Conversation--->Movement
Will we see the ongoing conversation emerge into a movement in our lifetime? Perhaps, perhaps not. But never forget, importunate conversation ultimately matures and develops into a movement. If we are fortunate to see the ongoing conversation emerge to the next level we must stay focused and remain patient; movements never run their course in one generation. The great revivals and reformations that dot the history of humanity were never the work of just one person. When conversations advance it is the sum of visionaries who have gone before, generations of uncompromised lives.
A movement comes of age when one life harvests the seeds planted by countless lives in previous generations. A movement occurs when one person, no greater or lesser than those who have gone before, lives a forceful life in the fullness of time. Never think that the great movements of Luther, Calvin, or Campbell were entirely of their own doing. They were simply fearless lives placed by God in a receptive crevice of history.
Never give up, ramp the conversation, live vigorously, stir others; cause a movement. The mark of a visionary is his willingness to lay down his life for those whom he’ll never see.
Will the conversation become a movement in our generation? I hope so. But even if it doesn’t, even if we never see it, it will occur. And we’ll have been a part of it.
posted by Fred Peatross @ 8:30 PM
4 Comments:
Do we need it to become a movement?
If the conversation doesn't evolve to the next stage in its development it will eventually die. Conversation is the embryo of a movement.
Fred, this out of Brian McLaren's book, " The Last word..."
"It arises from the belief that sometimes, our constructed laws get in the way of unseen justice, our underconstructed words get in the way of communication, our institutions get in the way of the purposes for which they were built, our formulations get in the way of meaning, our curricula get in the way of learning. In those cases, one must deconstruct laws, words, institutions, forumulations, or curricular in the hope that something better will appear once the constructions- become-obstructions have been taken apart. The love of what is hidden, as yet unseen, and hoped for gives one courage to deconstruct what is seen and familiar." ("The Last Word..." p.xvii
It ties in niclely with what you've said, moving through this land of transition we find ourself now, will only happen through conversation. And hopefully as these conversational stones roll down hill, collect and form mass...we will see momentum...into a movement.
We must remember as you said, "movements never run their course in one generation."
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