potent-ials

Welcome to the conversation.

Has anyone ever described you as having potential?

I don't want to be rude but how old were you when they said this: 20, 40, 50, more?

It is now four years since I read these words from Erwin McManus: If you are forty-five and someone looks at you and says, "You have so much potential," pause, excuse yourself, step into a closet, and have a good cry. (Seizing Your Divine Moment)

I'll let you guess how old I was when I read this. Now, I don't think it's impossible to begin realising some of that potential when we are older but it is way harder. We know it's not about potential but about turning that potential into productivity. And I have to admit, up front, that is something I long to be a part of making happen for people some how, some way.

(Here's a vexing question for me at the moment, out of the so called Parable of the Talents - Matthew 25:14-30: Would the person who was given the one talent and who buried it, have done something more creative with it if someone else had come alongside to help him?)

There was a group of people, who, unknown to themselves, were full of potential, but we would have known absolutely nothing about them if something hadn't changed the trajectory of their lives. They lived many years ago but have impacted the lives of many of us because they were prepared to allow someone to bring out their potential and turn it into something astonishingly productive. Some of them had been fishermen and tax officers but they became world-changers.

We know them as the disciples of Jesus. Jesus knew that every human has potential that needs to be worked out, and once we've seen what we can be then we'd be foolish not to live it, wouldn't we?

Again, it's Erwin McManus who captures something of the sense of this when he writes: There is a point where you're not supposed to be full of potential; you're supposed to be full of talent, capacity, product. Potential is a glimpse of what could be, yes there must be a shift from where we have potential to where we are potent. (Uprising)

I have a dream and each day I am exploring how to live it out: I want to live my life to the utmost of its potential amongst a people who are exploring how to live their lives fully too - this always towards others - because they know it is the only way to live.

And then it dawned on me - this is what it means to live missionally.

This is what Jesus had in mind when he envisaged a community of faith - what we have called church - a group of people together living out their potential towards others - and that is mission, and that is church. Scott Boren writes of how The missional call invites the church to go where it has not been, to be what it has not been, and to do what it has not done. (The Relational Way)

Potential is the future calling us to live today with potency.

What do you think?