For the Christian, individual knowledge of the direct, active, immediate leading of the Spirit is not sufficient. Individual guidance must yield to corporate guidance. There must also come a knowledge of the direct, active, immediate leading of the Spirit together.
Much of the teaching on divine guidance in our century has been noticeably deficient on the corporate aspect. We have received excellent instruction on how God leads us through Scripture and through reason and through circumstances and through the promptings of the Spirit upon the individual heart.
This is why Richard Foster listed guidance among the Corporate Disciplines and stressed its communal nature.
While God guides the individual richly and profoundly, He also guides groups of people and can instruct the individual through the group experience.
Perhaps the preoccupation with private guidance in Western cultures is the product of our emphasis upon individualism. The people of God have not always been so. God led the children of Israel out of bondage as a people.
Click here for more from Richard Foster on the Corporate Spiritual Discipline of Guidance
