Monthy Archive: September 2010
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September 23, 2010

Life : I’m Baaaack (for now)

I suddenly find myself with a lot of things I want to write about, so I have decided to reboot my blog (given the IP issues, I am certainly not going to put these essays up on Facebook). I have no idea how long this wave of inspiration will last; but while it does, I’ll be posting my sighs and musings here again. I continue to recommend that people follow this blog via an RSS reader – that way you don’t have to keep checking here to see if there are new posts. You’ll get them whenever I post, regardless of the lag in between. It is still too early to tell if I will be able to settle in to a regular schedule or not.

Before I get into more substantial comments, it would seem appropriate to catch people up on the state of my life (although I suspect that anyone still looking for posts here already knows). A couple years ago Anne and I moved from Silicon Valley up into San Francisco. Well, the short version is that we moved back down. What’s more, we have decided to end our wandering ways (or at least stopping looking for opportunities to move out of the area) and have purchased a home. So at the age of 50, I am finally putting down some roots. As one might imagine, a lot of thought went into both decisions, and some of that thinking will end up on this blog in due course.

Associated with the move, we are once again looking for a new church home (not that we ever really found one in San Francisco – another source of posts to look forward to). There is a church within a half mile of our house that we are cautiously optimistic about; but are still getting to know it. I can already see that it is a place that I can learn from (they have some interesting differences which hint at a fresh perspective); but the bottom line as always is: where does God want me?

Finally, it has been 14 months since I have regularly blogged. That has given me some time to re-organize my thoughts on some subjects, and I have some new ways of looking at old subjects. I keep looking for an opportunity to start writing a book instead of a collection blog posts; but that has not yet come together. So I’ll keep working on my ideas and my writing skill here.

Posted by Steven at 05:00 AM | Permalink

September 24, 2010

Faith : Of growth, natural and otherwise

When a farmer sees that some crops may not be growing as they should, the farmer starts to look at things like the weather (has it been too hot? too cold? too sunny? cloudy?); the soil (too acid? base? not enough nutrients? etc.); irrigation (too much water? too little?) and the like. Essentially, they look at the environment in which their crops are growing because they know that plants will grow just fine on their own if you give them the right environment. What they don’t do is grab the plans and start pulling on them to try and stretch them; or paint them to make their color better - trying to directly make plants grow better never works.

This is a lesson the church needs to learn.

I believe that Christians will grow to be fruitful disciples quite naturally if they are given the right environment to grow in. Their fruit will both be personal (love, joy, peace, longsuffering, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control) and evangelical (sharing their faith with others). There is nothing you need to do to get a Christian to grow in this way if you have given them the right environment.

If there are aspects of growth that are not present in people lives, what we need to be asking is: what is lacking in the environment in which they are growing? Why is this growth not happening naturally as it should? There are numerous factors that could be involved and listing them all is impossible; my desire here is not to give answers but to encourage the right questions to be asked.

Unfortunately, in most churches what happens is that when someone sees that the congregation isn’t growing in some way is that a program is created to artificially produce growth. People aren’t sharing their faith, so let’s start a door-to-door ministry or a tract distribution ministry. Men aren’t supporting each other so let’s create a men’s ministry. People aren’t reading The Bible so let’s create Sunday School classes to teach them.

Now it could be countered that these programs are just attempts at establishing the right environment, and I accept that many sincere, well-meaning people view it that way. In many cases they believe that because they have never seen church done any other way. The distinction I am making here is between told “now we are going to do X (study, evangelize, build relationships, etc.)” and doing X because you are driven to do it from inside (by your heart and by God’s Spirit within you).

When I first began my journey of following Jesus, I read the Bible through in about a year. I didn’t do that because I was told to do it – I did it because I wanted to understand this thing I had become a part of. You would have had to struggle to get me to not read my Bible. Likewise, in those early years I was quick to tell people about what I was learning about God, and led several people to begin their own journeys. Again, I didn’t do this because it was Saturday morning and therefore time to “do evangelism” – I did it because I was excited about my new relationship with Jesus and talked about it (just like I talked about everything else I was excited about).

It took several years of being part of your typical American churches for those natural desires to be squeezed into the church’s programs and for the passion to disappear.

I am also not suggesting that organized activities are a bad thing. If a group of men, who have already started to form relationships with each other, want to get together regularly to support each other in their faith, that’s a great idea – such meetings would be a natural, organic outgrowth of their relationships. If a group of believers find themselves drawn to the homeless who are living in a local park and want to express God’s love to them (both in actions and words) in an organized way, by all means. Such actions come about because the individuals are growing in an environment that encourages love and action. My objection is only to creating programs and institutions to do something that people should be doing; but no one wants to do because the environment doesn’t encourage such growth. My plea is that when we discover something lacking in the discipleship of people in the church, we ask "why are they not motivated to do this on their own?" and look at the environment we have provided to them in our churches to see what is lacking to support that growth.

Posted by Steven at 05:00 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

September 26, 2010

Life : Regarding Mentorship in The Church

As part of his comment on my previous post, Stacy asked:

What is your perspective on the mentor/mentee relationship? Do you see that as a viable avenue for spiritual growth?

Mentor/Mentee is a bit of a touchy subject as I was witness to some of the failure of the Discipleship/Shepherding Movement a couple decades ago and know people who lost their way because of being dominated by others in the name of mentorship. For those not old enough to recall, starting in the late 70’s there was a big push (led by a small group of well-know Christian leaders) to use mentorship relationships as a means to encourage spiritual growth among Christians. Sounds logical, and it certainly has good Biblical foundations.

Unfortunately, in a far too many cases this was pushed to an extreme with the mentor lording in over the mentee. I personally avoided being harmed (I have no problem telling someone “no” and leaving relationships that aren’t healthy); but saw many younger Christians messed up by it. I still run into people who are afraid to go back to church because of bad experiences with “Mentors.”

I’ll also note that a couple of the early leaders later publicly repented of the teaching – not for their own actions (which remained reasonable) but for misleading the church into dangerous territory. I personally believe that anytime your create an unequal relationship within the church, you are asking for problems (although unpacking that statement would take several posts – but I am headed in that direction). We serve the church in different roles; but none of those roles are higher, more important, or more powerful than others. Church structures that violate that principle will always result in sin.

All that being said, the idea of mentorship is quite biblical and there clearly is a place for it in Christian discipleship. I started to write, “the trick is to provide appropriate safeguards” and realized I was slipping into the same error I was writing about in the previous post – thinking of programs to “fix” failures in the church as opposed to going back to organic solutions.

The reality is that the good mentor/mentee relationships I personally have had were not structured as mentor/mentee relationships. They were relationships I had with more mature (experienced) Christians where we each were free to speak into the other’s lives. Given the differences in experience, I was more often on the receiving end of input; but the individuals made a point to seek out my advice (even if just to show me how my advice was still looking at the issues from a worldly perspective). We were truly “submitted to one another” but I was gaining benefit from the other’s greater experience.

It’s that kind of relationships we need to create in the church – ones that are structured as mutual, egalitarian relationships; but yet allow less mature Christians to gain benefit from the experience of more mature ones. I’m just afraid that as soon as you start to call it Mentor/Mentee, you are asking for trouble.

Posted by Steven at 05:00 AM | Permalink

September 28, 2010

Faith : A Parable in Golf

(Feel free to substitute other appropriate activities for Golf – the story remains the same. For me personally “Board Games” works just as well).

Imagine a world where there is a subculture of people who believe Golf is the ultimate activity. These Golf fanatics gather together every week in special-built auditoriums to hear professional golfers talk about the game. The professionals give talks every week explaining the fine points of the game and advise the gathered fans on how to improve their swing. The fans also sing songs about how great Golf is and, because paying for the building and the professional golfer to speak isn’t cheap, they collect donations so the meetings can continue. A whole industry has grown up around these fans. Books are written about how to read the green and to choose which club to use, and dedicated bookstores exist to sell these books (as well as trinkets with Golf-related logos).

And yes, sometimes a few of the fans actually go and play a game of Golf; although for most of the fans it is enough that they know how to play from having been to weekly talks on the subject. Few actually own clubs and many have never even touched a golf ball, yet they remain confident in their understanding of the game because they have listening to people talk about it since they were a child. Those occasions when a fan actually plays the game are significant events, and quite often the fan is asked to say a few words about their experience at the weekly meeting before the professional comes up and gives their Golf lesson.

Now things are not always peaceful among the Golf fans. Major disagreements exist on topics like the correct stance when putting, whether it is appropriate to use a golf cart when playing, and what kinds of clubs are legal to use. Some disagreements have become so heated that fans with different views will simply not play with each other. Among the professionals, different tours have formed and certain players only play on certain tours and won’t even visit a golf course that is used for a different tour.

There are also some fans (led by professionals) who have taken upon themselves to defend the honor of Golf. They protest at football games, and object when schools teach things like volleyball. They complain about TV shows where a golfer is shown hitting a ball into a rough since golfers aren’t supposed to do that. Of course all that protesting takes up a lot of time, so these fans rarely have the opportunity to actually play the game themselves. It is more important to them to discourage other people from engaging in “lesser” activities.

"He who has an ear, let him hear"
:)

Posted by Steven at 05:00 AM | Permalink