Spiritual Discernment Paper

Barton identifies spiritual discernment as the capacity to recognize and respond to the presence and the activity of God - both in the ordinary moments and in the larger decisions of our lives. He indeed raises the enormously vital question: if we are not pursuing the will of God together in fairly intentional ways, what are we doing (Barton 2012, 10-11)? This is remarkably applicable to my partnership team, where each member sees the value of finding God’s will personally, but not together as a group. I plan to start moving forward in the direction of spiritual discernment as a community, embracing several principles from Barton’s book, such as solitude and silence, engaging the scriptures, prayer, and self-examination as a group. Of course,