Wise Teaching
The last few years Wheaton College has started a great custom. It sends various professors out and about, throughout the year, to give lectures at alumni club meetings. These are not just a good way to touch base with other alumni, from all generations, but also a chance to remember why Wheaton was such a great place for learning.
They’ve posted recordings of these lectures online. Well worth having a listen.
Here’s the lectures from this year:
Dr. Lon Allison, Director of the Billy Graham Center
Discovering Your Faith-Sharing Style
How do you share your Christian faith with others? Dr. Lon Allison will discuss how you can discover your God-given style of faith-sharing with those around you. He will present eight styles with practical ways to apply them to your everyday life.
Dr. Ken Chase, Associate Professor of Communication
Digital Delusions and the Future of Christian Witness
The Internet Age provides wonderfully new opportunities for communicating the Gospel to a global audience. However, it can also seduce Christians away from the communication techniques most needed in our culture. We mistakenly look to digital answers to overcome the deep divisions within our society. Dr. Chase will discuss how we must look, instead, to the enduring power of Christian witness to communicate the Gospel.
Dr. Christine Gardner, Assistant Professor of Communication
The Rhetoric of AIDS
Dr. Gardner explores how the power of words shapes our understanding of a disease that continues to claim the lives of nearly 8,000 each day. Drawing on experiences in the field and in the classroom, Dr. Gardner focuses on different spheres of rhetoric—from political to entertainment to religious—and the impact of our words on the Church’s witness.
Dr. P.J. Hill, George F. Bennett Professor of Economics
Capitalism and Christianity: Friends, Foes, or Uneasy Partners?
During the 20th century, market capitalism was found to be the most successful way of ensuring increases in material well-being in a society. This raises an important question for the Christian: What is there in our understanding of human nature that provides insight into the success of a system based on private property and markets? The material success of capitalism also raises important issues about other aspects of human flourishing. What are the moral and ethical implications of a market economy?
Dr. Kristen Page, Associate Professor of Biology
Loving Neighbors: Christian Responsibility in the Created World
We live in a world of much suffering. Patterns of human land-use and resource consumption result in fragmented ecosystems, pollution, climate change, loss of biodiversity, and ultimately emerging diseases. In her lecture, Dr. Page discusses how we, as Christians in the developed world, must recognize our contribution to the suffering of our neighbors. We are called to image Christ, to live in family, and to respond in love to those around us. Since care for creation is love for our neighbors, we must live with compassion, kindness, humility, gentleness, patience, and love toward all creation. By acting as agents of reconciliation, we can truly love the Lord our God with all our heart, soul and mind, and love our neighbor as ourselves.
Dr. Jerry Root, Assistant Professor of Evangelism/Associate Director of the Institute of Strategic Evangelism, Billy Graham Center
C.S. Lewis’ Prince Caspian: A Showcase for Lewis’ Big Ideas
Every time C.S. Lewis put his pen to paper his aim was to set forth a vision of life. This is not merely true in his work in Christian apologetics, but also in his fiction. Dr. Root explores the background, main ideas, and rhetorical intention Lewis articulated in Prince Caspian. His presentation coincides with the recent release of the new Narnian Film, “Prince Caspian.”
Dr. John Walford, Professor of Art History
Photographic Explorations: An Art Historian’s Sideways Glance
Over the past few years, Dr. Walford has extended his activities from teaching and writing about art history to exploring the medium of digital photography as a further means of artistic expression. In this illustrated presentation, Dr. Walford describes how this new endeavor—which has led to a recent exhibition in Italy, and a forthcoming book of his photographs—has enabled him to combine his art historical training and visual sensibilities and led to engaging fresh audiences through the medium of the Internet, as well as revitalizing his classroom teaching. Dr. Walford’s presentation includes a slideshow of images. View this image gallery as you listen to the lecture.
Jay Wood Dr. Jay Wood, Professor of Philosophy
Virtuous Transformation
Thinking about moral virtues and vices has been a major concern of philosophers since the days of Plato and Aristotle. In fact, philosophical interest in the ways virtues and vices form our character is enjoying a resurgence of popularity at present. Christians, too, have always had an interest in virtues and vices as they bear on Christian character. This lecture will be an exercise in faith-learning integration, as we explore how virtues and vices contribute to our transformation in Christ.
I’ve noted before the fact the Wheaton has its chapel presentations online going back to 2003, and scattered selections before that (one or two even reaching the edges of my own long ago attendance).
A Persistent Peace. An Autohagriography
Throughout Christian history there has been quite an interest in men and women who did great things, whether in this world or within their soul. These men and women weren’t seeking self-satisfaction. Rather, they were truly seeking God and his work in them and in this world. The interest in such people often insisted they be viewed as saints, objects of devotion if not worship. Biographies written were often filled with stories of great victories, moral pronouncements, heroic stands. Little was said that would suggest these people had real personal histories or daily struggles or lived in complex times.
Glossing over the negatives, and thus the whole truth, these biographies were meant more as inspiration than history–inspiration for those already walking in their footsteps, devoted to the cause and method.
A Persistent Peace: One Man’s Struggle for a Nonviolent World
I was disappointed, however. A Persistent Peace is a history of the icon, John Dear S.J, and even more the story of the names and places involved in the Peace movement since Reagan.
But we never really get to know the man, John Dear. The gift of an autobiography is that we can see not only the events, but also the internal perspective, wrestling, frustrations, development of the subject. John Dear seems to open up, but often only in ways that bolster the sense of his superiority. People around him don’t understand him. They are bored or angry or confused. Dialogue is pontifications of his teaching to the ignorant, even hateful, opponents or less ignorant friends. This is coupled with a hero worship of sorts, in which Dear seems to reveal himself most by talking about the people he wants to be like. But, all throughout it seems a lot of the real John Dear remains hidden, hidden because it seems he is still unwilling to be truly transparent about who he is and where he came from.
In the foreword, Martin Sheen writes, “I suspect that much of John’s character was formed, as it is for all of us, during adolescence, that critical period when every level of physical, emotional, physiological, sexual, and spiritual development begins to emerge.”
I suspect this too. Only A Persistent Peace gives nothing of this. We begin with John in college at Duke. We are given only the barest glimpse of his family life, which is decidedly upper class and filled with powerful influences. Indeed, he mentions his father and mother only in passing again and again, often as sources of introductions for people he proceeded to lecture about peace issues.
So, we don’t really ever get to see the man, only the image of the peace activist seeking the way of Jesus in this world as he sees it, fighting against the benighted masses who disagree, not only with the goal but also the method–public protest and nuisance. This is not a review to argue such tactics, however, I can’t help but think that being empowered because of arrests for public behavior is entirely different than the martyrs arrested for their message. Speaking the message is perfectly fine and accepted, a fact I think grates against those who seek to find identity within a pampered martyrdom.
Because of this I was disappointed with the book. We are left with more of a polemic than a story, again and again told rather than shown. Which places me outside of the target audience, to be sure, which is almost certainly the choir of people who already celebrate the message, goals, and tactics of John Dear as being the true expression of a “faith that does justice”.
Giving this a star rating was difficult even still, because I realize for many this is precisely what they want and need. Hagiographies were popular, and still are, because people need heroes presented in a certain light and need the empowerment that comes from seeing their causes as black and white, good versus evil. I give it three stars because I do not share the initial assumptions and was seeking a history of the man rather than a story of places, and celebrities, and events that make up the Peace movement. I wanted to learn about the man, not the symbol.
Here is a quote that I think would best help readers to determine the worth of this book. John Dear upon arriving at the Pentagon says, “it was the center of death for the whole planet, its prime purpose to organize the empire’s killing sprees at the behest of the multinational corporations and their politicians.”
If you agree with this, then you will see this as a five star book, speaking truth to power, and modeling heroic activism. If you disagree, you will find this book likely confirming what you like least about the Peace movement, even if you happen to agree with many of their ideals.
This is not particularly an interesting or insightful autobiography. It compares poorly as such to the recent works by Jurgen Moltmann about his life in theology, A Broad Place: An Autobiography
This is a book for the choir. If you’re wearing the robes then have at it, enjoy it, for it is certainly written with passion. It is also a good history of the last decades of the Peace movement. In fact, I wish Dear had not styled this a story of one man’s struggle and instead more honestly made this a book of many people’s participation.
As such, I’m left thinking Dear is trying to impose himself as a major figure, seeking the identity of his heroes Gandhi, Martin Luther King Jr., Bobby Kennedy, but falling flat despite his many arrests and popularity within a certain segment of particular activists. He wants to be seen and applauded and affirmed.
Which makes me wonder what his life was like before Duke and with his family. Which makes me also wonder if maybe he really should have become a Franciscan after all.
Being Missional: Practicing the Presence of the Holy Spirit
It’s all the rage in this postmodern age to be missional. In fact, the words ‘missional’ and ‘postmodern’ go together quite nicely. Not just because one reflects the other, and vice versa. Also because they are the sorts of words people use without really knowing what they mean. Oh sure, people generally use those words with a meaning in mind, but oftentimes it’s a vague sort of meaning, riding the zeitgeist of the paradigm shift, so to speak.
It might be nice to just toss out the term–let it be adopted by church planters and the major presses as being a synonym for what’s new–but that doesn’t satisfy me. It is an important word and a descriptive word that gets to the heart of what we need to do.
In fact, I think this is such a big term that I don’t want to devote just one post to it. But for now I will, because I’m joining in on a big ol’ synchro-blog where a bunch of us are asking “What is missional?“
I’ve read my Newbiggin, and have some interesting quotes from the 17th century Baptist Roger Williams on the evils of Christendom. But there are better folks to lay out those things. I’m going to focus on my particular interest. And with that particular interest I’m going to go ahead and throw out my definition.
Missional means practicing the presence of the Holy Spirit.
For some that might bring to mind images of dancing around to lively music, speaking curious phrases that most no one can understand, and other attributes of Pentecostalism. But that’s not what I’m talking about. Pentecostals are fine, don’t get me wrong, and their global explosion over the last century certainly suggests an empowered mission far beyond most other representatives of Christ. Yet, being missional is a lot more than empowered worship. Because the Holy Spirit is about a lot more than putting on a show for us. Being missional means participation in the mission of God, and the missionary of God to us now, to all of us in the church and outside the church, is the Spirit.
What happens in Acts 2? They are in a room praying. The Spirit comes. Tongues of fire appear over their heads and tongues of men are spoken aloud. That’s where too many people stop reading. However, the chapter continues. The church doesn’t stay in the upper room. They go out, out into the streets where people from all the nations are gathered. Peter preaches, and the church grows. They go out, people come in, a continuing rhythm of transformational growth.
A great chapter. But for this post I want to emphasize two other passages in Acts that even better get at what practicing the presence of the Holy Spirit means.
Acts 8:26-40 and Acts 10.
Have a go at reading these passages. I’ll wait until you’ve read them. It’s quite important, you see, that we not only come up with a meaning for missional but that we let Scripture show us what it’s like.
Done?
Back at it. Don’t get distracted by the visions or the dreams or the curious popping hither and thither. Look at the heart of these passages. That is what it means to be missional. That is the practice of the presence of the Holy Spirit.
Where is the Holy Spirit in these passages? Out and about. The Holy Spirit is working in the life of a Roman Centurion. The Holy Spirit is working in the life of an Ethiopian Eunuch.
The Spirit tells Philip to walk towards the Ethiopian. He runs. He not only runs. When he gets there he can immediately understand the passage the Ethiopian is reading and immediately respond to it, with Scripture and teaching. This isn’t a stock script telling the Ethiopian what his questions are. This is having the wisdom and training to respond to exactly where the Ethiopian is at.
Here is the first point of practicing the presence of the Holy Spirit. It insists on a flexibility that is deep enough to respond to any context. Evangelism in the past has catered to the shallow. This is true recently and in history. “Just go to church”. “Here are the five laws of salvation”. Theology and a mastery of Scripture was left to the professionals and almost seen as suspect.
Colossions 4:5-6
Conduct yourselves wisely toward outsiders, making the most of the time. Let your speech always be gracious, seasoned with salt, so that you may know how you ought to answer everyone.
Conduct yourself wisely towards outsiders. Making the most of the time. Be gracious. Be seasoned. Know how to answer everyone. Wisdom. Efficiency. Grace. Challenge. Understanding. This can sound a lot more daunting than just memorizing scattered verses in Romans. But it is the way of the Spirit, because the Spirit has been and is working in the life of people, preparing the way, inspiring others to plant seeds. Being missional is being like Philip, going and responding, built up in our own depth so that we can respond to the depths of others, where they are at, with what they are dealing with. It is a practice of the presence of the Holy Spirit because in doing this we are looking for how the Spirit has already been working in the life of others. We just fill in the blanks and put words to yearnings and answers to sometimes hard questions.
1 Peter 3:13-16:
Who is going to harm you if you are eager to do good? But even if you should suffer for what is right, you are blessed. “Do not fear what they fear; do not be frightened.” But in your hearts set apart Christ as Lord. Always be prepared to give an answer to everyone who asks you to give the reason for the hope that you have. But do this with gentleness and respect, keeping a clear conscience, so that those who speak maliciously against your good behavior in Christ may be ashamed of their slander.
In your hearts set apart Christ as Lord. Always be prepared. Be gentle and respectful. Be holy.
These are key works of the Holy Spirit in our lives, as I talk about in my book. Philip practiced the presence of the Holy Spirit and was able to participate with the Spirit’s work in the Ethiopian’s life, a work that is credited for the very ancient Ethiopian church. Philip didn’t need to go to Ethiopia. He needed to go to that Ethiopian. And the Spirit continued to work because Philip was prepared internally in his wisdom and character and externally in his fluidity and flexibility.
With Peter we see the same example. He responded to the Spirit, to go and be where the Spirit was already working, and when he arrived he was able to respond to what the Spirit had prepared. Added to this is another key aspect of practicing the presence of the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit is in charge. Being missional isn’t about bringing our culture, or our customs, or our habits or preferences. There are some aspects of a life with Christ which are demanded, but very few of these are the emphases that people think of when they think of evangelism or missionary work.
Our goal is not to make people be like us. Our goal is to help people become who they were always meant to be. We aren’t in the business of taking people’s identity. We are to help them see how their identity becomes alive in the power of Christ through the work of the Holy Spirit. The Spirit is the battery that brings machinery to life, the enlivening presence of God himself. We become alive, really alive, with the Spirit’s work. And so here we see Peter being told to let go of the cultural boundaries, to trust in God’s work that all has been made clean. He is supposed to minister to who they are, where they are, and lead them towards their own fulfillment in God’s work. It is not up to Peter to say whether or not they fit, or to conform them to his own perceptions. It is Peter’s job to go and to confirm what God is already doing.
Being missional means discovering God’s mission in every context. It is not just a telling it is also a listening, and a seeing, and a hearing. By being missional we ourselves become missionized by the Spirit as we learn and grow in understanding God’s work. It is never one-sided. We have our part to share but we always have parts to discover about the Spirit’s pervasive work.
When we are practicing the presence of the Holy Spirit we become dancers. The music is God’s mission in this world, which goes beyond simple salvation and extends into eternal relationship. God is working. Working in places we might never go, with people we might never meet, and in ways we might often not understand. In the dance with the Spirit we become attuned to his movements and as we increasingly dance better with God we dance better with others, teaching and learning, including and discovering in holiness, and outreach, and community.
In other words, when we practice the presence of the Holy Spirit we become truly free and are able to help free others where they are at.
Now the Lord is the Spirit, and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom (2 Cor. 3:17)
Being missional means participating with this Spirit; the Spirit of hope, and life, and wholeness.
Being missional means practicing the presence of the Holy Spirit so that we become freedom fighters.
Listed below are those who will be participating in this global synchroblog.
Alan Hirsch
Alan Knox
Andrew Jones
Barb Peters
Bill Kinnon
Brad Brisco
Brad Grinnen
Brad Sargent
Brother Maynard
Bryan Riley
Chad Brooks
Chris Wignall
Cobus Van Wyngaard
Dave DeVries
David Best
David Fitch
David Wierzbicki
DoSi
Doug Jones
Duncan McFadzean
Erika Haub
Grace
Jamie Arpin-Ricci
Jeff McQuilkin
John Smulo
Jonathan Brink
JR Rozko
Kathy Escobar
Len Hjalmarson
Makeesha Fisher
Malcolm Lanham
Mark Berry
Mark Petersen
Mark Priddy
Michael Crane
Michael Stewart
Nick Loyd
Patrick Oden
Peggy Brown
Phil Wyman
Richard Pool
Rick Meigs
Rob Robinson
Ron Cole
Scott Marshall
Sonja Andrews
Stephen Shields
Steve Hayes
Tim Thompson
Thom Turner
N.T. Wright
N.T. Wright, one of my favorite writers, was on the Colbert Report last night talking about heaven. Quite interesting… both the topic and how he did in that setting. It’s a hard topic to get across in such a short amount of time and with the jokes flying back and forth but I think he did a good job. Then again, I spend a lot of my time trying to sort out those kinds of things so maybe I’m not the best judge of how well he communicated. The fact he was on, however, is really interesting and might be among the nicest ‘theology in popular culture’ events I’ve seen in a long while. Hopefully, there will be more of that. Bringing theology directly to the people is a very needed task.
Here’s the clip (scroll down–I can’t embed it here for some reason and can’t link directly to the exact clip).
Funny World
Amy forwarded this to me, and I think it worth posting. From Story People:
He told me about Jesus & Arizona & the best way to make beer & I said you’re a funny kind of preacher & he said it’s a funny kind of world & I still remember his eyes clear as a desert morning.
It sums up for me what emerging/missional folks are trying to get to. Not the ‘make beer’ part, that’s just a random hobby that could be many things–no longer limited to a list of approved hobbies such as golf or fishing or Bible reading. Nor is it he part about Arizona that gets me. That’s an emphasis on knowing a place, being there and able to tell others about it–in contrast to always seeking the elsewhere, and the next ministry model far away from home. Its not even the part about Jesus. Lots of people talk about Jesus. And far too often talking about Jesus isn’t particularly an appealing description. People know about him, but far too many talk without knowing him.
It’s the last part that draws it together. His eyes clear as a desert morning. Suggesting peace and tranquility, being grounded without anxiety or frenzy. He is who he is. Whole. And this reflects back into what he knows. He knows himself and what he likes. He has a place, a location whose geography and personality he has mastered. He then talks of Jesus within that calm and clarity, inviting not through words but through aura and presence and calm.
I want to be he.
on religion
I’ve increasingly come to the conclusion that what traditionally marks religion isn’t devotion to God, but rather a strong belief that God doesn’t really know what he is doing.
First a little theology and background:
In antiquity religion denoted the cultic veneration of God. Cicero defined it as the cultus deorum. Religio could sometimes be used of the relation to other people to the degree that a comparable veneration was owed or paid to them. Cicero distinguished religio as moral duty from the taboo-fear of superstitio. This distinction differentiated the Latin term from the Greek threskeia, which embraces all forms of cultic veneration, even those that are excessive or erroneous, and which occurs also in the NT in this sense. Closer to Cicero’s religio is theosebei, which is not closely tied to the cultus. In Cicero pietas is an attitude of soul which in relation to the gods finds expression in cultic acts. Yet Cicero does not equate piety and religion. He relates the latter term much more to rites and their observance. Nor does he call the knowledge of God religio. In his work on laws he describes this knowledge as the mar of differentiation between human beings and animals, but he does not call it religion. Nevertheless, he regards a knowledge of the matter of the gods as necessary to bridle the expression of cultic veneration.
Unlike Cicero, August in his De vera religione (c. 390) stresses that the knowledge of God and the worship of God are inseparable in religion. For him, then, there is a close relation between religion and philosophy. Doctrine and worship belong together. In this regard he appeals to Plato, but he finds the supreme example of the connection of doctrine and cultus in the church. The true religion is to be found where the soul does not worship creaturely things but the one eternal and unchangeable God. IN his own time this perfect religion was identical with the Christian religion whose teachings Almighty God himself had set forth. These consist of the prophetic intimation and historical recording of the saving provisions of divine providence for the renewal of the human race.
By tying together worship of God and knowledge of God Augustine sought to do something very honorable which was to essential combine thought and practice. However, the problem comes in the perversion of this that happens because we really, at our cores, don’t think God knows what he is doing. We invert this order, making our worship of God become a source of knowledge about God, thus making how we want to serve God become the criteria for what we think God wants.
In other words, we tell God what we will give him and then expect him to applaud our service.
Or we think that God has really left a lot out, forgetting maybe what he wants, and that we need to fill in the blanks, and make others follow our lead in doing that.
This is true from the earliest days and is at the heart of alienating religion. That’s why I think Cicero was right to separate the two. If we truly know God we will likely respond to him as we should. But, far too often we want to serve him without really knowing or trusting him. We create forms of worship he never mandated, and then make this worship the criteria of inclusion among his proclaimed people.
Sometimes God does tell us how he wants to be worshipped. He told Moses the clear guidelines. And he laid out who was to be included, how they were to be included, what they were supposed to do and not do on what days. God can be quite specific when he wants to be.
When he’s not specific we can’t be specific for him. Because it’s showing that we don’t know, like, or trust what God has done when he has freed us from those specific forms and giving the Holy Spirit to be the true marker of who is and who is not part of the people of God.
Worship becomes then not only separated from the knowledge of God, it becomes a barrier to the knowledge of God, creating a false knowledge, and false attributes, always enforcing the forms of worship rather than the fruit of the Spirit and the reflection of Christ.
It’s easy to not trust the Holy Spirit’s work in people. Peter could have rejected Cornelius because Cornelius did not match the liturgical patterns of Jewish Christianity (the true Apostolic form). In fact there was a movement in the early church to do just that, something that was addressed in Acts 15. However, Peter would not have been part of the church any longer himself had he done so. The Spirit forms the church, and Peter followed.
So too today. Which is why I have such trouble with so many forms of leadership which mistake form for knowledge and enforce non-Scriptural patterns as being somehow authoritative for God’s demands. That’s why I have trouble with contemporary emphasis on leadership development that emphasizes roles and organizational structure far beyond what Scripture indicates. It creates a cult of personality and emphasize non-Spirit charisma over and above spiritual gifting and Spirit leading.
Religion that doesn’t trust God is found in both the newest and the oldest forms of the Christian faith, and we see this even in the New Testament letters. Paul is writing to churches who don’t trust God and so created their own misshaped patterns that had to be rebuked or adjusted.
God tells us what we need to know and sent the Spirit to teach us all things. That’s not always answering the questions we might have, however, even as we are taught what is necessary. We can in response either trust God and be free in the freedom he has brought, free in diversity and free in expression, worshiping in manifold ways out of the particular knowledge and gifts the Spirit has bestowed. Or we can betray God, enforcing rules not his own that we attribute to him, thinking that our contrived worship is in fact knowledge rather than whim and habit.
Crying Wolf
CHICAGO, May 15.—The Rev. W.W. Reynolds, pastor of the Brightwood Methodist Church of Indianapolis, recently wrote to Capt. Luke Colleran, Chief of the Chicago Detective Department, inquiring if the use of the bicycle among women had affected their morality in any perceptible manner. Although not offering statistics, Capt. Colleran’s reply deals with the subject in a positive manner.
He writes:
“I am not an advocate of the use of the bicycle among women, when viewing it from a morality phase. Women of refinement and exquisite moral training addicted to the use of the bicycle are not infrequently thrown among the uncultivated and de¬generate element of both sexes, whose coarse, boisterous, and immoral gestures are heard and seen while speeding along our streets and boulevards. Many doubtless es¬cape the contamination, although the contagion be ever present.“A large number of our female bicyclists wear shorter dresses than the laws of morality and decency permit, thereby inviting the improper conversations and remarks of the depraved and immoral. I most certainly consider the adoption of the bicycle by women as detrimental to the advancement of morality—nay, even its stability. I have always entertained deep sympathy for the hosts of noble and honorable ladies, who while riding their wheels are frequently associated with women whose morality will not stand investigation and whose conversation is invariably coarse and undignified.”
On being asked for an expression of opinion, Mrs. Charles Henrotin said:
“This Indianapolis minister must be very hard up for subjects. Perhaps he considers that he has conquered the devil in his own dominions and must go forth to conquer him in new fields. Why should cycling be restricted to men. I don’t see that they have any superior rights in the matter. It is an exercise conducive to good health and good spirits, and certainly there is nothing-improper in it.”
Morality these days? Where’s it going to go next?
Of course, this article was in the New York Times on May 15, 1899. Turn of the century concern.
I make note of it because it so illustrates something that has been on my mind of late and I might want to explore here more, now that I’m back to posting a little.
What matters?
Not only what matters but what should particularly matter to us. The Rev. W.W. Reynolds thought that women riding bikes mattered. It was a gateway hobby, you know. First they get on the bike, then the skirts slip up a little, and then one time upstanding, moral, young women will start associating with all kinds of ne’er-do-wells. Who wouldn’t oppose that?
Well, now that seems a little silly. We have perspective and all that. It’s a great hobby and bike riding is the least of our moral concerns.
I live in California. I know about the pressing moral concerns of our era.
But that’s what gets me to think about what really matters and why it matters. Because this article above is so much a reason why we are in the moral confusion we’re in these days. Christianity became about culture, and morals, and respectable living. It wasn’t as much about Jesus, and serving others, and letting go our demands, and living with love. Morality replaced spirituality.
There’s no real power in morality, however. There’s only power in the Spirit who leads us to morality.
So what should we focus on?
What does Paul emphasize? What did Jesus emphasize?
I think there’s something in that worth considering more.
Signs of Life
A couple weeks ago I had the chance to preach on the topics in my book It’s a Dance: Moving with the Holy Spirit. It wasn’t recorded, as far as I know. However, this morning I sat outside and got it on video. It’s about 27 minutes long.
Not as Forgotten Ways
Alan Hirsch has a very interesting interview in Christianity Today talking about small groups and touching a bit on his book The Forgotten Ways.
Very much worth reading. This part stood out to me this morning:
I’d like to look specifically at the disciple-making element for a moment. You mentioned in the book that disciple making is a crucial, pivotal element in the process. What makes it so important?
It seems to me that if we fail to make disciples—that is, people who can become like Jesus Christ, which is a very simple definition of discipleship—if we can’t get that right, then in doesn’t matter what else we do because there will be a fundamental weakness in our ministry. The lack of disciples will always undermine any effort beyond that. But if we succeed in developing and creating an environment where people really can become more Christlike, it seems to me that the movement is on, and everything else will have a substantial basis along with it.
The problem is that we are being discipled every day by our culture, and it’s done very profoundly and very well—and I say this with a background in marketing and advertising. There are billions of dollars going into advertising, which is not just selling us products. There’s much more of a religious dynamic going on. So if we as a church or a small group don’t disciple in the way of Jesus, then the culture gets to have the primary say. And I have to say that, despite our best efforts, the culture is winning at this stage.
If I can be a little subversive here–one major, absolute barrier for real discipleship making has been, in my estimation, the significantly higher emphasis the church places on leadership development. Finding and developing leaders has become the primary task of training and pastors in today’s church world, whether in established or in avante-garde settings.
Leadership is about organization. It is about communicating, deploying, managing, inspiring, and otherwise getting people to where you think they need to be in order to do what you think they need to do.
However, leadership does not in any way mean discernment. Meaning that the greatest leaders can lead a whole mass of people into a morass. Discipleship, however, means becoming close to God, restoring the likeness of God in our lives so that we increasingly pursue the Holy Spirit in instinct. When we pursue leadership and leaders, however, we are looking at organization as the world understands it. That’s a big reason the culture is winning. Our best efforts have gone into playing its music and dancing its steps rather than letting go our demand for control and really learning how to trust the Spirit in our lives.
Leadership emphasis has undermined discipleship, even as leadership emphasis seems to be so, so potent in creating enthusiastic participants with passionate ideas. Leadership development mimics discipleship, as often it emphasizes those who are already the most dedicated to evangelism and ministry. It confuses passion for depth, and misses out on the deeper level pervasive impact that the less glitzy discipleship brings along.
Jesus, however, didn’t talk about organizational principles. He discussed the kingdom. He didn’t pick those with the most leadership potential. He chose those who were willing to be disciples.
The Spirit came upon them and led counterintuitive people to do all kinds of counterintuitive things.
Stations of the Resurrection
Christ is risen.
Happy Easter!!
The Stations of the Cross are an important meditation. But focusing so much on that leaves out so much of what we really are about. We’re not only forgiven, we are now free to really begin to live, live free now and through eternity.
In thinking of this, after several years of focusing on the Stations of the Cross as both a physical experience at the church I worked at and as a written exercise I thought it worthwhile to have a go at the Stations of the Resurrection. I’ve heard since there are other forms of this, but as I was going by my own inspiration and couldn’t find guidance at the time I have chosen these fourteen emphases, beginning with Easter and ending on Pentecost.
Someday, given the space and opportunity again, it might be fun to put these into some kind of physical, sensory, experience.
For now… writing and art. Enjoy these Stations of the Resurrection.
He is risen indeed.
