Basic Progress Themes

Presence Therapy

Religios nature is fundamental to the human spirit, but religious character is a result of the character-transforming encounter with God. God moves the person from searching to finding, from inspirableness to inspiration, from promise to fulfillment. Individuals are free to respond, not coerced. A continuous positive response is the fullest meaning of spiritual growth.

The process of conversion is coming to an understanding of the reality of God. The acceptance and cooperation with God's plan of action through Christ launches one on a life of personal development into the likeness of God.
Presence Therapy does not create a finished product; rather, it initiates a dynamic process in which the power and limits of human freedom are brought to bear on God's act of grace.

Cooperative Momentum

Human interaction is as fundamental to human life as breathing. The community with whom we work, play, study, meditate, and spend time together will either enhance or depress our potential for productive contentedness. The curriculum of Basic Progress loses its most powerful dynamic once individuality becomes dominant. Once the group together begin to experience interactive grace of mutual spiritual growth, the individual draws from that a deeper faith, an active passion and a stronger will to become everything God wants for them.

Spiritual Playground

Becoming as a child means shedding fear, prejudices and accusations. It is the whole hearted spirit of forgiveness that is experienced in the rebirth of naivete. The Basic Progress motif for this adventure is play, not work, which is the highest and complete state of man. Christian maturity is thus defined as "pure spiritual play."

Christian liberty frees the human heart to love without ambition and the human mind to pursue truth as a means to personal enjoyment of God's intended purpose in the creation of human life.
Christian liberty is presented through "fact-forms" or symbols. This imaginative knowledge provides liberation from all types of religious dogmatism and rationalism.

Cultivation of Potential

Every human has the capacity to transcend their own circumstances and living condition. This cultivation of one's personal potential not only emerges through Christian living, but is facilitated by and through the community of faith.

Becoming everything one can be is a fact finding and truth facing proposition.
Becoming what God wants us to be is the journey.
Killing the self-made man rather than the God-made person.

Productive Contentedness

Christianity is a life process. Spiritual growth is a fundamental principle of of a human life conformed to Christ. In most cases, conversion is not a datable, explosive, disruptive conversion experience, but a process of struggling maturation in the daily, unremarkable things of existence.

Conversion is an ongoing series of Divine influences and moments of spontaneous awe that can be confessed as genuine encounter with the Holy, resulting in a stronger sense of His Presence, character and will for our life.
Germaine to this approach to life is patience with one's self and any religious doubts. In other words, accepting one's current status in life and progressing a little bit each day renders long-term concrete results.

Dynamic Desparation

God's indirect method of winning human hearts does not preclude the use of sin, evil, suffering, and the horror of existence. It is often through crisis and turmoil that God wins a person's attention.

Crises serve to build rugged character and passionate enthusiasm. Despite the realities of crisis, illumination available to faith can mean an intuitive sense of God's presence as unmediated, direct and personal.
Divine Restlessness is that internal urge God places in us to cooperate with His will in His world.