religion – The Pastor's Study

July 12, 2013

How to train key leaders as disciples and leaders

Last week I joined staff and area directors from sixteen campuses, along with our executive coaches, for training in ministry building. It was the best training of my ministry career. One of the things that made it powerful was the synergy that emerged from sharing the experience with one of my direct reports and our coach. All told, we spent more than 40 hours together face to face, which is more than we’d normally get in an academic year.

Key to the training is a tool—we received more than thirty tools over the week—called the “discipleship cycle.” It’s illustrated below. The discipleship cycle is the most effective way to both guide Christians in maturing as followers of Christ, but at the same to move them along a continuum of leadership development as well.

“Hear the Word” – Through prayer, scripture, and in shared discernment, we come to agreement on what God is asking us to do. It may be agreeing to reach out to three people whom God has brought to mind. It may be taking the risk to approach another graduate student and encourage him in his faith. It could be any number of things.

“Respond actively” – When God leads us to do something—regardless of what it is—we respond actively. Hopefully out active response is also a full response rather than a marginal effort.

“Debrief and interpret” – This is critical to growth both as a leader and as a disciple. In community with another, we consider what God asked us to do and how we responded to his invitation. How did we feel? What was the outcome? What did we like about the experience? What was uncomfortable? What held us back from full obedience? You get the idea.

Asking questions is an incredibly fruitful way of coming to understand another. Answering questions is also an incredibly rich way to come to understand ourselves. Put these together with a trusted guide or coach who can, in reliance on God, attempt to bring some degree of interpretation to the experience and the combination is dynamite.

What’s so beautiful about this approach is that it can be deployed quite easily and naturally throughout the day and even a brief five minute encounter can become a micro-seminar with a very concrete, very particular lesson.

During the week, we used this tool and I found that it forced me to stop, consider the action or goal I had undertaken, evaluate my response to it, and then connect the two in the company of a coach who could help by clarifying, observing, and interpreting.

What tools do you use to help train followers of Christ as leaders?

June 11, 2013

You cannot have mission without discipleship

Over the fifteen years since the publication of Darryl Guder’s landmark book The Missional Church, North American Christianity has become enamored of the word “missional.” This is no bad thing, but Mike Breen observes in this post that the future of missional may not be quite as bright as we hope. Could it be that in the next several years “missional” will sound in our ears much the same as “seeker sensitive” does today? Perhaps.

That may seem cynical, but I’m being realistic. There is a reason so many movements in the Western church have failed in the past century: They are a car without an engine. A missional church or a missional community or a missional small group is the new car that everyone is talking about right now, but no matter how beautiful or shiny the vehicle, without an engine, it won’t go anywhere.

Breen points out something that congregations often overlook: mission and discipleship are interdependent. Discipleship that fails to participate in the mission of God in some practical way isn’t really discipleship. Mission that isn’t rooted and sustained in Christ-centered community isn’t really mission at all.

The real problem in today’s church is that we’re not at all sure how to root our lives in the presence of God and in Christian community. Skye Jethani notes:

Many church leaders unknowingly replace the transcendent vitality of a life with God for the ego satisfaction they derive from a life for God.

As we engage in mission, it is critical that our minds and hearts be connected God through a life of vital piety.

It’s often assumed that evangelicals do not have the theological resources necessary to provide a foundation for missional discipleship. In the Reformed tradition, at least, nothing could be further from the truth. Calvin’s central critique of the monasticism of his time was not it’s practices, but that it was limited to a select few (see Boulton, Life with God 2011). Calvin saw the church as company of believers united around Word and sacrament and whose lives were marked by the intentional practice of the spiritual disciplines used by monastic communities. The difference–Calvin’s Christians were “monks” in the world and it was not a peculiar calling, but one that is universal to all believers–the democratization of the monastic spiritual disciplines.

In order to be missional in an authentic and sustainable way, we need to recapture Calvin’s sense of our being monastics in the world–people practicing the presence of God in the midst of our secular callings. Only then can we successfully integrate mission into life without simply burdening ourselves with another project for God.

June 6, 2013June 6, 2013

Are we a church separated by a common language?

Disclaimer: This post is designed to be neither polemical nor apologetic. I’m attempting to describe what I am observing in the midst of the current unrest in the PC(USA). While it is a generalization, I think there a significant degree of accuracy in this observation. -JBG

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An American walked into an Oxford pub and addressed the bartender, “I’d like a beer and some chips.” The response puzzled him, “It’ll be five minutes on the chips, they’re in the fryer.” Looking behind the bar, the man noticed row after row of different types of chips–regular, salt and vinegar, barbecue–lined up ready to go. It’s been observed that the United States and Great Britain are two nations divided by a common language. In Britain, chips are crisps and the word chips refers what we might call fries.

The Presbyterian Church (USA) is a denomination separated by a common language. It’s not our only challenge, but certainly ranks among the top five.

This reality often escapes the casual observer who reads our Book of Confessions and Book of Order. When any of us reads, we pour into the words before our eyes a meaning we associate with those words based on our education, experience, and convictions. In other words, we engage in interpreting those words–that is, we translate. This is why lawyers (and philosophers) are so precise with words. At least one job of a good lawyer is to ensure that her client clearly understands what, in reality, he is agreeing to. There is, of course, often a difference between what we think we’re agreeing to and what the other person thinks we are agreeing to. The difference often lies in the interpretive act.

In the Presbyterian Church (USA), we share a common theological language. That language, however, is filled with varying and often competing interpretations. We all say “chips,” but some of us are thinking french fries and others Baked Lays. Same words. Different meanings.

One example of this is the theological phrase, “the Lordship of Jesus Christ.” Every part of the church, perhaps with the exception of those who object to the term “lord” in the first place, affirm that Jesus is Lord. Technically, it is inaccurate to say that the denomination rejects the Lordship of Jesus Christ. The reality is that there is a diversity of meaning in this phrase.

What does this phrase mean? Are we talking chips or fries?

When evangelicals (broadly) say the “Jesus is Lord,” they typically understand this phrase to refer to a constellation of affirmations.

These include, but aren’t necessarily limited to,the following:

Jesus is the only way by which we may be reconciled to God;
this reconciliation is accompanied by a conscious recognition of it if not a conscious decision to repent of sin and believe the gospel;
as Lord, Jesus lays claim to every element of the believer’s life;
this claim requires the study of and submission to the teaching of Scripture;
the teaching of Scripture is best captured by referring to those interpretations whose currency comes in the form of longevity rather than novelty.

Typically, evangelicals will focus more closely on personal piety or personal righteousness and less on what might be called social righteousness. This is the residue of revivalism in the creation of modern evangelicalism.

Again, broadly, those who are not evangelical will mean something different with the phrase:

Jesus is the only (some would not agree to this) way to be reconciled to God;
this reconciliation may or may not be accompanied by an awareness of it;
as Lord, Jesus lays claim to every element of the believer’s life;
this claim requires the study of and submission to the teaching of Scripture;
the teaching of Scripture is best captured by referring to those interpretations that consider the insights of modern critical scholarship and recognize the significance of the interpreter in assessing the meaning of a text.
Older interpretations are more likely to be affected by social realities that no longer exist and which may (although not necessarily should) be rejected.

Those outside of the evangelical camp will tend to emphasize the corporate or social nature of righteousness and see in Scripture that a key component of the nature of the church is it’s commission to stand for God’s justice in the world.

See the tension?

I’ve written elsewhere about how tensions have to be managed rather than resolved. This tension in the PC(USA) will not go away nor will it dissipate. In the end, every minister and church has to decide to what extent are they willing and able to manage the tension. Those who are both unable and unwilling ought to be free to appropriately depart. Those who believe they can remain should do so.

May 14, 2013

Don’t let this be you

I was walking in our backyard over the weekend and came across a curious sight. Several years ago a sapling must tree must have grown in such a way that its leading branch grew through our chain link fence–specifically between the chain links and the metal frame that holds it erect. The tree didn’t stop growing. Instead as it grew the metal cut into the trunk producing a tree with a metal strand embedded in it.

This is a powerful image of what happens to many Christians as they face key transitions in life. In my work as a campus minister I often observe the difficulty some students face in making the jump from undergraduate life to graduate study and from graduate school to professional practice.

The fresh opportunities and, more often, the fresh challenges can cut into a Christian world and life view (borrowing that term from Abraham Kuyper) that is not sufficiently developed to handle them.

Failing to attend to this often leads to significant challenges for Christians:

Leaving the church because the connection between Sunday and Monday is too tenuous
Leaving law school because the practice of law only ever seems to reach a proximate justice rather than full justice
Experiencing life in the absence of any sense that God cares about or values your work
Feeling the unrelenting pressure to perform and carrying that view into your relationship with God and gradually losing sight of the hope of the Gospel
Growing to resent God because of the great suffering seen in the lives of clients, patients, parishioners, or students

How are you preparing for the next stage of your personal or professional journey?

Are you making sure that you’re world and life view is growing, changing, deepening, and developing so that it is sufficient to aid you in faithfully following Christ?

February 25, 2013

[Missional Monday 3] – Why prayer is the fuel of missional ministry

This is the third post in our series about missional ministry. In the first post I defined what missional is. I defined being missional as, “at it’s heart being…about placing God’s mission at the center of the life of the individual and the center of the church’s existence.“ I argued that the church needs adaptive change–a change in strategy–to a missional model of church rather than tactical change (like altering church service times or simply adding a contemporary service).

In the second post I noted that it’s impossible to be missional alone. I noted that community is essential to missional ministry for four reasons: security, encouragement, accountability, and perspective. This week we ask the question: what role does prayer play in missional ministry?

In our exploration of missional ministry, we’ve used the account of the sending of the seventy-two as a foundation or starting point for our discussion. To recap, this is the first ‘sending’ of the church into the community for the purpose of the proclamation of the Gospel and the establishment of kingdom outposts in advance of Jesus’ visit to particular cities in order to preach. The account is found in Luke 10:1-11, which is reproduced below.

After this the Lord appointed seventy-two others and sent them two by two ahead of him to every town and place where he was about to go. He told them, “The harvest is plentiful, but the workers are few. Ask the Lord of the harvest, therefore, to send out workers into his harvest field. Go! I am sending you out like lambs among wolves. Do not take a purse or bag or sandals; and do not greet anyone on the road.

“When you enter a house, first say, ‘Peace to this house.’ If someone who promotes peace is there, your peace will rest on them; if not, it will return to you. Stay there, eating and drinking whatever they give you, for the worker deserves his wages. Do not move around from house to house.

“When you enter a town and are welcomed, eat what is offered to you. Heal the sick who are there and tell them, ‘The kingdom of God has come near to you.’ But when you enter a town and are not welcomed, go into its streets and say, ‘Even the dust of your town we wipe from our feet as a warning to you. Yet be sure of this: The kingdom of God has come near.’

The missional vision for ministry–a vision which sees the church in a missionary encounter with culture–was certainly lived out by the early church.

The church of the early Twenty-First century is being called back to this approach. As we attempt to make the missional shift, one question plagues me. Does the church of the Twenty-First century have the character and the practices to be ample to engage in missional ministry in a Godly way?

I could ask the question another way: is the current church sufficiently rooted in Christ so that this shift will be more than simply a fad or a trend, but will be the product of deep repentance for missed opportunities, the product of a deep desire for the salvation of men and women, and the product of a profound wish for the church to be collectively faithful to the witness of Scripture in describing and envisioning the church as a missional community?

If this is to be the case then we have to ensure that the church places prayer front and center in its mission. It’s important to begin with a simple definition of prayer.

Prayer is an offering up of our desires unto God for things agreeable to his will, in the name of the Christ, with confession of our sins, and thankful acknowledgment of his mercies.

Westminster Shorter Catechism, Q/A 98

In other words, prayer is talking to God. Sometimes we talk to those we love formally, and sometimes we talk with them informally. It’s the same with prayer. Sometimes we will speak with God using formal, set prayers. At other times we will simply tell him what’s on our heart.

Prayer is the fuel of missional ministry. More precisely, common prayer is the fuel of missional ministry. A missional church will structure its life together around common prayer. The form of prayer will vary with the tradition of which the church is a part, but what’s not up for debate is the primacy of prayer in the life of the church. Why?

Prayer brings us into the fellowship of the Holy Trinity. As Christians we are connected to the Godhead through the Holy Spirit who lives in us. In a sense, it is God who enables us to pray and it is God who gives us the words to pray, and it is God who carries our prayer and receives our prayer. C. S. Lewis notes this in Letters to Malcolm: Chiefly on Prayer when he writes that, essentially, prayer is God talking to Himself.
Prayer is a means of grace. We need grace for the journey. The way we are walking is greater than our ability to complete. The journey of faith is like the Appalachian Trail–we need a guide and we need a power greater than our own. In prayer we receive the sustaining grace of God that can carry us in our journey.
Prayer forms the way we think and act. This is most powerfully true when we become familiar with praying a set liturgy or a portion of the Scripture. When we pray, we name reality before God and ask him to intervene. This is all the more powerful when in our naming of reality we are aided by the prayers of others who have gone before us.
Prayer connects us with one another. Common prayer provides a powerful context for reconciliation and repentance against those in our number who we have wronged or who have wronged us. This sets the stage for a powerful unity in love that enables the fellowship to be willing to try new things and to reach out.

The church that wishes to be missional must pay attention to the requirements of community and prayer before anything else. Failing to pay attention to this will derail a community as it attempts to make the missional shift.