What is new about the Movement for Religious Renewal, The Christian Community

Thoughts from ‘What is new about the Movement for Religious Renewal, The Christian Community’, a conversation on Sunday 16 January by Rev. Reingard Knausenberger.

New is the inner attitude, the inner approach to what is Christian practice and sacramental ritual.
As a ‘Church’ our approach is not about a 'new packaging' of traditional practice, like making it fun and entertaining, so to say ‘modern’. Marketing is not the objective. Rather, the sacraments and rituals are a new garment for the relevant living Spirit Being we call Christ, appropriate for a more mature awakened and self-aware humanity. It reckons with an adult searching for identity and greater meaningful context and purpose. It encourages and awaits questions.
Real searching questions awaken the mind. Without a question no answer is needed. It presupposes a search in every human soul, even if unconsciously, for meaning around the root questions of existence. It builds on the fact of human evolving, growing and becoming.

New is an approach, as a matter of course, that the full human being includes body, soul AND spirit. Every aspect of life is also connected with a spiritual reality to be reckoned with. There is always an invisible, very real dimension to include. Spirit reality has become thinkable, available to cognitive logical thinking. Thinking is a spiritual activity. Thinking own thoughts actively and purposely is a learning practice and focused work. This kind of thinking can inform feeling, which can inform action, which is inner movement: re-enlivening, re-energising and co-creative.
This is new in Christian ritual. Asking to take charge of your own faith, as we can only truly believe what we know. This has never been the objective before.

The conversation was informed mainly by the new formulation of the Creed. Every sentence is an encouragement to be actively awake. Step by step it leads through very precise factual descriptions, stimulating new deeper expanded understanding and feeling.
It highlights where and in what way the Deed of the Cross is at work in the present and exactly what our future depends on. It awakens to facts and choices, befitting that we are children of God growing up into adults expected to participate in the outcome. It describes the projected outcome.
There is nothing more challenging today than to infuse every aspect of life as flowing from a religious source, and to experience this source as a universal all-permeating presence of a living evolving Being. This source has a name and a clear identity, like all spiritual beings.  As individuals in community, when we gather in reverent celebration, this Being can presence itself in us.