The Spiritual Pathway
The pathways are an invention of Evergreen church and are only a model of how we can interact with God. The statistician George P. Box said, “All models are wrong; some are useful”. I think that the pathways is a useful model, but it certainly does not express all the ways we can experience God – nor does it attempt to contain God.
That said, the Spiritual Pathway is our attempt to describe how we can draw closer to God at an unseen level. The Spiritual pathway acknowledges a fundamental Christian truth: that there is an unseen realm and that we, as followers of Jesus, have a part in it.
For many of us this is the hardest pathway, but because of its relationship to God and its reflections in the scriptures, it may be the most important. The Spiritual pathway will result in spiritual buoyancy if we let it. We share the broken world with others, and we are not to remove ourselves from this broken world or shield ourselves from the problems of others. The spiritual pathway asks us to stay plugged into God and the result is that God’s peace, God’s hope, and God’s joy becomes the context of our existence. If we choose to forgo the disciplines of this pathway, then we will fall into the same darkness that we are meant to illuminate. While our salvation may be assured, our outlook will be bleak, and our witness will be non-existent at best.
- Written by Matt Brown
September 9th, 2008 at 10:07 pm
I agree with your premise, but I’d expand it out to include all the Pathways. I think lacking in any of the disciplines, whether sacrifice or meditation or studying the Bible or serving others or dealing the pains in your past or, or, or…will lead to spiritual flatness. How many people do you know who can quote the Bible forward and backwards, but, if you make them angry, they will come at you with guns blazing rather than love and humility?
I do think it’s important to remember that all that we offer, from classes to assessments, are tools. They are meant to shine a light on your Journey with God so you can see where you’ve been growing and where you can aim to go next. But none of them is all encompassing. That can only come from being in relationship with God.
September 10th, 2008 at 12:28 am
I love the phrase “plugged into God.” Great wording!
Having said that, I just finished a conversation with my mom about the church using tools and models. It was interesting, because her take was along the lines of: we have to keep praying and studying the Bible above all else. Which is true. But.
But your average person who’s been out of church for 10+ years isn’t going to be able to sit down, read Job, and then apply life lessons from it. Heck, I have trouble getting through Job and I’m a seminary student! Prayer is a little easier, in my opinion, but I suppose for some it’s even harder than Bible study. The point being: we would be negligent in our duty to disciple others if we weren’t providing tools. And I like the fact that at Evergreen, we are constantly evaluating and revising our tools.