Recovering the Personal

When a church tries to be missional at the expense of the personal, people are reduced to their function, "you" becomes "it", and the Body of Christ degrades into a machine with a good cause. People get steamrolled in the name of a program or a campaign. The diversity of stories and individuals become homogenized into sterile categories of personality types and functional roles. In the name of the Kingdom we are dehumanizing one another.

But the Church is nothing if not personal. We are members of one another, and our mission flows out of our personal connectedness, every joint set in its place. The missional springs from the personal and expresses itself in the personal. We are the people of God, not a corporation with a cause; the family of God not a franchise of faith.

There is only I-You, not I-It or Us-Them. It is all personal.

Comments

[Steven Todd]

Great article! Best line, "the family of God not a franchise of faith." Gonna quote that one!

[Joel Gonzaga]

What about "Us-You" as in a communal relationship with God, rather than only a vertical, individualistic, one?

[Glenn Packiam]

Joel...you're totally right. My use of the pronouns is a "nod" to Martin Buber's book "I and Thou" and which he fights to recover the personal....But recovering the personal is not to highlight hyper-individualism....It is an US and YOU (God) thing....That would be a different post. Certainly not attempting to cover every base here....but thanks for adding this dimension to it.

Peace.

[Joel]

I caught the Buber reference... props.

I did like what you said in the blog.