In graduate school for educational administration, I was struck by the concept of situational leadership. School leaders assess the maturity of their followers and interact with them accordingly. An immature teacher needs more assistance and guidance from the principal; the mature teacher less.
Immaturity describes the rebellious two-year-old and the argumentative teenager, but these are stages created by God to stir us to discover our identities and our boundaries. Through young adulthood, we are absorbing every mirror of ourselves, good and bad, to fill in what Rohr calls our container.
We move through the immature-teacher-of-ourselves stage, trying to gain footing for our ego, that we might become anchored in a healthy version of our identity, or container. Hopefully we are moving through this frenzy with an ear turned to leaders who are ahead of us, whose containers are so rooted in maturity that they are showing us there is a second half (of earthly life) yet to live.
A child looks around at a small world and learns how and where he fits. As the world expands, he can stretch his view of himself without losing his uprightness.
A church's pursuit of God sometimes creates a small world of rules and regulations and shrinks to fit. When God seeks to expand its world with His agenda of love for the lawless, it cannot stretch its view of self, because its uprightness is rigid and inflexible.
The child and the church are both in need of understanding there IS a second half of existence. As both teach themselves by interacting with their world, immaturity will only phase into maturity if the container--their identity--is solid. Maturity means moving, growth, leaving what is known to follow God's call into the unknown.
In Rohr's words, To build your house well is, ironically, to be nudged beyond its doors.
Oh, the fear of maturity! But the swell of life lies there--it is the chase, the pursuit that is wired within us and within the Spirit-base of our churches.
How is your container? And that of your church?
Pray to enter the swell. Who you and your church are meant to be(come) hang in the balance.
