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    Way of Life Participant Guide: A Study Based on The Great Spiritual Migration
    Way of Life Participant Guide: A Study Based on The Great Spiritual Migration
    Way of Life Participant Guide: A Study Based on The Great Spiritual Migration
    Ebook71 pages56 minutes

    Way of Life Participant Guide: A Study Based on The Great Spiritual Migration

    By Brian D. McLaren

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    About this ebook

    The study Way of Life will help groups approach and engage the spiritual, theological, and missional proposals in Brian McLaren’s book The Great Spiritual Migration. This participant guide provides an introduction to the main text and can also stand alone with additional commentary and questions. The book also contains new content from Brian McLaren, including personal devotionals written to accompany each section.


    In The Great Spiritual Migration, Brian McLaren argues that in order to survive, Christianity must shift away from an outdated system of beliefs to a way of life based on love. In order to achieve this, McLaren outlines three migrations: spiritually, Christians focus less on doctrine and more on the abiding life of love made manifest in Jesus; theologically, a new way of reading Scripture shifts away from literalism and toward a more generous, literary approach; and missionally, the new way of life leads to “organizing religion,” rather than organized religion, in which spiritual activists are committed to ecological, economic, and interfaith concerns.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherAbingdon Press
    Release dateSep 19, 2017
    ISBN9781501847707
    Way of Life Participant Guide: A Study Based on The Great Spiritual Migration
    Author

    Brian D. McLaren

    A former college English teacher, Brian D. McLaren was a pastor for twenty-four years. Now he’s an author, activist, public theologian, and frequent guest lecturer for gatherings in the U.S. and internationally. His work has been covered in TIME Magazine, Newsweek, USA Today, The New York Times, Washington Post, CNN, and many other media outlets. The author of more than 15 books, including Faith After Doubt, Do I Stay Christian?, and A New Kind of Christian, he is a faculty member of The Living School at the Center for Action and Contemplation. McLaren lives in Florida.

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      Book preview

      Way of Life Participant Guide - Brian D. McLaren

      Introduction

      Migration is the seasonal movement, often between north and south, of many species of birds. Driven primarily by the availability of food, migration patterns have been recorded for thousands of years, even in Scripture. Job 39:26 reads, Is it by your wisdom that the hawk soars, and spreads its wings toward the south? (NRSV). Like hawks and geese and other birds, we human beings feel an innate urge that pushes us to roam. Anthropologists tell us that our species has been migrating for around two hundred thousand years. From our evolutionary birthplace in East Africa, our most ancient ancestors spread west and south across Africa, then north across the Middle East, some then heading west across Europe and others heading east across Asia, eventually arriving in North America and quickly spreading through Central and South America. Even now above us, human beings have migrated to space, and many of us dream of voyages to distant planets and even to other stars. To be human is to move. To be human is to change.

      Today, Christianity is in need of movement and change. In The Great Spiritual Migration, Brian McLaren lays out his strategy for how millions of Christian believers can move the faith to a better place and become better Christians. He explains three powerful shifts that define the change.

      First, McLaren argues that Christianity has reduced its core identity to a collection of correct beliefs. Beliefs are interesting and important, he says, but a list of unchanging beliefs should not define what it means to be a follower of Christ. Instead, he advocates for a way of life centered on love, following the example of Jesus’ life and teaching, which he calls the way of life of love. Throughout the New Testament, he says, love is the main thing, the one thing that matters above all others. The spiritual migration, then, is a challenge to Christians to live into the good news of Jesus Christ in their daily lives, and to understand Christianity as a way of life, a way of love.

      In the second section, The Theological Migration, McLaren explores the theological shift that must take place if we are to live into this new way of life. Some passages of Scripture reveal God to be vengeful and violent, favoring some people and disfavoring or rejecting others. As a result of this portrayal, some Christians have felt justified in perpetrating much violence in the world. Such violence—and such a violent concept of God—must become unacceptable for us as we move forward. We must move toward the loving God, whose character emerges as the Scriptural story unfolds in both the Old and New Testaments, revealed in Jesus as One who is for all of us and not against any of us. He challenges us to leave behind methods of interpreting Scripture that hinder that vision of a loving God from shining through. The life and work of Jesus show us a generous and loving God, who is the Spirit of justice, joy, and peace, and this is the God who empowers us to a new way of life based on love.

      The third section, The Missional Migration, is a call to action. The move toward a new way of life starts with individuals and groups adopting the new way of thinking about beliefs, Scripture, and God. McLaren draws on social movement theory to show how Christians (and those of all faiths) can join together to turn organized religion (religion organized for self-perpetuation) into organizing religion (religion organizing for the common good). He portrays the ministry of Jesus as a social and spiritual movement in which we are invited to participate.

      Through these three migrations, McLaren offers concrete suggestions for individuals, congregations, and other groups to help them rethink their conception of Christian faith, of God, and of the practice of religion, and to migrate to a new way of life based on love.

      In this Participant Guide, you’ll find summaries of the book’s four sections, considerations of Scripture, questions for reflection, and excerpts with questions for personal contemplation. Also included are four previously unpublished devotions written by Brian McLaren that reflect on the themes in each section. The study is organized into four sessions covering the book’s introduction and three sections. This book functions as a tour guide for The Great Spiritual Migration, providing explanations and prompting deeper thought about McLaren’s work.

      Let this study serve as a convening table around which we can begin the conversation about the loving way of life embodied by Jesus—the nonviolent, liberating spirit of God—and

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