a sense of framing
On the one hand, the structure we call the New Testament church is a prototype of all subsequent Christian fellowships where old and young, male and female are gathered together as normal biological families in aggregate. On the other hand, Paul’s missionary band can be considered a prototype of all subsequent missionary endeavors organized out of committed, experienced workers who affiliated themselves as a second decision beyond membership in the first structure.
- The Two Structures of God's Redemptive Mission, Ralph D. Winter
Winter makes the point that the body of Christ has always consisted of multiple layers with different graces to follow Jesus in different ways. His framework has two "speeds".
Modality All are welcome with no common call beyond the essence of faith.
Sodality Specific subcommunities at specific times receive grace for additional shared commitment to a shared call.
The sad reality is that the spiritual lives of many first-world believers are saturated by modalities: low commitment spaces that neither ask much nor foster much opportunity or growth. We all need modality in our lives - a place where we can worshipfully articulate unity with the local and global Church, a place to go when we have nothing left to give - but not at the cost of losing the other critical element of revival identified by Winter: the sodality.
Paul is driven by the good news of Jesus Christ to found new communities, social experiments on the urban landscape, where old values are superseded and new relationships created. He is convinced that this is not just a human invention, a product of skill or cultural innovation. What he sees at work is, rather, a divine activity that creates new human agents, a phenomenon as fruitful and miraculous as the birth of Isaac (Galatians 4:28). Because this derives from elsewhere, all kinds of new possibilities emerge on the human stage.
- Paul and the Power of Grace, John Barclay
Formative communities is a term we use to express the idea of sodality. These are spaces where a committed group of believers gather regularly to intentionally address their spiritual formation and discern around shared calling through shared rhythms and overlapping lives.
We seek to cultivate formative communities that embrace four movements of the spiritual life.
Praxis
Imagine → Experiment → Reflect
Seasonality
Light → Life → Love
Charism
Discern → Integrate → Return
Divestment
Lament → Deconstruct → Reimagine
Praxis is a movement by which formation is prepared, and rhythms are developed and iterated.
Seasonality is a movement embracing the heterogeneity of spiritual life by mirroring the liturgical calendar. We like using Bobby Gross' framework of Light (Advent-Shrove Tuesday), Life (Lent-Pentecost), and Love (Ordinary Time).
Charism is a movement of discerning grace, or identifying what God is inviting us into individually and communally.
Divestment is a movement of laying down and refiguring our use of and relationship to power.