Monday, December 03, 2007
To The Heart Of The Matter
Glenn Lucke lets go with one of the best posts I have ever read in the Christian blogosphere.
The bottom line is this - doing Christianity well, as disciple or discipler, is a dirty business. Glenn talks all about stories, people's stories and The story. Interesting stories, save in my beloved comics, are dirty things. People have foibles, even flaws. They hurt each other, they say bad things. When we get close to them, we risk a great deal of pain - they are likely, yes I said LIKELY, to hurt us.
That is what we are called to. Consider Jesus, really think about it. God got close to us, and look at what we did to Him!
We cannot go into this thing trying to protect ourselves, we won't get anywhere if we do. We also cannot hide from people what they are getting into, we can only let them know through our example that it is worth the effort and pain.
We also have to be patient. Doing things this way takes time, and it does not produce instant gratification.
We need to learn the lessons we proport to teach. We need to seek the good, not the immediate.
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Imagine having a fold-out chart plotting the precise coordinates of the spiritual maturity of all the students in your campus ministry.Glenn calls his post "Relational Discipleship." Great title.
That chart resides in a box of artifacts from my days of method-driven ministry. I remember my boss expressing skepticism about plotting human souls on such a chart. He was into grace and I was into programs, performance and…charts.
The Lord ‘let’ me fail at this method of McDiscipleship, hopefully before I caused too much harm. Failure has a great way of opening one up to new ideas and, even better, old ideas. Reflecting on God’s Word and on my students, I realized that two old ideas, listening and studying, might be a good place to start.
Listening meant being a student of my students, being attentive to their hearts and minds. Studying, for me, meant an apprenticeship under seminary professors who had dedicated their lives to serving Christ and His Bride in biblical and theological studies. The vast treasury that I learned of Scripture, theology, history and culture remains one of the great gifts the Lord has given me for life and ministry.
In ministry, listening without a growing knowledge of Jesus and the Christian story would have made me an empathetic but impotent spiritual leader. Knowledge of Scripture and theology without listening to those in my care would have rendered me a puffed-up pontificator. Blending listening with Christian truth allows one to follow Jesus in ministry. In Luke 7 Jesus listens to the faith of the centurion, the doubt of John’s disciples, the self-righteous judgment of the Pharisee and the desperate weeping of the ‘sinful woman’. After listening, Jesus tells them truth they need to hear. By His grace, we could be doing the same with the flocks entrusted to us if we will listen and study.
[...]
The tyranny of 5 steps, 7 secrets and 10 principles…and accompanying chart…is a new law, with people as widgets. By listening to their stories and teaching the Christian story, we help our people learn a robust, durable way of grace that they can live together. And that’s off the charts.
The bottom line is this - doing Christianity well, as disciple or discipler, is a dirty business. Glenn talks all about stories, people's stories and The story. Interesting stories, save in my beloved comics, are dirty things. People have foibles, even flaws. They hurt each other, they say bad things. When we get close to them, we risk a great deal of pain - they are likely, yes I said LIKELY, to hurt us.
That is what we are called to. Consider Jesus, really think about it. God got close to us, and look at what we did to Him!
We cannot go into this thing trying to protect ourselves, we won't get anywhere if we do. We also cannot hide from people what they are getting into, we can only let them know through our example that it is worth the effort and pain.
We also have to be patient. Doing things this way takes time, and it does not produce instant gratification.
We need to learn the lessons we proport to teach. We need to seek the good, not the immediate.
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