By clicking on the audio podcast button below, you can listen to a summary of the discussion of our Bible study at church based on Paul’s vision of the man from Macedonia in Acts 16:6-10. The study is entitled, “What’s Standing in the Way?” Feel free to join the conversation by adding your comments to this blog post.
The Acts 16:6-10 Bible study comes from a retreat resource put together by people who utilize “complexity theory” as a window through which to discern God’s work in the world and particularly, as a way to understand the work of churches undergoing renewal. One important conclusion derived from complexity theory is that planning and action based on it is necessary but must adapt itself to complex situations that can never really be planned for. So, though Paul and his companions had an idea of where they ought to go and what they ought to do, their ongoing encounters with the risen Jesus and the Holy Spirit required them to alter (even drastically) their plans once they began to act on them. But they would never have ended up (in Macedonia) unless they had first begun to act on plans that turned out to be inadequate. So this view of church renewal says that making plans and acting on them puts us in a position where it finally becomes possible to discern where God is actually leading. And that may require us to change our original plans. In this view, too much planning or planning that extends too far out into the future isn’t particularly helpful. What matters is taking action and learning from it.