The Hsu’s Views

I’ve been working through “The Great Omission” by Willard for this course I’m in. It is a collection of writings and sermons/talks on discipleship. Great stuff. Willard writes:

“Spiritual formation in Christ is accomplished, and the Great Commission fulfilled, as the regenerate soul makes its highest intent to live in the commandments of Christ and accordingly makes realistic plans to realize this intent by an adequate course of spiritual disciplines.” P. 76

Then comes a great comment that is useful in helping heal so much of the division that exists in the church today.

Christian spiritual formation understood in this way is automatically ecumenical and inclusive in the sense that those thus formed, those who live in obedience to Christ, are thereby united and stand out as the same in their obedience. The substance of obedience is the only thing that can overcome the divisions imposed by encrusted difference in doctrine, ritual, and heritage. The lamp that is aglow in the obedient life will shine. The city set on the hill cannot be hid. Obedience to Christ from the heart and by the Spirit is such a radical reality that can never be achieved by direct efforts at union. It is not achieved by effort, but by who we are: “I am a companion of all who fear you” (Psalm 119:63).

Some years ago, ecumenism attempted to center on the confession (italics mine) of Christ as Lord. Little came of it because, in the manner to which we have been accustomed by history, the attitudes and actions of real life were left untouched by such a profession. But actual obedience (italics mine) to Christ as Lord would transform ordinary life entirely and bring those disciples who are walking with Christ together wherever their lives touch. Christians who are together in the natural contexts of life would immediately identify with one another because of the radically different kind of life, the eternal kind of life, manifestly flowing in them. Their mere non-cooperation with the evil around them would draw them together as magnet and iron. Any other differences would have no significance within the unity of obedience to the Christ who is present in his people.

Two reflections from these thoughts, maybe three. First, merely confessing Christ as Lord is not enough to transform our lives and give us the peace that accompanies the spiritual life that Jesus offers us within his Kingdom rule. We must choose to obey Christ, in all he teaches us. This choice should be reflected in our pursuit of spiritual formation.

Second, within the framework of the centered/bounded set conversation, I’ve seen the importance of developing or finding people who want to gather together because of (1) their love for Jesus, and because (2) they were informed with a Kingdom theology. I would now add a third critical element, Obedience to Christ. Intending to obey Christ will lead to a “radically different kind of life” characterized by “non-cooperation with the evil around them.”

Third, I may be self-deceived, but this is what I see in the lives of those U40-ites who choose to walk and minister together in the city. We have so many different callings and foci of ministry, yet we are not drawn together because of a particular denominational affiliation, a particular ecclesiology, or worldview. We love Jesus. We want to participate in His Kingdom. We want to obey him.

I’ve been working on an independent study class on Celtic Spirituality and Movements. I’m interested in studying spiritual formation, both the ancient monastic traditions as well as today’s neo-monastic thought. It interests me because I believe this is the piece that much of the church in the West (or at least N. America) has systematically forgotten in large measure. There have always been the exception; people who cultivated a deep and abiding faith manifested in a transformed life… but this has been so far from my own life and ministry.

My understanding of discipleship was primarily dependent on a set of materials that I needed to learn or that I needed to get people through. Discipleship was largely the conveyance of information, with the belief that that information would change a persons thinking and behavior. Today, thanks to a Monday morning study with a group of men, together working through Dallas Willard’s “Renovation of the Heart,” I think differently about discipleship.

Today, it is about the transformation of the inner self. “Spiritual formation of the Christian basically refers to the Spirit-driven process of forming the inner world of the human self in such a way that it becomes like the inner being of Christ himself.” (P. 22 - Renovation)

Prayer, as a spiritual discipline (or “spiritual practice” as preferred in today’s language) was a central element in Celtic spirituality. Specifically contemplative prayer… often in solitude. I like what Ray Simpson says in his description of contemplative prayer in his book, “Exploring Celtic Spirituality.”

“…contemplative prayer is the opposite of controlling prayer. It is fatally easy to project the unrecognized needs of one’s own ego into prayer requests. Prayer meetings or private prayer times then become dominated by human self-will dressed in religious clothing. Control is the last thing a Christian clings to in her or his journey into obedience. Contemplative prayer is natural, unprogrammed; it is perpetual openness to God, so that in the openness his concerns can flow in and out of our minds as he wills.” (p. 74 - Exploring)

The contrast between “self-will dressed in religious clothing” and “a perpetual openness to God” (and his will) is what struck me about contemplative versus intercessory prayer. I’m more used to intercessory prayer. And what causes me to sit up and think is that my “request for things” might reflect merely my “self-will.” How would that spiritually form me? It seems to me that a diet heavy in intercessory prayer alone will shape how I see God… alas, even use God.

I like the idea Simpson introduces about contemplative prayer being about a perpetual openness to God’s will. This is consistent with Willard on his chapter of transforming the will. He asks, What does a will or heart look like that has been transformed into Christlikeness? How is it to be characterized?

Single-minded and joyous devotion to God and his will, to what God wants for us — and to service to him and to others because of him — is what the will transformed into Christlikeness looks like. (P. 143, Renovation)

Contemplative prayer + joyous devotion to God and his will = transformation of the inner life.

“It is not the church that has a mission of salvation to fulfill in the world; it is the mission of the Son and the Spirit through the Father that includes the church” Moltmann 1977:64

Mission is thereby seen as a movement from God to the world; the church is viewed as an instrument for that mission. (Aagaard 1973:13)

There is a church because there is a mission, not vice versa. (Aagaard 1974:423)

To participate in mission is to participate in the movement of God’s love toward people, since God is a fountain of sending love.

David J. Bosch, Transforming Mission: Paradigm Shifts in Theology of Mission (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 1991), 390.

I ran across a great quote in a BGU dissertation by John Lamb. He was making a point about how successful Campus Crusade for Christ has been in ministry over the years, but that achievement is not necessarily an asset as the ministry attempts to address the changes in today’s world. The more successful you are, the more likely you will be driven by that success to do more of the same.

He quotes Dallas Willard from “The Divine Conspiracy”:

Intense devotion to God by the individual or group brings substantial outward success. Outward success brings a sense of accomplishment and a sense of responsibility for what has been achieved — and for further achievement. For onlookers the outward success is the whole thing. The sense of accomplishment and responsibility reorients vision away from God to what we are doing and are to do — usually to the applause and support of sympathetic people. The mission increasingly becomes the vision. It becomes what we are focused upon. The mission and ministry is what we spend our thoughts, feelings, and strength upon. Goals occupy the place of the vision of God in the inward life, and we find ourselves caught up in a vision-less pursuit of various goals. Grinding it out.

Success can cause a ministry to lose focus on what God’s calls it to. Next thing you know we are driven by what we have accomplished and that becomes the important thing. Whether you are a large missions agency or a successful mega-church… success can make it difficult to diagnose our myopia.

Dallas Willard, The Great Omission: Reclaiming Jesus’ Essential Teachings on Discipleship (San Francisco: HarperCollins, 2006), 95.

My friend Cari Jenkins informed me about a new book and documentary entitled, “Lord, Save us From Your Followers.” It is a humorous/incendiary documentary that explores the question, “Why is the Gospel of Love dividing America?” Though interviews, “Bumpersticker man”, and confessionals, this documentary can really stir some great conversations.

I’d like to see it. Let me know if you book it. In the meantime, click below to view the preview.

Visit the website for interviews, short clips, and a host of other things associated with the movie.

Hear the author and director Dan Merchant on a Today Show interview.

This is the second of a two part entry. The first is here.

Ellul continues to describe the scandal of X (true Christianity) by evaluating how our need to create systems and order runs counter to X.

“When we are told that the church has ministers, and its life is organized around them, well and good. But at once we have to remember that these ministries are a gift of the Holy Spirit and not a permanent or organized thing. This leads us to invert the biblical movement. We set up pastoral positions or benefices with rectors and bishops, etc. We then fill these posts with people we think are suitable. But this is the opposite of the movement presented in the Epistles, in which the Holy Spriit gives to the church people who have the gifts of love or the word or teaching, and the church has to find a place for them even if it had not anticipated doing so. If, after a while, the Holy spirit does not give someone who has the spirit of prophecy but gives someone who has the gift of miracles, then the church must change its form and habits!”

We should probably embark on a conversation about the doctrine of the priesthood of all believers but we won’t. But what is important to capture is the idea that there could/should be a flow and flexibility in the offices of the church in relation to the giftedness of the people God has placed into its midst. Should God work within the confines of our human structures, or should our structures flex and support what God is doing?

Within many of our denominational structures, we have placed such importance on our ecclesiology that we put “Congregational” and “Presbyterian” in our names. I think it is a healthy for the church in North America as it moves into what has been called a post-denominational posture. Perhaps it will allow greater flexibility for God’s people to exercise and release their gifts as the Lord so blesses people and congregations.

Ellul continues to show the weakness of structures that are an attempt by humans to create order and sense for themselves.

“No doubt some will reply that God is not a God of disorder, incoherent, or abitrariness, but a God of order. Of course he is. Unfortunately, the whole of the Old Testament shows us that God’s order is not that which we conceive and desire. God’s order is not organization and institution (cf. the difference between judges and kings). It is not the same in every time and place. It is not a matter of repetition and habit. On the contrary, it resides in the fact that it constantly posits something new, a new beginning. Our God is a God of beginnings. There is in him no redundancy or circularity. Thus, if his church wants to be faithful to his revelation, it will be completely mobile, fluid, renascent, bubbling, creative, inventive, adventurous, and imaginative. It will never be perennial, and can never be organized or institutionalized. If the gates of death are not going to prevail against it, this is not because it is a good, solid, well-organized fortress, but because it is alive; it is Life — that is, as mobile, changing , and surprising as life. If it becomes a powerful fortified organization, it is because death has prevailed.” Ellul — P. 157.

These comments thrilled me because I dream of a reimagined church that moves and functions more like a movement than an institution. I’ve been on a journey of learning about Complex Adaptive Systems (Thanks Lee) and Chaos theory. Alan Hirsh’s work in The Forgotten Ways regarding apostolic movements is exquisite and exactly right.

In short, I have felt that our structures, our organizational theories have been been efforts to create order and control, but in the process we placed limits on God and his people, choking the movement of God’s Spirit. There is order and structure, but in a very different way than what our Modern minds have been able to recognize and appreciate. Scandalous.

What would a movement of Christ look like that took seriously these organic, viral, mobile, fluid bubbling, creative, adventurous leanings. Would our structures look more like scaffolds than cathedrals, flexible and responsive to the Lord’s movements? Perhaps as denominations and local churches are freed from religious bureaucracies focused on self-preservation, they will be able to increasingly direct their energies to God’s Kingdom agenda.

“If it becomes a powerful fortified organization, it is because death has prevailed.” I’m sure that the Holy Spirit would never allow the Church to get to this place… on the whole, but in North America, it feels like a dangerously large percentage of the Church has reached this point.

I’m working to subvert the further institutionalization of the church. I want to reimagine a way of following Christ that allows or even embraces chaos and disorder (in human terms). Does this make me an anarchist?

Jacques Ellul (1912–1994) was a French thinker, sociologist, theologian and Christian anarchist. Despite my aversion to anarchy in general, Christian or not, I decided to pick up a copy of his book, The Subversion of Christianity, largely because I saw his work referenced many times in multiple books.

Centrally, he argues that the true and best expression of how to live as a community that is shaped by the gospel became distorted at a very early point due to many different reasons. He persuasively argues that Christianity became subverted by pagan practice and beliefs, focused on moralism, and created it’s religious forms and structures in man’s image.

In Chapter Eight, he continues his thesis that much of what true Christianity, or what he calls “X” throughout the book, is very usually the opposite of what is natural to us. “It is thus a scandal.” Or in the words of Kierkegaaard, nothing displeases or revolts us more than New Testament Christianity when it is properly proclaimed.

In this context Ellul writes that what might be natural to us is order. It is something we want and expect, but “X, when it comes to us, cannot be organized. We can have neither stability, routine, collective permanence, association, nor group cohesion if we want to live by revelation, if we put X at the center as the sole truth.”

“When we are told that the Holy Spirit constituted the church at Pentecost, we like that. But when we learn that the Holy Spirit is like the wind that blows when and where it wills and we do not know where it comes from or where it is going, we do not like it.”

“When we are told that the church consists of those whom God calls, we applaud, but who are they? Who can trace the boundaries? We may say that the church has a center, Jesus Christ, but it has no circumference.”

Ellul is saying we want to clearly know who God is and where he will lead us, but the scandalous truth of God is that we can’t put him in our boxes to satisfy our need for order. Similarly, our desire for some clear categories of who are actually “saved or called” is a desire for order that perhaps cannot lend itself to a clear cut answer. The Church’s answer might be construed as those who are baptized… but even that might be seen as merely a human construct to create categories for who is saved or not.

I think it is fascinating that Ellul, in speaking of who is “in or out” uses language that is eerily close to language of centered-set and bounded-set that is being used today in missional discussions. The scandal is that we can only clearly define the center, Jesus Christ. It is only our need for order/categories that we look for some circumferential border defining who belongs and doesn’t. The scandalous bit is that the determination is God’s business, not ours.

More tomorrow in part two.

I’ve been enjoying this book by the folks over at Missio Dei in Minneapolis. They describe themselves in the introduction as an “Anabaptist community, inspired by the Franciscan tradition, [and] a part of the new monastic movement…”

The Breviary is a liturgical book that captures some of their deepest held convictions. It is basically morning and evening devotions that help their community anchor their orientation toward Christ, a missional commitment to place and a focus on social justice. While designed for use with a community that does this together each morning and evening, I find it useful in my personal devotions, knowing I’m doing it with others.

You can thumb through the entire book, which has been posted online. (Click on the image.) You can also get an RSS feed, or read the daily entry online. Finally, to support their work, you can purchase your own copy from Amazon.

I enjoy a great spiritual formation study with a handful of men on Monday mornings at 6am. We have been working through Dallas Willard’s book, “Renovation of the Heart.” We have been talking about the need to have our mind (thinking, images, ideas) transformed. This is especially important as we work to identify false ideas of God that lead to us live defeated lives. Willard writes:

Ideas and images are, accordingly, the primary focus of Satan’s efforts to defeat God’s purposes with and for humankind. When we are subject to his chosen ideas and images, he can take a nap or a holiday. Thus when he undertook to draw Eve away from God, he did not hit her with a stick, but with an idea. It was with the idea that God could not be trusted and that she must act on her own to secure her own well-being. -Willard p. 100.

We must then work to have a correct understanding of God. Tozer writes:

That our idea of God corresponds as nearly as possible to the true being of God is of immense importance to us. Compared with our actual thoughts about Him, our creedal statements are of little consequence. Our real idea of God may lie buried under the rubbish of conventional religious notions and may require an intelligent and vigorous search before it is finally unearthed and exposed for what it is. Only after an ordeal of painful self-probing are we likely to discover what we actually believe about God… I believe there is scarcely an error in doctrine or a failure in applying Christian ethics that cannot be traced finally to imperfect and ignoble thoughts about God.

I’m quite stimulated by this book.

The author of this book, David T. Olson, has collected a database of over 200,000 churches and has apparently done a good job of comparing and contrasting those numbers with Census data to present some alarming facts about the state of the church in America.

You can find additional information at the book’s website, including Powerpoint presentations specific to cities like our own, San Diego.

For a six-minute glimpse into the research watch the YouTube teaser below: