Discerning the Spirits

Michael Adam Beck and Isaiah Park

Part IV—Resistance and Repair

This article is part of the series “Discerning the Spirits.” Below are the links to the series introduction, Part 1, Part 2, and Part 3.

Introduction, https://www.umcdiscipleship.org/articles/introduction-to-the-series-discerning-the-spirits

Part 1, https://www.umcdiscipleship.org/articles/discerning-the-spirits

Part 2, https://www.umcdiscipleship.org/articles/discerning-the-spirits-part-2-full

Part 3, https://www.umcdiscipleship.org/articles/discerning-the-spirits-part-3-full

Overview of “Discerning the Spirits” Series

“Discerning the Spirits” is a four-part series designed to help pastors, planters, lay leaders, and congregations think theologically, biblically, and pastorally about the forces shaping Christian identity today. We offer this resource to help the church discern what is of Christ and what is not, so that disciples of Jesus may remain rooted in truth, formed in love, and faithful in public witness.

Resistance and Repair

Over the last three parts of this series, we have engaged with difficult realities facing the church. We explored how MAGA has functioned for many people not simply as a political preference, but as a sectarian formation within the body of Christ. We considered why people remain loyal to movements that often contradict the way of Jesus. We also discussed how Christian nationalism can turn politics into a kind of religion, forming people to see neighbors as threats rather than as people made in the image of God.

This final article is about the “how.” If people are being formed more deeply by news cycles, social media, grievance, and fear than by scripture, prayer, worship, and the life of Jesus, what can the local church do? The church has been entrusted with practices of resistance and repair.

The Spark: A Church that Listens

Restoration Church in Northern Virgina offers a powerful example. A few years ago, a lay young adult, Michael Graham, felt a holy restlessness as he watched families, friendships, and communities fracture over politics. He began asking a deep and missional question: “Can the church help heal this division?” Out of that question, Restoration Church began BreadBreakers, a Fresh Expression that gathers people in third places. It begins with a meal, a table, and an invitation to listen. BreadBreakers creates space for people to be heard, seen, and known. Many who come are not connected to a church community and have questions about faith. They desire honest conversation, meaningful connection, and a place where their story matters.

BreakBreakers is shaped by four pillars:

1.     We are not here to change minds.
2.     We are here to learn something new.
3.     We are here to listen deeply.
4.     We are here to build bridges one table at a time.

These practices create a brave space. Truth is not watered down, and harm is not ignored. People remain present long enough to encounter the humanity of someone they may have been taught to fear, dismiss, or despise.

Practice 1: Curious Conversation

One of the most important practices a local church can cultivate is curious conversations. In our current climate, when someone says something we disagree with, our instinct is often to correct, react, label, or dismiss. BreadBreakers invites a different posture. We are not here to change minds, but to learn something new. This is learning to suspend the urge to judge. This does not, however, mean to abandon truth or discernment. It means refusing to let judgment be the first move. Instead of asking, “What is wrong with you?” we can ask, “Can you help me understand why this matters so much to you?”

When people tell the story behind their beliefs, something shifts. Anger may be connected to fear, and suspicion may be tied to betrayal. A harsh comment may be covering grief, loneliness, anxiety, or a painful experience with the church. Curious conversations do not mean every belief is faithful. It means that every person has a story, and it resists contempt and makes room for the Holy Spirit to work.

Practice 2: Building Multidimensional Relationships

When we know someone through only one category, especially a political one, they become a caricature. Once that happens, it becomes easier to dismiss, mock, or judge them. The work of repair requires multidimensional relationships, and we have to see people in 3D again.

BreadBreakers practices this through different conversation tables. Participants choose a table to sit at for the duration of the meal. Three different tables are offered: Slice of Life, Spiritual, and Current Events. Slice-of-Life tables focus on ordinary human experiences such as family, food, respect, joy, and memory. Spiritual tables invite questions of wonder, suffering, hope, doubt, and meaning. Current Events tables engage difficult topics such as immigration, race, voting, violence, and economics. As participants engage in conversation and hear others' stories, caricatures begin to fade, and multidimensional relationships form. When you have heard someone talk about their children, grief, hopes, or memories, it becomes harder to reduce them to one opinion. Once you have seen someone’s humanity, it is much harder to unsee it.

Practice 3: Resistance and Prophetic Truth

Christian peacemaking is about confronting injustice, cruelty, racism, scapegoating, and dehumanization. This is multifaceted work. A church can speak truth clearly and still keep the table open. It can be prophetic in the pulpit and hospitable in the neighborhood. It can march for justice and host conversations with people who may disagree with that march. This is discipleship. Jesus gathered people who likely would not have chosen one another. Tax collectors and zealots were drawn into the same kingdom movement. Jesus did not erase truth or ignore sin, but he created a new social reality around himself.

Resistance stands against sin, and repair refuses to abandon the person. Resistance names what is false, and repair makes room for repentance, healing, and transformation.

Fresh Expressions of Church, such as BreadBreakers, create little pockets of community where this work can happen. Usually, they gather in neutral spaces in the community, not on church property, during normal rhythms and patterns of everyday life.

Practice 4: Compassion as a Practice

Compassion is often treated as a feeling. However, compassion is also a practice and a lived-out experience. It is something we can cultivate and return to, especially when our instincts tell us to withdraw, attack, or give up.

Growing in compassion takes repeated practice over time. One dinner or one conversation will not repair everything that has been broken. Formation takes repetition; repair takes time; compassion has to be practiced again and again. This is cruciform love, a love that tells the truth, refuses dehumanization, and keeps seeing sacred worth where the world has trained us to see only a threat.

We believe compassion is not merely one virtue among many in the Christian tradition. It is at the very heart of Jesus' spirituality. The gospels repeatedly portray Jesus as "moved with compassion," σπλαγχνίζομαι (splagchnizomai),before he teaches, heals, feeds, forgives, or restores. Compassion is not simply something Jesus does. It is a window into the character of God. The Christian tradition describes this reality through the concept of the passio Dei: the suffering, feeling, and compassionate love of God. In Jesus, we encounter a God who does not remain distant from human pain but enters into it, bears it, and transforms it through self-giving love.

This understanding of divine compassion is particularly important in an age marked by polarization, trauma, loneliness, and social fragmentation. Trauma often narrows our field of vision. We begin to interpret others through the lens of fear, threat, and scarcity. We become reactive rather than reflective. Compassion interrupts this cycle. It creates the conditions for human flourishing by helping us remain connected to ourselves, to others, and to God, even in the midst of disagreement and suffering. Trauma-informed, compassion-centered communities become places where people can experience safety, belonging, and healing rather than judgment, exclusion, or shame.

Like any spiritual discipline, compassion grows through practice. One simple compassion practice is compassionate listening. Rather than preparing a rebuttal or defense, we intentionally seek to understand another person's story, wounds, and humanity. Another is the practice of self-compassion. Drawing from both Christian spirituality and contemporary social psychology, self-compassion involves treating ourselves with the same grace, patience, and mercy that we would extend to a beloved friend. Rather than responding to our failures with condemnation, we learn to respond with honesty, kindness, and the assurance that we, too, are recipients of God's compassion.

At St. Mark’s United Methodist Church in Ocala, Florida, throughout a network of Fresh Expressions, compassion is not simply a theological concept but a lived ecology. Each micro-church creates koinonia, where people can belong before they believe, where stories are honored, and where healing is prioritized over judgment. Through community dinners, neighborhood gatherings, Fresh Expressions in tattoo parlors, burrito shops, and rehab facilities, people are learning to listen deeply to one another.

Thus, compassion functions as both the method and the message. Many people who have been wounded by churches, families, institutions, or society are asking whether there is a place where they can be seen, known, and loved. Compassion-centered communities answer that question with a resounding yes.

In a divided world, where some view empathy as “the fundamental weakness of Western civilization,” compassion may seem weak, sentimental, or impractical. Yet the witness of Jesus suggests the opposite. Compassion is one of the most transformative forces available to human beings. It has the power to interrupt cycles of fear, create bridges across difference, restore dignity to those who have been marginalized, and cultivate the beloved community God desires for the world. It is a way of life. And, like all practices of discipleship, it becomes transformative when it is embodied together.

The Big Question: Where Is Your Identity?

At the heart of this series is a question the church must help people answer: “Who do you worship and where is your deepest identity found?” Is it found in a political party, a national story, a media ecosystem, a movement, or a leader? Or is your identity found in Jesus Christ, the Humble Servant? It is daily discipleship. Our identities shape our loyalties; our loyalties shape our loves; and our loves shape our actions.

If Jesus is truly Lord, then no political movement can claim our ultimate allegiance. No nation can save us; no party can define the kingdom of God; no ideology can disciple us more deeply than the Sermon on the Mount. The local church must help people rediscover their primary identity in Christ and discern which spirits are shaping them.

Conclusion: A Beacon on a Hill

The goal for every local church is not to win the argument. The local church is about becoming a faithful sign of the kingdom of God. In a divided age, the church can become a small, imperfect, Spirit-filled expression of the wider community where people encounter God and one another differently. This work will be hard, as repair is not always clean, and resistance is not always easy. Building communities is hard, and faithfulness is required.

There is a story of a woman who came to BreadBreakers wearing a MAGA hat. In many places, she felt judged before she spoke. But at the end of the night, she thanked the group for creating space where she could be heard. At another table, a conservative and a liberal exchanged emails and began a friendship after they actually listened to each other’s stories. These moments are signs of God’s kingdom breaking in. We can recover the ancient practice of sitting at a table, breaking bread together, telling stories, and listening for the image of God in the other person.

This is how we discern the spirits of our time. We refuse to let fear and anger be our teachers. We resist the idols of power and the golden statues of our age. We repair what has been fractured, one table, one story, and one conversation at a time. The world does not need more reactive culture warriors. It needs communities formed by Jesus, filled with the Holy Spirit, and courageous enough to become a beacon on a hill for a hurting and divided world.

Next Step: Webinar

What’s next? We invite you to come, see, and listen as local church and community leaders share what they are learning, how they are leading, and where they are seeing signs of hope. These conversation leaders will explore how local churches can respond through practices of discernment, resistance, repair, compassion, courageous conversation, and renewed allegiance to Jesus Christ. Join us for this webinar on Tuesday, August 25, 2026, at 7:00 p.m., Eastern Time. Register now and invite others to join this important conversation!

Register for the Webinar

Invitation to Engagement

Please reach out for further engagement, conversation, and to provide feedback by contacting:

Michael Beck: [email protected] and 
Isaiah Park: [email protected].