| Seeing the bigger picture |
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Once I had completed the Vocations 4 Life course quite a few things fell into place. Like the missing pieces in a jigsaw puzzle and I was able to see a much bigger picture of how God has wired me up. For the first time ever I was at peace about the outcome of my Personality Profile; how I had loathed doing these in the past!!! It became evident that I had been masking who I really was and when the correct profile was pointed out and I finally accepted it real peace came. This has brought me release to me. The most helpful clarification was realising my vocational grace motivation was that of Pastor, without any mixture; I am not a blend - just straight Pastor!! It eased a lot of the tensions I had been living with. Now I can Pastor all of creation - not just in my relationships of family, friends, work, tribe and nation/s but all creation!! Redeeming the land, bringing healing, pouring out the oil on the highways and byways, indeed wherever God leads me. This assurance has been liberating. Annamarie Baker |
Ben Gray has written an excellent book that helps renovate our ideas of what church is and how we were designed to engage in society … Here is an apostolic vision that points the way to a more fruitful future by grounding us in a more faithful past.
Ben Gray is not one who has allowed himself to become entrenched in a comfort zone. In Heaven’s Answer to Earth’s Dilemma, he lets us know that the church of the future will be radically different from the church of the past.
Heaven’s Answer to Earth’s Dilemma ... flowed nicely from the history of where we have come from as the church, and the ‘Greco-roman’ mindsets that have limited us from living in the supernatural Hebraic and eternal truths of our God. As the book so eloquently points out, knowledge does not equate to practice.
The most important paradigm shift that church leadership can make in the 21st century is to grasp that the kingdom of God is the central theme of the New Testament, nothing else. Everything about us missionally and ecclesiologically comes from this reality. Ben Gray lays out this revolution as well as anyone I have read. 