The Soul of Tomorrow's Church: Weaving Spiritual Practices in Ministry Together

Rating:
Summary: Soul Food For The Journey
Review: The Soul of Tomorrow's Church: Weaving Spiritual Practices in Ministry Together by Kent Ira Groff, (Nashville, TN: Upper Room Books, 2000), 181 pp.

Reviewed by David Nash

Kent Groff gives us the book that many of us parish pastors have been looking for. He offers us not a new program but an ancient calling to recover the soul of the church, and, in the process, to find a renewal of our own calling to ministry.

I recommend the book highly, though it is not an easy book to live and work with, for the reader is called into self-examination and commitment while at the same time receiving encouragement and hope. Groff calls the pastoral leader and the believing community to the contemplative life style of practicing the presence of God in order to love God, others and self, especially as it works itself out in the functions of ministry. The aim is to recover the integrity, passion and wholeness of Christ within the believing community in order to re-present Christ to the world. To answer such a call means a long-term commitment and serious soul work.

What moves Groff to write this book is his deep concern for the spiritual life of the pastoral leader; the need for clergy and laity to be joined together, especially to work through crises; and how the common ventures of ministry and church life can become the opening for God's presence . this book is for laypersons and clergy together. It "is written for (our) interactive learning, reflection, prayer, and retreat" together in a contemplative spiritual journey.

Groff functions as a spiritual director for those who choose the contemplative path. He sees the vital ministries of worshipping, administering, educating, caring, and reaching out being woven together with the "spiritual aptitudes" of prayer, discernment, faith stories, silence-presence, and hospitality all for the purpose of Christ being formed in the believer and believing community for the sake of the world.

The creative image of weaving suggests possibilities of a variety of patterns of minsitry. It is a powerful image which could have been made stronger for us by a brief description of the weaver at work to help us see the loom and feel the excitement of the movement of the shuttle back and forth carrying the variety of threads to create a pattern. Still, the image comes through with careful reading.

Not a book of theology or theory, but building on both, the focus is on practicing the presence of God. In five chapters, Groff briefly describes the "soul" of the church and suggests how to weave the contemplative attitudes throughout each ministry of the church. Groff offers a variety of "leavening the liturgies" spiritual exercises for each function of ministry. And there are "resources" of spiritual practice included in the appendix.

The spiritual exercise are not gimmicks, techniques, or quick fixes. They are, however, interactive and participatory and suggestive. The intention is to make deeper connections with God and with one another. Indeed, Groff encourages the reader to create one's own exercises. The purpose is to place one's soul and the soul of the believing community before God and to be open to where God's Spirit leads. Each congregation, obviously, will be led into different expressions of God's love of the world through the functions of ministry.

Groff writes our of his rich experience of contemplative practice. In particular, I like the way in which each of the first two chapters on "The Soul of Tomorrow's Church" are enriched by a meditation on 1 Corinthians 13 as is also the next five chapters on "Weaving Spiritual Practices in Ministry together" are each nurtured by a meditation on Romans 12. Groff begins each chapter with an original Taize-like chant. And he includes his own poetry throughout the book. I found these gifts of his soul opening my own spiritual awareness as I read the book. And I felt our souls touching in sharing common concerns.