Archive for the 'discipleship' Category

Choosing the life

Published
by
Graeme
on July 4, 2008
in discipleship
. 3 Comments

Last night I finished reading Choose the Life by Bill Hull a book on discipleship, very much in the same sort of role as David Watson’s classic text Discipleship. It’s taken me virtually a month to read through this as there is something challenging on almost every page, but it’s been well worth the effort.

Early on in the book he says:

The average group of professing Christian’s would agree that we all should love and obey God, that the Great Commandment and the Great Commission are our main purposes, and that we should share our faith and give sacrificially of our time and resources. The problem is that while we say these are what should define Christian character, Christians themselves do not exhibit these qualities.

Whilst he writes from a North American perspective, this situation is evident across the church here in the UK as well. There are many good Christian people who are experiencing only a pale imitation of the life that Jesus offers us as abundant life, what Hull calls ‘nondiscipleship Christians’.

In his opinion, the main reasons for this is the lack of accountability that Christians really have and our general unwillingness to train more disciples. We have a church leader/pastor/officer who has spiritual oversight of us but rarely do we ever submit ourselves to them to such a degree that we allow them to ask the really searching questions of our relationship with God. Those self same people who we don’t truly submit ourselves to are the same people we expect to do all the training of new disciples.

Of course the real blame lies in the fact that the Church has pretty much sold out to the ‘cinema model’ of church. We go to church to get something for ourselves, rather than to offer something to God. We expect to entertained, although we probably don’t realise that this is even the case, and so we are faced with the situation where the person teaching on a Sunday is looking out over a morose group of people, few of whom ever react in anyway to what the teacher/preacher is saying.

Real discipleship is costly! Dietrich Bonhoeffer speaks of the ‘Cost of Discipleship’ and James, the book I’m reading at the moment, speaks in depth about what this cost is. It’s costly in terms of attitudes, actions and discipline, but the rewards for that sort of living at greater than we can even imagine.

Soldiership as Discipleship

Published
by
Graeme
on June 19, 2008
in My Pilgrimage, The Salvation Army and discipleship
. 2 Comments

It’s now more than 10 years since the International Spiritual Life Commission reported their thoughts to The Salvation Army. Unfortunately, in some areas the emphasis has been placed more on what they didn’t do, especially in terms of baptism and the eucharist, than on the calls that they made to Salvationists and the corps they are part of.

I’ve been looking at them recently and within the Call to Soldiership I discovered this:

“We believe that soldiership is discipleship…”

The reality is though that for many soldiers, soldiership has actually been a route to playing an active part in the life of the ‘club’ rather than a commitment to radical, life-changing service. The Articles of War, or Soldier’s Covenant, that they signed hasn’t really made a significant impact on their lives. Why this is the case has been discussed a lot in recent days and in my opinion is a combination of poor teaching, an emphasis on ‘Army’ subculture rather than mission, poor leadership and changing times.

When you read the Soldier’s Covenant it really requires a radical commitment. Too often the emphasis has been placed on the commitments not to drink and being active as is possible in the corps programme, rather than on those of response and obedience to the Holy Spirit and living by Kingdom values.

I heard today of two corps which are well known in this Territory that have changed the format of their evening meetings. The band and songsters are now only on duty about once a month and when they are not taking part the majority of the members are absent. When one of the corps has a Bible Study they only get about 25% of the number of people who go when the band or songsters are taking part. Is this radical commitment to the Lord, or is it membership of an interest group?

Real discipleship is costly not cosy. Yet despite this cost it ultimately leads to a life that is defined by the beauty of a relationship with the Father and assurance in His promises.

Duty?

Published
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Graeme
on June 14, 2008
in Faith and discipleship
. 0 Comments

Within The Salvation Army there is a word that has, for my generation at least, become an unacceptable part of the vocabulary. It’s as if this simple 4 letter word has become, in English slang, a ‘four-letter word’ and to even whisper it in polite company will earn you frowns of disappointment.

The word is ‘duty’!

Why this word has become such an anathema to many Salvationists is a combination of the age we now live in and its poor use within Army circles. For any of us who grew up in the Army of the 70’s, 80’s and early 90’s, duty was used almost solely in respect of our brass band and songsters. I’ve lost count of the number of times that I’ve heard the phrase “The band [or songsters] is on duty!” Almost without fail it meant that you would be seriously looked down upon if you weren’t at the particular event that the ‘duty section’ was in! It didn’t matter whether you had arranged something else, even months in advance, because there would always be someone who would find fault at you not being there, after all it was your duty!

This is not to say that this use of the word is particularly bad. If you commit yourself to be involved in a band or choir, of course you should be prepared to make your programme fit around its programme. However, the problem is that little, if anything, was ever mentioned about our duty to follow Jesus and be obedient to him.

Maybe this is one of the reasons why the song ‘Pathway of Duty’ has become so unpopular. Perhaps the words serve as a reminder to us of being on ‘duty’ at concerts that held little or no interest to us, and which never really seemed to bring anyone into the Kingdom.

We live today in a world that concentrates on the rights of the individual and a reluctant, tacit acceptance that many people have given up on being responsible members of society. Duty is unpopular as it suggests a reigning in of freedom and forces us to conform to certain societal ideals.

Yet duty is important, and we do have a duty in our walk with Jesus. At the root of our faith is a duty to be obedient. Without obedience our faith cannot grow. Bill Hull, in his book Choose the Life, has written that:

Many people have studied the Bible and considered following Jesus, but until we actually step out in obedience to him, we can’t experience the transformation of our character.

Many of us in the church are obedient to the rules of reading our Bible and praying every day, yet when it comes to being obedient to the Holy Spirit in our lives we ignore him. We choose the path of religiosity in our faith rather than being followers of our Rabbi who is also the Son of God.

Our duty as Christians is to put aside everything of ourselves, surrender our self-control, and to become disciples whose every step is a step of obedience. By embracing this duty of obedience to him, we will in the words of that old, often despised song discover that “while we walk this path of duty we will find our needs supplied from the river of God’s mercy that is flowing close beside.”

Changing places

Published
by
Graeme
on April 29, 2008
in Holiness and discipleship
. 2 Comments

Churches are meant to be places that can change abnormal people into normal people. People who are shadows change into real people. People who are half-dead in their addiction to destructive habits of selfishness and egotism, change into rich, fully alive human beings, knowing how to love, even when it hurts. At the same time they are also to be places that transform the life of the communities and societies around them by this very same power.

So says Graham Tomlin on page 120 of The Provocative Church.

One question that I have that isn’t answered in this book is, “Why do we major on evangelism now when the early church didn’t?” Now don’t get me wrong, I don’t mean that the early church didn’t evangelise, its simply that they didn’t make it the focal point of their teaching. One answer to the question could be that it is because so few of the people are involved in evangelism and I’m certain there are more than a few who would accept this premise.

However, I’m not so sure that we are focussing on a symptom rather than the cause. Pushing an agenda that highlights evangelism as the most important role of the church seems to distort what the church is really about. It is not about bringing people to a crisis point in their life and getting them ’saved’, it is about being a community in which people are transformed into people in whom the glory of God is seen.

Let me make it clear, I believe that the Salvation Army was called into being to reach souls for the kingdom. I believe that this is our first and greatest mandate. I am not though convinced that in your face evangelism is the ‘be all and end all’ of our effort. In fact I think that the real reason for our success was not our skill at evangelism, but rather our position of being firmly entrenched in the holiness movement.

Graham Tomlin’s book (and I promise this is the last mention of it for a while) actually is not so much a book about evangelism but is a book about holiness. He might not call it that, but the core of his argument is that for us to be truly evangelistic in our efforts for the Kingdom we must live holy lives. Without this basic holiness then ultimately no amount of evangelism will bring the numbers to the Lord that we would like. For me personally, this is why Jesus didn’t turn round and tell us to only get people saved, but instead told us to go and make disciples. Only disciples who seek to live the holy life that Jesus did; disciples who are being increasingly human; are going to influence a real and lasting difference in the lives of those asking the questions.

How to glorify God

Published
by
Graeme
on April 23, 2008
in Holiness, Reading and discipleship
. 0 Comments

I’ve mentioned before that in my Google Reader I get a daily quote/thought from a sight called inward/outward. The quote that is provided is not always great and sometimes I disagree fundamentally with them. However, this morning’s is a Thomas Merton quote, and whilst I’m not in agreement with it, it did make me think. The part I want to share with you is this:

A tree gives glory to God by being a tree. For in being what God means it to be it is obeying God. It ‘consents’ so to speak, to God’s creative love. … This particular tree will give glory to God by spreading out its roots in the earth and raising its branches into the air and the light in a way that no other tree before or after it ever did or will do.

Merton goes on to say that every being gives glory to God by being the thing that He created them to be. In my opinion this is definitely a thought that shows Merton’s Zen influences, but I do think he has a point.

The problem though comes with us humans. Do we reflect God’s glory simply by being human? I would say that we don’t because in actual fact the majority of humanity are not ‘consenting’ to God’s creative love. We are not actually being who God created us to be and we’re certainly not obeying God.

As I said in my last post I’m currently enjoying reading Graham Tomlin’s The Provocative Church. There are numerous passages highlighted already, with quite a few scribbles in the margins, but here is one that I feel is pertinent to this post:

[loving the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, mind and strength] means a reorientation of our lives towards learning to love God and learning to love other people, rather than the sef-indulgent and self-oriented lives we’re used to.

This is the message that I’m trying to get across in our morning meetings at the corps at the moment. We are working through the various Fruit of the Spirit and I’m trying to explain how these are the real signs of spiritual maturity, rather than what we do in church. For me the real test of an individuals holiness is the manifestation of these fruit. In my mind it doesn’t matter how much an individual expresses their love for God; it doesn’t matter how much they do in church. What matters is whether their lives are increasingly loving, joyful, peaceful, patient, kind, good, faithful, gentle and self-controlled.

This is how we, as humans, give the glory back to God. As we grow in the fruit of the Spirit, as we allow the Spirit to work within us and convict us of sin and shape us into holy people, then we become more like the people God intended us to be. So Merton has a really good point, but we have to allow the Holy Spirit to shape us in order to really reflect God’s glory.

Provoking a response

Published
by
Graeme
on April 19, 2008
in Mission and discipleship
. 0 Comments

When we think about being provocative I would guess that a lot of people would see this as a negative thing. I suppose this is mainly because provocation is one of those words that seems to be a bad thing. We think of people being provoked into an argument or of someone hitting someone else after being provoked. So when a book suggests that the church should be provoking a response from people it could well get assigned to the spiritual dustbin, along with terminology such as ‘getting out of comfort zones’ and ‘taking risks’.

However, a few months ago a book that does exactly that was recommended to me. At that point I didn’t get it, but then as I was browsing the shelves of my local Christian bookshop about a month ago there it was simply begging me to buy it!

On Sunday night I finally got round to starting to read it, and so far I haven’t been disappointed. Its actually a book about evangelism, although I suspect that some reading it might not agree with the methods it suggests. What is refreshing though is that this is not a book that consigns verbal evangelism to the scrap heap, but instead elevates it to its rightful position within the church, front and centre.

By the way the book is Graham Tomlin’s The Provocative Church. The basic premise is that unless an individual, or a congregation, live their lives in such a way as to make people start asking questions about the way they are living no amount of evangelism is ever going to make an impact. One quote that stood out on the first page of Chapter 1 was,

Sometimes Christians assume that people ‘out there’ are eager to listen to what the Church has to say. The only problem is learning how to say it louder and more clearly.”

It immediately made me think of the stereotypical ‘Brit abroad’ picture. We have a reputation for talking to people who don’t speak English ‘loudly, slowly and clearly’ so that they will understand what we are saying. Of course the real problem is that we aren’t speaking their language. The same mentality still exists in some circles of the church, including The Salvation Army. It doesn’t seem to matter that people no longer speak our cultural language. All we have to do is say the same things louder, slower and clearer and everything will be ok.

As someone who has never felt entirely comfortable in traditional evangelistic methods this book is really speaking to me and I’ve been thinking in depth about possible efforts that we could get involved in here in our location. I’m well into chapter 5 and have numerous thoughts coming out of it, so I’ll probably be posting more on this.

Being fully human

Published
by
Graeme
on February 23, 2008
in Holiness and discipleship
. 4 Comments

In some ways this post is an extension of my previous one from Incarnate as it carries on our responsibility to live incarnational lives that whilst unremarkable in its events is noticably different in the way it is lived.

Both Stuart Murray-Williams and Gary Bishop (i’ve only really read their papers so far due to all the other stuff I’m reading) pick up on our need to live truly human lives. Murray-Williams says:

Maybe only God can live a fully authentic human life. But the incarnation of Jesus … demonstrates that God wants to live that fully human life through us…

and Gary writes that:

…very little has been offered which would encourage or equip the faithful in their humanity.

These two thoughts combined in my mind to create a couple of questions. Could it be that true holiness is found in becoming more like Jesus in his humanity? Is holiness really about becoming fully human in the way that God originally intended us to be when he created us?

One of the consequences of this sort of thinking would be that we would start to teach discipleship in terms of equipping people to live their lives. We could concentrate on making disciples who were sanctified in their attitude toward the world and were committed to bringing about the Kingdom, yet were fully immersed in living lives as God intends us to. It would stop us putting our efforts into what we shouldn’t be doing and instead free us up to do the things that we should be doing.

If we started to live in a way that reflected the full humanity that is our touchstone in living, then we would be taking our holiness out into the world, rather than separating ourselves from it. This is what Jesus did! He brought his holiness from heaven to earth and followed his Father’s will in all things. What better example can we ask for?