Engagement

“The healing path is first and last about engagement. It is through engagement with you that I learn to hope more deeply for us. It is through hope that God slowly heals past brokenness on the basis of future promise. The healing path takes me from living as an `insider’ to engaging in areas of burden and passion on the fringe of what most people view as the formal, structured local church.” – Dan Allender, The Healing Path, p. 243

To “engage” means “To obtain or contract for the service of; employ. To obtain and hold the attention of: engross. To require the use of; occupy. To pledge or promise.” And so on. Used here, it more than likely means, “To interlock or cause to interlock; mesh. To please or attract, win. To entangle, involve.” I think I like Merriam-Webster’s definition best. It seems to convey Allender’s point well when it defines “engagement” as: “emotional involvement or commitment.”

Interestingly, one of the definitions of “engagement” is “The condition of being in gear.” Conversely, “disengagement” is being out of gear.

Where are you “in gear”?

Gears aren’t meant to function in isolation. They work together, in unison. An apt analogy for the Body of Christ.

“But I am not to go it alone” writes Allender. “I am… to sojourn with an apostolic band. We may occasionally walk alone, but we are meant to walk together.”

Following some words on the mission and the sanctification of his followers to his disciples in John 17, Jesus prays, “My prayer is not for them alone.  I pray also for those who will believe in me through their message, that all of them may be one, Father, just as you are in me and I am in you.”

What does that mean, and what does it have to do with “engagement”?

A musing by Kristine.