In the Midst of Much-Doing

Charles R. Ringma

Description

How are we to sustain activism and compassion amidst the never-ending crises of the twenty-first century? While the concern for social justice is deeply biblical, cynicism, burnout, and despair are all too common side effects when action is divorced from contemplation. To effectively serve as the hands and feet of Jesus, the church must attend to the revitalization of its inner life through the spiritual practices which feed, support, and sustain the work of the kingdom. Rather than the fragmentation and dualism that have led denominations to choose between prayer and service, evangelization and justice, the church must integrate heart, mind, and body in order to fulfil its calling to transform the world from within. Drawing from Scripture and a wide range of Christian traditions – from the monastic to the evangelical – this book inspires its readers to integrate spiritual renewal and prophetic witness for the glory of God and the good of his creation.

Sujets

• Religion
• Christianisme
• Missions
• Christian Ministry
• Philosophie et théologie

Informations

• Publié par: Langham Creative Projects
• Date de parution: 31 mai 2023
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781839738449
• Langue: English

Extrait

Reading this book in the midst of my “much-doing,” teetering on the edge of exhaustion, it was both a salve to my soul and a prophetic shot in the arm. With patient attention to the riches of deep church – equally at home in the Celtic lectionary as the Catholic catechism and Lausanne movement commitments – Charles models triple listening to the word of God, the world of scholarship, and one another in our stories of everyday faith. Charles beautifully weaves together missional activity and mystical spirituality in an integrated theological reflection which performed an open-heart surgery that lay bare my own pretension. Charles humbly deconstructed his nearly five decades of radical mission with the poor, stumbling toward a way of being that could sustain and energize the whole church’s calling as whole-life disciples who are contemplative in our doing and on mission in our meditating, all in pursuit of union with Christ for the life of the world.
Dave Benson, PhD
Director of Culture and Discipleship,
The London Institute for Contemporary Christianity
For evangelicals whose mission activism has become increasingly wearisome, this book is a must-read. Ringma makes a strong case from Scripture and church history that evangelical mission is not sustainable without grounding it in a robust spirituality of ascetic practices, identification with a suffering world and Christian hope. But the work does far more than present cogent arguments for a missional spirituality, it engages the reader existentially as the author shares from his own personal struggles. For me, this is the book’s most attractive feature.
Simon Chan, PhD
Editor, Asia Journal of Theology
Formerly Earnest Lau Professor of Systematic Theology,
Trinity Theological College, Singapore
Charles Ringma says that this is no work of academic theology, and in a sense that is true. Yet it draws upon a wide range of theological voices of many backgrounds and that gives the book an intellectual solidity. However, it is more invitational than instructional, more exploratory than expository. Above all, it is a work born of personal struggle through a now long life, which gives the book something of the feel of spiritual autobiography, weaving together many threads of a life that has been not only long but remarkably varied.
The inspiration of this book is radically biblical but it also stresses the need to listen to and learn from the voices of the poor, often heard on the peripheries. Listening to the voice of God in Scripture and the voice of God in the poor becomes the ground of the contemplative vision which the book builds. Words like contemplation, mysticism and spirituality can be slippery. But Charles Ringma makes it clear that they all look to the experience of the real God which the world craves. People, especially the young, are looking not for words or concepts about God but for the experience of God, and unless Christians have this experience in depth they will leave the world dying of hunger. The church can go out to the world only if the church goes down into God.
These are life-giving insights at a time when a Church under pressure may be tempted to close ranks in a form of self-defence but when the church in fact has to imagine and enact new forms of mission. In this book, Charles Ringma, humbly and wisely, points the true way ahead.
Mark Coleridge, PhD
Metropolitan Archbishop of Brisbane, Australia
The word I kept returning to as I read Ringma’s book is depth. This book leads us deeper into the life of the Triune God, deeper into the rich reservoir of biblical and theological witnesses, deeper into a life of solidarity and action with our poor, oppressed or suffering neighbour, and deeper into a life of care for, wonder of and attention to the creation beneath and above us. In a digital and secular age where we struggle to pay any prolonged attention to God or our neighbour, this book offers the fullness of mature thought and practice from someone who has embodied this integral vision he espouses for a present-day missional Christianity. Please read this book. I have no doubt it will help you to live more deeply in your own human vocation as a bearer of the divine image in a tattered world.
Tim Dickau, DMin
Associate, Center for Missional Leadership,
St. Andrew’s Hall, Canada
Director, CityGate Vancouver, Canada
This is a book to read slowly and deeply. It is the fruit of Charles Ringma’s lifetime ministry as a missioner, teacher and writer. With a combination of rich theology and biblical reflection he invites the reader to follow Christ to that place where contemplation and action combine to make believers not only bearers of the message but an embodiment of it.
William Dyrness, PhD
Senior Professor of Theology and Culture,
Fuller Theological Seminary, California, USA
For centuries the church has struggled to find a way to bring the competitive sisters, the “Mary” of contemplative spirituality and the “Martha” of active serving, into a warm embrace. In this book Charles Ringma, writing as both scholar and mentor, shows us how. The fruit of his lifetime of personally integrating intense missional activity with an ever-deepening spirituality, this is Ringma’s magnum opus. It is a work that will be read, marked, discussed and taught for a generation to come.
Maxine Hancock, PhD
Professor Emerita, Interdisciplinary Studies & Spiritual Theology,
Regent College, Canada
This book is an outstanding and welcome contribution to the growing area of the study of missional spirituality. It critiques our misplaced Western activism and offers in its place missional life that flows from the life of God made available to us through participation in Christ by the Spirit, in deep ecclesial community where we are working with God, not for God.
Ross Hastings, PhD
Sangwoo Youtong Chee Professor of Theology,
Regent College, Canada
Theology tends to work in the separate silos of its academic disciplines but Franciscan Tertiary and theologian Charles Ringma argues here for the integration of mission and spirituality. This important and original work draws on a wide range of sources, biblical and historical (including Luther, Francis of Assisi, the Anabaptists and Liberation Theology), but above all the author reflects on his own life engaged in a range of ministry in cross-cultural missional contexts. Spirituality and radical activism are integrally related and this book encourages us all to enter more deeply into that point of connection, that both prayer and active ministry may more profoundly nourish each other.
Brother Christopher John, SSF
Minister General, First Order Brothers of the Society of St Francis
In the Midst of Much-Doing: Cultivating a Missional Spirituality provides rich and valuable resources for an integrative view of mission and spirituality. Drawing from various Christian themes and traditions, the book integrates theology, spirituality and mission in a thought-provoking manner. It challenges us to cultivate a missional spirituality that is wholistic and life-transforming.
Jean Lee
Abundant Grace Professor of Theological Studies,
China Graduate School of Theology
In the midst of a “much-doing” period, this book came into my hands. The questions proposed captured my attention. They not only named my concerns but invited me to a deeper reflection on the theme of mission and spirituality. This book is clearly the result of a long journey in Christian discipleship that seeks to integrate mind, heart and hands, drawing our attention to the neglected realities that hinder an integrated Christian life. It is not material to be read in one sitting; you will benefit most if you allow the text to lead you into times of prayer, contemplation and reflection. The breadth and depth of reflection in this book open new windows of understanding and invites us to new paths of transformation. This excellent work is an essential reference for all who seek a spiritual life that guides, sustains and strengthens Christian witness and service.
Ziel J.O. Machado
Honorary President, International Fellowship of Evangelical Students
Vice-Rector and Professor of Pastoral Theology,
Seminário Teológico Servo de Cristo, Brazil
This book is a comprehensive integration of the lifelong learnings of a social activist turned contemplative, a thoughtful synthesis of what the intellectual heirs of Greek dualism had rent asunder – wedding spirituality to service, prayer to praxis, mission to mysticism. Charles Ringma, drawing from church history and a plurality of spiritual traditions, as well as from his own personal journey across cultures, has woven these strands together into a narrative that compels attention describing what faith can look like when it is lived in its fullness and not broken up into pieces and stored into neat little boxes. Charles Ringma faced what the poet W. H. Auden has called “human unsuccess.” It is a thing for rejoicing that someone who belongs to cultures with a “can-do” mentality emerges out of disillusionment with this gift, the sense that we are only servants waiting and watching for the inbreaking of the hand of God in our history.
Melba Padilla Maggay, PhD
President,
Institute for Studies in Asian Church and Culture
Worthy reading for anyone who is seriously interested in the integration of church, prayer, and mission; and who is deeply concerned to explore what a missional spirituality could look like. This is the author’s careful reflection on biblical and historical themes on the church, prayer and mission. The book will contribute towards the formation of practical integration of church, prayer and mission.
Moses Yamo Masala
Anglican Bishop of Rorya, Tanzania
This magnificent book invites us to an integrated life of contemplative missional servanthood. Dr. Ringma offers us the fruits of a lifetime of scholarship, cross-cultural missionary experience and reflective wisdom that is trul