This post was originally a comment to Mike's post below, but it got so long I decided to make a post out of it!
I have been thinking that real, genuine actions (orthopraxy) flow out of our health as individuals and our health as a community. That said, I think times of inward and self-reflective growth are very important, so long as we don't stay there. Common Table seems to have gone through some important growth as a community in the past year or two, and I think we are feeling a renewed hunger to engage outside of our group. The reason I point this out is that I felt a while back we where trying to engage outside our group, while we weren't engaged inside our group (I should qualify this as my perception, not a fact). Maybe I am making a false assumption about the order of events, but I really like the notion that engaging and helping others is the outflow of our inward vitality. As we have become church to each other, we begin to meet each other's needs in real and tangible ways, and ultimately we begin to join together and seek to do things for those in even greater need.
So instead of feeling guilt about what I (or we) are not doing, I think it is good to focus on what we are doing, and work to extend that in our lives. Otherwise I personally tend to feel overwhelmed and under-resourced to meet any of my lofty expectations for my life and my community.
Labels: Orthopraxy
