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).
Wisdom for every day
In various monastic writings we find two verses emphasized as being among the most spiritually effective prayers. Psalm 71:1-2 (NIV)–
In you, LORD, I have taken refuge; let me never be put to shame. In your righteousness, rescue me and save me.
It is emphasized because it is the prayer of desperation, encapsulating a heart’s cry, pointing it efficiently towards God. The spiritually wise suggested repeating this regularly, throughout the day. Not only for those who are encountering crises. For everyone. Because while it is the prayer of the oppressed, pleading for God’s salvation, it is also a prayer of grounding. Those who deal with pride, or arrogance, or easy living are reminded of their status and their goal. This establishes the relationship, a pledge of allegiance of sorts. We are all in need of God’s salvation, and asking for it reminds us of those places that we might like to hide from or ignore–or do not see in the moments of bounty.
Worth looking at other translations.
New Living Translation:
O Lord, I have come to you for protection;
don’t let me be disgraced.
Save me and rescue me,
for you do what is right.
Turn your ear to listen to me,
and set me free.
New King James:
In You, O LORD, I put my trust;
Let me never be put to shame.
Deliver me in Your righteousness, and cause me to escape;
Incline Your ear to me, and save me.
NRSV:
In you, O LORD, I take refuge; let me never be put to shame. In your righteousness deliver me and rescue me; incline your ear to me and save me.
Along with the Jesus prayer–”Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me, a sinner”–these verses are a way to center and re-center, orienting us right in the midst of our busy lives. Easy and profound expressions of deep theology and deep faith.
As I’m writing today I’m hit with another passage that serves much the same purpose. Rather than being prayer towards God, however, this one is a reminder from God to us.
Exodus 14:13-14
Moses answered the people, “Do not be afraid. Stand firm and you will see the deliverance the LORD will bring you today. The Egyptians you see today you will never see again. The LORD will fight for you; you need only to be still.”
Here we have an antecedent to Ephesians 6 and Isaiah 31.
The Israelites have been freed from Egypt, but they are not yet free. They stand at the edge of the Red Sea, blocked. Pharaoh realizes he made a mistake. Who is this God of Israel that could take away his slaves? He gathers his army. He pursues the newly emancipated.
Exodus tells us:
They were terrified and cried out to the LORD. They said to Moses, “Was it because there were no graves in Egypt that you brought us to the desert to die? What have you done to us by bringing us out of Egypt? Didn’t we say to you in Egypt, ‘Leave us alone; let us serve the Egyptians’? It would have been better for us to serve the Egyptians than to die in the desert!”
Life became overwhelming. They were terrified, broken, emptied of hope. They saw what was following them and they despaired.
“Do not be afraid, stand firm, and see the deliverance that the LORD will accomplish for you today; for the Egyptians whom you see today you shall never see again. The LORD will fight for you, and you have only to keep still.”
The Egyptians throughout Scripture represent ‘the world’–its terrors, its promises, its enslavements, or its companionship. Sometimes it is a place of God given safety. More often it is the feared oppressor or the false security. We run from Egypt because of its power. We embrace Egypt because it promises protection.
We see the Egyptians about us. In our struggles and in our temptations. We fear. We lose hope. We stumble in the strain. We go crazy, act angry, no longer reflections of Christ.
And God reminds us.
“Do not be afraid, stand firm, and see the deliverance that the LORD will accomplish for you today; for the Egyptians whom you see today you shall never see again. The LORD will fight for you, and you have only to keep still.”
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
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.
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.
A society of Pentecostals
Last Wednesday I flew out to Durham, North Carolina to attend the Society of Pentecostal Studies annual meeting. Though there was wireless in my hotel room and at the conference I didn’t check in here. I guess it’s the same part of me that tends not to take pictures at big events. I want to enjoy the moment, be in the moment, rather than be thinking how to document the moment.
I guess it’s another sign that I studied history rather than journalism in college.
That being the case, now that the trip is in the past I can begin to document the goings on.
My dad took me to the airport early on Wednesday morning, on his way to work. Which was nice, though his work and my flight time didn’t exactly match up. I got there round about 7. My flight took off at 11:40. Plenty of time to get to know the Ontario International Airport. I walked for long while. And I read for a long while, read a book I was hoping to re-prime me for theological conversation. It certainly did. The Holy Spirit in the World is a wonderful, wonderful book, though very dense, and got my brain moving again. It even ignited thoughts about new trails of study.
The time went by fairly quickly. Hardly felt like a wait at all. I boarded my flight, a very new Delta 757, and had a 4 hour ride to Atlanta, in which I mostly read some more, listened to a lot of classical music, as well as one of my favorite people in the world.
Landed, then I had to go from one side of Atlanta to the other for my next flight. Well, one side of the airport to another, Terminal A to E, which involved a mile+ walk and riding a train for ten minutes. Then onward to the Raleigh/Durham airport. Totally uneventful, entirely full, flight.
Landed. Was picked up by my good friend Maria, who used to be a SoCal resident before finishing up her degree at Fuller and wandering over to see what kind of extra education she can pick up at Duke. We first met at the church I used to go to/work at, and had good long conversations about very intellectual things as well as less intellectual things. She was, without a doubt, one of my earliest and most encouraging cheerleaders when I began my writing in 2003. That she’s brilliant and exceedingly well read with a superior grasp of English (despite being born and raised in Austria) made the encouragement all the more encouraging. So it was nice to see her. And not have to walk to the hotel.
She made me a turkey sandwich, because it was late and she thought I would be hungry. I didn’t know I was, but it turned out I was more hungry than I knew.
Got to my Quality Inns and Suites, right next door to the Durham Hilton, checked into room 103 and proceeded to immediately not fall asleep. Sure it might be 10:30 local time, but it was just starting out the evening in my time. Add the fact I was really suffering from a cold and a bad cough… well, I didn’t get to sleep until around 1.
Woke up wide awake at 6. Round about 7:30 I walked over to the Hilton, checked into the conference, opened my little packet of materials and was happy to see me staring back. A flier on It’s a Dance was included. Made me smile. I also got a couple of free books, which occupied my time until the shuttle came to take folks to Duke. Sat next to one of the main organizers of the conference, though I wasn’t aware of it at the time, not until he stood up at the main session that evening.
Did I say I’ve not been real involved in academia for a while and don’t really know anyone?
A new session had been added at the last minute. I decided to go. The Rev. Eusebius Stephanou spoke on his charismatic conversion in the early 60s and his subsequent ministry within the Eastern Orthodox church for the last forty years.
My thoughts on that will be in the next post.
Oh, and I forgot to mention. The night before my flight to the conference I got some nice news which helped my attendance take on more substantive meaning. I got a note from Dr. Veli-Matti Kärkkäinen that I had been accepted as his PhD student at Fuller Theological seminary beginning this Fall, and more that I had been awarded by the School of Theology a scholarship that entirely pays my tuition.
Off and Away to an emerging pneumatology
I’m leaving on a jet plane, be back late Sunday evening.
Going to the Society of Pentecostal Studies annual conference, out in North Carolina–at Duke to be more exact.
Should be a grand time. I’m giving a little presentation on emerging pneumatology, in which I take the traits of the emerging church and view them through the lens of Moltmann’s theology to identify these traits as an emerging pneumatology.
In other words, the same thing I did with my book.
This morning I practiced and recorded it. I need more practice, and I need to get over this cold and cough, but for the most part I’m happy with what I’ve done. The book is 270 pages. The paper I wrote for the conference is 27 pages. The text of the presentation I will be giving on that paper is 13 pages. Editing down is fun!
Here’s the 1/2 hour presentation.
Or you can visit me on youtube.
If there is good access I’m going to try to do regular posts from the conference, and maybe get some video. We’ll see.
Cheers!
The High Calling
A good friend sent me this today and it very much was what I was needing to hear and be reminded about.
The High Calling
If God has called you to be truly like Jesus, He will draw you into a life of crucifixion and humility and put on you demands of obedience that sometimes will not allow you to follow other Christians. In many ways He will seem to let other good people do things He will not let you do.
Other Christians, and even ministers, who seem very religious and useful may push themselves, pull strings, and work schemes to carry out their plans, but you cannot do these things. And if you attempt them, you will meet with such failure and rebuke from the Lord as to make you [deeply remorseful]. Others can brag about themselves, about their work, about their success, about their writing, but the Holy Spirit will not allow you to do any such thing; and if you begin bragging, He will lead you into some deep [humiliation] that will make you despise yourself and all your good works.
Others will be allowed to succeed in making great sums of money, or having a legacy left to them, or in having luxuries, but God may only supply you daily, because he wants you to have something far better than gold – a helpless dependence on Him – that He may have the privilege of providing your needs daily out of the unseen treasury.
The Lord may let others be honored and keep you hidden away in obscurity, because He wants to produce some choice, fragrant fruit for His coming glory, which can only be produced in the shade.
God will let others be great, but keep you small. He will let others do a work for Him and get the credit for it, but He will make you work and toil without knowing how much you are doing. And then to make your work still more precious, He will let others get the credit for the work which you have done, and this will make your reward ten times greater when Jesus comes.
The Holy Spirit will put a strict watch on you, with jealous love, and rebuke you for little words and feelings or for wasted time, which other Christians never seem distressed over.
So make up you mind that God is an infinite Sovereign who has a right to do as He pleases with His own and needs not explain to you a thousand things with may puzzle your reason in His dealings with you.
God will take you at your word; and if you absolutely sell yourself to be His slave, He will wrap you up in a jealous love, and let other people say and do many things you cannot do or say.
Settle it forever that you are to deal directly with the Holy Spirit and that He is to have the privilege of tying your tongue, or chaining your hand, or closing your eyes in ways that others are not disciplined.
Now when you are so possessed with the living God that you are, in your secret heart, pleased and delighted over this peculiar, personal, private, jealous guardianship and management of the Hold Spirit over your life, you will have found the [entrance hall] of heaven.
~Anonymous
