Skill Trees - Session 5:
A glimpse of our first Skill Tree for the “Poor in Spirit”.
Martin Luther King Jr. once wrote that there were four basics steps necessary in any nonviolent campaign:
Collection of the facts to determine whether injustices exist
Negotiation through existing avenues
Self-purification if those existing avenues deny justice
Direct Action (i.e. sit-ins, etc.)
When we look at the world, we can see a growing divide between one another. Some say we now make decisions more by our perceived identities than the ideas we encounter. Regardless of what side you choose to take, it’s apparent our world is broken.
As our team sought God, we felt a call to “return to the basics”, to go to Jesus’s earliest teachings that some people call the Beatitudes. Rather than looking for change in a year or decade, we see God calling us to move in a steady march over the generations. We likely will not live to see the changes we seek, but if we can still prove faithful in seeing God’s Kingdom here on earth, one where Christ is King over how we see ourselves, connect with one another, and live as a community.
It’s easy to think you’re a follower of Jesus, but it’s another to actually follow Jesus. Unless we practice what Jesus taught, we will end up tossed to and fro by the winds of the world and its decrees and desires.
Utilizing open-source software, we were able to put together a “skill tree”, a way for self-paced practice of what Jesus calls us to. Once one “skill” is practiced, it unlocks other “skills”, allowing us to see some progress and also giving some concrete direction for practicing the commands of Jesus.
During this session we introduced the first Skill Tree and have begun a four week pilot of journeying together in following Jesus. Our hope is to know Jesus more intimately not just by hearing Jesus’s commands, but by obeying them and so show ourselves as children of the Kingdom.
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