Changing Values

Dallas Willard in his book, Renovation of the Heart suggests that the
deepest changes occur when:
-people are given vision of what can be
-people themselves have intention- they want the difference
-people have the means (they know how, the steps to take)

A part of GraceRiver is casting vision of what life could be like when
God is clearly involved, when His hands are active in our lives, when
we hear from Him, see Him, live out of our time with Him. That is
vision of life that is extraordinary, not the blase' mundane of going
thru the motions, but a world alive with hope and possibilities. That
is the story of scripture, that God is alive and well and fills the
world with His presence and purpose.

Then people have to choose. They must activate their will and form
habits that bring that world into reality. Habits like worship,
scripture reading, meeting with others, serving all work together to
form us. But... this begins in us with a choice.

And then means. How? That is the role of a church to do more than
cast vision of what might be and TELL how but to create patterns that
people can choose (#2) that shape us according to the vision (#1). As
I work with church leaders it seems that this is where we often miss
it. We get the vision cast. We know people must choose. But we have
missed that for people to move and become WE must form the means, the
patterns and the habits. We must create opportunities within our
organization for people who have the intention (#2) to have the means
(#3) and therefore grow! When an organization creates means on a
regular basis and cast vision for those means, the culture changes.
People "get it" and over time, it gets them. Simple things like
friend day, serving projects, an evening of prayer take the vision of
a kingdom life and put it into everyday experience. And that is when
the Kingdom of God expands, not with the vision, but when the vision
is joined with intention in repeated moments of means (habits).