the Pitt 29: Women and Leadership - part deux

So there was a good bit of conversation from my post on Women in Leadership, so I wanted to follow that up...to kind of go over my last comment and segue into this post:

@Bill - I hear you...I also am against power-plays and chaunvinism or hyper-feminism. To me, it actually seems antithetical to Jesus' call of the gospel - servant leadership. Knowing Rose, and knowing her story, I heard her being tragicomic in the video, and actually two times taking the posture of humility. First, in a bit from the story she tells about the mega-church she was asked to speak at and her submitting herself to whatever they thought best. And then in her own church, who having recognized the call and gifts of senior leadership and empowered her in that, she still comes around to humility saying it's about team leadership. I'm a huge proponent of that!

So, let me put my cards on the tableau vis-a-vis authority and leadership and power and gender-issues: for me Jesus has the authority (given to Him by the Father), and expresses that through living through us. Thus it's about the Father's reign in Christ through His Spirit. All authority has been given to Him...and He exercises that authority through us via indwelling and living through us (Paul says we no longer live, but Christ lives in us/through us), which is where He gives us power. James D.G. Dunn says it better than I:

"As E. Kasemann has rightly insisted, so far as the Pauline community is concerned, authority resides in or belongs to the act of ministry itself – it resides neither in the person nor in an office, but in the particular charisma itself. Moreover, the concomitant responsibility to evaluate that charisma is laid upon all. Now this fact is true of all ministry, of all charismata, in the Pauline vision of community.”

I apply this to issues of leadership, authority and power as well.  So Jesus expressing authority and leadership and gifting in the church isn't based on the broken vessel itself, but rather on Christ living through us, and in Christ, issues like male/female, slave/freeperson, sophistocated/primitive culture...all those are what Paul might call 'matters of preference/indifference'(odiofera), because for me it's about discerning as a community what Jesus is saying to the churches and through the churches to the world and acting upon that (what Dunn calls 'the act of ministry')...and that takes the community as a whole, at least that's my two-cents.

Out of Ur is currently running a 3-part series on Women in Leadership (here are links to Part 1, Part 2 and Part 3), and below is a video with the eminent scholar and theologian N.T. Wright.  In this video, Wright outlines the prominent role of women as apostles (Romans 16) and the counter-cultural fact that a women was the first person commissioned to announce the news of Jesus' resurrection (John 20). He chooses to read 1 Timothy 2 in light of these texts:

the Pitt 28: The Cruciform-Shape of Authenticity

Some time ago, my friend T Freeman wrote a short series called “Naturally Sacramental” on his blog.  One of the main pieces in our ensuing conversation that has begun to emerge in the conversation toward cuiltivating a faith community in Pittsburgh is the sacramental nature of people.  In the practice of people being sacramental, I believe this helps us move toward re-imagining a core posture of humility and authenticity with respect to being what we typically refer to as 'naturally supernatural':

“There are several ways that the practice of honesty shapes what Vineyard churches do and, more so, how they do it.  The most obvious is the casual, come-as-you-are approach to dress, style of speech, and style of music.  Even when performing the miraculous or experiencing intimacies with God the Vineyard is known for speaking in the native language of the people involved.  The phrase “naturally supernatural” came to embody this value in the movement. Whether in teaching, healing, praying, singing, or expelling demons, no one needs to put on airs or be what they aren’t or speak in King James English or a different tone of voice.  And tracking with the great commandments, transparency in the Vineyard is seen as facilitating close relationships among people as well as with God.  Many critics of the Vineyard assume that all the above practices are marketing-driven.  While it’s true that has played a role in varying degrees, churches and times, the value is more driven by a desire for true intimacy-people sharing what they really are-with God and others, and this value has shaped everything in the Vineyard movement.”

It’s about a deep honesty that engenders deep humility.  It is about being more human, not less human.  But this kind of humility and honesty does not lead us into stagnation, but rather propels us more and more to seek Jesus and the Kingdom of God, not only “in church” but everywhere we go in our lives in naturally supernatural rhythms.  We have begun to experience a new reality of the in-breaking Reign of God, in part but not in whole, at our most charismatic if not at our most mundane – thus perhaps we need to re-assess our experience of the Reign of God in Christ, because it directly affects the way we live in this world.  Too often the approach of the Church has been in either/or categories, not seeking to understand the tension inherent in our present reality, and I think this tension keeps us humble and promotes the way of being naturally supernatural.  When the work of the Spirit is embraced but naturally supernatural humility is not embraced, we tend to want to break the tension and either become gloriously myopic in the ‘now’ or ride off chasing after the ‘not yet’.  Seeking genuine wisdom, we want to move toward the essence of the mystery of the gospel of the Kingdom of God in Christ Jesus, and we embrace the tension and cruciform-shape to our formation and discipleship lived-out in our present reality as the people of God in Christ Jesus and as Spirit-empowered catalysts of the in-breaking Kingdom who journey through this present age as wounded healers in naturally supernatural ways. 

T goes on, "As always, the proof is in the practices. Vineyard churches, because they sacramentalize the believer, routinely make space in their gatherings (usually called ‘ministry time’) for large teams of people (generally not including the pastor) to “do the stuff” with/for anyone that wants someone to pray and listen to the Spirit for them, for one kind of healing or another, and routinely offer trainings/workshops (I have given them myself) for people who want to participate in this kind of ministry both in the church meetings and outside of them. I should probably also mention here that the practice of actually seeking or asking for God to be uniquely present or active is also viewed as sacramental in the Vineyard, in that it is commonplace in the Vineyard to expect God to be uniquely active when people ask or welcome him to be.  Even though the Vineyard does not teach that God’s response is at all dictated by people, they do teach and practice that sometimes God is not “uniquely present or active” because we  don’t ask, expect or really want him to be." 

We’re all wounded and broken, and we minister from this place and posture of weakness and brokenness.  This is our authenticity.  Dr. Terry Wardle at a recent formational prayer seminar spoke about “brokenness, brokenness, brokenness”.  He was referring to three types of brokenness:

• congenital brokenness (from the fall);
• communal brokenness (we are wounded and broken and we all go about wounding others and breaking others – Al-Anon has a saying resonating with this: “Hurt people hurt people.”);
• but the third one is sacramental brokenness: we minister healing from a posture and place of humility and weakness as Christ lives and heals and moves through us via His Spirit. 

This keeps me humble, and I think it seems to position all of us in a mutually transforming posture of something Ephesians talks about, mutual submission.  It is not I who live, but Christ lives through me.  It also seems to me that in a culture of self-promotion, humility becomes a primary spiritual discipline and even lifestyle of following Jesus while embracing all that it entails.  To me this seems utterly counter-cultural.  I also see this relating to the wisdom of the 12^th tradition of AA: “Anonymity is the spiritual foundation of all our Traditions...” 

Thus, in this way, I think our Vineyard distinctive of ‘naturally supernatural’ can be embraced as non-hyped but significantly life-changing via Christ Jesus with unlimited possibility and hope as we humbly submit and surrender to His Reign impacting us, moving through and on to others.  We’re merely broken vessels, and in seizing the authenticity inherent in brokenness, and acting on the wisdom of AA – that ‘alcoholics need other alcoholics’, i.e., the broken need others who are broken - we need to always endeavour to be mature, humble ‘pray-ers’ and as those receiving ministry to give good feedback and communication so that we move together in mutuality.  In this mutuality, we give ourselves over to Jesus to move and have His Being in and through us - joining Him in being the place where heaven and earth meet, trusting that the subsequent transparency and humility will affect mutual transformation and mysteriously – as Colossians 1:24 hints at – bring the sorrows and sufferings of Christ to wholeness.

[to be continued...]

the Pitt 27: Dark Knight of the Soul

Here's the thing that you have to understand about this new journey into cultivating a faith community in urban Pittsburgh thus far...it's hasn't been from happiness to happiness. It's a struggle and a wrestling - as I mentioned here - and that's how this journey began and continues.

It's also surprising in many ways, and I happen upon God in the midst of fear and restless sleep, like Jacob trying to sleep with a rock as a pillow and in that dry, fear-filled place, I agree that surely, God is in this place. I think I (or perhaps I can be so bold as to say we) have lost the fundamental calling of Christians and our understanding of suffering overall, but especially the sense that suffering forces us into the sacrament of the present moment (as de Cassaude called it), no matter what that present moment feels like/looks like.

One of the people I have learned a lot from in the past few years has been Terry Wardle, who teaches at the Ashland Theological Seminary in northeast Ohio. What Terry writes resonates with much of my own experience, in that honest, raw way:

"I must tell you that my initial reaction to this principle [the principle is expressed in brief form by Jurgen Moltmann: " The God whose divinity Jesus revealed through his self-giving always helps first of all by suffering with us."] was not positive...[r]ealizing that He was actually involved made me angry. I had been experiencing deep emotional pain for too long!...To discover that God was in this darkness did not please me. And frankly, I let Him know my feelings in no uncertain terms....Yet an amazing transformation began to take place. As I wrestled with God in the darkness, I began to know Him better and better. His love, patience and faithfulness slowly became present realities as never before...even though, after several years, the journey is not without pain...seasons of anxiety threaten at times, and I have lingering avoidance issues yet to conquer. But I have learned to seek God in the darkness immediately, thankful that now the handicap draws me closer to Him and brings with it a healthy humility regarding life. While my ministry to the broken is a sacred trust, this infirmity reminds me that His strength is made perfect in weakness. Thus my weakness really is a precious gift. This concept was developed by the Christian mystics of the fifteenth to eighteenth centuries. Their insights helped me better understand...this makes each moment a sacred opportunity to experience our Lord..."

...several years ago, God brought me through a sojourn into woundedness and healing; a dark night of the soul as St. John of the Cross framed it.  In a twisted way, it was a dark knight, with my own Joker to torment me and riddled by my own Two-faces; it was difficult, and I walked around most of that period of my life in a haze, with my spiritual vision impaired…and yet Jesus brought me through it, stumbling toward Him and His tender wooing toward healing.

This ‘dark night of the soul’ is so hard, yet in the end the benefits that I reap are invaluable. It’s one of those trials that I’m so grateful now for going through it, but I cringe to think that it might happen again - and it has in small seasons…and it is likely that I will experience them again and again. When we go through this, we need to engage with each other and with Jesus to explore our wounded hearts and receive healing from Him. I can relate to how Dan Allender wrestles with this in his introduction to his heart-felt book The Healing Path: God may have to unweave us to knit us together again with love and healing.

This scares the crap out of me, but at the same time gives me immense hope. I came through this time of dryness – this wilderness experience – closer and more radically dependent upon Jesus. It brought me closer to Jesus and to some truly sacred friends who stood with me; and my faith came through it not only intact but increased and strengthened and with new depth! This is my hope for all of us as we live in this fallen yet-headed-for-redemption world…and it reminds me of what author Henri Nouwen calls all Christians who minister to others: wounded healers.

Being a wounded healer means not letting ourselves get lost in the quagmire of life. Most often we (created earthlings as a whole that is) go around wounded, while striking out and wounding others out of our own brokenness…it's just sometimes we get lost in our own brokenness. That’s definitely what happened to me during my time of spiritual dryness.


But Jesus has something better for us. He calls us to something that paul points to in Romans 12: we are not to live after the pattern of this world, but to be transformed. It's my earnest hope that these experiences of the Hiddenness of God and also the manifest Presence of God have and will continue to form and transform me/us, that having keenly felt both/and, God has prepared myself and my wife and a few friends as wounded healers being brought into the midst of Pittsburgh...may it be said of us:

"When we honestly ask ourselves which person in our lives mean the most to us, we often find that it is those who, instead of giving advice, solutions, or cures, have chosen rather to share our pain and touch our wounds with a warm and tender hand."

[to be continued...]

the daughters of new jerusalem

...some wordcraft following the post and video interview from yesterday. I wrote this particular piece of wordcraft after a conversation with Beth Wacome Keck some years ago, as we were dreaming of the future of her daughters and mine:

fierce as the lioness
gentle as the doe

the daughters of New Jerusalem
sing forth their haunting Woe

once heard in jubilant song
and graceful swaying dance

now crushed by those grasping
to dwindling dominance

without the daughters of new Jerusalem…
who are the sons of Zion?

yet where have their voices gone…
lost in the roar of lions?

brood of Anna sing forth
your precious utterance

over the Messiah once more
prophetic breviloquence

who is this coming up
from the wilderness with her Lover?

tis a flowering blossom in bloom
dancing to discover

her voice clear as water
radiant in colors imbue

sing forth anointed daughter
as we are joined anew

the Pitt 26: Women in Leadership

Found the following through my friend Steve Schenk.  I love Rose!  In early February, I got to visit with her shortly as the church she leads in Seattle hosted the Society of Vineyard Scholars conference. 

I first met Rose a few years ago when she taught and lead a breakout session at a Vineyard Central gathering on the Contemplative Charismatic.  She has taught and helped me so much!  One of the things I want to begin to blog about some after Easter and regarding Pittsburgh is toward the Contemplative Charismatic.  But today, I thought I would share this video with Rose talking about Women in Leadership, because I love what she has to say about team leadership and women and men together...and that is definitely something that impacts what God is calling us to cultivate in Pittsburgh:

the contemplative element of love

“The success of love is in the loving—it is not in the result of loving. Of course it is natural in love to want the best for the other person, but whether it turns out that way or not does not determine the value of what we have done. The more we can remove this priority for results the more we can learn about the contemplative element of love. There is the love expressed in the service and the love in the contemplation. It is the balance of both which we should be striving for. Love is the key to finding this balance.”

~ Mother Teresa

Taking Stock of Your Miserable Existence

Nigel Marsh riff-ing off from St. Benedict...

sweet embrace lingers

wordcraft for the feast of st. valentine:

expectation meets sweet delight as I await…

taking in the sound of your footsteps

swirling, swirling in the midst of your elegant embrace

the churning light all around

a warmth radiates with irresistible adoration

as we connect…

boldly you flow through my very being

I am awash with you

I cannot contain it…I will burst

I can…almost…touch you

you are here

you are here

you are here

fading…fading

like an echo through the canyon…go your footsteps

distant again, yet mysteriously

splendidly

still present altogether

the Pitt 25: Casting Fire Upon the Earth

Last year, I mentioned an engaging conversation between Steven Leyva and myself regarding a "shared experience of the Spirit". I want to return there and unpack a few things now that I have been soaking in that and contemplating it, because a few things have occurred to me and come up in the on-going conversation:

1. Communitas: almost immediately in ruminating on "a shared experience of the Spirit", my mind linked it to a missional term I have heard Alan Hirsch talk a lot about: communitas and liminality. I'll let Alan talk toward this:

"I have come to believe that communitas is thoroughly biblical and is inextricably linked to Apostolic Genius (the latent potency that energizes world-changing Jesus movements). When we survey Scripture with liminality and communitas in mind we must conclude that the theologically most fertile sections where in those times of extremity, when people were well out of their comfort zones. The main clusters of revelation seem to come in times of liminality (e.g. Patriarchs, the Torah, the Prophets, Jesus, Paul, John, etc.) and most of the miracles in the Bible are recorded in situations of liminality. (e.g. Exodus, Exile, the Gospels, and Acts) And when we consider the stories that have inspired the people of God throughout the ages and we find that they are stories involving adventures of the spirit in the context of challenge. In fact that is exactly why they inspire (e.g. Heb.11.) Take Abram for instance, who with his entire extended family (estimated to be about 70 people and their belongings), is called by God to leave house and home and all that is familiar to undertake a very risky journey to a land that at that stage remained a mere promise by an invisible God. And when we look at the various experiences they have along the way, stories that have shaped all subsequent faith (e.g. the offering of Isaac), they are not safe little bedtime stories. Rather they call us to a dangerous form of faithfulness that echoes the faithfulness of Abraham (Gal.3:15ff, Heb.11:9-13.) Or when we explore the profoundly liminal Exodus experience we find that this very tricky journey indelibly shaped the people of God, and continues to do so to this very day. It was also the context of the substantial revelation of God in his covenant with his people. The same can be said of the exile into Babylon many centuries later-this was an extreme situation which changed the whole way Israel related to her God, and still does. The prophets spoke the Word of God into such contexts of extremity. And the fact it was precisely when the people of God settled down and 'forgot YHWH' (Dt.4:23-31) that they had be spiritually disturbed once again by the prophets. To awaken the people to their lost calling, the Prophets recalled the dangerous memories about fires on the mountain and pursuing armies and a God who lovingly redeems a people to Himself and enters into a sacred and eternal covenant with them. This sounds pretty liminal to me. Consider the lives and ministries of Samuel, Elijah, Samson, David and his band, and ask what conditions they encountered and we come up with the consistent themes of liminality and communitas. And when we come to the New Testament we need to look only to the life of Jesus, who had nowhere to rest or lay his head, and who discipled his followers on-the-road in the real dangerous conditions of a occupied land and against a hostile and dodgy religious elite. So much so, that discipleship ala Jesus looks awfully like those risky initiation rites that the African kids have to go through. It was both costly ('deny yourself and follow Me') and dangerous ('if they hated me, they will hate you too') but it came with the territory of discipleship. But to find these themes in abundance, look at the life of Paul. He describes it pretty vividly for us in 2 Corinthians. Whippings, beatings, imprisonment, and shipwrecks can hardly be called 'safe, secure, comfortable and convenient' and yet through these experiences he and his apostolic band totally realign the course of history around the Gospel of Jesus Christ. The Book of Acts is so brimful with communitas and liminality that it reads like a rollicking adventure story."

2. It's not all about me: a shared experience means that quite possibly not all of the people will feel all of the same thing, at the same time, every time. I take it to mean that we will notice and share in an experience of the Spirit moving in our midst, but one time I may be receiving something special and feeling an overwhelming Presence, but another time, I may need to help midwife someone else's receiving and walk with them through that, while not being particularly overwhelmed myself. And sometimes, I get to watch what God is doing with others and watch others helping and sit back and bless and enjoy the experience from a distance. My point being, it may not (and if we understand God as infinitely creative then probably won't) be the same of look the same every time for every one...but just because I didn't get my 'Holy-Spirit-Experience-on' this past week, doesn't mean that we didn't have a shared experience of the Spirit.

3. Casting Fire on the Earth: too often I believe we only think of a "shared experience of the Spirit" as some sort of 'group bliss-out' experience. Now, there should be plenty of that, because I can personally attest to having tasted those brief moments of bliss. But perhaps I myself (and perhaps a collective "we") have limited my understanding of this shared experience of the Spirit, and limited my own understanding of what the Spirit may be up to. In scripture, surely we see the symbols and metaphors of the Spirit as a dove and as water washing through and bringing life to wilderness...but equally the Spirit is symbolized with fire and storm. In fact, Jesus said that he came to cast fire on the earth...the refining fire of the Spirit, which can and is a shared experience of working out our faith in fear and trembling. An erstwhile student of Jesus in the 1st century basically put it this way: I want to have the shared experience of Jesus' suffering, along with the shared experience of the power of the resurrection.

4. Expansive/Wholistic Spiritual Formation: a shared experience, to my thinking, is always linked to formation. Formation being quite simply, activities or experiences that forms us as people, communally, relationally and individually. The direction I move toward in this is wholistic; since the Holy Spirit uses everything we experience to form us toward Christ, our best and our worst, the felt Presence and Absence of God, our easiest and our most difficult seasons. We need to broach the deeper aspects with perspectives from our current reality in Christ and the inaugurated eschatological reality of His Reign, both ‘now’ and ‘not yet’; too often the approach of the Church has been in either/or categories, not seeking to understand the tension inherent in our present reality. When the work of the Spirit concerning formation is neglected with respect to the 'now-and-not-yet' of the Reign of God, we tend to want to break the tension and either become gloriously myopic in the ‘now’ or ride off chasing after the ‘not yet’. Those who would follow the Spirit move toward the essence of the musterion of the gospel of the Kingdom of God in Christ Jesus, and we embrace the tension and cruciform-shape to our formation and discipleship lived-out in our present reality as the people of God in Christ Jesus and as Spirit-empowered catalysts of the in-breaking Kingdom who journey through this present age as wounded healers. Peter Crafts Hodgson speaks of it this way:

“What God “does” in history is…to shape a multifaceted transformative praxis. God does this by giving, disclosing, engendering, in some sense being, the normative shape, the paradigm of such a praxis…I shall call it the “Christ-gestalt,” by which I mean what is for Christians the definitive shape of God in history. If we wish to ask how God is active in this, my answer is that the Christ-gestalt is engendered by the Wisdom of God, which is a mode of God’s spiritual presence in the world. God shapes spiritually and ethically, by indwelling, moving, empowering, instructing, inspiring human individuals and communities, and perhaps other forms of life as well…The Christ-gestalt is a shape or structure of incarnate praxis, the praxis of redemptive love and reconciliatory emancipation.”

All of these thoughts are coming together with respect to what God is calling into in Pittsburgh...I'm stoked to see how God plays this out in our context...

[to be continued...]

A Sense of True Self

"A strong community helps people develop a sense of true self, for only in community can the self exercise and fulfill its nature: giving and taking, listening and speaking, being and doing.  But when community unravels and we lose touch with one another, the self atrophies and we lose touch with ourselves as well.  Lacking opportunities to be ourselves in a web of relationships, our sense of self disappears, leading to behaviors that further fragment our relationships and spread the epidemic of inner emptiness."

- Parker J. Palmer, A Hidden Wholeness

the Pitt 24: A Poor Man's Wisdom is Scorned

Listen, my dear brothers: Has not God chosen those who are poor in the eyes of the world to be rich in faith and to inherit the kingdom he promised those who love him? But you have insulted the poor. Is it not the rich who are exploiting you? Are they not the ones who are dragging you into court? Are they not the ones who are slandering the noble name of him to whom you belong?
James 2:5-7

'I want to link my destiny to that of the poor of this world' - Jose Marti

I just love that quote from Marti [afterall, i want to inherit the Kingdom!]

I mentioned in my last post that I am an alum of the Sustainable Faith School of Spiritual Direction.  At one of the last meetings of my cohort, we were talking about the art of listening...and I was struck by a thought planted by the brothers William: most of us 'listen' to the 'rich' or 'published' [and those are the metaphors that shape our lives], but who listens to the poor?

I mean really listens to them:

• listen to them explain their own experience without imposing our own imperialistic ideas of what living poor means
• listen to their laughter and their tears
• listen to their spirituality: what of their experience of God, who listens to them talk about God?
• listen to the wisdom of those who are rich in faith

One of the issues that keeps coming up amongst the conversations about cultivating a faith community in urban Pittsburgh is structural evil.  Lots of -isms in the structural evil world: racism, classism, We want to discern the structural evils in which we passively and actively participate.  We have this yearning to break free.  In the comments from the last Pitt post - Isaiah and Urban Possibility - Ramon helps us see the economic ties of oppression to racism and sexism.  I think one of the structural evils I am fighting right now is a bias in need of a paradigm shift, because in the western world nowadays, we look down on the poor - we're prejudice against the poor - as if they have no value.  This is because we measure 'value' and 'success' in the glittering images of the beautiful people, meanwhile, my recent experience has been somewhat like the passage from Qohelet 9:16 -
'A poor man's wisdom is scorned,and his words are not heeded.'

Below is a post from Cat Johnson of Ranges Commnity Church in Australia, writing about a paper she delivered on structural evil:

"I recently had to write a paper on 'structural evil'. I admit that when I read the topic I was not very impressed, it seemed to be fairly irrelevant and a bit presumptuous. However it did not take long to realise that my life was daily influenced by systems that perpetuate and encourage injustice and oppression. The more I read the more I became aware how everything is inherently connected. What I spend my money on here in Melbourne, could be supporting a sweatshop in China. The coffee I drink has possibly been harvested under unfair trade agreements. Using disposable nappies is causing land fill issues that my children's children will need to deal with.

And while there needs to be balance and perspective in all things, there also needs to be informed choices and awareness that we share this planet with 6 billion other people. Che Guevara (quoting poet Jose Marti) once said, 'I want to link my destiny to that of the poor of this world'. It's as simple and as difficult as that. It's as simple as buying fair trade coffee and as difficult as accepting that I need to change how I live because it is affecting people suffering under structural evil through no fault of their own. As a Christian I believe that I have a mandate to 'link' my life with the oppressed and voiceless. Who'd have thought that this 'irrelevant' paper on structural evil would be the beginning of living out that mandate with a greater degree of understanding and with a whole lot more honesty?"

...and the echo of a leaders deep, rough voice is heard in the threatening invitation that underlies the rhythm of the bass, as we all begin 'speaking to one another in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, singing and making melody with your heart to the Lord':

The Spirit of the Sovereign Lord is upon you
Because he has anointed you to preach good news (Repeat)
He has sent you to the poor (This is the year)
To bind up the broken hearted (This is the day)
To bring freedom to the captives (This is the year)
And to release the ones in darkness (This is the year)
of the favour of the Lord(This is the day)
of the vengeance of our God(This is the year)
of the favour of the Lord(This is the day)
of the vengeance of our God
The Spirit of the Sovereign Lord is upon us
Because he has anointed us to preach good news (Repeat)
He will comfort all who mourn (This is the year)
He will provide for those who grieve (This is the day)
He will pour out the oil of gladness (This is the year)
Instead of mourning you will praise

Andy Park © Mercy/Vineyard Publishing