broken//stained//glass

A Rock-dropping Ceremony for Brian

Yesterday I met with my friend Brian for coffee. Brian is a senior at Temple University in the city. He had called me earlier in the week and said that he needed to get together with me and tell me some things that were going on in his life.

I remember the first time I met Brian. It was after a service in the middle of a series we were doing called They like Jesus but don't like the Church based off of Dan Kimball's book by that title. During my teaching that night I had told a story about my interaction with someone I knew who was intrigued by Jesus but was turned off by organized religion. He sought me out after the service and told me point-blank: "It sounds like the people you want to connect with are people like me." He told me that he is not a follower of Jesus. I truly felt the Spirit of God prompting me to call Brian, connect with him and hear more of his story. Since that conversation that night - and for the past 11 months - Brian and I have been meeting every other week to read the Bible together and discuss it.

Brian is the first person I have ever discipled before they have come to faith. We've memorized Scripture together and worked through the book of Mark. I gave him my Bible from college. We've prayed together. (I remember how astonished I was when Brian would pray that his friends at school would become Christians - and this was before Brian was even a Christian!) Each time we met, Brian would tell me that he was getting closer to understanding the role of God in his life, but he would honestly share his hesitations as to why he couldn't fully give himself over to the ways of Jesus. Brian has asked some wonderful questions about faith and God and the Scriptures during our meetings - the kind of questions that are so honest and inquisitive and street level that you wished every person would ask.

Last year on Good Friday we went through an experiential prayer station experience where I explained the importance of the cross and the empty tomb as we walked around and reflected on Christ's sacrifice. One station was about forgiveness where we were encouraged to take a rock in our hands and stand silently and prayerfully over a bucket of water and meditate on forgiveness and the sacrifice that Jesus had made for us. When we had understood the forgiveness extended to us we were to release the rock from our hands and watch it fall into the bucket. It was a powerful experience.

Brian and I partook in that together - but before Brian dropped the rock in the bucket I encouraged him to hold onto it. I told him that I thought it would be meaningful if he didn't drop the rock in the bucket (yet) but instead save the rock. Later, if/when he came to the point in his journey where he was ready to completely follow the life and teachings of Jesus, we could have our own private rock releasing ceremony into a bucket of water. He said that was a great idea and would be special for him if/when he was ready. 

Well, yesterday Brian sat down and said, "There's something I need to tell you. Remember that rock exercise we did Easter weekend?"
"Yeah."
"I'm ready."
"What?"
"Yeah. I'm ready for my own rock dropping ceremony. On Saturday I took the leap of faith and decided it was time to become a Christian. So I did."

All I could do was sit there like a sappy wuss with tears rolling down my cheeks.
As Brian saw my tears he said, "I knew you would do that!"
I asked him what finally pushed him over the edge and he told me he felt that it was time to finally give the entirety of his life to Christ.  It was just time.
And then he said, "Thanks for all you've done in my life. I would not have made this decision without you and our times together. Thanks for helping me make this decision."
More tears.

Ironically, Brian is telling me all of this in the same coffee shop at the same table where I had a conversation with another Brian about faith just a week prior.

Brian wrote this on his Facebook page earlier this week:

"I had an amazing and powerful weekend. GO GOD! Go Phillies! And oh yeah, I guess go Birds [Eagles]!"

I'm so grateful, humbled and overwhelmed to be involved in people's lives long enough to see God's spirit at work like he has been working in Brian's life. The Spirit has slowly, gently and progressively been working in Brian's life to come to that decision on Saturday. And I'm pumped to continue to meet with Brian to witness more transformation and growth in his own life (the rest of yesterday's conversation: Brian asking questions about what it means to allow the Holy Spirit to guide and teach us). 

This is the very reason we stepped out in faith to start the Renew Community - to see people's lives renewed by the power of the gospel message. I hope this is the first of many rock-dropping ceremonies at Renew.

Spiritual Formation online

Here is a great investment of 10 minutes each day as you sit down at your computer.
Check it out.

Christianity's reputation

What reputation would you want Christianity to have 30, 100, 500 years from now?
Whatever our answer is, we should be living with that goal in mind today, shouldn't we? 

When disciples turn back

Reading John 6 recently I stumbled across this intriguing passage:

60 On hearing it, many of his disciples said, "This is a hard teaching. Who can accept it?"61Aware that his disciples were grumbling about this, Jesus said to them, "Does this offend you? 62What if you see the Son of Man ascend to where he was before! 63The Spirit gives life; the flesh counts for nothing. The words I have spoken to you are spirit and they are life. 64Yet there are some of you who do not believe." For Jesus had known from the beginning which of them did not believe and who would betray him. 65He went on to say, "This is why I told you that no one can come to me unless the Father has enabled him."66 From this time many of his disciples turned back and no longer followed him.

That last phrase - "many of his disciples turned back and no longer followed him" - jumped out at me. Certainly, Jesus had more disciples than the Twelve. How many and to what level of commitment, we don't know, but he certainly had followers who considered Jesus their rabbi. I wonder how that must have made Jesus feel - to have your followers, your own disciples, turn their backs and say that its too difficult, it's too much to handle. Was Jesus sad? Was he disappointed? Did he take it personally? Might he have been shocked or did he expect this? How much of his humanity came out when he saw people lower their face, scratch their head and walk away?

As every pastor knows, there are times when it is tempting to soften the message of the gospel because we fear that people will find it too difficult or will turn their backs.
But Jesus didn't soften the message when it was communicated to his followers.

The passage continues:

67"You do not want to leave too, do you?" Jesus asked the Twelve. 68 Simon Peter answered him, "Lord, to whom shall we go? You have the words of eternal life. 69We believe and know that you are the Holy One of God."

I wonder what Jesus' tone was in verse 67. Was he frustrated, defensive, hurt? Or did he see this has a poignant teaching opportunity to talk about commitment and total surrender?

I have to ask myself that if I were a follower of Jesus in the first century and I heard this difficult teaching would I have continued to follow and responded like Peter or would I have walked?

In a culture of convenience and instant gratification, I''m challenged today by the serious calling and the significant cost of following Jesus.

Praying For Our Enemies

In our weekly discipleship group of eleven other guys we've memorized 1 John 2:6: "Whoever claims to live in him must walk as Jesus did."

Last week I asked the question, "Who annoys you, makes your life difficult, mistreats you, attempts to make your life difficult? Write it down." We spent about five minutes make lists of co-workers, neighbors, relatives, bosses, groups of people.

Then we looked at the red letters of Jesus. Specifically where he tells his followers to love their enemies and pray for those who persecute them.
So we decided to walk as Jesus did - and pray every day this week for the people on that list we had just created. It's been a difficult, but refining and freeing exercise to participate in.

As I've breen praying through my list this week, I received an email from an organization that Megan and I support called Gospel for Asia, an international missions organization that trains locals in the 10/40 window to become pastors and missionaries. Many would-be pastors and missionaries, especially in India and Pakistan, are persecuted (mostly physically) for their faith.

The email came from the president of GFA, Dr. K.P. Yohannan, asking for prayer on an attack by local militants on a training school in India. In the email, it mentioned that those attending the school were attacked by 500 anti-Christian militants, causing destruction, power outage and a few people seriously injured (one in critical condition).

The staff is praying for the attackers, the email writes - not that they would be captured, but that their attackers would be blessed and that one day they would have the opportunity to tell them about Jesus. Talk about living out the words of Jesus! These nameless missionaries in India are challenging me by their obedience to the red letters of Jesus.

Read about the story here.
Be challenged and encouraged by our brothers and sisters in Christ who are living our the words of Jesus.
And be praying for them and the other nameless members of the Body of Christ who are being persecuted every single day for their faith.

Discpleship: Jesus as Master Teacher

We've all seen the bumper sticker or the t-shirt that reads: "Jesus is Lord."
While I believe that to be true, I've wondered why I've never seen a bumper sticker on the back of a minivan in traffic that reads "Jesus is Master Teacher."

It should not read, "Jesus is Teacher." There are many good teachers out there. It should read "Master Teacher" - he is above all other teachers that have ever lived. When we say we are disciples of Jesus we are acknowleding that he is our Master Teacher - there is no other by which we should life from.

I think it's because we get the Jesus as Lord and Savior thing (a salvific understanding of the gospel) pretty well - starting from when we're old enough to sit in those little squatty chairs and eat Graham Crackers in Sunday school - but we miss the Jesus as Master Teacher element (a transformed-life-in-process understanding of the gospel). Somehow - though I am not sure how - Lord and Teacher got separated in our theology - and it desperately needs to be joined back together.

I've arrived late to the show. This idea of seeing the whole gospel (Jesus as Lord and Jesus as Master Teacher) is something I've just recently discovered in the past three years or so. And it has changed my understanding of a centered, committed life in Jesus completely.

When we see God and his son Jesus only as our Divine Lifeguard on duty and not as our Master Teacher (the Maestro, rabbi, teacher of every area of my life, etc.) guiding and directing our lives, can we really comprehend discipleship enough to live it out?

So next time you're in traffic and you see that bumper sticker or you are in the mall and see someone wearing that T-shirt ask yourself, "yeah, but is he also my Master Teacher?"

It's only when we join Lord with Master Teacher do we have the foundation for discipleship to begin in our lives.

Thoughts on Discipleship from Australia

Recently, my Aussie pastor-friend Josh and I have been trading thoughts about discipleship. I just noticed he has some good thoughts on discipleship over on his blog. Looks like he'll be doing a very interesting series on the topic...wish I could listen to his teachings.
Check out his thoughts here.

Sign Posts

A former high school teacher and friend of mine has listed some sign posts for wise living on his blog.
Check it out here.
For those of who us are followers -- er...disciples of Jesus these are significant sign posts to guide us in our journey with God.

Random Thoughts on Followers and Disciples and the Difference Between the Two

Follower or Disciple: What's the Difference? That's what I'm been chewing on.

WARNING: Random thoughts ahead.

Over the last several years, it seems, the word Christian (especially with the word Evangelical placed before it)  is seen by our culture more as a politicized term used to describe a group of people and what they are against, rather than someone committed to becoming like the master Teacher Jesus.

When people ask the question, "Are you a Christian?" it can be pretty loaded. It could be a question  of your religious affiliation..or a euphemism for "how do you vote?" or "what's your stance on homosexuality and abortion?"

Many churches, pastors, communicators and others - me included - have tried to move away from that word in our everyday vocabulary. Don't get me wrong, I'm not ashamed to associate with Christ. I'm not embarrassed to be called one. It's not because the term is bad or untrue, but because it's been so misunderstood; it's lost its weight and significance and context. It's become its own brand, genre of media, it's own political agenda. Ironically, the word was always intended to be a noun and was never intended to be an adjective. Yet we have Christian bookstores, Christian music, Christian T-shirts (oh, don't get me started on that one), Christian radio stations, etc, etc, etc...
It's not all bad (I did go to a Christian college and loved the experience). But it can create a worldview of "us/them" if we're not careful.

So many of us have replaced that word with what we believe to be other more contextually accurate or less negative terms such as follower of Christ or Christ follower. I've liked that because it strips away the political (capital and lower case "p") baggage associated with it.

However, I was reading Matthew 4:23-25 the other day and was struck by the difference in the text between followers and disciples. Maybe I'm reading into it a bit too much on this one, but I see a difference at least. Especially verse 25: "Large crowds from Galilee, the Decapolis, Jerusalem, Judea and the region across the Jordan followed him."

Based on the context of Mark and the chapter in which these verses take place there seems to be a level of fascination - even curiosity - with those who were following him, not necessarily a conviction, a radical, transformational life change of the crowd. I wonder if many of those 'followers' stopped following and fell away - it reminds of the parable of the Sower of the seeds that fell on good soil, grew up a little bit, but were eventually choked out.

Jesus had many, many followers as Mark records. But he had very few disiples - the twelve that we know about...and I'd probably include the Marys, Martha, Lazarus, Zacchaeus and a few others sprinkled throughout the gospel texts.

Again, I am not trying to split hairs here. While I believe there is a difference between being a Christian (as 85% of Americans claim they are) and being a follower of Jesus, I also believe there is (or should be) an important distinction between following Jesus and wanting to be a disciple of him - an apprentice, as Dallas Willard would say.

Which makes me wonder: am I a follower of Jesus or a disciple? And how would I determine that? How would others determine that by what they see in my life?

More thoughts on discipleship

Yesterday I was invited  to teach a seminary class on discipleship for a couple of hours. I thoroughly enjoyed the interaction with the students - a few whom I know. They are great thinkers and they asked great questions. I learned a lot from them and hopefully they learned a thing or two from me.

I introduced myself and said, "As we get started let's get something straight: I am not a discipleship expert here...but I should be. And so should you. It's our job as followers of Jesus and servant leaders of His Church."
I truly do want to be an expert in discipleship - since that's what Jesus desires of me - and you.

Sometimes we can complicate discipleship quite a bit. As most of you know, I will never be accused of being a brilliant thinker like a lot of pastors, authors and bloggers out there. So in class we started talking about the basics. Some of the questions that we addressed - and some that we never got around to discussing - were:

How would you define discipleship in one sentence?
Based on that one sentence definition, am I a true disciple of Jesus?
Is it possible to be a "Christian" without being a disciple?
And is it possible for me to be a disciple without being a "Christian"?
If I claim to be a disciple then I need to ask two foundational questions: (1) Who is discipling me? and (2) Who am I discipling? And if I am not being discipled and if I am not discipling someone else, then am I following the words of Jesus? And if I am not following the words of Jesus, then am I a disciple?

I don't have the answers to all of these questions - I'm still processing them.
But I'd appreciate your thoughts for the next time and place that I teach/share about discipleship.

Help me out here...

How would you answer one/a few/all of these questions yourself?