Sabbath's Good Slow Work in Us

August 25, 2011 Daniel Harris

In our family, we are Sabbath novices, but we've come to love the small tastes of it that we've experienced so far. We had been out of the rhythm of a weekly Sabbath for a while in the weeks right before and after our daughter's birth, but life is now getting a bit closer to having normalcy again, so we've enjoyed jumping back in to our experiments with Sabbath.

Last week, we had begun our Sabbath together as we normally do with supper and unplugging ourselves from email, text messages, etc. And since it was one of the two nights each week when we're allowed to water our grass in the local drought-time water restrictions, I went out into our yard after supper to get our sprinklers running. (Some of you from other parts of the country will have no concept of this. You always have green grass without working for it. The tradeoff is that while your yard could stand to be mown every 5 days or so, I've only mowed twice this whole year.)

As I went out to set up the sprinklers, my son wanted to tag along as he often does. So he played while I got things going. Then, after a bit my wife also came out with our baby girl and they rocked on our porch swing. It was a good, slow evening of pushing my son in his new swing set while knowing that there wasn't anything else that I needed to be accomplishing on that night.

Eventually I went over to sit with my wife and baby on the swing. (Thankfully, the yard is big enough for the sprinklers to be running and not getting us wet while we're doing these things.) As I walked over, I could see his eyes looking at the sprinklers, with an idea brewing in his two-year-old mind. I told him, "Bud, go ahead and run through them if you want to." He got close enough to get a little wet, but wasn't very sure what else to do.

I sat down on the swing next to my wife while he stood there getting a little wet. He asked me to come play in the sprinklers with him, and although I was in a good, slow Sabbath mode, it hadn't progressed far enough to let me lower my resistance to getting soaked in my clothes, and I declined the invitation.

About a minute later, my wife said, "Oh, why not?," handed me the baby and went to give our boy a lesson by example in how to get thoroghly soaked by your back yard sprinklers.

They were both laughing as hard as I've ever seen them, and it continued for a while. The longer it went on the sillier they got, with our son eventually losing himself in belly laughs while my wife carried him around encouraging him to shake hands with the leaves on our tree as the sprinkler continued to soak them. I enjoyed watching their fun as much as they enjoyed having it.

There are seven days each week, but we're finding that stuff this good is much more likely to happen during one of them when we're in the rhythm of practicing the Sabbath.

It's a 24-hour period when we set the boundaries around ourselves to entrust whatever hasn't been accomplished into God's hands. This reminds us that regardless of how hard we work during the other six days, our work is really only a very small piece of all of the good that God is working to accomplish in our world; his kingdom actually survives just fine even when we lay the striving aside for a day.

It's a 24-hour period when loving and enjoying each other are among the highest priorities on the things we have to do. All of the emails that need our responses, all of the blog posts there are to write, and the myriad of other things get laid aside once each week. And we're falling in love with it.

P.S.: If you're curious, or looking for a way to become Sabbath novices in your house too, Ruth Haley Barton's chapter on Sabbath in her book, Sacred Rhythms, was one of the main things that opened the door for us.

Book Review: Renovation of the Church by Kent Carlson and Mike Lueken

August 24, 2011 Daniel Harris

This is a book I have been waiting for someone to write for a very long time. When I was preparing for my senior year of college, I was required to spend a summer doing a ministry internship. Although I'm thankful that I had the opportunity to do that as part of a good ministry in a good church, that summer left me disillusioned with ministry. I returned to my senior year at Asbury hungry for a way of doing ministry that led to something more, and that hunger, along with relationships I was fortunate to have with great people at Asbury, guided me into the beginning of my interest in spiritual formation. It was during that year that I first read Dallas Willard, and from then on, my understanding of Christianity and ministry was dramatically changed.

The authors of [amazon_link id="0830835466" target="_blank" ]Renovation of the Church[/amazon_link] had very similar experiences, only theirs occurred more than a decade into a very successful attempt at planting a church. They had a rapidly growing suburban church with a new facility, and had around 1,700 people attending worship every weekend. Then they realized that the way they did ministry was actually working against the likelihood that their followers would ever have their characters become significantly like that of Jesus. They state, "It slowly began to dawn on us that our method of attracting people was forming them in ways contrary to the way of Christ" (35).

The book tells the story of their church, Oak Hills Church of Folsom, CA, from the time that it was planted, through their entry into the seeker church movement and rapid growth, then through the decision to change and the mistakes, consequences, and rewards that have followed. It is very honest, respectful, and obviously took a great deal of courage to publish. (Congratulations to both the authors and InterVarsity Press for doing so.) I've read the stories of other pastors or churches who have gone through similar journeys, but this is by far the best written.

Dallas Willard's foreword is worth the price of the book. He opens the book with a question (also repeated in a later chapter) which the rest of the book tries to unpack and Willard says is "the single most important question in the church culture of North America today": "How do we present the radical message of Christ in a church that has catered to the religious demands of the nominally committed?" (9) Or, as it played out in the story of Oak Hills, the question might be: How can we expect people whom we have attracted with a 'come have all of your preferences and desires met at church' style of ministry to respond well to Jesus' 'deny yourself and give up your life to follow me' gospel? The authors concluded that those two were incompatible.

Personally, one of the greatest strengths of the book was in making connections I had not been able to make before between our consumeristic habits that are so deeply ingrained in us in North American culture and churches' general lack of effectiveness at helping people grow in the character of Christ. As the authors point out, cultural consumerism isn't so much the problem, as is how churches have adopted the consumerism of the culture around us and decided we have to harness it as a strategy for church growth. Ministry becomes an endless cycle of creating attractive ministries to get people to come to our churches, then trying to keep them happy and engaged enough to continue coming rather than dropping out or finding another church. When people come to us on these terms, we cannot be surprised when we discover that they may actually have very little interest in learning to do the things that Jesus taught and arranging their lives as any of his serious students would naturally do.

Along with tackling the "insidious monster" of consumerism, the book also addresses personal ambition in pastors and how it feeds this destructive cycle. We can cover and excuse our selfish ambition in language of wanting to accomplish great things for God's kingdom, but ambition often leads us into ways of living that are destructive to our souls and those of the people following us. As Carlson states,

"The desire to be better than others, the odious nature of comparison, and the lack of contentment with our actual state, is the problem formationally. This whole personal ambition thing is a very messy area... Perhaps ambition is needed more than ever. But it must be ambition directed toward something other than personal and organizational success. We must be ambitious to decrease so that Christ may increase. This is truly something worth giving our lives to " (76, 87).

Amen. Our churches will certainly benefit if this book can launch honest conversations among our leaders.

P.S.: If you're not a pastor, this is still an important book to read, but... If you come away from reading it ticked off at your pastor or your church for not doing things this way, you've entirely misread the book. The authors themselves strongly urge against thinking that would lead to such a reaction, as they state that the best possible result is for you to encounter God in the church where you already are, rather than going looking for another church or pastor who does things the way you like. As I've stated it before personally, the biggest hurdle to great ministry in my church is my own unlikeness to Jesus, not that anyone else has gotten things wrong. In almost every case pastors and church leaders are working very hard and doing the very best they can in an incredibly difficult job. Take it easy on them, and use this book to help you become more like Jesus for them.

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A Prayer for the Twenty-Second Sunday of Ordinary Time (Year A)

August 23, 2011 Daniel Harris

[This is one of a series of Prayers for the Christian Year. To see the other posts, click here.] Living, loving Father,

We give You thanks today as we call upon Your name. You have done so much for us, and for all who have gone before us, that it is our joy to sing Your songs and tell Your stories, so that we will always remember Your faithfulness.

Although we do not understand why, You have issued a call to each one of us, to know You, follow You, and play a part in Your work in the world. On our own, we are incapable and still stuck in bondage, yet as we open our eyes to Your presence and listen to Your call, You promise to be with us as we go about Your work. May we all know the desperation of having things to do for You that are much too big for our own powers.

As we follow along in Your ways, we will realize that whether or not Your call to us involves things that appear to be big, following You always reveals parts of us that need Your healing touch, and these things are always the core of Your work in our world. Teach us to let love be the center of who we are, loving You and others deeply, learning, as was the way of our Master, Jesus, to bless those who seek to do us harm.

It is from the matchless example of the life that He lived among us as Your Son that we best learn how to love, how to keep our minds on Your things rather than on the ways of the world around us, and how it is in giving up our own lives that we find real life.

So it is again today, as His students, who have heard His call to deny ourselves, take up our cross and follow Him, that we take the step of praying the prayer that He taught us, saying,

Our Father in heaven, hallowed be Your name, Your kingdom come, Your will be done, on earth as in heaven.

Give us today our daily bread.

Forgive us our sins as we forgive those who sin against us.

Save us from the time of trial and deliver us from evil.

For the kingdom, the power, and the glory are Yours now and for ever. Amen

Notes:

Depending on which system of ordering one pays attention to, this Sunday can also be referred to as Proper 17, or (in 2011) the Eleventh Sunday after Pentecost. Regardless of the system, the readings are the same. So, the readings for this week, on which this prayer is based, are:

Exodus 3:1-15: The second of nine consecutive readings from Exodus. This is God's call to Moses from the burning bush, including Moses' initial objection to the call and God's assurance that he would go with Moses to deliver his people from Egypt.
Psalm 105:1-6, 23-26, 45b: Part of a hymn that recounts God's work to save his people from the time of Abraham until they settled in Canaan. These verses of the Psalm call the reader to worship God for his deeds among the people, how Jacob's descendants multiplied and were oppressed in Egypt, and that God sent his servant Moses to free them.
Romans 12:9-21: The thirteenth of sixteen possible consecutive readings after Pentecost from Romans. This passage is a list of instructions from Paul on living in the way of Christ, centering on the command to live genuinely loving lives.
Matthew 16:21-28: All of the gospel readings after Pentecost in Year A come from Matthew. This passage is the beginning of how "from that time on" Jesus prepared his disciples for his death. Peter objects to what Jesus says, receives a strong rebuke from Jesus ("Get behind me, Satan..."), and Jesus gives the call most often repeated in the gospels: "If any want to become my followers, let them deny themselves, take up their cross and follow me..."

In Defense of Perfection

August 22, 2011 Daniel Harris

We recently bought a kit for a new backyard play set for our kids. Even months before my son's 3rd birthday, he was far too tall for the toddler play set we bought a couple of years ago from our neighbors, so we jumped at the chance to buy this bigger and better version when we found it at a very deep discount.

The first thing I learned in the process of putting the set together was that I have always drastically underestimated how much work they take to assemble. When I've seen them in stores, they've looked nice, but somehow my eyes never noticed how many screws, bolts, washers, and nuts they require. I knew I was in trouble when I opened the box and the directions said that even with 2-3 people, it would still take 12-14 hours to complete. I knew I was in double trouble when I realized the only person I had to help me was the same two-year-old for whom we bought the set, so any time he spent on the job would be more likely to increase the time remaining until the project's completion than it would be to help me finish.

Even if he didn't reduce the workload by much, I loved the time we spent outside together working on the play set. It was good for both of us. He wasn't stuck inside the house watching videos, and I loved having him with me, even though he asked on an average of every 3 minutes, "Is this how we build a playground, Dad?"

The second thing I learned in the process had to do with all of the mistakes I made in putting it together. There were close to a dozen times that I had pieces put together only to realize that I'd done it wrong and had to take the pieces apart and put them together again. A couple of times there had already been too much progress made before I realized my mistake and I had to improvise by putting some piece where it would be good enough, rather than where it was really supposed to go, or by drilling my own holes where the holes would have been if I had done things correctly.

In my younger days, I would have become pretty frustrated at those mistakes, but at this point in my life I've made enough of them to realize that the mistakes are part of the process of getting things right. I have a lot of ideas that have never gotten off of the ground because of the hesitancy brought on by the possibility of the mistakes that I would surely make along the way. And, the projects that have gotten off the ground have, as expected, been full of mistakes.

But here's the thing the play set taught me: which one of those types of projects ends up closer to perfection? Obviously, it's the type that gets done, mistakes included. This is because, even with the mistakes that have taken place, they can still end up perfectly serving their purpose.

This play set will always show the scars of the errors I made in its assembly. Holes are drilled in the wrong places, and some hardware doesn't match since I had to go out and get new pieces to make up for my mess-ups. But, in the end, the play set's purpose is that my kids and their friends will enjoy playing on it. Even with its misplaced holes and hardware, it can still fulfill that purpose to perfection.

Perhaps it's a very limited analogy, but this really helps me to make sense out of a God who knows our mistakes so well and who also says, "Be perfect as your Father in heaven in perfect." I've made plenty of mistakes in the process of my own "construction," but my sincere hope is that there's still a very real way in which I can end up perfectly accomplishing my purpose.

If, 5-7 years from now, this play set is well-used and still standing, and it hasn't caused any child's serious injury, its entire existence will have been a complete success. And if, 60-70 years from now, the people who knew me best can honestly look back at the years of my life and say that I loved God and I loved people, that I had a living, vital relationship with God and passed it on to others... that's the perfection I'm aiming for.

Looking for Something More?

August 19, 2011 Daniel Harris

The following is an adaptation of a letter I sent to a few friends today about a new Apprentice Group that we are starting. Some of you reading this have already been through the experience. If so, please consider leaving a comment below and share your thoughts on Apprentice. If you haven't been in a group, you live in the Midland area, and this sounds like something you'd like to do, email me.

Over the past two years, the best thing I have been involved with in ministry has been participating in and leading others through Apprentice Groups. I've never been a part of anything else that's as effective at helping people grow in their relationship with Christ, regardless of where they are in their spiritual life or how long they've been a Christian.

Some of us who have gone through the experience together so far came into it feeling spiritually stuck; we had been active Christians for decades, but had even become numb to how lifelessness had crept in to the most important relationship in our lives.

Others have come into these groups as a way of taking their first spiritual steps as Christians; regardless of how rough our pasts may have been, or how opposed to Christianity we may have been in the past, some of us have gotten very solid footing for our first Christian steps through these groups. When asked how the experience had changed their relationship with God, one participant simply said, "Now there is one."

Still others have come into these groups already growing spiritually, and have found in our experiences together reliable guidance for how to continue growing and satisfying their desire to know God in a real, practical way, as we learn to actually live as Jesus' disciples (apprentices).

Our experiences in Apprentice Groups are based upon coming to realize that we do not change by simply gritting our teeth and deciding to do better next time. This is true from small things, like trying to lose 10 pounds and keep it off, to larger things such as becoming the kind of person God created us to be and experiencing the fulness of life that Jesus said he came to give us. When we're talking about our lives in Christ with the Holy Spirit involved in the process, there is a way in which change happens naturally, even easily, though it always requires our cooperation. The brief version is that change happens in us when the Holy Spirit works and we tweak these three factors:

Our thoughts: In Apprentice Groups, we specifically look at this question: Is the way that we think about God aligned with or contrary to the way that Jesus thought about God, and the way that God is revealed in the Scriptures? This makes a huge difference in the course of our lives. Regardless of how long we've been Christians, or how many Bible studies we've done, every one of us in these groups has had our thinking challenged by the way that Scripture instructs us to think about God. A big part of how we seek to modify our thinking in these groups is through memorizing full passages of Scripture together.
Our habits: Most of the advice we've been given as Christians on how to shape our lives often comes down to two things: pray and read your Bible. While we can't overstate the necessity of those two things, they do not form a life that we actually live as we follow Jesus. Rather, along with many other habits, for apprentices of Jesus they should be part of an overall lifestyle arranged around our desire to learn from him. Therefore, during each week in between each of our Apprentice Group meetings, we have one Soul-Training Exercise to engage in. Some are things we usually associate with our spiritual lives, like specific ways to pray and read the Scriptures, but others are ways to more generally shape our overall lives to cooperate with the Holy Spirit's work in us. (For example, the first week's exercise is sleep!) In other words, the goal of these exercises isn't so much to add things to your already-too-full to-do list, but rather to train us in arranging the lives that we already live around our apprenticeship to Jesus.
Our relationships: Although we're tempted to think that this is the least important of these three factors, by the end of our previous groups, participants have said that this was the most impacting aspect of the entire experience. One participant summed it up by saying, "I've come to realize that I don't spur myself on to holiness. I need other people to do that for me." To put it another way, we cannot be spiritually healthy Christians apart from spiritually healthy community, and many of us are unknowingly desperate for this kind of community in our lives. This is precisely what John Wesley meant when he said: "There is no holiness without social holiness."

The material for Apprentice Groups comes from three books by James Bryan Smith, with each one emphasizing one of the three factors above:

The Good and Beautiful God deals primarily with comparing our thoughts about God to those of Jesus and how God is revealed in the Scriptures.
The Good and Beautiful Life is based on the Sermon on the Mount and deals with the habits that make up our lives, and if arranged according to the teaching of Jesus, can actually lead to us becoming people who live lives free of greed, lying, lust, worry, etc., and who live in ways where we become people who do the things that Jesus taught and did, such as blessing people who curse us.
The Good and Beautiful Community addresses our relationships and the things we do together in our life with God, such as forgiving, worshipping, serving and living generously. Although each book has its specific emphasis, the group's experience is designed to affect each of the three areas from the beginning of the group until its end.

Some of you reading this have already been in an Apprentice group with me or someone else in our church. The rest of you should! But- I realize that some places where I've had readers in the last month (like Atlanta and Kenya) are legitimately too far to travel to Midland each week to meet with us. So, regardless of whether it's with us or with someone else (or starting your own), here are the normal commitments for Apprentice Groups.

Make being there a priority. Some groups commit to 25 weeks together, and state right off the bat that none of the participants will miss more than three of the sessions.
Read one chapter from the book each week. Whether you spend a lot of time in books, or they're a completely new concept to you, you can do this. The chapters are very readable, not too long, and well-written (no pictures, but you do get some good stories).
Do the Soul-Training Exercise for each week. Like anything else, the more you put into this, the more you'll get out of it. Some require time and planning, others don't.
Memorize Scripture together. We take nine weeks to memorize Colossians 3:1-17, two verses at a time. Regardless of what you're thinking, you can do this. It's something that I've come to believe God is tremendously in favor of, and therefore helps us to accomplish.

Again, if you're near Midland and this sounds interesting, email me. If you live somewhere else, you can check this partial list of churches with Apprentice Groups, or look into starting one at your own church. If you've already been in an Apprentice group, leave a comment and describe it for yourself.

A Prayer for the Eighteenth Sunday of Ordinary Time (Year A)

August 1, 2011 Daniel Harris

[This is one of a series of Prayers for the Christian Year. To see the other posts, click here.] Living, loving Father,

We call upon You, because we have found that You answer us. Incline Your ear to us and hear these words that we pray.

You save those who seek refuge in You, and we pray that just as Your love has always been steadfast toward us, that You would show it to all those who seek You today.

Although we have striven with You and sought to have our own way, You have blessed us. We deserve Your condemnation, yet in Your mercy, instead of condemning, You have given us Yourself.

Your loving faithfulness is not new to us, but for thousands of years You have been working in Your people to bring about good in this world.

This loving work of Yours came to a climax in the life, death, and resurrection of Your Son, our Savior, Jesus. He showed us that although we may feel unable to do Your work in the lives of others around us, all things are possible with You. You are able to take what we have to offer, bless it and multiply it for the good of others. So it is as students of Him who fed the crowds with five loaves of bread, and who abundantly gives us all that we need to live fully in You, that we pray again in the way that He taught us, saying,