In my previous post, I reacted to what I perceived as a lack of a strong sense of ecclesia; my sensibilities tend toward the narrative of a strong, intentional effort toward structures built by the church to enable the formation of the people ; the resistance to the culture’s values; the need for an intense “restructuring” of the way in which we live on many levels. On economics, on health, on including and being with the poor, on knowing and living in and being with God’s story as it unfolds through the history of Israel and in the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus. The Servant Leadership School is an outgrowth of The Church of the Saviour communities that is a base of curriculum, contemplation, “hooking up” to the processes that enable and encourage embodiment in particular missions, with a particular called people. A lot of what has filtered through The Servant Leadership School has been treated in articles by Sojourners over the years.

If Sojourners readers eventually make their way to the likes of such “integrators” of spiritual and social issues as The Servant Leadership School (who are certainly based in and exist FOR the church— indeed , their very purpose as a “mission” of The Church of the Saviour communities is to “hook up” seekers to embodied and intentional communities), then Sojourners would be an effective curriculum for the church. There have been many people who have made their way through such a journey. Sojourners has been an “alternative news source” helping to initiate what for many is that initial awareness that “empire” is alive and well and must be confronted. I feel the “gap” of late in the lack of a sufficiently “ecclesial” perspective on the “solutions” to the injustices we are recognizing (and it seems, of late, more often than we are accustomed, although this is not REALLY true). But MANY MANY people are GETTING THERE through such “awareness raisers” that Sojourners has been doping through their articles and initiatives over the years. I feel like I’m on the edge between groups like Sojourners and those who “have problems” with what Jim Wallis is saying or doing (from all sorts of directions: from advocates for “the Separation of Church and State” and from those who argue from advocacy for a more “robust and distinctly Christian language”. The fact that Wallis is “getting it” from both sides is testimony for me as to the almost no-win position he is in in advocating for an acceptance of “faith language” in the public square. But that DOES include “distinctly Christian language” as well. Wallis HAS that perspective. But he IS trying to help secularists understand where CHRISTIANS are coming from. If I were to talk to Jim, and we could talk about this, I would certainly speak of my desire to see the church be brought into the dialogue as the “people” that are deperately needed to enable us to become the “Peaceable People” and the “light” that would expose the false choices and false “solutions” this world has offered us and sold us and insists that we accept “for the common good”.