Transitions: Horizoning our Story…

Let us return this month to the image of “horizoning.” (I made the word up; I hope that you get what I mean.)

I mean lifting our eyes above the particularities of our daily challenges and circumstances, toward the sunrise. I mean pausing for a moment to consider our overall direction. I mean disengaging for a moment from the “whats” and the “hows” that fill our days to the brim, to consider once again the “whys.” Where are we going, anyway? What difference does it make? It is important to orient ourselves in this way from time to time – and in these times of organizational transition especially. There is nothing more disorienting than losing our sense of horizon. If you are a pilot, as we said last month, losing your horizon is a full-blown emergency.

The “horizon” represents the intersection between what we know and what we do not, what we can see and what lies beyond our field of view. The “horizon” represents the transition between our history and our future. It lies precisely at the intersection between our yesterdays and our tomorrows – our accumulated experiences, values and perspectives and their practical application “beyond the horizon.” Horizons move us onward.

In a sermon for Ascension Day, in 1522, Luther described a movement toward the horizon – in particular, the natural “horizon” of our mission in the world.

“The preaching of this message may be likened to a stone thrown into the water, producing ripples which circle outward from it, the waves rolling always on and on, one driving the other, till they come to the shore. Although the center becomes quiet, the waves do not rest, but move forward. So it is with the preaching of the Word. It was begun by the apostles, and it constantly goes forward, is pushed on farther and farther by the preachers, driving hither and thither into the world, yet always being made known to those who never heard it before…” (WA 10 III, 140, 6ff.). 1

This is how the process works: first and fundamentally, the gospel of salvation splashes into our lives – here is the irreplaceable beginning. “[T]he whole propulsive power of the Lutheran Reformation” is based in this encounter – what Werner Elert has famously called the “impact of the Gospel (evangelischer Ansatz).” 2

And then the gospel ripples out. The gospel “wants to be taught and preached always and always,” said Luther, “in order that it may always appear above the horizon” (WA 10 I, 1, 540, 12f.). 3 The gospel goes out “throughout the length and breadth of the world… and keeps on going farther” (WA 24, 392, 28). The gospel itself creates this dynamic. It moves always toward the horizon.

We are introduced to the love of the Savior: we want then to introduce him to others. We discover ourselves made new by his grace: we see then that others need newness, too. We find with Paul that we can no longer live on our own or for ourselves: “but it is Christ who lives in me, who loved me and gave himself for me” (Galatians 2:20). The love of Christ comes to control us “because we are convinced that one has died for all” (2 Corinthians 5:14). This is a power that cannot but ripple to the farthest shore.

“He who speaks about the Gospel in this way also proclaims it,” Werner Elert summarizes. 4

The “impact of the Gospel” does not issue in a precise way of doing missions, however. It is not about doing this but not that; saying one thing but not another; serving in one fashion but avoiding alternatives, and so on. It creates very few predictable structures. It is about movement in the rhythm of the original splash. It is about fueling our obedience by the love of the Savior. It is not our own careful plans, resolutions, policies and priorities, strategies and insights that propel us into the world, in Luther’s view. It is the gospel itself.

And then the ripples ripple. They do what ripples do. You can describe them by the laws of physics, I suppose, but you won’t understand them so very much better. They are simply “rolling always on and on, one driving the other, till they come to the shore….”

This gives us a “horizoning strategy” for the transitions before us as an organization. We must return first of all, again and again, to the pure and original gospel splash: the wonderful news of God’s love in the wonderful grace of the Savior. But then we should lift our heads and watch for the shore.

I am thinking that ripples cannot know, with any precision, on what shore they will land. They are simply on the move, at the impulse of the original splash. Yet they might know that they will land somewhere. Because the church proclaims the gospel, Werner Elert explained, it “moves in direction of the nations – and is kept moving by them.” 5 The gospel has landed in the world, “as a stone in the water,” Luther said. “But the work is not yet finished; the gospel has not yet reached its limit” (WA 10 III, 140, 6ff.).

Here is the strategy in a nutshell: we apply “the impact of the Gospel (evangelischer Ansatz) to the fact that the Gospel has not yet reached all mankind.” 6 This is the horizon to keep squarely in view. This is the movement that leads “ripples” to shore.

Other posts in this Transitions series:
Transitions: Remembering • Transitions: Remembering Our Story… • Transitions: Horizoning… • Transitions: Horizoning our Story… • Transitions: Provisioning… • Transitions: Resting… • Transitions: Now What?