The Best Thing I do in Ministry

Being in ministry in a situation like mine requires doing a wide variety of things (often with opportunities to dabble in new areas of my incompetence), but among the things that I do, there is one that stands out to me above the rest as

  • being the most enjoyable,
  • helping me become more the kind of person I want to be,
  • making the biggest difference in others' lives,
  • developing good and needed personal friendships with others,
  • and responding the best way that I can to the invitation from God that I've sensed for a long time to help others mature in their love for God and for others.
I remember writing in my journal years ago that I wanted to shape my life around two simple things: being a disciple of Jesus, and helping others to do so. This opportunity in ministry has helped me to do both of those things more effectively than anything else in the decade that I've been doing this kind of thing full-time, and it's nothing unique to me or my situation. Whether you're in ministry or not, you can easily be involved in the same thing I'm talking about: being part of a group of people going through The Apprentice Series by James Bryan Smith.
Because of the nature of the roles that I have had in ministry, I usually stay pretty familiar with a good deal of the curriculum available to churches. There is a multitude of good stuff out there, but I have never used or seen anything else like Apprentice. It is the only material I am aware of that does such an effective job at helping us to think about God in a way that is consistent with the scriptures, arrange our lives in a way that gives God room to work in us, and connect with others in the relationships that we must have for Jesus' kind of life to keep growing in us. Or, as one of my heroes, Dallas Willard, describes it, it is "the best practice of Christian spiritual formation that [he has] seen."
Apprentice isn't exactly a book study, but it is based around three books, all by James Bryan Smith: The Good and Beautiful God, The Good and Beautiful Life, and The Good and Beautiful Community. A leaders' guide and other very helpful resources are available for free at www.apprenticeofjesus.org.
We've greatly enjoyed going through the first two books with a group of friends at our church, and will begin the third book in a couple of weeks. One of the things we have enjoyed most is the mix of people in our group: from people who were very new to church and Christianity to others who have probably averaged being in church 3.5 times per week for their entire lives. It has made a difference for all of us. We love the relationships with one another, and those friendships have been an important part of how Apprentice teaches us overall to shape our lives in a way that we are Jesus' apprentices in how to live life in the kingdom of God.
I remember a specific time as a teenager, after I had committed my life to Christ. I wanted to learn to live my life as God wanted me to, but was having trouble figuring out how to do so. I was in church, I prayed and read my Bible, but I still wanted to know, "what's my life supposed to be like from now on?" I went to a Christian bookstore, hoping to find something with a title like, How to Live as a Christian, but I didn't have any such luck. That was almost 20 years ago, and I have kept looking hard for that answer, with some very good help along the way. If that is a question you have in your life now, the Apprentice series is the first place that I would point you. Find out if anyone in your church is going through this, and if not, get a group of friends together (who can be very committed to it) and start.
If you're someone who goes to First Methodist of Midland with us (or if you're anyone else locally), and this sounds interesting, there will be two chances to jump in during the coming months: one group will start in September on Wednesday nights, and another will start in January on Tuesday nights. Email me for more details.

There's a Better Solution than Telling Your Kids You Love Them

[This is one of my posts about the life of my Dad. Please see a list of the others at the bottom of this page.]

My Dad is dying of cancer. We found out a couple of months ago, and it has been very, very hard. It is hard to think of the future without him, and it's hard to see how he has already been affected by the disease. After we first found out, I felt like I was in a fog a couldn't find my way out. I still feel like I don't know how to deal with it very well, but the fog began to lift a bit when my wife helped me to realize something: the reason I have so much to mourn in all of this is because I HAVE A GREAT DAD.

After we learned the diagnosis, my wife and I seemed to take turns on which one of us was emotional on a particular day and which one was more stable. I've certainly had the majority of the emotional days, but during one of the times that our roles switched, she was able to name her own feelings in a way that also summed up much of why I have loved him so deeply for all of these years. She said, "I have just always felt loved by him. I've never had to be any certain way, or do anything, but I've known that he loves me."

It's a perfect description. As I was growing up, if there was something that I could do well, he enjoyed it, and I knew that he loved me. If there was something that I stunk at, I knew that he loved me. Simply by the way that he has lived his life, particularly in his constant willingness to always sacrifice of himself first for the benefit of the rest of us, I have always known his love for me.

I wish that I would hear a parenting expert, especially in addressing fathers, encourage parents to live their lives that way. Okay, surely there are some who do. Yet we hear so often about the importance of parents telling their kids that they love them. That's fine, but it doesn't cut it. A better solution is my Dad's way: Parents, live your everyday lives in a way that your kids know, in the deepest parts of who they are, that you love them. Regardless of what happens, they know that you will love them. When they succeed, they know, and when they are dismal failures, they know, "I am loved."

This has very little to do with words. On the negative side, our words can do serious damage to any efforts to convey this to our kids, but on the positive side they are inadequate to ingrain it deeply enough in our children's souls. The best that they can do is to reinforce the message that we send with our lives.

I don't think that I've ever heard my Dad say a word about how to be a successful father, but I know. Because I have one.

More Posts About My Dad:

Is Leadership Overrated?

Did Jesus ever encourage another person to be a leader? Obviously he was one himself, and his B-team (at best) of disciples ended up doing a pretty remarkable job of leadership, considering that after only three years of having Jesus around, they founded the most influential movement in world history. Definite overachievers. But did Jesus ever talk to them about leadership? I know he taught that whoever wanted to be great should be a slave of everyone else, which could be applicable, but anything else? I've been thinking about this a lot lately, because I've been on something of a crash course of discovering how ineffective I can be as an organizational leader. Sure, a good deal of it has to be learned, but it also comes more naturally to some people than others.

What has caught my attention, though, is how close we seem to come at times to equating the gospel with leadership, or at least acting as if leadership were a central part of Jesus' message. To illustrate, I searched christianbook.com for books with the keyword "leadership" (which Jesus rarely, if ever, talked about) and compared it to the total number of results for searches of books on the topic Jesus talked about more than anything else: Total books with keyword "leadership"= 4,139 Total books with keyword "kingdom of God" or "kingdom of heaven"= 831

Ouch. In other words, for every 1 Christian book pertaining to the thing Jesus preached, almost 5 are published pertaining to something he never talked about.

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More Life Than We Can Shake a Stick At

Whoever has the Son has life; whoever does not have the Son of God does not have life.
1 John 5:12

The name of this blog is SalvationLife. I wanted to name it “Salvation is a Life,” after one of Dallas Willard’s chapters in The Spirit of the Disciplines, but figured there’s probably some copyright person out there who wouldn’t like me doing so. Nevertheless, one of the things that I hope to be able to experience fully for myself, and also communicate to others, is, salvation is a life.

I understand this in a couple of ways: Salvation is not only something that happens to us at a point in time when we "asked Jesus into our hearts," or whatever kind of language your tradition puts around it. Nor is it only something that happens to us after we die, meaning that we get to go to heaven rather than go to hell. It is indeed something that disciples of Jesus have experienced in the past, and will experience in the future, but also something that we are meant to be experiencing today. It's the Wesleyan belief that "I have been saved. I am being saved. I will be saved."

The second meaning, which gives practical shape to the first, is that salvation is not just something that God does to us, in which we are completely passive subjects. Although we are utterly incapable of obtaining salvation (life) for ourselves, the Scriptures clearly indicate that we have a role. As Paul said, "work out your own salvation with fear and trembling, for it is God who is at work in you" (Philippians 2:12-13).

Or, in Dallas’ words, salvation is a life. It is meant to be lived, and it makes us alive.

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Jacob's Problem and Ours

Then Jacob woke from his sleep and said, “Surely theLordis in this place—and I did not know it!” (Genesis 28:16)

One of our family’s favorite things to do in the evenings is to go on walks around our neighborhood. Our son is almost two, and we started the walks when he was younger because it was amazing how if we put him in this stroller and went for a walk, all was well in his little world regardless of how fussy he may have been in the house.

I remember a period of time before his first birthday, while he was still taking multiple naps during the day and staying up a later at night, when we would walk for a couple of miles almost every evening. Sometimes if my wife had been home with him all day, it was a good way for her to have a break and for me to have some time with the little guy, so most nights we could easily be out walking for 45 minutes.

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Get the Hell Out of... Us.

Several years ago as a youth pastor, I was working with a group of middle school boys. During our lesson one Sunday, I asked them, “Other than not having to go to hell when you die, what are some reasons why you believe it's a good thing to follow Jesus and be a Christian?”

This was a group of boys who had grown up in the church. Most of their parents were very involved in the church, and had worked hard to bring these children up in Christian homes. To me, the boys’ answer to my question was very informative about what many of us in the church today have come to believe about the life to which Jesus invites us. What was their answer?

They didn’t have one!

This group of boys couldn't state one reason to follow Jesus, other than that they would get to go to heaven rather than going to hell when they die.

How do you and I answer that question? Is "getting in to heaven" really all that matters?

Are we really to believe that the life, message, and mission of Jesus Christ on earth is reduced to that?

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