Although you don't have to be a person of faith to use the principles and practices of the Renewable Organization, its architects have been profoundly influenced by that stream of Christianity that, at its best, has preached and practiced a message of scandalous love, radical freedom, and profound responsibility to neighbor. Our lives and our work are shaped by these five theological propositions:
This is God’s gig
Throughout the Hebrew Scriptures and the New Testament, we meet a God who has a dream for us and for all creation. Jesus came to announce and to accomplish a new “kingdom” in which the last will be first, the hungry are filled, the outcast are welcomed with open arms, and death does not have the final word. This is God’s agenda. It is the only agenda that matters.
God is on the loose
God will not conform to our expectations or be confined by our walls, our wishes, or our rituals. Acts 2 was not an anomaly. The whole Biblical story tells us that God is at work in and through all kinds of places, in and through the most unlikely people, even when we are unaware of it. That is also the experience of our lives. The world is not a place to be avoided or conquered. It is the arena of God’s activity. We meet God “out there,” no less than we meet God “in here,” within the community of faith. And so we engage the world with eyes wide open, on the lookout for what God is up to in the midst of the everyday.
Our lives matter
The Biblical story tells us that God never works alone. One of the very first things Jesus did was to gather a group of women and men to work alongside of him. We are called to participate in what God is up to in the world, as a community of faith and in our everyday lives, to name it when we see it and to jump in to help in any way we can. This call is a gift because it comes to each of us freely without precondition. And this gift is a call because it defines our purpose and gives our lives and our work meaning.
Jesus sets us free
In and through Jesus, we have been set free from sin, death, fear, and anything else that separates us from God and from each other. There is no Jew or Gentile, black or white, male or female, rich or poor, gay or straight, old or young. We are all children of the same heavenly parent. We are called to live like that is true and to share this good news with everyone.
We could be wrong
The God who comes to meet us in Jesus was nailed to a tree but will not be nailed down by our pious proclamations. In fact, that cross teaches us that this God turns our every idea about who God is and what God is supposed to look like and how God is supposed to act upside down. As soon as we are convinced that have all the answers, we are as wrong as we could possibly be. And so we engage our work and our world with a kind of bold humility, confident enough to say what we believe but smart enough to know we might be wrong and eager to learn from those who see things differently than we do.
