Eugene Peterson, a very influential voice in defining the role of the pastor in modern America, writes in his memoir about his experience of seminary:

“Daily life at the seminary comprised common prayer in the chapel, common meals in the refectory, common play in the requisite volleyball game on the roof after lunch each day. . . . All of this took place on a quiet side street bordering the maelstrom of noisy, jostling, harried, secular, cutthroat, competitive New York City.

“I had only the vaguest notion of why I was there. . . . I didn’t know it at the time, but what I absorbed in my subconscious, which eventually surfaced years later, was a developing conviction that the most effective strategy for change, for revolution - at least on the large scale that the kingdom of God involves - comes from a minority working from the margins. . . . [T]hat a minority people working from the margins has the best chance of being a community capable of penetrating the noncommunity, the mob, the depersonalized, function-defined crowd that is the sociological norm of America.” (my emphasis).

We do not change the world; but changing ourselves and working in the community of our study groups can provide the insight that will power revolutionary change on a larger scale, that is, the unfolding of Divine consciousness in the lives of an entire planet.