Confession 1
March 30, 2009
Admittedly: Confession is hard to do. Is it for you?
Richard Foster, of Celebration of Disciplines fame said:
“Confession is so difficult a Discipline for us partly because we view the believing community as a fellowship of saints before we see is as a fellowship of sinners. We come to feel that everyone else has advanced so far into holiness that we are isolated and alone in our sin. We could not bear to reveal our failures and shortcomings to others. We imagine that we are the only ones who have not stepped onto the high road to heaven. Therefore we hide ourselves from one another and live in veiled lies and hypocrisy.
But if we know that the people of God are first a fellowship of sinner we are freed to hear the unconditional call of God’s love and to confess our need openly before our brothers and sisters together. In acts of mutual confession we release the power that heals. Our humanity is no longer denied but transformed.”
How do you practice confession in your community? Is it practiced? Should it be? If so, what would it look like?
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5 Comments to “Confession 1”
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I appreciate and needed the words on confession today.
I also apologize for going off topic with these comments; I have been visiting Missional Order nearly daily for a month or so. I have been helped by what you are attempting to do here.
One question on CDP - why did you choose to mutually commit to CDP over the Divine Hours by Phyllis Tickle. I am sort of sampling both and would appreciate some guidance and advice.
Jerry, thanks for visiting and contributing.
The three of us where this idea of missional order was born were going through Divine Hours for a while (in my case 2 years) and thought a change might help us in our own practice of sacred rhythm. We all loved Divine Hours.We liked the recitation of the portions of the Psalms, the prayer of the church, the recurring Lord’s prayer, and many other things.
So we started using CDP and liked what we were experiencing. We agreed that initially we would start with it and then possibly change to something else.
What I like about CDP is the strong Christological emphasis of the prayers. I also like that after a while you get to know the prayers by heart. That is freeing. For me it has opened new ways of leading in public praying and afforded the opportunity to expose others to sacred rhythm.
A little secret: We are at the initial stages of doing our own missional order liturgy to reflect our three common commitments and a bit of the ethos of who we are and our present ministry settings. It’s a long way off but there seems to be a desire on our part to do it. Pray with us.
What do you like about each?
Georges, thanks for the explanation on CDP. I have used CDP from this website for about 2 weeks but have just received a copy of Divine Hours for springtime that I ordered from Amazon.
I initially thought the added variety of Divine Hours would be better than the more repetitious structure of CDP but, like you, was beginning to see some benefit in the repeptition. I also like that CDP structures in “prayer for others”.
I plan to continue with Divine Hours through Easter. Maybe I will see which is best for me by then. But I will also consider that using CDP may be more in keeping with the mutual commitment aspect of a missional order.
[...] – Richard Foster (ht) [...]
Georges, I think this is such a great quote from Foster. And thanks for your thoughtful response to Jerry’s question.
Jerry, good to hear from you again and your experience with CDP and Divine Hours.