Vineyard Church | Weekly Update February 28, 2024

Last week, our blog began by recalling how we opened our new year and winter teaching series with an acknowledgement that we are all in process, that God is at work in all of us, and that because we are finishing works, we cannot expect each other to act like fully finished works. The outcome of this posture is compassion, mercy, and conflict resolution that lead to community and reconciliation…very countercultural outcomes.

One expression of this that defies the culture around us is the rejection of the tendency to create narratives. Narratives, the stories we create to make sense of events and interactions, can sometimes say more about us than they do about the person or situation we are experiencing. 

Narratives are formed when we assume we know why someone did or said something, draw conclusions from this, and then create a paradigm of how we treat or view that person (or talk about that person to others). Creating narratives includes deciding why someone cut me off in traffic, why they choose to dress the way they do, why they didn’t smile at me or wave when they saw me….The list goes on, and the temptation to create narratives permeates our daily life.  

The danger of creating narratives is that it allows our biases to excuse broken relationships because we can interpret the worst about someone without engaging them. Put another way, we don’t have to risk finding out if either reconciliation is possible or if there is a sin we are committing if we allow our narrative to take the place of honest conversation. 

Avoiding creating narratives is made more difficult in our culture because cynicism, suspicion, and self-righteousness actively attack the reconciliatory process. Social media and entertainment content are full of examples of people assuming the worst about another person’s comments, actions, or decisions, and following this assumption is the creation of a narrative that breeds an entity we interact with that does not fully reflect the person we are dealing with.

The immediate danger of this is that we end up with a flesh and blood enemy. As Paul closes his letter to the Church in Ephesus, he reminds those in the Church (and us) of this: 

For we are not fighting against flesh-and-blood enemies, but against evil rulers and authorities of the unseen world, against mighty powers in this dark world, and against evil spirits in the heavenly places. Ephesians 6:12 (NLT)

John Wimber paraphrased this passage by saying, “My brother is never my enemy, even when he acts like it.” Narrative creation that leads to flesh and blood enemies is a clear relational transgression and reveals that the root of suspicious or cynical narrative creation is actually in us rather than in the one we are creating a narrative about. 

The spirit of the world, the spirit of the flesh, would have us create a narrative that assumes the worst in the actions and words of others, but the Spirit of the Living God frees us to assume the best. This process, after receiving what might be a slight or transgression, begins with the grace of limiting judgements to what we actually know and an engagement in a process like the model Jesus lines out for us in Matthew 18:

15 “If another believer sins against you, go privately and point out the offense. If the other person listens and confesses it, you have won that person back. 16 But if you are unsuccessful, take one or two others with you and go back again, so that everything you say may be confirmed by two or three witnesses. 17 If the person still refuses to listen, take your case to the church. Then if he or she won’t accept the church’s decision, treat that person as a pagan or a corrupt tax collector.” Matthew 18:15-17

This process is most effective when it is free of social media interaction, text or email that allows faulty context to be read into the communication, and when the temptation for revenge or retribution has subsided. The next part of the process is to apply the full measure of the freedom we have in Christ to the situation, another piece that is incompatible with revenge and recompense. 

This is the freedom to assume the best of the people we are in community with, the community we call the Vineyard. This freedom flows from the reality of the season we are preparing to celebrate, the unimaginable length that Jesus went to in order to forgive our sins. This act of sacrificial love gives us the freedom to do the same, and wrapped in this gift is the freedom from creating narratives.

Adam Greenwell
Pastor  |  Billings Vineyard Church
www.BillingsVineyard.org