Ten Books 2014

Ten books that I read in 2014 should be worthy of your time to read. 

 

Andrew Root, Bonhoeffer as Youth Worker: A Theological Vision for Discipleship and Life Together (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2014).

 

“The child reveals personhood, for the child cannot be without the belonging of others; a child is a distinct will in the world that is given personhood through the will of those who act in freedom to be for him. The child has his being in and through the acts of others who love and care for him. He shares in others’ persons—his mother and father—and these other persons share in him, giving him personhood through acts of love and care” (p. 49).

 

Eric Metaxas, Bonhoeffer: Pastor, Martyr, Prophet, Spy: A Righteous Gentile vs. The Third Reich (Nashville: Thomas Nelson, 2010).

 

“Bonhoeffer was respectful of the students’ point of view. He never wanted his classes or the seminary to become a cult of personality, centered on him. He was interested only in persuading via reason. Forcing his thoughts on others was something he thought of as fundamentally wrong, as worthy of a ‘mis-leader’” (p. 265).

 

“The authority of a servant leader, as opposed to the authoritarianism of the mis-leader, came from God and was a leadership of serving those below oneself. That was Christ’s example to the disciples, and Bonhoeffer strove to lead that way too” (p. 269).

 

Paul Borthwick, Western Christians in Global Mission: What’s the Role of the North American Church? (Downers Grove: IVP Books, 2012).

 

“Our capacity to repent and learn from our historical mistakes is itself a resource to help us find our place in global Christianity. Perhaps our awareness of our own historical mistakes—such as cultural imperism and leading by power rather than by serving—will help us partner with the new missionary senders from Latin America, Africa and Asia” (p. 69).

 

Michael W. Goheen, Introducing Christian Mission Today: Scripture, History and Issues (Downers Grove: IVP Academic, 2014).

 

“What defines missions today is not exclusively the crossing of cultural or national boundaries with the gospel, but creating a gospel witness where it is absent or weak” (p. 403).

 

John R. W. Stott, The Message of 1 Timothy and Titus. The Bible Speaks Today (Leicester: Inter-Varsity Press; Downers Grove: Inter-Varsity Press, 1996).

 

“Behind the ministry of public teaching there lies the discipline of private study. All the best teachers have themselves remained students. They teach well because they learn well. So before we can effectively instruct others in the truth we must have ‘really digested’ it (The Jerusalem Bible) ourselves” (p. 116).

 

_____. The Message of 2 Timothy. The Bible Speaks Today (Leicester: Inter-Varsity Press; Downers Grove: Inter-Varsity Press, 1973).

 

“For God gave us his own purpose of grace in Christ before we did any good works, before we were born and could do any good works, indeed before history, before time, in eternity. We have to confess that the doctrine of election is difficult to finite minds. But it is incontrovertibly a biblical doctrine. It emphasizes that salvation is due to God’s grace alone, not to man’s merit; not to our works performed in time, but to God’s purpose conceived in eternity” (p. 36).

 

謝挺:《創世記（上）──從創造到揀選》(香港：明道社，2008)。

 

_____.《創世記（下）──從揀選到保守》（香港：明道社，2011）。

 

曾思瀚 著，蘇慧中譯：《以西結的領導學──領袖、異象、新時代》（台灣：校園，2011）。

 

余達心：《攀生命高峰：與偉大心靈同行》（台灣：校園，2014）。

Paul's Work of Reproduction in the Spirit

A Spirit-led church is a Spirit-formed church. The church is spiritually formed into Christ-likeness so that she grows into maturity to participate in God’s mission. Spiritual growth is vital for the mission of the church. Immaturity brings disruption and destruction within the life of the church. It hurts the witness of the church in the world. The growth of the church is ultimately the work of the Spirit. We can plant and water, but only God can make it grow (1 Cor. 3:6). How often we focus on the missionary task in the world but neglect the missionary work within the church. Christian nurturing is important for church health. The church must provide a growing context for Christians to experience the work of the Spirit.

 

Pastoral leadership plays a decisive role in this process. Ross Hastings writes, “The leader’s role, then, is not to take control of the chruch’s growth but rather to equip the church (its present reality) to be the church (its future hope). The concern should be to empower people to be who they are—representatives of the kingdom of God.”[1] I often think of Paul’s words on discipleship—“Pass on what you heard from me—the whole congregation saying Amen!—to reliable leaders who are competent to teach others” (2 Tim. 2:2 The Message). A leader’s task is to produce disciples who can reproduce and raise up next generation to carry out the work of the gospel. To be a leader is to find a balance between the work of man and the work of the Spirit. To be a spiritual leader is to rely on the work of the Spirit in the midst of laboring. “That’s what I’m working so hard at day after day, year after year, doing my best with the energy God so generously gives me” (Col. 1:29 The Message).

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[1] Ross Hastings, Missional God, Missional Church: Hope for the Re-Evangelizing the West (Downers Grove: IVP Academic, 2012), p. 300.

Christian Leaders Lead Bodily

The main task of being Christian leaders is to handle the truth, speak the truth, live in the truth, and follow the Truth (Jn. 14:6). Christian leaders should hate illusion and pseudo-comfort. Real leaders don’t live in denial and deny what is true. In The Conviction to Lead: 25 Principles for Leadership that Matters (Minneapolis: Bethany House, 2012), Albert Mohler notes:

The leader faces the facts, and this means that the facts must be determined and known. The leader must know the organization as it is, know its needs as they are, and face the world as it actually exists. The conscious denial of reality is a central danger of leadership, and the leader must defend against this temptation…The leader must be unafraid of data and facts, and he must surround himself with people who know the information he needs and will give it to him. (p. 61)

Unfortunately, I have met many Christian leaders who welcome illusion, enjoy pseudo-comfort, deny the world as it actually exists, and turn away people who know the information they need.

I despise and disgust positional leaders who are indeed losers. They are losers because they who are in leading positions are supposed to lead and empower others but they become their stumbling block. They are losers because they are supposed to be called to bless others but they neglect their callings and the callings of others. They are losers because their stubbornness, stupidity, and spiritual slothfulness minimize the (spiritual and physical) size of the body of Christ that is made up of different individuals who are entrusted with varieties of spiritual gifts to build up this body (Eph. 4:11-12).

The doctrine of incarnation is fleshy and messy. In the midst of messiness, we get a glimpse of God’s revelation. No one expects to find God’s revelation in bodily form. But all the fullness of his deity dwells bodily (Col. 2:9). The truth of incarnation exposes any human speculation of who God is and what he is supposed to be like. Whoever has seen the incarnate God has seen God the Father (Jn. 14:8-9). It destroys human fantasy. It deconstructs our construction of the Towel of Babel. We can’t reach up to God. On the contrary, he reaches down to us. He reveals himself to us as it is. It is what it is. To affirm what is is an incarnational thinking through which we may get a glimpse of God’s presence, revelation, and glory.

In Christ Plays in Ten Thousand Places: A Conversation in Spiritual Theology (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2005), Eugene H. Peterson writes:

Popular forms of spirituality tend to avoid history, at least in its messier aspects, as subject matter and context for nurturing the soul…

History is bounded by birth and new birth, by the virgin birth of Jesus and the resurrection of Jesus—life, life, and more life. But between those two life-giving moments there is also death, death, and more death. When we are born we find ourselves in a world in which death and dying are major preoccupations; when we are born again it is still the same world. History consists of what happens in this world. History is the accounting we make of the human endeavor. More often than not it is an accounting of the mess we make of things: brutality, war, famine, hate, quarrelling, exploitation. History deals with what happens, what has happened, what is happening and what will happen. It means dealing with a world where things rarely turn out the way we think they should…Something is wrong here, dreadfully wrong. We feel it in our bones. The most conspicuous event in history that arouses within us this spontaneous sense of violation, of outrageous sacrilege, is the suffering and death of Jesus, a suffering and death in which eventually we will all find ourselves involved whether we like it or not. History. (pp. 133-134)

 
Christian leaders are historical, not ahistorical.

Christian leaders nurture the souls of others in bodily form.

The Conviction to Lead

I haven’t read books on leadership for a while. They usually talk about the same thing. Albert Mohler’s book, The Conviction to Lead: 25 Principles for Leadership that Matters (Minneapolis: Bethany House, 2012), is not so different either. But he approaches the topic from a convictional perspective: Christian beliefs. That makes the book a bit different then.

Leaders must lead with deep and passionate beliefs. “Put simply, a conviction is a belief of which we are thoroughly convinced. I don’t mean that we are merely persuaded that something is true, but rather that we are convinced this truth is essential and life-changing. We live out of this truth and are willing to die for it” (p. 22). Paul said, “Because our gospel came to you not only in word, but also in power and in the Holy Spirit and with full conviction” (1 Thess. 1:5). Accompanied by the power of the Spirit, Paul preached the gospel of Jesus Christ to the church of God in Thessalonica with full conviction.

The Spirit persuades us to respond to the gospel; we are also persuaded by a messenger who preaches the preached word with full conviction. Nowadays, we often hear no conviction in pulpit. What we hear is god-talk. God-talk is external to what we say and do; however, conviction is inherent in our words and deeds. We lead and speak with conviction. “Without conviction, nothing really matters, and nothing of significance is passed on. I believe that leadership is all about putting the right beliefs into action, and knowing, on the basis of convictions, what those right beliefs and actions are” (p. 26).

Without conviction, we are like those who talk and act like “a wave of the sea that is driven and tossed by the wind” (James 1:6).

Acts 6:1-7: On Leadership

In Acts 6:1-7, there is a tension between the Hellenistic Jews and the Hebraic Jews: “Those who spoke Greek complained against those who spoke Hebrew, saying that their widows were being discriminated against in the daily distribution of food” (6:1b). The early church grew rapidly in numbers. At the same time, problems came along with it. As I am preparing a sermon (in Chinese) based on this text, I notice a few things about leadership.

The first thing is that “the Twelve called a meeting of all the believers” (6:2a). The apostles took the initiative to address the issue. They rightly discerned the reality, helped the congregation to see the reality, and addressed the reality alongside the congregation. How often leaders (=pastors) ignore or rationalize what is in front of them and live in illusion. One of the main motives behind such ignorance or rationalization is to avoid problems so that they can practice their faith which is context-free. In other words, in order to make sense out of their religiosity, they twist the fact that is in front of them. Their faith is like a bird with no feet. Religion becomes a hand-made utopia. It is ahistorical. Under this type of context-free leadership, the church as a whole misses a lot of chances to experience God and grow toward maturity in Christ in the midst of finding solutions to resolve problems, for God only meets us in reality. The God of Israel is the God of history in the person of Jesus Christ. There is a historical Jesus; however, there is no ahistorical God.

The Twelve called for a meeting and allowed the congregation to see their current state clearly: “Look! This is what is going on. Yes, we do grow in numbers. But we got issue here.” As leaders, we are one step ahead of others. We should see the problem first. Even though we may not see the problem first, we have to be the first ones to take the initiative to address it. If we are not the first ones to bring up the problem, at least we don’t dismiss it when people point out what is obvious. Leaders who don’t see any problems are useless. Leaders who don’t have the guts to face problems are cowardice. When “leaders” are always one step behind others, they are nothing but followers. Or they belong to the crowd, which is made up by nameless individuals.

Secondly, the Twelve prioritized their ministry—the ministry of the Word and prayer. “We apostles should spend our time preaching and teaching the word of God, not administering a food problem” (6:2b; see also 6:4). Christian leaders must guard their time so that they can handle this sole ministry well. I call this sole ministry because it is extremely important for the well being of the church. If leaders spend too much time on other ministries and ignore this prayer-word ministry, the congregation suffers from the distraction of the leaders. Generally, many leaders are like tourists without a map. They don’t know where they are going and what they are doing. They just follow other tourists. Pastoral ministry is all about the ministry of the Word and prayer. It is the heart of it. Eugene Peterson says that pastoral busyness is laziness. Many busy pastors are lazy because they don’t make efforts to prioritize their ministerial responsibilities. They are busy running errands; however, they miss the most essential ministry: the ministry of the Word and prayer. They look busy, but they are lazy.

Thirdly, because the Twelve kept the main thing as the main thing—the ministry of the Word and prayer, they delegated others to take care of other things, in this case, a food program. Delegation is important in leadership. No one can do it all and do it well. “Select seven men…and give them this responsibility” (6:3). The response is that “everyone liked this idea” (6:5a). The early church was fond of the suggestion and willing to take up the responsibility to face the challenge. Good leadership has to do with delegation. But biblical delegation has to do with godly discernment. Leaders must appoint those who “are well respected and are full of the Holy Spirit and wisdom” (6:3). Therefore, godly discernment comes from knowledge of others in the congregation. In other words, leaders must know the people so that they can delegate ministerial tasks to them.

The result of good leadership is vividly shown in 6:7—“So God’s message continued to spread. The number of believers greatly increased in Jerusalem, and many of the Jewish priests were converted, too.”

Missional Leadership

In Introducing the Missional Church: What It is, Why It Matters, How to Become One (Grand Rapids: Baker Books, 2009), Alan J. Roxburgh and M. Scott Boren write:

A key to missional innovation is empowering the people of a local church to discern and develop actions that come from among themselves rather than strategies and programs proposed by leadership. To be blunt, most change plans and programs initiated by leadership will not change the social system or imagination of the people. Leadership has a choice: it can either be in control of plans, programs, and outcomes or it can work at creating the environment that will release the missional imagination that is among the people of God. Leaders need to decide which of these is the most important in terms of being in this new space. The job of leadership is to create the environment in which that can happen, which requires them to learn new skills. This is what the Missional Change Model is intended to be (pp. 137-138).

One of the tasks of missional leadership is not to introduce and reinforce methods, programs, and strategies in the church, but to create an environment in which the people of God can develop a way of life. I believe that this environment can be cultivated through personal or small-group discipleship. A way of life is often nurtured through an intentional, relational engagement through which old habits and practices are being replaced by new habits and practices as we learn to keep in step with the Spirit (Gal. 5:25). Nowadays, church leaders usually function within an institutional setting. The job description of church leadership is to play designated roles and perform specific tasks in a formal setting. But the underlying requirement for being a pastor is in Mark 3:14—Jesus calls disciples so that they can be with him. Jesus as a shepherd always spends time with the sheep—being with him—in a personal way. Jesus then sends them out to do works.

Being with Jesus is a discipling process in which the kingdom-of-God mindset and mission of Jesus are being internalized by disciples who externalize the message of Jesus the King in Jesus’ way. Being with Jesus comes before doing works in his name. Jesus spends time with the disciples to disciple them; the disciples who are being discipled are sent out to participate in God’s mission.

Missional God, Missional Church

In Missional God, Missional Church: Hope for Re-evangelizing the West (Downers Grove: IVP Academic, 2012), Ross Hastings discusses that one of the responsibilities of the missional church is to cultivate missional community that spiritual charisms and character are joined together instead of being dichotomized. A missional church realizes that mission is carried out by missioners who are morally formed into His likeness. This junction is Christian relational wholeness through which Christian mission flows from. Any ecclesial practices should be oriented around this kind of spiritual and moral formation so that Christians are equipped to participate in the mission of God to the world (see pp. 301-304).

Ross Hastings rightly says: “The strategy of Jesus’ mission was to invest heavily in the transformation of a few. If our sentness is to reflect his, we will follow this strategy. Robert Coleman said this well when he suggested that ‘everything that is done with the few is for the salvation of the multitudes’” (p. 302). A missional church should not fall into the temptation of mass production and be succumbed to the one-size-fit-all mentality. Jesus chose a few and nurtured a few at a time. We see the fruit of Jesus’ labor in the early church as the disciples went out to carry out His mission in the presence of the Spirit.

Jesus’ strategy always puts me into perspective on how to “do” ministry. “Doing” ministry in Jesus’ way is to delay one’s gratification to be big. The Jesus’ way is like a mustard seed. It starts small and looks insignificant. It will grow tall at the appointed time. However, we don’t make it grow. “He sleeps and rises night and day, and the seed sprouts and grows; he knows not how” (Mk. 4:27).

What the Church Is and Does

In the chapter entitled Sacramental Ecclesiology, Ellen T. Charry, professor of theology at Princeton Theological Seminary, laments over the fact that many theological students (would-be pastors) do not have a biblical understanding of the church. She writes:

I am increasingly realizing that a number of our ministerial students have no ecclesiology to speak of. For them, the church is a voluntary not-for-profit organization run like a local franchise. Like other organizations, the mission is to meet the needs of its target population in order to grow. Ministry means designing programs that address the widest array of tastes and needs as possible. Its watchword is hospitality, also known as inclusivity.

These students do not know what ecclesiology is, and would be suspicious of it if they did, because a theology of the church threatens the individualism that is the bedrock of this model, and the voluntarism of our students’ identity. A theological understanding of the church is prior to the self-concept of the individual and that runs counter to the highly individualistic notion of selfhood that our students bring with them. It is not surprising that they resist ecclesiology, because it seeks to define its members rather than the other way round, now natural to us [in The Community of the Word: Toward an Evangelical Ecclesiology, edited by Mark Husbands and Daniel J. Treier (Downers Grove: InterVarsity Press; Leicester: Apollos, 2005), p. 201.]. 

I think her observation is absolutely right. Theological students are usually concerned about the doctrines of the Word, God, Christ, Spirit, the end time, etc…When you read a theological textbook, the study of the church is usually discussed at the end, right before eschatology. It gives a wrong impression that ecclesiology is less important than other doctrines. It is true that ecclesiology is usually neglected in theological studies. The church is just a place where we practice what we know. The church is a place where a bunch of Christians gather together to do something in a Christian way. What is the church? What is the nature or essence of the church? What the church is is important to what the church does. If students/pastors do not pay enough attention to what the church is, what the church does will be inevitably done according to human needs or wishes. If so, the church “seeks to define its members.” The result of that is that the church is dominated and also captivated by our human-centered wishes of the church, which no longer reflects the nature and character of God.

Charry’s observation invites Christian leaders to revisit what the church is. Church leaders often place the emphasis on serving as servant-leaders. But they often serve without a strong sense of purpose in terms of leading the church to a specific direction. I think that servant leadership is a Christ-like attitude toward ministry. It is a must for all Christians. However, it does not offer us a clue on what the church is and what the church does in the light of what the church is. Church leaders are called to serve the church as Christ-like servants. Church leaders are also called to be ecclesial theologians as overseers of the church who help the church know what the church is and does.

Six Reasons for Unemployment

Discussing on how to mobilize a congregational team, Aubrey Malphurs refers to a problem of the church as “the church’s unemployment problem.”[1] Only a few are employed; the rest of them are unemployed. He points out six reasons why people are without a job in the church:[2]

1.      A faculty recruitment process is used that is based on emotion and coercion.

2.      The leadership has a lack of knowledge as to how to mobilize the congregation for ministry.

3.      Some people are waiting for a personal invitation for involvement.

4.      Some pastors feel threatened when laypersons are involved in ministry.

5.      Many people are simply too busy doing things outside the church.

6.      Most congregations are convinced that ministry is the pastor’s job.

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[1] Aubrey Malphurs, The Nuts and Bolts of Church Planting: A Guide for Starting Any Kind of Church (Grand Rapids: Baker Books, 2011), p. 153.

[2] Ibid., p. 154.

Six Discipling Failures

According to Bob Gilliam, there are six reasons why the church fails to make disciples:[1]

 

1. Leaders don’t know what a disciple looks like. 

2. Leaders don’t know how to make a disciple even if they can define one.

3. Leaders don’t know how church programs work together to make disciples.

4. Leaders have no way to measure progress.

5. Leaders aren’t model disciples and reproduce after their kind.

6. Leaders don’t know how to become intentional without splitting their churches.

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[1] Quoted by Aubrey Malphurs, The Nuts and Bolts of Church Planting: A Guide for Starting Any Kind of Church (Grand Rapids: Baker Books, 2011), pp. 137-138.

Discipleship Letters 65, 69

Discipleship Letter 65                               Dec. 13^th, 2009

“Congregational mess provides a particularly perilous condition for convincing us that we are necessary. Others have messed up, done it badly, behaved irresponsibly, and we are called in to make a difference…We always work in sin conditions, but they don’t define our world. They just provide the material for our world, for our gospel.” [Marva Dawn and Eugene Peterson, The Unnecessary Pastor: Rediscovering the Call (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2000), pp. 121-122].

Timothy is called to deal a particular congregation and her particular mess with sound teaching. “Teach and urge these things. If anyone teaches a different doctrine and does not agree with the sound words of our Lord Jesus Christ…” (1 Tim. 6:2b-3; see 1 Tim. 1:10; 6:3; 2 Tim. 1:13; 4:3; Titus 1:9, 13; 2:1, 2).

“The Greek word for ‘sound’ is hygiein, from which we get hygiene. The main thing that Timothy is to do in Ephesus in order to clean up the mess is to teach sound words, sound truth, healthy thinking and believing. Verbal hygiene. Healthy gospel.” (p. 132)

Sound qualifications for sound leaders are as follows:

“As you select them, ask, ‘Is this man well-thought-of? Are his children believers? Do they respect him and stay out of trouble?’ It’s important that a church leader, responsible for the affairs in God’s house, be looked up to—not pushy, not short-tempered, not a drunk, not a bully, not money-hungry. He must welcome people, be helpful, wise, fair, reverent, have a good grip on himself, and have a good grip on the Message, knowing how to use the truth to either spur people on in knowledge or stop them in their tracks if they oppose it.” (Titus 1:6-9, The Message; cf. 1 Tim. 3:1-13)

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Discipleship Letter 69                               Jan. 10^th, 2010

“Every role or ‘hat’ you are asked to wear has its own responsibilities and objectives. If you change hats, keep in mind that the context changes.” [John Maxwell, The 360 Leader: Developing Your Influence from Anywhere in the Organization (Nashville: Thomas Nelson, 2005), p. 47]

In ministry, it’s not good to put on too many hats. Each hat that you put on has responsibility, and pressure comes along with it. My suggestion is that we shouldn’t have more than three steady roles in ministry. Every hat that we put on, we should achieve its goals and objectives as much as we can. It’s not good to put on the hat and not be able to put up with works. This is just common sense.

Changing the hat means changing the context, for we work with different people in different context. We won’t interact with everybody in the same way. This is just common sense.

Think about your hats. What do you need to do in order to do your jobs well? Finish your tasks strong? Don’t do too many things, yet merely do the minimum. Our great God is not pleased with minimal service. When you go to a restaurant, you aren’t pleased with bad service either. This is just common sense.

Discipleship Letters 105-106

Discipleship Letter 105                                              Sept. 26^th, 2010

“Jesus’ desire for his followers is not one of leafy growth with little or no fruit. Like his first command to the man and woman in the Garden of Eden, ‘Be fruitful and multiply,’ God also wants us to be fruitful in our lives. But fruitfulness requires pruning, whether the pruning of the desire to eat of that original forbidden tree or the pruning of our contemporary desires to be like God” [Robert A. Fryling, The Leadership Ellipse: Shaping How We Lead by Who We Are (Downers Grove: IVP Books, 2010), p. 52.].

Perhaps, we need to be pruned from having to be right all the time, to be pruned from self-righteousness, to be pruned from our excuses for irresponsibility, to be pruned from being perfect, to be pruned from our inconsistency, to be pruned from making many empty promises, to be pruned from our ignorance of God’s Word, to be pruned from being indifferent to the church and to the world, to be pruned from only showing interest to one’s own family, to be pruned from maximizing one’s own resources and minimizing His given resources to others, etc…

Jesus uses the language of pruning in John’s gospel. In the Synoptic gospels, it’s the language of repentance. For Paul, he talks about putting off the old self. For the author of Hebrews, it’s discipline: “It is for discipline that you have to endure. God is treating you as sons. For what son is there whom his father does not discipline? If you are left without discipline, in which all have participated, then you are illegitimate children and not sons…For the moment all discipline seems painful rather than pleasant, but later it yields the peaceful fruit of righteousness to those who have been trained by it” (12:7-8, 11). Our heavenly Father is the God of pruning because we are His adopted children through Jesus Christ (Eph. 1:5).  

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Discipleship Letter 106                                              Oct. 03^rd, 2010

“Always it is God to whom we are paying, or trying to pay, attention. The contexts, though, vary: in prayer the context is myself; in Scripture it is the community of faith in history; in spiritual direction it is the person before me. God is the one to whom we are being primarily attentive in these contexts, but it is never God-in-himself; rather, it is God-in-relationship—with me, with his people, with this person” [Eugene Peterson, Working the Angles: The Shape of Pastoral Integrity (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1987), p. 4.].

God is never in Himself, for He is always in relationship with God the Son and God the Spirit. In creation, God is in relationship with the other two Godheads. In redemption, Jesus is in relationship with the other two Godheads. In the Age to Come, the Spirit is in relationship with the other two Godheads.

The contexts vary; God-in-relationship remains unchanged.

For pastoral work, preaching, teaching, and administration are big angles. Being in relationship with this or that person is a small angle. Big angles may be changed by contexts; small angle ought to be context-less. For pastoral work, I believe that big angles ought to be grounded in small angle, for the kingdom of God, which is like a mustard seed, is tiny and hidden.

To be with this or that person, it is a mustard-seed kind of work that foreshadows the nature of the kingdom of God in pastoral, ordinary relationship.

Discipleship Letters 87-88

Discipleship Letter 87                                    May 16^th, 2010

More than 70 percent of leaders do not finish well because of the following reasons: (1) Leaders lose their learning posture. They stop listening and growing; (2) Their character wanes; (3) They stop living up to their convictions; (4) They fail to leave behind ultimate contributions; (5) They stop being aware of their influence; (6) They stop cultivating good relationships with Christ Jesus [Bill Thrall, et. al, The Ascent of a Leader: How Ordinary Relationships Develop Extraordinary Character and Influence (San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 1999), p. 14.].

Leaders should make a difference. However, leaders fail. Leaders plateau. Leaders drop out. Leaders go through the process of mutation from goodness to badness. “Not many of you should presume to be teachers, my brothers (and sisters), because you know that we who teach will be judged more strictly” (James 3:1). It’s one thing to acquire a title; it’s another thing to attain individual potential according to the title. Leaders are not uneasy to find; good leaders are scarce.

“Salvation is always in danger of self-absorption. When I become intrigued with matters of my soul there is the ever-present danger that I begin to treat God as a mere accessory to my experience. And so salvation requires much vigilance” [Eugene Peterson, Christ Plays in Ten Thousand Places: A Conversation in Spiritual Theology (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2005), p. 199.].

The worst sin that leaders should never commit is to begin to treat God and the congregation as a mere accessory to their experiences and as mere instruments, respectively.  

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Discipleship Letter 88                                    May 23^rd, 2010

“There are calls to faith and calls to ordination, but in between there are calls to particular communities and calls to particular tasks within them—calls into and out of relationships as well as calls to seek God wherever God may be found. Sometimes those calls ring clear as bells and sometimes they are barely audible, but in any case we are not meant to hear them all by ourselves. It was part of God’s genius to incorporate us as one body, so that our ears have other ears, other eyes, minds, hearts, and voices to help us interpret what we have heard” [Barbara B. Taylor, The Preaching Life (Cowley, 1993), p. 25.].

This is the relationship between the vocation of God and the discernment of a Christian community. God may call us with a low whisper or with a very loud trumpet blast, but in any case, “let the wise hear and increase in learning, and the one who understands obtain guidance…The way of a fool is right in his own eyes, but a wise man listens to advice” (Prov. 1:5; 12:15). The discernment of others is necessary to discern God’s guidance, for this is God’s program of guidance as incorporated in a community of faith.

To whom do we turn? We should turn to mature Christians who know the Scripture and in whom we have confidence of spiritual maturity and discernment. Why do we turn to immature infants who are just like us? Why do we turn to someone who is one step (or a few steps) behind us? From a Christian perspective, “the mature person knows Scripture. Turning to an immature believer, or even a nonbeliever, is the height of folly. How will God use that person to develop your character and give you spiritual direction?” [Bruce K. Waltke, Finding the Will of God: A Pagan Notion? (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans; Vancouver: Regent College, 1995), p. 110.].

The Ministry of Absence

“And he [Jesus] said to them, ‘Come away by yourselves to a desolate place and rest a while.’ For many were coming and going, and they had no leisure even to eat. And they went away in the boat to a desolate place by themselves.” (Mk. 6:31-32, ESV)

Jesus sends out the apostles (6:7-13), and they return with a report (6:30). After a glimpse of what ministry looks like, Jesus says to them to return to a desolate place where they can focus on the center and learn not to be seen and mentioned. The outer ministry is possible because of the spiritual formation of workers; the spiritual health of workers is sustained by the quiet center.

“For many were coming and going, they had no leisure even to eat.” It indicates the danger in ministry. We come to serve, not to be served. Serving is one of the characteristics of ministry. Without serving, we cease to be called servants. However, serving can easily lead to burn-out if we neglect the importance of the ministry of absence. Serving is the ministry of presence; retreat is the ministry of absence. “No leisure even to eat” implies that the outer needs of ministry are much greater and stronger than the inner capacity of workers. When the inner space is not in proportion to the outer demand, problems, such as pressure, stress, disorder, etc… start to sneak in. If we are unaware of the tension between them from time to time, we will be burn-out, rust-out, and die-out.

The ministry of presence has its danger because there is a temptation to be seen and needed all the time. The place of ministry can be an idol factory. “The apostles returned to Jesus and told him all that they had done and taught” (6:30). We can feel the excitement of the apostles. Such an excitement can become the source of turning away from the Lord of the harvest. The ministry of presence is dangerous because we are living the life of omnipresence, which, however, only belongs to God. The fact that we are not omnipresent shows that we need to know our gifts and prioritize our time to serve according to our gifts. In some areas of ministry where we are not gifted, we can let others who are gifted in those areas to handle them. We exercise our gifts in the ministry of presence; we trust God who bestows gifts upon others to take care of His own business in the ministry of absence. The omnipresence of God is manifested through the body of Christ, not one or a few individuals in the body of Christ.

Jesus invites the apostles to retreat from the ministry of presence and learn to be content with the ministry of absence: get away and rest. Ministry is a tough business. It is supposed to be a means to promote the glory of God. Often time, it becomes the place for self-glorification. The ministry of absence is the clue to avoiding the snare of ministry. The ministry of absence confesses that Jesus is what people need, and He is irreplaceable in the church. The ministry of absence tells us a hard fact that things go on with or without us. The ministry of absence says that a healthy ministry does not depend on our presence, but the presence of the Spirit. The ministry of absence helps us understand our own limitations: we are the creatures; He is the Creator, Redeemer, Sustainer, and Consummator.

Indeed, without the ministry of absence as the center of our ministerial core, we cannot serve the greater needs of the world. In the following narrative, it is about feeding the 5, 000 (6:35-44). In comparison with the apostles’ previous ministry experience, the feeding of the 5, 000 is more demanding. Jesus anticipates what is to come and cultivates the spiritual formation of the disciples in solitude and silence. The ministry of absence helps us stay healthy in ministry. It also creates more space in us so that we can cooperate with God for a larger purpose in God’s mission.

Jesus' Powerlessness

Jesus explicitly foretells His suffering, death, and resurrection three times on the way to Jerusalem in the Synoptic Gospels (Mk. 8:31; 9:30-31; 10:32-34). As I read through Mark’s gospel, I notice that after Jesus’ own predictions of His divine future the second and third times, disciples miss Jesus’ saying and argue the opposite of that saying : Who is the greatest? What Jesus describes is to be handed over to power authorities; the disciples promote power among themselves. The issue of power and leadership seems to be very important among the disciples. Otherwise, the issue won’t occur repeatedly. Jesus is their master and leader. Among the disciples, who is the leader?

In Capernaum, Jesus asks them, “What were you discussing on the way?” (Mk. 9:33) The disciples are silent (9:34). Are they silent because they are ashamed of getting involved with the issue? Or no one wants to be the first to answer Jesus’ question? Everyone wants to be the first to get the credit in leading, but no one wants to be the first to get blamed or be questioned.

In the light of Jesus’ suffering, death, and resurrection, the disciples argue about leadership. What they need is discipleship, not leadership. What they need is to follow, not to lead. In order to be a leader, we must first follow Jesus. The disciples totally miss the concept of following. They are fascinated with position, authority, and dominion. They are good at following the way of the world. The Jesus’ way is far from their system. What Jesus presents to the disciples is a powerless victim. What the disciples are concerned about is to become a powerful victor. Jesus says, “My power is made perfect in weakness” (2 Cor. 12:9). The disciples say, “I can hide my weakness in power.”

The first will be last of all and servant of all (9:35). Jesus then puts a child in their midst and says, “Whoever receives one such child in my name receives me, and whoever receives me, receives not me but him who sent me” (9:36, ESV). A child is powerless. When Jesus puts this child in his arms, he embraces powerlessness. Being powerless is Jesus’ way—the opposite way of human nature. The Jesus we follow is powerless in the sense that his power—resurrection— is manifested through powerlessness: suffering and death.

In Christian living, when we learn to disarm power and embrace powerless, we are in tune with the visible Christ. More than that, we are in tune with the invisible Father in heaven. The Father who sends the Son is an act of forsaking the Son for us—the powerless. The Father is the forsaken God in sending the Son into the world. As Jurgen Moltmann notes:

The Father forsakes the Son ‘for us’—that is to say, in order to become the God and Father of the forsaken. The Father ‘delivers up’ the Son in order through him to become the Father of those who have been delivered up (Rom. 1:18ff.). The Son is given over to his death in order that he may become the brother and savior of the condemned and the cursed.

The Son suffers death in this forsakenness. The Father suffers the death of the Son. So the pain of the Father corresponds to the death of the Son. And when in this descent into hell the Son loses the Father, then in this judgment the Father also loses the Son.[1]

Both the suffering of the Son (being sent) and the suffering of losing the Son (the sending) involve with being powerless. On the way to Jerusalem, it is the path of disarming power. It is a great reversal of the theology of sending and being sent when the disciples fight for power on the way.

[1] Jurgen Moltmann, The Trinity and the Kingdom: The Doctrine of God (Minneapolis: Fortress, 1993), p. 81.

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The Shepherd and The Sheep

Jesus’ leadership is spiritual leadership. His spiritual leadership is relational leadership: to the Father and to his sheep. “I am the good shepherd; I know my own sheep, and they know me, just as my Father knows me and I know the Father” (Jn. 10:14-15a). Jesus leads his sheep in relationship. It involves trust and vulnerability. The sheep “won’t follow a stranger; they will run from him because they don’t recognize his voice” (Jn. 10:5). The disciples recognize Jesus’ pastoral voice because Jesus spends time with them. John 10 delineates a beautiful picture of pastoral ministry: the Shepherd and the Sheep.

“Spiritual leadership is the leadership of the Good Shepherd. As Jesus says, good shepherds know their sheep, and their sheep know him (see John 10:14). These must be a true mutuality between shepherds and sheep. God leaders know their own, and their own know them. Between them is mutual trust, mutual openness, mutual care, and mutual love. To follow our leaders we cannot be afraid of them, and to lead our followers we need their encouragement and support.”

“Jesus calls himself the Good Shepherd to show the great intimacy that must exist between leaders and those entrusted to them. Without such intimacy, leadership easily becomes oppressive.” [Henri Nouwen, Bread for the Journey: A Daybook of Wisdom and Faith (New York: HarperOne, 1997), April 13.]

My Top Ten

Being a leader and building leaders are two sides of the same coin. I really like what John Maxwell said about The Law of the Inner Circle: "Every leader's potential is determined by the people closest to him. If those people are strong, then the leader can make a huge impact. If they are weak, he can't. That is the Law of the Inner Circle" [The 21 Irrefutable Laws of Leadership: Follow Them and People will Follow You (Nashville: Thomas Nelson, 1998), p. 110.]. Pay attention to the Inner Circle if you want to find out whether a person is a good leader or not.


Ten Books on Leadership:

1. Johnny M. Hunt, Building Your Leadership Resume: Developing the Legacy that will Outlast You (Nashville: Broadman and Holman, 2009)

2. Dan B. Allender, Leading with a Limp (Colorado Springs: WaterBrook, 2006)

3. Robert A. Fryling, The Leadership Ellipse: Shaping How We Lead by Who We Are (
Downers Grove: IVP Books, 2010)

4. John Stott, Basic Christian Leadership: Biblical Model of Church, Gospel and Ministry (Downers Grove: Inter-Varsity Press, 2002)

5. Jimmy Long, The Leadership Jump: Building Partnerships Between Existing and Emerging Christian Leaders (Downers Grove: IVP Books, 2009)

6. Hans Finzel, The Top Ten Mistakes Leaders Make (Colorado Springs: David C. Cook, 2007)

7. Aubrey Malphurs, Being Leaders: The Nature of Authentic Christian Leadership (Grand Rapids: Baker, 2003)

8. Aubrey Malphurs and Will Mancini, Building Leaders: Blueprints for Developing Leadership at Every Level of Your Church (Grand Rapids: Baker, 2004)

9. John C. Maxwell, The 21 Irrefutable Laws of Leadership: Follow Them and People will Follow You (Nashville: Thomas Nelson, 1998)

10. Bill Thrall, Bruce McNicol, and Ken McElrath, The Ascent of a Leader: How Ordinary Relationships Develop Extraordinary Character and Influence (SanFrancisco: Jossey-Bass, 1999)