The dualism of private/public, personal/professional is being unraveled in me and around me.

The fragmentation and disembodied faith that is birthed under this dualism is the cause for much of the broken policy and polity we are seeing.

The Gospel healed me (and continues to) but it also CHALLENGES me to think of my life as a holistic embodiment of its core truth that touches ALL OF MY LIFE. Everything that happens in public, private, political, priestly, personal, professional.

Why do this matter?

• Because we carry on our days thinking that what happens privately won’t have public ramifications and vice versa.
• Because we think that politics is OUT THERE and priestly work is IN HERE.
• Because we think we can have two lives, one outcome.

The gospel is a public truth, a secular announcement. The Church is a primary vehicle and it shapes and forms the imagination of the Christ follower when it gathers. But the full circle is completed when the Christ follower is scattered, sent into public, civic life. The Gospel offers a grounding for the current social constructs we have that feel ungrounded.

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Michael Goheen, a Newbigin “nerd” (in a great way that I need) says,

“The gospel makes a remarkable and bold claim: the goal of universal history—and therefore the purpose and meaning of the whole creation—has been disclosed, accomplished, and made present in the life, death, and resurrection of one Jewish man in the middle of history. This is surely not an announcement to be slotted into a private category called “religion.” Rather, it is a “secular announcement” and “public truth”: it is a message of ultimate importance for all people.”

Goheen, Michael W.. The Church and Its Vocation: Lesslie Newbigin’s Missionary Ecclesiology