A Theology for Being with God

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1. Our calling is to imitate the way God is.

2. Our clue to how to imitate God is to follow the way God is with us in Christ.

3. Our first awareness is the abundance of God and our own scarcity – together with our gratitude that we have been given so many ways to transform our scarcity into God’s abundance.

4. It is a miracle of grace that God meets our scarcity through the abundance we discover in those apparently more exposed to scarcity than ourselves. 

5. A community seeking regeneration has already within it most of what it needs for its own transformation.

6. We do not configure situations as problems needing solutions.

7. We cannot understand, listen to, be taught by, or receive grace from people unless we inhabit their world which we see as valuable for its own sake.

8. There is no goal beyond restored relationship: reconciliation is the gospel.

9. The centre of ministry is worship (being with God); and the centre of mission is being with the disadvantaged and receiving abundance from them.

10. Being with is both the method and goal of social engagement.

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Sam Wells: The Nazareth Manifesto