other one.
Indifference has always played a major role in discernment for saints in the past. Augustine, Ignatius, John Welsey, Thomas A Kempis and AW Tozer all had prayers of indifference. The Apostle Paul considered everything as loss for the sake of knowing Christ (Phil 3:7). We are called to the same.
These are just three aspects that have stuck out to me from our recent experience of discerning how the Lord is at work within CURATE. How about you? What are some principle or aspects of communal discernment that have been helpful to you?