discipleship

To the Single and Childless Among Us

Abbie Smith — Wed, 04 Jan 2012 13:39:53 -0800

He slipped his way into my morning coffee, and accidentally, he said, proceeded to spill onto pages of my morning reading. Walk. And now work.

The non-mom-voice keeps taunting me. He did this when I was single, too. Idiot.

Why don't you have babies yet? You've been married over a year.
Your clock is ticking. Your womb is wasting away.

At first I tried to ignore it, but somehow that only created deeper and more persistent taunts.

What's wrong with you? What's wrong with your body?
Everyone else is. And is wondering why you're not.

Feeling David-sized in my voice, up against a Goliath-sized pack of lies, I decided to attempt a response.

You are wrong. Your taunts and arguments are wrong. You clearly do not know my God.

Teary and uncomposed, I continued.

You don't understand my God.
His daughters are given a different womb.
A womb about a Kingdom.

If God should ever give me a child who calls me mommy, I shall be terrifically grateful.
But if He doesn't, there are multiple other means by which He's positioned my practice of motherhood.
Multiple others ways my God reconciles children to His own perfect mothering.

Like letting me tell children how treasured they are, fostering life and a story worth living.
Letting me share with the younger what is pure and what is true.

My womb is far bigger than you are fathoming.
My womanhood is part of a far bigger story.

As a woman, I've been asked to dream with the broken, and disciple hope and a future into the flock behind.
As a womb-bearer, I've been given space to invite the hurting, and marriage to the bearer of life, freedom and healing.

And these are but the fringes.
These are but a taste of the astonishing roles for which my mothering heart has been created.
And for which l am terrifically grateful.

I haven't heard the non-mom-voice again today. But when I do, please remind me of these words.

Parental Discipleship

Adam Stadtmiller — Thu, 09 Jun 2011 11:06:26 -0700

Most parents have no clue how to disciple their kids. I’m not saying it is their fault; they are as much victims of the crisis of discipleship in the church today as their children.

Here is a good way to figure out if you are measuring up in discipling your son or daughter. Imagine that your child is not your own. Rather, Jesus has introduced them to you with a commission of discipleship. Until he or she turns 18, you will be given 3-5 hours per week to show them the way of the Savior. The sky is the limit, but you only get these 3-5 hours to create a sustainable faith in this kid—to make sure he or she knows Christ in the depths of their soul.

What would you do? How would you do it? Would it be different then what you are doing now?

When we think of a discipler we often conjure up a much different picture than that of a parent. Parents can easily turn to provision and protection and miss the parallel call of discipleship. You can be a fantastic parent and fail as a discipler; non-believers do this all of the time.

When I think of disciples and those they follow, I tend to see dirt roads and hear conversations. God is being talked about and experienced along the way—in the “net cleaning” moments of life (Luke 5).

Disciplers tend to let their followers occasionally fail. They are friends who laugh and cry together. They share life in a way that is impossible to keep up a façade of perfection. Life is lived too closely for this.

I am not saying that a discipler is a better model then a parent. Since God chose the “Father” metaphor as a primary analogy for our understanding of Him, we must acknowledge the importance of parental leadership and guidance. We must continue to excel in the role of Godly parenting.

My contention is that as parents we have forgotten that raising children to follow Jesus requires us to be more then just great parents. We are also called to be discipler and friend. Now go and make disciples! (Matthew 28:19)

For more on parental discipleship check out www.giveyourkidsthekeys.com

Raising Kingdom Bringing Kids

Adam Stadtmiller — Tue, 31 May 2011 16:38:32 -0700

Banishing Sunday School Teachers

John Barry — Mon, 27 Dec 2010 21:20:46 -0800

What we do in church services doesn’t matter if it doesn’t change our lives and the lives of others. Biblical illiteracy is on the rise, and will continue to be until we make discipleship part of our life.

Most of us don’t have mentors, and when we do, they aren’t spiritual mentors—they’re business mentors. We rarely think about being discipled in the ways of Christ.

When we think of education, we think of universities and colleges. Biblical education, outside of Christian schools, isn’t even part of our thought process, and that’s a tragedy. We spend thousands of dollars paying for higher education, but how much do we spend on biblical education? When I think of it in those terms, I’m terrified about our future.

Paul lists teachers as the third spiritual office in 1 Corinthians 12:27–31. In light of this passage, we’ve already discussed that:

- We don’t compare ourselves to Elijah but should.

- We treat pastors like restaurant managers.

- We tell prophets to be like retailers.

But none of this matters, if we don’t do something about the discipleship problem. We desperately need good, interesting education in our churches today. And this needs to be a church-wide movement—something that is part of our church services. It can’t just be something we do on the side.

We banish teachers to Sunday school rooms, and Christian school classrooms. We’ve taken the people who are meant to help us be disciples of Christ, and made studying under them unappealing. We’ve reserved discipleship for those who are willing to stick around for an extra hour.

Given, there are sermons in church services, but how much can you really learn from being lectured at? You need interaction. You need to question.

Church would be a whole lot more interesting if we regularly had different speakers, and had question-and-answer sessions. It would also make teachers feel welcome again. We would suddenly find our third spiritual office happily filled. Most Sunday school teachers and small group leaders I know practically beg for promotion. They only get the people in their classrooms and small groups who are desperate for discipleship. Everyone else just ignores them.

We’ve tried to fix this problem with small groups, but our small groups are not usually run by people with the gift of teaching. Small groups are usually run by people with the gift of helping, commonly called hospitality. Thus, with no spiritual leader in place, most of our small groups become group therapy sessions, or conversations about our feelings about God and the Bible—not discussions about what the biblical writers actually meant.

Why not have the person with the gift of helping open their home, be just the person who opens their home? And then have the person called to teach, be the person who teaches? You don’t need one person to start a small group, you need two.

I’m tired of watching people with the gift of teaching be banished. Let’s do something about it. Let’s empower them. Let’s invest in them, and consequently invest in the future of Christianity and the world.

What can we do about this problem? What are your ideas?

Ernie Becker V: Live a More Fulfilling Life

Guest Voices — Mon, 18 Oct 2010 16:30:55 -0700

Ernie Becker V has lived five lifetimes in one. Or at least that's the way it seems. Born and raised in Las Vegas as a fifth generation contractor/developer, Ernie followed in the footsteps of his family business and was very good at it. He performed all aspects of construction development, buying and selling real estate, raising money and working closely with financial institutions. Then things started to spiral out of control. As Ernie says, "I tried to find anything I could on the outside to make me feel better on the inside."

Then Ernie discovered Christ, put his addictions down and began to work forward with what Jesus had in store for him. For ten years he became both a student and a teacher of Christians life coaching principles. Three years ago he formed E5 Coaching, LLC, as a way to help people find the life purpose he has found.

E5 Coaching is committed to the teachings of Christ by gently guiding people to be wholly and pleasing to God. "We empower you by applying Scripture to everyday life challenges through E5 programs, books, worships and coaching session," says Ernie. "Each product is designed with only one thing in mind: to bring you closer to Christ. Our desire is that you will experience a close relationship with Christ and your life purpose will be to glorify God."

The centerpiece of E5 Coaching is a 30-day program designed to help you live a more fulfilling life. In addition, E5 Coaching provides services for one-on-one coaching, design coaching, books, programs, and merchandise

Ernie and E5 Coaching are excited to offer a free download of an excerpt from his 30-day DVD series and workbook, Conquering Chaos with Love.

Hanging by a Thread "Bewilderment is the True Comprehension"

Phil Towne — Sun, 19 Sep 2010 08:05:49 -0700

Today, I was reading through The Cost of Discipleship, by Bonhoeffer and came across this quote from Luther:

"Discipleship is not limited to what you can comprehend--it must transcend all comprehension. Plunge into the deep waters beyond your own comprehension, and I will help you to comprehend even as I do. Bewilderment is the true comprehension. Not to know where you are going is the true knowledge. My comprehension transcends yours. Thus Abraham went forth from his father and not knowing whether he went..."

This is an enormous encouragement to me today. As some of you know, my family and I have been on a wild ride, leaving California just over a year ago to go help with a church plant in the foreign land of Idaho, only to return 10 months later. Still, I do not have a full-time job (as many in our rough economy). I am blessed to be teaching adjunct at a couple schools, and this helps us stay afloat, but in many ways we have recently felt like we are hanging by a thin thread not knowing where to go or what to do at this point.

This is a trying and frustrating time for us. Self-doubt creeps in and we easily believe lies about ourselves and about God. So, besides loving the Barth-like dialectical quote of Luther for its theological sake, I am deeply comforted to read, "Bewilderment is the true comprehension."

In this life of unsurity, we have but one thing to cling to. In times like this, I can not rely on my own devices, skills, thoughts, logic. I can only cling to the one who brings true hope, sight, and meaning.

I pray for those who are also unemployed. It is so easy to fall into the trap of feeling like your life has no meaning, that you are worthless, that your stability has been ruined. We have no full stability in this life. There are no guarantees. We can only cling to the one who brings true comprehension amidst our bewilderment. Amen.

Phil

Introducing Eric Bryant

Renee Johnson — Tue, 06 Jul 2010 11:43:28 -0700

A few weeks ago, I shared on why I'm happy to attend the Origins Conference in Los Angeles. One of the speakers, Eric Bryant, who is the Navigator Pastor at Mosaic Church is launching a new book soon called "Not Like Me." You can pre-order a copy on Amazon, and listen to this video I asked him create just for you! You can see for yourself what to do w/those peeps in our life who just happen to be not like you! :)

Go Eric!

Learning From My Mistakes

David Swanson — Tue, 01 Jun 2010 15:51:22 -0700

As I approach my 20th year of ordained ministry, I can say that my biggest mistake has been trying to will transformation in people's lives. At one point, I was so consumed by my own efforts and creative ideas to revitalize a church that I completely omitted God from the process. I was going to do it by the sheer force of my determination and work ethic.

Right. Try that. See how it works for you. I was trying to lead people towards abundant living, but I didn't know it myself. Guess what? I didn't lead them very far or very well.

Psalm 30 became a constant refrain for me as I found my heart crying "out of the depths." I had to address certain habits and ways of thinking in my own life before I was going to lead effectively towards vitality in Christ.

From that posture of searching, the contents of my new book, Vital Signs, began to emerge. The lessons became the foundation for a sermon series that I preached in Ft. Myers, Florida. With revision and further growth, I preached it again at First Presbyterian, Orlando. In both churches, God has been so faithful to do what I could never do on my own: revitalize and heal people and communities.

Too often, I think we depend on a new program, a new study, or a new mountaintop experience to get us going. The reality is that we need to invest more in the daily walk of discipleship instead of constantly searching for the next spiritual fix. Yes, those things can help, but an abundant Christian life is one carved over years of faithfully engaging in the basics--the solid food of God's Word, the power of worship, the blessing of community, the joy of giving, the sense of purpose derived from mission. These are the essential elements through which God pours out His life in us.

My desire is to use this space to personally share with you what I have learned--including what I have learned from my mistakes--so that you will find a deep hunger to know more of these things and more of the presence of God in your life. It is not something I have mastered by any means, but it is a journey I humbly share with you.

"Perhaps" - the power of risk, and the paralysis of fear

Richard Dahlstrom — Fri, 21 May 2010 13:44:40 -0700

If you're climbing a rock face, the thing that spares you from death in the event of a fall is your protection (which is some sort of anchor you put in the rock that will put an end to your falling). Of course, the higher you climb beyond your last piece of protection, the farther you'll fall if you fail. This can have the effect of unnerving the climber, which ultimately negates the climber's skills, causing him/her to freeze with fear and eventually fall.

It's terrible irony that the very thing they fear, ends up happening, precisely because they're afraid of it happening. "Fear" it turns out, is one of the worst enemies, just as Roosevelt, and Joshua, and the angel all said. It has the power to strip us of our capacities, freezing out the kind of risk necessary someone's going to embody the generous, just, wall breaking, bridge building, life restoring character of Jesus. Live too carefully, and you'll end up looking religious instead of righteous - painfully boring, and ridden with anxiety.

I think we usually become better at careful living the older we get, because acquiring more is the social equivalent of climbing higher. As we amass stuff, or social status, or net worth, it becomes increasingly tempting to live carefully, fearful as we are of losing what we've worked hard to acquire. But we didn't acquire much of anything by living fearfully, and so we run the risk, like the climber, of substituting 'prudence' for courage, of 'moderation' for wise risk. If our motive in so downsizing is 'preservation', we've lost already, even if we win. Risk is inherent in any worthwhile endeavor and the old man Caleb reminds us that we needn't lose our stomach for it as we grow old, or climb higher.

I'd suggest that this 'fear of loss' weighs, not only on families, but on the psyche of entire nations. Recent gridlocks in our nation's capitol are rooted in, among other things, a fear that any course of action will run the risk of loss. We don't want to raise taxes or cut revenue, for fear of losing - votes, popularity with the voters, security. We don't want to regulate banking for fear of losing - political favor with lobbyists, the mirage of greed free "free markets", whatever. So we freeze, or act so feebly that our actions are functionally meaningless. We're like the climber on the rock face, thirty feet above his last piece of protection and too afraid to go up or down. He'll remain there until his strength gives out, and then he'll do what all people paralyzed with fear do: he'll fall.

Jonathan took on an entire garrison with this scant assurance: "Perhaps the Lord will work for us..." He know that the important thing wasn't succeeding or failing, but doing the right thing. He knew that falling while trying something great was better than freezing and not trying anything at all because of fear.

The degree to which fear - of loss, or failure, or rejection, infects us, both individually and in our national psyche, is astonishing. We hear it in daily conversations, see it in the way news is delivered, and live it by staying home and watching TV when there are whole truckloads of living to be done. And sitting there in our fear, you know what will happen: our fears will come true.

One simple verse in Psalm 73 is, for me, the most powerful antidote to fear: "Who do I have in heaven but you O Lord, and having you I desire nothing else on earth." If Christ is meaningful to me, the real basis of satisfaction, then I'm liberated from needing $$ success, or the perfect reputation, or success in every endeavor - I'm free to climb - both literally and metaphorically, knowing that weather I land at the top, or in a heap, my most important Companion will be there with me. And that, it seems, ought to be enough. This is the "why" of intimacy with Christ: a byproduct of intimacy is contentment, and a by-product of contentment is courage, and courage, God knows, is what we all need these days.

I welcome your thoughts.

March Madness...Like a Virgin

Richard Dahlstrom — Wed, 07 Apr 2010 08:20:44 -0700

I'm getting ready to study the passage for this coming Sunday about the ten virgins, five of whom had oil in their lamps and five who didn't. On the surface of it, the whole story seems to run contrary to the golden rule. "Do for others what you'd want others to do for you." If I was out of oil, I'd want you to give me some oil - so if I have oil, and you don't, I need to give you some oil. That's generosity. That's charity. That's the gospel.

Instead, Jesus confounds things for us by having the story unfold in exactly the opposite way. When the bridegroom came, the five who didn't have enough oil asked for help. The answer they received was, in essence, "Get your own oil. If we help you, none of us will have enough. Better that some of us get into the party (i.e. we who had the good sense to prepare).

What's going on here? Is Jesus Darwinian after all?

Parables always have a point, and one of the big problems with parables is that the point the teller of the story is trying to make is the only point he's trying to make. If you don't understand this, you can come to all sorts of wrong conclusions, thinking that Jesus is advocating both selfishness and theft in various parables which, of course, He isn't.

So what's the point of this parable? Jesus is trying to tell us only one thing: "You need to have your own oil" if you're going to participate in making God's good reign visible on the earth. Some of us in America have just passed through the cultural phenomenon known as March Madness. There were 65 college basketball teams a few short weeks ago, selected as the best, who then fought each other in a tournament of single elimination games until, Monday night, the Blue Devils of Duke were crowned as champion. Millions of us filled out brackets, playing prophet to predict who would reign as the top team.

: we shouldn't confuse watching with playing

Because we filled out brackets, we'd predicted who would win each game. Because we'd predicted, we watched, cheered, even had some strange sense of ownership. Some of us yelled at our TV screens when the teams we'd chosen failed to deliver. We fought with the refs. We shouted advice to the coaches. We cheered and jeered players. These were our teams, even if we didn't even know where Murray State or Butler were located on a map. We loved these teams, cared for them; they were our teams.

Except that they weren't. The whole ownership thing was a vicarious illusion. We jumped on bandwagons for a week or two, and we'll have forgotten, by next week, the names of the players we had such a high stake in. The culture of spectator sports, as much as I love it, can easily make us all feel like we're bigger than we really are, and more athletic - identification runs the risk of becoming illusion: "I watch - therefore I am".

Role this over into the life of faith. This past Sunday, about 2800 people passed through the doors of our church to celebrate the good news that Christ is Risen. We sang songs. The choir sang songs. I preached. But the crux of the event was my invitation to give God the pen, so that he becomes the author of each of our stories, each of our lives. Giving God the pen is like having the oil - each of us needs to do that for ourselves.

We run the risk, in a culture where it's easy to sit and consume worship services as if they're basketball games, of thinking that "being there" equates with having oil. It doesn't. If you want to participate in the good reign of God, then you need to keep your lamp full of oil. This means practicing habits that will enable you to remain full of the Holy Spirit, and pouring out your life in acts of service.

Our church presently participating in God's good reign through an initiative called Spilling Hope, which last year raised 135k for wells in Uganda. I'm hoping and praying that as we embark on this again this year... we'll have even fuller participation from our church, because as we grow larger, the illusion of vicarious participation intensifies. You need your own oil - spectator Christianity is an illusion.

How can churches help create a culture of Christianity that swims upstream against spiritual consumerism?

I welcome your thoughts.