Navigable Space and the Prior work of the Spirit

In postcard 5, “Spiritual Tourism" (The Out of Bounds Church? Learning to Create a Community of Faith in a Culture of Change by Steve Taylor) Steve writes that the missional task of the church recognises and respects that being created in the image of God is to have been created with an intrinsic Godward pull. St. Augustine calls it a “restlessness” that only finds its rest in God. Further, he writes: “always the Spirit is in the world…the Spirit is ruach…a wild, primal, and powerful wind.” (p.82). The Spirit is what Philip Sheldrake calls that “risky, wild, profligate side of God.”  Key expressions Steve explores include: “movement,” “journey,” “tourism” (great sidebar too by Gerard Kelly on the importance of “rootedness,” “commitment,” “longevity,” and “staying-put” – p. 85), and “navigable space.”

Among a number of important points in this chapter, one that stood out was the implicit recognition and acknowledgement of the prior work of the Spirit in all mission activity and initiative. Mission is God @ work. A work that we join in on. This “prior work” is recognised doctrinally as God’s “effectual call” which corresponds to Paul’s use of the verb, “call” (i.e. God calls, God draws people to himself, and that “call” is effective; God call is efficious inasmuch as it is able to bring about a consoling movement toward God). “To choose God is to realise that you are known and loved in a way surpassing anything we can imagine…” God’s Spirit is “prior;” God’s love is prior (cf. Psalm 139).

In the beginning (Gen.1); always prior; always before – God. God is the primary concern. “But it is not only God; we get included.”

The Spirit hovered (”eaglelike,” or like a “mother-bird,” cf. Moffat) over the great emptiness, disorder; over an “unproductive…place.” God creates, God forms and shapes, God “colours in,” fragrances, and textures his creation. In the beginning God created. God continues to create, to recreate, to hover over and amongst the disorder. David Tsumura argues that the concern of this narrative Gen 1 – 2:3 is for life…the empty, disordered state of the earth reflects a situation in which the earth is not producing life. God in re-creating is undoing (in and through Jesus Christ) all that is inhospitable to life.

Steve’s “navigable space” and Frost and Hirsch’s “proximity spaces” recognise and honour this always prior life-in-place-of-death work of God; God re-creating, re-forming, God @ work, God “blessing” (i.e. the potency for life), God for life over and against death and all that diminishes life This work of mission is not anthropocentric, God is at the center. God is wooing, drawing, inviting, and calling. God is the initiator and the instigator, but we are in on it. Steve’s writing on this “postcard” honours God. It also invites us to creatively and faithfully “share in the mission of Jesus.” God’s Mission, and evangelism as a subset of that mission is always our response to God’s prior work and working. I like the dual emphasis, the prior and the consequential.

Comments

[bill]

Seems this is akin to the notion of prevenient grace which kind of opposes the notion of total depravity. Been awhile since i was in a Calvinist/Arminian smackdown.

[Paul Fromont]

Yep, I guess it does Bill. I've long suggested that we so often forget Genesis 1 and 2, deciding instead to start the story from Genesis 3.

[brian]

Something to add to the reading list for my PhD on "Faithful Companion: a pneumatology of wisdom in the life of the church."?