James Bryan Smith: The Encouraging Community

"While it may be true that treating churchgoers as consumers by trying to meet their stated needs may make them feel more comfortable, by lowering our expectations of them as active participants we are decreasing the possibility of genuine transformation."... "I want a community who will take an interest in my well-being, a community who is not afraid to ask me to make a commitment to my own spiritual growth and service to others, a community who dares to offer me a reliable pattern of transformation and then backs it up by challenging me to enter into some form of accountability in order to help me meet our commitments." ... "I know three things from experience. First, people rise to the level of expectation. We fail because we do not ask for accountability and commitment. Second, people intuitively know that when things are made easy there is little chance that any good will come from it. We lower our expectations because we think people will respond in greater numbers, but in reality we do them no service, and most people sense this. Third, while not everyone in every church is ready to make a commitment to transformation, there are many who are ready and are not being challenged. Far too much attention is being paid to getting people to come to church, and far too little is paid to those who are hungering for a deeper life with God."

(James Bryan Smith, The Good and Beautiful Community, Ch. 6: "The Encouraging Community")

Beginning My Tribute to Dallas Willard

I never met Dallas Willard, though I came embarrassingly close in 2009. (My wife arranged through a friend to have the book pictured above signed and sent to us.) He was my hero, and though I had been reading and re-reading his stuff for a decade at that point, plus listening to any recording of him that I could get my hands on, I had never heard him speak in person. Then, it happened that I had moved back to Texas and Renovaré was going to have its international conference in San Antonio that year, so I was eager to go and sign up for anything that had Dallas' name on it.

One way I did that was that I signed up to be a participant in a breakfast where he was going to speak, and to my joy I ended up in the buffet line right behind him. It wasn't to my joy that the person in front of him in the line was apparently just as happy as I was to have an opportunity to talk to him, and that person was apparently much more extroverted than me, and therefore had plenty to say. Even though I was standing right next to Dallas at that moment, I wasn't having a very Dallas-ish attitude toward that person and even invented a term for them in my mind: conversation hog. (If you're as introverted as I am, you'll know what I'm talking about. If you're as extroverted as I am introverted, you probably are one without even knowing it, but my attitude is better toward you now.)

After we waited through the line and got to the point of putting food on our plates, the–um–extravert apparently either ran out of things to say or became more focused on food selection. So, it was my chance. Among all of the people on the planet with whom I had never spoken, I was standing next to the human being with whom I most wanted to have a conversation, and I said absolutely nothing. In my mind, I wanted to give him a conversation break from the previous fifteen minutes. But actually, I guess it had to do more with my introversion taking over and I couldn't come up with anything appropriate to say while standing there next to the scrambled eggs and muffins.

Dallas died of cancer this week, and I've spent more time than ever before thinking about my time standing behind him in the breakfast buffet line in San Antonio. I haven't thought about it with regret about not saying anything; I still don't know what words I would have used. I certainly could not have conveyed my gratitude to him very well while also trying to allow him to choose between blueberry or banana nut. More than anything, I've just been grateful for the opportunity to have heard him in person which only added to his influence on me.

But the news of his death has been harder for me than I expected. I knew that he had been sick, and I knew that it would be a sad day for me when the day of his passing would come. Even though I expected it to be sad, because I never met him and didn't know him personally, I didn't expect it to have as much of a sense of real grief for me as it has.

I haven't really even wanted to talk to anyone about it, because it seems like it would sound silly to admit that I'm in mourning for someone with whom the closest I ever came to personal contact was that he might have handed me the muffin tongs. Thankfully though, my wife gets it–she knows how much Dallas influenced me, and she was able to help me see the issue for what it was the night that he died, while I was surprised at how hard of a time I was having with it.

She said, "You've lost both of your heroes." She was right. There are a group of people whom I sometimes describe as being "among my heroes," but only two men that I have referred to with words like, "he is my hero": Dallas and my Dad.

So I've given myself permission to grieve over Dallas, while also–alongside so many others–experiencing deep gratitude for his life and teaching. The day that he died, I had a sense of, "I have to write something about him," but I tried to start a couple of times and nothing good was coming out. I just couldn't figure out where to start, where to try to end up, or what to do in between to try to point at the extent to which Dallas' teaching has been helpful in shaping my life with God.

Then, again, my wife was very helpful and suggested that I write a series of posts communicating things I learned from him. Writing stories of my dad's life has been incredibly helpful to me since his death, and though my third-person experiences with Dallas are obviously of very different nature than my life with my Dad, I think I can tell some good stories about things Dallas has taught me through the years.

So, much more to come about life with God and how Dallas helped me into it.

A Brief Break

Just a heads up: In order to save a little money each month, I'm going to be reworking some details of the site–like how it's hosted and some other details of how it works. All of my past experience with stuff like this has taught me to expect that my first attempt at it probably won't go precisely as expected, but hopefully it won't take too long. I mention that to offer an explanation for why I don't expect to post anything new for at least the next week. I'll give the time that's usually given to writing to the process of moving the blog. Hopefully, in about a week, things will pick back up as normal here. (If you subscribe by email, you won't have to change anything. If you subscribe by RSS....I'm not so sure.)

In the meantime, I'll continue to send articles from the archives to those on the "I want to receive something every day" email list, and these also get posted on Facebook and Twitter.

Why the Bible Should be Translated by Texans

The writers of the Bible used a word that's common in Texas vocabulary, but which I've unfortunately never seen in any of our current English translations of the Bible. This is a costly mistake, because failing to use this word completely changes how we see the respective passages of scripture. Therefore, I'm proposing that a group of native Texan-speaking Bible scholars get together and produce a new translation to correct this mistake and finally–because of our love of God and humanity–make appropriate use the all-important word: y'all. (Yes, I'm well aware that Texans aren't the only ones to use y'all. I lived in Georgia for six years, and it was every bit as central in the vocabulary there as it is here. But, like nearly everything good in the world, Texans probably invented it. And I've also previously speculated about the goodness of a Texas Translation of the Bible.)

Like many of us, for the majority of my life, I have tended to read the Bible as if every time that it uses the word "you," it means that the passage in question was intended to be a message from God directly to me. Our preference for individualizing the message of the scriptures is evidence of how we tend to individualize everything in our way of thinking and how difficult it is for us to read the Bible through the lenses of its original audience, who lived with a much more community-centered orientation than we do. (Texans may also be responsible for the invention of individualism, which doesn't play into our favor in the context of this post, but we would be able to correct that by producing this Bible translation.)

This issue first came to my attention several years ago. While living in Guatemala, as part of the process of learning Spanish, I had a Bible which had the Spanish and English translations next to each other on each page. I remember reading through the Sermon on the Mount and noticing that the Spanish used its equivalent of "y'all" throughout the sermon, but the English (apparently translated by a non-Texan) used the less accurate "you." In some passages, perhaps it doesn't make much practical difference, but in general it's a big shift in our thinking to look at a passage as being addressed to a community of people rather than to an individual.

I had been thinking about this for a while, and then it was confirmed in a fantastic book I read last year by Jack Levison called Fresh Air: The Holy Spirit for an Inspired Life. Jack is far from being a Texan (he was raised in New York of all places!), but he still understands the need for "y'all" thoroughly, and he describes it masterfully in one of the chapters in that book. In reference to the passage from 1 Corinthians 3 which says, "Do you not know that you are God's temple and that God's spirit dwells in you?", Levison comments:

The “you” in this question is plural and could better be translated by the southern expression “y’all.” The metaphor of the spirit-filled temple occurs in a question posed, not to individuals, but to an entire community: y’all. Growing up, I heard time and again that my body was a temple of the holy spirit. That’s why, I was told, I shouldn’t smoke cigarettes. This was good advice; I am better off for never having smoked cigarettes. Still, this advice shows how easily people can apply a biblical text about communities to individuals. Renowned Pentecostal author Kenneth Hagin does this in The Holy Spirit and His Gifts. “Relatively few Christians,” he writes, “are really conscious of God in them— dwelling in their hearts and bodies as His temple” (26). Oddly, Hagin writes this despite quoting from the Amplified Version of 1 Corinthians 3: 16, which explicitly identifies the temple as the whole community: “Do you not discern and understand that you [the whole church at Corinth] are God’s temple (His sanctuary), and that God’s Spirit has His permanent dwelling in you— to be at home in you [collectively as a church and also individually]?”

He goes on in the rest of that chapter to set the passage from 1 Corinthians in its context, showing how opposed Paul was to those who would cause schisms within God's people. So, consider the difference between interpreting these emphases of 1 Corinthians 3:16-17 as being written to individuals (you) or to a community (y'all):

• Do you not know that you are God's temple and that God's spirit dwells in you?
• If anyone destroys God's temple, God will destroy that person.
• For God's temple is holy, and you are that temple.

Or:

• Do y'all not know that y'all are God's temple and that God's spirit dwells in y'all?
• If anyone destroys God's temple, God will destroy that person.
• For God's temple is holy, and y'all are that temple.

With my experiment this year, I've also been thinking of the difference this makes in the ways the Bible talks about prayer. Consider, for example, the difference between Jesus saying,

• "When you pray...[you] pray like this: Our Father in heaven..."

Or

• "When y'all pray...[y'all] pray like this: Our Father in heaven..."

A really interesting case is with Paul's instruction in 1 Thessalonians 5:17 to "Pray without ceasing." Although "you" isn't in the verse in English or any other language, other languages specify whether commands are to an individual or to a group. So, again, there's quite a difference here, and what the scripture actually says is the second of these:

• "[You] pray without ceasing."

Or

• "[Y'all] pray without ceasing."

Honestly, if "pray without ceasing" is a command to me as an individual, I don't know how to do that. I know the ways we usually talk about doing that as individuals, like being mindful of God all throughout the day or praying about whatever has our attention throughout the day. Like Levison's example of not smoking cigarettes, these are good advice, but I'm convinced they weren't what Paul had in mind.

Paul was thoroughly an ancient Jew, and therefore his habits of praying would have mostly been shaped by the community's practice of praying the psalms and other prayers at set times of the day (which I describe in Live Prayerfully as "praying with other people's words"). It was natural for the early Christians to continue the practice since it had been part of their Jewish heritage and therefore, shaped the prayer practices of Jesus, Peter, Paul, John, and all the rest.

So when Paul said, "[Y'all] pray without ceasing," I think he was saying, "[Y'all] make sure you don't give up this practice of continually praying as a community."

Then, as Christianity spread around the globe, it appears that a "y'all" interpretation of this verse became even more significant. In Live Prayerfully, I wrote:

An interesting thing about how people have viewed this throughout history is that it is a very practical way for the entire church to literally fulfill Paul’s command to “pray without ceasing.” Tomorrow morning after I wake up, the first thing I will do is to pray morning prayer. But I will do so only after Christians in Johannesburg said their morning prayers while I was fast asleep, and in the next hour another group in the next time zone will pray, and on and on through the night other Christians will wake up in their time zones, say their morning prayers, and then it will finally be our turn here in the USA’s Central time zone. Then it repeats at mid-day, evening, and night, so that constantly, all throughout the world, Christ’s people are praying, and in a very real sense, doing so together and without ceasing.

–––

Something I've prayed this week (and y'all might have too):

May God be gracious to us and bless us and make his face to shine upon us, that your way may be known upon earth, your saving power among all nations. (Psalm 67:1-2)

[This is the 29th post from A Year of Living Prayerfully]

Mocked for My Lack of Rhythm

When I played basketball at a very small college, once per year we would go and play a big, NCAA Division I school. The scores in those games usually weren't very pretty, as we were one of the small schools that those big schools would schedule as a "cupcake" game. Aside from the beatings we took, another memory stands out about when we played our DI game my first year: it was my introduction to hecklers. We were playing against Tennessee St., which isn't exactly the cream of the crop of college basketball, but whose team was still several levels above us. They had a pretty big arena, but hardly anyone was there for the game–except for a few guys who probably sat on the front row at every home game and made it their sport to heckle the visiting team. They were good, too. As our team was getting throttled (as I recall, they had nine straight trips down the floor when they hit a three-pointer on us), at least we had something to enjoy from the evening by appreciating the way their hecklers were making fun of us. They made fun of everything about us. They mocked our uniforms, called our coach "Physics Professor" the entire game, and would come up with different things to say to each of us. I wasn't an important enough player on our team to warrant many comments from them, but I still–16 years later–remember laughing at their only comment to me: "Hey #42...I can just look at you and tell you ain't got no rhythm."

I haven't thought about that night in quite a while, but it came to mind today as I thinking about something that happened a few days ago in my year-long experiment: I got a warning sign that I'm losing my rhythm. By this point in the experiment (now five months in), I've experienced how good the rhythms of praying that I've undertaken can be. They provide a method for constantly returning to God, and I'm realizing more and more how desperately I need that.

But there have also been bumps in the road of the experiment. I've had a good number of times when I've completely forgotten to pray. It's most often happened during the evening, and I usually don't realize it until I'm reading night prayers with my wife before going to bed. I avoided forgetting any times for a while in the beginning, but ever since the first time happened and my original streak ended, it's become more frequent.

So, forgetting one of the times for prayer certainly wasn't a first for me. But, for the first time, a few days ago I went to pray night prayers and realized I hadn't prayed at midday or evening that day, nor had I even thought anything about it. I've missed times here and there, but this was the first time that I'd missed two in a row. That caused me to think a bit about how I've gone, from planning my day around praying in these ways in the beginning of this experiment, to now being about halfway through the year and going from morning until night without praying and not even noticing that I hadn't done so. I think the answer has to do with what those hecklers told me: my lack of rhythm.When I began the experiment, I had a rhythm in the evenings of reading my prayers after I put my daughter to bed. But then, somewhere a few months into the experiment my wife and I made a good change and began alternating which one of us would be with our daughter at bedtime and which would be with our son. The rhythm changed, and so did my practices. I still remember to pray on the nights when I'm with my daughter, but–though I certainly enjoy the evenings when I'm with my son, I haven't adjusted my habits accordingly.

People who have practiced these things a lot longer than I have often talk about the importance of having a certain place and time for praying, so that it becomes a habit to be in that place at that time, and when we are–we don't even have to try to remember, but we'll just pray naturally out of custom. When we do something like that every day (or most days) it becomes a rhythm for us.

That's good to pay attention to, and it's also good to pay attention to the flip side of it. When there is some change to our daily routines, we shouldn't be surprised if our spiritual habits also get a bit out of rhythm. When we moved from the U.S. to Guatemala, I was seriously out of rhythm for a while, but after a while I settled into better habits than I had known previously. When we moved back to the U.S. a couple of years later, I was again out of seriously rhythm for a while, but–again–the habits came out stronger after some time. Major changes like that throw wrenches into the works of any good rhythms we may have established. The big changes in our lifestyles usually have big impact, and it may take a while for our habits to resurface in a new way after the changes have settled. I've been aware of that dynamic for a while, but this experiment is helping me to realize that it also comes into play with the smaller changes, like the adjustment in our routine of putting our kids to bed.

Whether the changes are big or small, and our resulting out-of-rhythm-ness is major or minor, I think it's safe to say we can go easy on ourselves. Yes, we want the habits to resurface, but the fact that you may feel like you've lost them in a period of change doesn't mean you no longer love Jesus very much–it probably just means you're out of rhythm for a while. Be merciful to yourself–with intention, they'll come back after some time, hopefully even in better ways than you knew them before.

The good part of this is that every time those changes to our lifestyles come, we have an opportunity to reshape our habits in new ways that are more conducive to the kind of lives we want to live and the kind of people we want to become.

–––

Something I've prayed this week:

O God, you have prepared for those who love you such good things as surpass our understanding: Pour into our hearts such love towards you, that we, loving you in all things and above all things, may obtain your promises, which exceed all that we can desire; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. Amen. (Prayer for the Sixth Sunday of Easter from The Book of Common Prayer)

[This is the 28th post from A Year of Living Prayerfully]

My Preschoolers' Interpretation of a 16th Century Saint

Last week, I was driving home from the ranch with my kids in the back seat of my pickup truck. We were about halfway home when I heard my 22-month-old daughter in the back seat begin to say with gusto, "Uhh! Uhh! Uhh!" I looked back to see what she was talking about and saw her pointing out the window at our favorite place to get a burger (Whataburger, of course).

Me: "Do you see Whataburger?" Her: "Yes!" [Pause] Her: "Eat! Eat! Eat! Eat! Eat!"

The mention of Whataburger got my 4-year-old son's attention. The boy sincerely loves that place. Earlier this year, while on a trip to visit my wife's family in Missouri (where, regrettably, there are no Whataburgers), we were eating cereal at breakfast, and we had this conversation:

Him: "Hey Dad, how much longer til we get back to Texas?" Me: "It's still going to be a while. Our trip just started. How come?" Him: "It's just–I'm really missing Whataburger." Me [smiling]: "Me too, buddy. But it will still be there when we get back to Texas." Him [frowning]: "I just don't think I can wait that long."

So, back to the conversation after my daughter's, "Eat! Eat! Eat!..." When he heard her saying that, my son looked up from the toys he'd been playing with and realized with a sad resignation that–once again–we were driving so close to his favorite establishment, but instead of stopping we were continuing on right past it on our way home. Then came the memorable question/commentary:

Him: "Dad, why are we spending all of our time not eating at Whataburger?" Me: "Good question, buddy."

He had a good point. He's now been in this world four and a half years, and though (obviously) we're no strangers to Whataburger, he could see that he was letting his life go by, spending virtually all of his time on other things. Why, Daddy, why?

For a long time, I lived my life essentially asking the adult equivalent of my son's question. I had things that were pretty deeply-seated desires in me, but still I spent all of my time not doing them. For example, for years, I thought it would be great to spend a day alone with God–even to make a habit of doing so. I even attended conferences where I chose workshops that talked about doing it, and always left inspired. Yet I still never did it.

It applied to other desires too. I wanted to spend more time with my family. I wanted to spend more time outdoors and less time in an office. I wanted to spend more time in boots and less time in dress shoes. Perhaps most of all, I wanted to live more prayerfully than I was.

You probably have desires like those too, and my son's question about Whataburger applies just as well. Why are we spending all of our time not doing them?

St. Teresa of Ávila wrote about this in the 1500s:

If we have the hope of enjoying this blessing [communion with God] while we are still in this life, what are we doing about it and why are we waiting? What sufficient reason is there for delaying even a short time instead of seeking the Lord...? (From Interior Castle)

It was both a great relief and a scary challenge to me when I realized that the huge majority of the obstacles that were keeping me from living according to those desires were not nearly as external as I'd thought. When it came down to it, my lack of those things was not due to anyone else's fault, but simply to the fact that I had never really intended to arrange all of the parts of my life around them (and, perhaps that desperation hadn't yet driven me to make any drastic changes). It didn't take any nerve to keep living like I always had and continue wishing that things were different.

A huge step for me was my participation in a Transforming Community. I felt like it gave me permission to live the way I'd always wanted, but in the process I discovered that I had never actually needed anyone's permission in the first place. All I needed was God's invitation and some reliable guidance along the way. The invitation had already been given to me, just as it has to you, and good guidance is readily available to us.

(This is where the analogy breaks down, because in this stage of their lives, my kids certainly do need my permission to go to Whataburger.)

–––

Something I've prayed this week:

Almighty God, whom truly to know is everlasting life: Grant us so perfectly to know your Son Jesus Christ to be the way, the truth, and the life, that we may steadfastly follow his steps in the way that leads to eternal life; through Jesus Christ your Son our Lord, who lives and reigns with you, in the unity of the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. Amen. (Prayer for the Fifth Sunday of Easter from The Book of Common Prayer)

[This is the 27th post from A Year of Living Prayerfully]

The Most Abused Poor Widow in History

As I spent a lot of time in Mark's gospel last year, and then in Luke this year, I've noticed a story which both of them tell, and both of them tell it in a way which makes it obvious that the meaning they were trying to attach to the story is very different from what I had always thought it meant.

It isn't an obscure story, but one that is likely to be familiar to many of you. Here is Mark's version (and Luke's is very close to it):

Jesus sat down opposite the place where the offerings were put and watched the crowd putting their money into the temple treasury. Many rich people threw in large amounts. But a poor widow came and put in two very small copper coins, worth only a few cents.

Calling his disciples to him, Jesus said, “Truly I tell you, this poor widow has put more into the treasury than all the others. They all gave out of their wealth; but she, out of her poverty, put in everything—all she had to live on.” (Mark 12:41-44, NIV)

If we read this story by itself, we are likely to come away with the same conclusion that I had always had in the past: Jesus was praising the widow for her sacrificial generosity, giving "all that she had to live on" for the sake of God's temple. But, if we want to avoid committing biblical malpractice, we can't just read the story by itself. Instead, when we read it as part of the overall stories that Mark and Luke were telling, it takes on a very different meaning.

To help point us toward the meaning Mark and Luke intended in telling the account of this poor widow, here are the three things I noticed which first made me wonder if all of the things I'd ever thought about this story might have been off-center:

First, despite the sermons that we've all possibly heard (or some of us may have even preached!) which praise the woman for her sacrificial generosity, Jesus never commended her. He simply sat there watching, noticing what was happening, and pointing it out to his disciples. Neither story says that he ever spoke to the woman. He never even said what she did was good. He simply commented that her few cents cost her everything.

Second, the more I've dug into the gospels, the more I've realized that their authors didn't choose the words they used–nor tell the story in the way they did–by accident. Mark has particularly intrigued me with his story telling ability, as at times he will put stories next to each other, apparently so that their meanings bounce off of one another, each filling in gaps in the other.

In light of that, we should pay a lot of attention to the stories that are put next to the account of this poor widow, and Mark and Luke each use the same accounts to precede and follow this one.

Here is the passage immediately before Jesus' comment about the widow's offering:

As he taught, Jesus said, “Watch out for the teachers of the law. They like to walk around in flowing robes and be greeted with respect in the marketplaces, and have the most important seats in the synagogues and the places of honor at banquets. They devour widows’ houses and for a show make lengthy prayers. These men will be punished most severely.” (Mark 12:38-40, emphasis added)

So Jesus warned his disciples to watch out for people like this who, among other things, devour widows' houses, then a poor widow came and put in "all she had to live on" in order to support the system that supported the people Jesus was warning his disciples against.

Third, we've got to pay attention to the stage of Jesus' life in which this occurs, during the final week before his crucifixion. He had very recently ridden into Jerusalem to the cheering crowds who welcomed him as their new king. Only the Jewish king or a high priest would have the kind of authority to go into the temple and make all of its regular business come to a halt, which is exactly what Jesus did after arriving in the city. Then, he spent the next couple of days teaching in the temple, mostly about the destruction that was sure to come to it and to Jerusalem if its people failed to change their ways and heed his warnings. Jesus was saying and doing extremely provocative things against the temple and its leadership, and the authorities would not allow someone who said and did those kinds of things–especially right there in the temple!–to live.

Putting the widow's offering in that context, notice the verses that come next:

As Jesus was leaving the temple, one of his disciples said to him, “Look, Teacher! What massive stones! What magnificent buildings!”

“Do you see all these great buildings?” replied Jesus. “Not one stone here will be left on another; every one will be thrown down.” (Mark 13:1-2, NIV)

So, if we put these three passages together (in the context of intense war of words at the temple between Jesus and the religious authorities), both Mark and Luke give us this sequence of events:

• Jesus continued teaching in the temple, and warned his disciples to watch out for these teachers of the law, because "...they devour widows' houses..."
• Then he pointed out a poor widow putting the last money she had to live on as an offering into the temple treasury.
• Then, as they were leaving the temple and one of his disciples remarked how impressive the temple was, Jesus said that it was going to be demolished.

So, to make my point (or, actually to rescue Mark's and Luke's point): Instead of holding the poor widow up as an example for the rest of us to follow, Jesus pointed her out as someone who was being unjustly abused by a crooked religious system that refused to heed his warnings and was about to come crashing down. She gave all she had to live on, presumably because she had been taught it was her duty to God to give those offerings, and she gave them to support a religious system which–instead of devouring her house–was supposed to have existed for the inseparable purposes of worshipping God and caring for people exactly like her.