We host a VantagePoint3 Gathering every couple of years and invite our dispersed community of developmentally minded leaders to join us. Last week, 77 of us gathered in Scottsdale, AZ.
A group of men and women, ages 17 to 84, came together, sharing a deep concern for “growing up in every way into Christ” and helping others grow up into Christ. Most of us also wanted to find a little warmth amidst winter’s cold.
For the VP3 team, this regular gathering expresses our deep desire to learn and encourage a more relational way of life and ministry with others.
Dr. Jim Houston’s words to me almost three decades ago resonated through the meals, the teaching, the hikes, and the many conversations — “Rob, we got spiritual maps and mapmakers, ad nauseum; what we need are a few more mountain guides, wise men and women who are willing to come alongside others on the way.”
This gathering convened a mountain guide conversation, not a spiritual mapmaker conversation. I am grateful to the Lord for the many with ears to hear this invitation to more of a mentoring way of life and ministry. Spirit of God, be generous among us.
Author Greg Paul, founding pastor of Toronto’s Sanctuary community (sanctuarytoronto.org), guided our teaching time around the theme of “Being and Seeing Jesus in a Broken World.” Sanctuary is a unique faith community in which both the wealthy and the poor live, work, and share their experiences and resources daily. It makes a priority of welcoming and caring for some of the most hurting and excluded people in Canada’s largest city.
As our time drew to a close with communion, Greg led us to the Lord’s Table with this paraphrase of Jesus’ beatitudes. I leave these challenging and inviting words with you.
The Beatitudes, paraphrased
Blessed are the spiritually bankrupt, for all the riches of the kingdom are available to bail them out.
Blessed are those whose life is a litany of loss and destruction, and who are so blasted by grief they cannot stand, for they will find a new and strengthening intimacy among others who grieve, and with the Comforter by their side.
Blessed are the shoved-out, put-down and ripped-off, for they will discover that everything – everything! – belongs to them and nothing can contain them.
Blessed are those who are starving for justice, dying of thirst for someone to treat them right, for a feast is coming.
Blessed are the guilty ones who, knowing their own guilt, show mercy to others; they’ll receive mercy too.
Blessed are those whose whole being – body, soul and spirit – is so focused on discovering God for themselves that nothing in this world ever seems good enough; they’ll find what they’ve been looking for at last.
Blessed are the ones who stand in the middle of other peoples’ disputes and are hated by both sides; it’s a horrible place to be, but it’s where they are claiming their identity as children of God.
Blessed are those who are battered and bruised and slandered because they try to treat others well; they are displaying their citizenship in the kingdom of God here and now.
Blessed are you in the moment you are rejected, slandered and verbally abused; rejoice in the knowledge that you are in your very being prophets whose witness rings out through the kingdom of heaven.*
Lord Jesus Christ, be merciful to us…
*Shared by Greg Paul on Friday morning of the VP3 Gathering, February 21, 2025. A version of this paraphrase is found in the appendix of Greg Paul’s Resurrecting Religion: Finding Our Way Back to the Gospel (NavPress, 2018)