Sublime

Encounters with the sacred that radiate from the core of the ordinary embolden you to cultivate stillness and simple awareness. In the midst of a world that is begging you to distract yourself, this is no easy practice. Yet you keep showing up. You are indomitable. You are thirsty for wonder.

I want to supplement Willard’s emphasis on the individual practice of the spiritual disciplines with what might be a counterintuitive thesis in our “millennial” moment: that the most potent, charged, transformative site of the Spirit’s work is found in the most unlikely of places—the church!

Offer deeply spiritual leadership—

If you are in a leadership position, make sure you have a circle of people who can tell you the truth, and to whom you can speak the truth. Bring others into shared leadership with you, and/or collaborate with other formations so you don’t get too enamored of your singular vision.

What makes the pastoral (or better, the ministerial) remain significant, even up against these transitions, is its ability to host an encounter with personhood. It appears, both in lived experience and the tradition, that divine action comes in and through personhood.