4-G Discipleship

I prepared this 4-G discipleship Training in my previous pastoral ministry. In my discipleship training, I followed the Grounding-Growing-Giving-Going pattern strictly (I got the 4-G concept from Gary Parrett, Professor of Educational Ministries and Worship at Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary). I implemented it into making disciples. The mission of the church is to put the Great Commission (Matthew 28:19-20) into effect. We can memorize it, talk about it, and preach it. But how do we incarnate and actualize it in a practical way? In Paul's words, how do we present every believer mature in Christ? (Col. 1:28)

 

4-G Discipleship Training

Introduction

In the Great Commission, Jesus has only one command—“make disciples.” This is the task of His church—to make disciples. Discipleship is a relational process in which a veteran disciple (Paul) teaches, nurtures, and walks alongside with a new disciple (Timothy) on a regular basis. The essence of discipleship is to make disciples a few at a time and to focus on life investment, multiplication, and accountability.

Discipleship I—Grounding (1^st Year)

The purpose of this stage of discipleship is to build a personal and intimate relationship with new disciples, to re-confirm and re-clarify their decision to follow Christ, and to teach them the essential truths of Christianity (e.g. Assurance of Salvation, Bible Reading, Prayer, etc...). The relationship between a discipler (Paul) and a disciple (Timothy) is the key element in this stage. If a solid relationship is formed, the life of the disciple will be transformed more easily. Real accountability will bring spiritual formation and growth. Moreover, in this stage of discipleship, a new disciple needs an example to follow—the embodiment of the Truth. In this stage, the nature of discipleship is one on one.

*Lay the ground work for spiritual growth.*

Discipleship Materials: ·         One to One Discipling (12 Lessons) [6 months] ·         One to One Evangelism (6 Lessons) [2 Months] ·          Book Study: o   Basic Christianity (John Stott) [2 months] o   How to Give Away your Faith (Paul Little) [2 months]

Requirements: ·         Finish the above materials ·         Use John Stott, Through the Bible, Through the Year for Daily Devotion and Bible Reading. ·         Go to worship, Sunday school, fellowship.

 

Discipleship II—Growing (2^nd Year)

The objective of this stage of discipleship is to build a firm foundation for wholistic growth—a balanced relationship with God, others, and self. This stage helps new disciples understand different stages of experiencing God in real-life circumstances. In this stage, the nature of discipleship is in small group setting. This small group is made up of 3-4 people. At the same time, if possible, some disciples who are in this stage will learn how to be a discipler (Paul) and start a discipling process with a new disciple (Timothy).

*Keep growing together, and help others to grow.*

Discipleship Materials: ·         Experiencing God (Henry Blackaby) [6 months] ·         The Purpose Driven Life (Rich Warren) [40 Days]   ·         Book Study: Knowing God (J. I. Packer) Celebration of Discipline (Richard Foster) After You Believe (N. T. Wright) The Radical Disciple (John Stott)   Discipleship Materials for qualified disciplers: ·         Transforming Discipleship: Making Disciples a Few at a Time (Greg Ogden) ·         Disciple-Makers’ Handbook: Helping People Grow in Christ (Alice Fryling)

Requirements: ·         Finish the above materials ·         Use D. A. Carson, For the Love of God I for daily devotion and Bible reading. ·         Buy Douglas Stuart & Gordon Fee’s How to Read the Bible Book by Book. It is a helpful guide to assist us reading the Bible. ·         Besides Sunday worship, Sunday school, and fellowship, start to seize every moment to share the gospel with non-believers, based on what you learn from One to One Evangelism

 

Discipleship III—Giving (3^rd Year)

The objective of this stage of discipleship is to help disciples who have gone through Discipleship I& II discover their God-given gifts and encourage them to developthose gifts in ministry. The nature of this stage is also in small group setting. Ideally, it should be the same group continued from Discipleship II. Paul will continue to keep disciples accountable and give spiritual direction to each disciple according to their specific needs. Again, disciples who have gone through Stages I & II should be able to start a discipling process with new disciples.

*Grow to be a leader—discover and develop God-given gifts.*

Discipleship Materials: ·         Book Study:   o   Being Leaders (Aubrey Malphus) o   How People Grow (Henry Cloud & John Townsend) o   The Living Church (John Stott)   Discipleship Materials for qualified disciplers: ·         Spiritual Mentoring: A Guide for Seeking and Giving Direction (Keith Anderson) ·         The Disciple: Following the True Mentor (James M. Houston)

Requirements: ·         Finished the above materials. ·         Use D. A. Carson, For the Love of God II for Daily devotion and Bible reading. ·         Buy Douglas Stuart & Gordon Fee’s How to Read the Bible for all Its Worth. It is a helpful tool to help us handle God’s Word correctly. ·         If possible, participate into mission work by joining Short-Term Mission

 

Discipleship IV—Going (4^th Year)

This stage is the last stage of discipleship. Timothy who has gone through stages I, II, & III should be a self-initiating, reproducing, and fully devoted disciple. There is no assigned discipleship material for this stage. But some books are required for Timothy to read and study with Paul.

*Being mature, and start to multiply.*

Book Study (Book report is required): ·         Building Leaders (Aubrey Malphus) ·         Grounded in the Gospel: Building Believers the Old-Fashioned Way (J. I. Packer and Gary A. Parrett) ·         The Leadership Jump: Building Partnerships Between Existing and Emerging Christian Leaders (Jimmy Long) ·         Firestorm: Preventing and Overcoming Church Conflicts (Rod Susek) or PeaceMaker: A Biblical Guide to Resolving Personal Conflicts (Ken Sande)

Outsourcing: ·         Those who are in stage IV are encouraged to take courses outside of the church. ·         Theological courses (e.g. Church History, Theology, Christian Ethics, etc…) are available on-line or at some extension sites offered by seminaries.

 

Updated on 8/29/2012

反思.尋求

我一直很喜歡閱讀孫寶玲的文章和書籍，不論是學術的或是生活的。喜歡他的觀察，內省，批判和直率。人與人之間存着很多偽善，好「黑我憎」。

以下的文章提到華人牧者在北美牧養的困難，我是很同意的。

Taken from http://greatest-dad.xanga.com/767360935/知所進退/

在新加坡待了三年，連在國外求學和研寫的幾年，對香港基督徒牧者/講員在外的限制甚有體會，也逐漸明白為甚麼在眾多華人信徒族群中，移民後回流之數總以港人為首(這點有待科學調查驗證)。

香港牧者移民他國，面對最大的困難就是語言。也許這幾年情況有異，我那一代的港人，能講流利華語/國語/普通話的實在不多，莫說日常生活，就是講道，香港腔國語常有讓人側目、笑刺肚皮的效果。國外的華人來自江湖四海，就是華語，也是各種地方的腔調都有，加上東南亞、台灣、中國大陸，再加上省籍、國共、地緣等糾結，溶合各地華人的華人教會並不容易牧養。由於語言和文化的限制，名牧講員或許可以在一時兩刻的講座受歡迎，長期的牧養，絕對不是想像那麼容易。畢竟，你自以為是名牧或名聲講員，來自台灣、中國，甚至在西方長大的會友卻不以為然。

英語也是另一個困難。我認識的港人牧者，能說道地和流利英語的真的沒有幾個。英文說不好，如何能與生長於英語環境的教會下一代合作同工，怎能待下去？可以說英語是一回事，以英語為基本語言(講道、探訪、開會)卻是完全另一回事。

帶著語言限制的現實，你要在西方、特別北美待下去，除非可以或甘於面對日漸縮小的會眾(操方言的會眾年紀漸老，年輕一代說英語)，否則，你還是惦記你曾經丟棄的小島，那裡的人似乎比較善忘，那裡的生活除了空間小，質素竟然比國外的高。重要的是，你可以重拾那名牧的感覺。回流是迫不得已，但畢竟是下策中的上策。

我們讀神學和聖經的，深知留在西方學府工作是甚為不易。除非你的學術真的出色過人，或有人脈關係，不然，在眾多的聖經/神學博士中脫穎而出，找到教席，委實困難。但我們在香港的圈子裡，頗有「塘水滾塘魚」的味道，你稱我為甚麼甚麼「專家」，我道你是甚麼甚麼「權威」，一到了國外，沒有人知道你和我的名字。最後，還是得回到這小島上，再次享受那樂公開講座不疲的群眾。按我有限的知識，迄今真的為國際學者所敬重、並且引用其研究的華人聖經學者只有一位。我姑隱其名，皆因未得他允許。其他的，不是功力還有待發展，就是寫外國人並不很懂的cross over，這些我就不算在內了。我絲毫並沒有貶抑同道的意思，只想強調我們沒有一般會眾以為的那麼了不起，也想我們教書研寫的人，不要以為自己真的很了不起。

我寫這一貼，就是希望看官能抖下甚麼名牧、明星講員、學者專家的期望，也對那些回流的同道多些了解、體會和同情。

我寫這一貼，也是希望我們這些自以為是名牧、明星講員、學者專家的，能知所進退，謙卑地作手上的工，作主的門徒。抖下身份，放下面具，說些人話。只有這樣，我們才能宣講。

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.

---

[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.

Peterson on Spirituality 2

Taken from http://www.christianitytoday.com/ct/2005/march/26.42.html

 

Spirituality for All the Wrong Reasons 2

 

 

So how should we visualize the Christian life?

In church last Sunday, there was a couple in front of us with two bratty kids. Two pews behind us there was another couple with their two bratty kids making a lot of noise. This is mostly an older congregation. So these people are set in their ways. Their kids have been gone a long time. And so it wasn't a very nice service; it was just not very good worship. But afterwards I saw half a dozen of these elderly people come up and put their arms around the mother, touch the kids, sympathize with her. They could have been irritated.

Now why do people go to a church like that when they can go to a church that has a nursery, is air conditioned, and all the rest? Well, because they're Lutherans. They don't mind being miserable! Norwegian Lutherans!

And this same church recently welcomed a young woman with a baby and a three-year-old boy. The children were baptized a few weeks ago. But there was no man with her. She's never married; each of the kids has a different father. She shows up at church and wants her children baptized. She's a Christian and wants to follow in the Christian way. So a couple from the church acted as godparents. Now there are three or four couples in the church who every Sunday try to get together with her.

Now, where is the "joy" in that church? These are dour Norwegians! But there's a lot of joy. There's an abundant life going, but it's not abundant in the way a non-Christian would think. I think there's a lot more going on in churches like this; they're just totally anticultural. They're full of joy and faithfulness and obedience and care. But you sure wouldn't know it by reading the literature of church growth, would you?

 

But many Christians would look at this church and say it's dead, merely an institutional expression of the faith.

What other church is there besides institutional? There's nobody who doesn't have problems with the church, because there's sin in the church. But there's no other place to be a Christian except the church. There's sin in the local bank. There's sin in the grocery stores. I really don't understand this naïve criticism of the institution. I really don't get it.

Frederick von Hugel said the institution of the church is like the bark on the tree. There's no life in the bark. It's dead wood. But it protects the life of the tree within. And the tree grows and grows and grows and grows. If you take the bark off, it's prone to disease, dehydration, death.

So, yes, the church is dead but it protects something alive. And when you try to have a church without bark, it doesn't last long. It disappears, gets sick, and it's prone to all kinds of disease, heresy, and narcissism.

In my writing, I hope to recover a sense of the reality of congregation—what it is. It's a gift of the Holy Spirit. Why are we always idealizing what the Holy Spirit doesn't idealize? There's no idealization of the church in the Bible—none. We've got two thousand years of history now. Why are we so dumb?

Since the Reformation, though, we've championed the idea that the church can be reformed.

Hasn't happened. I'm for always reforming, but to think that we can get a church that's reformed is just silliness.

I think the besetting sin of pastors, maybe especially evangelical pastors, is impatience. We have a goal. We have a mission. We're going to save the world. We're going to evangelize everybody, and we're going to do all this good stuff and fill our churches. This is wonderful. All the goals are right. But this is slow, slow work, this soul work, this bringing people into a life of obedience and love and joy before God.

And we get impatient and start taking shortcuts and use any means available. We talk about benefits. We manipulate people. We bully them. We use language that is just incredibly impersonal—bullying language, manipulative language.

 

One doesn't normally think of churches as bullying.

Whenever guilt is used as a tool to get people to do anything—good, bad, indifferent—it's bullying. And then there's manipulative language—to talk people into programs, to get them involved, usually by promising them something.

I have a friend who is an expert at this sort of thing. He's always saying, "You've got to identify people's felt needs. Then you construct a program to meet the felt needs." It's pretty easy to manipulate people. We're so used to being manipulated by the image industry, the publicity industry, and the politicians that we hardly know we're being manipulated.

This impatience to leave the methods of Jesus in order to get the work of Jesus done is what destroys spirituality, because we're using a non-biblical, non-Jesus way to do what Jesus did. That's why spirituality is in such a mess as it is today.

 

But many pastors see people suffering in bad marriages, with drug addiction, with greed. And so they rightly want to help them now, by whatever method will work.

Yes, except something backfires on you when you're impatient. How do we meet the need? Do we do it in Jesus' way or do we do it the Wal-Mart way?

Spirituality is not about ends or benefits or things; it's about means. It's about how you do this. How do you live in reality?

So, how do you help all these people? The needs are huge. Well, you do it the way Jesus did it. You do it one at a time. You can't do gospel work, kingdom work in an impersonal way.

We live in the Trinity. Everything we do has to be in the context of the Trinity, which means personally, relationally. The minute you start doing things impersonally, functionally, mass oriented, you deny the gospel. Yet that's all we do.

Jesus is the Truth and the Life, but first he's the Way. We can't do Jesus' work in the Devil's way.

I get exercised about this because many pastors are getting castrated by these methodologies, which are impersonal. There's no relationship to them. And so they become performance oriented and successful. It's pretty easy in our culture, at least if you're tall and have a big smile. And they lose their soul. There's nothing to them after 20 years. Or they crash. They try all this stuff and it doesn't work, and they quit, or quit and start doing something else. Probably 90 percent of the affairs that pastors have are not due to lust, but boredom with not having this romantic kind of life they thought they'd get.

 

What if we were to frame this not in terms of needs but relevance? Many Christians hope to speak to generation X or Y or postmoderns, or some subgroup, like cowboys or bikers—people for whom the typical church seems irrelevant.

When you start tailoring the gospel to the culture, whether it's a youth culture, a generation culture or any other kind of culture, you have taken the guts out of the gospel. The gospel of Jesus Christ is not the kingdom of this world. It's a different kingdom.

My son Eric organized a new church six years ago. The Presbyterians have kind of a boot camp for new church pastors where you learn what you're supposed to do. So Eric went. One of the teachers there said he shouldn't put on a robe and a stole: "You get out there and you meet this generation where they are."

So Eric, being a good student and wanting to please his peers, didn't wear a robe. His church started meeting in a high-school auditorium. He started out by wearing a business suit every Sunday. But when the first Sunday of Advent rolled around, and they were going to have Communion, he told me, "Dad, I just couldn't do it. So I put my robe on."

Their neighbors, Joel and his wife, attended his church. Joel was the stereotype of the person the new church development was designed for—suburban, middle management, never been to church, totally secular. Eric figured he was coming because they were neighbors, or because he liked him. After that Advent service, he asked Joel what he thought of his wearing a robe.

He said, "It made an impression. My wife and I talked about it. I think what we're really looking for is sacred space. We both think we found it."

I think relevance is a crock. I don't think people care a whole lot about what kind of music you have or how you shape the service. They want a place where God is taken seriously, where they're taken seriously, where there is no manipulation of their emotions or their consumer needs.

Why did we get captured by this advertising, publicity mindset? I think it's destroying our church.

 

But someone else might walk into Eric's church, see him with his robe, and walk out, thinking the whole place was too religious, too churchy.

So why are they going if it's not going to be religious? What do they go to church for?

Of course, there's another aspect to this. If you're going to a church where everybody's playing a religious role, that's going to be off putting. But that performance mentality, role mentality can be seen in the cowboy church or whatever—everybody is performing a role there, too.

But we're involved with something that has a huge mystery to it. Are we going to wipe out all the mystery so we can be in control of it? Isn't reverence at the very heart of the worship of God?

And if we present a rendition of the faith in which all the mystery is removed, and there's no reverence, how are people ever going to know there's something more than just their own emotions, their own needs? There's something a lot bigger than my needs that's going on. How do I ever get to that if the church service and worship program is all centered on my needs?

Some people would argue that it's important to have a worship service in which people feel comfortable so they can hear the gospel.

I think they're wrong. Take the story I told you about this family in front of us on Sunday. Nobody was comfortable. The whole church was miserable.

And yet, they might have experienced more gospel in going up and putting their arms around that poor mother, who was embarrassed to death.

 

How do we know when they have moved from merely adapting ministry to the culture to sacrificing the gospel?

One test I think is this: Am I working out of the Jesus story, the Jesus methods, the Jesus way? Am I sacrificing relationship, personal attention, personal relationship for a shortcut, a program so I can get stuff done? You can't do Jesus' work in a non-Jesus way and get by with it—although you can be very "successful."

One thing that I think is characteristic of me is I stay local. I'm rooted in a pastoral life, which is an ordinary life. So while all this glitter and image of spirituality is going around, I feel quite indifferent to it, to tell you the truth. And I'm somewhat suspicious of it because it seems to be uprooted, not grounded in local conditions, which are the only conditions in which you can live a Christian life.

 

 

Peterson on Spirituality 1

Taken from http://www.christianitytoday.com/ct/2005/march/26.42.html

 

Spirituality for All the Wrong Reasons 1

 

What is the most misunderstood aspect of spirituality?

That it's a kind of specialized form of being a Christian, that you have to have some kind of in. It's elitist. Many people are attracted to it for the wrong reasons. Others are put off by it: I'm not spiritual. I like to go to football games or parties or pursue my career. In fact, I try to avoid the word.

 

Many people assume that spirituality is about becoming emotionally intimate with God.

That's a naïve view of spirituality. What we're talking about is the Christian life. It's following Jesus. Spirituality is no different from what we've been doing for two thousand years just by going to church and receiving the sacraments, being baptized, learning to pray, and reading Scriptures rightly. It's just ordinary stuff.

This promise of intimacy is both right and wrong. There is an intimacy with God, but it's like any other intimacy; it's part of the fabric of your life. In marriage you don't feel intimate most of the time. Nor with a friend. Intimacy isn't primarily a mystical emotion. It's a way of life, a life of openness, honesty, a certain transparency.

 

Doesn't the mystical tradition suggest otherwise?

One of my favorite stories is of Teresa of Avila. She's sitting in the kitchen with a roasted chicken. And she's got it with both hands, and she's gnawing on it, just devouring this chicken. One of the nuns comes in shocked that she's doing this, behaving this way. She said, "When I eat chicken, I eat chicken; when I pray, I pray."

If you read the saints, they're pretty ordinary people. There are moments of rapture and ecstasy, but once every 10 years. And even then it's a surprise to them. They didn't do anything. We've got to disabuse people of these illusions of what the Christian life is. It's a wonderful life, but it's not wonderful in the way a lot of people want it to be.

 

Yet evangelicals rightly tell people they can have a "personal relationship with God." That suggests a certain type of spiritual intimacy.

All these words get so screwed up in our society. If intimacy means being open and honest and authentic, so I don't have veils, or I don't have to be defensive or in denial of who I am, that's wonderful. But in our culture, intimacy usually has sexual connotations, with some kind of completion. So I want intimacy because I want more out of life. Very seldom does it have the sense of sacrifice or giving or being vulnerable. Those are two different ways of being intimate. And in our American vocabulary intimacy usually has to do with getting something from the other. That just screws the whole thing up.

It's very dangerous to use the language of the culture to interpret the gospel. Our vocabulary has to be chastened and tested by revelation, by the Scriptures. We've got a pretty good vocabulary and syntax, and we'd better start paying attention to it because the way we grab words here and there to appeal to unbelievers is not very good.

 

This corruption of the word spirituality even in Christian circles—does it have something to do with the New Age movement?

The New Age stuff is old age. It's been around for a long time. It's a cheap shortcut to—I guess we have to use the word—spirituality. It avoids the ordinary, the everyday, the physical, the material. It's a form of Gnosticism, and it has a terrific appeal because it's a spirituality that doesn't have anything to do with doing the dishes or changing diapers or going to work. There's not much integration with work, people, sin, trouble, inconvenience.

I've been a pastor most of my life, for some 45 years. I love doing this. But to tell you the truth, the people who give me the most distress are those who come asking, "Pastor, how can I be spiritual?" Forget about being spiritual. How about loving your husband? Now that's a good place to start. But that's not what they're interested in. How about learning to love your kids, accept them the way they are?

My name shouldn't even be connected with spirituality.

 

But it very much is.

I know. Then a few years ago I got this embarrassing position of being a professor of "spiritual theology" at Regent. Now what do you do?

You make spirituality sound so mundane.

I don't want to suggest that those of us who are following Jesus don't have any fun, that there's no joy, no exuberance, no ecstasy. They're just not what the consumer thinks they are. When we advertise the gospel in terms of the world's values, we lie to people. We lie to them, because this is a new life. It involves following Jesus. It involves the Cross. It involves death, an acceptable sacrifice. We give up our lives.

The Gospel of Mark is so graphic this way. The first half of the Gospel is Jesus showing people how to live. He's healing everybody. Then right in the middle, he shifts. He starts showing people how to die: "Now that you've got a life, I'm going to show you how to give it up." That's the whole spiritual life. It's learning how to die. And as you learn how to die, you start losing all your illusions, and you start being capable now of true intimacy and love.

It involves a kind of learned passivity, so that our primary mode of relationship is receiving, submitting, instead of giving and getting and doing. We don't do that very well. We're trained to be assertive, to get, to apply, or to consume and to perform.

 

Repentance, dying to self, submission—these are not very attractive hooks to draw people into the faith.

I think the minute you put the issue that way you're in trouble. Because then we join the consumer world, and everything then becomes product designed to give you something. We don't need something more. We don't need something better. We're after life. We're learning how to live.

I think people are fed up with consumer approaches, even though they're addicted to them. But if we cast the evangel in terms of benefits, we're setting people up for disappointment. We're telling them lies.

This is not the way our Scriptures are written. This is not the way Jesus came among us. It's not the way Paul preached. Where do we get all this stuff? We have a textbook. We have these Scriptures and most of the time they're saying, "You're going the wrong way. Turn around. The culture is poisoning."

Do we realize how almost exactly the Baal culture of Canaan is reproduced in American church culture? Baal religion is about what makes you feel good. Baal worship is a total immersion in what I can get out of it. And of course, it was incredibly successful. The Baal priests could gather crowds that outnumbered followers of Yahweh 20 to 1. There was sex, there was excitement, there was music, there was ecstasy, there was dance. "We got girls over here, friends. We got statues, girls, and festivals." This was great stuff. And what did the Hebrews have to offer in response? The Word. What's the Word? Well, Hebrews had festivals, at least!

 

Still, the one big hook or benefit to Christian faith is salvation, no? "Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ and you will be saved." Is this not something we can use to legitimately attract listeners?

It's the biggest word we have—salvation, being saved. We are saved from a way of life in which there was no resurrection. And we're being saved from ourselves. One way to define spiritual life is getting so tired and fed up with yourself you go on to something better, which is following Jesus.

But the minute we start advertising the faith in terms of benefits, we're just exacerbating the self problem. "With Christ, you're better, stronger, more likeable, you enjoy some ecstasy." But it's just more self. Instead, we want to get people bored with themselves so they can start looking at Jesus.

We've all met a certain type of spiritual person. She's a wonderful person. She loves the Lord. She prays and reads the Bible all the time. But all she thinks about is herself. She's not a selfish person. But she's always at the center of everything she's doing. "How can I witness better? How can I do this better? How can I take care of this person's problem better?" It's me, me, me disguised in a way that is difficult to see because her spiritual talk disarms us.

 

Peterson on Reading and Writing

I haven’t read Peterson for a while. It is always refreshing to be in touch with his pastoral thinking. Almost every time I read his stuff, I feel like, somewhere in the world, someone truly understands what I am doing here at a small corner of the world.

Taken from http://thegospelcoalition.org/blogs/tgc/2012/04/19/eugene-peterson-on-the-reading-and-writing-life-of-the-pastor/

Eugene Peterson on the Reading and Writing Life of the Pastor

How has good literature, whether modern, classical, or ancient, shaped you in your pastorate, in your theology?

Good writers are people who pay attention to language, are interested in telling the truth, and are in some ways finding themselves inoculated against the fads of what will sell, what will please. Good literature almost always goes against the grain of the culture: interpreting it, subtly criticizing it, maybe not polemically. Pastors are right in the center of deceit and corruption and bad use of language. We have a commitment to use words accurately and honestly.

Good writing does not come easy; it takes a lot of discipline, a lot of self-criticism. A lot of people in my position want to know how to write, and after talking to them for a while I realize, "You don't want to write, you want to get published; you're not willing to go through the disciplines, the rejections." Rejections are often compliments, because we're not writing for popular taste or the stuff that just titillates people, what makes them feel good or bad or whatever. Propaganda is the worst kind of writing; there's almost something pornographic about it. It just dehumanizes what's going on, and we're just filled with it right now politically, so I think of the importance of poets and novelists, because I think of poets as the high priests of the language. No poet writes in order to get published, not in America, so anybody who takes the path of poetry is going a lonely way and a not lucrative way.

It's hard to be a good novelist in America because of all the Stephen Kings. There are good novelists and great novelists, but I think for pastors their training isn't how to use their imagination like novelists in the sense that they see the narrative connection of everything, how everything fits into the story. So if our imagination isn't trained to see these connections, relationships, and the way words work to bring out truth rather than just facts, we are just giving lectures from the pulpit, moralisms in a counseling place. It's a great responsibility, I think, to learn to use words rightly. Pastors don't realize how much we owe to our congregations, to the public, to learn how to use words rightly and skillfully and truthfully.

Could you talk about writers who have influenced you and fired your pastoral imagination? You have previously mentioned Wendell Berry.

George Bernanos, a French writer, French novelist. He had an enormous influence on my early life. His book Diary of a Country Priest and novels that followed helped me to re-imagine the pastoral life in terms of simplicity and guts and rejection. When I first read him I thought it was a true story, it was a real diary, and I read it two more times, and then finally somebody told me it was a fiction novel. It was true nevertheless.

More recently, Marilynne Robinson and her novels Gilead and Home. Now she knows what the pastoral life is like. I don't know how she knows it, but she knows what we do. And there's nothing glamorous about it, there's nothing dramatic about it, but there's something deeply, deeply true about it. She knows what she's doing.

William Faulkner was very important to me because of his ability to expose both sin and redemption so skillfully. There's nothing cheap about any of Faulkner's novels. There's a lot of suffering, there's a lot of deceit, there's a lot of hypocrisy. But it's always struck me as true; this is what redemption is. I don't think he was a Christian, at least in any obvious sense, but I don't look for Christian writers when I'm finding somebody. Some of them write more Christian they know, but I look for novelists who are truth tellers.

You have written many books as a pastor. Can you talk about what your writing life looked like? You advocate simplicity as a way of life for the Christian; presumably writing books and being a pastor means there's a lot on your plate.  How can a pastor both enjoy reading and writing in a balanced way?

You have to decide if you're a writer or not. I'm a writer because I'm a writer. I can't say it didn't make any difference to me whether I was published or not, but I was rejected for ten years before I was ever published. Publishers would suggest ways I could make this more marketable, and I knew I couldn't do that. I have to write honestly about what I'm doing, and most of those books that were rejected were later published---sometimes by the same publishers. A lot of people ask me that question, "How can you do all you did and still write?" Well, how does an alcoholic drink and still hold down a job? That's what you do. You have 3x5 cards in your pocket, and you're stopped for a red light, and there's a phrase and you've got it down. Or you're sitting in an emergency room in the hospital, and it takes two hours before your patient is ready to see you, but you're writing.

Writing is a vocation; it's not just a way to get published. I knew from early on that I was a writer. I didn't know what that meant. I did have a sense that it meant something about the integrity of the gospel and none of this cheap Bible exegesis or propagandizing the gospel. I wanted to get into the whole story and the whole Bible. So I don't think that's a very good question to ask a writer, "Why do you write?" You write because there's fire in your bones. You've got to do this whether anybody ever reads it or not. If you're looking for whether you're going to be published, you'll probably cheapen what you're doing.

Sex, Selfish, Servant

In Real Marriage: The Truth about Sex, Friendship and Life Together (Nashville: Thomas Nelson, 2012), Mark and Grace Driscoll talk about two types of couples in relation to sex. The first type is called selfish lovers; the second, servant lovers. Obviously, servant lovers put the interest of their spouses first; selfish lovers rarely look at the relationship from their spouses’ angle. According to them, there are various ways that we are considered as selfish lovers in this area (pp. 165-166):

An excerpt:

• Rarely have sex. We can simply decide to rarely, if ever, have sex. This is often done through simply and repeatedly denying our spouses’ advances, which shames and humiliates them, causing them to feel unloved, unwanted, and undesired. Eventually they will simply stop seeking to be intimate with us.

• Take too little time and too little effort. We can do as little as possible sexually. By exerting minimal effort, passion, or interest, we can be sure to discourage our spouses from seeking to be intimate with us frequently. People have explained this as a gross feeling, where their spouses simply lie there, looking away disinterested and disconnected, making them feel as if they are basically using their spouses’ bodies. Wives have explained this in terms of husbands who do not patiently take their time to prepare them for lovemaking, but instead lazily rush right into penetration, thereby causing their wives discomfort…

• Only have sex when we both feel like it at the same time. Can you imagine if everything in your marriage was governed by this same thinking, so that, for example, you only ate together or spoke together when you both felt like at the exact same time? Sadly, we have heard this illogic from even pastors and their wives. Servant lovers are willing to serve their spouses even when they are not in the mood, and know that on another occasion their servant lovers will do the same for them. Furthermore, humble servant lovers know that as they serve their spouses, God often awakens their desires, puts them in the mood, and blesses their obedience.

• Rarely initiate. In a contentious marriage one spouse is always on sexual offense and the other on sexual defense. This means that one person never initiates talk about sex or activities of sex and is continually on the defensive. The other spouse is then forced to always take the sexual initiative, which makes him or her feel controlled and manipulated in addition to neglected and unwanted, which is discouraging.

• Commit sexual sabotage. We can conveniently get out of the habit of going to bed at the same time. Or at bedtime we can pick a fight or present a displeasing attitude that makes it unlikely sex will ensue. If this happens often, you can probably assume it is not coincidence, but rather an intentional ploy to avoid sex.

• Make our spouses earn sex. We can control and manipulate our spouses with sex. If they do something we want, then we give them sex. If they do not do something we want, or do something we dislike, we punish them by withholding sex. This kind of sexual relationship is more akin to prostitution than marriage. In essence, our spouses have to earn sex and pay for it in some way.

Relational Sin of Omission

I bought a book at a local Christian bookstore last week, Mark and Grace Driscoll, Real Marriage: The Truth about Sex, Friendship and Life Together (Nashville: Thomas Nelson, 2012), and finished it today. It is a pretty good book, filled with personal struggles, stories, and biblical principles that help couples deal with their marital issues. It is one of those books that is not stuffed up with theory and principle. Rather, what they say in the book is not without being practiced and constantly attempted. I believe that having a healthy marital relationship is much harder than it is.

We are usually content with being nice to one another in marriage. As long as we are nice to one another and do not argue and fight, we are fine. We are fine with getting along “fine” without tackling with many itchy issues in relationship. We are fine with what happens on the surface. We are satisfied with not making mistakes. Deep down, it could be shallow. We try to stay away from the sin of commission. But we often commit the sin of omission. We don’t do what we are not supposed to do; however, we don’t do what we are supposed to do. We don’t hate; nevertheless, we don’t love. We are together, but we don’t strive for intimacy in our togetherness. We have nothing to do with the sin of commission; we have everything to do with the sin of omission.

Often times, many couples just find a way to co-exist and work together, like paying bills, raising up kids, and helping others. They are co-workers or life partners, but not lovers and friends. They can be nice to each other, but love is missing in this niceness. Love is not making either. Or, love is rarely made. Even verbal intercourse seldom occurs. “Words passed between them with no greater purpose than passing on information and dividing tasks.”[1] A sense of politeness is accompanied with a sense of coldness. Marital responsibility comes along with a sense of bitterness.

“This is my beloved and this is my friend” (Song of Songs 5:16).

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[1] Dan B. Allender and Tremper Longman III, Intimate Allies: Rediscovering God’s Design for Marriage and Becoming Soul Mates for Life (Wheaton: Tyndale, 1995), p. 72.

Lydia's Household

In Acts 16:6-10, the Holy Spirit kept Paul and his companions from entering into the province of Asia and Bithynia. They then traveled to Troas by passing by Mysia. A vision appeared to Paul at night: “A man of Macedonia was standing there, urging him and saying, ‘Come over to Macedonia and help us.’” Luke (the author as well as Paul’s companion) concluded that God called them to preach the gospel to the Macedonians (16:10).

They traveled from place to place and finally arrived at Philippi, “which is a leading city of the district of Macedonia and a Roman colony” (16:12), where they met a business woman named Lydia. As Paul was teaching the women on the Sabbath day, “the Lord opened her heart to pay attention to what was said by Paul” (16:14). The gospel of Jesus Christ was preached and expounded by Paul. The Lord opened Lydia’s heart to understand it. The doctrine of the gospel needs to be taught by women and men in accompany with the work of the Spirit. It illustrates that Lydia’s mind was at work in hearing the gospel with faith. In commenting on this verse, John Calvin wrote, “Wherefore, we see that not faith alone, but all understanding and knowledge of spiritual things, is the peculiar gift of God, and that the ministers do no good by teaching and speaking unless the inward calling of God be thereunto added.”[1] One of the means that the Spirit works through is faithful teaching of the gospel. Both faith and mind are at work here.

Lydia got baptized. So did her household. She urged them, saying, “If you have judged me to be faithful to the Lord, come to my house and stay” (16:15). Her true faith led her to open up her house and invite them to stay. This household became the seed of church planting in Philippi. This woman was the first-fruit of the gospel in Philippi; her household became the gathering place through which the Spirit planted the church in Philippi.

The church as an institution is foreign to the New Testament. In the New Testament, the church is always a people of God. It is not about a place, but a people called out by God. In the early church, Christians gathered together in different households and scattered from them. These households were the churches in the first century.

The other day Sue and I revisited the concept of ministry and asked, “What kind of ministry do we want to go into in the future? What kind of ministry are we suitable for? What kind of ministry does my ministry style and personality fit into? How do we make disciples of all nations in a practical way?” We came up with an idea that perhaps it is a right direction for us to start different house churches and make disciples through household gatherings in the future. Can we have the Lord’s Supper in Lydia’s household? Can we baptize people in a household? Can we sing, pray, and worship corporately in a household? Can we have Sunday school in a household?

The church is a church because of a people, not a place where the building is registered as a church. How does the New Testament view the church? What is the function and nature of the church?

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[1] John Calvin, Commentary upon the Acts of the Apostles, vol. 2. 500^th Anniversary Edition (Grand Rapids: Baker, 2009), p. 103.

Reading the Bible Relationally

I am rereading Scot McKnight, The Blue Parakeet: Rethinking How You Read the Bible (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2008). The first time I read the book was 2008. I can’t believe it is 2012 now. Reading Scot Mcknight urges me to read and study the Bible with seriousness and delight. God spoke to different generations through Moses, Joshua, David, Solomon, Jeremiah, Hosea, Paul, Peter, etc…God speaks to our generation through us. It is our noble task to make God’s truth timely. In other words, we need to contextualize the word of God in our contexts in our days in our ways. God spoke to the previous generation in their contexts in their days in their ways. As Scot McKnight writes, “Our task is to take the timely timelessness of the Bible and make it timely timeliness for our world. We need to go back to the Bible’s timely timelessness so we can come forward to live out the Bible in our timely timeliness” (p. 35).

One of the examples that McKnight uses to turn the two-dimensional Bible reading into a three-dimensional divine encounter is this:

Who of us, once having read C. S. Lewis’s The Voyage of the Dawn Treader, can forget the scene where Eustace Scrubb and Lucy and Edmund Pevensie stare at a picture on a wall of a Narnian ship when suddenly the picture draws them into a whole new world? Suddenly that picture on the wall comes alive and they begin to feel the breeze, smell the air, and hear sounds. The kids are magically drawn into the painting and find themselves in the water, where they are helped into a boat with the enticing name The Dawn Treader. These kids, now in a new reality, travel to distant lands looking for the seven lost lords of Narnia. At the end of their adventures they find a lamb that turns into Aslan. Great story (p. 42).

Bible reading is not to get information out of the Bible. Getting Bible knowledge is not wrong. It ought not to be our only purpose. In any meaningful relationship, we don’t merely get a piece of information about a person. Whenever we are more interested in pieces of information about the person more than knowing the person, we depersonalize the person. We get to know the person for the sake of knowing. True friendship is based on pure knowing. Knowing God precedes acquiring information about God. Knowing God comes before knowing about God. Bible reading is an act of immersing ourselves into the Story of God. It is exactly like how we interact with our good friends. We get to know each other in the presence of others through ordinary days, meals, and events. We enter into the stories of others with listening, discerning, and nurturing. We get to know more about each other by invitation only. I think this is the way we read God’s word as story. We don’t turn the Bible into a system. We listen and discern God’s story. We pay attention to the plots of this story just as we pay attention to the plots of our friends’ stories, such as school, career, marriage, children, career change, etc…

Not to Speak is to Speak

What kind of message does the world need from the church? What kind of problem does the modern church face in the world? I have been thinking about the phrase, Speak openly and clearly about what God is for. Speak openly and clearly about what God is against. One of the problems of being a Christian in our pluralistic society is that we do not speak up for almost anything. This Sunday, I heard something intriguing. The pastor said, “We are tolerant to beliefs. But we are judgmental to shoes.” We are judgmental to small matters. We speak openly and clearly about our views on fashion, music, food, etc…But we are silent on serious matters, such as morality, religion, lifestyle, etc... Where is our moral courage? Where is our message? Can we speak openly and clearly about what God is for and against?

Dietrich Bonhoeffer said, “Silence in the face of evil is itself evil: God will not hold us guiltless. Not to speak is to speak. Not to act is to act.” I think the world needs this kind of message from the church. Or I should say, the church must openly and clearly preach this kind of message to the world. So many silent Christians live in the world and are only judgmental to what people wear. But they are not “judgmental” to secular morality like friends with benefits, gay marriage, abortion, injustice in the world as well as in the church, etc… What are we for and against? If we are for honesty, we are against any form of deceitfulness in the church and the world. If we are against domination and oppression, we are for equality and stand in solidarity with the oppressed.

In the church, the more I think about it, the more I am convinced that we have been telling people to live a life of spirituality that is very self-centered and society-decentered. I feel like most of the time we live our Christian life in a churchly way: We read the Bible and pray regularly. We practice spiritual disciplines on top of different life responsibilities.  We keep a sense of calmness in all matters. Don’t speak too much. Don’t raise our voice when we speak. Don’t get mad in all circumstances. Don’t look at women in a lustful way. Don’t debate with others because when you debate, you may get mad or go crazy in disagreement. We listen to a sermon with submission. In collaboration with others, we ought to focus on relationship, not relationship, efficiency, effectiveness, and goals/objectives altogether.

Sometimes I wonder, “Is this how Jesus lived? Is this a kind of spirituality that Jesus expected from us? Do we miss anything in our Christian living?”