Discernment – Listening for Truth

I am continuing to write on the ten Christian Practices that Diana Butler Bass outlines in her book, Christianity for the Rest of Us. I am not, however, simply giving a chapter-by-chapter book report of her work. I am using her thoughtful and thought-provoking book as a jumping-off point for my reflections on the subject. Today, the topic is “discernment.”

Allow me to give you a little background on how I see the process of discernment. I live in an intentional community where the residents of our neighborhood have all made a commitment to be in relationship with one another and to share certain values about how we live. This is not a religious community, nor do our values function as absolute statements of belief or behavior. Those values simply provide a kind of structure that supports and guides the life of the community. The most obvious of our values is that we attempt to make our decisions by a process of reaching group consensus. (That it is a process also means that we don’t do it perfectly.)

I think, in some ways the community and its consensus process functions like a liberal Christian congregation might function. In liberal churches, people do not insist that everyone hold to the same theological formulation of biblical truth. There is something significant, though, that holds it together. (Maybe it’s a discernment process.) The Park Church is a particular kind of liberal congregation because it operates according to Congregational Polity. This means, in part, that no person or group has the authority to tell the local church what beliefs it must hold, and furthermore, no minister or local church hierarchy has the authority to tell any individual what to believe. Congregational polity is based in a belief that if the conscience of the individual is respected, and if people share their “statements of conscience” with each other respectfully, then, at the least, the collective will of the congregation, if not the will of God, will emerge in the process.

In my neighborhood, the attempt to reach consensus is form of a discernment process. I find it to be similar to Dr. Bass’s description of the discernment process in her book. Consensus works best when there is an external value to guide the process. Some religious groups say that the Bible is the external truth, but there is still a great lack of agreement about what the Bible actually says. Others refer to the “law of love that is given by a God of love.” For still others, holding to a standard of mutual respect that plays out in honest expression and careful listening is enough of a value to guide the process.

A religious group, even a liberal one, might say that the divine spirit (or God, if you prefer) participates in the life of the congregation, both individually and collectively. So if the constituent individuals bring together the resources of scripture, prayer, tradition, personal experience, and reason in respectful dialog, then the “will of God” is likely to manifest in the consensus reached by the group.

This discernment process is risky. We sometimes find ourselves deciding to move in an unexpected and/or challenging direction. Also, when people become part of a community of faith, individual opinion and preference becomes less important than the emerging wisdom of the congregation. A discernment process can address the life and behavior of an individual, but it needs the foundation of the community for its validation. While this may sound like a version of “majority rules,” or “the tyranny of the group over the individual,” it doesn’t actually work that way. Reaching consensus is not a power play, nor is the will of the group imposed on the unwilling individual. It is a loving process that looks for solutions that address the deeper needs of the individual as well as the group. Looked at from the other side, consensus is also not designed for an individual (given enough time and persuasiveness) to impose on the group either.

In a church, the primary question in the discernment process is sometimes formulated as “Where is God in this?” or “What is the divine in us trying to manifest in the present?” But, other questions may be just as valid

If a congregation simply tries to figure out what to do in order to get more members and ensure its continued existence, sooner or later it will fail. The discernment process requires a congregation to determine its deepest identity and what it needs to do to honor their divinely rooted identity. Dr. Bass has concluded from her research that healthy Christian congregations tend to do those things that Christians have always done. I tend to agree with her. And I am convinced that when a congregation embarks faithfully in discernment, it can better live out its deepest identity.

What do you think?

Wayne Gustafson
“Our faith is 2000 years old, our thinking isn’t.”
The United Church__of Christ.