Donut discipleship: don’t eat the donut and you’ll be a better person.  Eat instead the bran muffin, or the yogurt, or the hardboiled egg.  Just don’t eat the donut.

If you have to eat the donut, at least feel bad about it. Feel bad, and vow to do better next time.

But then again, there’s donuts at tomorrow’s meeting too.  Vow to do better next week.

Know deep down, that if you can find the strength to never eat the donut you will have achieved a certain level of holiness.  But for now, be content with the knowing that you are at least struggling to not eat the donut.  There’s a meretricious valor in the in little ways you try to become a better person.  Somewhere you believe you’re getting credit for wanting to be better.

Because, really, isn’t life a journey and not a destination?  This way I get to eat the donut, indulge my continued narcissism, and count it as part of my discipleship journey.  It’s a guilty pleasure precisely because I can enjoy being guilty.  All the sermons at church confirm this:  Don’t eat the donut.  But if you do, feel bad, try again.  Christianity is about not eating the donut.

Previously I suggested that discipline is unrelated to discipleship.  That is to say, you cannot try harder to be a better Christian.  Most discipleship techniques are merely behavioral modification devices.  If I want to stop drinking, I attend 40 hours of AA meetings a week.  Now I don’t drink because I’m too busy, and because I constantly talk about not drinking.  I haven’t become a person who doesn’t drink, I’m a person who wants to drink but mostly doesn’t.  I can still be a crummy father, husband, person-in-general…but at least I’m not drinking.

The explicit messages from most American churches, pastors, and authors is, “If you can stop doing bad, then you will be good.”

This is not a true statement.

If you stop doing bad things, you will simply become a Mormon.  Or a Pharisee.  Either one is hard work and makes you dress weird.  One involves tassels on your robe, the other requires full body, funny underwear.  Even in the summer season.

The goal of becoming like Christ, the whole death and resurrection / re-formatting the entire cosmos thing, did not happen so that you could simply become a more tepid and boring version of yourself.  Becoming you, in Christ, is not so the much removal of the few petty vices you have, but rather, the overwhelming addition of fruits, gifts, and characteristics that you should have.  I am most fully me when I am bursting forth with love, healing, long-suffering, peace, prophecy, joy, and leadership.  Anything less and I become a pallid imitation of who I’m supposed to be.  I become like Christ by addition, not by subtraction.

Christ was mature not because he hit the holy trifecta tipping point of not smoking, not swearing, and zero lust.  Christ learned obedience and maturity through addition.  He grew in wisdom, stature, and the Holy Spirit.

Too many of our efforts are spent trying to get people to do less to become more.  Rather, the more we walk in the Spirit the less we walk in the flesh.  But the converse is not true: if we walk less in the flesh, we don’t walk more in the Spirit.  The absence of our flesh simply creates more room for sin.  If I quit gossiping, I will simply talk more about politics, or sports, or fall silent.  But if I praise God more, I will quit gossiping and grow in the Spirit.

“Do not be drunk with wine, but be keep being filled with the Spirit.”  Paul is telling us something very important.  Wine is an additive.  Once sipped, wine can’t be disciplined.  Never sipped, and you can’t discipline yourself to feel as though you’ve had wine.  Once inside it effortlessly makes you gregarious, patient, hospitable, and affectionate.  Wine is a discipline-free disciple-maker.  What others take years to fake, you can authentically achieve in mere minutes.  Wine will do things to your personality you can’t manufacture otherwise.

This is how the Spirit works.  Once inside the Spirit effortlessly makes you more joyful, prayerful, faithful, and self-controlled.  But remember, trying to be more joyful, prayerful, faithful, and self-controlled won’t make you more Spiritual.  In the same way that being more gregarious, patient, hospitable, and affectionate won’t put a good Pinot Noir in your system either.

Keep being filled with the Spirit.  Being filled with the Spirit is not a one-time event.  It can be, but it shouldn’t be, is Paul’s point.  Filling must be an everyday, all-day occurrence.  Just as if you filled yourself with wine at every meal also be filled with the Spirit several times a day.

Now, Paul almost could have just as easily said, “Don’t be energized by coffee, but keep being filled by the Spirit.”  Most Americans take to this analogy a bit better.  Coffee effortlessly makes you energetic and focused.  No discipline involved.  Just drink the coffee and get going.

This is the difference between donut discipleship and coffee discipleship.  Donut discipleship says don’t eat the donut, control your appetites, do less.  Coffee discipleship says grab a Starbucks, cultivate an appetite for coffee, do more, be more.  Discipleship is the result of the Spirit working in you, not the result of you working in discipline.  The mark of a disciple is praising, praying, fasting, singing, sharing, eating, and giving.  More, more, more is the disciple.  1 Cor 12-14, Gal 5.22, 2 Peter 1.5, Romans 5.3-5.  These are the lists of qualities and characteristics that we add and add and add to ourselves by the Spirit in Christ.  Becoming Christ-like is more.  The role of the Spirit is to add more of you everyday.  You are adding to others.  Discipleship is growing, not restricting.

“Journey”, like the other J-word, has become the answer you can give in church to just about any question, without fear of ever being wrong. That’s because it’s not really an answer at all, more a kind of verbal smokescreen.

To be “on a journey”, spiritually-speaking, means you’re heading in the right direction (probably) but wouldn’t claim to have everything sussed. It suggests wisdom and perspective, balance and humility, without giving substantial proof that you possess any of those qualities. As such it is extremely useful. Try slipping “journey” in during a small group meeting and I guarantee that at least half the heads in the circle will nod empathetically, even if the question was whether you’d like a shortbread finger.

Given its unassailable status, how very tempting it is to stroke the cat backwards and try arguing that, on the contrary, your faith isn’t anything like a journey. I suspect that actual violence might ensue…

Mike (group leader): Andrew, tell us a little about your faith.

Andrew: Thanks Mike. Well, it’s become increasingly important for me to recognise that my faith isn’t a journey…

Mike: I’m sorry?

The rest of group raise their heads, glance at each other.

Andrew: That my faith isn’t a journey.

Mike (offended): Well it must be; everyone’s is.

Andrew: I’m sorry, it just isn’t.

Mike. It is, I tell you! (to supportive cries from other group members)

Andrew: I used to think it was, but I was wrong – it’s really very liberating, because I hate journeys. Prefer arriving. Instead, my faith is more like a…

Before he can speak, the rest of the group have risen towards him as one.

Mike: Seize him!

Andrew: … more like a….

Mike and assorted group members manhandle him out, to cries of Take away his coffee! That’s it, grab his legs, etc.

Andrew (above the din): … more like a… story.   (Read the rest here)

____________________________________

Mind your metaphors.  How is a journey different than a destination?

Or, put another way, how is journeying through the wilderness different than possessing the Promised Land?  The commission was not to wander through the Promised Land, but to possess it.  Jesus did not call people to wander through the Kingdom of God, but to live in it.

The wrong metaphors will give you a silly Christianity that is prone to frustration and immaturity.

Inception, Infographics, and Discipleship

Try this exercise: have your staff design an infographic for the discipleship process at your church.  It’s a red flag if you get a roomful of blank looks or they end up with this after an hour:

continue reading here….

Awesome at….

In what ways does your church help people become awesome in the their day-to-day living?   Too often churches help people be awesome at church:  When to show up, where to volunteer next, what to give.

But try it another way.  Let’s insert specific words and see what we get.

• “We help Fathers be awesome at….”
• “We help Husbands be awesome at….”
• “We help Men be awesome at….”

continue reading here….

or, Should Churches Have “Names”?

In response to Zach’s blog here.

Related posts from myself: http://tiny.cc/q3sq9

An article I remembered afterward.

Some quick thoughts on the subject:

I look at the situation from a brand vs product dynamic.  Usually people / groups like to brand themselves to show that they’re different, unique, or better.  Church 1 doesn’t do anything different than Church 2, but they believe in pre-trib rapture instead of post-trib rapture, or spiritual gifts, or Reformed theology.  Since they don’t do anything different, that is, since they don’t have a different product, it becomes necessary to differentiate by branding and marketing.

Let’s call branding the whole interaction of your product, their experience, and marketing.  Product is what you produce and what I take away; experience is how, when, and the contexts in which I engage and interact with your product; and marketing is the promise of what this product will do for me in the future.

Right now, most American churches brand themselves as Evangelical.  If you go to an Evangelical church, your experience will be: a music set of personal songs to a personal Jesus, a sermon of spiritual principles that can be individually applied, and all done in about an hour.

Now, within that Evangelical brand they market to different demographics.  Assembly of God, Covenant, Calvary Chapel, Baptist, and non-denom are all marketing a different promise: more spirit, more multi-cultural, more doctrine, and more of less, sequentially.  But if the promise doesn’t materialize it doesn’t matter.  The promise is what you wanted out of the brand, not what the brand offered.  The brand is individual experience in a group setting.

Like a movie.  Regardless of which movie you see, be it Schindler’s List or The Matrix, you will never participate in the making of the movie, the acting, or the revenue.  Your interaction is passive consumerism.  The active consumerism is deciding which movie you want to see and deciding how much you liked or disliked the movie afterward.  It gives the semblance of active participation.  But participation only as a consumer.  The brand is movie, the product is [title here], the marketing how it will contribute to your identity as high brow, action, or funny.

So should a church have a name?  That depends on if you’re naming the marketing, the experience, or the product. Hamlet as a book, movie, a Broadway play, or Shakespearean festival are the same name, but different marketing, experiences, and products. So to, Hamlet is different if you’re a reader, a watcher, or an actor.

One question to ask is whether your church is a community, an hour-long service, a Body, or a group of individuals.  The marketing, experience, and product will differ accordingly.  While most churches think they can be all of the above, I don’t think that’s possible either practically or biblically.  But that leads to the overall confusion about what the church is, how to interact with it, and how to promote it.

The other question is,”what do others call you?”  Other people will name and define what you do.  Pay attention to whether they call it community, church, or way of life.  We spend a lot of time trying to tell people we’re a community, but in the end they call us church as usual.

Within a Corinthian context, Paul rebukes the notion and practice of factions. Named or not.  But Paul’s remedy is to define the outcome, not the name.  If your product and experience looks like I Cor 14, where people are involved in an empowering and equipping community of the Spirit, then call it whatever you want. If you’re doing church based on doctrinal distinctions and personal freedoms, then just calling it something different won’t help it become something it’s not.

This is an interesting article because it raises some broader issues.

Like Trish notes: did anyone really speak for the Evangelical church in the past?  The white, middle-class faction was certainly represented.  But did that representation help? Or did it only coalesce and reinforce the blending of Evangelicalism with the American Way of the early 20th Century?

I’d make this argument: Evangelicalism’s heritage is problematic precisely because it has none.  It’s a movement whose main motivation was to distance itself from Fundamentalist, Catholics, and Pentecostals.  All those movements were fraught with embarrassing, counter-cultural tradition, doctrine, and practices.  For those who wanted a mass Christianity it had to appeal to the mass culture.  Therefore it made sense to reduce everything to principles, private, and personal.  A movement birthed with Neo-liberalism’s gospel principles mixed with American private sensibilities and crossed with Billy Graham’s personal Jesus experience.  It was the answer to question, “How can my Christianity coexist with my American lifestyle?”  This is seen in C.F.H. Henry’s push for inerrant principles not inerrant practices.  As an Evangelical I can think differently without having to act differently.

It’s possible no one is speaking for the Evangelical Church because it isn’t saying anything.  They’ve become so culturally attenuated that Glenn Beck is probably the closest real thing they have to a speaker.  He’s religious, political, and unashamed.  But isn’t he Mormon?  Does it matter?  This is the Evangelical heritage: a checklist of personal principles over outward practice.  On a hundred point checklist, Glenn Beck would differ only by 10 points from any leading Evangelical.  But there would also be a 10 point (or more) difference among Jim Baker, Swagger, Wallis, or Dobson, or Kennedy and they’re allowed under the umbrella.  Evangelicalism is founded on the lowest common-denominator belief system and it’s a little too late to get choosy now.
I don’t know that Evangelicalism was ever supposed to have a speaker.  It was supposed to create an acceptable theological bridge to the dominant culture.  And it succeeded.  This is why Oprah, Osteen, or Obama can just as easily speak for Evangelicals today: we just selectively apply their bits and pieces to the loosely held platitudes that comprise our spirituality.

Who speaks for us today?  I’d like to see the Body of Christ speak with power and compassion in the midst of a perverse generation and a dying world.  In fact, I’d like to see a whole lot less speaking and more doing.  And while there has been token gestures toward social justice and compassion ministries in the last decade, they aren’t making a difference and these efforts have ended up as so much empty marketing.  Surely compassion ministries and social justice extend beyond fixing up yards, handing out water, and random acts of kindness?   It isn’t that Evangelicals don’t care, it’s that they confuse the church as another social service.  Unless the church moves in the power of Christ as the community of the Spirit, it will never have anything to offer the world around them.  Unless the church speaks prophetically it has nothing to say.

Anyway, I enjoyed the post, thanks John.

Disciplines don’t make disciples.  That is to say, most of our modern day “spiritual disciplines” are really a rather benign and menial checklist of religious gestures.  I say gestures because they don’t even rise to the level of habits or behaviors.  Gestures are forms and formulas of going through the right motions at the right times.  But gestures are easy to do and look right for the right people.

Let’s be clear: becoming a disciple is not the same as discipleship and unrelated to discipline.  Discipline is trying harder to do better.  Or more specifically, trying harder to be better.  Sleeping in, eating donuts, and watching tv are not disciplines.  I am simply obeying my appetites.  However, getting up early, eating vegetables, and reading my bible are disciplines.  I am doing things I am not hungry for.  We believe these disciplines will make us better.  They must, because disciplines, by their very definition, are hard to do.  In doing them I believe I have accomplished something.  I believe I can re-shape myself.

But disciplines don’t make us better.  Disciplines may make us busier or change our activities; but disciplines don’t change us.  This is self-evident: I am only as strong as my weakest discipline.  And it’s my weakness that are the problem.  My strengths are fine.  I am bound by my genetics.  Regardless of how much basketball I practice, I cannot make myself taller.

Failure is inevitable.  Trying to change is not hard, IT’S IMPOSSIBLE.  (Anyone who has the discipline of reading their Bible knows this.)  Romans 7 states explicitly that your body is dead and unable to change.  You cannot improve on death.  Eating better, going to the gym, listening to classical music will not improve the condition of death.  You are destined to fail regardless of how hard you try.  Reading your bible everyday, going to church, and having quiet time will not improve on the condition of death.

How many of you remember when you were in the womb?  Do you remember the strain and travail of growing?  Doing baby pushups, eating right, doing the harder crosswords.  And that was after evaluating and picking the right parents, the best economic strata, best country, the best time to be born into.  All this effort and evaluation to gestate, grow, and be born.

What?  You don’t remember that?  That’s because it didn’t happen.  Conception, gestation, birth were all effortless (at least, it was effortless for you).  This is Romans 8: you are made alive by the Spirit.  This is the only possible improvement for death: re-birth!  To be born of the Spirit is to be made alive incorruptible and sinless.  But what of discipline?  What about making myself better?  Discipline becomes a pointless exercise for the part of you that is incorruptible.

To sum up thus far:  1) discipline is pointless for dead beings, 2) discipline is pointless for new creation.  QED, discipline is pointless.

Do or do not, there is no try.

What about becoming a disciple?  Becoming a disciple is not the process of becoming a better you, it is the process of becoming someone else.  You forsake what you were doing, where you were going, to follow someone else.  A disciple does not attend weekend conferences or read how-to books.  A disciple sells everything, leaves everyone, and goes to live with the master.  A disciple joins a cult.  But in a good way.  You give up all claim to possessions and ambitions.  You sign up for something bigger.  You don’t try to be a disciple.  You are or you aren’t.  Even Yoda know this,”there is no try, do or do not.”

To be a disciple is not a matter of effort, it is simply a matter of decision.  There is no mountain to climb or sea to swim.  To be a disciple of Jesus is to not just leave your family, but to hate your family.  To be a disciple of Jesus is not try harder, it’s to take your cross and be put to death.  A disciple decides to follow, to become one with the master.  What he does, I do.  Where he goes, I go.  What he says, I say.

To become a disciple is a matter of decision, not effort.  Discipline is not part of becoming a disciple.  Obedience is the mark of a disciple.  By definition, disciples are those who obey their masters.  Disciples are not those who try harder.

To make disciples we baptize people (where effortless rebirth happens), then we teach them how to effortlessly grow into Christ, His Body, as they obey the Spirit.

Really the whole thing couldn’t be easier.  This is Grace, this is Salvation. This is life in the Kingdom.  Sonship, maturation, and suffering are clearer concepts for American /Westernized minds when talking about life in the Spirit.  We too easily confuse discipleship with discipline.

How are disciples made?  Apparently the concept wasn’t too foreign to the, well, disciples.  They had spent the last three years being discipled by Jesus.  Interestingly, Jesus hadn’t given them a list of “spiritual disciplines” to master, like, 1) read the Bible in a year, 2) have quiet time in morning, 3) tithe gross not net, 4) don’t smoke, drink, or eat certain foods, 5) find an occasional weekend of solitude, or 6) short term missions trip.  Rather, in making them into disciples, Jesus had taught them how to relate to the people and the culture around them.  He had taught them how to act in power, redemption, and love.

It’s interesting that in our modern Christian culture we create a list of individual “disciplines” that are supposed to make us better Christians.  These disciplines are supposed to make a better “me”, a more spiritual me.  A Christianized self-improvement plan.  A list of practices I can do by myself, for myself, to myself, for the betterment of myself.  Nobody else needs to be effected.  Indeed, there is no expectation of affecting someone else.

Of course, applying this definition of spiritual disciplines has produced the very model of the modern, American disciple.  The American disciple is a fine combination of Western individualism and religious impulses, drawing from a syncretized cultural heritage of Eastern mysticism, random asceticism, Oprah, Dr. Phil, and Joel Osteen.  The American disciple has been crafted by an American church that is culturally relevant, Kingdom irrelevant, and is always trying to pass off volunteering in the children’s department as “ministry”.  In short, the American disciple is an American disciple, not a Kingdom disciple.

The American Way is the pursuit of self: life, liberty, and happiness.  Or, home-ownership, the corporate ladder, Prozac, and Prilosec.  We create ourselves in the image of ourselves, and ask God to bless the effort.  And the culturally relevant church cannot be any different.  To be culturally relevant necessitates that part of the church’s task is to help in this transformation.  Getting smarter, applying yourself, and trying harder is the civic religion of the American faithful whose reward is promotion and wealth.  Their’s is a transactional God who trades blessing for hard work.  ”God blesses those who bless themselves” is the slogan of a popular American religion.  This is how we can shamelessly expect our civic God to bless our businesses, our sports teams, and our armies.  Only in American do we expect that God will reveal to us our leadership style so that we may do good by doing well.  This civic religion is comprised of universal truths that I appropriate selectively to meet my needs as an individual.  Only in America can we have universal truths leading to a personal Jesus and individual salvation.

But in the end, no one is deceived: we are not creating disciples.  We are creating workers, we are creating individuals, we are creating man in the image of man.  But we are not creating disciples in the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.  Our civic religion is culturally relevant because it is culturally similar.  Our disciplines are simply those of the Protestant work ethic and nothing more.  Civic religion may lead to a first-world country but it doesn’t lead to the Kingdom of heaven.

Enough then, disciplines do not produce disciples.  Relationships make disciples.  Disciples are those who know Christ, as Savior and King.  In Christ, you know God, but as Father, not universal truth.  In Christ, you know the Spirit who makes you part of the community of the Spirit, the Body of Christ.  The Godhead can only be known relationally.  As a “truth”, God is condemnation and judgment.  As Son we know God as Abba.  Disciples are those who know God through Christ in the Spirit.  Life in the Spirit produces peace, joy, patience, kindness.  There is no discipline for those.  Practicing the Ten Commandments will keep you out of trouble, but it will not produce disciples.  Discipline itself proves that you cannot become a disciple.  That fact that more and more effort is required to keep coming short.  Discipline reveals your best efforts as pallid and pathetic imitations of discipleship.

Rebirth and resurrection are the pathway to new life, new relationship, and new identity.  Resurrection cannot be achieved through discipline.  Rebirth comes by obedience not effort.  Kingdom life is marked by growth not strain.  Instead of self-improvement, disciples are defined as those who reach out to their neighbors, who eat with the fatherless, who pray with the needy, who bring the gospel to the poor.  At the Last Day, the Judge of Creation will not look for those who improved themselves but those who improved others.

“Go into the world and make disciples.”  We cannot make disciples from afar, nor can we make disciples from an elevated pulpit.  We make disciples by immersing them in the Kingdom life of the Father, Son, and Spirit, where we live in faith, hope, love.