A few weeks ago, a well-known and respected church consultant, the Rev. Susan Beaumont, came to train our newly emerging Annual Conference and District Shepherding Teams in adaptive leadership (read more).
She said, “The church is in liminality!” Huh? Liminality is a word from the Latin, meaning threshold. It’s a time of being betwixt and between, acknowledging that what has been is dying away or disappearing but what will be is not yet clear.
Can you see that the Church is in a liminal time! That it’s changing-yes, dying and disappearing in many ways and places-but that we don’t yet see what it will become?
“It does not yet appear what we shall be,” as it says in 1 John 3:2. But we are not without direction as to how to live in this liminal time.
Mary Magdalene went to the tomb “while it was yet dark” . . . there’s a liminal image! She couldn’t imagine what she would find there but because of her faithfulness, service, and love, she put herself in the position to be in the presence of the risen Christ.
We’re called to faithfully do what God has called us to do: to make disciples of Jesus Christ for the transformation of the world. But we’re also called to trust in the mystery which is the liminal gospel of Easter: walking by faith and not by sight, letting the light shine through where it exists in the darkness, and navigating uncharted territory!
Celebrate Easter in the spirit of Mary Magdalene-under the cloud of unknowing but trusting that God is yet revealing what we shall be! Read the Bishop’s April column.