{"id":27175,"date":"2021-02-02T02:24:08","date_gmt":"2021-02-02T10:24:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dminlgp\/?p=27175"},"modified":"2021-02-02T02:24:08","modified_gmt":"2021-02-02T10:24:08","slug":"the-house-of-your-church-is-on-fire","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/the-house-of-your-church-is-on-fire\/","title":{"rendered":"“The House of Your Church is on Fire”"},"content":{"rendered":"

In 1933, Bonhoeffer was invited by Bishop Theodore Heckel to pastor the two German congregations in London.\u00a0Metaxas writes that there were two reason Bonhoeffer wanted to go: To engage in the grounding experience of honest \u201cparish work\u201d and to push away from the church struggle in Germany to gain perspective on the bigger picture.<\/a>[1] In regards to the latter reason, Bonhoeffer was one of the first to see that the struggles immediately facing the German church extended far beyond what they seemed. Keeping these in mind, Bonhoeffer made his way to London, but decided against telling one of his closest and most influential friends until after he arrived: Karl Barth.<\/p>\n

After his arrival, he wrote Barth telling him of his decision. When Barth wrote back, he told Bonhoeffer that his journey to London was a mere interlude and that he needed to hurry back. Speaking prophetically, Barth wrote, \u201cBe glad that I do not have you here in person, for I would let go at you urgently in quite a different way, with the demand that you must not let go of all these intellectual flourishes and special considerations, however interesting they may be, and think of only one thing \u2013 that you are a German, that the house of your church is on fire, <\/strong>that you know enough and can say that you know well enough to be able to help, and that you must return to you post by the next ship.\u201d<\/a>[2]<\/p>\n

Two lessons in leadership stick out from this:<\/p>\n

    \n
  1. Sometimes you need to step away.<\/em> <\/strong>At times, we become inundated with our surroundings that we fail to see the bigger picture of what is happening around us. We see the same people, see the same situations, and see the same results. This narrows our focus and can get us locked in on asking the wrong questions. Sometimes we need to step away from the immediate context of the problem to think and reflect from a different angle.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

    While Bonhoeffer was in London, he built connections with Bishop George Bell, who would become a major ally to the German church and the resistance against Hitler. Bonhoeffer became Bell\u2019s principle source of information of what was happening in Germany and he would then take Bonhoeffer\u2019s messages to the British public.<\/a>[3]Bonhoeffer also mobilized the German congregations in London to join the Confessing Church.<\/p>\n

    Metaxas writes, \u201cOf all the countries with German congregations, only one country \u2013 England \u2013 would take such a stand, all because of Bonhoeffer.\u201d<\/a>[4]<\/p>\n

     <\/p><\/blockquote>\n

      \n
    1. \u2026but there is a time to return.<\/em><\/strong> When one steps away, it would do no good if he or she does not return with their renewed sense of perspective. Stepping away can be a transformative act and stepping back in<\/em> can spread that transformation to others.<\/strong> To keep the lessons learned from our pilgrimage to ourselves is not only irresponsible, but it defeats the purpose. One cannot put out the fire if he or she is nowhere near it.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

      To put it another way, it is important to be well-differentiated and reflective, but the leader must also have some sort of \u201cskin in the game.\u201d As Bonhoeffer would later write after his stint in New York:<\/p>\n

      \u201cI must live through this difficult period of our national history with the Christian people of Germany. I shall have no right to participate in the reconstruction of Christian life in Germany after the war if I do not share the trials of this time with my people.\u201d<\/a>[5]<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

      Sometimes we must step away, but eventually we must return.<\/strong><\/p>\n

       <\/p>\n

      <\/a>[1] Eric Metaxas, Bonhoeffer<\/em> (Nashville: Nelson Books, 2010), 195.<\/p>\n

      <\/a><\/p>\n

      [2] Ibid., 197.<\/p>\n

      <\/a><\/p>\n

      [3] Ibid., 199.<\/p>\n

      <\/a><\/p>\n

      [4] Ibid., 204.<\/p>\n

      <\/a>[5] Ibid., 321.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

      In 1933, Bonhoeffer was invited by Bishop Theodore Heckel to pastor the two German congregations in London.\u00a0Metaxas writes that there were two reason Bonhoeffer wanted to go: To engage in the grounding experience of honest \u201cparish work\u201d and to push away from the church struggle in Germany to gain perspective on the bigger picture.[1] In […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":129,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[571],"tags":[1943],"class_list":["post-27175","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-biography-drama-history","tag-bonhoeffer","cohort-lgp10"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27175","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/129"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=27175"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27175\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":27179,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27175\/revisions\/27179"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=27175"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=27175"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=27175"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}