September 28, 2026 Today we are starting a series called [[Formation Fridays]], where we're going to take a topic that's important in the field of Formation and learn a little bit more, week by week. We're also going to experiment a little bit with short form video! Hopefully it's something you'll enjoy. --- ## Resurrection This last weekend was the weekend of [The Apprentice Gathering](https://apprenticeinstitute.org/the_apprentice_gathering/), a big Formation conference put on by [The Apprentice Institute](https://apprenticeinstitute.org/). TAI is officed on the campus of [Friends University](https://www.friends.edu/), where I did my undergraduate studies. People come in from all over for workshops and networking, and I love it. Living in town makes it easy to volunteer without having to book a plane and a hotel and I feel very fortunate. I had the opportunity to sit in on some of the intensive sessions that they offer on Thursday as an add-on to normal registration. Whenever I go to a conference like this, I always make it a point to visit the authors I'm familiar with, because otherwise the sessions you sit in on can be a bit of a gamble. Luckily, this year I got to see [Bette Dickinson](https://www.bettedickinson.com/) talking about her new book, [The Art of Vinemaking](https://www.bettedickinson.com/shop/p/artofvinemaking). I think she's not charging enough for this book, so you should go buy it right now before she comes to her senses. Bette is a prophetic artist, author, and a really good conference workshop facilitator. I'll have a review on the way of this book momentarily, but I wanted to share a bit of what I loved from her talk and how it resonated with me, and hopefully you. The main premise of [[The Art of Vinemaking]] is to take a look at the year-round cycle of dressing grapevines as an extended metaphor to examine the cycles of life that believers go through as their lives progress. Bette spent quite a bit of time working with professional vine dressers to understand the trade and the reasons why dressers do what they do, and she presents this metaphor to us as a cycle of Life, Death, and Resurrection. In Life, we are productive, in Death we are "dormant" and growing our roots, and in Resurrection new possibilities spring forth from within. Reflecting on this cycle brought me back to when we had to close down a church plant that we had been a part of for five years. We reflected then that we were experiencing a kind of death. The person I was, the person that got to see those people every week, was dead. They didn't exist anymore. There's quite a bit of grief attached to that. As I was going through this season, I heard a friend give a lesson on Jesus bringing Lazarus back from the dead. He took time and care to make a distinction between "resurrection" and "resuscitation." Resuscitation is being brought out of death back in to the life you had. Resurrection is passing all the way through death and on to new life on the other side. In Resurrection, we still bear the marks of this life. Jesus had the holes in his body from hanging on the cross. Resurrection doesn't turn back the clock, doesn't undo the effects of death. When we are promised, as the people of God, that to follow Christ in to his death allows us to follow him in to his resurrection, we are not promised the life we had. We are promised new life. There are days when I still grieve the life I had, the people I met. On a certain level, the grief is blunted by the fact that I can in fact just pick up the phone and call them for dinner if I want, so in that way it's not the same as the death of the body. But it is a kind of grief, a kind of death. A lot of times, we go to God and we want the life we had, we want resuscitation. Maybe we want him to fix what's wrong with a relationship, not understanding that "what's wrong" is something much bigger than the fact we fight a lot. Maybe we want him to make us successful in our job, not knowing that this job is something of a dead end for us. We ask for our wildest dreams, not understanding that our perspectives are at once too big *and* too limited. The promise of Christ for his people is that, in sharing in his death, we share in his resurrection. In resurrection, we move forward to new life, not back to the last thing we wanted. This can be a difficult truth to internalize, but living in the light and life and *liveliness* of God is worth it. After all, [dreams that bear the mark of love are dreams that never die.](https://youtu.be/bH2lqoOVEqo?si=EZwPxNUMolG0iiQW) --- Thank you for reading the first post in Formation Fridays. I want to tackle more fundamental topics in this series, but there is a certain virtue in simply starting where you start and building the plane while you're in the air. I'm looking forward to exploring this space with you! View the accompanying video to this blog post [Instagram](https://www.instagram.com/reel/Dd1hnhXTHHZ/?stkn=YzNqZzdham1iMjhr) - [Tik Tok](https://www.tiktok.com/t/ZP8TEsM6a/) - [Youtube](https://youtube.com/shorts/burJMoOQRz0?feature=share) Follow Formation Fridays on social media [Threads](https://www.threads.com/@formationfridays?igshid=NTc4MTIwNjQ2YQ==) - [Bluesky](https://bsky.app/profile/spaceraser.bsky.social) - ~~Twitter~~