Β “Jesus as the truth gets far more attention than Jesus as the way.” – Eugene Peterson
We cannot skip the way of Jesus in our hurry to get the truth of Jesus as he is worshiped and proclaimed. The way of Jesus is the way that we practice and come to understand the truth of Jesus, living Jesus in our homes and workplaces, with our friends and family.
The local congregation is the place and community for listening to and obeying Christ’s commands, for inviting people to consider and respond to Jesus’ invitation, “Follow me,” a place and community for worshiping God. It is the place and community where we are baptized into a Trinitarian identity and go on to mature “to the measure of the full stature of Christ” (Eph. 4:13), where we can be taught the Scriptures and learn to discern the ways that we follow Jesus, the Way.
The local congregation is the primary place for dealing with the particulars and people we live with. As created and sustained by the Holy Spirit, it is insistently local and personal. Unfortunately, the more popular American church strategies in respect to congregation are not friendly to the local and the personal.Β The American way with its penchant for catchy slogans and stirring visions denigrates the local, and its programmatic ways of dealing with people erode the personal, replacing intimacies with functions. *
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* Peterson, Eugene. The Jesus Way: A Conversation About the Ways that Jesus is The Way. Grand Rapids: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Co. 2007
Long-ing For Life 
“The American way with its penchant for catchy slogans and stirring visions denigrates the local, and its programmatic ways of dealing with people erode the personal, replacing intimacies with functions.”
Wow…that’s a powerful statement. Looks like i need to get this book π
so do you think that the “small group/home community” piece of a larger gathering is the place that this gets met?
It has the potential to. However, to often it becomes simply a smaller version of what happens on Sunday. Also, it depends on whether the mindset of the congregation is one of a church with small groups or a church of small groups.
The basic problem is that people who are comfortable with a church of the “American Way” are unlikely to practice the “Jesus Way” in a small group.